Goldy at The Stranger is excited for this year’s installment of The War on Christmas, but is that even a thing anymore? I don’t have my finger on the pulse of the right wing, but my sense is that losing a few battles in the War on Gays might have the warriors in retreat on all fronts. There’s not a single mention of it on Fox News’ front page or on Memeorandum. A Google News search shows that a lot of the top hits are liberal sites anticipating the revival of the War on Christmas, or arguing that there is no war.
And while I’m on this topic, where’s the Fox defense of Wal-Mart? Shouldn’t it be the next Chick-fil-A?
Elizabelle
Fake War on Christmas and real War on Thanksgiving (for retail employees, those takers and moochers).
gelfling545
Nah. No sex involved.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I’m thinking that horse has been beaten to death. The righties have basically lost most of the culture war save for abortion and guns, they’ve outright won those. What’s left to fight about? The Reagan legacy just got well and truly repudiated. I expect a few months of stunned silence and then a few years of total irrelevancy.
Brachiator
I have been away from much media and the InterTubes working on special projects. What has Wal-Mart done this time?
I live among too diverse a crowd to have ever given a rat’s ass about the phony War on Christmas. It’s too funny if any liberal sites are trying to make anything of this at all.
On the other hand, I am sure that some wingnut blog out there is making something sinister out if the notion that in the current animated film, “Rise of the Guardians,” Alec Baldwin gives voice to Santa Claus. And with a Russian accent. An obvious coded message to commie sleepers.
Lee Rudolph
For my sins (as it were), I’m on the American Family Association’s email list. They certainly want me to know that The War On
XChristmas is alive and kicking.espierce
Not so fast…
Joseph Nobles
More interested in the War on President Mosri that seems to have broken out in Egypt. Things are getting mighty real over there.
The Red Pen
It’s a thing. Santa Monica, California town just axed a nativity scene. Freepers have brought this up about a dozen times:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afreerepublic.com+california+nativity
They’re itching for a war. WOLVERINES!!!
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: That Rise of the Guardians movie looks abysmal.
Schlemizel
No war on CHristmas?
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a war on Christmas. It exists as certainly as hate and stinginess and demogogary exist, and you know that they abound and give to their life its highest ugly and joy. Alas! how merry might be the world if there were no war on Christmas. It might be as merry as if there were no teabagers. There would be no inchoate hate then, no petty sniping, no panic to make less tolerable this existence. We should have enjoyment, except in insensate cruelty and slights. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be increased.
Not believe in the war on Christmas! You might as well not believe in T-bone eating Bucks! You might get your papa to hire men to watch all of FAUX News to catch the war dispatches, but even if they did not BillO frothing at the mouth, what would that prove? Nobody sees the war on Christmas, but that is a sign that there is a real war on Christmas. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see (according to FAUX News). Did you ever see welfare queens driving cadallacs on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the evils there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
No war on Christmas! Thank God! it lives, and it lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, it will continue to make mad the ‘brains’ of morans.
MattF
I’m thinking that Agenda 21 plus the End of Everything on Dec. 21 is keeping people distracted from the defense of Christendom. What could be worse than the UN taking away your golf courses? I only ask.
Schlemizel
Wish I could edit my post, I see a couple of improvements & a correction but it says I don’t have permission
EDIT: Of course this damn one it WILL let me edit
Tripod
Santa is hanging on to a chopper skid as the last Wal-Mart is overrun by union socialists.
Turns out Jesus and Toby Keith were fellow travelers.
I’m off to post something nasty in yahoo comments to the effect that somebody should do something about “those people”.
That’ll show ’em.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Most of the User Reviews at IMDB have been very positive, although you always have to take the enthusiasm of the opening night crowd with a big grain of salt on your movie popcorn.
Critics reviews have been mildly positive.
Oddly enough, Guardians is the only movie with an explicit holiday theme out during the Thanksgiving Christmas nexus. And I think the film is set during Easter. Go figure. So maybe Hollywood has surrendered in the War on Christmas? Or something.
scav
They’re also a little distracted by the bombshell that the moochers at the bottom have been gifted for years! with government sponsored weightloss and make-over programs aka food stamps. What’s next? govt sponsored day spas — public services with free soap in the restrooms?!
