Why Christmas songs suck so much

Today while listening to that reprehensible piece of tripe "Jingle Bell Rock" for probably the 300th time in my life, it finally occurred to me why modern Christmas songs suck so much. Yes, it is because they are overplayed. But to put the matter more accurately, I believe it is because they are for the most part musically mediocre and pedestrian, yet they are played as much as the truly great songs that have been written in the past decades.

Think about it. Of the great songwriters, how many have written Christmas songs that are considered among their best compositions?  Hm... Irving Berlin's "White Christmas".  John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)".  Hm...  That's it, I'm tapped. There may be others but I can't think of any. The rest of these songs are the work of hacks, or good songwriters doing throwaway work (e.g. what do you think Springsteen really thinks of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town"?)

And yet these songs are played everywhere we go for a month, and we hear them more than our personal favorites.  Have you ever thought about how many times you've listened to one of your favorite songs?  For example, I have probably listened to "Strawberry Fields Forever" about 500 times total, and "Paranoid Android" about 300.

Meanwhile, I stand by my "Jingle Bell Rock" estimate of 300, so I have been forced to listen to that piece of crap as many times as "Paranoid Android". It's not right.

Why do stores, radio stations, etc. play these songs so much? I guess it is to acknowledge the season. I suggest to them that they play a steady drone of a lovely woman's voice sprechstimme' ing: "Holiday Season! Holiday Season! Holiday Season! Holiday Season! " etc. At least that would be much easier to phase into the background than, say, "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" (which, by the way, is the same melody as "Jingle Bell Rock"; think about it).

Time to think about vegetarianism again

I was a vegetarian for a couple years. I fell off the wagon gradually, first dabbling in shrimp, reasoning that they were little more than sea-based bugs. Then I allowed myself fish from time to time, since they were barely conscious really. Then an occasional chicken wing, because that was the one type of meat that I kept dreaming about. I finally finished falling down the slippery slope about half a year ago, because I was granting myself so many meat allowances that I was afraid of being a hypocrite.

On Saturday I began slipping back toward vegetarianism....

That was the day we officially celebrated Thanksgiving this year. On Friday I went to our local Market Basket to buy the turkey. All they had left were ten GIANT turkeys, the smallest of which weighed in at 21 lbs.  I could easily have seatbelted that bird in my car!

I had two choices of brand, Market Basket or Shady Hill Farm.  I chose the latter because it seemed to promise better taste. I based this on nothing but the name. I am ashamed to admit that I was so easily fooled by basic advertising!

The next day, as I was preparing the turkey, I finally read the label. This wholesome-sounding Shady Hill Farm turkey was produced by:

CARGILL MEAT SOLUTIONS, INC.

Aaaaiiieeeeee!!!!! Cargill, of course, is the gigantic industrial food producer (yearly revenue: $120 BILLION) that is responsible for a quarter of all U.S. meat!  Who would have thought that they could make their name sound even more evil by the appending of that grotesque word "Solutions"?

Since the 90s software companies have been adding "Solutions" to their name to sound more respectable, or more comprehensive in their product offerings. I have always cringed in embarrassment when I see such company names, feeling for my fellow software workers who have to say they work at Weenysoft Solutions, e.g.

But what the fuck is a "Meat Solution"? What is the problem it is meant to solve? I imagine the problem is meat hunger, and the solution is a smorgasbord of meats with enough variety to adapt to your slightest whim. This is the dream of American meat-eaters that Cargill fulfills.

Polish Princess Coming to Utica!

A member of the Polish nobility has expressed an interest in my hometown!  Diana Lenska, a descendent of Louis XV of France, has purchased one of the dilapidated 19th-century mansions that dot the city and is planning to use it to house the Royal Order of the Kingdom of Poland. She plans to use the building as her embassy:

“Steeped within the history and traditions of monarchy, the embassy will host balls, concerts, investitures, musicals, art exhibits, official functions within the etiquette, and protocol of the 18-19th century. The cultural embassy will also serve as a royal bed and breakfast for visiting knights.”

