The Rage: Happy Mother @#!*ng Holidays

If I say happy holidays?  I mean happy holidays.  If I wanted to say Merry Christmas?  I’d have said Merry Christmas.  Why does this seem to confuse people?  Why do people act like “Happy Holidays” is some conspiracy by abortion clinic doctors and pro-cannibus hippies?

Okay, lemme back up.

I get some flak from a close friend for caving into what he perceives as “liberal guilt”, and I suppose it’s true that I can be fairly characterized as a bit of a bleeding heart.  Still, I’d like to say that it’s not guilt but empathy.  It’s also not about being liberal; it’s about not being a dick head.

Did you know that Hipster don’t celebrate Christmas? Most chose to champion Boxing Day….you’ve probably never heard of it.

You see, I’m well aware that there is a point where you become so open minded you wrap around and become a bit of a ass again.  It’s easy to close your mind to people not as “open” and “accepting” as you perceive yourself to be.  Then you end up just as much as a close minded jerk as the other side, only now you are likely to stink of patchouli and/or listen to Death Cab for Cutie.

So, in an effort to become neither a whiny hippie or a maladjusted hipster, I end up trying to make my choices and then just let them abide.  The exception is when there are people people who are apt to spew forth some rhetoric regarding injustices (so long as no one else has heard of them), and then I can kind of be a little bit more snarky and in your face, as I don’t judge causes by how much the victims or the needy have sold out.  In all other cases, I try to keep my crusades and causes down to a dull roar.

It’s not about me feeling special or needing to show how just I am.  It’s about feeling this way or that, and then acting like it.  It’s pretty damn simple.

Surprisingly, my use of “Happy Holidays” has never been about have a cause or about being over sensitive; it just made sense to me.  I understand why some non-Christians get upset at being wished a Merry Christmas, but I really think this is one of those issues of over-sensitivity more then any legitimate problem more often then not.  Christmas is, now, as much of a secular holiday as a religious one.  You can still be a dick about this; you can wish someone a Merry Christmas with that snide, jack ass look that clearly suggests you just wished them a Happy Birthday to Jesus in an active attempt at being an asshole.   The thing is that these people who unironically believe there is a war on Christmas are the minority,  and easily ignored.

In my case, I use it just because it’s the most apt and simple expression I have.  I know Christians, Jews, Islamics, Pagans of a multitude of stripes, and more.  All have their own holidays.  All of those holidays are ones which I hope the celebrants de jour will enjoy.  Most importantly?  Saying all of those holidays separately is a big pain in the ass, and “Happy Holidays” has me covered.  No one is left out.  Everyone is included.  No extra effort or big productions need.  The matter is done.

Yet, every year, I get  some smarmy jackass who somehow takes umbrage at me being nice to everyone.  They fire back at me, in their most perfect asshole tone “Merry Christmas”.  As if I have just offended their sensibilities somehow.   Worse yet is when they act like the feel sorry for me; like I WOULD have wished them a Merry Christmas, but somehow my holiday spirit has been stifled by forces beyond my comprehension.

What a load of shit.

There was a disturbing number of pictures with Jesus holding a gun…so here is the Buddy Jesus instead.

Look, I don’t mind if you’re telling me Merry Christmas because that’s your holiday of choice; go nuts.  You wanna fill your house with 8,000 novelty nativity scenes and poignant pictures of Jesus giving little starving kids bread and AK-47s?  Have yourself a Merry Motherfucking Christmas.  Seriously; don’t presume my profanity is used in condescension of any kind.  I’m pissed off, but I sincerely hope your Christmas is Jehova-tastic if that is what you want it to be.

However, when you talk down to me?  When you treat me like some sort of fool or pitiable specimen when I have made the calculated choice to give you a well-wishing that covers all the bases because I honestly want to be that nice?   You can take your self-righteous, grandiose, persecution complex having bullshit and stick it right up your own holly hole.

You people are right there with assholes who say “psh, I don’t believe in God” after you say “God bless you”, when they sneeze.  You know, the people who you have to force yourself not to kick in the ball sack or clam bag?   The ones where you say to yourself “they knew this wasn’t a challenge for their right to be an atheist; they just want to be a petty, entitled dickhead because they got the opportunity to point out how damn special they are”?  That’s you.  That is what you look like, talk like, and act like.  Obsessed with pointing out what a special, magnificent rose you are in the great big cesspool of life.