Warren Terra
@Brachiator: Maybe there are fewer explicit Christmas movies this year because the last Christmas movie to really make a lot of money was, what, Bad Santa ?
spoonman
They don’t retreat they just reload. I expect another “Mao on the christmas tree” any second or some other bullshit. Like the kkk said, never never never. They will never stop. Never!!!
This second term is already bringing back memories of Clintons second term. It was the same thing.
Davis X. Machina
Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the country. People know people who work for WalMart. People know that they’re a flat-out bad employer.
Fox isn’t ready to mount a full-throated defense of gilded-age labor relations just yet, so close on the heels of the election fiasco.
The Fox demo is older, and more prosperous, and such, than average, but it’s not Monty Burns and the Stonecutters either.
handsmile
@Brachiator:
Comrade Claus has been a commie symp for years, maybe even a KGB/FSB agent.
Among the facts:
Redistributing income, he brings “gifts” to “moochers” and “takers”;
He wears red;
How does he “know if you’ve been bad or good” if not for constant surveillance?;
His home is just a sleigh ride from Moscow.
Wake up, Sheeple! Wolverines!
maya
On this, the newest national holiday of the year, which merits a greeting of its own, let me be the first to wish you and yours a Very Thrifty Black Friday.
redshirt
The best way to win the WAR ON XMAS is as follows:
As Liberals, revel in the paganism of Xmas. Point out – repeatedly – to your Wingnut relatives that just about every aspect of Xmas is pagan, and not Christian. Xmas trees, mistletoe, Santa, presents, reindeer, all of it. Pagan.
Mention Jesus was born in April or something, and early Christians stole the holiday’s date from Mithras.
Keep it on. Soon enough the Wingnuts will turn on Xmas themselves, or demand an “Unskewed CHRISTmas”, and finish this war for us.
UNLIMITED PAGAN VICTORY!
quannlace
A ceasefire? In our local paper there was a story on a judge upholding a California town’s ban on a nativity scene in a public park. Was waiting for the salvos to come out on that, on the ‘Fox & Friends’ curvy couch.
Schlemizel
@handsmile:
Mr. CLause has a red suit, he’s a communist
And a beard and long hair, must be a pacifist
Whats in that pipe he is smoking?
The Pause Of Mr. Clause by Arlo Guthrie
j
@Davis X. Machina: Older, yes. More prosperous? Not by a long shot.
64% of FOX viewers make $30K or less.
Demographics, all news sources:
http://www.people-press.org/2012/09/27/section-4-demographics-and-political-views-of-news-audiences/
The Conster
@Schlemizel:
Yes Virginia, there is no sanity clause.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemizel:
That’s just fucking brilliant.
Fuck.King. BRILLIANT.
Fufuckingking brilliant.
quannlace
Well hey, ‘The Messiah’ was originally meant to be performed at Eastertide.
Re: Russian Santa. Wasn’t he, ‘specailly during Communist times, called ‘Father Frost?’
I guess to distance him from any religious, (St. Nicholas) connotations.
j
Why couldn’t I edit that post? It said I could, and I even typed the changes into the box. It should have said 31% make < $30k, 33% make a little more.
ChristianPinko
Just wanna say that what really offends me is stretching the Christmas season forward so that it begins on November 1 or earlier. It spoils the “specialness” of the season to make it last two months. Plus, there’s already a designated time on the liturgical calendar to prepare for Christmas: it’s called Advent, and it begins on the fourth Sunday prior to Christmas, no earlier.
Schlemizel
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks. A lot. I hit post too soon though & would love to clean it up a bit but I’m sorta proud of it
Anoniminous
@Schlemizel:
A thing of beauty.
Brachiator
@redshirt:
Wait a minute. Are you telling me that Santa is not the uncle of the Baby Jebus?
Oh my blessed Festivus Pole.
Actually, many wingnuts know this. But time and tradition smooth out the contradictions of historical details. So it boils down to atheism vs godliness and the horrible foreign holidays of the Other vs Real White American True Christmas.
ETA: one of the best Christmas celebrations I observed was in Jaipur, India, complete with a Hindu inflected Santa Claus.
