Sayeth the Lord: "Because day after day after day, all you do is mutsche me."

If God himself was behind the Denver Bronco's recent run, then He sent Tim Tebow a little message about humility yesterday.

Merry War On Christmas, everyone.

Maybe we NEED a War on Christmas

Every year, the usual suspects come out and claim that the Godless heathen homosexual jewish Muslim Kenyan socialist fascist great unwashed have declared war on Christmas, what with their "Happy Holidays" and their menorahs on the town hall lawn right there alongside of the Baby Jesus.

Well, you know what? Maybe there SHOULD be a War on Christmas.

Yesterday I received my copy of the local newspaper. It was the size of the Sunday New York Times, and almost all of it was ads for "doorbuster specials." It was one thing when the doorbuster specials started at 8 AM, or even at 7 AM. But when people are camped out at Best Buy for days on end, something has gone very, very awry with this holiday. It seems that Black Friday has become National I Got Mine And Fuck You Day for that portion of the 99% which doesn't realize it's camping out at Target to get $200 off a flat screen TV BECAUSE the oligarchs have taken away all but the last few bucks in their pockets.

Nothing exemplifies this horrific trend more than this confluence of the thuggish tactics employed by the University of California at Davis police and Christmas greed:

A woman shot pepper spray to keep shoppers from merchandise she wanted during a Black Friday sale, and 20 people suffered minor injuries, authorities said.

The incident occurred shortly after 10:20 p.m. Thursday in a crowded Los Angeles-area Walmart as shoppers hungry for deals were let inside the store.

Police said the suspect shot the pepper spray when the coverings over the items she wanted were removed.

“Somehow she was trying to use it to gain an upper hand,” police Lt. Abel Parga told The Associated Press early Friday.

He said she was apparently after some electronics and used the pepper spray to keep other shoppers at bay.

You can almost write the post-apocalyptic Philip K. Dick story for yourself; about a consumer-driven society driven mad by having everything it believed to be true proven wrong, scrambling for the marked-down accoutrements of their former life while those who run the companies that provide these opportunities watch on TV screens and laugh.

Oh. Right. That's already happened:



If this is Christmas, then I want no part of it. So I am hereby declaring a War on Christmas. Oh, I'll still make chili for the company potluck, because it's what you have to do. But other than that, I want no part of it. And if everyone just simply stayed away from the stores, or shopped exclusively locally (not just on Small Business Saturday), we just might get the message across that WE are the "job creators".

Update: Also, this. And this. And this.

How to Wrap a Cat For Christmas

via Lynn:

Christmas Video Blogging: Yeah. What Sarah Said.

Yeah, Santa. What DO you have to do with Jesus anyway?

You gotta be shitting me.

You've got to love the holiday season, when as George Carlin used to say, if you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it from you.

And then there's this -- a true sign of the season.

I only wish I was kidding.

So what do the Brilliants do for Christmas?

Well, first we try to find something to watch on TV that isn't nauseating while we have coffee. Then I make a few feeble attempts at blogging, a few more at cleaning, then a few more at still trying to decide whether to go with Garmin or Tomtom for our GPS-to-Be (I'm leaning towards the Garmin Nuvi 265T, because most of what I want it for is traffic reports and how to detour around jackknifed tractor-trailers on Route 46). Then in the early afternoon it looked something like this:

...only in a nicer place, and the duck looked more like this.

Then we came home and I initiated Mr. Brilliant into the wonderful world of Scrabble. I haven't played since college, but despite a valiant effort by Mr. B, the teachings I gained in childhood, in which I probably played against my father 1,476 times and only won once, served me in good stead. At 83, he still does the New York Times crossword puzzle every Sunday. In ink. Completely finished. Before noon. Every single damn week.

At last....a Christmas special for cynics

Marc Maron's Christmas in LA:

Is it over yet?

My one concession to Christmas

And only because her voice makes the heart sing....Darlene Love's annual appearance on David Letterman:

Ah, yer all a buncha pagans...

I've long found it fascinating how a celebration of someone born in the warm, dry Middle East became so associated with cold and winter. They didn't have spruce or pine trees in the Holy Land, nor did they have mistletoe. The Three Wise Men weren't an old fat guy with white hair and a beard dressed in a red suit bringing toys to children. And no one brought a turkey so that Mary wouldn't have to try to cook in a place filled with flammable materials. As someone once asked me, "How did Christmas become German?"

