Coventry Carol 2

December 17, 2014

A couple years ago I wrote about Coventry Carol and what I realized about the lyrics.

About a tiny child, presumably Jesus, being referred to as a youngling.

And that Jesus, therefore, is a Jedi.

But just recently I learned some more about the song, in that said tiny child actually isn’t Jesus. The song is about the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. When Herod went looking for Jesus in order to kill him and ended up ordering all first born boys under age two to be killed.

The song is a mother singing to her soon-to-be murdered baby.

Oh.

Well, this doesn’t change anything. It just means that the Bible forgot the part where Obi-Wan shows up and walks among the slain sadly, saying “Not even the younglings survived.”

Secular Spirit

December 16, 2014

Now for a non-theistic, festive edition of…

Here’s to You!!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, non-religious people who love Christmas!”

Yeah, that speaks for itself. People who aren’t religious but still love Christmas are a special breed as far as I’m concerned.

I think first of my former coworker. First work day after Thanksgiving, she and I were both putting up our respective tiny Christmas trees in our office space, which we both took down at the same time after Epiphany. She had been raised Catholic and remained one into adulthood, but after a while had enough of it. She wanted nothing more to do with religion, but she sure kept Christmas.

You can so easily have the Christmas without the Christianity. Either remove the Jesus element entirely or, better yet, treat it like just another Christmas legend, with the miracle virgin birth in the manger under the star right there alongside the snowman who comes to life when a magic hat is on his head.

I sort of wandered away from Christianity several years ago (as the progression of posts in the Occasional Godliness category sure demonstrate!) but I still go to my old church on Christmas Eve night. And you know what? I’ve always loved Silent Night and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and other classic carols, but I think I’ve come to appreciate them more since I pulled away from the mindset that one must believe these stories actually took place. I mean, who cares if it’s real or not? It most likely isn’t, but there’s no reason that should diminish the holiday at all. If anything, it just takes the pressure off!

And this shout out is to those who adore this holiday season without the “It’s all about Jesus!” junk. This shout out is for those who aren’t hung up on the idea that not being Christian means not having a place in the festivities. And those who gladly celebrate and don’t waste energy whining about traditions being “stolen” from other religious celebrations (which, being non-religious, they don’t believe in anyway).

And even in secular form, still calling it “Christmas” because, hey, why the fuck not?

No Glowing Anymore

December 15, 2014

So I was listening to (sigh, here it is again) the Christmas music on 97.1 WASH the other day at work via its website, when I glanced at the page to see what the next song was going to be.

It was…

The Rolling Stones, “Paint It Black”

Huh? That’s not even in the station’s regular lineup. (Awesome song, though.)

I had the music turned down to barely audible at the moment so I turned it up. What was actually playing was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Now ever since I keep singing to myself “I have a red nose and I want it painted black…”

Hey, it fits! 😀

Holiday Whining

December 14, 2014

People complain way too much about this time of year. I do too, I suppose. Complaining about complaining is especially annoying. But, fuck it, I’m doing it anyway. 😛

So here are some responses to all the bullcrap you people keep bitching about this season.

“Jesus is the reason for the season!”
Shove a nativity set up your ass.

“Everything about Christmas is stolen from pagans!”
Eat the above-mentioned nativity set.

“It’s too early for Christmas music/decorations! It’s only December 20!”
Consider a diet consisting solely of poinsettia petals.

“Christmas is so commercial!”
Yet you’re making an awful lot of money saying exactly that in Christmas specials and songs.

“Jesus was definitely not born on December 25!”
And you should definitely not have been born at all.

“Why don’t stores say ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore? Why?”
There’s almost half a gallon left of last year’s egg nog. Why don’t you finish it off?

“I don’t call it Christmas. I call it Yule.”
I wish “you’ll” shut the hell up and die.

“Remember what Christmas is all about.”
For you, I hope it involves choking on a candy cane.

“I heard three seconds of ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ while at the store! I’m so sick of Christmas music!”
Maybe you should be tied down and forced to listen to FOUR seconds of it.

“If there is a Christmas tree here, there should be a menorah, too! Why isn’t there a menorah?”
I hope some of that latke grease flies up and hits you in the eye.

“Why is there a menorah here? Why are we catering to the Jews?”
I hope the one who got latke grease in the eye runs you over while driving around blindly.

“Christmas is about family, not presents and stuff!”
I hope your family realizes you’re an asshat and abandons you in a snow drift this year. Without a coat or anything because that’s just “stuff”.

