Bartender Geek

Seems like it's after midnight here, which makes it Christmas Day.

Guess this means that we failed to win the War on Christmas this year. Well, there's always next year.

First, you have The Other -- that which is from the other world, eerie, eldrich, weird.

Then you have people who notice that the time is like that, and use it to let loose their own chaotic side.

Then society notices this time, and finds ways to tame it, and channel it -- to let the channeling of chaos be directed into less-destructive means -- perhaps there is destruction, but it is a lesser level of destruction.

Society keeps working to lessen and lessen that destruction, and it becomes ritualized.

And then it becomes commercialized.

What is Hallow'een? Why are all the costumes nowadays pre-made, and slutty? Why can you not give out homemade goodies for trick-or-treating? Why do you give them out at all? And why, in more and more neighborhoods, are there no trick-or-treaters, and what does "trick-or-treat" mean, anyway?

First, you have the night of the cross-quarter day when the veil between the worlds is thinnest -- a delicate day, a careful day. One where one must be very careful about what one says or does.

Or you have the night of the Winter Solstice -- the darkest night of the year -- a day full of threat, and yet also promise -- a day sacred to the deity in charge of Revenge for the Romans, celebrated with feasts. And celebrated as the birthday of the human manifestation of the Christian God, and celebrated as a birth-and-death day of many other gods, as well. Also a perilous time.

And people notice that day, and respond to it -- but you have a second response: instead of spending the day being careful, you spend the day being as careless as you can.

Somehow, teenage males always seem involved in this step. And alcohol. Alcohol and teenage boys. These days -- and nights -- of peril and danger become days and nights of mischief and revelry.

"Revelry", by the way, is far from a completely pleasant idea. The word "revel" comes from the same root as "rebel". These are nights of danger in the most physical, brick-to-the-back-of-the-skull manner, as much as from the spirits which also form a danger.

And yet -- there is benefit to them, as well. "Rebel" and "revel" come from the same root -- and it may be that having the one inoculates against the other. Besides, entirely quashing these things never works. So you channel it.

Sure, it may be that there is a riot, a rebellion. But what if you formalize that rebellion? Elect a King and Queen of Misrule? Instead of having the drunken mob break into the houses and steal your food and drink, they stand outside and yell for you to bring it out to them. Yell? Perhaps we can do better, and make them SING for their figgy pudding and wassail bowl. Or, perhaps, instead of simply destroying your property, they'll give you a fair chance -- they'll offer you a deal -- if you don't want them to play pranks, such as setting your fields on fire, or putting your wagon on your roof, they'll give you a chance to bribe them. They'll offer you the choice: trick, or treat.

And as they get more formalized, they get less dangerous. Less terrible. They become for younger children -- not the drunken mobs of teenagers, but elementary school children.

We decorate a tree. Because the children enjoy it -- and we tell them stories of a jolly fat man who brings toys. Oh, sure, I guess if he divides people into good and bad, I guess he makes judgments, too, but we don't think about that. EVERYONE must be good, right?

And we've ritualized it to the point that we all know what to expect. It's ritualized to the point of being standardized. And, if it's standardized, then can't it simply be bought, rather than made? It's more efficient that way.

Just as the Fair Folk are a proud and terrible race, not to be named less they notice you and take offense, and yet fairies are little more than butterflies with human faces. How can Titania and Tinkerbell be of the same race? But we control our ideas, shrink them, make them less terrible.

What is an angel? I saw a quote once: some person wrote a book in which they claimed that everyone has a guardian angel, but many times, we overlook them.

And the quote asked, how the HELL is it possible to overlook an angel? An angel is a Messenger of God -- the problem with an angel isn't in OVERLOOKING it -- it's in not having the composition of your soul blasted to nonexistence by the inherent power of the radiant Glory of the angel. Angels can just about tone their existence down to the point where exceptional humans can SURVIVE an encounter with one -- NOTICING them isn't usually an issue.

