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Monday, December 15th, 2008
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1:11 pm - Well... uh... huh. Who knew... WTF?
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So, Lord of the Rings collectibles. Ah? Eh? A nice sword, maybe: a model of Glamdring, the blade Gandalf carried, no problems understanding that. Hang that on the wall and be proud of your geekery. A Ring! The One Ring, encased in some nice rune-carved display globe. I get that. A brooch, maybe.
I admit that this particular collector's niche is something I never would have thought of. I'm not sure I would have pursued it if I did think of it. Click this! Click it!
I'll wait.
A... train? A collectible, HO-scale, gold-wheeled train set? With pictures from the movie on it.
Admittedly, when Frodo and the Fellowship were traveling by train to Mordor, with Legolas serving up tea and coffee in the dining car and Gandalf and Gimli playing a game of whist, the steady chugging of the wheels and the proud "whoo! whoo!" of the steam engine must have struck fear into the hearts of Sauron's servants, but damn.
Now, a Harry Potter collectible train? That makes sense. There's a %#&@$! train in that story. It's set in modern day. And I love me some HO-scale model railroading. But a collectible Lord of the Rings Electric Train Set... I... I'm jiggered. I'm really stupid right now. I must be in the wrong business. Seventy bucks per car. I should just bury my integrity and get into selling Thomas Kinkade holiday paraphernalia.
There's a Batman collectible train set advertised on the bottom of the page, if you like.
What's next? An exclusive Dale Earnhardt Intimidator Crossing Gate and Block Signals Accessory Set?
current mood:  Needled and nettled
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| Sunday, November 30th, 2008
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11:12 pm - Glad to be back in the land of Culture
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We're freshly back from Springfield, Missouri, and our heads are still reeling.
I can't pinpoint it exactly. Perhaps it's because Winter is there already, cold, bleak and deathlike. Maybe there's a disgruntled political atmosphere after the country had the audacity to elect a black man for President (MO went for McCain). Maybe it's because we haven't had a vacation in a long time, and our tolerance was low.
Of course, waiting for a table at Lambert's in Ozark, just a few miles from the Arkansas border, and being the only interracial couple in a racially homogeneous room, might have had something to do with it. We felt... alien. More than usual. The evangelist-wife beehive mullets were out in force, as was the flannel and the camouflage trucker caps and the beer-sponsored racing event t-shirts. Bianca and I didn't hold hands the entire time we were in the state.
I was asked by a girl there "how is California different from here?" I had a hard time figuring out what to say, where to start. There are some similarities: Chain restaurants. Too many SUVs. Starbucks. Most of California isn't much different from Missouri. Cows, tractor supply, Wal-Mart, highways, homophobia.
But the differences--when speaking of Los Angeles--are vast. L.A. has sidewalks. Springfield's roads slope into ditches because of the rain. In L.A. you can stand in line at a bank and run out of fingers counting ethnicities. Springfield is overwhelmingly white. From L.A. you can drive 275 miles to Las Vegas. From Springfield you can drive 40 miles to Branson. L.A. has earthquakes and wildfires. Springfield has tornado warnings, heavy rainfall and hail. L.A. has parking for ten bucks, advertised by flashlight-waving men in red vests. Springfield has no lack of parking, including 60-foot spaces for 18-wheelers. L.A. has mountains and sometimes an ocean within view. Springfield has an open sky.
How do I explain the utter joy of the taco truck, silhouettes of palm trees in front of phone lines, the brute-force wizardry of shuttle bus drivers weaving through traffic? Techno music, Mini Coopers, thin women with large sunglasses and tiny dogs, goth-industrial clubs, reading books at vegan cafes, Dodger Dogs, homeless veterans at freeway offramps? Celebrity sightings, smog, the Sunset Strip, tattoo & piercing parlors, the Santa Monica Pier, graffiti? The Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame, gang signs, West Hollywood, sushi bars, Pink's, the Melrose shopping district, police helicopters? Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Thai Town, Little Armenia, Olvera Street? I couldn't say much to her.