A city official describes it a bit less eloquently:

“She knights people,” Sullivan said. “There are all these guys who she’s knighted, and they get together and have cultural activities.”

Here's the full article.

And here's a picture of Her Highness:

Doubtless that is one of her knights, soon to be engaging in cultural activities.

UPDATE:  Damn!  Damn damn damn!  She's a fake!  At least that's what the Polish embassy claims:

“For sure, she’s not a princess,” said Kristina Sikorska, a cultural division specialist for the embassy. “For sure, she has no aristocratic relations with Polish families.”

Great.  Thanks a lot, Polish Embassy, for throwing ice water in the face of the dreams of Uticans everywhere.  Yet another sad setback for a once-proud city.

Health Insurance and Slavery

The fight to reform health care in this country has many parallels to an earlier struggle in our nation's history, the struggle to abolish slavery.  In both cases, a heavily entrenched minority tries to maintain a sizeable economic interest in an immoral enterprise, causing great suffering in a large segment of the U.S. population.  The moral footing of the private health insurance companies is arguably as bad as that of the Southern plantation owners.  It remains to be seen whether today’s struggle will end as violently as the older one. 

As a first point of comparison, let us consider the amounts of money involved in these two enterprises.  How much did the Southern slaveholders stand to lose if their peculiar institution was abolished?  One figure would be the value of all the slaves that would be freed, i.e. the total value of the “property” that the slave owners stood to lose.  In 1860 the combined value of all the slaves of the South is estimated at $4 billion.  We could also consider the costs of replacing the slave labor with paid labor, but for the sake of argument let’s just use the straightforward $4 billion figure as an estimate of the size of the Southern plantation owners’ economic interest in slavery. In today’s dollars (using an index that compares the average wages of an unskilled worker), that equals $645 billion. 

For the size of the health insurance industry’s economic interest, let us use the difference between today's inefficient private health insurance system and an efficient single-payer system.  That difference is estimated at $350 billion a year. This money’s only purpose is to support the private health insurance industry, and produces no additional value for the consumer.   

As you can see the amounts of money involved in slavery and private health insurance are comparable.  The exact figures are not important. What I want to illustrate is that the sizes of the economic interest in both cases is very large, and we should assume the stakeholders will fight to keep their money with equal ferocity.  More on this later. 

But what of the moral issues?  Are they comparable?  No modern person should find slavery anything but morally repugnant. But is the moral footing of the health insurance companies as bad as that of the slaveholders?  Just what are the crimes of these companies? 

The first, less serious, offense is extortion.  We are forced to pay these companies $350 billion a year, or 30% more, for nothing but a worser product.  A small group of people have worked themselves into a position of power and have levied a tariff on the healthcare costs of most Americans.  We have no choice but to pay this tariff, since the vast majority of Americans must purchase health insurance, and there is no competitive non-profit or public option. 

Health is the most basic necessity of life.  How would we feel if there was this tariff on other necessities?  Suppose when you wrote your $1000 rent check to the landlord, you also had to include a $300 check for a “rent processing company” whose only job was to pass the first check from you to your landlord?  Or what if you spend $100 at the grocery store, and on the way out you have to give a burly goon $30 in order to reach the parking lot?  Would you stand for it?    

Even worse morally is that the price of this basic necessity, health, has become beyond the ability of so many of our fellow citizens to pay.  How would we react if food became so expensive in this country that it became a luxury?  Would we allow these poor unfortunates who can't afford bread to just die?  I should hope not.   

But that's what we allow to happen to 45,000 people a year who die for lack of sufficient health insurance.  To put it in perspective, that's the equivalent of a 9/11 happening in our country every month, year after year, with no end in sight. Why aren’t more people appalled by this figure? Is it because the deaths of these people are not as dramatic as those of 9/11?   The deaths of the uninsured happen on the streets, in hovels, in inner-city hospital ERs, and wherever else the poor go to die.  The government has spent trillions of dollars trying to avert another 9/11, and yet this monthly 9/11, preventable by a comparatively smaller outlay of money, is allowed to happen. 