“I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas!”
Neither did I. Which was for you to get impaled on a holly branch.

Male Privilege

December 13, 2014

Privilege is a tricky concept to explain. People have a way of never using examples or never adequately explaining what they’re talking about, so the privileged ones who feel attacked act accordingly and everything turns into a completely pointless mess.

But a while back, I found a pretty good example of male privilege, and it was on the radio. No, it wasn’t 97.1 WASH this time! It was DC101, the rock station. There’s this thing they do weekday afternoons where they play a song that used to be played all the time but now isn’t played at all. They usually do one song but sometimes two or three. On occasion, they do more than that on certain special days.

This was one of those days. They played two songs, both of which had male lead singers, and a third one had a female lead singer. The fourth also had a female lead. At this point, the DJ was apologizing for making the set of songs too “girly” for playing two consecutive songs by female singers, and that apparently a couple of people tweeted or texted him commenting on that. So the DJ decided to make up for it and the fifth song was by an all-male band who, the DJ said, were “proudly misogynist”. And the next two songs were also sung by men.

So that’s seven songs, two of which were sung by women, and the other five by men. And somehow this was “too girly”. Even though the male-sung songs were still the majority. The fact that two of the songs were not sung by men, and that they were done consecutively, and that after they were done, the songs were two by men and two by women, thus even, this was considered “too feminine” and thus offensive.

And that, there, is male privilege. That when things are equal between the genders by the numbers, it is not perceived as equal but of a sign that men are losing out on something and that women have too much power. Even when they are equal. Even when, with the whole seven song set, the men still have a strong majority. Somehow, even in this case women still have “too much power”.

The Right to Privacy

December 12, 2014

How can people honestly worry about their right to privacy in this age of social media? People tweet constantly. People share their meals on Facebook all day long. They share their exact locations whenever they migrate to a different location. How, oh, how can people do all this while worrying about the government or police or whoever spying on them and knowing where they are and what they’re doing at all times when they share all this info freely anyway?

Easily.

Because the important difference with all the social media sharing is that it is freely chosen. Not everyone shares all these details or is interested in having a wide audience for these things. Some people do. And those people retain the right at any time to no longer share these details.

With other entities spying, it is outside of one’s control. It is invasion and coercion at that point. It is the removal of one’s autonomy.

Autonomy is so undervalued. :pissed:

Christmas in Africa

December 11, 2014

You’d think I should know better now after what happened last week, but I’ve continued browsing cool Christmas stuff on Wikipedia. And so far there has been significantly less child abuse.

I was looking through the Christmas Traditions article, with what countries all over the world do at Christmas. It’s pretty neat. Haven’t gotten all the way through it yet.

I had the radio on, playing the Christmas music. And guess what notoriously geographically-impaired song came on!

“There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time. The greatest gift they’ll get this year is light. Where nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow… do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”

Umm…

Christmas in South Africa is a public holiday celebrated on 25 December. Many European traditions are maintained despite the distance from Europe.

Christmas trees are set up in homes and the children are given presents in their stockings. Traditional ‘fir’ Christmas trees are popular and children leave a stocking out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. The gift bearer is Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

The Christmas meal is mince pies, turkey, roast beef or a barbecue outdoors. The meal is finished with Christmas Pudding. Christmas crackers are used to make noise.

Okay, I guess they don’t mean South Africa. Surely the rest of Africa is devoid of holiday spirit- oh…

Christmas Day is a public holiday in Nigeria which is always marked by the emptying of towns and cities as Nigerians that have been successful returning to their ancestral villages to be with family and to bless those less fortunate. As the towns and cities empty, people jam the West African markets to buy and transport live chickens, goats and cows that will be needed for the Christmas meals.

On Christmas Eve, traditional meals are prepared according to the traditions of each region. Rather than having sweets and cakes, Nigerians as a whole tend to prepare various meats in large quantities.

Huh. Okay, Nigeria seems to have this whole Christmas thing down. But then again, that song was more specifically about Ethiopia, right? And it’s not like they- oh, look at that!

Christmas Day in Ethiopia is celebrated on January 7. Many people who are Christian in Ethiopia, go to Church on the Eve of Christmas, and stay there all night until 4am the next day on Christmas while doing many spiritual prayer and rituals like Liturgy and Holy Communion.

Oh, snap!