I usually regard Randy Newman's music with the correct amount of revulsion, but the song holds absolutely true for us. We love L.A. And we're glad to be back.
current mood:  Dazed and Confused
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| Thursday, November 20th, 2008
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12:36 pm - Research Paper as Ugly Metaphor
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I am busy corralling my theoretical horses, marshalling my scholarly forces, and engaging in other horrible examples of metaphor in the pursuit of a "Final Paper" concept.
Popular Culture. Mass Media. Post-Modernism. Theorists. Needlessly long Sociological words meant to convey intent.
My final paper is a solar system yet in the accretion disk phase, slowly swirling around until gravity pulls it into understandable, more spheroid shapes. My planets will have great names: Baudrillard, Marx, Barker, Reggio, pulled helplessly into elliptical orbits around my central thesis sun. Sorry, McDonald, you've been shattered into an asteroid field somewhere along.
It's still fairly large until I get my head around the argument I want. I hope I can pull it off.
current mood:  Philosophomorical
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| Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
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11:18 am - What you did
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First, read this sharply sarcastic yet no less poignant list of questions, written by my friend Pete Nicely.
Then read my two posts before this one, just so you can get a sense of how I'm feeling right now.
Are you really aware of the impact of having voted Yes on Prop 8?
This was not just the simple question:
"Shall we now allow same-sex marriages in California?"
"No. We do not wish to change our current laws to allow same-sex marriage."
... and that would have been it. We would see that the California public is not yet ready for that kind of cultural shift. We'll try again when you're a little more enlightened, a little less ick-factored by your western Judeo-Christian cultural upbringing.
No. This was the stomping-down of a civil right already granted to a part of the population, a right which was really not hurting you at all. You could have looked at this Proposition, realized its heavy-handed extremism, and voted it down, waiting for a better, more civilized opportunity to deny same-sex marriage. You did not. You wrote it into the State Constitution.
You wrote religious-based belief into our Constitution.
People. Don't you know that there are federal benefits that are applicable only to "married" couples, without substitutions? The concept of "civil union" is toothless and not equal to marriage. Do you know how entrenched this now is, how far back culturally we've pushed ourselves, how similar this is to the anti-miscegenation laws that didn't end until Bianca and I were born?
What reasons do you have for this that does not look like hatred and fear? Whether you felt that your own marriage was being demeaned, whether you feared that your children were at risk of confusion, that your churches would now be forced to marry gay people, that same-sex marriage must somehow be mandatory teaching in public schools, that the Hebrew God of War in the first half of the Bible doesn't like it, that your religious freedom was being infringed upon. Your reasons are weak, and all of them I can deconstruct into the dirt.
Bianca and I have friends and parents who must now figure out how to rearrange their lives, since they are married--were married--and now have that taken away from them. I just wish you had more gay friends, more couples who had experienced a wedding ceremony, who have children who they are raising together. I wish you knew some, so you'd have to tell them, "sorry I gotta do this to you, this is how I feel."
If you are proud of your solidly-grounded stance on this, then so be it. You cannot budge from what you call God's Plan, or your fear that children will somehow be tainted with new knowledge, or an outspoken hatred of homosexuals. I accept that, and we'll just concentrate on how else we can interact with each other without brawling.
However, If you were just kind of shrugging with a "hey, look, I just feel that marriage is between a man and a woman, that's all," then I gravely suggest you read things before you affect other people's lives, and seriously consider whether you should ever attempt to discuss anything of a philosophical, political, sociological, cultural, historical, or otherwise intelligent nature with me.
California now == Deep South.
current mood:  Furious
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| Monday, November 3rd, 2008
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10:24 am - Vote No on (h)8
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Continuing, because thoughts have occurred to me as we drive past street corners with megaphone-wielding "Yes on 8" protesters.
If this was the initial battle to legalize gay marriage--where one side placed something on the ballot to make gay marriage legal, and the other wished to maintain the status quo--the tension would be understandable. People don't want to change things. All the same fear tactics would be brought out, suggesting terrible, unknown repercussions for changing our legal mindset.
But gay marriage is already here. Let me pose this question: do you recall exactly when gay marriage became recognized by California?
Have you observed the institution of marriage crumbling like a coffee cake since then?
No? Not much in the way of repercussions since then?
This is the first attempt to change a state constitution to remove a civil right. Advocates of Prop 8 argue for restoring, saving, or protecting marriage; this means they're saying the wonder and beauty of marriage is too good for some people. Same-sex partners don't merit the same rights as heterosexual people, because they are less than heterosexual people.
