It's MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY, goddamn it!

Last night (ironically, the first Friday the 13th of the new year), the mayor of Biloxi put out a tweet that rather specifically did not call Monday's holiday "Martin Luther King Day."

It was a fascinatingly specific error (yes, let's just call it an "error," shall we?), but they left it up overnight, finally deleting it this morning, and a lot of the Twitterverse noticed. My personal favorite response was this.

when u see what @CityofBiloxi did for the day acknowledging you pic.twitter.com/C6PufnXECK

— Large ☀️☀️of Anarchy (@JumpinJackFlask) January 14, 2017

Let's remember that Biloxi, Mississippi was the site of the infamous "wade-ins" in 1960, to protest the fact that the miles of available beach in Biloxi were "whites only," with only tiny "colored" bits of beach available. (That one didn't end well for the protesters in Biloxi, by the way, although it did bring the city to national attention).

Of course, the whole state has a terrible history in the civil rights annals - they didn't call the movie "Alabama Burning," after all.

And let's add this little detail to that list of Mississippi's record on civil rights:

1. In 1910, the state passed a law to honor January 19 as Robert E Lee's birthday.


2. In 1983, Reagan made Martin Luther King's Day a federal holiday, observed on the third Monday in January


3. In 1987, calling it a "cost-saving measure," the state of Mississippi combined the two holidays, in a move that most people understand was a backhanded insult to King (MLK Day was already a Federal holiday - you want to lose a holiday? Accept that you probably shouldn't have a day honoring somebody who committed treason.

And then, in 2017, the mayor of Biloxi decided that the combined holiday needed a name, since everybody was still referring to it by the name of that Negro. A move which he probably regrets, since he's been trying to walk it back all day.

Remember, as we enter the Trump Era, undercover racists are going to keep trying to do this kind of crap.

Happy Holidays! (2015 edition)

Apparently, novelty candidate Donald Trump and some random Youtube pastor have decided that the annual "War on Christmas" is starting again: this time, it's because Starbucks changed their cups to plain red (which is particularly stupid, since what Starbucks removed from the cups wasn't Christian imagery; it was just random snowflakes, reindeer, and other secular decorations).

But as usual, the cries of "they can't say 'Merry Christmas' anymore!" are also going up. (I particularly like Trump's quote: "If I become president, we're all going to be saying, 'Merry Christmas' again. That I can tell you." Because he thinks that's a law he can pass? And people complain that OBAMA is a "dictator"?)

But, you know, "happy holidays" is actually a valid thing to say for the rest of the year. It isn't that there's a war on Christmas - somebody seems to have forgotten that there are other holidays.

For example, today was Veteran's Day. Speaking as a veteran, fuck you if you're ignoring it in favor of something a month and a half away. (The British call it "Armistice Day." If you happen to be Canadian, it's called "Remembrance Day" - same thing, just more polite.)

If you happen to be Hindu, this whole week is a celebration, based around Diwali (most of the festivals have different names in different parts of India, since they have a cubic buttload of languages in that country). You missed Dhanteras on Monday, but today is specifically Diwali, the "Festival of Lights," which spiritually celebrates the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair. It's a big-ass party, and you're missing out on it just because you're too small-minded and provincial to move out of your comfort zone.

It also happens to be Kali Puja, where the remembrance of Kali sets you free from evil, both within yourself and from the world around you. So there's that. And then tomorrow, the fourth night of Diwali, is called Govardhan Puja, when Krishna defeated Indra by benchpressing the Govardhan hill. (Seriously - look it up.)

And then, on the fifth day of Diwali, we have Bhai Dooj, which is all about celebrating the bonds between brother and sister. (It's a little bit sexist, to be honest - the sister is supposed to cook the brother's favorite food, and it's all about the duty of a brother to protect his sister, and a sister's blessings for her brother. But, hey, if they aren't yelling at each other? That's a bonus right there.)

Then, this Sunday (November 15th) through Wednesday morning (the 18th, if that math is a little hard for you) , we have Chhath Puja, which is thanking the Sun god for his blessings (and maybe getting a little spiritual cleansing in, at the same time). It's famous for being the holiday when Hindus bathe themselves in the waters of the Ganges and epidemiologists have heart attacks.

