Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Hippos.

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I have devised a new home security plan.

The concept is simple, affordable in the long term, and will easily have you the talk of the neighbourhood.

It is unfortunately a logistical nightmare and may draw the ire of the local bylaw enforcement officers (though I assure you they do not have a law under which to exact punishment).

So what, you ask, is my ingenious, all purpose, wonder-alarm?

Revenge-Hippos.



My cousin Karli is travelling to Africa in March and has graciously agreed to procure the needed instruments to amass said army, I expect to begin beta trials of my new idea in about June, possibly a little later depending on our training schedule.

I anticipate it will take municipal level policy makers at least a year to enact legislation explicitly prohibiting hippos kept in the home, which will give me a solid year of quality, entertaining home protection services.

and of course when the lawmakers do indeed catch up with me, everyone knows there is little out there to rival the delicacy of Hippo-Steaks!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

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*** Just a note - I realised after I typed this up that some of it is similar to my last post... I hereby blame the morphine for my forgetfully rambled nonsense.***


I find Christmas traditions fascinating...

Exibit A





The Christmas Tree.

Whoever decided that a good way to celebrate the birth of God's son and man's saviour was to chop down a tree in the bitter cold, haul it in the house, decorate it with things that are likely to catch fire, and force the homeowners to deal with keeping it watered/alive, and picking up buckets of needles from their floor not just through the season but for months to follow deserves to be shot. In fact... we usually find needles nestled into cracks, corners and furniture folds well into November... we usually manage to FINALLY get them all disposed of just weeks before we go out and chop/haul/decorate/pick up from our next Christmas tree. How does this celebrate Jesus??? Other than inducing a unique form of suffering upon whomever cleans the house it really doesn't scream "yay for our saviours birth!".... more like "lets rush the baby to the ER because she has pine needles lodged in her throat!".

Stupid trees.



Exibit B




The Poinsetta.

Other than being red, and blooming in the winter (when kept in a climate controlled building) what is it about this that has ANYTHING to do with Christmas??? It's fairly ugly... short lived... poisonous... I guess it provides a quick 'out' for anyone desperate to be excused from a particularly boring family gathering.... just eat a few flowers and you too can enjoy debilitating diarrhea. In many cases such an ailment is preferrable to the torture of Uncle Ed and Auntie Bertha arguing over who gets to eat the turkey neck.



Exibit C





Cookies. Really? Let's take a nation with out of control obesity, and type II diabetes, and spend a full month cramming cookies down their throats??? Again with self destructive holiday traditions? Nothing says 'yay the Lord Jesus is here to save us' like slowly cramming the small vessels of our heart with sugar coated lard blobs? Don't get me wrong - I love a good cookie... but I'm 94lbs, I can afford to love a good cookie... unfortunately 80% of my fellow north Americans cannot... Perhaps we should start celebrating with celery? A nice pretty tray of Christmas Celery? It's green, which is Christmassy (still not sure what red and green has to do with Jesus' birth but that's another rant), we could put some red bell pepper slices with it and we could have a downright festive veggie tray! Not sure it would take off.






Exibit D




The Jolly Elf himself. In what is in my opinion the most bizarre twist in Christmas traditions, Santa Claus and his flying reindeer (???) magically deliver presents to all the good girls and boys around the world. Santa is a long standing tradition, previously known as 'Father Christmas' and believed to be fashioned after Woden - the old norse god - a diety of a long dead religion. Exactly what Santa, and his magical reindeer entourage has to do with Jesus' birth is beyond me. The gift giving of course stems from the 3 wisemen and their gifts to baby Jesus, however that concept has been horribly perveted by commercial North America and the 'buy buy buy' panic that follows American Thanksgiving. Sugar plums and candy canes used to fill children's dreams, where today it's Xboxes, 100$ brand name sweaters, and expensive vacations...


Yes. Christmas has been so twisted and perveted and commercialized that it is hardly recognizable as a Christian celebration of the birth of Christ.

Figures from long dead religions have overtaken the holiday season, and traditions seem dead set on overindulgence, unhealthy treats, and promotion of hedonism, in a massive push that culminates with New Years - a time where everyone is expected and encouraged to resolve to undo the physical damage they brought upon themselves 'in the name of baby Jesus'.

Last week I asked my 5 year old son why we have Christmas. His answer was "So Santa knows when to bring all my presents to me". ~sigh~

I realized suddenly that I had failed miserably in my role of 'educator'. I began to explain to him that it was actually a birthday, for Jesus... He responded with "who is Jesus?".

This is a child who has gone to Sunday School, Church, and has a Bible. While our family is far from 'religeous', we do strive to educate our children on different religions and beliefs, etc, with a bit of a Christian leaning... yet he fully beleived that Christmas was simply to remind Santa to bring Tyler his presents. oye.

So we had a little chat... Brandon's response was that Baby Jesus was born in a stinky place. Tyler's reaction was that the wise men brought kind of dumb presents for a baby... We're making a bit of progress.... I'm on the hunt for a 'Christmas Story' book for the kidlets.

I'm sure I'll find it around the same time Santa finds all the presents he will be showering on our kids this year... along with all the cookies we will be scarfing and the poinsetta's we will have on hand just in case.

Ahh Christmas.