2013: The Year In Review (Part 1)

Like the rheumy old geezer you're forced to sit next to in a theater or on a three-hour plane flight, 2013 is coughing, hacking and wheezing its way into the outhouse of history.  While not as bizarrely awful as 2012 (and that was due in large part to the presidential election), this year will go down as having more than its share of weird, unsettling and just plain annoying happenings.  So, let's take a look back at the crazy quilt of human folly that was 2013 and present some well-deserved awards for galaxy-class stupidity, starting with our premiere award:

The MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Award:  We thought we were going to get through this year without millions of right-wing dimwits getting all whipped up into a frenzied lather over some faux-controversy, like they did with the Chick-Fil-A idiocy last year.  You might remember that the COO of C-F-A made some ill-advised comments to religious publications that he was proud of financially supporting some groups that advocated a "traditional definition of marriage" (a.k.a. homophobia and bigotry disguised as piety).  When some people suggested we may want to direct our discretionary spending to a restaurant chain that wasn't quite as intolerant and hateful, the conservative sheeple were summoned into action by the right-wing garbage-mongers on Fox News and other pseudo-journalistic bastions of stupidity.  What better way to show your innate homophobia than by running down to your local Chick-Fil-A outlet and ordering up a big mess of their nasty fried chicken?  Yeah, that'll show those queer-loving liberals - go out and buy a shitload of artery-clogging, greasy animal parts.  A lot of people really had no intention of eating what they bought; many of them threw the food away immediately.  But gol darn it, they were going to make a STATEMENT and stand up for the First Amendment rights of some idiot who insists on sticking his nose into the lives and business of fellow Americans.

Back to 2013:  Fox News tried to get the ball rolling by kicking off their annual "War Against Christmas" pseudo-controversy.  When it appeared it wasn't getting enough traction with their easily-distracted-by-shiny-objects viewers, they decided to let slutty Botox abuser Megyn Kelly spew some incomprehensible drivel about Santa Claus only being white or... something? I don't even know.  But the shitstorm really spooled up to high gear when the patriarch of a clutch of barnyard animal-human hybrids that appear in some ridiculous reality show called "Duck Dynasty" cut loose with a rambling diatribe in GQ magazine that was pretty stunning and extreme in its stupidity, racism and homophobia.  Now I've never seen "Duck Dynasty," nor would I ever consider soiling my brain with whatever genetic-cesspool nonsense those hairy snake-oil salesmen are perpetrating on a dimwitted, gullible American public.  I spend my entire life avoiding those kind of people and trying hard to convince myself they don't really exist.  But you would really have to be living on some other planet these past couple of weeks to not have heard about this crapfest on nearly every news outlet.  The A&E network almost immediately tried to distance itself from the one program on their schedule that was an absolute cash cow, and "suspended" the noxious old fart from his own show.  Always eager to show its clout, the right-wing stupidity machine went into overdrive and cast this suspension as a heinous, unwarranted violation of someone's First Amendment Free Speech rights.  There's that pesky First Amendment again.  It's almost as misused, misquoted and misinterpreted as the Second Amendment.

The right wing loves to shriek like a stuck pig whenever they imagine someone violating their own rights, but gleefully and willingly will try to curtail the rights of any group of people they don't agree with, such as gay people seeking marriage equality or adults seeking to maintain access to a legal birth control procedure.  Then you get irrelevant, obsolescent gasbags like the scrawny, brittle, trailer-trash queen Sarah Palin dragging herself out from under some rock and shoving her pinched, ravaged face in front of any camera she can find, forcefully broadcasting her opinions like anyone gives a screaming shit about what she thinks.  The ignorant conservative hordes jumped up at their leaders' command and goose-stepped their way down to their local Walmart or Cracker Barrel restaurant and willingly blew their (irony alert) welfare checks on useless crap they really didn't need, just because some media hack told them they were defending some pseudo-celebrity's right to free speech, and snapped up every bit of Duck Dynasty schlocky merchandise they could get their fat, stubby fingers on.  It's astonishing to me that those idiots will do whatever their right-wing puppet-masters tell them to do, without a smidgen of critical thought.  As long as they see other people like them doing the same thing, they think they are on the right side of things.  Adolf Hitler would be so proud.