Schlemizel
@ChristianPinko:
The sadly ironic part is that its the very people who claim to be defending the holiday that seem to be encouraging the most damage.
I’d like to do an updated version of “A Christmas Carol” Scrooge would be this suburban Christan wingnut (played by that cow that is on the Target ads). Instead of a cheap miser she is dizzy from all the over the top running around and buy-buy-buy.
The 3 ghosts would show her what the holiday is actually supposed to be about. I have some details but not many & I won’t bore you with them
Wumpus
Fox is gun shy, so it has fallen to Wonkette to initiate hostilities.
http://wonkette.com/489914/a-declaration-of-war-on-christmas
Death to the Great Reindeer!
Brachiator
@Schlemizel:
The original still works well enough, and is plenty powerful. And just as applicable to the times.
Can’t wait for the rebroadcasts of the various movie versions, especially the one starring Alastair Sim.
Bob In Portland
I want all golf courses to become socialist hackysack fields, and I want it NOW.
Jay C
Well, I’m sure something from the starboard nut-hatch is going to be forthcoming – after all, it’s the same gang of Evil Librul Soshulists Who Hate America stirring things up – but the two circumstances are different enough, I think, so that the Faux Nation crew are probably having to hold off a bit to gin up their Latest Outrage Outburst for maximum effect.
The Chick-fil-a flap was, for the Wurlitzer, an easy take: CFA had wrapped their prejudices in “religion” (i.e. smarmy puerile religiosity, but who’s counting?), and it was simple enough to cast the criticisms as just another case of Ordinary Decent Christian Americans getting grief from Evil Secular-Humanist Atheist Satanist Baby-Killers or whatever for “practicing their faith”.
Wal-Mart, OTOH, is pretty much a straightforward labor dispute; and despite the company’s desperate flag-wrapping PR over the years, it’s harder to get the rubes quite as het up about the Awful Evil Threat To Freedom, as defined by the Wal-Mart Corp’s Constitutional right to keep their prices low by shortchanging, if not outright abusing their workforce, like God intended…
LanceThruster
Private Thruster reporting for duty,
When you are seriously outnumbered (godless vs god-clinging) it is considerd target rich envirnment. Some of my believing friends complain about “evangelical atheism” but do not realize I am not out to (de)convert anyone, but rather establish the reason for my views to anyone who asks. It is a push back against xian bullying. They say wanting “IN GOD WE TRUST” off the money is a little thing, but can you really think of anything more ludicrous than the government taking a position for all of us (by default) on a belief or non-belief in God? Neutral, despite what churchies say, is not pro non-belief. They’d rightly complain if the message was “IN SATAN WE TRUST”. I trust in no Gog/Gods, so it is either a LIE, or I am not considered part of the WE.
In my neck of the woods, there is a flap about banning a creche in the park in Santa Monica. What is ignored, is that the response came from the fact that atheists had applied for a majority of the spots that you could get a permit for, and because of the extreme offense taken at godless holiday messages “polluting” the public space, the city council decided to remove them all rather than get stuck in the middle (which they are now anyway). Glob forbid we do not have enough religious xmas decorations. Many xians hate any secular xmas observances. Why do they hate Santa?
kendyZdad
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/fox-news-scariest-christmas-ever.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
Yutsano
@Jay C: I would think this should be easy. Just throw up some bullshit about jack-booted union thugs et voila: the teatards are back in full frenzy. The fact that the Wal-Mart strike IS being organised by a union makes this easier, but really that’s just a detail.
scav
@Schlemizel: You sparked a neruon. My updated version would have the spirits showing Scrooge all the other ways people have celebrated mid-winter throughout time and space (basically spirit #2 with anthroplogical tendencies and a Tardis) only ther’d be a spirit for each new revelry and the clockbells are chiming up somewhere in the teens and the spirits keep coming like the brooms in Fantasia. Ends on a final clssic scream from left field:
Scroogebeth. Thou art too like the spirit of Christmas: down!
Thy fête does sear mine eye-balls. And thy revels,
Thy clearly light-blest pomp, is like the first.
A third is like the former. Filthy hippies!
Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes!
