Honey or Vinegar

I honestly wasn’t going for that 20% discount. I swear I wasn’t.

I live in a rather resort-y area so the first long weekend of the pseudo-Summer (because Summer doesn’t start until late June which makes Memorial Day weekend “pseudo Summer”) is a BIG DEAL where I live. Roads are congested, bars are packed, and forget about eating in a restaurant.

Hubby and I were doing the usual early-Summer stuff of deciding what we needed, what was broken, etc. I decided to take a trip to K-mart which is pretty close-by. Sure, they must have a hammock or two and some fans and one of those glass sun tea jugs, right?

Why? Why did I think that K-mart was the answer to my needs? No hammocks, the selection of fans left much to be desired and the sun tea jugs were some hideous plastic that I couldn’t imagine drinking something from. Bad move.

I bought a few fans and some sunscreen, spent way too long in line and headed to Bed, Bath and Beyond which should’ve been my first choice anyway.

I can actually get to the Bed, Bath by me without getting onto a highway which should’ve been my first clue to why this would’ve been a better choice but I was thinking “discount store” not “pretty comforter store”.

Bed, Bath was a like a consumer’s dream date on a holiday weekend. They had a ton of staff on and each and every one of those staff members was polite, helpful and attentive without being obnoxious. It was amazing.

I buzzed through the store, I found the hammocks. They had a wide selection, hmmm. After some thought I chose the striped fabric one. I looked at their fans and immediately had buyer’s remorse about the crappy ones I just bought at K-mart but decided to soldier on. I couldn’t find any sun tea jugs so I asked an employee who, I admit, looked like he wasn’t gonna be all that helpful but to my surprise he led me directly to my desired item. AMEN!

I got to the front of the store and someone asked if I was ready to checkout and led me to a register where she cheerfully checked me out and wished me well. Truth be told the whole front-end was littered with helpful employees moving people quickly through the checkout process.

I normally go to Bed, Bath when I have one of their many, many, many 20% off coupons. They seem to send them out weekly and will honor them FOREVER (go ahead and try it, they never care if it’s expired). I had no coupons which broke my cheap little heart.

I got home and tried to put up the new hammock only to discover that the fabric seemed a bit flimsy and it was too short for our hammock frame. After a quickie beachfront bike ride I made a return trip to Bed, Bath. It was creeping up on 7PM by then and the area seemed to have slowed down to a peaceful simmer. Everyone that was on their way had arrived at their destination. The roads were passable, the stores were empty, it was delightful.

I went to the courtesy desk in Bed, Bath with my recently purchased hammock and explained that I needed to return it and why. The young man behind the counter (though quite dorky, a toast to dorks everywhere) was very pleasant and helpful. I promised him I’d be right back with my alternate hammock purchase.

On my way back a female employee asked if I needed help or was ready to checkout, I thanked her but explained I was exchanging an item. She joined the young man behind he courtesy desk and started to do some retail-ish tasks.

I asked if either of them was the store manager, the female employee said that she was the front-end manager in charge and asked if there was anything she could do for me. She did NOT ask if there was a problem which was really nice of her to not assume that everything equals a problem. I told her that all I wanted to do was let a manager know what an absolutely pleasant experience I’d had shopping in that store TWICE today. I told her that my K-mart experience was less than desirable but that my experience in that particular Bed, Bath store had been truly lovely.

During this little discourse the young man was doing my exchange, he asked if I had any coupons and I told him that, sadly, no, I had no coupons today. The manager leaned over and swiped something and punched in something and PRESTO…I had 20% off my purchase just as though I’d trotted in with one of those blue and white coupons many of us are so used to.

What was today’s lesson? That just like momma always said, “ya get more with honey than you do with vinegar”.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend and remember the people who serve this wonderful country this weekend as you enjoy your hot dogs and beer!

Shake yo’ groove thang, babeeee

I think the thing about inertia is that you don’t realize you’ve actually become inert. It’s true. When you’re in it you’re just too close to it. When you get out of it you can’t believe you didn’t notice sooner.

