Dad: So how many countries celebrate Christmas
Me: How many people you mean?
Dad: I know places like Britain, France, Germany
Me: Yeah, well, it's a matter of Christians being predominant enough to actually shut everything down on Christmas, if that's what you're asking.
Dad: What about Arab countries?
Me: Umm, well, no. The mass of Christ is Christian specific, mostly.
Sister: Who do Muslims pray to.
Me: It's the Abrahamic god.
Sister: Is it?
Me: Yeah. Hebrew and Arabic are actually closely related, so just think 'Yeh-Ho-Vah' and 'All-Lah' and it's pretty clear...
Dad: Well wouldn't it make sense that they'd aknowledge the son of god....
Me. Well, um.....ummm. Well, they would be Christians is they considered Jesus the son of god. They don't, so.....yeah, you see.
Sister: Why do they say the Jews killed Jesus?
Me: Look, I'm going to pick up some more liquor. I'll be back in a bit.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
In Fairness
There are many in these parts who honestly think that any man who doesn't have a noticeable paunch must be undernourished.
"A Fox News guest on Thursday said that 'you might want to say' President Obama looks like 'a skinny, ghetto crackhead.'”
Still it's both amusing and obnoxious to witness the massive amount of creative energy being expounded to think up new ways to call the president nigger without saying nigger. And tragic too. All this wasted effort would have been better spent on making the next Cecil B. Demille/Jerry Bruckheimer epic piece of explosion porn.
"A Fox News guest on Thursday said that 'you might want to say' President Obama looks like 'a skinny, ghetto crackhead.'”
Still it's both amusing and obnoxious to witness the massive amount of creative energy being expounded to think up new ways to call the president nigger without saying nigger. And tragic too. All this wasted effort would have been better spent on making the next Cecil B. Demille/Jerry Bruckheimer epic piece of explosion porn.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Home in Western NE Again
Until very recently, this region suffered a lack of the Classic Rawk radio deluge that one finds in every more populated region. We've finally caught up on that account in the past five years. Until then though there was only a top 40 station, an 'oldies' station, (50's and sixties) and, of course, Country. The oldies station is a ESPN affiliate now, inventing sporting outrage so that you Mr. Divorced Alcoholic don't have to make up your own, even if you're out among the coyotes.
Out of Ogalala, a little courthouse town fifty miles west of here, there's a station set on 99.7, 'The Lake.' Classic Rawk, mostly, but independent, owned from within the community.There's a weird sort of variety to these stations, different from what you'd hear on some ostentatiously variable channel on Sirius because there's probably no hipster credibility to whatever gets played. On 99.7 I once heard one of Supertramps' twelve minute awkward early prog rock attempts followed by the Johnny Mathis version of 'What Child is This?' Last night whoever was working there put on Boston's "Rock and Roll Band', which includes the line 'Dancing in the Streets of Hyannis.' which is sort of funny since there actually is a Hyannis Nebraska to the north of Ogalala, an hours drive through bare grass on a blacktop road, population 200, one hundred miles from the nearest town of 10K+. It's one of the more isolated and forlorn places in the lower forty eight, is what I'm saying. So the thought of anyone dancing in its wheel-track 'streets' in the dead of winter brings a grim smile. Yet 99.7 the Lake will reach Hyannis, usually, and somebody there digs Suzanne Vega. So any Hyannite who feels the urge and has the time, which of course he does, need only wait by his radio until by and by that sweet dose of late-eighties mild Manhattan middlebrow groove shall come.
Out of Ogalala, a little courthouse town fifty miles west of here, there's a station set on 99.7, 'The Lake.' Classic Rawk, mostly, but independent, owned from within the community.There's a weird sort of variety to these stations, different from what you'd hear on some ostentatiously variable channel on Sirius because there's probably no hipster credibility to whatever gets played. On 99.7 I once heard one of Supertramps' twelve minute awkward early prog rock attempts followed by the Johnny Mathis version of 'What Child is This?' Last night whoever was working there put on Boston's "Rock and Roll Band', which includes the line 'Dancing in the Streets of Hyannis.' which is sort of funny since there actually is a Hyannis Nebraska to the north of Ogalala, an hours drive through bare grass on a blacktop road, population 200, one hundred miles from the nearest town of 10K+. It's one of the more isolated and forlorn places in the lower forty eight, is what I'm saying. So the thought of anyone dancing in its wheel-track 'streets' in the dead of winter brings a grim smile. Yet 99.7 the Lake will reach Hyannis, usually, and somebody there digs Suzanne Vega. So any Hyannite who feels the urge and has the time, which of course he does, need only wait by his radio until by and by that sweet dose of late-eighties mild Manhattan middlebrow groove shall come.
Monday, December 19, 2011
As for The Other Famous Dead Guy...
I wonder how many North Korean citizens honestly believe that heavy metal diction is the natural style of speech for everyone everywhere,; or how many there are who, in spite of hearing nothing else from any electronic media they're whole lives, are still able to recognize that there is something out of joint, funny or even contemptible, with everybody always speaking this way.
Do they know that they're living in a zombie movie while walking down their pristinely maintained never-used freeways?
RIP Vaclav Havel
-The Ram.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Yeah, I'm Drinking Scotch Today
I made a quick note on the passing of Christopher Hitchens at Slacktivist.
...."Hitch was a leftist who shared with the modern US right a Romantic ideal of belief. The notion that to sincerely believe a thing at all must necessarily inspire a lust to fight for and impose that belief on others. Those who are unable to comprehend the man must understand this. It is why an atheistic radical was able to support the imperialism of Gulf War II, how a man who was a forceful supporter of Palestinian statehood and close friend to several Mid-Eastern intellectuals was able to take the side of paternalism and forced assimilation in the French burqa controversy.
Most self-described American liberals are basically utilitarians. Our beliefs exist as polite and modest proposals for making life better, not as vehicles for grasping the infinite through holy struggle. We therefore see no problem with believing that secularism and rationalism are good things on the one hand while on the other hand believing that it is wrong to force these things upon others. Christopher Hitchens was very, very, straightforward in his belief that such a position was horseshit; that anyone who claimed to hold it must be both a liar and a coward."
Most self-described American liberals are basically utilitarians. Our beliefs exist as polite and modest proposals for making life better, not as vehicles for grasping the infinite through holy struggle. We therefore see no problem with believing that secularism and rationalism are good things on the one hand while on the other hand believing that it is wrong to force these things upon others. Christopher Hitchens was very, very, straightforward in his belief that such a position was horseshit; that anyone who claimed to hold it must be both a liar and a coward."
Thursday, December 15, 2011
You See, The English Drink a Bit
So depending on the time of day, they may be either a good deal less or a good deal more forward about their attitudes towards strangers than we Yanks are accustomed to.
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