It's really difficult to understand how this country has changed so much that some repulsive, grubby old scumbag can spout a load of vile, disgusting hatespeech to a national magazine and then have millions of idiots defend his right to call gay people "terrorists" and make astonishingly ignorant statements about how black people were better off under slavery.  Twenty years ago someone saying that would be roundly criticized and condemned from every part of the political spectrum.  Nowadays, you could come out in favor of child molesters and as long as you managed to sneak in some Bible quotes, you will get people defending you and your right to be an asshole in public.

How did that happen?  I think it's the result of a number of things; one of them being the death of civil political discourse and intellectual thinking in this country.  The internet and social media have given everyone a global, anonymous platform to expel any and all kinds of hateful, disoriented thinking, with little or no consequence or accountability.  The gun lobby has set an example of scorched-earth policy by vehemently opposing even the smallest, most innocuous and toothless tightening of gun laws in this country.  Even the slaughter of 20 innocent children in December 2012 meant nothing to them.  The only thing they cared about is the fictional "slippery slope" which would surely lead to the government forcibly confiscating everyone's firearms if they banned one assault rifle or extra-capacity ammo clip.  Throw in an ignorant, uneducated population that accepts claptrap like that as gospel, and the spineless, cowardly stooges in Congress who are firmly in the back pocket of the gun manufacturers, and you have a great example of neo-fascism knocking at your door disguised as "patriotism."

But I digress.  Thankfully, Christmas is providing a welcome (albeit short) relief and distraction from all this small-minded stupidity, but I fear the argument will only be resurrected next month as the new season of that Duck Dynasty trashfest starts up.  It seems the conservative parts of the population will put up with absolutely any kind of horrible stupidity and intolerance as long as it's painted with the varnish of "religious expression," which has become the dog whistle to automatically incite the vast unwashed hordes to jump up and do whatever they are told.  After all, Jesus is on their side.  Or so they think.

Therefore, I give the Much Ado About Nothing Award to Duck Dynasty and their mindless followers for all their spectacular bigotry and ignorance.  They have taken the entire country one giant step closer to hell.

Eve of Christ's Mass

So here we are on Christmas Eve, 2011. A time when we like to think a hush of peace descends all over the world and everyone contemplates a child born to a virgin mother in a dirty, dark stable, cushioned by a manger full of hay and warmed by the breath of barnyard animals lucky enough to be there at the right time, at the dawn of a new era of human existence.

For Christians in the civilized world, it is the holiest time of their year, a time when everything stops and everyone steps away from their regular routine and gathers around a crackling fireplace to gaze dreamily at a tree covered in lights, sheltering a pile of brightly-wrapped gifts. Songs are sung, glasses raised in toasts of family and friends, hearty meals are partaken, and people travel great distances to be with the ones they love. We will not trouble ourselves with the fact that the vast majority of people in the world are either Hindu or Buddhist and to them Christmas has no meaning. This is one day that is very special, and we all drink deep from the cup of shared cultural experience.

Let us consider what might be happening this day:

Somewhere in America, a family pet is outdoors in a dirty, drafty shelter on a cold, damp night, shivering in the darkness, away from the company of his family. Looking at his empty food and water bowls, he knows the only thing in abundance is loneliness and the bite of the cold wind. He can hear their voices as he gazes at the warm light coming through the windows of the home, so near yet so very far.

Somewhere in America, through either the ignorance or carelessness of its owner, an animal is giving birth to a litter of babies. Humans will take the babies, put them in a cardboard box, and leave them by the side of a road. The box will not be found for three days.

Somewhere in America, an animal will languish in a cold, sterile metal cage in a pound, huddling in fear of the terrifying sights, sounds and smells which surround it. It will not understand why, just a very short time ago, it was living in a home with a family it had grown to love. It was taken out of that home and roughly shoved into a tiny carrier, and watched as the family it loved turned their backs and walked out the door, without another word. It knows that it is a good animal, and will continue to hope in vain that its family will return and take it home again.

Somewhere in America, a good, sweet, friendly dog will be brought to a shelter and will sit next to its owner as he fills out the surrender form. The dog has no idea what is about to happen to him; the only thing he knows is that he is happy to be with his owner. He will take his paw and place it on the arm of his owner to try to get him to play, but the man only continues writing. He looks at his owner with love-filled eyes, and trusts him so very much. The paperwork is completed, and the dog's life will change forever.

Somewhere in America, a skinny, mangy cat, looking far older than its actual age, walks down a filthy, trash-strewn alleyway of a big city, looking for any scraps of garbage or discarded food it can possibly eat. It has learned that humans cause it nothing but pain and injury, and is constantly chased and targeted by rocks, bottles, anything that can be used as a missile. It will watch the rain as it puddles up on the grimy streets, and will never know the gentle touch of a loving hand.