Go fuck yourself; Jesus isn’t coming down and giving you a kiss on the cheek to celebrate your joyous, courageous defense of his birthday (observed).  For fuck’s sake, you realize that there are a shit ton of feast days in the name of

Saint Lucy is celebrated on December 13th! That’s boring, so here is a picture of a C.S. Lewis character.

various Catholic saints you could be celebrating?  Secular holidays like Canada’s boxing day and our own New Years?  That this is only some insidious, secret attack on your holiday if you are so paranoid that Glenn Beck starts to seem like a moderate.

Other holidays exist.  Some people like to acknowledge that.  I want them to enjoy theirs, just as much as I’d like you to enjoy yours.  That’s right; even as I say this, I sincerely hope that your Christmas is full of veneration of the Christian god and his only son if that is your spiritual path.  Sit at home, watch some Narnia movies, pray, or go to church.  I’ll follow my way, mind you.  Just don’t think I begrudge you yours, because I most certainly don’t.  I’m happy that you have found a faith that leads you to better things.

Just stop being a dick, and make sure you have a very, very, happy….fucking…holiday.

Asshole.

Inner Muse and Self-Doubt

Sometimes the issue isn’t that I don’t know what to write; it’s that I don’t have an idea of how to write it. Here are some examples of topics I’d like to write about, but have not yet.

Doctor Kindlenook: Or how I stopped being afraid and learned to love my e-reader: An examination of how silly I find the animus and anger over the slow degradation of the library system.  What we are replacing it with is the ability to magically summon any work ever written whenever you’d like, where you like it.  Why are we scared of loosing libraries when the result could be that then entirety of the planet becomes a library?

Laissez -Faire, Escargot, Cul de Sac, and Other Scary Words: I like the Libertarian party right until they start talking economics, because I think that unless the transition to a laissez-faire model is done very carefully?  We’re going to have a few decades where it’s a living hell.  I was also going to take the opportunity to offer a verbal tea-bagging to Ayn Rand, because she’s bloody stupid.

Theology 101: A recent biography I read a sample of detailed the author’s own paths through spirituality and religion.  While educational, it caused me to reflect on how much different my religious upbringing is versus just about anyone else I know.  I sort of wanted to look back on that, and see how it has helped me and hindered me.

Back, Down, Sideways, and Middle: I’ve made references to interesting paradigms between me and the lady-pet, but sexuality is usually sometime I avoid talking about.  I want to stop that idiocy, so I was going to get in that in a PG-13 sort of way.

Farewells to Disaster: Now that I find myself in a stable relationship and feelings pretty damn good more often then not, I’d like to put down my thoughts on those people who I surrounded myself with (both romantically and platoniclly) and how I feel about my time along side them.  Less funny then I normally try to be, and a lot more heartfelt.

Baldur Dash: A discussion at a Yule feast let to the conversation of  patron Gods and Goddess.  I wanted to share thoughts on the practice as a whole, and how it pertains to me.

Loki Iscariot: Loki is, in contemporary Heathnry and Asatru, a controversial figure.  There are those who ask why, and refute the stance that Loki does not deserve veneration; they criticize others for making Loki into a Norse Satan.  While I find that I agree with those who venerate Loki more then those who don’t, I also think we need to adjust the metaphors that we use for the problem…because the traditionalist view of Loki has a lot more in common with Judas then it does with Lucifer, and I think that might be an even worse problem.

I’ve had thoughts about every one of these topics, and that’s actually just the ones that I have the most interest in.   I feel like I could say something and that my view point could actually be interesting and entertaining.  So…why don’t I write that view point?  What stops me.

It’s tempting to blame being busy.  A scant six months ago, I was pretty much on the edge of oblivion and basically only kept myself busy in order to distract myself from how miserable I am.  Now I find myself pretty much a part of a life that I actually love, and it’s left a lot more on my plate.  Sometimes that wonderful life makes other things more important then sitting down and trying to write in order to appease my own self-worth.  That’s not the problem, however.