The day after that, November 19th, is the Great American Smokeout. Not really a holiday, but since my mom smoked herself to an early grave, I support it. So there it is.

And for Pete's sake, we haven't even made it to Thanksgiving, people! How can you bitch about "taking Christ out of Christmas" when you're ignoring "Giving Thanks"? (And for my own little part in the War on Christmas, Santa needs to haul his fat jolly ass back on the other side of Thanksgiving, where he belongs!)

Advent begins on November 29th, too. You're going to bitch about ignoring Christmas, but all you do with Advent is pull pieces of chocolate out of a calendar?

For that matter, both the Christian tradition and our secular friends have a whole flood of holidays throughout the month of December, as I've covered before. Feel free to review some of them if you're curious.

Among the Buddhists, the 8th of December will be Rohatsu, or Bodhi Day. (Rohatsu literally means "8th day of the 12th month," incidentally.) It commemorates the day that the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautauma, or Shakyamuni) achieved enlightenment. Traditions vary amongst Buddhist sects, but usually include meditation, study of the texts, chanting the sutras, or simply performing kind acts toward others.

Now, Chanukah this year will run from sunset on Sunday, December 6, through Monday, December 14, 2015. This should be moderately important to Fox "News" watchers, since they like to trumpet the importance of the "Judeo-Christian tradition." Weirdly, the "Judeo" half of that seems to fall to the wayside a lot.

Which means that they'll also be ignoring the fast of the Tenth of Tevet (in Hebrew, עשרה בטבת‎, or Asarah Be'Tevet), which happens to fall on December 22 this year. It commemorates the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and among observant Jews, it's a day of fasting from dawn until dusk, with a small service at the end of the day.

Most interestingly, to me at least, December 24th (Christmas Eve to most Americans) has a special meaning this year. It also happens to be Eid Milad ul-Nabi, the Sunni celebration of the birth of the Prophet: the Sunni celebrate it on the 12th day of Rabi' al-awwal (the third month in the Islamic calendar); the Shia celebrate it on the 17th of Rabi' al-awwal. (If you're curious, some sects of Islam, particularly the Wahabbi, consider the celebration itself to be bid'ah, an unnecessary religious innovation.)

Depending on where you are in the world, the observance can be anything from a solemn ceremony to a carnival atmosphere, and can include anything from an exchange of gifts to doing charitable work.

So you see, there are plenty of holidays to come through the end of the year. And with about 3 out of every 10 customers not being Christian (and even among the remaining 70%, there being a lot more than just Christmas to be observed), obviously, it's only reasonable to say "Happy Holidays!"

Memorial Day 2015

On 8 July 2003, in the middle of the night, a squad of 13 guys led by me landed on the runway of what had been called, until very recently, the Saddam International Airport in Baghdad. We were there to take over security of the area from one of the squads who'd gone in to set up the camp four months earlier.

The landing was pretty standard for a region known for rocket attacks - we flew over the end of the runway, and then spiraled down, straightening out at the last possible moment, to touch down while presenting as small a target within reach of the ground forces as possible.

At that point, I was a lukewarm liberal, not the most outspoken person politically; my wife had eased me out of some fairly conservative views, and turned me into a compassionate human being (I'm not sure I've ever forgiven her for that).

While over there, seeing the rubble we'd left of a beautiful city and learning more and more about how the Bush Administration had lied to get America to go to war, my attitude began to swing more firmly to the left.

I was lucky (if that's the right word) that none of the guys I took there came back in a box (one of them essentially came back in a straightjacket, but that's a story for another time). We didn't have a lot of direct fire - our big risk was the daily, ongoing rocket and mortar attacks.

I started learning more about what went on in the run-up to the invasion, and when I got back to the States, I volunteered for the Kerry campaign. And I wasn't the only vet in the room. That didn't work out as well as we'd hoped, and the day after Kerry gave his concession speech, I filed my retirement papers from the military.

So maybe I have a different perspective on the subject. I find myself getting a little angry as the GOP tries to rewrite what is, for many of us, current events.