Yes a lot of things will happen tonight, and some of them will be very bad. Right now, an automobile crash is happening and lives will be lost. Right now, an elderly woman lies in a hospital room, alone, with no one to hold her hand, her life slowly slipping away. Right now, a married couple will sit in silence in a neonatal intensive care unit and look at an impossibly tiny human form in an incubator, covered with wires and tubes and tape, taking short, labored breaths, and they will wonder why a merciful and loving God would do this to them and their firstborn.

These things, and a lot worse, will happen tonight. But since I try to be a "glass half full" kind of guy, I like to think that some good things will also happen.

I like to think that people are gathering together and sharing stories of the solstice, and of traditions and customs past, and forming bonds that will last a lifetime.

I like to think there are families where children are taught to accept everyone for the kind of person they are, rather than judge them on what color their skin is, or what kind of accent they speak with, or who they love, or how much money they make, or whether they worship a god or not.

I like to think we can live in a world where all children and animals are loved and wanted, and everyone has a home, enough to eat and medical care when needed.

I like to think there are people who are beginning to awaken to the understanding of the unimaginably vast universe in which we live, and how there are billions and billions of galaxies, each one containing many billions of stars, millions of which have planets similar to our own, and how some of them might harbor life with sentient beings who do as we do: look out into the vast starry expanse of a clear night and wonder if there's anybody else out there.

I like to think that not all people in the world are ignorant and bigoted and hateful, although so often it seems politicians, celebrities and athletes go out of their way in a very public fashion to prove otherwise.

I like to think that someday humans will rid themselves of the arcane, discredited and destructive notion that they are the superior form of life on this planet and all other forms are to be abused and exploited as we wish. I completely and utterly reject and condemn with every fiber of my being the Biblical idea that mankind has been given "dominion" over the earth. With each passing day, it's becoming more critical that mankind understands and accepts that it is a part of the immense web of life that exists on this planet, and we must coexist with every other life form. We have the ability to destroy this planet and with that comes the responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. We have no right to ruin this planet for other life forms just because we're unable to control our primitive urges.

I like to think that we can create a world where people are freed from the tyranny of religion and are fully able to realize their true potential. I want to live in a world where laws are just and fair and rooted in compassion and mercy, instead of hatred, fear and antiquated superstition.

I wish we could take a little bit of the peace and serenity of this day and keep it close to us and nurture it, and find a way to make it last through the other 364 days.

Christmas 2010

Here I am in the wee hours of Christmas morning, 2010. The house is quiet, all the bunnies are fed and getting ready for their bedtime. The doves are quiet after a late-night chorus of cooing that had almost all of them going off at the same time. I haven't the slightest idea what motivates them to start singing their songs so late at night, but I'm sure they have a good reason. All the outside lights are turned off and all is quiet and still. It's been over two weeks since I last wrote anything in this blog. I had an art project to finish and just found myself to be extremely busy. Whoever said that retirement would be boring did not know what they were talking about.

Time is running out on 2010, and I for one will be glad to see it go. Not a lot of real good things happened this year. Or maybe I should say, some good things did happen this year but they were outweighed and outnumbered by the not-so-good. This past week has seen a terrible spate of bunnies passing away - one was Sage (featured in a previous post in this blog), a very sweet mini-lop who had suffered through tremendous trials and tribulations but never once lost his beautiful personality nor his graceful serenity. Fuzzy was another bunny who had struggled with numerous health issues for quite a long time and was seemingly doing very well when he crashed on us and had to leave for the Bridge. I lost an injured cottontail that came to me with drooling from the mouth and a mysterious injury so bad that the poor bunny just faded away despite my best efforts. My dear friend Julia lost three of her beloved bunnies this year, two of whom (Duncan and Alyce-Michele) were born into my home on a chilly, damp, dark Tuesday in February 2004. I held them in the palm of my hand when they were mere hours old. In a way, losing them was like a parent outliving a child. There is a sense of great loss, disorientation and disorder, a sense that something happened out of sequence that should not have happened, in a perfect world.