What is to gain from locking down marriage? No one loses money because same-sex marriages are here. The sole reason for Prop 8 is ideological and religious... which, I might remind you, doesn't jive well with the concept of separating Religion and Government.
I saw that commercial, by the way, with the little girl asking her parents about the King & King book and the resulting awkwardness, leading to the claim that gay marriage confuses the children and by God we need to protect the children.
Here, I'll pose the situation the way socially well-adjusted people would address it:
"Mommy, is that true? Can two men be married?"
"Yes, honey, they can. When two grownups love each other, they can get married."
"Oh. Okay."
Children are direct and resilient, people. You can explain things and they get it. It's when you start hemming and hawing and having trouble with the question that children get confused. Confusion is brought on by you and your hangups.
Look... aren't there more vital issues to which you could be devoting your time? Aren't there active evils within the world, within our government, within our society, that you could address, instead of taking away something from someone else because you don't want them to have what you do?
current mood:  Focused
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| Friday, October 24th, 2008
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11:32 am - Gay Aliens Stole My Children!!
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Marriage is an institution.
So was slavery, if I recall.
The terror tactics are being hauled out of the closet again. Gay marriage will be force-taught in schools, marriage is a sanctified institution between a man and a woman, gays already have the same rights, etc. Nothing causes a sudden deer-in-the-headlights tensing-up like the prospect of homosexuals reserving a few hours at the local chapel. Beware, America. We're going to have to invite them to our football parties, and they're going to rifle through our sock drawers and touch things, and our sons will commence a mysterious addiction to musicals.
The Sanctity of Marriage. There is no such beast, not historically. If you try argument-by-tradition, you'll fail; was not marriage typically for financial and social gain? If not, whence comes the concept of "dowry?" Whence comes the idea of "marrying up?" We as a western culture are still classist as fuck, even more so than racist and almost as much as sexist. This is a fairly modern concept, this "love" thing.
Continuing on this: sanctity of marriage? Do straight people do a bang-up job preserving this? With so many "my heinous wedding" shows on television, wedding horror stories, and a multi-billion dollar industry based on making your perfect day the object of envy? Are the couples on "My Big Redneck Wedding" reflecting the somber-yet-joyful institution of marriage?
Perhaps they are. Why not? They're marrying for love, after all... and so do homosexuals. You want loyalty? Participation in society? Contribution to the country's economy? Dedicated parenting? You've got it.
What else... Biblical support. People tried to use the Bible to support the anti-miscenegation laws that would have prevented me from marrying my wife. Interracial marriage wasn't struck down until 1967, the year we were born. Slavery also has biblical support.
"But I have no problem with interracial marriage." You used to.
Let's also look at at this way: gay marriage means that two people are getting together, presumably for life, and are less likely to continue in a "promiscuous lifestyle," if you accuse homosexuals en masse of such a thing.
We're urged to "protect marriage." What are you afraid of? What will change? A lot of people will be a lot happier, for one thing; equal insurance rights, spousal visits in the hospital, funeral arrangements without the extra barriers. Tap into your greed if you have to and think of the business opportunities. That multi-billion wedding industry will be more tickled than ever; gays will spend as much money on that perfect day as you will. Capitalism is gender-blind.
What else can be argued? There's going to be a slippery slope toward incest, bestiality and child molestation? Marriage is for procreation? Children cannot be raised by gay parents? Gay marriage promotes gay recruitment? Bring those on.
No on Proposition 8, please.
current mood: Irritable
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| Thursday, September 25th, 2008
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11:53 pm - An Ethnography Within Silver Lake
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The Observance:
We sit blearily in a local café along Sunset Blvd. It's midmorning. Overhead thumps "Brick House", then "Pick Up The Pieces", "Lady Marmalade", "Shining Star", and "Kung Fu Fighting"... basically someone's pretense that mainstream '70s Jazz/Funk/Motown 101 equals ethnic hipness.
People sit here in pairs or pairs of pairs, carefully arranged to appear not-fully-awakened; a frumpled shabby chic. Classic tattoos of pinup girls peek from beneath the straps of summer dresses. Some people sit alone: women sit with a book, men with a laptop, hipster hat pulled low over a delicately bearded face. Every skin tone is present, from smooth mahogany to gingerbread to porcelain.
