This is probably going to sound like a silly cliché that old-timers say, but I'm being totally honest when I say it: it feels like the Christmas hype starts earlier and earlier every year. This year, I could swear that I started seeing holiday-themed commercials on TV before Halloween even happened. I know for a fact that I saw them well before Turkey Day, and if you ask me that's way, way, WAY too early as it is. I can only stand a week and a half (two weeks at the very most) of Christmas music before I start retching, so you can imagine how I feel about enduring almost two months of advertisements peppered with holly twigs, snowflakes, wreaths, flashes of red and green, and the annoying sound of sleigh bells. I think there ought to be a law that forbids Christmastime advertising of any kind until after Thanksgiving.
People would probably argue that doing so would be counter-productive in terms of having a successful "Black Friday", but then we all know that every store opens ridiculously early and has ridiculous sales on the day after Thanksgiving, so all that people who are interested enough would have to do is to ask their favorite stores when they'll open that day. One thing's for sure: the only place you'd find me on that day is at home. It's not that I don't like a good sale as much as the next guy ... hey, I've been known to use coupons just because I have them. Instead, it's the spirit behind it -- and that's the one kind of Christmas "spirit" I can definitely do without. We've all seen the images of those stampedes of people who flood into the stores the instant the doors open the morning after the feast, and we hear almost every year about someone actually getting killed in one of those hordes. No amount of savings is worth enduring that chaos, and anybody who voluntarily goes out to take part in it has got to be clinically insane.
I have to wonder what happens come December to all the religious conservatives out there. The other eleven months of the year they're all in the faces of us secular folk about embracing Jesus as their savior and living "a Christian life" (whatever arbitrary criteria that phrase is supposed to fit), but where are they when the blatant commercialization of their holiest of holy days rears its ugly head? Far be it from me to trash-talk a group of people based on their faith, but I rather suspect they're some of the first ones out there, waiting in line at 2 A.M. the morning after Thanksgiving to buy that $199 flat-screen TV for their kids. Personally, I'm at neither extreme. I'm not religious, so Christmas isn't any kind of "sacred cow" to me (we don't even feel compelled to put up decorations at home, except for maybe a wreath or two). Nor do I tend to put any importance on either the monetary value or the quantity of the gifts that I give -- I usually stick with making little home-made gifts for family and friends in the interest of keeping it simple, relatively inexpensive, and more personalized -- and I hold no expectations for the gifts that I may receive from others (or may not -- not everyone's in the position to give gifts, after all).
America needs to make up its mind how it feels about Christmas, but the way the media and culture perpetuate our lemming-like consumerist attitudes, I don't see a change coming anytime soon. Most people think Christmas is all about Santa Claus, and they don't take it seriously enough; most of the rest take Christmas way too seriously and make it all about the Baby Jesus; but I'm comfortable standing on the middle ground, believing that the most important people at Christmastime are my family and close friends. I have to wonder what the world would be like if we all gave that approach a try.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
You Never Know...
Do you want free money from the government? Now, before you think this is some infomercial or Ponzi scheme or something, it actually did happen to me ... honest and for real. Of course, your name does have to be on a special list in order to get the money, plus you may very well have earned the money in some way which would mean that it's techincally not "free" ... but my point is that there just might be money out there for you right now and you just don't know it.
It's really simple to find out, too. All you have to do is go to www.unclaimed.org -- that's the website run by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. They're an organization that can link you to your state (just click on the map on the homepage), where you can search with your name to find out if there's any money floating around out there that's yours. I did it just on a hunch, and landed myself a paycheck from my previous employer that, somehow, never made it to me after I moved out of state!
Now, a couple months later, I've all-of-a-sudden got enough money that I could get myself a new iPod! At least, that's what I was going to get, but my stereo has finally gone kaput and I need to get myself a new one. But hey, ain't that cool?! It's like getting a birthday or Christmas present from a total stranger! I only wish it hadn't taken me 15 years to get my hands on it. And I'm sure that, even though the government has been pulling down interest on it for all that time, they'll still want to take some more out come tax time ... those greedy so-and-so's.
It's really simple to find out, too. All you have to do is go to www.unclaimed.org -- that's the website run by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. They're an organization that can link you to your state (just click on the map on the homepage), where you can search with your name to find out if there's any money floating around out there that's yours. I did it just on a hunch, and landed myself a paycheck from my previous employer that, somehow, never made it to me after I moved out of state!
Now, a couple months later, I've all-of-a-sudden got enough money that I could get myself a new iPod! At least, that's what I was going to get, but my stereo has finally gone kaput and I need to get myself a new one. But hey, ain't that cool?! It's like getting a birthday or Christmas present from a total stranger! I only wish it hadn't taken me 15 years to get my hands on it. And I'm sure that, even though the government has been pulling down interest on it for all that time, they'll still want to take some more out come tax time ... those greedy so-and-so's.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Election Day ... Why Bother?