The insurance companies are only partially culpable for this travesty, to the extent that they drive up prices.  We, too, must bear responsibility, since we have not yet forced our government to provide universal health care coverage.

But the insurance companies can be held solely responsible another crime, for denying coverage and treatments in the interests of maintaining their profit margins.  Here they descend to the vile moral level of the slaveholder. In the eyes of a slaveholder and an insurance company, a human being is reduced to a mere accounting entity.  The slave had an initial cost and was expected to pay out more in labor over the course of his or her lifetime.  We, the insured, pay in premiums over the course of our lifetimes, and we damn well better not receive more payouts, in the form of actual health care, than what we put in.  If we do, the insurance company will do whatever it can to cut loose “the dogs,” even to the point of cancelling product lines across a state. 

This is evil.  Truly, no different than the evil of slavery.  In both cases, you have a rich, powerful person exerting complete control over another human being’s life, solely for the purpose of enriching themselves. 

Slavery did not pass easily from the face of this nation. The Southern plantation owners would not give up their slaves, and their huge economic interest, without a violent struggle.

How will this evil of private health insurance, and the meting out of life necessities to only those who can afford it, be purged from our nation?  Will it be purged?  Will this evil pass peacefully via mutual action and legislation?  Or, like slavery, will this stain on our nation require blood to be removed?   

I fear the worst.  The current system asks that 45,000 people a year not question the reason why they are denied health care, and just die quietly.  Many of them may be poor and old and unable to fight, but as the current system gets more and more expensive, the number of the uninsured will grow to the point that there will be enough able-bodied among them to refuse to just die, and to fight back.   

Coincidentally, the number of slaves at the peak in 1860, 3.9 million people, or 12% of the U.S. population, is about the same number as the uninsured today, 45 million, or 15% of the total. The slaves never succeeded in insurrection, but some tried.  Do we want to keep pushing the poor in this country to the point that they, too, have no choice but to revolt? 

Why should this struggle play out differently today than it did 150 years ago?  Are we better or smarter than we were back then?  That's doubtful.  Arguably, the average Southern plantation owner was better educated morally than the average health insurance executive today, to the extent that the church was a more powerful institution back then.  And yet the plantation owner still managed to find the elaborate justifications for maintaining their grip on their property.   

By what mechanism can this power be wrested from these entrenched interests?  Via popular expressions of distaste with the insurance company's actions?  These can be ignored.  By legislation?  The vast majority of the Congress has been purchased by the insurance industry.  At least in the slavery debate, there was a significant minority of congressmen who actively deplored the institution of slavery.  These days, nearly uniformly, the Congress is in support of whatever corporations choose to do. 

In our nation’s history, has any industry the size of the health insurance industry ever been coerced by the government to significantly change its ways? And yet here we are asking a $350 billion industry to just go away. 

I will continue to work peacefully against the evil of today’s system, but I do so with little hope of success.  I dread the bloody purgation of this evil, but fear that it will come.  I hope the more naturally optimistic among you are right and I am wrong.  
 
 

Emetic

What I am about to do probably violates the Blogger's Code: I am a going to post a link to a story, without having actually read the story! Here goes:

Jenna Bush weds, down-home style

But I have a very good reason for such a blatant violation of the Code. Please let me explain.

Blogging, for me at least, involves a lot of solitary late nights at the computer, as does my "day" job of software developer. Over the years I have developed an irrational fear of accidently poisoning myself while feverishly working, and there being no one around to help me. Sure, you might think this is far-fetched, but I've imagined a number of scenarios where this could happen. Like, I put the final period on a particularly compelling blog entry [e.g. "...and therefore I conclude it is theoretically possible for a soy-based burger to be as flavorful as an animal flesh--based one, Q.E.D."], then I reach for my beer for a triumphal swig, but I accidently pick up the can of Drano I had bought earlier that evening at the Home Depot. These things happen.

Well, now I'm covered. I have taken the above story and bookmarked it in my browser under the title "EMERGENCY EMETIC!" I have not yet read the story to ensure that the emetic will be delivered to me full-strength; when I hear every nauseating detail of the down-home, (yet tasteful), Texas-style wedding, and see every photo of the smirking, self-satisfied Bush family members, it will be for the very first time, and the vomit will pour out in a matter of seconds.