We didn't invade the country that attacked America, we invaded Iraq based on lies that they weren't cooperating with US weapons inspectors. To call that action "a mistake" is an abuse of the English language. But that's the currently popular position to take on the Right.

The full story (that some people in the Bush administration felt that we needed a permanent base in the Middle East, and it was just fine to destroy a country to get that) wasn't something that would go over well with the American people. So they had to change the narrative. It wasn't a "mistake," it was a calculated effort to mislead the public.

(If you don't know about them already, you should read up on the think tank that called themselves The Project for the New American Century. Jeb Bush is trying to back slowly away from his statement that he would have invaded Iraq, just like his brother did. (And of course he would have. Most of his advisers previously worked for his brother.)

Marco Rubio won't even go that far - he thinks it wasn't a mistake because it got Saddam out of power. So apparently, all those Iraqis can just suck it.

In a recent Rolling Stone article, Matt Taibbi pointed out that, as I said above, it was actually clear to a lot of people "that the invasion was doomed, wrong, and a joke."

It was not a "mistake," it was a cold-blooded, calculated conspiracy, carried out from the highest office in the nation.

It's a hell of a "mistake" that leads to almost 4500 dead Americans, and literally countless Iraqi dead and injured.

Memorial Day. It's all about remembering.

Happy Holidays 2014! Our sporadically-annual review

Well, Thanksgiving is over, that last piece of turkey breast is shoved to the back of the refrigerator, and it's time for Fox "News" to start flogging the War on Christmas.

(Trivia: in the 1920s, Henry Ford published a series of anti-Semitic articles, and noted that “Last Christmas most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone's Birth.” But it wasn't until 1959 that the John Birch society published a pamphlet to warn the nation about an "assault on Christmas." In case you were curious where all this started.)

As usual, the Most Important Sign that there's a War on Christmas is the prevalence of people uttering the phrase "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" An Un-American Act which blatantly fails to ignore the fact that not everybody is Christian!

But, because I'm something of a troublemaker, let's consider that little fact. Why IS "Happy Holidays" more appropriate than "Merry Christmas"?

There are any number of strange commemorations and artificial "holidays" set in December and early January, like National Bouillabaisse Day (December 14) and Poinsettia Day (December 12); I'm going to do my best to ignore those, in favor of religious (and semi-religious) holidays which might possibly mean a little more to a larger number of people.

(An argument can be made that Maple Syrup Day is holy to the Canadians, but, unlike the Américains impies, they celebrate it on February 6, when the sap first starts to flow, rather than December 17. So I'm feeling pretty safe on this one.)

December 22 is Forefather's Day, commemorating the Pilgrim's landing on Plymouth Rock. You want a whiter, more all-American holiday? And how come you didn't celebrate it last year, you commie?

The day after Christmas, December 26 is Boxing Day, which is mostly (but not entirely) only still celebrated in England.

If you're catholic, there's a whole string of feast days for various saints, if that's what you're into. (After slightly over 2000 years of history, they have wa-a-a-aayyy more than 365 saints, so there's a lot of overlap on them. You wonder if the saints sharing a particular day get along - do they go out drinking together on their day?)

In fact, you know that whole "12 days of Christmas" thing? It's twelve specific feast days, running from Christmas Day through Twelfth Night (5 January). There's a whole list of specific holidays for each of the twelve days; there's also a bunch of saint's days that have been tacked on. Both these lists vary depending on which flavor of Christian church you're dealing with. (There's also some question of how to tack on Epiphany - the day the Wise Men were supposed to have arrived - which is 6 January. If you're interested, you can read up on it on your own.

The point is, even if you're stuck on the "We're a Christian nation!" thing, you don't even have to leave your own traditions for "Happy Holidays" to be more accurate than "Merry Christmas." But we're better than that, right? We can accept that almost a quarter of the American population is not Christian, and maybe they have the right to have their own traditions, too.

For example, December 4 through December 21, a roughly 2-week string, are considered Zappadan, celebrating the life and works of Frank Zappa. Popular culture also gave us Festivus (you know, for the rest of us) on December 23.