I hope my good friend in San Diego isn't too disappointed in me after he reads this post, but my frustration-mixed-with-apathy (weird combination, yes) has reached a sort of critical mass. Mind you, since it's half apathy, don't be disappointed if you don't read a lot of seething vitriol. You see, this San Diego friend of mine is big into politics and rallies as many people as he can to the polls every election day. I really do have to admire him for that, because I just couldn't work up the enthusiasm for it, even if my life depended on it ... well, okay, maybe if my life depended on it. In fact, before we became friends, I voted in maybe half the Presidential elections and that was about it. It sounds terrible, I know, because it's our "civic duty" and all ... but I'm becoming less enthusiastic about it every year, and can barely see the point anymore.
It's not that I think the act of voting is pointless -- although with however the Electoral College process managed to get jury-rigged enough to get George W. Bush shoehorned into the White House in 2000, I have my doubts there -- but instead, I really seriously have to wonder what good it does anymore to have a certain person in a certain elected office? When you think about it, there are enough people in Washington with opposing viewpoints and agendas, that if one governmental body gets their way, another one is there to knock it down if they have the gumption. It's called "checks and balances", and though it was originally meant to keep any one person or group from wielding too much power, it has lately done little more than to stymie any true progress by the government -- at least toward anything constructive. If the legislative branch wants something, the executive can still veto it, but then the judicial branch might have the final say. I have to wonder if there's too much government, or not enough.
And then there are the damn-blasted political ads that saturate the TV. What's the point of them, or even of campaigning in general? All the candidates say the same things: "I'll create more jobs. I'll shape up our schools. I'll fix health care." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Each candidate will promise anything the public wants to hear because they want to get elected, whether or not he or she has a plan on how to accomplish what they promise. (And besides, their opponent will tear apart what they say, or just recklessly criticize their plan anyway, no matter how half-baked their plan or their opponent's plan is.) Every election campaign boils down to nothing more than a popularity contest, and I've never been big on popularity contests. The truth of the matter is, we'll never be able to tell what a candidate will or won't accomplish until they're in office, so I try not to rack my brain on who I vote for or why. Besides, most voters out there, I'd bet you money, just vote blindly partisan -- whoever's representing the party in which they're registered, without even reading up on what that candidate has to say.
But I'm getting off topic (and trying my darnedest to narrow my focus so this blog entry isn't half a mile long). One of my big problems here is how rowdy the American voters have gotten lately, and how uncivilized their vicious partisanship has become. The Democrats and the Republicans are each screaming just as loudly about how the other party is going to destroy this country. And each side is getting louder and louder all the time, so in order to be heard, they have to exaggerate and sensationalize their arguments more and more profoundly. President Obama has actually been called a "socialist" and a "communist", largely by people who don't know what those labels really mean ... and all because he wants every American to have affordable health care. Isn't name-calling something that fourth-graders do on school playgrounds? You know, the kids who are afraid of "cooties"?
The liberals and conservatives in this country are so verbally at each other's throats that I find myself wishing we'd just go all-out, have ourselves another big civil war ('cause we've only had one so far), and get it over with already. Then the conservatives can go live in their own part of our torn-in-half country, and the liberals can have their own half. In some ways, we might as well, 'cause this country is far too screwed up for any one President or any one Presidential administration to be able to fix in one four-year term, or even two. It'll take decades, and it'll take some major, earth-shattering (hopefully not in the literal sense) change. And what makes it worse is that the short attention spans of the American people, and their need for instant gratification, are so pronounced now that if the guy in office doesn't effect change RIGHT NOW, they vote in the guy from the other party, so that no one has the time to get anything accomplished. Do we honestly expect Obama to turn this country around in two years, after letting Bush play around with it for eight friggin' years?!?
We all want what's best for our country, I get that. But what's best for our country isn't the pervasive distrust that has led us to treat election day like a battle. ("Oh crap, the Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives. Now we're screwed." Are we so sure we wouldn't be screwed if they hadn't?) How do we know that there isn't one candidate somewhere out there who actually has that plan -- the one that will actually work at starting us out on fixing everything that's wrong with our society -- and that he or she has gotten lost in the flotsam, because their opponent didn't shut the hell up long enough to hear them out? I'd bet you anything that, 150 years from now, our descendants (in whatever country this ends up being, unless the United States of America actually manages to survive that long) will look back at these years and laugh at how childish we all have been acting.