[That is, assuming you're supposed to induce vomiting with Drano. Need to look into that.]

So thank you, Bush family! After all these decades of your rule over us you have finally done the nation a genuine service, providing us this freely available, internet-based, emetic.

Return to the Jug Handle

Tuesday I finally followed in the footsteps of that woman in the jug handle, that activist I described in a previous post. I stood in public by the side of a busy road with a political message and make a general spectacle of myself.

This was not typical behavior for me. I am generally an introvert. My personality type is probably closest to that of the conciliator; I want everyone to get along. I don't think I have made many enemies in the first forty years of my life (unless they are quietly seething). I have come to believe that this is a sort of flaw, brought about perhaps because my personality was too bland or unreadable. If people really know where you stand, then certainly your stance will be counter to what others believe, and you will make enemies. This, I believe, is a good thing. You must take your stand and make the inevitable enemies that result.

Anyway, enough tedious personal analysis. I've been meaning to go back to the jug handle, to stand there myself, for some time now, probably since I first saw that woman in 2002. But especially since I've started this blog, I have felt a need to go there and in a tiny way to counter the latest round of growing war hysteria in this country.

Finally, on Monday, after reading about yet more bellicose rhetoric coming from our government towards Iran (Mullen: 'We are stretched, but the Iranians shouldn't think we don't have any excess combat capability! Our Air Force and Navy are largely unused!'; Hillary: 'I would obliterate Iran!!!'; Bush: 'The Iranians are killing our boys! I can't show you any proof, you'll just have to trust me!'; etc. etc. etc.), I decided I had to get off my ass, and more than my internet ass. I had to get out in public.

So that night I went to Staples and bought some posterboard and some markers and made the following sign:

I thought hard about what message would appeal to the broadest audience. Early ideas, such as:

Iran is not a threat to US! No war with Iran!

seemed a little too abstract. Appealing directly to personal economic concerns seemed most effective, and most likely to resonate with all political persuasions. Then, I threw in a pitch for my favorite source of news on the internet, antiwar.com.


The forecast for the next day was for heavy rain. I decided this would work to my favor, since I thought most people would be more sympathetic to me, and would be more apt to believe my sincerity about the message I was conveying, if I was getting rained on. I encased the poster in plastic.

I wasn't sure what reaction to expect from motorists. I didn't think I would get support, but I was planning to receive abuse and belligerence.

I drove to the spot during my lunch hour. I approached the jug handle in a chill steady rain:

And then I stood there a bit:


I paced back and forth slowly, showing the message to the alternating lines of stopped cars. (Somebody I knew drove by and provided some shots from the cars' view. )


Here's a protester-viewpoint shot:



I stood there for 45 minutes, at times in a downpour, and got soaked. It's a busy intersection and cars would bunch up at least 10 a minute, so I estimate I showed the message to about 500 stopped cars.

And what was the reaction? Basically, utter silence and avoidance of eye contact from nearly ALL motorists!

About 20% of people were talking on cell phones and were totally oblivious to their surroundings.

About 10% of people seemed to actually read the sign, then quickly looked away from me.

A handful gave me inscrutable half-smiles or smirks.

One guy looked really pissed, like he wanted to kick my ass, but didn't say or do anything.

And ONE older guy, who represented my one moment of hope, actually smiled and nodded his head in agreement!

This is probably the reaction most anti-war protesters receive, but it was very informative to see it for myself. It appears there is no will in this country to counter the government's murderous and deranged plans.

I then went back to white-collar cubicle land and spent the next five hours with water-logged feet:

I'm not complaining. I'm glad I did it. You all should give it a try during your next lunch hour. It's not hard to do.

But even if you do, you should realize this next war is inevitable now. It probably became so when Pelosi took impeachment "off the table." There are now no formal fetters on Bush/Cheney's evil will.

God help the Iranians who are going to be bombed (possibly with nuclear weapons).

