Some Thanksgivingnukkah Thoughts

I found out about the whole Thanksgiving - Hanukkah thing a little too late to make a big deal out of it.  I feel like I should have done a little more to mark the passing of the day that will not happen again in 78,000 years and, as I can't conceive of the human race surviving for another 78,000 years, we may never see again.  I mean, sure, maybe humans will still be around 78,000 years from now, but I have to believe that there will be some kind of apocalyptic event that will change the culture entirely.  I believe in that, I think, more than I believe in Christ himself -- though maybe he comes back to save the day.  That hope is what Christmas is all about.  I read it in a book.

Ah, but let's not be so glum.  It was Thanksgiving, a time to be thankful.  Here is a brief list of things for which I am thankful:

Pomegranates.  I love me some pomegranates.  At work you will often find me at this time of year standing in our office kitchenette, carefully separating the ruby red tendrils from the rest of the fruit and putting them into a bowl.  I'll sit at my desk all day and eat them with a spoon.  Nobody else at the office does this -- they think I am kind of weird.  Can't imagine why.

The end of Black Friday.  I know a lot of my friends and my parents are kind of upset about the fact that a lot of stores opened up Thanksgiving night at 8 PM.  I was too, until I hit the Toys R' Us parking lot the day after at 8 AM and found it to be relatively empty.  There were signs of the great frenzy that had occurred the night before: the half empty boxes, the spattered blood, the bombed out Tiger Tank in aisle 5.  I had avoided all of it.  If it wasn't for the people who have to work at the stores on Thanksgiving day, I'd have no problem with giving the people what they want.  You can keep Thanksgiving in your way, I'll keep it mine, and if it means I can just walz into any store I want on my day off and take advantage of some killer deals, well, so much the better.  

I am thankful for this cock and balls sweater.  Wear it at your Church's next holiday mixer, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Fun.

Rocky IV. Surely the greatest of the bunch. This movie teaches us about American Greatness, and also what it means to love.  It's also worth noting that this movie came out in 1985 and in just six short years the Soviet Union had fallen.  I'm not daft enough to believe that Rocky IV singlehandedly tore down the Iron Curtain, but surely it was the last nail in coffin.

Mannheim Steamroller.  Actually, no.  I really, really don't like Mannheim Steamroller.  I appreciate their musical ability, but I find their Christmas music to be too dramatic.  Christmas music should be about a little baby in a manger, or chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or about how people you love make it feel like Christmas even when things go wrong;  by contrast, Mannheim Steamroller is probably the kind of Christmas Music that Luke Skywalker would be listening to as he skimmed along the circumference of the Death Star.  

I don't like dramatic things.  This is why I don't particularly care for Dr. Who.  You'd think it would be perfect for me, because it's British.  But it's just so dramatic.  The world is always going to end and things are always trying to exterminate other things and there is a lot of shouting and screaming and it's just....it's just too much.  I vastly prefer an understated drama where a sexy woman drinks a cup of coffee and stares out a bunch of snowy pine trees thinking about Dostoevsky and no one talks.  

But back to Mannheim Steamroller.  The other thing I don't like about them is that you can just tell they are super-stoked about the music they are making, like in an over excitable Dwight Schrute way that is hard to put into words.  In their defense I suppose I'd also be super-stoked about anything that made me as much money as they have producing over dramatic Christmas music, but I don't know.  It just makes listening to their music worse, because they think its so cool, and now its Christmas and I am attacking the Death Star AND It's supposed to be totally cool.  And it's not, because it's war!  A few weeks ago I was just a country bumpkin living on Tatooine, buzzing wamp-rats in my piece of shit T-16.  Now my aunt and uncle are dead, that cool old Hermit is dead, my new friends are all about to die...I'm living in a sea of death! And to make matters worse I'm really confused about that Princess Leia chick.  On the one hand those hair earmuffs, I mean....wow. You never see anything like on that Tatooine. They just make you want to....and yet I don't think I can.  It's like I know her from somewhere.

Mannheim Steamroller.  At any rate, I saw these jokers riding a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and, as I expected, they were super-excited to be there.  Surprise surprise.  

Friends and Family.  Woe be unto me if I don't mention the one thing I am actually truly thankful for.  Except for the pomegranates.  I really do love pomegranates.  And these guys.

    

...And Our Lady Hubris Strikes

So after making a rather self congratulatory blog post on how I was the greatest thing since sliced bread because I helped launch an aircraft carrier, even as I recognized that Our Lady Hubris is a vengeful mistress, my daughter was violently ill.  Like really violently ill in a way I've never really seen but always feared.