I just shook loose of a ten year bout of inertia. I suppose the inertia wasn’t the full ten years. The first few years I’m sure I wasn’t actually inert; you tend to achieve that state over time, it doesn’t just happen at the outset of something.

There I was plodding through the days at the same company year after year. It didn’t really hold much meaning for me. Over some time I stopped having to engage my brain each day for my job. It was just there.

Actually the only activity the job provided me was finding new and better ways to avoid it. I sought ever more creative ways to avoid going there each day. I’d look for reasons to be out of the office, sick, vacation, personal, business travel, offsite meetings, you name it I’d find it. I also noticed I’d developed a creative edge at shortening my work days, I’d come in later, leave earlier. My focus wasn’t on work but on getting out of that office as much as possible.

Coupled with that was this feeling that I couldn’t get out of that job. That I’d be left stranded, unemployed and unemployable if I left. I had this feeling that it was the last job on earth. I couldn’t leave it no matter how much I dreaded it.

Previously this was NEVER me. I would change jobs every four years or so. I was on the move, ever onward and upward but once that solid brick of inertia landed in my lap I was immobile.

I’ve officially been at a new job for just four days. It’s been nice. It really has. The benefits aren’t as good, some of the “policies” are better; there are distinct differences to be sure. One thing I need to do to complete the disconnect; I need to stop making those comparisons. It’s not the same, plain and simple. I’ve moved on. Certainly if you take into account my title and salary I’ve moved onward AND UPWARD but the most important thing right now, right this minute, is that I’ve moved ON.

What I feel more than anything else is freedom. I actually feel like I have options. It’s an odd feeling to have just started a new job but to also feel like I could move on if I had to. Right now I don’t want to but I like…no wait, I LOVE the feeling of freedom again; the feeling of being accountable to ME. My inertia at my previous job tipped the balance of power over my life away from me and onto the inertia (not really onto my previous company), I felt that I couldn’t move on, I was out of the game.

Now I feel like I’m back in the game and it feels GOOD.

I had to clean out ten years of crap from my old office. I loaded up box after box and dumped them in my car. My initial intention was to just transfer those boxes from my car to my new office but the fact was that I had no room for groceries in my car so I brought the boxes into the basement where they remain. I brought nothing into my new office from my previous life! Even that felt refreshing and new. I plan to go through the boxes and bring in select items that are useful to me. I plan to print out all new pix of the dogs to put in my office. It’s a new beginning for me.

I’m not going to claim that this is going to be perfect from a job perspective, but for right now, I feel like a new person in so many ways.

I feel like I’m shakin’ my groove thang, and I think I like it.

Random thoughts about celebrity…

I saw Ron Howard on the Today show. Ron Howard is certainly no looker but he came off as very smart and funny and kind. He clearly knows his craft on both sides of the camera. As a kid he was in everyone’s home first as that kid with the weird name, Opie, on the Andy Griffith show and then Mayberry, RFD. He went on to be everyone’s favorite nerdy teenager Richie Cunningham.

Throughout all of that he managed to learn everything about the business of making TV and movies. He married very young, by any standards but even more surprising he remains married to that same woman all these years later.

Paparazzi don’t seem to chase the Howard family around. I would imagine they could go to Target without being hassled. It would seem that they could have a carefree family dinner at the corner diner without anyone batting an eye.

He’s a hardworking man with a family. He could be any man in America with any family of many decades. One thing, though, he’s most likely really, REALLY RICH! We’re talkin’ megabucks here.

Now let’s flip this over. Brangelina. WTF? Really. I’d have to bet that Ron Howard has more financial assets than those two and yet I don’t hear about them jetsetting to a castle in France for any reason.

Brangelina often acts like it’s a hassle to be them, to have to dodge through airports with a staff to protect them; to be photographed on every family outing; all that happy horseshit.

But the reality here is that they have to love it, they must crave the attention. Neither of them have the broad range of talents that Ron Howard has (or if they do, they’re awfully good at hiding them somewhere out of view) yet their every move, their every career decision is news fodder.

If I were given the opportunity to meet one of those two famous couples and share a meal with them where we could talk about anything I would choose Mr. and Mrs. Ron Howard in a heartbeat. I’ll bet he’s got some great tales to tell and a very genuine way of telling them.

