*Insert Friendly Greeting Of Choice Here* *Insert Holiday Of Preference Here*

Listening to: "Invisible and Silent" by Covenant

Ahh, the holidays. Times of extreme consumerism, of generic sleigh bell noises in every commercial, of people whining and moaning over all that is not PC, of going to the mall on the 26th and getting into fistfights with soccer moms while returning those ugly pajamas your grandparents got you, of spending all your money on presents for people so that you're out of lunch money until February. Unless of course you're smart like me and you get them something small and cheap, plus something handmade and cheesy.

....Oops. Well, now you can all do the same for me. Or you can get me something nice, whichever you please.

Anywhoositz. The holidays. Love 'em or hate 'em, and chances are you do both, they are upon us once again, and I feel as though there are some issues involving them I must address. The first is this: Christmas carols. Yes, that's right, I said the C-word. No, not THAT c-word, you dirty minded freaks. I say "Christmas" because, with the exception of Adam Sandler's "The Hanukkah Song" (which barely counts anyway), Jews and Muslims and People-Who-Celebrate-Kwanzaa and atheists and whoever else are lucky enough not to have to put up with these infernal things. Forgive me if you disagree, but now that I've moved out of childhood, 95% or more of all Christmas carols annoy me so much that make me want to stick forks in my ears. Jingle Bells, White Christmas (racist much?), Little Drummer Boy, Rudolph The Reindeer Who Got A Sinus Infection...they're so frickin' catchy they won't leave your head. And they play them EVERY YEAR, with increasing frequency and for a longer period of time every year. Granted, a few of these, such as "O Holy Night" and "What Child Is This?" are either beautiful or epic or moving enough to be tolerable or even likable, but nonetheless the majority of these songs tend to piss me off every year with their annoying-ness. Add that to the fact that most of the lyrics DO NOT MAKE ANY SENSE, and I become rather Scrooge-like once the Christmas carols are dusted and taken off the radio shelves to be added to the playlists. Or, more accurately, brought up from a computer file. Whatever.

On the subject of the PC police, let me say that I am more offended by people saying "Happy Holidays!" to me than I would be if someone with halfway-decent eyesight told me "Merry Kwanzaa!". (A brief note on my absurd pastiness: I make cream cheese look like it has a tan.) This is AMERICA. Our founding fathers built our nation on the concept of FREEDOM OF RELIGION. By telling me that I will offend people by saying "Merry Christmas!" to them, and that I must instead say "Happy Holidays!", my choice of religion is being suppressed in the name of...freedom of...religion? Oh freedom of speech, too, that's a double whammy right there. The point is, Freedom of Religion does not equal Everybody Act Like You're Atheist. It means, or at least it SHOULD mean, Believe In Whatever You Want And Don't Let The Government Tell You Otherwise, even though it tends to be translated as Pretend Like You Don't Have A Religion And Sacrifice Your Freedom Of Speech So That You Don't Offend Anyone Mmkay?. Let's all try something like this next year: I should be able to say "Merry Christmas!" to a Jewish person, they should be able to say "Happy Hanukkah!", and we should both appreciate the kind wishes given to each other and turn off our Givudam's to the fact that we come from different religious backgrounds.

But then of course that would eliminate a cause for randomly suing the pants off of people, which isn't very American now is it?



Merry (belated >_<) Christmas and Happy New Year!

A Tiny Annoyance

The drums in most of The Deftones's songs sound like scheiza. The snare sounds like it's a genetically-modified tom. Other than that, they're kind of a good band, I guess. I had my iTunes on shuffle and that came up and it annoyed me, so I made it public. That is all.

Listening to: "My Own Summer" by The Deftones

A Super Spiel To Make Up For Lost Time

Listening to: "3 Libras" by A Perfect Circle

Wow, it's been awhile since I updated last...oh well. Anyway, I wrote this really long, rambling spiel (y'know, as opposed to my short, precise spiels) on that icky-sticky-oh-so-overdone topic of love awhile ago and sent it to a friend to see what they thought, and figured I'd post it here so it would look like I've actually done something recently. Plus I figured it'd give people something to be annoyed enough about to leave a comment. It's nicely cynical, blunt, and somehow deep but narrow-minded at the same time ("nihilistic" even, perhaps). Read the WHOLE THING before you decide to be completely, genuinely pissed off at me. Thanks.

Originally written 10.14.07:
I've noticed that, simultaneously, loving and not loving (which is not the same thing as hating), are the 2 most wasteful things someone can do in this life. Other than not recycling. But anyway. Say you love someone (romantically, compassionately, friendship, family, whatever, you choose). You could love them beyond your own comprehension, but there is nothing that says that they have to love you back to the slightest degree, or even be the slightest bit aware of the fact that you love them. Okay, you might say, what if they DO return the feeling? Then it's just that. A feeling. You have the feeling, they have the feeling...So then what? Well, maybe you/they act upon it, which makes love both a feeling and an action. As an action, it's something that you/they will physically/materially benefit from (a hug, a gift, a favor, etc). So if that is a physical/material benefit, what does that have to do with the feeling "love"? If I go to the mall and buy a t-shirt, the cashier doesn't give me the t-shirt because he/she loves me, but my friend might give me a t-shirt for that very reason (an over-simplified metaphor, I know, but it's the best I can think of right now). And if we love for physical/material benefit, then isn't that selfishness, which is pretty much the opposite of love? As for the "feeling" love, what benefit is in that? In a sense, the spirit, if you will, feeds off not only the "feeling" of loving another, but the "feeling" of another's love (I'm putting quote marks around the word "feeling" because that doesn't sound like the right word to me, but I don't know what other word to use. "Emotion" sounds even worse.). So the "spirit" is happy, satisfied, loving/loved, etc. What does this lead to? An action manifesting from it. Which leads to...? Back to the beginning. Another thought: If we are supposed to love everyone as we love ourselves, then do we love anyone? Is it possible to love everyone and still be able to say you love them? It's like the law of opposites, you can't have one without the other (or so it says). If you love everyone, and hate no one, then that sounds like you're neutral. But this could be untrue based on how much, and it what ways, you love different people. Don't get me wrong, everyone potentially deserves happiness. But it doesn't lead anywhere. Love, although the deepest "thing" (more quotes because, again, I don't know what else to call it) there is, is just another thing like everything else we do that seems to lead to nowhere/nothing, it just doesn't take as long as most other things and we tend to enjoy it most, obsess over it most, hurt from it most, want it most, etc.
HOWEVER...
NOT loving is ALSO the most wasteful thing you can do. Because if that's not what you're doing, then what the hell ELSE are you doing?! If you're loving, then you're making the most of your life that there IS to make of it. Life is a gift, which I'm really sick of hearing but I know it's true, so there's really nothing to do with it but enjoy it, which is most fully and effectively done by loving. People are always trying to find some deep special "meaning" or "purpose" in their life, but in reality, it seems that even if they DO find it, it's an action resulting as a manifestation of love. The only real difference is that there are an infinite number of actions that they can choose from in their day and in their life, and that's where the illusion of "I have to find my special destiny!" comes from. It's all the same thing, we just call it a bunch of different things because, especially in today's society, we have this whole "I'm a unique and special individual!" that everybody's obsessed over. Which isn't a bad thing, we ARE all different, which is great, but we can't be blinded by the illusion that any one individual is more important than any other individual. I believe in a thing called "social anarchy", which doesn't work if everybody only cares about whether they personally live or not, because then, nobody does. I digress. Love today. And tomorrow. And whatever other days there are. Cause that's all we can do.