It’s also tempting to place blame at the feet of my sub par attention span.  I have been diagnosed with some sort of attention spectrum disorder, and there are days where reading four sentences within four minutes can get challenging.  Now, try to right a document with a 500+ word count, proof read it, proof read it again because I’m absolutely shit at proof reading anything, find pictures to go with the document, add funny captions, dick around with the pictures because wordpress is being an asshole, proof read things again with the firm knowledge that I’m going to miss a ton of typos any damn way?  That gets tricky sometimes, and it’s not uncommon for me to want to beat myself in the head with a cinder block out of pure frustration.  Just minutes ago, the sounds of lady-pet clicking her mouse was nearly enough to completely derail my train of thought…and that takes some effort to work through.  That’s not the real problem either though.

This was taken from a drawing by Matthew Inman that pretty much perfectly reflects how I feel whenever I try to do anything.

The problem is that sometimes I feel like everything I write sorta blows ass and that I have no business saying a damn thing.

I will go along, trying to type something up.  I’ll try and examine things I see, attempting to expose the hilarity of the situation while examining things on deeper levels. .  Yet I never feel like I have any business saying a damn thing, because who the hell do I think I am?  I always feel like what I’m saying is so stuck up my own ass that it could effectively be a suppository.  I also feel very inarticulate at times.

I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t know shit about shit.  That I’m taking myself way too seriously.  From what I’ve seen, what I feel here isn’t particularly unique; anyone who has the desire to create anything tends to be a harsh critic of their own work and is prone to painful levels of self-analysis.  Anyone who wants to express their opinion has to grapple with either their own hubris or humility at some point.  Everyone needs the opportunity to decide how they feel about the things they want to say, and whether that message is important enough to them to actually speak aloud.

I don’t know how important it is to everyone else, but it’s definitely important enough to me.  I’ve gone through my entire life saying a lot that wasn’t important because it was a lot easier then trying to say anything that mattered.  So to hell with all of it.  Time to start writing whatever comes to mind, and just seeing where it leads me.

Time to be a little less Baggins and a little more Took.

(The second picture was cut and paste from Matthew Inman’s “Some Thoughts and Musings About Making Things for the Web” over at TheOatmeal.com.  I am eternally impressed at his ability to articulate the uncanny and the bizarre in a seemingly effortless way.  Also, he raised a lot of money for charity in response to a lawyer being a douchebag…and that’s pretty awesome) 

Renaissance Fair Trade

Fools! The Paladin goes in the front and the Bow Ranger goes in the back!

So the lady-pet is softly sleeping on the bed at the present moment.  We had a pretty full day; we explored a mall, met up with some close friends for Hibachi, discussed unspeakable things over frozen yogurt with said friends, j0urnied home through fog, and finally watched a Terry Pratchett cartoon while she was a bit trussed up.  We were going to possibly move on to a DVD of the old D&D cartoon, but she got sleepy.  Also we made sure that our lives weren’t so awesome that we might have destroyed the world via a singularity of such splendid awesomeness (hereafter referred to as an awesomularity).

You’re welcome.

Faux hubris aside, I then decided to get some work in on a pet project of mine.  I’ve been slowly working up table top RPG system and setting very loosely based on the Magic the Gathering card game.  Close friends will know that me working on such projects is inevitable…just as is inevitable that I’ll drop the project within two to eight weeks.  You see, normally I give up on the desire to create a campaign setting, game, artistic project, or whatever when I hit a snag that I can’t seem to untangle.  Inevitably, a new idea has popped into my head by this point and I feel the pull to move on.  Tonight, I had the feeling…but for a much different reason

This time, it has a lot more to do with the fact that I just don’t care.

Look at the rainbow spectrum of all the shits I don’t give!

I’ve gotten finicky with my fun these days.  I don’t want to do paperwork upkeep for my fun.  I don’t want to organize my fun.  I don’t want to micromanage my fun.  I just want to sit down, and start having fun right away.  This may seem sort of childish and impatient, but it’s just how it is these days.  I work a job that, while not tough, keeps me busy from start to finish.  I am stepping from “mommy’s friend” to “parent” (or something similar) in a child’s life.  I have a wonderful girlfriend/pet/slave person who needs attention too…and while I’m not complaining about those last two things?  They take time…and time is a valuable resource these days.  I just never seem to have enough of it to go around.