How do you get from there to the idea of a cherub that you could, y'know, MISS?

We take the frightening, awesome things, ideas, and times of our life. And we make them safe. Christmas is a time for family, and presents, and not a time for overthrowing the social order and slaughtering the right in their beds and stealing their things. New Year's Eve isn't for getting drunk in public -- it's for the wonderful First Night celebration, with artwork, puppet shows, and fireworks. Halloween is for children dressed up like goblins, and not the real ones. And not even dressed up as real goblins, but dressed up as Willem Dafoe dressed up as Norman Osborn dressed up as the Green Goblin. And they trick or treat during daylight hours, since our government has so kindly extended Daylight Saving Time to make sure that they don't even need to experience the night during All Hallows' Night.

But.

There is only so far we can go. And we've gone too far. And that's why this one is bursting at the seams.

All that which we have repressed, pushed back, turned our clocks against -- it's all still there. And these times of year still touch it. We in Boston are fortunate in that we won the World Series and therefore were able to spend October 30th screaming and dancing through the streets, drinking, and watching our heroes dance Irish-influenced jigs through the streets of Boston, to Dropkick Murphys' music. That helped us.

But not the rest of you.

Why are there no non-sexualized costumes for women?

And why are there starting to be sexualized costumes for GIRLS?

What are we repressing, and where is it oozing out through the seams?

Doesn't "Jack Chick" sound like the name of a gritty noir two-fisted detective hero?

And doesn't "Doctor Bronner" sound like the name of someone who might be a bad guy he was trying to put away?

It couldn't be a fanfic -- it would have to be a comic. But it would work.

"Yeah, Doc -- your syncretism might fool some of those mooks out there -- but you know as well as I do that it's a one-way ticket to hell. I know what you're up to -- and I'm going to take you down."

So this story just popped into my head. It's really just a first draft, so if anyone wants to offer any suggestions, feel free.
( Read more... )

So, one of the people on my friends list was in a discussion on someone else's journal, about the nature of religion, and was mentioning the discussion, and I figured I should jump in and offer my 2 cents. And as long as I offered them there, I figured I could offer them here.

(As it turned out, my input wasn't actually useful, because people just sort of ignored it and said, "Well, despite all historical evidence and theological study which shows that I'm wrong, I still think I'm right." I eventually had to say, "Oh yeah? Well, YOUR definition of religion is WRONG, and mine is RIGHT, and I know this because people pay me $90 a week to teach their kids what religion is." I hate using "arguments from authority." I just kinda got frustrated. . . )
( So, here's what I posted )

Blame this on dakiwiboid. I got to it through her LiveJournal. And she got to it from Diane Duane's blog.

Anyway.

This is a discussion of, and, more importantly, a downloadable MP3 of, the worst rendition of "O Holy Night" ever done, anywhere. (And I'm including this one as one of the ones that is better.) The supposition is that this was an audition tape sent in for the Christ In Youth summer program talent show. By someone who, presumably, thought he had talent.

The first twenty seconds or so are just wince-worthy. Then the next twenty seconds are actively painful. But then, something changes. And it becomes Ed Wood-level great.

My stomach hurts from laughing too much. I may start listening to this clip in lieu of doing sit-ups.

The discussion is here:

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000570.php

If you just want the goods, the MP3 is here:

http://www.hipcast.com/export/Pcdb6ba80abb10db44cedbd78f4ac15adYVhxQFREYmJ3.mp3

So, I just went to the convenience store across the street to get a drink of juice (I have plenty of juice in the house, but I saw that Fonzi, the owner, was in, and I wanted to buy something and say hi), and he asked me whether Anna had put that thing up in my front yard for grapes or something, and I said that, no, I'd done that for a Jewish holiday. There were two other customers in the store at the same time, and they had both been wondering what it was, too, so I gave them the one-sentence summary ("Two thousand years ago, everyone would go to Jerusalem for the Jewish new year, but there was another holiday like a week or so later, so, instead of everybody going back home, they'd just put up those things and live in 'em for a week, and so we do that to remember it. 'Course, if you're in the Mediterranean, you can actually live in 'em -- around here it's a little cold for that, so it's more symbolic. But when I was a little kid, I'd sometimes get my sleeping bag and camp out in it, but I'm a little old for that these days.")

