Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Please don’t feed the bears.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Republicans in disarray!

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

This fight is for everything.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

You are here: Home / Music / Time for the Seasonal Stylings of America’s Favorite Singing Statistician. (Open Thread)

Time for the Seasonal Stylings of America’s Favorite Singing Statistician. (Open Thread)

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From the vocal chords of one Professor T. Lehrer, this celebration of Chanukah.  (Embedding is disabled, but you can cross that link for an…interesting aesthetic experience.)

And, just to provide some more direct stimulus — here’s an old favorite that popped up on my radio this morning.  Nothing seasonal about it, but still, a good time will be had by all:

<div align=”center”><iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/lO7sgPNNgcc” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>

What would you want an archaeologist 5,000 years from now to find all tangled up in your bony hands?

You may consider this an open thread.

 

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    Cuppa Cabana

    Let me be more naughty than nice in order to quote the late great Mr Hitchens:

    [T]o celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism’s bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.

  3. 3.

    Tom Levenson

    @Cuppa Cabana: Hitchens is, as ever, trenchant. But that Athens for Jerusalem trope is pretty much spot on. Not to mention a little “run away from teh ghey” action mixed in. (See II Maccabees on the subject of the abominations of the gymnasium the Hellenized Jewish elite were shoving down the throats, as it were, of the traditionalists.)

  4. 4.

    cathyx

    What would you want an archaeologist 5,000 years from now to find all tangled up in your bony hands

    That’s easy. A glass of Columbia Crest Two Vines Cabernet Sauvignon at an affordable price of $5.99.

  6. 6.

    Tom Levenson

    @Cuppa Cabana: But that said, f**k Hitchens for this lazy, easy line:

    “Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh…”

    This is in fact the kind of cyclamate filled prose that Pollit was talking about in the post DougJ put up yesterday. Seems bravura enough if read in haste; shows up as unthought, unfelt nonsense on any closer reading.

    Chanukah in diaspora, and especially through and after the disasters of the 20th century, is not an anodyne celebration of solstice solidarity and quasi assimilation to majority culture. Far from it.

  7. 7.

    Ian

    What would you want an archaeologist 5,000 years from now to find all tangled up in your bony hands?

    I don’t know what I want them to find, but I got a pretty good feeling about what they are going to find, and it ain’t pretty.

  8. 8.

    Anoniminous

    Dead Egyptian Blues FTW.

    “Christmas,” as it is did, is a rip-off of ancient Germanic religion. The Christmas Tree is emblematic of the World Tree Yggdrasil, hanging stuff on the boughs is a recapitulation of hanging sacrificial animals and, yes, humans in honor of the Disir (goddesses,) & so on and so forth.

    Seeing as how there is nothing else to do in and around the Baltic during the winter except to drink until you pass out having a ceremony to “do your bit” to convince the damn sun to come back so it’s not so bloody cold, dank, and dreary appeared to be a Pretty Good Idea. (Couldn’t hurt.)

    This has nothing to do with Baby Jesus but a LOT to do with Christianity’s need to control everybody 24/7.

  10. 10.

    rea

    WEll, yeah, you don’t become a popular religion by getting rid of everyone’s favorite holiday. So, the Christmas tree is no accident; neither is the fact that Christmas falls at about the same time as the big Roman gift-giving holiday, Saturnalia.

  12. 12.

    Cuppa Cabana

    @Tom Levenson:

    Come now, Tom. I find it hard to believe that you gave it a “closer reading,” since you seem to have elided the essential clause:

    “…because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree …”

    He’s not saying all Jews everywhere are celebrating with this excuse, but he knows many who are, and I think you do too.

  13. 13.

    trollhattan

    What would you want an archaeologist 5,000 years from now to find all tangled up in your bony hands?

    Penelope Cruz.

  14. 14.

    Phylllis

    @cathyx: Their website reveals this is available at the Walgreens in nearby Mt. Pilot, which I will be visiting tomorrow. Your assistance in this matter is duly noted ;-).

  17. 17.

    catclub

    Does anyone else have experiences, tips, etc on swimming in cold water? By Cold, I mean about 52-60 deg F.

    I am finding it ( as family tradition has expressed it)
    incredibly refreshing.

    ‘refreshing’ was used by the person IN the lake to con the persons not in the lake into thinking the water might be warm enouhg to swim in. of course if your teeth chattered whil saying it the ruse wore thin.

  18. 18.

    folkbum

    @Jose:
    @PurpleGirl:

    Yes, Michael Smith, a Chicago treasure in the style of the more famous but less talented Stevie Goodman. These novelty songs are fun, but he’s a true craftsman. “The Dutchman” is perhaps his best-known song, but the whole catalog is one damn fine song after another.

  19. 19.

    4jkb4ia

    I may be as cranky as John right now. My husband is demanding protein, i.e. meat, and every other Chanukah recipe on the intertubes is either brisket or roast chicken. If the butcher shop around the corner was still in business we might have been able to get brisket, and it would still cost an exorbitant amount.
    The one time I have made brisket in nine and a half years was a Moroccan brisket recipe that started its life as lamb before Joan Nathan picked it up. It was not worth it.

    Gil Student had a very good post on the Orthodox way of driving in without any subtlety that Chanukah is rejecting Greek culture/Greek things/Hellenism today. I’ll try to find it. Because I hate that interpretation I think of Chanukah as more of a standard festival of lights–you are celebrating the ability to create spiritual beauty. You are also celebrating the ability to do what you can even if you cannot do everything and even if the Maccabees were flawed.

    Chag Sameach :)

    /Has Bieber’s “Mistletoe” in head as types

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