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The Bah-Humbug thread!
- Thread starter lunatic59
- Start date
Spock thought Christ was illlogical in one of those ST;OS episodes. Something about the sun... Uhuru set him straight.
I was talking about Holiday jumpers ... What were you talking about?...different metaphor.
No no, Spock thought it was illogical that sun worshipers would exist in a mechanized society as sun-worshiping as a religion is usually considered primitive. Uhura explained it wasn't the "sun" (as in the sun in the sky) but was the "son" as in the son of God. Spock didn't comment on that revelation.
shalemail
Android Expert
That "jumper" ^^^ makes me feel VERY Festive. Or something, it makes me feel very something, not sure if festive or ... well anyway, nice jumper. 
And @lunatic59 - thanks for straightening out that quote/scene. I hate to correct people, glad you're here to do it for me.
And @lunatic59 - thanks for straightening out that quote/scene. I hate to correct people, glad you're here to do it for me.
I was talking about Holiday jumpers ... What were you talking about?
No no, Spock thought it was illogical that sun worshipers would exist in a mechanized society as sun-worshiping as a religion is usually considered primitive. Uhura explained it wasn't the "sun" (as in the sun in the sky) but was the "son" as in the son of God. Spock didn't comment on that revelation.
What I said.
Well, if we can't quote Star Trek sub-plots accurately in an anti-Christmas thread on an Android user support forum, then I don't even know why I bother waking up in the morning.
I had my choice this morning of watching either the X-Files, the Walking Dead or Scrooge. I chose the creepiest one ... Scrooge. (Okay, I didn't choose it, but seeing how the wife hates the X-Files and neither of us give a zombie's posterior about the WD ... )
The premise of the story (as everyone knows) is a miserly old skinflint who cares nothing for his fellow man and led a miserable lonely life, inflicting his unsympathetic personality on anyone he has contact with. Those most affected are is nephew and clerk ('clark' for those of us still living in Victorian England
) -- the people he should care about most. His dead business partner, as part of his penance for living a similarly nasty life, appears to him and sets up a series of ghostly visitations (at this point I checked the channel guide to make sure I hadn't switched back to the x-files ) for his reclamation as a human being.
I won't bore you with the rest, because besides being a story that's been over-told, it's as believable as Mulder and the Lone Gunmen finding out Bigfoot is an alien who smokes.
It got me thinking, though. You see, i am constantly called a scrooge at the holidays. But, I am pretty much a fun guy. I have friends and help out whenever I can. I try to lighten the load of my fellow human without thought of compensation. I'd like to think I'm generous and forgiving and all those things that Scrooge is not. And, I don't dislike the season because it puts a dent in my pocket or because I don't like having a good time.
If I had a dead friend send some spooks my way to "fix" my Christmas spirit, I wonder who they'd be and what they'd show me? I know if I got the same group as Scrooge, I'd see a really f***ed-up childhood holiday season and a family who took the 'fun' out of dysfunction. I'd see that in the face of a boatload of emotional crap, both environmental and genetic, I turned out pretty well, with a generally positive outlook.
The big fat ghost of over-indulgence would take me around today and show me all the fights at Walmart over the $50 TV, religiously motivated bombings, secularized holiday pageants at schools where they teach creationism as science, and hosts of people who criticize all the "scrooges" for bringing down Christmas.
I think when the third guy shows up, I'd just give him a great big hug and say it's okay, you can just leave me here in the cemetery.
The premise of the story (as everyone knows) is a miserly old skinflint who cares nothing for his fellow man and led a miserable lonely life, inflicting his unsympathetic personality on anyone he has contact with. Those most affected are is nephew and clerk ('clark' for those of us still living in Victorian England
) -- the people he should care about most. His dead business partner, as part of his penance for living a similarly nasty life, appears to him and sets up a series of ghostly visitations (at this point I checked the channel guide to make sure I hadn't switched back to the x-files ) for his reclamation as a human being.I won't bore you with the rest, because besides being a story that's been over-told, it's as believable as Mulder and the Lone Gunmen finding out Bigfoot is an alien who smokes.
