#16tovote on the 16th – Myths and Facts

December 16, 2010

Starting this past February, I’ve been running a little Twitter campaign called #16tovote on the 16th, where we tweet about lowering the voting age throughout the 16th of the month. Today is the eleventh run of the event, which has grown a little since it began, though its success varies month to month, hardly a linear progression.

Anyway, the idea is that there are a lot of tweets on this specific day in support of lowering the voting age, and all tweets must use the hashtag #16tovote. This way, I can watch the search results for the hashtag to see who and what has contributed to the event. Fairly simple. Yet even so, I often find myself having to clarify the same things constantly, to bust some myths that don’t want to be busted. Such as…

Myth: The #16tovote hashtag is for use only on the 16th.

Fact: The #16tovote hashtag is for use whenever, for any tweet about lowering the voting age. The event #16tovote on the 16th of course is special in that it specifically uses the hashtag because of the emphasis on voting age tweeting. Sort of how even though Thanksgiving is about eating turkey, we still eat turkey throughout the rest of the year.
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Just Add Alcohol

December 14, 2010

You know what’s annoying about the drinking age? Aside from the fact that it exists? It’s like a go-to excuse for all sorts of other ageism against young people.

There are many hotels out there that will not let you check in if you are under 21. Hell, Holiday Inn Express’s website will even tell you point blank on their hotels’ pages the minimum check-in age. What’s often the little excuse for having this ridiculous rule? “Oh, we don’t want there to be underage drinking parties!”

Well, the logic there crumbles easily. Most parties with alcohol have at least a few people 21 or older around, mostly since they’re the ones who supply the alcohol to begin with. And if they have the 21+ people for that, chances are those people would be the ones checking in. As long as you allow anyone under 21 to stay at your hotel at all, even families, you run the risk of having underage drinking on your premises. Please. These rules don’t attack underage drinking. They attack youth independence.
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Giant Inflatable Santa

December 13, 2010

I was at Home Depot a couple weeks ago to pick up some Christmas lights, which are now hanging on my living room window for the neighbors to admire. Yay! While there, I looked through all the other decorations, mostly stuff entirely too big and fancy to put in front of my house, whose front yard is like 90% driveway, 5% porch and walkway, and 5% tree and bushes. Ah, townhouses.

Most of the decorations at the store were rather sensible. Just some lights. Prelit trees. Snow globes. Obnoxious singing stuffed animals.

Then you get the huge lawn ornaments and whatnot. Huge inflatable snow globe for the front yard, six feet in diameter. Maybe some illuminated reindeer. Giant snowman. And, of course, as said right in the title of this thing, giant inflatable Santa, bigger than any of that other stuff.

PROTIP: If you find you have purchased the giant inflatable Santa, and you have placed it somewhere on your premises, you are officially overdoing it.

😉

Sparkle Sparkle

December 12, 2010

I hereby decree…

Leave Twilight alone!

Jesus Christ, am I sick of everywhere I look, mostly online but also some offline, there’s the exact same stale attacks on the popular Stephenie Meyer book series “Twilight”. I used to read most of the Cheezburger sites on a daily basis, but stopped because it seemed like every damn thing on any of the sites was something whose entire humor seemed to be that it was mocking Twilight or Justin Bieber. Honestly, it’s fine once in a while, but all the damn time? There’s other shit in the world, you know!

It’s the same shit, too.

“Oh noes, Edward Cullen is a sparkling vampire? That’s an insult to real vampires! I’m offended!”

“Oh noes, why is Bella so attracted to Edward when he’s totally stalking her? That’s not a healthy relationship!”

“Haha, for Bella it’s a choice between a dead guy who’s 100 years older than her or a werewolf.”

“Oh, God, it’s sooo poorly written!”

I actually did read Twilight recently. It didn’t exactly blow me away, nor really keep me hooked, but I didn’t find it anywhere near deserving of the venom it gets all the time. True, I haven’t read the other three books yet, so we’ll see how I feel then.
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Deathly Hallows

December 11, 2010

So this afternoon I finally got over to the damn movie theater to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1”. Usually when I go see the Harry Potter movies for the first time, I get annoyed. Yup, I’m that person who is all “WTF? that’s not how it happened in the book!” Though more specifically, I can understand deviation from the book in some circumstances, like perhaps trying to save time or not having to cast more people when they could substitute it easily in another way. Better than in “Half Blood Prince” when they pretty much just started making shit up.

For example, in this movie, after they all left the Dursleys’ disguised as Harry, they ended up at the Burrow instead of the Tonks house like in the book. But it was a change that didn’t make much difference.

But that’s about all the deviations really were. The movie was great! They even left in one of my favorite lines: after they all take the Polyjuice Potion to turn into Harry, Fred and George say “we’re identical!” I LOL’d.

They even left in the evil spirits from the locket teasing Ron before he smashed it with the sword.

Although, I could have done without the spirits’ image of Harry and Hermione making out naked. Yeah, guys, I know Rule 34 is quite popular but the movie doesn’t need it! 😆

Old Songs Are Old

December 10, 2010

You know what’s cool about some Christmas carols? Like the super old ones, like Silent Night and Hark the Herald Angels Sing? They’ve been around a long ass time.