But alas, I'm finding out over and over that this world is far from perfect. Politically, it was a pretty gruesome year, with the midterm elections putting more Republicans in high office than I can remember. In state government it was even worse, as most if not all high state offices went to the Republican candidates. The newly-elected president of the state senate is a crusty old troglodyte named Russell Pearce, who has unashamedly associated himself with Nazi and white supremacist groups in the recent past and does not even bother to conceal his rabid, vitriolic hatred for Hispanics. It's incomprehensible how someone could even consider voting for a vicious old creep like that. Expertly riding a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, the desiccated, ancient remains of the eternally loathsome Jan Brewer got elected to a full term as governor of this wretched, godforsaken state. Looking like the dried-up husk of a gigantic praying mantis, we are going to be afflicted with her idiocy, stupidity and appalling appearance for the next four years, and that is a damned shame. The voters in this state have to be the stupidest, most hateful and bigoted people on this planet.

It really seems as if stupidity is on the ascendancy in this country. There is such a current of anti-intellectualism nationwide, as if it's a bad thing to have an education and speak and act intelligently. Instead we get the supremely annoying bleating of the incredibly obnoxious Sarah Palin, who insists on shooting off her big mouth every chance she gets and in the process says very little. She is single-handedly dumbing down America every time she opens her yap. Luckily we have heard very little from Sharron Angle, a hot mess of a Senate candidate from Nevada who must be living in another century, or from Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, another loser in a Senate race whose most memorable lines were in a television ad she ran claiming "I am not a witch," and "I'm just like you." God forbid anyone would be just like her. Between Palin, Angle and O'Donnell, women have absolutely nothing to be proud of with these public figures.

I know this country has suffered through periods of massive stupidity before, and we seemed to have gotten through it and survived. Certainly the Reagan administration in the 80s was an eight-year stretch of some of the most mendacious dumbness this country has ever had to slog through. Having a senile, fourth-rate hack actor for a president wasn't the worst of it, because fascist creeps like Alexander Haig, James Watt, Edwin Meese, and James Baker almost made Reagan look moderate. That's because there has always been a resiliency in the American spirit which has allowed it to get through periods of difficulty and somehow its innate better nature came through. There was a little bump of stupidity with the first George Bush presidency, but that was more creepy and weird than stupid. But with the enormous idiocy of George W. Bush, somehow stupidity has become a permanent feature of America and even after Bush we are showing no signs of coming out of it. Like a foreign weed, stupidity has taken root in this country and is spreading with every Republican that comes to office.

As the clock ticks down to 2011 there is a palpable sense, at least to me, that America's better days are behind her. Obama has been crowing mightily about this hot-shit compromise he made with Senate Republicans that back-loaded an additional $800 billion of debt onto this country. Although Obama promised in his 2008 campaign that his administration would be transparent and he would not be involved in backroom deals and bargaining sessions, that is exactly what it was - a quid-pro-quo that clearly ended up in the Republicans' favor by ensuring that the wealthiest one-percent of wage earners in this country would continue to live their opulent lifestyles thanks to the extension of the Bush tax cuts, while the middle-class continues to drown in debt and have their homes foreclosed. We have become a huge debtor nation to the Chinese, who will be sucking this country dry of all its money for many decades to come. In a very real way, young people just starting out in their careers today will be working for the Chinese for most of their lives.

Wealth and resources continue to drain out of this country at an alarming rate, and Congress and the President are content to look the other way and repeatedly postpone any meaningful (i.e., painful) remedies to the situation. We all know what has to be done, but no one has the political courage to do it. So we just pass the burden on to the next generation. What a horrible thing we are doing to children yet unborn, mortgaging their future and condemning them to live in a third-rate country, which is what the U.S. will be in a very short time.

So, I'm finding very little to be cheerful about this particular Christmas season. I'll be glad when it's over, I'm already violently sick and tired of all the awful commercials they show on television over and over again. The automobile commercials have been particularly galling. Who the hell gives new automobiles as Christmas gifts? Seriously, I've never met anyone who did that. Maybe I hang out with a different set of people, but that is just so out of my experience I can't imagine what it must be like. Crass commercialism and greed has been rampant this year, as always, but I've opted myself out of all the craziness and that has been a very good choice.

I can only hope 2011 will be a better year for everyone. I will absolutely not say that it couldn't get any worse, because I'm sure it can, but I sincerely hope we can get back to some good news and good things happening after the past two horrific years. But I have to say I have very little reason to be optimistic.

White Christmas, Indeed!

The Christmas season brings its whole raft of unique entertainment and there's something for everybody. Whether it's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (completely irresistible) or "Santa Claus vs. The Martians" (polar opposite) there's something to check out nearly every day. One of my favorite diversions is the Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye movie, Irving Berlin's "White Christmas." It was on television last night and I was so there.