It got me thinking, though. You see, i am constantly called a scrooge at the holidays. But, I am pretty much a fun guy. I have friends and help out whenever I can. I try to lighten the load of my fellow human without thought of compensation. I'd like to think I'm generous and forgiving and all those things that Scrooge is not. And, I don't dislike the season because it puts a dent in my pocket or because I don't like having a good time.
If I had a dead friend send some spooks my way to "fix" my Christmas spirit, I wonder who they'd be and what they'd show me? I know if I got the same group as Scrooge, I'd see a really f***ed-up childhood holiday season and a family who took the 'fun' out of dysfunction. I'd see that in the face of a boatload of emotional crap, both environmental and genetic, I turned out pretty well, with a generally positive outlook.
The big fat ghost of over-indulgence would take me around today and show me all the fights at Walmart over the $50 TV, religiously motivated bombings, secularized holiday pageants at schools where they teach creationism as science, and hosts of people who criticize all the "scrooges" for bringing down Christmas.
I think when the third guy shows up, I'd just give him a great big hug and say it's okay, you can just leave me here in the cemetery.
I used to dread Christmas because I had to spend it with my family. Now I dread it because I don't get to spend it with my family.
I'd let you spend it with my family, but somehow I don't think that would help.
Like a kidney stone, this too shall pass.
Thanks for the thoughts everybody. A new year is upon us. There will be new promises to break. New bridges to burn. Most of all new bad habits to form.
That's not dust in your eye, @rootabaga , it's my fist.
My reaction to the 5-year-old ...
...dying in Santa's arms.
My first reaction was one of anger. First because of the attempt to tug at my heartstrings with a poignant tragedy. Then outrage for once again shoving the whole Santa Clause lie down my throat as a moral paradigm using emotional extortion. It reminds me of the commercials showing horribly mistreated animals or starving children, and then begging for money. If you want to help those kids and dogs, don't point a camera at them and then pay someone else to make the real difference in their lives.
Don't get me wrong. I am truly sad for the poor child and his family. The loss of a child is unfathomably tragic. But his final wish was based on a lie and in the end it really didn't make much of a difference. He's still dead and Santa couldn't help him because Santa's a fraud.
Why the hell am I supposed to feel anything for an old guy who got thrown into a bad situation and lied to a dying child to make him feel better? And, based on what the child asked, he didn't really succeed, did he. What if he were dressed as a religious icon or a beloved Disney character instead of the Christmas Clown? Could a fake Jesus or giant pantomime mouse done any better or worse?
It's propaganda, and I'm not biting.
If you really want to help, then help. Go volunteer in a pediatric cancer ward (don't just send money) and read a dying kid a book or sing them a song or play a game or just give them some company. Don't throw this crap in my face to prove that Christmas fixes stuff or makes things better. Because, especially in this case, it didn't.
My first reaction was one of anger. First because of the attempt to tug at my heartstrings with a poignant tragedy. Then outrage for once again shoving the whole Santa Clause lie down my throat as a moral paradigm using emotional extortion. It reminds me of the commercials showing horribly mistreated animals or starving children, and then begging for money. If you want to help those kids and dogs, don't point a camera at them and then pay someone else to make the real difference in their lives.
Don't get me wrong. I am truly sad for the poor child and his family. The loss of a child is unfathomably tragic. But his final wish was based on a lie and in the end it really didn't make much of a difference. He's still dead and Santa couldn't help him because Santa's a fraud.
Why the hell am I supposed to feel anything for an old guy who got thrown into a bad situation and lied to a dying child to make him feel better? And, based on what the child asked, he didn't really succeed, did he. What if he were dressed as a religious icon or a beloved Disney character instead of the Christmas Clown? Could a fake Jesus or giant pantomime mouse done any better or worse?
It's propaganda, and I'm not biting.
If you really want to help, then help. Go volunteer in a pediatric cancer ward (don't just send money) and read a dying kid a book or sing them a song or play a game or just give them some company. Don't throw this crap in my face to prove that Christmas fixes stuff or makes things better. Because, especially in this case, it didn't.
But not for everybody. This time of year is very hard for me. It's not because I lost a loved one or my puppy was run over or I didn't get the gift I wanted. Hell, my son was born on Christmas Eve (talk about a joyous gift). As the days darken so does my mood, but Christmas is what produces stress and anger and depression. I've tried drugs and counseling and even hypnosis. And here we are.