What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
Another yet! A seventh! I’ll see no more:
And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass
Which shows me many more; and some I see
That two-fold balls and treble presents carry:
Horrible sight! Now, I see, ’tis true;
For the b’Rudolphed’d Santa smiles upon me,
And points at them for his.
[Apparitions vanish]
What, is this so?
Turns out Birnam wood is evergeen, be-tinseled and advancing.
I didn’t say it
was a sane neron that went off.
FFrank
Christmas has struck back early. Two weeks before Thankgiving the Christmas Song have started. Psychological Pernicious Warfare if I do say so myself.
jon
@Bob In Portland: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! If more than six people start playing hacky sack in one location, a Phish concert will spontaneously generate!
Schlemizel
@scav:
nicely done!
Valdivia
@handsmile:
biggest. grin. ever.
elves of the world unite! :)
Jay C
@Yutsano:
Possibly, but as @Davis X. Machina said @ #18, Wal-Mart is pretty much an omnipresence in most of this country, and its workforce is (AFAIK) hired from the same demographic as Fox’s core viewership. Griping about “union thugs” is fine when one’s audience can imagine them to be a bunch of sweaty cigar-chomping no-necks from distant urban sinkholes: when it’s your Aunt Polly or Cousin Dave getting chronically overworked for paltry salaries with few/no benefits – and, most likely, fired outright for complaining – it’s another story…
LanceThruster
@FFrank:
I too was shocked to learn that the “all xmas music all the time” station had started before Thanksgiving. We have to make a stand or at some point they’ll overrun Halloween.
SiubhanDuinne
I made an appointment several days ago to have my nails done today, forgetting it would be Black Friday, so while I am not actually shopping, I am in a strip mall. What’s interesting to me is the small number of cars in the parking lot, even right up close to Target and Bed Bath & Beyond. Most days these lots are super crowded, but quite the contrary today. Curious….
SiubhanDuinne
@LanceThruster:
I remember stopping in a drugstore on New Year’s Eve a few years ago. They had their Valentine’s candy on sale and were putting out displays for Easter candy.
joeyess
While it’s true that I found this on TPM, it still aired on FNC yesterday.
While Fox continues the war, their allies in Wingnutopia seem to have largely left the battlefield.
It is, however, only November.
Xecky Gilchrist
I think the War on Christmas nonsense peaked with that time the toughs issued “Merry Christmas!” as a challenge to everyone on a subway and then beat up a Jewish guy for responding with “Happy Hanukkah.” http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/12/12/subway.attack/
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne:
been meaning for the longest time to just say hi and hope you had a good Thanksgiving. I never seem to be in threads where I get a chance to say hi so I am grabbing the chance right now :)
Schlemizel
@LanceThruster:
sad news here guys – one douche station started November 1st, another last weekend.
Its already happening
LanceThruster
@SiubhanDuinne:
I always wondered what the xmas season would look like if it jettisoned the Giftmas fixation. It troubles me how the coverage of it is usually based around sales projections wrapped in a few tokens of ‘xmas spirit’ human interest stories to justify the materialist excesses.
If we wanted to exploit the smart conusmer approach to commercialized xmas, we should claim to convert to that sect of xianity (Greek Orthodox?) that celebrates xmas in mid-January and then we’d kick ass on the after xmas sales.
I enjoy the getting together for the breaking of bread, and finding meaningful ways to remember the less fortunate, but xmas should mostly be mostly for kids, and the participation required on par with that of Halloween (i.e. strictly voluntary and at any level of observance whatsoever).
I observe xmas with the smallest recognizable tree (pre-decorated straight out of the box). In terms of practicality and ease, it’s the next best thing to a Festivus pole.
Schlemizel
@LanceThruster:
We did not always have a lot of money when I was growing up. There were a few years we celebrated on January 6th (forget the title but its the day the wise guys are supposed to have shown up with gifts). It was years later that it occurred to me that they probably were counting on post-xmas sales to allow them to be more generous to us kids
David Koch
Morsi is Mubarak’s 3rd term!
He’s sold us out!
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@jon:
If six rednecks do meth around a chalk circle, does Kid Rock appear?