Male partners face each other, in rugged shorts and hiking boots, varying in degrees of baldness and beardedness. They are at ease, and smile often. The gay men have powerlifters' arms, the straight men guitarists' biceps.
One couple sits nearby; both are youngish and thin. She wears a mostly-black outfit that is not quite a skirt, not quite shorts, and one can see carefully rendered ink above one breast. Her dog is shaggy and bored, dozing on one of her black go-go-boots. The man wears an intentionally weathered green t-shirt, with a slogan meant to cause confusion so he can appear well-traveled. He has a tattoo too, a tribal line around one forearm. He thinks he is funny, and keeps interjecting quips into their conversation; he never elicits more than a polite laugh from her as she discusses movies, then literature.
The Analysis:
From a Feminist or Romantic perspective, it is difficult to determine dominance in a couple's relationship; except for the one male's attempts to charm his companion, there was an ease and comfortable sense of equality. Gay men enjoy an acceptance particular to this area, more so than perhaps other places in our world.
The tattoos and summer dresses embrace femineity, yet reject any sense of weakness or frailty; any attraction is due as much to confidence as it is to female form. There is very little sense of "Other" in this place, partially because of the lack of domination, partially because of the wide array of ethnicities. There is less "fixed essence of femininity, masculinity, [...] and other social categories" (Barker 217). The heterosexual males here seem more interested than the females in projecting an "identity" as social construct, usually that of the sensitive, knowledgeable urbanite. The women seem merely happy to be alive, to look as good as they do, and to engage in conversation; they are examples of the postmodern world, "composed not of one but of several, sometimes contradictory, identities" (Barker 220).
As for our imbalanced couple, the girl seemed more worldly than her companion, merely by being reserved. He was desperate to win her laughter, and seemed to fail on the basis of being too mundane and by not fully participating in the discussion. It is not enough for him to be colorfully presentational; he must attract her mind.
Works Cited: Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice.
current mood:  Ineffectually Intellectual
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| Thursday, September 11th, 2008
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10:01 am - Waiting for October
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Today is our 15th wedding anniversary.
We won't be able to celebrate it much, as I won't be home tonight until 11.
I'm also leaving at four in the morning to fly out to Missouri, to drive back to California with my father's ashes.
It's going to be a long weekend.
I'll get back to posting vapid and inane thoughts soon, I promise.
current mood:  Weary
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| Thursday, August 7th, 2008
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4:50 pm - Lou
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My father died today.
It was one of those accidents. He was eighty-one. He fell outside and struck his head, there was a concussion and internal bleeding; his lungs, deteriorated by years of exposure to asbestos, could not take in enough oxygen. The doctors could do nothing.
Dad hated his condition. He had been a strong man, stocky and solid, heavy-faced and serious. He terrified Bianca when she first met him. He had been a gunner's mate on a destroyer in World War II and run a plumbing company for over thirty years. His employees were hard-bitten men, with tattoos and hard lives and prison time, and all of them respected him, to a man. They called him Lou. One of them told me that my dad in a fight once hit someone else so hard the man had flown backward ten feet and didn't get up for five minutes.
I agonized to see his strength leave him over the last few years. His hearing had gone, and he often had to sit just to breathe. It embittered him, and sometimes his moods would grow dark, but that's not what I will remember.
I've striven all my life to be something approaching the man my father was; patient, wise, with an understanding of people and an abundance of common sense. I usually lack that last, being too distracted most of the time, but I am lucky to have had such a role model. That's the part that I will remember, that makes up part of me. I will remember his deep and rocky voice; the way he would conspiratorially beckon me over before telling a blue joke; the way he would curse under his breath when trying to aim a stick-shift truck backwards with a boat trailer attached; his heavy, calloused hands; the gap in his front teeth when he would burst into an unexpected smile.
I sit now, struggling to decide what to do. I should fly out to Missouri, right now, and cannot; my mother would not have it. She has things she must do, the kinds of things you do when you have to sort through half your life, and it will make it harder for her for her son to see her in a state of less than full-control. That is the way of our family, although it confuses Bianca. There will be no massive gathering, with chicken and casseroles and brisket being prepared and cousins coming out of the woodwork. There will be a service here in California. We will be quiet, efficient, and carry on; that is what Elsensohns do.
