Politics Becomes an Assessment of Holidays

I think Republicans should be banned from the face of the Earth. Then again, I think Democrats should be given the same treatment. Why has no one managed to heed George Washington's advice, given in his farewell address?
The good man warned the nation against political parties. He said they would lead to the division of the nation, which could be detrimental to the government's efficacy.
We've done a great job with that one.
He also said we should not become involved in the affairs of other countries. We have one of our own to run, and that's hard enough.
We've also managed to botch that one pretty well, too.
And now we celebrate the Fourth of July by drinking in excess and shooting off fireworks.

It seems to me we do a pretty poor job with holidays, come to think of it.

The pilgrims most likely did not eat turkey at their first Thanksgiving, nor was it the last Thursday of November. They managed to wipe out an entire indigenous people with foreign diseases and an unfair weapons advantage.
And now we teach small children that Indians and Pilgrims got along just fine. No mention of the fact that we've turned around and forced Indian nations onto designated bits of land. We took pretty much everything that was sacred to them. And now little kids color pictures of smiling Indians in headdresses and happy, porky pilgrims eating turkey.
Why do we even call it Turkey Day? What the hell does native oppression and/or cultural unity have to do with turkeys? The turkey isn't even our national bird (and not for a lack of trying, on Ben Franklin's part). Maybe we should refer to it as Eagle Day, and celebrate by roasting eagles. After all, isn't that just as plausible as turkeys?

And how about Easter? Completely bastardized. What was once solely-religious, the return of Christ and all that, has now become a candy-crazed manic festival involving eggs and chicks and bunnies (bunnies? Really?) that leave candy-filled eggs and other gifts for kids the morning of the holiday.
How the hell have rabbits become associated with the return of Christ? Was he a rodent? Was he known for eating carrots? Did his disciples perhaps know him to be a timid character, and so dubbed him "The Bunny?"
Maybe it's because the image of Jesus hiding plastic eggs in bushes and trees is a bit silly. Certainly, a rabbit doing such a job is far more realistic.

And Christmas. The granddaddy of consumer mania. Retailers rely on money spent on this single holiday alone more than on any other occasion on the calendar.
And what, again, was the original point of Christmas?
Supposedly, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior (if you cannot tell, I have more than a little disdain for the whole affair).
And we celebrate it by spending absurd amounts of money on things like small lights and inflatable snowmen?
This is not to say I am against getting presents, on the contrary, I think Christmas is wonderful in this respect. But we really should stop harboring all pretense about just what we're celebrating. There are the few out there who have a real view of Christmas, go to church the Eve and Day of, and embrace the holiday at its core. But the rest of us should really just call it Consumer Day.

And why the hell have we not bastardized other religious holidays?
Why is there no Rabbit hopping around hiding matzoh balls? Why don't we have a pre-Ramadan shopping frenzy? How come we haven't capitalized by creating some kind of Solstice Fairy who leaves presents to well-behaved children?

My proposition is this: find some unconventional holiday, unconventional in terms of the rest of the populace's awareness, and create some kind of silly symbol for the holiday. We need a President's Day Goose, an End of Daylight Savings Fairy, etc. I've had enough of this consumer-crazed nonsense.
It's time to come up with some ideas of our own.

Hello, World

So this is my first venture into the world of blogging. At one point, I was set completely against the idea, but then I thought, hey, why not, I have a big mouth, why not share it with the Internet.

But why is it called a "blog?" Why not a "rant?" Or "prose?"

Who decides these things? Where are these people from?

And what exactly am I going to talk about on here? I feel a little like a person shouting into a canyon- the place is so big, who is out there that will hear me?

It also feels a little like talking to myself. The only person who is guaranteed to read any of this is me.

I recently moved to college. I spent most of my conscious life yearning to go to college and live on my own, and now that I'm here, I'm a little disappointed. The people here are mostly morons. I have met a few cool people, but I've also run into far too many simple-minded sheep.

I mean, what is this obsession with partying all of the time? What is so alluring about being drunk and consuming cheap, poorly-made beer?

And all of these kids who like to try mushrooms, and LSD, and all kinds of other psychotropic drugs. I feel I can safely say I am crazy enough without drugs.

And Portland was a poor choice to try and get away from crazy people. They are everywhere.

They're on the transit lines. They're at the coffee shops. They're in the grocery stores.

I used to think I had mental problems. And then I moved to Portland.

An example:

The bus to take me home from a friend's house was late, and it was around midnight. Midnight in Portland on a Saturday is a strange time to be stranded by a late bus, by the way.

A gargantuan woman stood on the street corner two blocks from the bus stop, and when I walked past her, she began to yell.

"This is my damn corner, you ho!" she shouted. "Go find your own place!"

This tirade continued long after I had continued down the street.

As I stood waiting for the bus, a homeless man walked over and stood by me. He introduced himself and asked what my name was.

Meg is a fairly common name, and is in fact not even my legal name, and so I gave it to him.

He asked if I wanted him to wait with me until the bus arrived. I told him no thank you, as politely as possible.

He asked if I had a bike. I said I do, indeed, have a bike. He asked if he could go bike riding with me some time.

The bus showed up, thank the higher powers that may be, and I escaped.



Portland is an unusual place. Even if it does have a large populace of homeless people, most seem relatively benign. As a city, it has the attitude much more of a small town than a real metropolis, compared to other cities I have encountered over the years.

But I still cannot help but feel surrounded by insanity.



If insanity intrigues you, I suggest taking Anthropology. I have begun to realize humankind is progressing through time by becoming crazier and crazier. We do things that do not make logical sense, for whatever pretense we give- happiness, religious conviction, et cetera. Somehow, part of our population manages to make discoveries of all kinds. However, these kinds of things tend to disagree with previous information, and because of this, the majority or some large minority (ah, an oxymoron) refuses to accept it. Take, for example, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. This flies in the face of previous knowledge stating the Earth is the center of the universe. The majority imprisoned the man who discovered said information.

We are an oxymoron in general. Humans tend to be a highly adaptive species that resists change at all costs.



One more quick rant about the insanity of humankind, and then I'll sign off.

This recent stroke of craziness would be the whole "save the Earth" campaign.

Since when has Earth ever needed saving?

Let us put this in realistic terms. Earth itself is a large spinning ball of rock and metal, revolving around the sun. It has been here before our cellular ancestors rose from the primordial muck, and it will be here long after we've all managed to kill each other.

This "environmental" campaign is not some noble movement to save a planet that is indifferent towards every species. It's a campaign to save our own sad asses.

And do not get me wrong- I am all for making sure we can still survive for another few generations. Death by hole in the ozone layer sounds awful to me.

My problem with this is the fact that people work on their own egocentric missions in the name of some other thing. Another great example of this is the calendar.

Who says it is 2009? Who wrote this? Why is this true?

If we were truthfully accurate and timed time from the beginning of the planet, the number would be quite a bit bigger. But we won't do that, because we've decided the only years that count are the ones where we've been in on the action.

And back to saving the planet. What an unusual behavior we have developed, this need for ulterior motives to do something beneficial. Why is it so bad to say, "We want to cut emissions so we don't all choke on the smog and die?"



Humans are crazy. We do things that will make future generations scratch their heads. And we are all fine with it. We look back at the Holocaust, and Rome, and the Aztecs, and we think we've "learned from our mistakes."
And then we have no qualms with killing thousands of people in the Middle East because they aren't like us. We're fine with imposing our own governing rules on people who have thousands of years of culture and history built up behind them. We're fine with condemning people for killing, and punishing them by executing them.

So I say to you, reader of this rant, hello. My name is Meg. And I think everyone is crazy.