Don’t worry; Me and the lady pet’s activities have nothing in common with this BS.

Don’t get me wrong here; I’m still a gamer, a nerd, a dork, and a geek.  I’ve just have a list of priorities now.  The time commitment to creating a game world just doesn’t yield a greater output of joy against any of the other things I could be doing.  I could be writing a book, working on something for the Heathen/Pan-Pagan communities, developing an actual marketable game to try and get it published, playing with SH, having kinky sex with the lady-pet, working on something in the house, perfecting my pizza dough recipe, or any number of things that just make me feel better then wasting my time tinkering with a game system I’ll only ever use once or twice at most.

I still want to just sit with mindless fun every now and again, but I just don’t have the patience to be running around in circles to get to it.  That’s why I’ve been loving the Wii, the PS3, and the 360 lately.  No build up, lengthy paper work, or anything else that wastes my time.  Turn on system, then have some fun.  It’s also one of the reasons that MtG just doesn’t hold my attention the way it once did; too much maintenance for too little fun.

I feel like I’m coming on the beginning of a personal Renaissance.  The time where I finally can take all this learning and experience I’ve been banging on about for years, put it somewhere useful, and then apply it in amazing ways.  That’s a tremendous feeling, and when I feel it slip away cause I’m doing something that feels like a waste?  I feel like I’m turning my back on it, and why the hell would I ever do that?

Feeling mentally healthy is kinda weird.

Topic Buffet: Saint Gygax, Gargoyles, and Hylian Trampstamps

A SUNDRY of  TOPICS appeared!
HARRISON used SPELL CHECK!
It was knot vary effectiv.

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I don’t always run dungeons… but when I do?  I go left.

* I really wish I could still be excited about the stuff WotC makes; products by Wizards of the Coast and the companies they’ve purchased have been some of my favorites.  It goes beyond D&D and Magic; they’ve also had ownership of Legend of the Five Rings, put out campaign settings like Planescape and Spelljammer, and even tried to make collectable dice games.  These guys are like, part of my childhood.  All the same, these people are all business now…and part of the magic has gone because of it

*I keep going back and forth on my political affiliation.  Not between Republican and Democrat….pft….GODS no.  I mean I COULD…I could also headbutt a brick over and over again.  No, I switch between Democrat and Libertarian.  I like the Democrats…until I realize that all the good intention in the world doesn’t give you enough motivation to do something about them.  I like the Libertarians….but laize faire economics scare me to the point where I can’t think about it to long without finding somewhere to lay down for a bit and weep.

This.

*Hey Disney.  Okay.  Buying Marvel?  I was scared.  Not gonna lie, I was VERY scared.  Then you pumped out Avengers and some of the movies that preceded it.  They not only went off without a hitch, you nailed the landing.  Now you’ve Star Wars.  Okay, I’m down; I think you turn that puppy around.   You know what we need now?  GARGOYLES.  Come on.  You’re starting to kick ass again; double down on it.

What a fake; how can I tell if she has a timeline theory with her showing off that tattoo….freaking attention whore….

*So, the internet is angry at fake nerd-girls.  This surprises me since Disney purchased Star Wars, and Star Wars is the alpha topic for dorks of all stripes to get pissed about.   Still it has held on for some reason, and I find it laughable.  A lot of places and people have cited misogynous peter-pan assholeism, but I think the reason is actually more pathetic then that.

Short version: If you’re a dork and you get rejected by a girl who is also a dork?  Who gets all those nerdy things you love, loves them just as much as you, and STILL doesn’t want anything to do with you?  Where you don’t have the token excuse of “she doesn’t understand me or my passion and is a superficial bitch; I am the lone, misunderstood gentleman” to hide behind.  You’d have to accept that you are a desperate, ill-manner, jackass and that the only one to blame for your loneliness is yourself.  That it’s not about you being weird; it’s about you being unlikeable.

Fuck that…blame the geeky girls.  They’re obviously frauds, right?

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The SUNDRY was defeated!
You get 2 page views.  7,283,112 page views until next level!

