Gratitude is a vanishing commodity. APMEX should sell it as an investment. The Outrage du Jour can be found at Market Ticker in the form of tweets from dreadful children practising for the role of 'ingrate #3' on some Lifetime movie or other.
These are the milder ones. Welcome to Entitlement Xmas. Now, I am the first to admit that there is ZERO biblical instruction to celebrate Christmas as Jesus' birthday, or anything, but history and culture have deemed it so, but come on. One time of year when the world turns toward Bethlehem, hey, I'm for it. The difference now is that instead of looking to the manger, most are turning toward Macy's. (Oh, no, an anti-commercialism screed!) No. I ALSO like the goodies, kind of as an echo of the Greatest Gift, but when Jesus is moved out of the equation, and all you have left is a Santa Ho-Ho-Holiday...well, you get Tweetage like the above, and that is sad.
I pray that our culture may yet be redeemed. There is still hope, I think. My concern is that it will only happen after the dynamite goeth boom.
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7 comments:
Talk about spoiled rotten . . . and I hope to God I never get an iPhone for Christmas. Or for any other holiday or occasion for that matter.
I've been unemployed now for three years. Our Christmas has consisted of pulling out the artificial tree and watching "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol". I'm not claiming there's an inherent nobility in being financially troubled (more to the point: It Sucks!), but when all you're left with is Sentiment, then it becomes interesting how you can build on it.
What exactly is your PROBLEM with Apple's technofascism? Huh? HUH??
One can do far worse than watching Magoo's Christmas Carol. We did the same thing. It's a better version than the wretched George C. Scott attempt.
My favorite Postal gal (she smokes cigars...we gift 'em back and forth, AND she knows who Charles Proteus Steinmetz was!) asked to borrow my copy of Magoo...watched it 3 times in one night.
Give your sweetie a hug from me. It's OK if you enjoy it.
Besides the Magoo version of "A Christmas Carol" we also watch the 1971 Oscar-winning animated version, directed by Richard Williams and produced by Chuck Jones. Other than that, my usual Christmas viewing fare consists of "The Year Without A Santa Claus" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".
A female postal worker who is a cigar aficionada and knows who Steinmetz was? If she's single then I'm amazed.
I couldn't have imagined getting a car for Christmas. I gave my mother $600, back in the day, to hold for me to buy my own car. Being a fine alcoholic at the time, she spent it and I never did get a car. She doesn't even remember, even to this day. Or won't admit it.
I wonder how many of these kids are going on to drugs to deal with the "pains of life". When they leave mom and dad, or get booted out, and have to deal with the fact that no one will give them anything. Either that or more fodder for the OWS crowd. (Where they will loose even the iPads-pods-tablets they DID get.) hehe
Never mind.
Guess I'm the opposite. I tell the parents not to give me anything but they usually do.
As for favorite Christmas viewing, mine's Battle of the Bulge. Nothing says "Christmas!" like World War Two!
At the risk of showing my ignorance, who's Stienmetz?
Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865 - 1923): mathematician and engineer. Developed the principle of alternating current. Thought lightning was Way Cool. To electrical research what Hyman Rickover was to Nuclear Power, or Kelly Johnson to Aeronautical Engineering.
Steinmetz was a dwarf of sorts, and a genius (think of a benign Dr. Loveless). He also enjoyed his cigars. Apparently his fellow electrical wizard-types also enjoyed his cigars. To train them out of it, he had a box of special cigars rolled with a Special Ingredient: horsehair. This was during an intense period of research in the lab, and before he knew it, all his cigars were gone.
He had absent-mindedly smoked them all himself.
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The word "developed" in Mike's precis is key. Tesla came up with the AC dynamo, Westinghouse put his money behind it, displacing Edison's DC system. Steinmetz and an army of others tamed and civilised the AC beast to the docile lamb that serves us so well today. One Steinmetz project was an anti-corona device that prevented "leakage" around the lines that showed up as a St. Elmo's Fire-type display.
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