Well, alright. Ethiopia has a lot of Coptic Christians. They in fact do know it’s Christmas time, just like Nigeria and South Africa. But maybe it’s just them, and that the rest of Africa doesn’t know about Christmas…

Or they do, since according to this map, only in Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Tunisia, SADR, and Somalia is Christmas NOT a public holiday.

Though the song is from 30 years ago so who knows what’s different between then and now. And there’s some new version of it out now that seems to have changed the above line. That’s something. But the original is played frequently, complete with misleading information. And it’s stuck in my head now and I’m still annoyed because it’s three weeks into the Christmas music and I’ve only heard them play Canon twice with its nice lyrics of not-totally-sure-what-but-at-least-not-geographical-misrepresentation. :irked:

Tumblr Temps

December 10, 2014

So often on Tumblr when a post so much as includes mention of a temperature, I know what’s coming.

Let’s say it says something like “This is 50 degrees in Michigan” and there’s a picture of people wearing t-shirts, shorts, and sandals. Then it says “This is 50 degrees in California” and in that picture everyone is wearing heavy winter coats and shivering.

But in the replies, before long at all, there will be some idiot who says “I live in England where we use Celsius so I was confused.”

No you fucking weren’t. You’re pretending to be confused. You’re in England, so while the Fahrenheit scale is not in use anymore, you all are at least aware of it. Hell, you all switch back and forth between it and Celsius in some contexts. And even so, you’d know full well the US is on Fahrenheit and that the locations mentioned in the image are in the US, so you could probably deduce as much.

Enough of this “tee hee, I don’t know the other scale” nonsense. Context, people! If someone is referring to 35 degrees as being hot, it’s Celsius. If cold, Fahrenheit. If referring to the day’s weather being 80 degrees, it’s obvious Fahrenheit, because 80 degrees Celsius isn’t exactly livable.

But that one wasn’t as bad as a similar one, where the temperatures -40, -30, -20, and -10 were shown in four respective pictures, showing Canadians considering them warm comfortable weather. And even in this context, there was some temperature scale confusion.

First of all, it’s negative temperatures. That’s still below freezing on both scales and still fucking cold. What’s to be confused about?

Also, and to mimic Futurama’s Morbo for the moment…

MINUS FORTY FAHRENHEIT AND MINUS FORTY CELSIUS ARE THE SAME FUCKING TEMPERATURE! GOODNIGHT!

It Is the Season

December 9, 2014

Now for a holiday promotional edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Unless you are currently singing “Deck the Halls”, please stop saying “‘Tis the season!” You sound like a loser. And you probably are one. It doesn’t make your sentence more Christmassy. It just makes your sentence completely stupid and murders innocent brain cells in the process. Why would you do that? Why?

It always sounds so cutesy and/or forced. When I hear it in an ad or something, it’s like I can tell the speaker is gritting her teeth, glaring at whoever wrote the dialogue, and with her eyes promising to disembowel him later with a cork screw.

We contract “it is” to “it’s”. So we’d say “it’s the season”. Do you typically contract “it is” to “’tis”? If you do, okay then. If you do not in any other context, then quit being a dumbass.

These are probably the same people who complete a list of things this time of year with “and a partridge in a pear tree”.

Social Justice Is a Waste of Time

December 8, 2014

I hereby decree…

(See title.)

*trollface*

But seriously, yeah, it kind of is when you think about it. In the same sort of way that changing a tire after you get a flat is a waste of time. In that, yeah, changing the tire is necessary, but it was only necessary because some idiot left nails on the road.

Really any movement against oppression has only been necessary because some assholes decided to, well, be assholes. And they were assholes so much in particular ways that we got to the point we didn’t recognize many things as being the work of assholes and just called it normal. So now people who are hopefully not assholes must clean up the assholes’ mess.

And when I say hopefully not assholes, well, that’s wishful thinking. So many activists are most definitely assholes who are causing more mess for some other activists to clean up. So often they’re under the delusion that being assholes to the right people is going to further their cause. While many are assholes simply out of habit or convenience, these activists are being assholes out of believing it is helping the world. But in the end, it’s all still people being assholes to each other. What has been accomplished? How has the world or humanity advanced?

Hey, I’m not saying “asshole activism” isn’t sometimes effective. But in those cases it’s a side effect. It’s not something to strive for. We should be striving for… people not being assholes to each other. If that’s not your goal, then you’re just wasting everybody’s time.

We have science and art to do, damn it!