Flyte Club

I want you to insult me as hard as you can…

For a whole bunch of reasons, I ended up looking up what the heck a proper “flyting” was.  The term was used to describe a somewhat archaic form of poetic back and forth that consisted of insults and criticism, but further description was never at hand.   We have a few examples of them in the lore are some pretty damn good pieces as far as I can judge (the Lokesenna and the Lay of Harbarthr), but how one creates a flyting of any sort is hard to determine.  Like most children of the internet, I loaded up Wikipedia, looked some stuff up, and started branching out.

Why does Flava Flav look like one of the goblins from Diablo? I can’t be the only one who sees that, right?  Between the grin and that helmet…

It was interesting stuff, let me tell you.  For starters, the term seems to broadly cover any form of poetic verse that is somewhat focused around a volly of insults; there is very little in the way of a standardized format.  Shakespeare used the in some of his plays and they were also done as public, improvised battles of wit and composure.  So, apparently Scots and Vikings had rap battles.  Kooky!  I now presume this to be the reason Flava Flav has worn a Viking helmet this entire damn time.

In either case, flyting has something I believe Heathenry needs more of; honest humility.  A lot of the Heathens I know are pretty proud folk, and a lot of them have every right to be.  I know some kick ass people because of the community, and I have created bonds that I hope will last a life time.  They are talented and educated, and seem to push themselves to refine their skill sets by any means available.

We’re not perfect however.  The things is no one seems to acknowledge that.  We acknowledge that our gods have human flaws, but that subject line seems to be missed from many of our self-descriptions.  I think we need to take a step back and remind ourselves that yes….our shit stinks.  Hey, and while we’re on the subject?  Fun Fact!  The earliest recorded use of the word shit as an insult occurred in a flyting!  Thank you, Scops aand Skalds, for giving me such a proud and worthy tool in my cussing weaponry!

On a more serious note, I can hear some discontent already with my opinion.  Humility seems to be a bit of a bad word in a lot of pan-Pagan circles I know of, and just about all of the Heathen circles I’ve encountered.  It tends to go in that box with things like proselytizing and a dedicated clergy that make people nervous.  It’s something, I am occasionally told, that we need to get “over”.

For the curious, alternate titles to this post were “Street Flyter Alpha”, “Saturday’s Alright for Flyting”, “Flyte of the Bumblebee”, and “Flyte of the Navigator”.

Balls to that.  We’re too damn proud.  We often praise our ancestors for being honest, hard-working, industrious, and uncomplicated people, and we say how we want to mimic their resolve.  Then when it comes time to make an honest reflection of ourselves, we delude ourselves into thinking that any trace of humility is just wrong.  Our ancestors made a GAME of humbling each other, and for some reason we act like it’s frithful, honorable, and honest to only bring up our successes.  Does that make sense?  It certainly doesn’t to me.

The Heathen community seems to have too many innocents, and not enough confessions.   We’re really good at justifying our actions and explaining how flawless they are.  We stumble, it would seem, when it comes time to assess our own contributions to the issue.  I keep seeing holding patterns established over stuff that ceased to be any sort of practical issue long ago, but is now an issue of ego and self image.  That’s just as much of a wound to our wyrd and frith as excessive humility, I think.

Where will you be when your laxative starts working?

It doesn’t need to be just self-flagellation over our faults either; want to celebrate your accomplishments?  Hey, name the time and place and I will raise a horn/chalice/travel mug/stein/red solo cup/foam dome or whatever you have and celebrate along side of you.  However, the reason those accomplishments matter is just as much BECAUSE of our failings as in spite of them.  We need to start being just as prone to announce what we need to overcome as we are to announce that we overcame it.

Hence, the thoughts of a performing some form of “self-flyting”; if I’m going to go out here and grab a soap box of some sort and act like I have something worthwhile to say about our collective hubris?  Well, then I need to be damn sure I can talk the talk that I’m saying everyone else needs to.

In closing, one of the nine truths says that “joy is better then guilt; let us be joyful!”.  Guilt does not automatically equate to humility, and joy need not be prideful.  We can be proud heirs to the legacies left by ancestors both recent and far removed, knowing the balance between our best and our worst.