Among the 6.6 million Jewish Americans, Hanukkah runs from December 17th through the 24th. And since our Christian friends like to talk about the "Judeo-Christian tradition," it's a little silly to complain about honoring that one, isn't it?

But this is America, and like it or not, there are plenty of people of other religions, too.

If you follow Tantric Buddhism, the 16th is Dakinis' Day, when they make offerings to the Dakinis (female embodiments of enlightened energy) and Mother Tantra. Among the Tibetan Buddhists, yesterday (December 13th, 2014) was Lha Bab Duchen, celebrating the Buddha's descent from heaven after teaching the Dharma there. And coming up on the 21st is Shakyamuni Buddha Day, where they meditate on the Buddha's teachings and strive to fulfill the Precepts. And the 29th is Tara Puja, the fast of Bodhisattva Tara (she has a lot of aspects - it's a little confusing, looking in from outside).

In the Islamic calendar, you just missed Arba'een (Arabic: الأربعين‎, "forty") on the 12th - a Shia observance that occurs forty days after the Day of Ashura, commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad. However, coming up on either the 3rd or 8th of January (depending on whether you're Sunni or Shia), we have Mawlid, celebrating the birthday of the prophet Muhammad.

If you happen to be African-American, Kwanzaa runs from December 26 through January 1, and it's a commemoration of African heritage; having first been celebrated in 1966, it's now officially older than a lot of the people bitching about it.

Here's a thought: if you're going to complain about people not honoring your white, Christian traditions, perhaps you shouldn't complain when they hold celebrations in honor of theirs.)

"Explosions are not comfortable." (Yevgeny Zamyatin, exiled Soviet dissident)

For many years, our country has proudly embraced our heritage of blowing shit up by scheduling an annual celebration of gunpowder and explosions.

It's a long and noble birthright, of invading sovereign nations, toppling governments and propping up dictators. Our very nation is founded in destruction and bloodshed, 238 years ago. And the GOP in our our Congress wants to continue it even today, in far-flung corners of the globe (mostly the Middle East).

However, as more veterans return from the battlefield scarred with wounds they may never recover from, both physical and psychic, the media is finally noting something that some of us noted some years ago: perhaps some of our veterans don't appreciate random explosions in their neighborhood.

It's a fairly simple equation, one that I can attest to myself, but only to an extremely limited extent. (My older son, returned from far too many tours in Afghanistan, struggles with PTSD every day.)

There is something about being in a high-stress environment, and having no warning as to when a loud noise might mean the death of a friend or a companion. Or worse, the knowledge that you, yourself, might never hear the last echo dying away, as you do the same yourself.

There are many reasons to oppose fireworks, especially here in New Mexico. Hundreds and thousands of acres of land are destroyed every year, homes are destroyed and people are killed, because of wildfires here in the Southwest, many of them caused by unregulated use of fireworks. But there's another fact that the American people are finally realizing.

In honoring our nation's history, you are, perhaps inadvertently, harming our nation's veterans.

Way to support the troops, America.

Praise it and blaze it

Easter is a strange holiday. I'm not even going to look at its pagan roots: the concept isn't really in dispute any more. But Easter is, if viewed from one angle, an opportunity for conservative Christians to explain that their support for the death penalty is proven by their approval of nailing some guy to a stick and letting him hang there until he dies. Or something like that.

Has anybody noticed that Easter this year comes on 4/20? It's a popular meme among the marijuana crowd online. However, to put it in another light, it can be used as evidence that Jesus supports medical marijuana.

Probably because the Bible can be used to support pretty much any viewpoint out there, there are plenty of verses that can be cited to support this position.

Isaiah 18:4 - "The Lord said unto me, 'I will take my rest and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs.' "

Ezekiel 34:29 - And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.

Genesis 1:12 - And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:29-31 - God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth.…To you it will be for meat." …And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Revelations 22:2 - In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Psalm 104:14-15 - He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.

You can google the term "easter grass" and come up with a lot of sites that sell it, but I think you'll be disappointed with what you get.

And you can even drag politics into it. Remember, the US government is conducting a war on drugs, whereas Matthew 5:9 tells us "Blessed are the peacemakers." I'll bet you can do that math on your own.