Aren't we all Americans? That's the thing that most people seem to be forgetting around November 2nd. To paraphrase Jon Stewart in a rally he recently hosted: the more we all shout, the harder it is for us to hear one another. And if I may employ another old saying: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Therefore, I'm going to do my best to stop complaining about the government, because I (like 99.9% of the rest of the country) don't have a damn clue how to make it better, though we can guess all we please. If we all really want what's best for our country, we need to start acting that way. We need to stop bitching about what's wrong with the other guys, and start working with them to turn this country into something we can all be proud of.
It's not that I think the act of voting is pointless -- although with however the Electoral College process managed to get jury-rigged enough to get George W. Bush shoehorned into the White House in 2000, I have my doubts there -- but instead, I really seriously have to wonder what good it does anymore to have a certain person in a certain elected office? When you think about it, there are enough people in Washington with opposing viewpoints and agendas, that if one governmental body gets their way, another one is there to knock it down if they have the gumption. It's called "checks and balances", and though it was originally meant to keep any one person or group from wielding too much power, it has lately done little more than to stymie any true progress by the government -- at least toward anything constructive. If the legislative branch wants something, the executive can still veto it, but then the judicial branch might have the final say. I have to wonder if there's too much government, or not enough.
And then there are the damn-blasted political ads that saturate the TV. What's the point of them, or even of campaigning in general? All the candidates say the same things: "I'll create more jobs. I'll shape up our schools. I'll fix health care." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Each candidate will promise anything the public wants to hear because they want to get elected, whether or not he or she has a plan on how to accomplish what they promise. (And besides, their opponent will tear apart what they say, or just recklessly criticize their plan anyway, no matter how half-baked their plan or their opponent's plan is.) Every election campaign boils down to nothing more than a popularity contest, and I've never been big on popularity contests. The truth of the matter is, we'll never be able to tell what a candidate will or won't accomplish until they're in office, so I try not to rack my brain on who I vote for or why. Besides, most voters out there, I'd bet you money, just vote blindly partisan -- whoever's representing the party in which they're registered, without even reading up on what that candidate has to say.
But I'm getting off topic (and trying my darnedest to narrow my focus so this blog entry isn't half a mile long). One of my big problems here is how rowdy the American voters have gotten lately, and how uncivilized their vicious partisanship has become. The Democrats and the Republicans are each screaming just as loudly about how the other party is going to destroy this country. And each side is getting louder and louder all the time, so in order to be heard, they have to exaggerate and sensationalize their arguments more and more profoundly. President Obama has actually been called a "socialist" and a "communist", largely by people who don't know what those labels really mean ... and all because he wants every American to have affordable health care. Isn't name-calling something that fourth-graders do on school playgrounds? You know, the kids who are afraid of "cooties"?
The liberals and conservatives in this country are so verbally at each other's throats that I find myself wishing we'd just go all-out, have ourselves another big civil war ('cause we've only had one so far), and get it over with already. Then the conservatives can go live in their own part of our torn-in-half country, and the liberals can have their own half. In some ways, we might as well, 'cause this country is far too screwed up for any one President or any one Presidential administration to be able to fix in one four-year term, or even two. It'll take decades, and it'll take some major, earth-shattering (hopefully not in the literal sense) change. And what makes it worse is that the short attention spans of the American people, and their need for instant gratification, are so pronounced now that if the guy in office doesn't effect change RIGHT NOW, they vote in the guy from the other party, so that no one has the time to get anything accomplished. Do we honestly expect Obama to turn this country around in two years, after letting Bush play around with it for eight friggin' years?!?
We all want what's best for our country, I get that. But what's best for our country isn't the pervasive distrust that has led us to treat election day like a battle. ("Oh crap, the Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives. Now we're screwed." Are we so sure we wouldn't be screwed if they hadn't?) How do we know that there isn't one candidate somewhere out there who actually has that plan -- the one that will actually work at starting us out on fixing everything that's wrong with our society -- and that he or she has gotten lost in the flotsam, because their opponent didn't shut the hell up long enough to hear them out? I'd bet you anything that, 150 years from now, our descendants (in whatever country this ends up being, unless the United States of America actually manages to survive that long) will look back at these years and laugh at how childish we all have been acting.
Aren't we all Americans? That's the thing that most people seem to be forgetting around November 2nd. To paraphrase Jon Stewart in a rally he recently hosted: the more we all shout, the harder it is for us to hear one another. And if I may employ another old saying: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Therefore, I'm going to do my best to stop complaining about the government, because I (like 99.9% of the rest of the country) don't have a damn clue how to make it better, though we can guess all we please. If we all really want what's best for our country, we need to start acting that way. We need to stop bitching about what's wrong with the other guys, and start working with them to turn this country into something we can all be proud of.
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