So Garrison Keillor was right. I should have said "Launching a Carrier is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" and left it at that.  But no.  I had to be bombastic.  Well, I have learned my lesson.

Ah well.  Just goes to show you how life can turn on the head of a pin.  So it goes.

You're Hanging out with the Crazy Croat on WAMF "The Fuzz".

Sports talk?  Yeah.  I think I could do it.  Here's why:

First of all, I have just helped launch an aircraft carrier today at work.  If you are having a crisis of confidence I'd highly recommend it. Seeing 90,000 tons slip out into the James River and knowing you had a hand in it, that you were a fairly important player in its preparation, makes you FEEL like you can do just about anything.

I understand, of course, that I am actually quite limited with regards to my abilities.  Still, if you came up to me right now and put a scalpel in my hand and said "perform a tracheometry on this 65 year old man...who, by the way, is Sir Arthur Cunningsford, CBE, 11th in line for the throne and 3 time victor of the Newcastle Pie Festival Pie Eating Contest.  He is extremely important so don't fuck it up," I'd at least for a moment say "yeah, I've got this.  I can do it."

Now like any good Lutheran I understand that is a fool hardy thing to suck upon the alluring but sour teats of Our Lady Hubris, and I know my comeuppance is probably right around the corner, but right now I feel pretty good.

Second -- I don't know, I mean, how hard can it be?

I mean, this guy can do it.  How hard can it be?

Sure, being a radio or TV personality takes an innate talent that you probably either have or you don't.  But assuming I have that, what is sports talk really?  As far as I can tell, its just a bunch of guys (and a few women) using a sea of facts and stats and their past experience to try to make sense out of the reality that is playing out before them on the field, or on the court, or in the arena.

That's pretty much what you and I do everyday with regards to everything else, only we don't have to scream them out over the objections of a rather agitated Michael Wilbon.

In the end, I think its a series of just well-informed opinions. Give me three years to study up and watch as much sports as I can, give me some time to work out in the gym so that I could be TV ready (or just put me on radio and be done with it), and I think we can do this thing.

So yes, I think I could do it.  I think a great many people have the mental acuity to do it as well.

But I don't think I really want to do it.  I mean, I'd have to start tweeting and I'd have to travel all over the place and I'd have to eat at Permanti Brothers when I went to Pittsburgh because that's what you have to do when you go to Pittsburgh with any sports talk franchise.  And I would probably die from it.

Oh, and I am sure I'd have this caller, Rick "The Wing King" Jackson, who would call me every week and talk about how the road to the Super Bowl goes through Denver and Jason Campbell is going to take the Browns down that road to sweet sweet victory.  And I'd have to try to prove to him every week why that can never happen, even though at the end of the day I'd have to concede that mathematically it was still possible.

Strange, that we should use one of the most objective expressions of our reality to come to an agreement on something as inherently meaningless and chaoticc as the success of a football team.  But as I have said before that's the kind of thing that all of us do everyday.

Eh.  It's fun.  Anyways, I suppose I won't be on SVP and Russilo anytime soon.  Too bad America. But sometimes you get the sports commentator you need, not the one you deserve.  Wait a minute....reverse that?  I don't know.  It's complicated.

The Senator's Shoes

Ladies and Gentlemen, for your approval, I give you the Christening of the USS GERALD R. FORD:

Nov. 9, 2013: With one swift swing, Susan Ford Bales, daughter of President Gerald R. Ford and sponsor of the aircraft carrier bearing his name, smashed a bottle of American sparkling wine across the bow to christen the ship. Also pictured (left to right) are Capt. John Meier, commanding officer, CVN 78; U.S. Sen. Carl Levin; and Newport News Shipbuilding President Matt Mulherin. Photo by Chris Oxley (HII-NNS)

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for your approval (though not your pleasure -- for those of you trying to log into www.croatianfootbondage.net I can only surmise that your Google is broken), I give you feet:

Of course, these are not just any old feet, mind you.  They are privileged feet, important feet, feet that will command a ship, that have lead an industry, that have carried the burden of Presidential legacy, that have trod the corridors of power in the Senate.  

So I got to ask:  What's up with the shoes, Mr. Levin?

It is perhaps unfair to even ask, as there are plenty of perfectly good reasons why Mr. Levin's footgear is not up to code.  He may have a foot condition that requires him to wear sneakers all the time.  He may have forgotten his good shoes at home.  He may prefer sneakers because they let him sneak around in the Senate cafeteria galley looking for cookies without being detected, as it is a well known fact that the clackity clack of well shod feet upon a hard kitchen floor is not conducive to absconding with macaroons.  