There are those who will try to tell you that the Bible condemns drug use: one explanation is that the original Greek word for "sorcery," pharmacea, is the same root word for "pharmacy." Look hard enough, you'll see explanations for the use of herbs (to include marijuana) as medicine only, because all drug companies deal in poison. That's not only a little extreme, but shows an open ignorance of history: much like chemistry and alchemy have the same roots (as do astrology and astronomy), early wise women and hedge wizards started concocting drugs to help people. But many of their naturalist practices came from pagan roots (and berries, but let's not get into that...): the priestesses would often double as healers. And if they could help people more than the Christian priests and their prayers, the witches must obviously be condemned as evil (otherwise, people might go see the pagans for help).

This is also where you'll find the argument that the actual phrase should not be "suffer not a witch to live," but "suffer not a poisoner to live." Sorry, guys. The specific translation there should, in fact, be "witch." It's just that pagan priestesses of the time knew enough about natural medicine that they could also concoct poisons.

In a similar vein, there's an old French word, grimoire, that refers to a book containing magic spells, such as what would be owned by a witch or sorcerer. The root for that word was grammaire, which was a book of grammar (usually Latin, in the early days; the same source gave us the Olde Englishe word grammarye). But much like with the Tea Party today, somebody with a little knowledge frightened the average illiterate peasant back then; so somebody with a big thick book was probably up to no good.

And much like with pharmacea, that's the difference between the root of a word and the actual definition.

But, really, what can be more pot-induced than a holiday based around hard-boiled eggs and ample supplies of chocolate?

Happy Holidays, y'all!

You know, it's that time of year again; as we approach the end of the year, we enter the Holiday Season. And just like every year of late, there are those who can't be happy unless they're given the opportunity to feel angry about something. And this time of year, the majority of them are the fine folks who don't believe in American values like "inclusiveness" and other sentiments best expressed at the base of the Statue of Liberty (you know, that whole "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" thing).

People like (just as an example) Bill O'Reilly, who want to pretend that there's some kind of "War on Christmas." They have decided to make themselves angry over something as innocuous as wishing people "Happy Holidays," instead of saying "Merry Christmas."

This is a particularly stupid thing to get cranky over, if you think about it, because the time in question, often referred to as the "Christmas season," runs from Thanksgiving through Christmas, and usually spills over into New Years, which is three holidays right there.

(I'm going with the current, somewhat commercialized version of the "Christmas season" - you know, "free market = good thing" - as practiced here in America in the 21st Century, so keep your cranky little historical interruptions to yourself - I might just mention them later anyway. And incidentally, the current "Christmas season" seems to have extended itself almost to Halloween at this point, which is yet a FOURTH holiday.)

December is just littered with minor Christian holidays, some of which (depending on your particular flavor of Christianity) are considered of relative importance, such as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12 (which is moderately popular here in New Mexico for some reason).

(A little trivia for you: the "Immaculate Conception" doesn't refer to the birth of Jesus, but to the day Mary was conceived, probably a decade and a half or so earlier: see, in order to give birth to the child of God, her birth had to be "immaculate." A lot of good Christians get that wrong - it's pretty much a Catholic thing.)

December is particularly full of Feast Days to various saints, from St Francis Xavier (December 3) to St Lucy of Syracuse (December 13). Yesterday, December 6, was St Nicholas Day, if it helps - that, at least, has a Christmas-based attachment to the holiday.

At least five of the December saints are Johns, if you count one non-English variation: St John Damascene (December 4), St Juan Diego (December 9), St John of the Cross (December 14), St John of Kanty (December 23) and, of course, St John the Apostle (December 27).

A lot of the saints were Johns; that's why Jesus needed to make sure that the prostitutes got into heaven first (Matthew 21:31). * ba-dum CHING *

Now, that last John (the Apostley one) is actually a part of a whole series of Feast Days (an even dozen of them, in fact), which make up a string of holidays immortalized in the song "the Twelve Days of Christmas." You'd think that somebody fixated on Christmas traditions could at least remember that much.