You can keep Brangelina for the headlines, that’s all they’ve got.

One Hour Photo

It’s cold here. Oh is it cold here. It’s a Friday night and I could’ve easily gone out with the girls but, frankly, just too damn cold.

Now that the C’mas holidays have come and gone we’re onto the next phase of movies to be shown on non-network channels. It appears to be the ramp-up to Valentine’s Day. It’s rom-com time on cable TV. So, trapped inside on a freezing cold Friday night with sole control of the remote I found myself watching a Sandra Bullock flick from 1998; Hope Floats.

1998 doesn’t seem all that long ago. I mean I remember this movie (as much as I remember any movie, not really being a movie person and all that). But there’s this scene in the movie when Sandra Bullock is looking for a job in her old hometown and she ends up working at a one hour photo lab. My first job was working at a similar type of photo lab, it was years ago and I thought it was the greatest job…it was the greatest job for a 16 year old. I made a lot of money for a kid and it seemed like exciting, important work. I was printing out people’s wedding photos and graduation photos and holiday photos, I had a hand in making the memories of strangers. I was 16 quite a long time ago now.

But 1998, that doesn’t seem that long ago to me. Yet there was Sandra Bullock struggling at the helm of a one hour photo shop’s printing machine.

Now this may seem like a random connection but times change. That machine was relevant just 12 years ago. Not long at all really, right?

I just read an article in The New Yorker about the US Constitution. It was eye-opening not least because it spoke to change, just like that obsolete machine in “Hope Floats”. The article talked about how few people actually know what’s in the Constitution and I realized that I was one of them. We think we know what it says but we don’t.

Even more interesting than pointing out our collective ignorance was pointing out our collective resistance to change. The Tea Party movement claims to be there to support the US Constitution and some have even offered up their own plain English interpretations of it. But what does this get us? What does it prove? I respect the founding fathers. I love that I live in America; that I grew up here. I really do love being American. Ben Franklin is mentioned in The New Yorker article delicately pointing out that what they drafted may or may not be the most perfect foundation for the new country.

It’s more than 200 years since that document started its journey. Times have changed. There have been big changes and little changes but there have been changes. I’m sure that those founding fathers really did have the best intentions at heart but even that thought gave me pause; founding fathers. Would we have that today? Women are captains of industry all over the place I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be the just men at that table if it were happening today.

When that document, the US Constitution, was drafted boy oh boy were things different. Women weren’t CEO’s and African-Americans weren’t called that and they sure as shit weren’t President of the United States of America. But times change. Thank the heavens up above…times do change. The Tea Party doesn’t want to embrace these many and varied changes, some good, some not so good and many that the jury is still out on…but they’re happening anyway.

When this group of people want their constitution back I’m not so sure they even know what their asking for and if they do, well, does it really fit into a vastly different society? I believe that the people brave enough to form this new country were just that, brave, but brave people embrace change, they know that nothing stays the same and they work at making the changes that are inevitable be good and valuable changes.

So, I don’t miss one hour photo shops. I love digital cameras, love the freedom to snap pictures whenever I want on my phone, that phone that goes everywhere with me instead of a phone tethered to a wall in my house. Taking pictures, making those memories, used to require remembering to buy film and batteries, remembering to bring the camera along and then after all was said and done, remembering to drop that film off at the one hour shop and hoping that you got a few good shots on that roll of film.

Not anymore, just click away as long as you’ve got battery power on your droid or iPhone you’ve got the chance to capture a memory. I love it; change that makes me happy.

I want to read the Constitution now, I hear it’s just 4,400 words, I typed almost that much in an e-mail last week. I want all of the tea partiers to read it too. Then I want them to think about all the changes they’ve seen in their years on the earth. Some good, some not so good and some, well, who knows just yet, but the point is that those men who wrote that document more than 200 years ago couldn’t even imagine a one hour photo shop no less the disappearance of them all in one lifetime (mine).

SMILE, SAY CHEESE!

Why we stay

A widely circulated Gallup poll shows that people leave their jobs because of bad bosses. Bad bosses seem to be bad for business, well if you want to keep your employees and not deal with turnover and all that goes with it.