It's sort of like trying to determine what the relationship is between the resurrection and fluffy bunnies and eggs. And why "Easter" sounds so much like "estrogen".

The answer, of course, is that just as Oasis ripped off the Beatles, so did the early Christians rip off the pagans. Add to that some good old fashioned commerce, and you have the Christmas celebration that people like Bill O'Reilly regard as being somehow mandated by God himself.

The Independent (UK) has the straight poop on the trappings of Christmas:

Why is Christmas Day on 25 December?

The Bible offers no date for the birth of Jesus, which probably was not in the year 1AD, but a few years earlier, and may or may not have been in December. The celebration of the birth of Christ on 25 December dates back to the fifth century, when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The date was chosen to coincide with the winter solstice and the Roman festivals associated with the shortest day of the year, which falls between 22 December and 25 December. This was seen as the day when the Romans celebrated Dies Natalis Solis Invicti – "the birthday of the unconquered sun". It was also Jupiter's birthday and, further back, the birthday of his Greek equivalent, Zeus. In Eastern Europe, the various Orthodox churches – the Russian, Greek, Armenian, Serbian et al, follow the old Gregorian calendar, and in which Christmas Day is 7 January There is no Santa Claus in the Gospels.

Where did he come from?

Nearly 1,700 years ago there was a bishop of Myra, in Asia Minor, who was imprisoned under the last pagan Roman Emperor, Diocletian, but reinstated under Constantine. A cult grew up around him in Greece and spread outwards, and he became the patron saint of children, among others. An old legend about him is that there was a poor man who could not afford dowries for his three daughters, until bags of gold were tossed through an open window by St Nicholas, landing in the stockings drying in front of the fire. In Holland and Germany, there was a custom that St Nicholas was the secret bringer of presents for children on 6 December, his feast day.

When did he start sliding down chimneys?

After the American revolution, New Yorkers tried to rediscover their Dutch roots, and revived the feast of St Nicholas, and his legend. The writer Washington Irving took the mickey out of this revived cult in a satire published in 1809, called Knickerbocker's History of New York. In it, St Nicholas appears as a fat, jolly figure, dressed in fur, with a clay pipe and beard, who slides down chimneys.

There's more here. Of course if your name is "Bill O'Reilly", you might want to pass it by. After all, why would you read something that deprives you of a weapon?

And for those of you not inclined to snark today, you may want to revisit my post from Christmas Eve last year, when for one brief shining moment, I was able to give my cynicism a rest.

Joyous Yule, everyone.

Minstrel Boy: American Hero

Why we are huge fans of the Minstrel Boy:

While we're waiting in the checkout line, just ahead of us is a archetypal Snowbird. He's wearing the uniform so identification is a snap. Shorts and windbreaker, Costco sandals with sock, shocking alabaster white skin. Most of the locals here at least end up with "farmer" tans, even if they get their farmer tan on the golf course.

All is well and proceeding nicely until the checkout lady finishes up his transaction and hands him his receipt. She says "Happy Holidays."

You would have thought she said "Allah bless Osama bin Laden, and all gay marriages," Because the snowbird guy puffs himself all up and puts on his best Bill O'Reilly look of extreme indignation. He gives her what I expect he imagines as his best imperious and withering gaze and says:

"In MY house we say MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

Usually I have my normal brought up on the rez type of reserve. I'm not known for being chatty or even saying all that much. Usually I just would have stood there and let things shake out the way that they will. It might have been the creeping pain that I was starting to feel in my jaw as the novocaine began to subside. It might also have been the two Vicodin that the oral surgeon gave me before I left his office. It might have been my extreme feduppitude with the whole bullshit "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" fiction that is so beloved of the social conservative crowd. It might even have been some residual resentment of out of state folks who spent bazillions of dollars in the last election to amend the California State Constitution for the first time in history with the express purpose of denying rights to a whole class of our citizens, including my cousin, with their odious Proposition (h)8.

It might have been all of those things all bubbling up in my opiate addled head. Anyway, the result was that I blurted out in the same cadence and tone of voice as the Snowbird dude:

"In MY house we say go FUCK yourself!"