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Yes, the title is another imagined shot in the “war on Christmas.” Regardless of creed, religion or lack thereof, here’s my annual Christmas Eve greeting from Jackson Browne’s “The Rebel Jesus“:
- And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgment
For I’ve no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear
“Happy Xmas (War is Over),” John Lennon
For some reason this year’s onslaught of “best of the year” lists really wore on me. As a result, I’m not going to do one of those posts for 2013. Instead, I will note that, based on books listed in both of two different compilations of this year’s book lists, it’s again clear I am evidently out of touch with mainstream or even literary culture.
In fiction, the only one I read was Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life — and I gave it two stars. I found it rather plodding and essentially gathering praise because it was “literary fiction” when, in fact, it was a SF/F novel exploring ideas handled far better by genre writers. In contrast, my favorite book of the year, The Humans by Matt Haig, not only wasn’t on the compilations, I don’t believe it was on any year-end list I glanced at.
I do a little bit better when it comes to nonfiction. I read Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital and listened to the unabridged audio of Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. Both were well-done but struck me as, at best, slightly above average. I doubt either would have made any best of list I did. In fact, the only nonfiction book in my Goodreads year’s best bookshelf was a book first published in 2006.
Plainly, not only am I not a trend-monger, I appear to ignore them.
Sense isn’t democratic. An opinion uttered by 99 people, doesn’t necessarily make more sense than an opposing opinion uttered by one person.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Orwell in America (“Edward Snowden recognized two great Orwellian truths; first that liberty depends on millions of private lives kept private. …. Second, Snowden recognized that the War on Terror is no war and the quicker we drop the impossible abstraction of it all the better.”)
Legal Puzzler of the Week
Most Honest Person of the Week
- When police stopped a California man driving a stolen truck, he told them he stole it because he had to get to court for an unrelated stolen vehicle case
Bookish Links
Nonbookish Linkage
We’re gonna press on, and we’re gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.
Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase), Christmas Vacation
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Dystropia: The Christmas Edition! (“During a holiday that is increasingly dominated by commercial interests, the Christmas Creep highlights the panoramic greed that encapsulates us all this time of year. Even the Whos down in Whoville were noticeably happier once they got all their shit back.”)
- The Last Taboo (“Basically, atheism is still as close as it gets to political poison in American electoral politics”)
Most Honest Person of the Week
- After her latest arrest, 83-year-old Doris Payne, who’s stolen some $2 million in jewels in the last 60 years, listed her occupation on court papers as “jewel thief“
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
The point is there ain’t no point.
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
It’s been a long time since I posted about the interesting, at times disturbing, insights that appear in Google’s autocomplete suggestions. Autocomplete displays potential searches based on the first couple words entered in the search box. The suggestions are based on the search activity of all web users and the context of the web pages indexed by Google.
With the holidays approaching, I wondered what people think various religions “should” do. Most Christian denominations don’t even prompt an autocomplete, although “Catholics should not work in emergency rooms.” For other religions, though, the autocomplete suggests indicate a significant, but sadly not too surprising, amount of religious intolerance.
Let’s start with the people the various religions might all agree they dislike — atheists. Seems they “shouldn’t have rights” or they “should be deported.” While that doesn’t say much for understanding that freedom of religion includes the choice not to believe, this is mild.
Hindus, Muslims and pagans “should be killed.” It should be noted, though, that autocomplete first suggests Muslims “should be banned” with killing them taking second place. “Scientologists should be shot,” although left unstated is whether there should be fatal intent. And while the most common autocomplete for Mormons is that they “should not grow barley,” that is followed by the autosuggestion they “should be killed.” (Evidently barley is a concern because it is used to make beer.)
Perhaps the mildest autocomplete is for Buddhists as all but a very small minority themselves probably agree that they “should not worship Buddha.” History apparently plays a role when it comes to the Jews, who “should apologize for killing Jesus.”
Aren’t religious differences thought-provoking? Actually, perhaps the problem is a lack of thought.
[Fundamentalism is] the Chinese food-binding of the human mind.
PZ Myers, The Happy Atheist
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