But why do people STAY at a job? I just left a company I was at for TEN YEARS. Yes, TEN YEARS. Why did I leave? Yuppers, I’m not all that original, I left because of a bad boss (or two).

I knew that I was interviewing for jobs because I had to get away from a management situation I felt was toxic to me. But there was hesitation on my part. I would get called about a job but hesitate to interview and I decided to examine why I did that.

I figured out that the main reason I was sticking around that joint was for a bunch of perks completely unrelated to the actual job. I was getting zero job satisfaction, coupled with a boss that I couldn’t stand but I was sticking around for reasons that didn’t relate to the job or my boss at all.

I was even sticking around for things I didn’t use, I just liked knowing they were THERE.

What did we get? Oh we’ve gotten things like George Forman Grills (my husband called that “small appliance Wednesday”), more fleece jackets (of increasingly fabulous quality) than I’ll ever wear, from October through the end of last year they had special events every Friday including free lunch and snacks every single Friday, stuff like designer cupcakes and three different types of brownies, chair massages and a free gift wrapping service. We were awarded points like S&H green stamps that we could use to “buy” things like jewelry and Coach bags.

The list goes on and on…

Of those things I can say that we do use the grill, I wear the fleeces, but those Friday things? Nah. I’m always watching my weight so those Friday indulgences were more of an annoyance to me, who the hell wants to wander through the pantry area and see box after box of assorted designer cupcakes? Yes, I admit I did get one of those chair massages on a Friday afternoon…but it was kinda weird to be getting a massage at 3 in the afternoon at work, I get regular massages on my own and I think I’ll keep it that way.

The reason I was staying was for silly little things, little bribes the company put out there for just that reason, to get people to stay. When I thought about it I felt sad because it hinted that maybe, just maybe they actually know that there are serious management issues and instead of fixing those it’s easier to toss another shiny gift on the heap. I felt like a little kid that was easily duped into eating their veggies in exchange for a useless plastic toy. I didn’t need another fleece jacket or even a Forman Grill. I can buy those things but my inherent human greed kept me hanging on for the next little trinket. Ooooh, shiny things…I want them.

Even as I was closing in on a real job offer, something that sounded good, a good fit for me, a step up the food chain, a challenge and all that other happy horseshit, I was still hesitating. I had to make it through the holidays, I had to see what our holiday gift would be…it’s always something fab like an iPod or iTouch so I couldn’t miss out on that could I? I strung along my new job so I could milk every last shiny treat out of them before the end of 2010. Just so ya know, the gift wasn’t even worth it in the end.

And the time off…oh the time off, I think when all was said and done I came in at nearly 8 weeks off a year and no, I’m NOT a school teacher. It was hard to cut that back to just 6 weeks or thereabouts…but maybe if I don’t hate the job as much it won’t be as painful to be there…had I even considered that? Probably not and why not? Most likely because after ten years of mostly dreading going to work it’s hard to imagine that maybe, just maybe I won’t dread the next job quite as much which will certainly make it a bit easier to NOT have to pray for the next time I can take a day or ten off.

Now that it’s over, now that I’ll be starting a new job in a few short days, I realize how stupid I’ve been. I’ve been struggling against management decisions that I’ve questioned for quite some time but like a small child I was far too enamored by the dangling treat than by the rational knowledge that I needed to get the fuck out of there.

Will my new job be perfect? Who knows? I’m sure I’ll find stuff there that I don’t’ like, I hope that doesn’t happen for a few years at the very least but whenever it happens, if its stuff that I just can’t live with, well, I hope that I don’t linger past my time just because of some fancy shiny objects dangling in my face.

Those of you in jobs you hate, suffering with a boss that is mean, stupid, unbearable or any combination of those things, ask yourselves why the hell you’re staying. If you’re there because you really can’t find something else, I’m genuinely sorry for you, I really am and I know this economy sucks but if you started to sound like me and said you were there because you got a lot of vacation time you’d accrued and you couldn’t walk away from it or you got all kinds of fancy treats then it’s time to reconsider.

Do you hear what I hear?