It could also be interpreted as yet another moment where we see how human these people are.

The best example of that, maybe even better than Levin's shoes, are the remarks that Donald Rumsfeld gave at the Christening. Now, if you were to tell me at the beginning of the day that his remarks were to be my favorite of the many, many given on the day, I would have laughed in your face and said "surely, thou art shitting me heartily."  But when his voice broke as he described how he and his wife went to visit President Ford on what was his last Thanksgiving I felt my heart break a bit as well, and I was reminded that whatever my latent disagreements with Mr. Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration are (and there are many), I also was reminded that Donald Rumsfeld is still very much a person.  I might even find him to be a very good person, if I got to know him.  It was a valuable recapitulation of an oft forgotten fact in these divisive times.   

So likewise there is Senator Levin in his crappy shoes, just trying to get through the Christening as comfortably as possible, just as any of us would.  

On the other hand....

Look, I am the last person who should judge someone else on his footware.   Every night  Van Gogh's ghost knocks on my door, pleading with me to let him paint my battered old brown shoes in a heavy impasto.  

Still, if I learned that I was to be up on that podium with Mrs. Susan Ford Bales, standing at the leading edge of one of the mightiest symbols of American power ever constructed, I reckon I'd probably pull the good shoes out of the back of the closet and I'd probably shine them up too.  

But that's just me.

Simply Having a Wonderful (and Early) Christmastime!!

Like the errant zombies or first cases of mystery plague foreshadow the oncoming apocalypse in a B horror movie, the first Christmas carols and movies of the season have signaled the coming onslaught of the Holiday Season.

It caught me off guard.  I just sorted through my daughter's Halloween candy this Thursday (and, just between you and me, I have been pilfering from it ever since).  Then on Saturday I am flipping through the channels and see that the Hallmark Channel is already showing its particular brand of Christmas movie (i.e. the ones that are so sweet they make you yak) 24/7, and today at Subway over the din of people ordering sandwiches I heard a ghostly 1990's version of Neil Diamond -- a Neil Diamond well past his prime but still with the power to fill the Roanoke Civic Center with adoring middle aged women and their abashed husbands -- wishing me a Merry Christmas in musical form.

I should have known, of course.  I and millions of others have noted for quite some time that Christmas comes earlier and earlier each year; it seems that we have finally reached the "All Hallows Eve Asymptote", the line that Schrodinger postulated the beginning of the holiday season might approach but not cross whilst he was taking a break from looking for his cat.

Admittedly, I am something of a humbug when it comes to the Holidays.  Christmas in of itself is okay, and its good to spend time with family and friends, and I admit I do enjoy a good Creme Brulee late.  Oh, and on Boxing Day there is always a full set of EPL soccer matches, which is a great way to spend the day after Christmas.  The British certainly got that one right.

But the Humbugs are many.  There are endless days of meaningless and often uninspiring College Football games. There is the crass commercialism.  There is the bad music -- Christmas may have produced Handel's Messiah, but it also produced "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer".  But most of all, I'd say my problem with the Christmas Season is that I find it impossible to sustain the much expected good cheer over its long length.

Look, as it is, I can store up enough happiness to maybe last three days.  After that, external factors come into play.  I generally have to avoid books and music.  The brunette who works at the Park Lane Tavern on Wednesdays can't call in sick.  The Browns have to lose all their football games.  Wolf Blitzer needs to keep his beard carefully trimmed at 3/35ths of an inch lest the increased gravitation pull of his whiskers throw off the delicate balance of the moon, wind, and tides, thus varying the progression of ocean waves as they crash into the shoreline while I sit on the beach writing bad poetry.  I prefer my waves to have a period between 22 and 29 seconds;  anything outside that range can send me slipping into a melancholy of moderate intensity.

So my happiness is a tenuous thing -- too tenuous to last for a couple months, too tenuous to last for the whole Christmas Season.

Ah, but if you look up there are an awful lot of "I"s.  Perhaps I have forgotten the....*sigh*.....the true meaning of Christmas.  And that is that we have been put on this Earth to "Be Excellent to Each Other", that the fullest lives are those lived in compassion and love for others.  Such things may not lead to the happiness that a new I-pad or a Trek road bike or the full set of Aubrey/Maturin novels might bring (hint hint), but it might just be enough to sustain a person for more than three days, and maybe even the whole damned Holiday Season.