so do we decorate the xmas tree?

Well here it is, Sunday, December 13, and we havent finished decorating our xmas tree yet. the main reason is that kevin and i wanted to decorate it together, but since we are currently on different schedules for work, we don't see each other very often and when we are together, one of us is usually asleep so obviously that doesn't leave much time for much of anything, let alone decorating a tree. even when we have our days off together, it still never manages to get finished. the other day i was sitting on my couch pondering about this and that, and i thought to myself "why am i even bothering, and making such a fuss over having this damn tree decorated?? we don't have kids or expected company to enjoy it, and we're both seeming to be pretty indifferent about it. we're not even christian, so we've got no legitimate reason to even bother." i told kevin this the other day and he said "well, yeah you're pretty much right, but it is kind of pretty to look at." of course i agreed with that, but mentioned that we only had just over a week before christmas and since we wouldnt even be spending much of christmas at our place, why shouldn't i just take it down now and save on my power bill?

so what do i do, as an Ignostic, as someone without children or company, as someone who doesn't even like materialistic corporate holidays? why should i put a tree up? what did other people do who have been in this situation, especially those who aren't christian? why do people even put trees up to begin with? do they know WHY they do it, or are they totally ignorant and just do it cuz it's what their parents did each year or because it's "fun?"

well, my eventual decision aside, i have been feeling a little down about all the holidays lately, because right now they are just so contrary in their capacity to be enjoyed as to when i was a kid, that they barely seem different from any other old day, except it guarantees me the ability to see at least one side of family. holidays just feel so boring and disappointing you know, like bad sex. you have all this buildup to something you know should be awesome and fun, then it just dissipates into nothing. it would seem this phase is normal for anyone who has a few gaping years between when they leave home, and when they settle down and have kids, right? or am i the only one totally over-thinking things as usual?

(By the way, here is what we know about the origin of the christmas tree, just in case you were wondering [courtesy of Wikipediaa]):

"According to Christian lore, the Christmas tree is associated with St Boniface and the German town of Geismar. Sometime in St Boniface's lifetime (c. 672-754) he cut down the tree of Thor in order to disprove the legitimacy of the Norse gods to the local German tribe. St. Boniface saw a fir tree growing in the roots of the old oak. Taking this as a sign of the Christian faith, he said "...let Christ be at the center of your households..." using the fir tree as a symbol of Christianity.

The tradition of the Christmas tree as it is today known is fairly young. It was established by Martin Luther as a Protestant counterpart for the Catholic Nativity scene. Luther established the Christmas tree as a symbol of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.

The custom of erecting a Christmas Tree can be historically traced to 16th century Northern Germany and Livonia (present-day Estonia and northern Latvia). According to the first documented uses of a Christmas tree in Estonia, in 1441, 1442, and 1514 the Brotherhood of the Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their brotherhood house in Reval (now Tallinn). At the last night of the celebrations leading up to the holidays, the tree was taken to the Town Hall Square where the members of the brotherhood danced around it. In 1584, the pastor and chronicler Balthasar Russow wrote of an established tradition of setting up a decorated spruce at the market square where the young men “went with a flock of maidens and women, first sang and danced there and then set the tree aflame”. In that period, the guilds started erecting Christmas trees in front of their guildhalls: Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (Marburg professor of European ethnology) found a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 which reports how a small tree was decorated with "apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers" and erected in the guild-house, for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas Day." isn't that some interesting shit. now how many christians do you think know even a fraction of that? =)

BBC book list- 100 books you should read

Here's the official BBC Book List; they said the average person has only read 6 books from this list- see how many YOU get by marking off those which you've already read.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien-YES
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen -YES
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling -YES
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne -YES
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell -YES
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis -YES
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë -YES
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott -YES
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling -YES
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling -YES
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling -YES
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck -YES
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll -YES
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl -YES
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald -YES
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (HALFWAY DONE)
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens -YES
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett -YES
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl -YES
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell -YES
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden -YES
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens -YES
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind (SAW THE MOVIE, I KNOW I KNOW)
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl -YES
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl -YES
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar -YES
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho -YES
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

an open letter to supporters of the FCC

if you are a supporter of the FCC, you are seriously deluded.

before this becomes too heated a discussion, let me say that I DO see where you're coming from. you don't want to have to hear other's inappropriate/offensive language, and you want to protect not only yourself from it but your children as well. clearly that means so much to you that you've made the effort to set up the FCC as a way to help restrict the language (and sex, violence, drug use, etc) in movies and radio, and especially on tv.

the problem is, that in this motion to protect yourself from offensive things, you are forcing your opinions and morals on others, who may not share your views on censorship. clearly you can see the problem here. the rest of us- who aren't bothered by language, etc and honestly dont even think twice about it- can only enjoy our programs after they've been deconstructed to meet YOUR FCC standards. we don't force you to watch OUR shows, but you do anyway then censor them? how is that fair?

i know you'll retaliate saying that if we don't care so much about the language, why bother adding it in there to begin with? well, the answer is because we don't want to spend every day watching a damn Disney movie. to us, swear words can make situations funnier or extra dramatic. sex and violence and drug/alcohol use are common, naturally occuring things so why do you care if they're depicted? because the bible told you so? life isn't a fantasy fairy tale, so why should our entertainment be? the rest of us- we are not fooling ourselves. we are mature enough to acknowledge these things are HUMAN, and that they've been around forever; we can deal with seeing them in our entertainment, so that's why we add it in there. it's human drama. we are not so tempted by naked people in a sex scene that by merely watching it we'll feel unclean. we are not so tempted by drugs and alcohol that after watching a fictional character partake of them in a movie that we will also have to go partake after the show's over. we are not so easily deluded by fictionally violence that we will become violent warmongers. and if YOU feel you could be tempted or mislead from viewing these things, then that's YOUR problem, and YOU need to stop watching shows that have that big of an effect on you. you do NOT need to ruin entertainment for the rest of us because you are weak-minded and easily influenced.

i think the bigger problem here is that YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYONE ELSE BUT YOURSELVES.

instead of ruining tv and movies for the rest of us by means of censorship through the FCC, why don't you make more interesting movies that meet your own standards?!! all i hear from pro-FCCers is bitching over how no means of entertainment nowadays is clean or family friendly. well, the truth is, that some of us DO NOT WANT everything to be family friendly. we LOVE our violence and we LOVE our swear words and we LOVE our alcohol and drugs and we LOVE our sensuality, and if YOU don't like it then don't watch it. we are Constitutionally protected, and we will get rid of your FCC. you need to not be so lazy, and do more than just censor everything. make your own movies. write letters to your tv stations to make a better variety of shows to match your self-imposed standards, and to your video game creators to make more kids games, and so forth.

the FCC slightly aside, THIS is why i tend to look down on most conservatives, probably above any other reason. because rather than creating healthy feasible solutions for your own problems, you instead choose the path of least resistance which, 9 out of 10 times involves trampling others' rights. i hate that. i would hate it even my rights weren't involved. i know YOU all would hate if YOUR rights were dismissed and trampled. so don't trample ours- either leave our entertainment alone, or reconsider your politics, values, and priorities.