The holidays, continued.

Amazing isn’t it? This little season from Thanksgiving ‘til December 25th (Christmas, if you will) has its very own segment of the entertainment industry. The music alone is staggering. In an industry that has been suffering for several years this little season can still generate big piles of cash. Just about everyone manages to eek out a holiday song or re-make a well-known holiday song and someone will buy it. I admit that I am a blatant holiday music whore. I’ll listen to it all no matter how cringe-worthy; matter of fact the more cringe-worthy the better.

There are touching songs and raunchy songs and funny songs. There are songs about snow and songs about no snow. Songs about love and joy and Santa and toys. Certainly there are songs associated with other seasons. Sure there are songs we hear that make us think of a particular Summer, but Summer songs aren’t really specific to Summer, they’re just songs that happen to get played a lot during a particular Summer. They don’t even come back around every year they just fade away from a current song to a heritage classic and then a golden oldie.

Not Christmas tunes though, nope. They come back around every single year with a few (hundred) to add to the heap. Let’s face it, that Bing Crosby version of White Christmas sounds as good today as it did when ol’ Der Bingle was still alive and being a crappy father and husband while putting on the image of the all ‘round great guy.

Speaking of snow…we were speaking snow, right? Notice that most or many of the holiday songs are focused on something to do with snow? All that hearkens back to the origins of the Yule season up in those Nordic and Germanic countries where snow in December and January would be pretty common. Basically holiday music disregards anyone living south of the snow line as well as south of the equator . Good ol’ Santa in his many guises is definitely dressed for some wintery weather. You don’t see Santa in a nice pair of cargo shorts and a Summer shirt. Snow, it’s all about snow. It’s about building snowmen and riding in horse drawn sleighs over the river and through the woods.

So yeah, there’s an entire sub-music industry built around one day of the year and a season that spans no more than four weeks. It’s shocking, fun in many ways but shocking that so much (mostly bad) music can come out of this season.

I admit that I have a huge collection of holiday music but I’ve kinda slacked off in recent years, I think the redundancy of it all made me lapse into bored apathy.

Holiday movies and specials are another sub-industry unique to this season. There aren’t nearly as many holiday specials on TV as there were when I was a kid. When I was a kid there were tons of variety show style holiday specials. Andy Williams had one, The Smothers Brothers, Bing Crosby used to ALWAYS have a holiday special, that’s where that awesome version of Little Drummer Boy with David Bowie came from. Now holiday TV programming is more along the lines of truly awful holiday movies primarily focused on a variation of “A Christmas Carol”. To mix things up a little there are the standard tearjerkers with touching endings; single moms who meet the love of their life where they least expect it or families reunited by the magic of the Christmas spirit.

Just like with the music, the TV shows are completely unrealistic and inappropriate at any other time of year. No one would believe that you could handcuff a guy you were waiting on in a luncheonette and end up marrying him by the end of the two hour movie (“Holiday in Handcuffs” complete with Mario Lopez AND his dimples) but in this season clearly ANYTHING is possible. I can’t get enough. It makes Saturday and Sunday afternoon movies the rest of the year pale by comparison.

Have ya noticed that they seem to recycle the same actors through most of the awful holiday flicks? There’s a crop of actors and actresses, C, maybe D listers who seem to show up over and over again in the same roles with different names and backdrops. It’s usually actors on their way back down the food chain, hey at least they’re working as actors and not waiting tables (I suppose).

When I was young television choices were limited to the major networks and a few peripheral channels so it did limit the outlets for holiday programming. With cable and satellite TV those limits have been blown out of the water. Now there are food and style networks that have their very own special holiday offerings with their very own level of awesomeness. The Food Network has all kinds of tips and tricks for holiday foods offering hours of overeating inspiring programming. HGTV and Style offer ways to dress up yourself or your home to reflect those fabulous holiday myths celebrated between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

By now you must be wondering if I’m for or against this glut of weirdly bad entertainment options four weeks at the end of every year. I’ll end that speculation right now. LOVE THEM. Of course the only reason I love them is because they are weirdly bad and maybe even because they are a tad out of reach. You’re usually not treated to a heavy dose of Christmas movies in March so just the fact that I have to wait for them makes them just that much more desirable.