LanceThruster
@SiubhanDuinne:
While I understand the retail aspects of seasonal marketing, it is all too much like the Simpson’s episode on “Love Day.”
I have a hard time thinking of any day of commemoration, where the thing being observed/remembered is the primary focus. It’s an excuse to take off work and party and/or shop.
Before I became godless, I used to say I like Lent so much I gave it up for Lent. I wince at how many people I know who see xmas as “cash in on someone else’s guilt” day. My family used to ask (and submit) gift lists, but now i just tell them I ereally don’t need anything, but will give them catagories of bric-a-brac I like. This has worked out great. I like “space stuff” (fact or fiction) and my sister picked me up a set of chrome rocket ship salt & pepper shakers (they look like the 50’s sci-fi rockets). She came across it mid-year and it didn’t break the bank. We were both thrilled. I don’t need “stuff” but will make room for cool shit that comes my way.
LanceThruster
@Schlemizel:
It’s great the creative ways parents come up with to show their love. I never complained about practical gifts like socks and underwear because wrapped in xmas paper and tucked under the tree with everything else, it just made it seem like a magical cornucopia of goodies.
LanceThruster
@Schlemizel: The work stands as is. Quite a creative offering and a wonderfully appreciated gift.
? Martin
@Schlemizel:
It’s Epiphany. The wise men arrived on that day and recognized that Jesus was the son of God, hence the name. It’s also what the 12 days of Christmas refer to – it’s the 12th day after Dec 25.
When I grew up in NY, most of the orthodox families around us celebrated on Jan 6. The 25th was for going to mass and putting the tree up and small gifts were given every day with the big thing and another big feast on the 6th. I still don’t take our tree down until after the 6th. I’m an unconventional atheist I suppose.
LanceThruster
@Brachiator:
[fingers in ears] I’m not listening, I’m not listening!
xD
Yutsano
@Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches: Or Ted Nugent.
Schlemizel
@? Martin:
Thats it! I just forgot & was too lazy to look before posting. We always put the tree up on xmas eve and took it down the weekend after the 6th.
@LanceThruster:
Thanks, I see a couple of big gaping logical inconsistencies in it though. I have already rewritten it to fix them and a couple of other problems plus I added the original letter. It’ll go up on FB when the mood strikes & I may post it again here if appropriate.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@Yutsano:
I thought you needed to blood-sacrifice a mallard to get Ted Nugent?
I lost my copy of the Redneckcromicon some years ago, though, so I might be misremembering.
Yutsano
@Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches: I freely admit I’m not well versed in the higher intricacies of Redneck Arcana. I’m certain there’s a new spell that will conjure up Honey Boo Boo though.
Schlemizel
@Yutsano:
Yeah open a package of ho-hos and a Dr. Peper
MattR
@LanceThruster: Gregg Easterbrook is generally a douchebag, but his Tuesday Mornning Quarterback column at ESPN does a good job of pointing out extreme examples of Christmas creep.
Bago
Bow down, bow down, before the power of Santa!
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=CP1thwtnKtk&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCP1thwtnKtk
Or be crushed, be crushed, by his jolly boots of doom!
Schlemizel
I know this is a repost & even worse it is a repost of my own post and in the same thread but I hope you forgive me, I really liked this & wanted it cleaned up a bit
DEAR EDITOR:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no war on Christmas. Papa says, ‘If you see it on FAUX News it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a War on Christmas?
VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.
No war on Christmas?
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by rationality in an irrational age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not provable by rational observation. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, can be little. The reaction to this great universe of ours can be for man to be a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a war on Christmas. It exists as certainly as hate and stinginess and demagoguery exist, and you know that they abound and give to their life its highest ugly and lowest meaning. Alas! How merry might be the world if there were a war on Christmas. It might be as merry as if there were no teabagers. There would be no inchoate hate then, no petty sniping, no panic to make less tolerable this existence. We should have enjoyment, except in insensate cruelty and slights. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be increased.