Christmas to me is a solution in search of a problem.
Go read the first post.
Ughhhh. From the article ...
To me that doesn't indicate happiness or even peace. The kid was scared and asking for something. I doubt in the mind of a 5-year-old "can you help me" meant "let me come to terms with my own inevitable death." He wanted to be magically cured by Santa Claus. Didn't happen.
Okay, root ... I typed a bunch of stuff after this that I just removed because I am angry and rationalizing. It does, though, as Elvis Costello wrote, make me look into that "deep dark truthful mirror."
When I was a child my family had a lot of problems. Some external, but mostly internal. I was constantly told not to worry, that everything was going to be all right. It wasn't. Even at Christmas, when everything is supposed to be better, it was worse. So it got to be that when adults told me things would be okay, i braced myself for the impending disaster that was looming on the horizon. It usually came. And I knew that they knew and were just lying, even if to protect me. It didn't. It made me feel less trusted and not really a part of the family. It also made me think that they thought I was gullible or stupid, which I seemed to have spent my life trying to disprove.
I could go on, but I think I might owe you $175/hour for the therapy. So let it stand as my problem.
And that, Charlie Brown, is what depression is all about.
zuben el genub
Extreme Android User
I've had theme trees but I made all my own ornaments. All we cared about was keeping the cats out of the tree.
The Vulcan had the worst time shopping. Like a Vulcan, he doesn't have any imagination. I'd have to tell him what to get the kid, or I'd have to get it.
The kid always wanted a home made present. I've made stuff for her for years. Still do.
She always got books. The Vulcan would sit and read with her at nights.
With wrapping - ran out of paper once, told the kid to use toilet paper. She used her imagination and did get a wrapped present for the Vulcan.
If we were shipping care packages to relatives back east, we had to make sure the cats weren't in the boxes.
The Vulcan had the worst time shopping. Like a Vulcan, he doesn't have any imagination. I'd have to tell him what to get the kid, or I'd have to get it.
The kid always wanted a home made present. I've made stuff for her for years. Still do.
She always got books. The Vulcan would sit and read with her at nights.
With wrapping - ran out of paper once, told the kid to use toilet paper. She used her imagination and did get a wrapped present for the Vulcan.
If we were shipping care packages to relatives back east, we had to make sure the cats weren't in the boxes.
zuben el genub
Extreme Android User
I still like this one:
D
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shalemail
Android Expert
As I have stated, I am not in general a Scrooge. I love Christmas time just not all the social and economical BS that goes with it. (Read that as the decorations, shopping, sales, Christmas cards, fake niceness.) I love this thread for a different reason than most I am sure, but love it none the less. That aside ...
Luna, I have such respect and affection for you and your contributions around here that it actually pains me to know how deeply you resent the holidays and how much they obviously cause you discomfort. All that said, have a great end to your year and start to the next, don't make resolutions you won't keep, hug your loved ones and keep on being the awesome, knowledgeable, helpful, curmudgeon we've all come to love and appreciate.
Luna, I have such respect and affection for you and your contributions around here that it actually pains me to know how deeply you resent the holidays and how much they obviously cause you discomfort. All that said, have a great end to your year and start to the next, don't make resolutions you won't keep, hug your loved ones and keep on being the awesome, knowledgeable, helpful, curmudgeon we've all come to love and appreciate.
Thanks for the words @shalemail. It's very similar to the social anxiety thread in that this is misunderstood. It's not that I hate Christmas in concept, but Christmas in practice hurts me. I wrote a Novel roughly based on it (as yet unpublished and in dire need of an editor).
Christmas (the whole season) is like a blizzard. You know it's coming and it's going to disrupt everything for a period of time. There's dread from the possible damage it can cause and anxiety in preparing. When it finally arrives, nothing you can do but wait it out. When it's over, you have to dig out, but eventually it's just a memory and then business as usual.
Christmas (the whole season) is like a blizzard. You know it's coming and it's going to disrupt everything for a period of time. There's dread from the possible damage it can cause and anxiety in preparing. When it finally arrives, nothing you can do but wait it out. When it's over, you have to dig out, but eventually it's just a memory and then business as usual.