Now, back to watching some holiday decorating tips on HGTV.

It’s the MOST … time of the year.

Warning: This may be a multi-part post…or not.

Disclaimer: As with everything on this blog, the views expressed here are my own if you disagree that’s fine, just like its fine for these thoughts and opinions to be mine.

There’s no denying that it’s officially the holiday season here in the USA. It’s been creeping up on us for months but now the full court press is on. Nearly every commercial is holiday themed; wait, why am I saying holiday themed? Nothing is “HOLIDAY” themed, they are all CHRISTMAS themed.

The American Atheists Organization(http://atheists.org/atheism/Christmas) put up a billboard outside the Lincoln Tunnel, the major entry to New York City from New Jersey. It went up the day before Thanksgiving, the “official” holiday, ummm, Christmas season kick-off. The image is a familiar one, three wise men guided by a star to a nativity scene, the message is much different, “You KNOW it’s a Myth, this season, celebrate reason”. I admit that I haven’t heard much press about this just yet but I can’t imagine it will exist there without scandal for the next four weeks. If it does then there are more reasonable people out there than I’ve thought possible. For years I’ve been inundated with billboards and bumper stickers telling us to “Put Christ back in Christmas” which is really far more offensive than what the American Atheists are putting out there.

Christians had to put Christ into Christmas in the first place. Yule or Yuletide (sorry, I just took a break to do a holiday movie trivia quiz online) was a celebration in the northern hemisphere with some pagan and cultural roots. There’re plenty of sources for info about the various traditions out there on the internet and because this isn’t a scholarly paper I’m not gonna hunt down references, you’ll just have to take my word for it and do your own damn research.

Yuletide was a big ol’ feast. The countries that celebrated it, places like Norway, Sweden and other cold places up north killed the necessary livestock for their winter meals and generally partied hard to get through their harsh and DARK winters. Evergreen trees were common in the forests of the Nordic and Germanic countries and so was darkness. That said, you’ve got forests of trees that never lose their greenery in winter and you have something that can symbolize endless life and re-birth…not necessarily the physical re-birth of a religious savior but the re-birth of more basic stuff…like plants which happens in the spring and plants equal food which equals LIFE. So if you light up those evergreen trees with some candles you bring light to the darkness (I’ve been up in those countries…it is DARK this time of year) combined you have a symbol that life will eventually return to the earth in the form of spring and also light will return as the seasons change. Now all you Christian folks are welcome to co-opt that stuff for your own needs but let’s not tout putting Christ BACK in Christmas because I’ll be responding by saying let’s put Yule back in ol’ Yuletide.

The twelve days of Christmas, that would be December 25th to January 6th, oh yes it is. I did my research on this many years ago because my birthday happens to be twelve days before Christmas and people would make a point of telling me I was the first gift of the twelve days of Christmas, I had to know so I looked it up (long before the days of the internet I might add). They were wrong. Yule straddles the end of December and the beginning of January and the festival would last twelve days generally the darkest days of the year. Again our Christian buddies liked it so they decided to attach their own meaning to it, January 6th is often referred to as Little Christmas or Epiphany. The myth is something about it being the day the Magi reached the baby Jesus in the manger which works quite nicely to marry up Christian myth with pagan traditions and end all that overeating and overdrinking and hunker down to get through the remainder of the cold, dark winter months.

You get the picture, Christianity was spreading but they needed to sell themselves to the masses and the best way to do it was to glom onto an existing celebration.

Flash forward lo these many years and the whole mess has turned into, well, a whole mess. I have to wonder if those ol’ Yule feasts were also fraught with family drama the way today’s are. They must’ve been, right? I mean nothing says family drama like downing a few too many pints of mead?

A recent article I accessed through CNN.com bashed Christmas TV ads like Lexus and DeBeers because of the sheer extravagance of it all. I don’t know a single person in my half century + on planet earth that has ever walked outside Christmas morning to see a shiny new luxury car in their driveway with a big red bow on top. I don’t even know someone that has walked outside to see a used Chevy in their driveway on Christmas morning no less a friggin’ Lexus but there it is, every year, this ridiculous commercial put out there to make all other gifts seem pale and inadequate. I don’t even know what I’d do if I walked out and saw a new Lexus in my driveway. Honestly, if we had enough money to do that wouldn’t I want to go with hubby and pick it out myself?