I was watching the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol this evening, and when Scrooge is with Christmas Present he’s watching his nephew and the Cratchits in church. Where everyone was singing O Come All Ye Faithful. And then I just got this feeling, that this movie from 1938, about a story written and taking place in like 1850 or so, features a church service where they are singing O Come All Ye Faithful. The very same O Come All Ye Faithful I’ll be singing at a church service on Christmas Eve here in 2010.

Times like this I understand more why people cling to their religions and/or traditions. Not so much necessarily any ideological reasons, but that belonging to some long-running chain of events, that makes one feel part of that something bigger, yet in a sense that each one of us is significant in it. Something like that.

When I went to London last year, I visited Saint Paul’s Cathedral, which has been there for like over a millennium. Or, more accurately, since it was rebuilt after that big ass London fire in like 1666 or something, but in any case, that site has been used for religious purposes for that millennium or so. While I was there, they did a quick afternoon service and some choir was singing. And I thought while sitting there that here I was, witnessing yet another service in the countless number of them that had been going on there since so very many centuries ago. Neat.

Christmas songs are perhaps my favorite thing about the season, what with embodying all the traditions have been swept into the veritable Katamari that Christmas is, as well as the general joy. And music is fun anyway!

And I wonder that a century from now, two centuries from now, they’ll still be singing Silent Night and Angels We Have Heard on High, as well as the newer but just as fun and meaningful songs, and the even more Christmas songs that have yet to be composed. Now that’s what I call seeing Christmas Past, Present, and Future!

The One About Jesus

December 9, 2010

Did I ever tell you the story about Santa Claus? He’s the guy who lives at the North Pole for some reason and has a magic sleigh and reindeer with which he zips around the world Christmas Eve night and delivers presents to everyone!

Did I ever tell you the one about Santa’s ninth reindeer, Rudolph? He was born with a glowing red nose, and the other reindeer bullied him over it, until one foggy Christmas Eve, when Santa couldn’t fly anywhere because magic sleighs and flying reindeer are no match for ordinary fog that apparently covers the entire world, they realized Rudolph’s red nose makes a fine fog light, so they were able to go out after all.
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Stop Torturing Teens? That Is SO Democrat!

December 8, 2010

And now for a partisan, torturous edition of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

I realize the Republican Party seems to exist for no other reason than to stop the Democrats from doing whatever it is they’re doing, no matter what it is. To be fair, Democrats do the reverse as well, but not quite as much, considering almost no Republicans in Congress or Senate seem to ever vote the “Democrat” side of an issue, while Democratic Congressmen and Senators do so quite a bit. And it’s pisses ordinary Democrats the hell off! But I digress.

So, as part of the Republicans’ agenda of don’t-fucking-let-anything-pass, now they’ve effectively stalled legislation to get teen behavior modification facilities some much needed regulations. HR 911 passed the House and then it’s been in a Senate committee to see if it’ll get put to a full vote before the Senate. We NYRAnians met with the chair of that committee, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), to help move it through the committee. The senator agrees with our position on it. The trouble was some pesky Republican Senators on that committee who seemed to have some qualms about some of what this anti-torture school legislation is asking. Seriously, go to the above link to read Alex’s piece about it in Huffington Post. These Republican Senators have a problem with things like forcing school to do things like, oh, NOT withholding food or vital medical treatment from students as therapy.
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Kids at Christmas

December 7, 2010

I almost don’t think I should write about this since I’m sort of repeating stuff I’ve said quite a bit already. But, screw it, here’s another!

Right now, I’m at work and getting ready to send the first batch of NYRA’s holiday cards (yay!) and have 97.1 streaming online, the DC version of the generic Clear Channel light rock station that carries that annoying Delilah show in evenings and in December plays 24/7 Christmas music (with a few Chanukah songs thrown in here and there so they can pretend they’re all inclusive). I love Christmas music, I’ve been over this many times, yet there are several songs, which I’ve also mentioned before here and here and here and here and here, which are awful and keep getting played for some reason. Two of the worst are “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”. While the latter thankfully doesn’t seem to be getting played quite as much this year, the former is of course getting played over and over.
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The Amazing Ash

December 6, 2010

It was four years ago today I lauded my legendary red eye tetra Cedric and his tankmates for their survival despite my astoundingly poor job of taking care of them and the aquarium.

Cedric, as you know, lived in my tank for an astounding four years and seven months, right up until about 23 months ago he swam off to fishy heaven. Nonetheless, his spirit lives on, that spectacular little fish who hung on to an admittedly boring life inside a little five-gallon aquarium, for such a long time. None of my other fish have done that!

Or, actually…

My serpae tetra Ash is about to beat that record! Cedric lived in my tank for 4 years and 214 days, the exact same amount of time it has been since my sister brought me Ash on my birthday in 2006, along with other serpae tetras Quigley and Templeton, plus sunset molly Pyro. Pyro died only a couple months later. Lost Quigley sometime last year. Last February, when the big ass Superbowl weekend blizzard knocked out our electricity for 30 hours, this meant my house went that long without heat, and as such the fish tank got really cold, killing my algae eater Stripe, and nearly killing Ash and Templeton, though once the heat was back on, they were fine again after a bit. Except Templeton died a few weeks later. Ash was all alone until May when I got another algae eater, Aurelius. So now it’s just the two of them.

Congrats, Ash! For your resilience under the care of someone like me, who should probably never ever be in charge of any living thing.