The staff at the Starbucks in my building are all wearing red holiday tshirts today. I promptly gave them a good-natured ration of shit for that. I really hate how the Christmas holiday ‘season’ starts earlier and earlier each year. Thanksgiving, still a good two weeks away, is being overcome by the Christmas marketing and retailing onslaught. At this rate Holloween will be swallowed up by 2008.
And this is my pet peeve, I like Thanksgiving. I like the idea of the big meal the entire family sits down to eat, and eat, and eat, and afterward everyone staggers off to sit in a tryptophan-enduced coma for a few hours. I look forward to this every year and every year my bile rises a bit higher because Christmas is bullying Thanksgiving right out the way.
The last three months of the year are dreary and cold, but there was always a level of anticipation because at the beginning of each month, you knew you got something cool out of it at the end. October gives you Halloween and a sugar coma, November gives you Thankgiving and the tryptophan coma (a very good, mellow buzz, if you ask me, not at all electric like a sugar high), and December, the coldest month of all, gives you Christmas and the double whammy of large feasts AND material goods.
Each month has a distinct and unique flavor to it. October is dark and spooky, November is warm and cozy, and December is bright and cheery. Each month has its holiday. Each holiday should stay in its own month. This, to me, is the right of it, the way things have been and always should be. This way, you can enjoy each holiday for itself, savor the things that make each holiday unique.
Christmas is getting way too uppity to be showing its face on November 9th. We need to tell it to sit down and wait its turn. Thanksgiving has been waiting all year and deserves its moment in the spotlight. And, and at this rate, I really don’t want to be stringing christmas lights in July, do you?
Fuck it – leave the Christmas lights up year round!
But yeah, hasn’t the commercial Christmas season always started on Nov. 1st?
As for the employees in Starbucks, maybe their anxious for some early Christmas cheer in light of all the nasty ugliness in the world for Americans right now.
Everyone who walked in there was making a comment similar to mine. The employees looked pretty uncomfortable wearing such shirts now.
There’s gotta be an Iraq angle in here somewhere – lol
Yup – I’m stuck on Iraq – call me an Iraq geek –
Partition Iraq by muslim sect now and get the hell out!!
Perhaps they are really moonlighting from their regular jobs at Target.
Re: Muslim sect division of Iraq….I’ve been saying this over and over, so I couldn’t agree with you more!
Easier said than done, grasshopper. Two big issues will ever keep that from happening. 1) From what I understand, the oil is only in one part of the country, so whoever gets that part will be golden, but the other factions will be jealous, and 2) the Kurds pretty much rule the north, so much so that there is no violence there, none at all. If you partition the country, you would have to give the north to the Kurds, and Turkey would have a hissy fit.
Paul’s right, Christmas season starts Nov. 1. I just happened to be in our local Wal-Mart on November 1st shopping for Moon Pies and trucker hats and noticed that they had already replaced all of the Halloween candy (2 full rows) with Christmas gift baskets and other assorted Christmas items. Damn shame too. As I’ve gotten older and fatter my favorite holiday has shifted from Halloween to Thanksgiving.
As for Iraq, screw the Turks and screw the oil. Sitting on huge pools of oil has done nothing to improve the lives of the vast majority of Arabs, Persians, Mexicans, Nigerians, Venezuelans, Canadians or any other third world citizens. The Kurds would probably be better off without oil and the Turks long ago forfeited any right to object to anything we do in Iraq.
How much percentage of the world’s known oil reserves will be potentially lost Roger? 10%? BFD
I say there’s not enough oil in Kurdish territory to warrant the cost of America’s continuted occupation needed secure it.
Leave it to the Kurds, the Turks, Iran, Shi’ite’s & Sunni’s to fight over it. America has other options and doesn’t need that oil badly enough.
Paul
And hello Jim!
Oh and I’m betting the Turks will play nice seeing as how their government wants into the EU so bad.
Why shouldn’t there be a Kurdistan?
You all misinterpreted my comment about the oil. The world wouldn’t lose the oil, rather, if the Sunnis gete it, the Shiites will get jealous and attack the Sunnis, and visa versa. It doesn’t matter to me whether they do or not, really, because you’re right, 10 percent or whatever is no big deal, especially when we have ANWR (LOL, he pokes the bee’s nest), but if the goal is a stable region, you’re not going to get it when one side gets the profits from the oil and the other side doesn’t. That’s all.
Have Western powers EVER been able to keep this region stable? (not for long)
Why do we collectively continue to beat our heads against that wall?
There is a 3rd option beyond cut and run:
Develop alternative energy for peace and prosperity.
I would love to leave this region alone. It’s a waste of time and energy for a region that is stuck in middle ages. The problem is they won’t leave us alone, the bastards.
I heard a fragment of a discussion on Islamic fundamentalism on the radio last month, the person discussing this with the host was some expert of Islam. Don’t ask me for details about the guy because I can’t remember. What I DO remember is what he said about why these guys are dangerous. They have access to technology that is the result of an intellectual and spiritual renaissance that the western world went through. A renaissance which tempered the more radical strains of Christianity. Islam hasn’t had this happen yet, so the current crop of nutballs have no historical understanding of the tools that it uses. Theres more to it as well, and as I remember it, It’ll post.
America puts itself more in jeapordy by continued reliance on oil imports from this region. We must find an alternative. This will not directly address fundamental terrorism but it will put us in a stronger position. If everyone in the world stopped buying their oil the “bad guys” would lose revenue and fall back into the dark ages. If America develops the alternative energy solution(s) and sells them to the rest of the developed world we all win.
I know you personally don’t approve of government intervention in business and scientific but its got to be a better solution than the military one we’ve tried for the last 6 years.
This problem trancends global economics and affects the very fabric of western society.
Removing our reliance on foreign oil will NOT in ANY way stop terrorism.
As far as the rest, there is an interesting set of posts I discovered by a guy who posts under the name The Skeptical Optimist. I haven’t read them in detail yet because there looks to be a lot of info, but he certainly puts forth the idea of a “Going to the moon” national effort. http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2006/10/energy_post_7_a.html
That post is the last in a series of 7 that I want to read. The guy really seems to have his shit together.
Your essentially right about foreign oil – what I said was if EVERYONE stopped buying it from Islamic countries which is a pipe dream I know. Even so, if America can kick the habit that would remove one important point of potential leverage against us.
Surely you can see that? Even Bush would agree with me on this one I think – lol
Of course, we need to NOT be dependent on foreign oil. I’ve felt that was the logical course of action for years, but it we actually suceed in doing that, it will not stop terrorism.
Yes – it’s probably far too late for that. The seed has been planted and neither side will ever give up.