Month: December 2007

This Is Christmas

December 16, 2007

It’s nice to have moments throughout the holiday season when you can truly feel the spirit of it. I had one of those today. I went to see my friend from college, and her husband and infant son, and a couple of their friends, for the usual monthly game day.

There I was standing with them in their kitchen. She was baking cookies along with her housemate. We randomly started singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and then “Let It Snow”.

In their living room, the Christmas tree was up (and they had a rather interesting ornament on it, of a half-naked Santa Claus with a ball in his mouth and strapped to a couple of giant candy canes, LOL!), and they had a string of lights long their ceiling edges.

And we sat their playing games and listening to twisted Christmas carols.

Mmmm. ‘Tis the season. Christmas time with nice people. Love such moments.

Made it even nicer when I saw on their table they had received the NYRA holiday card I’d sent them. Hehehe.

Sickening

December 15, 2007

Ugh. This news story just got posted on NYRA.

Source

Canadian Muslim Teen’s Dad Charged in Her Murder; Friends Say They Clashed Over Head Scarf

TORONTO — A Canadian man has been charged with murdering his own daughter, and her friends say the two clashed over her refusal to wear a Muslim head scarf. Police have not commented on a motive.

Aqsa Parvez, 16, of Mississauga, Ontario, was rushed to hospital in critical condition Monday after a man made an emergency call in which he claimed to have killed his daughter, police said. She died late Monday night.

The emergency call “came in from the father saying he had killed his daughter,” police spokesman Wayne Patterson said. “Police arrived and rushed her to hospital and she passed away.”

Patterson said they are working at determining the motive and refused to confirm it was over the head scarf.

The girl’s friends said in interviews Tuesday that Aqsa loved shopping for clothes and clashed with her family over her reluctance to wear the hijab, a traditional veil or head scarf for devout Muslim women.

Continue reading “Sickening”

It’s a Wonderful Life

December 14, 2007

Holy crap, what an awesome movie. It was just on NBC, so with all the ads, it got stretched into three hours. Hooray for writer’s strike! Take off all the crappy sitcoms and just play Christmas specials every evening! :cute:

In a strange sense, it’s kind of pro-youth. You’ve got this young George Bailey guy always determined and always willing to do the right thing, even at his own expense. Even when just 12 years old, saved his brother from drowning which made him half deaf, he yelled at that old Potter guy defending his father, and stopped his boss from poisoning a kid by mistake even though he doesn’t point out the error before he gets the shit slapped out of him. Everyone around him is screwing up, so it’s up to him to be the solid one, the responsible one, the rock.
Continue reading “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Kid Nation

December 12, 2007

And now, for an inspiring, reality-based edition of…

Here’s To You!

So I raise my glass and say “Here’s to you, Kid Nation!”

When I first heard about this show, I figured they were just recreating the original Boys’ Town for reality TV. Give some kids a town and say “here’s a town, run it”. No one is there to pick them up when they fall down. They have to pick themselves up. No mommy and daddy to do everything for them. It’s up to them to keep things going themselves.
Continue reading “Kid Nation”

V-Chip Can Go to Hell

December 11, 2007

Oh, my God! Enough of these damn V-Chip ads already about the stupid parents taking control of the TV.

What the hell is on TV that you people are so afraid kids might see or hear? Something might give them nightmares? They might hear a naughty word or two? A few too many sexual innuendoes?

Please, if your kid wanders into your bedroom at the wrong time one night, all of those things will happen a thousandfold compared to whatever is on TV!

But beside the point. It’s all over the place. Control your kids! Control what they see! Control what they hear! Control, control, control!

Perverts.

Jesus Is Love

December 10, 2007

For obvious reasons, this is the time of year I’m the most pious. All the Christmas songs, I suppose, being about Jesus and how great He is. The joy of His birth. Mmmm, nice.

As I mentioned several weeks back when ranting about atheists, identifying myself as Christian tends to confuse people. They’ll come up with all sorts of stereotypes and presumptions about my character, as well as what my exact beliefs must be. And when I say that my personal belief system does not align with what they’re telling me Christians all are supposed to believe, I get to be told that I either don’t understand my own religion or I’m not really Christian.
Continue reading “Jesus Is Love”

Slim Santa

December 9, 2007

So I was just downstairs spending time with grandma (out of guilt since her 80th birthday dinner was this evening and I missed most of it for a NYRA board meeting) and the news was on. Yeah, that usually gives me something to gripe about. Here’s what it was this time.

A bunch of mall Santas are being made to slim down. We all know Santa Claus is supposed to be fat, but then all the “health experts” have decided to chime in and say that a fat Santa is a bad influence and glorifies poor diet.

What?!
Continue reading “Slim Santa”

Flashy

December 8, 2007

Last weekend, I finally bought a string of sequencing Christmas lights. Last night, I got them out of the box, plugged them in, and watched them flicker and flash! They were plugged in and sitting in a pile on my lap. Weird!

So I strung them around my window, which is right next to my computer. A little awkward and half assed, but still cool looking.

But I mentioned this already last year in Lights Please. Colored sequencing lights are win.

Except I had to turn them off after a while because they were giving me a headache and making me nauseous, LOL. Bah! :irked:

This is the exact same type string we had many years ago at our house. It was put on a small tree in our front yard. And my dad, my sister, and I could never agree on a flashing setting! I wanted it on Chasing Flash, but my sister wanted it on Twinkle Flash. I forget which one my dad liked, probably Combination. There’s eight settings total.

Except this string I just got is faulty on one of the settings. The one called “Slo Glo” is supposed to be each color fading in and out, but it doesn’t work like that. It’s just a random bunch of lights on the string that fade in and out, different colors. So not much different from Slow Fade, which is all of the lights fading in and out at the same time. Which is kind of boring.

This tells me that I’m not prone to seizures, at least. 😆

Good Writing

December 7, 2007

Been meaning to bitch about this for a while, but then I suppose it came up more after I was reading something about criticisms of the Harry Potter books. No, I don’t mean the Christian fundamentalist whining we all already know about. I mean the members of the “official writing community”, or something.

Eww! Rowling uses too many clichés! Eww! They’re just kidsy magic stories! Eww! This will just make kids be interested in bad pop culture writing and not Rudyard Kipling! Eww!

Wow.
Continue reading “Good Writing”