There's a whole buttload of secular holidays and commemorations going on: December 10 is Human Rights Day, December first was World AIDS Awareness Day; it seems like every time you turn around, somebody wants to remember, bring attention to, or sell something. Look up International Civil Aviation Day, and Poinsettia Day (which is also Christmas-related, if it helps - December 12). In fact, today (December 7, 2013) is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. (Did you remember? SpaghettiOs did.)

December 22 is Forefather's Day, commemorating the Pilgrim's landing on Plymouth Rock. You want a whiter, more all-American holiday? And how come you didn't celebrate it last year, you commie?

The day after Christmas, December 26 (which is also St Stephen’s day, one of those Twelve Days of Christmas I mentioned earlier) is Boxing Day, which is mostly (but not entirely) only still celebrated in England.

December 4 through December 21, a roughly 2-week string, are considered Zappadan, celebrating the life and works of Frank Zappa. Popular culture also gave us Festivus (you know, for the rest of us) on December 23.

If you happen to be African-American, Kwanzaa runs from December 26 through January 1, and it's a commemoration of African heritage; having first been celebrated in 1966, it's now officially older than a lot of the people bitching about it. (Here's a thought: if you're going to complain about people not honoring your white, Christian traditions, perhaps you shouldn't complain when they hold celebrations in honor of theirs.)

But just because other religions aren't Christian doesn't mean they don't have their own celebrations. For example, if you're of a particularly pagan turn of mind, December 21, 2013 will be the Winter Solstice. Among the Germanic people, this was known as Yule - it's one of the many pagan celebrations that the early Christian church hijacked. (Where do you think the term "yuletide" comes from?) There's also Saturnalia, which is a festival based around fertility rituals that comes from the Greco-Roman traditions (and certainly sounds like more fun than another round of carol-singing).

For our Hindu friends, Friday the 13th this year will be Gita Jayanti, celebrating the "birth" (creation) of the Bhagavad Gita; technically, it's held on the Ekadasi (11th day of the waxing moon) of the month of Margashirsha in the Hindu calendar, so I did that math for you.

If you happen to be of the Buddhist persuasion, tomorrow (the eighth day of the twelfth month) is Rohatsu, or "Bodhi Day," commemorating the enlightenment of the Buddha. (If you happen to live in a Zen Buddhist monastery - I don't, but your mileage may vary - this would be the last day of a week-long sesshin, or meditative retreat.)

Hanukkah ended on December 5 this year. Since our right-wing friends like to trumpet the term "Judeo-Christian traditions," it's surprising how few menorahs I saw in the windows.

If you are a follower of the Jedi church, I really don't know what to tell you. "Life Day" is a Wookie holiday, and falls about once every three years on our calendar. But the first human awareness of it came about this time of year in 1978. Make of that what you will.

In that magical era of the Fifties that conservatives like to pretend was a special time in American history when everything was perfect, they liked to refer to America as "the melting pot," where people from all cultures could live and thrive. So, really, if the phrase "Happy Holidays" offends you, perhaps you should consider why you're such a crappy American.

The War on Thanksgiving

The entire country (outside of corporate boardrooms) seems to be up in arms about all the stores being open on Thanksgiving, which is traditionally a national holiday. It all started when Wal-Mart, that bastion of worker abuse, announced that they were going to beat "Black Friday" by a day, and everybody started following suit.

The lefties view it as just another example of the corporations treating workers like machines, with no time for their families. The right wing, on the other hand, has a somewhat more nuanced view: knee-jerk patriotism demands that they wail and cry about this abandonment of traditional American values, but brainwashed worship of unfettered capitalism won't allow them to criticize big corporations. So the whole situation makes them angry, but they don't know what to do about it.

The answer is fairly simple, though. If you don't like stores being open on Thanksgiving, don't shop on Thanksgiving. Tell all your friends not to shop on Thanksgiving, and explain why. Social media is an important part of this: send out the word on Facebook and Twitter, post videos on YouTube and Vine, or even post a message on Google+ (if you're particularly fond of the sound of your own voice echoing off empty walls).

You can even slant your message to match your audience. "Abusing the workers" won't resonate with the Fox News crowd, but "destruction of American values" seems to do it for them.