God help the US soldiers and sailors who are going to receive the brunt of the counterattack.

God help us all, the 99% of US citizens who are not ultra-rich and who will feel the economic and psychological effects of this wicked action for decades to come.

But especially the Iranians. No matter what the media wants you to believe, you must never forget that they are human beings too.

Bush’s Pretzel Incident

[Blogger’s note: Ordinarily I have tremendous sympathy for recovering alcoholics and people struggling with addictions in general. However, I have no such generous feelings towards Bush. His enthusiastic support for such horrors as aggressive war and torture put him, in my estimation, beyond the realm of ordinary human to human sympathy, and I have no problem whatsoever mocking him and heaping ridicule upon him and his drinking problems.]

Do you remember the incident with Bush and the pretzel? In the dark days following 9/11, Bush allegedly was watching football by himself in the White House residence when he swallowed a pretzel too quickly. This somehow resulted in him sort of choking – but not really choking – and then somehow fainting. Since he was allegedly alone at the time, this could have been a catastrophe (can you imagine, the President dying by choking in private on a pretzel?) Thankfully, Jeebus was watchin’ over him extra hard that day, and he woke up and sheepishly told the secret service guards what had happened.

I had forgotten about this strange incident until yesterday, when I read an internet article that used this picture to illustrate Bush:

How did he get that bruise? I wondered. Was it a recent occurrence? After minimal searching I found the article that was the source for the original picture:

Bush faints at White House, recovers quickly

I read that story six years ago and I remember thinking, just a little bit, that maybe he had “fallen off the wagon.” But, a mere four months after 9/11, I still was in a state of shock, and still had some small amount of respect for the president, so I took Bush’s version of events as the truth, and put aside those ungenerous thoughts of him lapsing back into alcoholism.

However, last night when I read the story, I must say, I was laughing my ass off! Oh, come on! For God’s sakes! It’s preposterous:

******

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president had been checked by his physician, Dr. Richard Tubb, Monday and his vital signs were normal. Bush had never before had a fainting spell, Fleischer said after checking with the president.

"I hit the deck," Bush said in recounting for reporters how, alone in a room with his dogs, he had passed out while watching a football game on television. "Woke up and there was Barney and Spot showing a lot of concern."

The president looked a bit tired but otherwise fit when he stopped to assure reporters that he was doing well. Bush shared few details about the episode.

"I didn't realize what happened before I looked at the mirror and my glasses cut the side of my face," the president said, pointing to an abrasion on his upper left cheek. "I had good blood pressure last night. Good blood pressure this morning."

Tubb said in a telephone interview Sunday that Bush quickly recovered from the episode, apparently brought on by swallowing a pretzel awkwardly which triggered a temporary decrease in heart rate. He said the president had been feeling under the weather over the weekend.

******

“A temporary decrease in heart rate” my ass! He “looked a bit tired.” He “had been feeling under the weather.” Har har har! Any rational person has to admit that the most probable explanation his bruise was that he drank himself silly to the point that he passed out and smashed his face on a coffee table! [A slightly more comical -- though unsupported-by-the-facts -- theory might be that Laura got really mad at him and threw a frying pan at his face, after which she was awkwardly wrestled to the ground by secret servicemen; we can’t discount that explanation.] 

Oh yeah, and I’ve had that same sort of tired and ill feeling myself, but I call it a hangover!

Really now. The poor dear, all by his lonesome watching a football game to try to relieve the unbearable weight of being commander in chief and protecting America from all the terrorists. And he chokes on a pretzel. So unfair.

Or an utter incompetent, in WAY over his head, reverting back to alcoholism in a big way?!

You decide.

I tried to imagine what sort of person I was six years ago that I would possibly think the official story credible in any way. I must have been far too child-like and trusting.

I take it as a positive sign, a sign of maturation, that I am properly laughing at this incident now. Also, as a sign that I have perhaps moved beyond the fear that 9/11 induced in all of us. Honestly, at this point I am more afraid of the harm that Bush and Cheney are doing to this country than I am of any potential terrorist attack. And that seems like a sort of progress.