And that is what I am. I was adopted, and we have no blood in common, but he was my father, and I will always carry some of that with me.
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| Sunday, June 29th, 2008
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2:21 pm - Hmm... a touch close for comfort
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We dropped into the Trader Joe's in a strip mall along Santa Monica Blvd., west of Fairfax in the Russian section. Nothing newsworthy there.
Note the small businesses along one side. Note particularly the aquarium right by the fish market.
I dunno... I dunno... "Mom, my goldfish died" might become "New Special on Golden Lucky Fish Filet".
Or maybe it goes the other way... "You'll love this fish, the Norwegian Blue... it prefers kippin' on its back... beautiful scales..."
current mood:  Wry
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| Friday, June 27th, 2008
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10:43 am - Irony tastes like formula
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So this news story appears a little while ago:
"NC 'Big Twins' tip scales at a combined 23 pounds"
In North Carolina, Sean William Maynard and Abigail Rose Maynard are born. He's 10 pounds 14 ounces, she's 12 pounds 3 ounces. Both healthy. They were born at the Sara Lee Center for Women's Health.
Wow! Twenty-three pounds of twins. That's great news. What fun.
I'll back up. Big babies. Born at the Sara Lee Center. Sara Lee. As in pound cake. The Sara Lee Center for Women's Health.
Okay, I'll go back to writing restaurant reviews now.
current mood: Discombobulated
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| Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
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10:53 pm - Damn.
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| Friday, June 20th, 2008
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4:18 pm - Now You Know Where to Go
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Following up on that:
http://www.dininginla.com/
That's the new site. All lovingly compiled and arrogantly written using the b2Evolution blogging software.
Go there! Please! Think of the kittens!
current mood:  accomplished
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| Friday, May 16th, 2008
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12:04 pm - It's my own fault, really...
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I've always wanted to write my own food blog, geared toward my own experiences in L.A. I like to write, I love to eat, I've already got some entries ready.
O'course, me being the spectacularly unmotivated 'Beast that I am, I always get hung up on the specifics of the site: should I make an HTML site? Should I install some blogging software so that I can use the search and categorization functionality? Should I install some real estate PHP software and hack it? Should I make it in Flash using XML? And then my indecisive brain would go off and think about tacos or sex, and I'd do fuck-all about it.
I had a name for this wonderful site: "To Live and Dine in L.A." I came up with it five or six years ago.
Now I finally dig up my notes, and see that the domain name was taken a couple years ago. By some stupid cable show who will never make a website for it.
Bastards! Reprobates! Shameless hussies! How dare you take advantage of my brilliant idea (that tons of other people have also independently thought of) and inherent laziness!
At least www.doomweasel.com isn't taken. Isn't that a great domain name? If I had the slightest idea what to do with a domain like doomweasel.com I'd register it.
current mood:  Scandalized
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| Monday, May 5th, 2008
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12:37 am - Losing parts of one's life
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I once wrote this back when we first moved to Silver Lake:
---------------------------------
Some things in life are so - sweet - that they help to strip away some of one's cynicism and bitterness.
Across the street from our apartment is a small, battered two-story house, with outside stairs leading to the second floor, on which lives an elderly gentleman. He is tall, wispy and white-haired in a Peter O'Toole kind of way, and has a quiet smile that we see sometimes when he is outside smoking and chatting with two of the other old men who live nearby.
This elderly gentleman is always busy: he takes energetic walks up our forbidding Tularosa hill, works endlessly on his front lawn/garden, and wakes early. He has a dog - a pug, I think - something definitely along the lines of small, inclined to plumpness, and friendly-looking. The dog strikes me also as elderly.
It's just the two of them. An old man, and his little dog.
And they have probably lived there forever. They take walks together, and smile at you when you pass by in your car on your way elsewhere. When he talks to his neighbors the dog is there too, sitting in the sun and nodding sagely. Sometimes he just sits at the top of the stairs, with his dog, petting the dog and probably having a pretty good conversation with him. He and the dog are the best of friends. It touches the heart, if you have one.