Not believe in the war on Christmas! You might as well not believe in T-bone eating Bucks! You might get your papa to hire men to watch all of FAUX News to catch the war dispatches, but even if they did not witness BillO frothing at the mouth, what would that prove? Nobody sees the war on Christmas, but that is a sign that there is a real war on Christmas. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see (according to FAUX News). Did you ever see welfare queens driving Cadillacs on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the evils there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
No war on Christmas!? Thank God! it lives, and it lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, it will continue to make mad the ‘brains’ of morans.
low-tech cyclist
@Davis X. Machina:
This. A defense of WalMart’s War on Thanksgiving would collide head-on with the personal experiences of their viewers, or their viewers’ friends, neighbors, and relatives.
So it’s a better bet for them to just ignore the subject, since both sides are the wrong side for them in one way or another.
Ed Drone
@Schlemizel:
The Scrooge in All of Us
Marley, so they tell us in the book, was stone-cold dead,
Though Scrooge, his erstwhile partner, was still living.
But encounters with three spirits, not to mention Marley’s shade,
Encouraged Scrooge to learn the art of giving.
We’ve heard this story every year since Hector was a pup,
It gets repeated sometimes ten times o’er.
Why, Christmas isn’t Christmas lest they bring the damned thing up,
And yet I wonder why it’s not a bore.
Chorus:
(It’s ’cause)
Scrooge is the center of the story.
Ebeneezer is the focus of the fuss!
With his self-centered, short-sighted, money-loving ways;
There’s a little Scrooge in every one of us.
Now, most of us live lives filled with daily ups and downs;
There’s no one going to help us but ourselves.
And our patience is so sorely tried, our faces turned to frowns
At Christmas shopping, Santa and his elves.
We feel the pressure of the crush, the hurry, and the cold,
And we find it hard to think of others now.
So we secretly cheer Scrooge and wish that we could be so bold,
And hope for that old man to win somehow.
Chorus
And yet, for all the secret selfish pride we take in him,
We know that Ebeneezer’s going to change.
We see his heart begin to melt at the plight of Tiny Tim,
So Scrooge’s transformation’s not so strange.
In each of us, though hidden, lives that impulse toward the good,
And the self-adoring, grasping way we live
Can be set aside a moment — we really know it should —
That’s why Ebeneezer has so much to give.
Chorus
Copyright ©1990 Bob Clayton & Ed Drone;
JPL
Ceasefire? What ceasefire…
Will fox news ditz this big box store for suggesting violence?
Schlemizel
@Ed Drone:
Thanks! That’s very cool!
Is it safe to assume you are the Ed Drone mentioned in the the (c) ?
Dee Loralei
@Schlemizel: That was pretty damned brilliant sir! And please repost it after you’ve made the corrections you want. I’d love to post it on my facebook page, too.
Schlemizel
@Dee Loralei:
Please feel free to use it any way you like as long as you don’t take credit for it ;)
Was over on reddit & watched them take some art students life apart because she was posting (and apparently publishing) other peoples work as her own. Mob justice always makes me sympathetic for the criminal.
Dee Loralei
@Ed Drone: Really like that too.
Ed Drone
@Schlemizel:
Yes, though it’s not actually my name — I use “Ed Drone” as a nom de intertubes, so that there’s a distance between real life and what’s said here and elsewhere.
It’s “Ed,” because I work in Education, and “Drone” because my workplace is an office cubicle.
Ed
Schlemizel
@Ed Drone: Clever, I like that a lot.
So is this from a larger work? Am I a dope for not recognizing it? It looks very professional and polished thats what makes me ask. You are very good at this
Ed Drone
@Dee Loralei:
Thanks. I’m thinking I’ll use it in the CFC talent show we do every year. I need something different, since “One Meatball” and “Seven Beers With the Wrong Woman” have now been used (the last two shows), and those are my “party pieces” in sing-arounds.
Ed
gelfling545
@Schlemizel: It’s worth hearing again:
The Pause of Mr. Claus
MikeJ
@Ed Drone:
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah sounds like it’s right up your alley.
Ed Drone
@Schlemizel:
Professional in that a salable song was the goal; amateur in that it never “went anywhere.” One of the things I find distressing is the whole “singer-songwriter” milieu, where most of the songs are so personal that ONLY the singer would want to sing ’em. I prefer to write something that others would want to (and be able to) sing.
