Month: December 2005

1. It doesn’t exist.
2. There are other holidays being celebrated at this time of year. Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Boxing Day all begin or fall on December 26. Yule is on December 21. Those are only the big ones in the United States and Canada. And, of course, there’s also New Year’s, just one short week after Christmas. “Happy holidays” just helps cover a lot more ground. It’s a time-saver, more than anything. Just because Christmas isn’t being singled out for special attention does not mean its celebrants are being snubbed or persecuted.
3. It doesn’t exist.
4. If it did exist, and we take into account all the Christmas music, advertisements, sales, decorations and et cetera that have been on pretty much constant parade since Thanksgiving (if not Halloween), then we probably have to concede that the war isn’t going too well for anybody but the Christians.
5. Which is not to say the real Christians, who are perfectly happy to celebrate the holiday and reflect on the birth of Jesus in the privacy of their own homes and churches with friends and family. I mean the idiots writing dumb books like this, or hosting bad television programs like this, the sort of people who seem to be more enchanted by the sound of their own voices than in any true holiday spirit.
6. It doesn’t exist.
7. We don’t live in a theocracy, and we do have separation of church and state. So even if 99% of the nation celebrated Christmas — and they don’t — it wouldn’t be a state-sanctioned or -sponsored religious observance, and forcing non-Christians to celebrate it as such would still be wrong.
8. The day itself has only been a national holiday since 1870. Were the almost one hundred years in this country before that a war on Christmas?
9. It doesn’t exist.
10. I suspect John, and by extension Wonkette, are right:
    

    The truth is, anytime someone starts talking to you about how Christians are persecuted in the United States, you are — right then and right there — talking to a retard.

    Because the evidence just doesn’t back them up.

11. Because, oh yeah, it doesn’t exist.

1. “I’m gnawing on the knowledge that I have been burnt”
   “I Held Her in My Arms” by Violent Femmes, gussed by John
2. “Oh where are you now, pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?”
   “Dark Globe” by Syd Barrett, guessed by Eric
3. “The love you need ain’t gonna see you through”
   “Telephone Line” by Electric Light Orchestra, guessed by Eric
4. “In the trees our sons stand naked, through the walls our daughters cry”
   “Mothers of the Disappeared” by U2, guessed by Eric
5. “Lit cigarette in his hand, steel-toed boots on the accelerator”
6. “Sweet and dandy pretty as can be, you be the flower and I’ll be the bumble bee”
   “Condi Condi” by Steve Earle, guessed by Eric
7. “I value my portability”
8. “No one, I think, is in my tree”
   “Strawberry Fields Forever” by the Beatles, guessed by Eric
9. “I’ve been casing your joint for the best years of my life”
10. “Black house will rock, blind boys don’t lie”
    “Cry, Little Sister” by Gerard McMann, guessed by Betty

All of last week’s lyrics, surprisingly, were guessed in just a few short days. Best of luck to everyone this week!

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

But now the good news:

The Senate on Friday refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans’ privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.

Japan’s Studio Ghibli, the Japanese studio and home of anime master Hayao Miyazaki (Howl’s Moving Castle), announced that it will adapt Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea fantasy novel series in an animated movie called Gedo Senki (Tales From Earthsea), the IGN FilmForce Web site reported. Gedo Senki will be released in Japan in July 2006 and will be based on the third and fourth books in Le Guin’s six-volume series, which was first published in 1968, the site reported.

I was a little disappointed by Howl’s Moving Castle, and this will be a first-time feature for Miyazaki’s son, so I don’t know. It may never even become available in the United States, for all I know. I do know that Le Guin was none too pleased with the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries of her Earthsea books, so we’ll see if she likes this one any better. I have a copy of the first book sitting on my desk at home, waiting to be read.