I have never properly met them, and I do not know their names, but I know they're there, and they're our neighbors. Which is a comforting thing, for Bianca and myself, who rarely know our neighbors and harbor a healthy disrespect and distrust for much of the world.
I can only hope they will always live there... because the world will be much less sweet when they do not.
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Over the years we've lived here, we discovered that the man's name was Mike. The dog? Spike. Mike and Spike. Perfect.
From a small memorial on his front lawn, we discovered that Mike had passed away on April 28th. He'd had a stroke and other complications. Spike is living elsewhere, presumably with Mike's son. We keep thinking of Spike and how he must be feeling the loss and not understanding it except as a hollow void in a dog's life. We think he will join Mike soon, and we think it will be good because they will be together, although we are sad because we know we will never see either of them again, ever. We look at their house and wonder what will happen to it, whether someone with money will come and try to fix it up and sell it to other people with money, who will never know the steady friendships and legacies of this neighborhood.
Wally, a white mop of a dog that lived with my sister's family, also passed away recently after far too few years.
Right before April, the resident patrol hound of Silver Lake, Bingo, also died. We attended his memorial service on the 6th, and he is now part of the mural on Sunset and Hyperion.
April was a bad month. I am too emotionally exhausted for this.
current mood:  sad
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| Friday, February 15th, 2008
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10:56 am - Some Kind of V.D.
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Valentine's Day, of course, not the other V.D.
So I get home from school and Bink and I go to Malo, which is our new restaurant to gush about even though it's been there for quite a while and we only just started going a few months ago because we're lazy and unmotivated.
Really nice evening: carnitas de al pastor, shrimp Diablo, chipotle new roasted potatoes, chips and salsa, and really well-made tequila drinks. Tongues burning and brains buzzing.
The guy next to us has that vaguely handsome-but-battered look that women seem to like (a bit of Vince Vaughn from Swingers era here, the guy who played Nate on Six Feet Under there). He busts out his own mixer to make him and his slender and vaguely exotic date/girlfriend/wife blended margaritas. They're very nice and apologetic about the noise, and laugh loudly and confidently.
They leave afterwards in a dark Suburban, and I shake my head a bit at his shirttail hanging out and his white sneakers. A bit frumpled, even for L.A.
Then we realized: oh. Hey. That was Johnny Knoxville.
At least I think it was him.
It's been a while since we've done the "brushed shoulders with celebrities without knowing it" thing.
current mood:  In love with L.A.
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| Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
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11:13 am - Commercial cluelessness
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I'm almost getting used to the fucked-in-the-head robbery of culture in order to pander to consumerism. Almost. I hear the ghost of John Lennon endorses Nike, Chase credit cards and diapers. Robert Plant sings about Cadillacs. They don't, really, but it creates some kind of false connection for those American shoppers easily led by an "OMG I'm empowered because I remember this song" leash.
I was thinking about those Royal Caribbean cruise commercials and their usurping of the Iggy Pop song "Lust for Life" in order to sell imagery of pasty, vaguely Anglo-Saxon families (socially valid mommy, daddy, boy, girl unit) leaping into swimming pools, jet-skiing, climbing up fake mountain walls, exercising on stationary bikes, eating fun dinners.
Brrrrumm-bum bum, badum bah badum bum heeeah comes Johnny, yeeeah, looks so fine, wheeee look at us! Cruises are FUN! C'mon, kids! Parent-approved safe activity on a cruise line I used to think had a shred of repute.
Here, then, are the first few lyrics of "Lust for Life," as penned by Iggy Pop:
here comes johnny yen again
with the liquor and drugs
and the flesh machine
he's gonna do another striptease
hey man where'd you get
that lotion? i been hurting
since i bought the gimmick
about something called love
yeah something called love
that's like hypnotizing chickens
well i am just a modern guy
of course i've had it in the ear before
'cause of a lust for life
So, a garage-glam-infused song about survival after heroin, commandeered for white suburbia on vacation. Perfect Utopian logic.
current mood:  Caustic
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| Thursday, January 24th, 2008
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11:23 am - Needlessly disseminated cultural irritants
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Today's notable item to which I've given a few moments of thought:
Regarding those web ad banners for financing your home, getting a degree, etc.:
Whoever makes those banners with the little 3D dancing human figures:
You know, the little figures who are line-dancing like they've had their rectum busted or are carrying a load in their slacks:
Whoever makes those:
... Stop it.
current mood:  Huffruntled
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| Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
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6:05 pm - Xmas Muzak and the Urge to Kick Puppies
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So which Christmas song is your least favorite?