It used to be that writers would do up a song and have it demoed, in hopes a publisher would take it on and then pass it onto a popular singer to actually record and sell. In some genres, the self-penned song was “the way,” so we see rock ‘n roll singers (particularly since the Beatles) doing their own songs instead of “covers.” Country music is pretty much the only holdout for the professional songwriter these days, and Tin Pan Alley is long gone.
I and my friends are folkies, where the self-penned song is the main kind you hear (save for actual traditional songs, which I normally prefer). But as a realist, I recognize that my songs aren’t going anywhere just because I sing ’em. I don’t perform in enough venues to get a following, and I’m slow to get my own recordings “out there,” so, when I write a lyric, it sometimes takes a while to be recognized. In the case of “Scrooge,” something like 22 years.
So thanks for the kind words, and I probably will see about working this one up and putting it on YouTube. I am working on a CD right now, but this one isn’t on the final cut. Maybe it should be.
Thanks again.
Ed
SiubhanDuinne
@Valdivia: Sorry, had to soak in acetone for a while there and couldn’t scroll or type. (Look, ma, no hands!)
Hi backatcha! Hope your Thanksgiving was a good one too. Mine was quiet — was with the cousins whose grown son died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago, so it was a poignant day, but nice memories of Zach. Happy now to have a nice long leisurely weekend.
One of these days we’ll be on the same thread at the same time :-)
Cheers,
SD
Amir Khalid
I’m about to find out whether I go into moderation for commenting with my old nym from a new machine on my Internet connection.
So who is “making war” on Christmas anyway? Is it the forces of non-Christian godlessness? And what are the enemies of Christmas supposed to be after? If you take it away, does Christianity collapse?
ETA: It appears that I don’t go into moderation for using a new machine. Good.
pluege
is it possible that after their humiliating election debacle the wingnuts are going to take a small break from being complete A-hole stupid for a little while?
Nnaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!
WereBear
If they could learn and change and grow, they wouldn’t be wingnuts, would they?
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeJ:
Cripey, that’s kind of spooky. Two days ago the Hut-Sut Song popped into my head and I was singing it and trying to ’splain it to some young friends. I doubt there are all that many people around any more who remember it.
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeJ:
Cripey, that’s kind of spooky. Two days ago the Hut-Sut Song popped into my head and I was singing it and trying to ’splain it to some young friends. I doubt there are all that many people around any more who remember it.
SiubhanDuinne
Oh, just go FY, you stupid WP.
Ed Drone
@MikeJ:
Well, I keep getting the second line mixed up and coming out like the “And so-on, so-on so forth” from the Horton Hatches the Egg” cartoon from my youth, but I know of the song. Ditto “Fwee Witto Fishies” and similar novelty songs.
No one writes novelty songs these days. Weird Al’s parodies don’t really count. Where is the “Flying Saucer” or “The Streaker” of today? I guess “Scrooge” is almost a novelty song, come to think of it — at least it’s not another love song or rock anthem.
Ed
Amir Khalid
@Ed Drone:
Weird Al has always done novelty songs alongside his parodies of other people’s songs. They aren’t as famous as the latter, but they’re always there. I am particularly fond of One More Minute, Trigger Happy, and Christmas at Ground Zero.
Schlemizel
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, you have it pretty much right. Its the ‘inclusiveness’ thing. So if I say “Happy Holidays” So I don’t have to concern myself with what your personal beliefs are when I wish you well then these Christianist crackpots want to take that as a threat to their total domination of American culture.
It allows them to believe they are under attack.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: I have adopted a whole string of holidays, from Winter Solstice through Festivus, Christmas, and on through New Years.
I’m happy to celebrate with friends on their own, too.
When it starts getting dark at four o’clock in the afternoon, the more the merrier!
TerryC
@jon: Or a disc golf course :)
cambridgemac
@ChristianPinko:
You seem to be implying that Merkan merchants and capitalists launched the real war on Christmas by disregarding / trashing / obsoleting Advent. This is crazy talk. To paraphrase St. Nixon, if bidness does it, it must be holy.
Heliopause
Quick, while they’re not looking let’s pass a constitutional amendment banning Xmas. This weekend, while they’re all at Red Dawn and Walmart. But for God’s sake hurry, their attention span is short.