"White Christmas" came out in 1954 and it really is a window on to another world and another time. World War II was still very much on everyone's mind even in the brave new world of postwar United States, where prosperity was everywhere, the babies were booming and the future could not look brighter. Americans were still processing the war experience and there were wounds remaining to be healed and lost soldiers to be remembered. It's clear in the film that the American military were still held in the highest regard, and being a soldier could not be a more noble or honorable profession. When you were part of a military unit you were part of a family, and your loyalty to your fellow soldiers and commanding officers were absolute and unwavering, even long after the war ended. The movie opens in Christmas 1944 in a war zone where inexplicably a holiday stage show is going on - complete with musicians and snowy backdrop - while strobe lights, I mean bombs, are going off in the distance. In only one of a myriad of dizzyingly surreal touches, Danny Kaye is playing some kind of crank-powered music box which floats delicate, tinkling notes amid the bombed-out landscape and allows Der Bingle to stop the show early on with his version of the immortal song, "White Christmas."

Fast-forward to after the end of the war, and Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are a successful Broadway songwriting/performing team. They find out that their former commanding officer, General Waverly, is running a failing resort hotel in the wilds of Vermont and immediately they drop everything and go to the rescue of the venerable war hero, who is worshiped like a god. There is also a pair of singing-and-dancing sisters, played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen, thrown in to add a little romantic tension and innocent tomfoolery. One of the showpieces of the movie is a song called "Sisters," where the ladies dance with huge blue ostrich-feather fans and celebrate the wonderful sisterly relationship they have, swearing eternal love and loyalty to each other, unless of course some man comes around and gets in the way. The song has this great kicker line at the end:

Lord help the mister
Who comes between me and my sister
And Lord help the sister
Who comes between me and my man!

Wow, that is awesome. Talk about wanting it both ways. You can be my sister and I'll love you to death, but mess around with my man and you are one dead beeyatch. Immediately I envisioned a Jerry Springer-type catfight where these two women tear into each other with the ferocity of wild animals while some scrawny guy in a dirty t-shirt looks on. A song like that with such a nihilistic, bisexual message would be the basis of an entire HBO series these days, but back then it was considered innocuous and normal. In another of the unexpected, bizarre twists that fill this movie, Crosby and Kaye assume the roles of the women - blue feather fans and all - and pantomime the song to a surprised Manhattan night club audience, lip-synching and mincing their way through it and getting big laughs from the sophisticated urbanites. Nothing enhances a holiday movie like a mildly inept drag performance, I always say.

Now there are a lot of other things going on in this movie, and the silliness is pretty much non-stop. The movie does jump the tracks a couple of times as the romantic back-story and wacky entanglements of the four lead characters get a bit more time than is needed, but it always returns to its main and best story, saving the Vermont lodge for the "Old Man." After a lot of maneuvering, Crosby and Kaye end up dragging an entire Broadway show - cast, crew and everything - up to Vermont via train, and putting on a staggering, astonishingly intricate benefit show for the General and his lodge. It looked like half of Broadway headed north, including singers, dancers, musicians, choreographers, set builders, painters, costumers, electricians, stagehands and just about everyone else they could cram on the train, not to mention a media tie-in with the show being broadcast on that new-fangled thing called "television." Are we going to try to figure out how they got a national-feed television signal out of rural Vermont in 1954 without a satellite? Of course not, not when there is singing and dancing aplenty going on. A dress rehearsal for a minstrel show scared me to death because I was sure it was going to veer off into some explosion of racial stereotyping, but it only ended up being a harmless exhumation of the spirit of Vaudeville.

The gender roles of postwar America are glaringly on display everywhere. In nearly every scene, women were shown in subservient, secondary roles, usually relegated to whipping up trays full of sandwiches and glasses of buttermilk (EWWW!) for the eternally-hungry crew. In at least one instance the General refers to them as "the womenfolk." The hotel assistant Emma, played by a tall, lanky, wisecracking Mary Wickes, is really the deus ex machina of the movie, and it's only through her incessant eavesdropping on telephone conversations, behind-the-scene manipulation of everything and everybody and constant kvetching that the movie gleefully steamrolls its way to its final, mind-blowing scene. There is also a naughty little undercurrent of sexuality, especially during the reheasals where lots of very leggy chorus girls are shown lounging around in chairs or stretching and warming up in teeny-tiny shorts in December in Vermont.