The DeBeers diamond commercial was also specifically razzed and as one of the commenters pointed out, getting engaged on Christmas is NOT all that original of an idea so DeBeers is just pushing the buttons on the least creative members of the male population. Kay Jewelers can get lumped in there for the same lack of originality. I saw a commercial just last night for some other diamond ring that was a specific style, an endless knot or something like that. Now here’s my thoughts on that…do you really want an engagement ring that anyone else could also have? Seriously, don’t you want your engagement ring to show some small degree of originality and not be a mass-produced style from a chain jewelry store?

The Folgers coffee commercials make me crazy (and not in a good way). To be honest that sister and brother creep me out a bit if ya know what I mean. She’s just a tad too excited to see him and she greets him in that weird way, “SISTAH?” I don’t get it, she’s the sister, is she reminding him who she is? She says it in this weird questioning way that is just odd. I also don’t know why the brother is traveling from West Africa, where did they get THAT from? Were they just trying to find some faraway exotic place to toss into the commercial?

Any commercial with the lovely Budweiser Clydesdales works for me. Love to see them prancing through fields of snow with the jolly sound of jingle bells in the background. I never get tired of seeing those. I’m not sure I understand the Tommy Hilfiger commercials and I don’t think they even advertise most of the year except for Christmas but there they are bounding out of some artsy-sporty vehicle in a field somewhere dressed in artsy-sporty Hilfiger clothes, pointless.

I can’t call this anything other than the Christmas season…not because I want it that way but because the commercials I’m talking about either flat out pander to Christmas or they imply Christmas so strongly that it’d be foolish of me to pretend that they’re holiday commercials. There are the Pillsbury commercials with the slice and bake Christmas cookies or the crescent rolls, there are the 3M commercials for the various tape and wrapping products. I have to give 3M credit for doing really excellent line extensions for their products. They now have a little tape dispenser that goes on your wrist and doles out precut pieces of tape to make gift wrapping easier, NEAT. They have those hanger things that are temporary and don’t leave marks on your walls, doors or mantels, again, NEAT. They have found a way to take some truly boring products and made them into something pretty useful to serve Christmas decorating needs. Kudos to their development and marketing departments (seriously, no sarcasm here, I love what they’ve done with their product line).

I’ve touched on the American Atheists (and in case you were in any way confused…I’m 100% in favor of what they’ve done with that billboard), they tout reason and they actually seem to mean it. Here’s how I feel, if you derive some sense of comfort or community by believing in a specific deity and worshiping something in a specific way then I say “go for it” with the caveat to not bother me with it. Don’t try to make me follow what you believe and please be kind and respectful to me and others who choose not to believe what you believe.

Now that I’ve put that out there I have to say that there are definitely some serious extremists who just won’t do that, who won’t play nice in this big ol’ sandbox known as earth. The American Family Association is one of them (http://action.afa.net/ ). They compiled a list of “naughty or nice” retailers, what, you may be wondering makes them naughty or nice? I was surprised to find out that what made a retailer naughty or nice was whether they said "Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”! Really? How FUCKING INTOLERANT; how completely EXclusionary. They think that if they have a holiday shop with ornaments and other decorations that it MUST be called a Christmas shop not a holiday shop! Why? What if they include in that area some Mennorahs and dreidls? What if you celebrate yuletide and put up a tree and decorations in honor of that? Nope according to the AFA it’s Christmas and nothing else. It’s because of folks like this that my Atheist buddies (of which I would say I am one) feel compelled to put up a billboard outside the Lincoln Tunnel pointing out that IT’S A MYTH. It may be a lovely myth. It may bring comfort and joy to millions of people, I get that. But please, please, please don’t shove your myth down my throat along with the turkey and cranberry sauce. Hell, Harry Potter is a myth too but the books are a lot easier to read.

NEXT UP: Holiday entertainment