I have no ill will toward most of the actual Christ-related music: little drummer boys and merry gentlemen resting on silent nights can pass me right by without any internal howling.
It's the generic happy-go-lucky, Dickensian winter pap, the simpering "All Season Long, Your Favorite Holiday Hits" programming that KOST-FM leaks on you in the Laundromat. Cases in point:
Certainly, "Jingle Bell Rock" is annoying, with its little tinkling guitar sting. No surprises there.
"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" is the archetypal hymn of white oppression (may all your Christmases be White). Even when Bing does it. Especially when Bing does it.
"Carol of the Bells" is a swarm of choral bees that slams against one's cranium until madness sets in. Bianca flees the room when it comes on because she doesn't want to hurt anybody.
"The Christmas Song" is its own private circle of Hell, since whoever's performing it is compelled to sing. It. Really. Slowly.
Chest.
NUTS....
roastinnnnng...
... on?
... an open fiiiiiirrre....
*Go start some coffee*
JackFrostnipping....
at your nooooooooooooooooossse.....
The one, though, that brings the uncontrollable twitch in my eyelid, a knot in my lower gut, a rising river of seething contempt for my fellow man, a thumb poised and quivering over a large red nuke button, must be "Winter Wonderland." By a long shot.
It's usually rattled off in a horribly jaunty manner worthy of the most emasculating Caucasian musicals of the '50s, you see, but it also never ends. Never. You could be winding down finally, "walking...", thank Heaven, orchestra swells, "in a Winter...", smiles everyone, smiles, big finish: "Wonder... LANNNDD!!!"
Wow, thank goodness that's finally over, I can get on with my li
"IN the MEADOW we can BUILD a SNOWMAAANNNN..."
... AUGH! AAAAUUUGH! NYYAAAAAHHH, and off we go into another stanza of Parson Brown and frolicking in the Eskimo way. Torture. Torment. Hatred.
"Happy Holidays" multiculturalism my ass. It's Christmas.
... Do I sound biased?
(Bah Humbug)
current mood:  Helplessly Inundated
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| Thursday, December 13th, 2007
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3:00 pm - Branding the Afterlife
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Hmm... how can I generate more capital off of people? I know! I'll cash in on their grief and their shallow attachment to consumerism! How about this: because I know you love Precious Moments figurines so much, when you die, you can be buried in a casket that's branded with the Precious Moments® logo! Or your cremains can be preserved in a specially designed urn.
Oh. It's been done.
So, let's see: Eternal Image sells "brand name funerary products that celebrate the passions of life." When you kick off, they've got branded caskets and cremation urns for Major League Baseball, Precious Moments, the Vatican Library Collection, and Star Trek... and there's the American Kennel Club and Cat Fancier's Association for when your pet shuffles off this mortal coil, too.
The Star Trek urn is especially coffee-table worthy:
*picks up* "Say, this is cool... is this one of those laser-clock things that..."
"That's grandpa's ashes."
"Urk!" *clank*
And this... this... wow. Thirteen teams to choose from.
"Yea, *snif*... my friends, Roy has finally slid into home. Finally caught that pop fly from Jesus..."
I like the disclaimer for the Cat Fancier's Association and American Kennel Club urns: "Please note: This product is for pets only." ... Aw, dang.
From the About Us section: "We combine the power of brand-names with 21st century materials and composites that won't rot." ... Ah, shouldn't we find another euphemism here? Perhaps "that won't suffer from degradation"..? And hey, if you want expertise on brand-name with materials that don't rot, contact your local McDonald's...
Also from the About Us section: "Mytych challenged himself to find an industry where branding -- and licensing -- had little or no impact to date. After months of research, Mytych hit upon what may be licensing's last frontier -- the funeral industry." ... It's all about money, folks. At least they're honest.
I'm surprised NASCAR isn't there: "Ah wanna be buried in a race car when ah die!"
current mood:  Woebegone
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