Protests might work, but you'd be giving up your holiday at that point, and it's a little late in the game for that anyway: you aren't going to get massive crowds to help you out. So the best way to get your message across is through your wallet - by not using it. If the profits for sales on Thanksgiving don't pay for the employees to come in that day, the corporations aren't going to do it again.

Tim Minchin: Woody Allen Jesus

Tim Minchin was supposed to be on the Jonathan Ross Show this week, and got cut by the network.

I see the reason he got cut: despite the myth of the "Liberal Media," networks are not run by liberal/conservative ideas, but by ratings (exception: parts of MSNBC and all of Fox "News") But that's a story for another show. And in the simple, uncomplicated-by-agenda media, you can't do something that will endanger those all-important ratings.

Nonetheless, I liked the song.



And if you care, Tim Minchin's reaction to getting cut from the Jonathan Ross Show is here. (And by the way, the Bonus Material after the video is actually way better than anything that came before it...)

So, you know, Merry Christmas and stuff.

The Republican War on Thanksgiving

In 1621, after the difficult, unrelenting labor of starting a colony, the Pilgrims, using planting techniques taught to them by the native Wampanoag tribe, celebrated their first successful harvest with a feast, which they shared with their native American neighbors (who we later almost wiped out, there being only about 400 survivors sixty years later, following King Philip's War).

This is the most important, most truly American holiday (the Canadians have a similar observance, but they're just our little northern clones anyway, right?). It's a day of forgiveness, a day when families travel from across the country to get together, eat our traditional meal, celebrate our mutual heritage, and nestle securely in the bosom of warmth and family.

Except, perhaps, for this year.

Because of the Republican insistence on "Free Market" capitalism and a winner-take-all mentality, now, with record unemployment around the country, the cost of the Thanksgiving meal is rising faster than inflation.

With the current annual inflation rate of 3.5%, the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner has risen 13%, and the cost of getting together with family and friends has increased even more than that.

The average airfare for travel to the top 10 most popular destinations in the U.S. for Nov. 23 to Nov. 27 has jumped 11% over last year, according to an analysis by Orbitz, one of the nation’s busiest travel websites. That means the average round-trip ticket for Thanksgiving rose to $373 from about $340.

Flights to New York for the holiday will rise the most, jumping 20% over last year, with an average round-trip price of $342, according to Orbitz. Round-trip flights to Los Angeles will increase 12% to $429, according to the travel website...

You won’t escape the higher prices by driving: Gas prices reached the highest levels ever in the week prior to Thanksgiving, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California. The average price of self-serve regular gasoline in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area was $3.82 a gallon last week, 66 cents higher than the same time last year.

With one in three Americans living at or below the poverty line, the GOP is trying to ensure that they cannot celebrate their own heritage. The Republican Party is trying to ensure that an Ayn Rand dystopia, with the richest living in luxury off the sweat of the working poor, is the model for American society.

The Republicans are trying to destroy Thanksgiving! And they're doing it in subtle ways, as well! The Christmas decorations, celebrating their dreams of commerce and overindulgence, come out earlier every year; the Christmas carols are already playing in all the stores; and the conservative-controlled media beats the drum, insisting that shopkeepers must say "Merry Christmas" instead of the more open, accepting "Happy Holidays," as if Thanksgiving didn't matter in the slightest!

This Republican War on Thanksgiving must be stopped! We must stride into the stores and demand that the carols be cancelled! "Turn off that crap! It's not even Thanksgiving!"

Websites are springing up devoted to bringing back our national holiday from the brink of extinction. We must support them; we must also support retailers like Nordstrom, who insist on celebrating each holiday in turn, and not skipping over the ones that can't be exploited by the greedy, and venal, and unamerican!

We must ask where the Thanksgiving displays are, and why they are overshadowed by some obese Germanic troll in a red suit! We must write letters to store owners, corporations, and our Congressfolk, demanding the return of our national holiday!

Radical conservatives must be stopped from destoying our heritage!



Please note: this is intended for satirical purposes only, and if you're stupid enough to take it seriously, you probably fall for that "War on Christmas" crap too, don't you?