Countdown to Christmas: Mass Hysteria and Tardishness

hi folks...

we're about four days away from yule-party '08... and this guy's about all funned-out.

why the humbuggary, you ask? allow me to explain. kris and i were pretty smart this year, and once again accomplished about 95% of our christmas shopping before thanksgiving - giving us an excuse not to brave the hellish gauntlets that we would've otherwise been forced to fight through at one of the local malls and/or shopping outlets. we got it all out of the way so we wouldn't grow sick and tired of the 'season,' that has somehow gone from being a straight-up december-thing to a shortly-before-halloween-through-valentine's day-thing. still, despite our most valiant of efforts, its hard escaping the mass of frenzied idiots when one does have to occassionally venture out into the realm of retail this close to the holidays. i can't stand it.

i don't see why so many people are so friggin' stupid about christmas shopping anyway, but i guess that's because i'm so smart about it. when in public, its common for you to see complete strangers in the parking lots of these strip malls willing to knife eachother over parking spaces... or two grandmothers ready to rip one another's throats out for that last vibrating elmo on a toys 'r us shelf. and at times like that, you find yourself wishing that christmas was already here and over with.

...and while we're on the topic of things that piss brian off, i don't know about you guys, but i've about had it with crappy christmas music. not to be confused with decent christmas music, mind you (much props, vince guaraldi trio, jingle bells-singing dogs, etc.), crappy christmas music grates at your soul like pourous rocks over a fresh wound (mannheim steamroller, pay attention here). this morning, for example, the family and i took a couple of our friends with us to a local church we occassionally attend for some live christmas music. this is out of the ordinary somewhat, but we figured since it was the season for pleasin' and all, why would anyone pass up live christmas music five minutes from their front door? i mean, come on - they had a string orchestra, full band and choir, the works. so we went.

...and it sucked. bad.

not the greatest way to get into the spirit of things, rest assured. it pretty much shot my sunday right in the foot - spoken word over narada-type piano-work? not my idea of christmas jammage. if its one thing i cannot stand, its contemporary christian carols and hymns - give me that kinda material old school and traditional. i want to feel like i'm in a lecture hall when i'm in church, not in some gawdy clapfest. leave the bells and whistles at home, and stick to the traditional stuff. am i boring? perhaps... but i'm also a licensed JamMaster, and know decent music when i hear it. and, in this case, i know when something sucks gigantically as well.

but like i was saying before: we've got four days left of this hysteria before the masses can slow back down again and refocus on what else is going on in the rest of the known world. there's corruption and peril afoot. and apparently some snow. and there's that 'economy' everybody keeps talking about, spiralling ever downward and/or out of control. and there's high school musical 3 making teenagers even stupider and less-cultured. and there's the muppets - still the coolest damn carpet samples known to man.

so, in the meantime, over the course of the coming week, i urge you to stay indoors away from the hell that would surely await you at the mall or a circuit city, and keep your radio turned off to avoid the ear-molestation you'd otherwise have to endure via the backstreet boys singing 'the holly and the ivy.' stay with loved ones, make a snowman, and keep focused on what's important.

...and for yours truly and company, that means making due without snow or family. in order to aid us along in this venture, we're stocked with holiday drinking ingredients, a webcam, and more (non-crappy) christmas music and movies than one could shake a stick at.

do i roll?/well i guess/thunder express.

merry pre-christmas,

- brian

Pirates?! Pssh...

you know, at first i thought this whole somali pirate craze thing was kinda cool. i mean, pirates? in the 21st century? attacking merchant ships on the high seas? peril?!

yeah... i found this considerably awesome.

this, of course, is coming from a kid who's childhood vocational dream was to be come a pirate himself (after realizing that there was practically a 0% chance i was ever going to learn the ways of the force and own my own lightsaber).

i was obsessed with pirates growing up, and, like most other kids, couldn't shake the romantic view of pirates that hollywood and popular culture has capitalized on over the course of the last hundred years or so. keep in mind that this was way before that whole johnny depp franchise came along, too... had i been still a kid when those movies came out, there's a solid chance i'd be cruising around in a fishing boat in the indian ocean today carrying an AK-47 and flying a jolly roger.

but let's not kid ourselves, folks...

pirates, as probably most of you are aware of, are not nearly as awesome as we make them out to be. very few pirates - bartholemew roberts and edward teach (blackbeard) being the exception here - ever tooled around in large, man-of-war, galleons the type of which are considered the pirate standard in the pirates of the caribbean franchise. and pirates usually didn't steal gold, or spanish dubloons, or any other type of treasure from their captured prizes - nine times out of ten, they were gunning for spare sails and rope, food and medical supplies, ship hardware, and, of course, casks of rum.

but let me stop right there for a sec - i realize that i'm beginning to transform into mr. hough... giving all you folks a lecture in blog-form. not my intention. nay, readers - my reason for writing about pirates this morning is to simply state my opinion on the whole, on-going fiasco happening today with these somalian pirates.

since the somalian government collapsed in the early 1990s, the country's become a safe-haven for pirates. no order, no stability, no peace = pirate heaven. now, for whatever reason, the global community - with all its naval firepower, state-of-the-art intelligence and global positioning equipment, financial capital, etc. - simply cannot stop a handful of half-starved somalians from putting along in their rusty fishing boats with outdated russian-issued no idea. these guys are just way too damn much for the likes of us.

...are you kidding me?!

this crap is ridiculous, ands its pretty much gotten to the point now where if countries are going to consistently act like morons when dealing with this threat, than they deserve to be hijacked and plundered. that's the price for being an idiot, guys. quit whining.

me? i'd take a lesson from the annals of history (another reason why i teach social studies). before getting his ass handed to him by julius ceasar, co-consul of rome pompey magnus was - and is still considered today -the greatest pirate hunter of all time. he single-handedly wiped out piracy in the mediterranean sea, creating a 'roman lake,' around which the entire empire spread out. and the funny thing about this is that he did it rather easily - it wasn't a brilliant plan by any means, it only took a matter of months, and, for the life of me, i can't understand why the hell we're not doing this right now.

here's how it works:

1. create huge bounties on pirate leaders, and offer rewards for captured pirates

2. bribe major pirate leaders to take down fellow pirates

3. blockade pirate safe havens and raid strongholds(what's up, somalia?!)

4. increase naval supremacy in the region and take no prisoners when encountering pirates

5. execute everybody you can get your damn hands on

that's it. that's how we solve the pirate dilemma in the indian ocean. the pirates of tunisia and algiers in the last century B.C. were a hell of a lot more sophisticated and organized than today's rag-tag assortment of hoopleheads, and they were vanquished with little or no technological support. i see no excuse for the global community's complete and utter lack of smartness.

in closing, i hope you all thoroughly enjoyed your lesson today - your homework assignment is to do the section assessment on page 297, questions 1 - 7. have it to me by monday.

- mr. hough