But this movie makes no apologies to anyone, and needs none. Part musical entertainment, part anthropological treatise, it really is a frozen moment in the American psyche when the idealism of the fifties was in full bloom, America was in its supremacy, and a good life was guaranteed to all. That was before the Russians started shooting satellites up into the sky and African-Americans started marching in small Alabama towns for their civil rights. And then the sixties came along and everything really got messed up. But if you're looking for a way to experience the squeaky-clean Fifties and hear some great music and singing and groan over corny jokes for a couple of hours, you just can't beat "White Christmas."

Boycott Christma$$$

As the year barrels to a close and the second decade of the twenty-first century rears its ugly head above the horizon, everyone should become dimly aware of the approaching holidays. Thanksgiving is a little more than three weeks away, and Christmas a bit more than seven weeks off. So, we should be hearing more about Thanksgiving, right? Not so fast, because I just saw my first television commercial for the Christmas holiday, and I haven't heard squat about Thanksgiving.

Walgreen's and Costco have had some of their Christmas merchandise out on display for weeks now, and I can't tell you how jolting and disorienting it is to see fully decorated Christmas trees right after coming in from near 100-degree temps outside. But I voluntarily walked into both of those fine establishments and I can walk back out again if I want to. When advertisers start showing their Christmas commercials on television, that is more of an invasion of privacy. By bringing their sales harangues uninvited into my living room and dumping them in my lap, they are showing an aggressiveness and pushiness that does not go unchallenged.

And I really wouldn't care if they started in with the Yuletide commercials right after Thanksgiving, the usual start of the holiday shopping madness, because that's when I really curtail my television viewing. I seriously get aggravated when I see the same damned annoying commercial 50 times in the space of a half-hour. And Christmas music can be very nice when it's not used as background music for hordes of greed-crazed children going into grand-mal seizures if they don't get whatever overpriced piece-of-crap gift the advertisers tell them they have to have this year, or their Christmas will be a complete failure.

There are plenty of things about Christmas that I like, such as the cooler weather, the house decorations (although that can get really out of control), going to Christmas parties with friends, and the aforementioned Christmas music. XM Radio in particular has a wonderful audio channel called "Classical Christmas" that they broadcast only during the holidays, and it showcases incredible holiday music that you rarely hear anywhere. There are some really enjoyable holiday movies on TV, and one of my favorites is "White Christmas" starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye (more about it in a future blog). I love the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, strange as that may sound. And there's just something so damned reassuring and comforting about "A Charlie Brown Christmas." It's like a big warm blanket made up of your childhood memories that just wraps around you and makes you feel like a kid again. That kind of stuff is priceless.

I've started my own Christmas traditions, and one of them is to boycott the store who shows the first Christmas commercial on TV. Last year that honor went to Wal-Mart, and this year it goes to Kohl's department stores. So, suck it Kohl's, Merry Damned Christmas to you. Because of your greediness and self-serving rush to shove your name into everyone's face so early on in the season, you won't be seeing me or my money in any of your stores. It's called voting with your wallet, and my wallet does not vote for Kohl's.

Obviously the kind of money-grubbing Christmas season the advertisers are trying to force us into experiencing comes from a place of greed and avarice. We're going to hear so much of the upcoming shopping season being a barometer of the success or failure of all the economic stimulus efforts that have been and are being done. And it's really a shame to cast Christmas in that light, because it just turns the holidays into more of a mad, delirious shopping spree/death march than usual, leaving everyone tired, demoralized and deeper in debt. But it doesn't have to be that way.

The choice really comes down to whether you will sit back and passively accept the edicts and demands of the business world when it comes to celebrating Christmas the way they want you to, or actively reject the stifling consumerism that chokes all the joy out of the season. I choose the latter, and this year as last year I'm backing away from the shopping and spending and gift-giving hysteria that used to make me fear this time of year. It's really simple and easy - all the power is in your hands. I'm going to start by telling my friends to please not buy me anything. I love my friends and appreciate their generosity, but I am very fortunate to have more "stuff" than I need. I would really love it if they kept their money and either spent it on themselves or their pets, or donate it to a charity of their choice, and Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue is always my first choice when it comes to worthy charities. For me, what I want the most is to spend time with my friends, enjoy their company and their good humor with a wonderful meal or a bottle of wine, and just get back to the way Christmas should be celebrated - as a time for gathering-together in friendship and holiday spirit.