One of the folks said that he used to know a rabbi down on one of the streets around here that would do that, and I told 'em all that, next year, when I put the thing up again, feel free to ring my doorbell and I'll feed them, 'cause we're supposed to have guests over for it.

I like living in a neighborhood. I like having neighbors. I like being able to do weird Jewish things and have people ask me about them. It feels good, y'know? Our town has Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Unitarians, Congregationalists, Jews, Pagans, atheists, and all sorts of folks, so I feel comfortable talking about being Jewish. If you live around here, you've got to be more-or-less cool with other kinds of folks. Fonzi is, I think, a Lebanese-born Christian, although I'm not sure about either of those parts, and he's got no real problem with Jews, Muslims, Anglos, or anything.

The other thing I notice, and this is kind of unrelated to my first point, but I've been thinking about it for a couple days, anyway: I do religion because I like it. This is good, because it means that I've got no problem if other people DON'T like doing religion. If I didn't like my religion, but did it anyway, I'd be doing it because I felt I had to, and I'd get kind of put out of other people didn't do religion.

But, for me, I like religion, and I like role-playing-games, and, if you don't like doing religion, that bothers me exactly as much, and for exactly the same reasons, as if you don't like playing role-playing games. Which is to say, "not in the slightest," and "why should it?"

Okay. It sucks, because I know so many people who are Christians who use their Christianity to be decent human beings. Yet I STILL have a visceral negative reaction to the word "Christian" -- even when, if I THINK of Christians I know, they are good people, and part of their goodness comes from and is shaped by their Christianity.

Then I see a story like this, and I say, "Yep, those are the sorts of things which caused my negative reaction in the first place."
( My thoughts below )

This one was at Temple Beth Avodah in Newton -- which is a GORGEOUS building -- well, actually, it's a nice building but GORGEOUS grounds. It's also off a maze of twisty little streets, all alike, so I was fifteen minutes late, but it all worked out okay anyway.

I've been working for Bruce Silverlieb for these parties, and I think he's fantastic. The parties all go off without a hitch, everyone has a good time, the staff is competent and totally together, and Bruce feeds us and is an AMAZING cook.

For this one, I was working with another bartender, and we were just serving mimosas, bloody marys, and soft drinks. But the parents of the bat mitzvah were old friends of Bruce's, so he wanted to make sure that everything was absolutely PERFECT.

Not that I've ever been anything less than absolutely perfect while working for him. Um, except for showing up fifteen minutes late today. Oh, and that time that I'm pretty sure that I served a kid with a fake ID. But other than that.

So, we were absolutely perfect. A bunch of people came up to us to compliment us on how nice the bar looked, and how smoothly we were making things run. My general answer to that is, "I know. That's just how good we are."

I got to chat with people during slow points. I talked to the, um, beadle, or maybe Shabbes Goy, or maybe custodian -- I don't know what his title is, but every Temple has one, and the whole place would fall apart without him (they're invariably male). He's from Peru, and looking at him, you can tell -- he looks mostly Peruvian Indian, with a little Hispanic mixed in. I really liked him. He rowed competitively back in Peru, at a yacht club he was a member of, he is planning to spend all day tomorrow swimming, because the place he lives has a pool and, "if you have a weekend like this, you don't waste it -- you know next Sunday is going to be cold, or raining, or something." Smart man.

I was also amused by one of his turns of phrase -- tomorrow, his plans are to get up early, "go and drop off my sins, and spend the rest of the day in the pool, before I go to work in the evening."

Isn't that a great phrase? I mean, it almost made me want to be Catholic for a second -- you can go and drop off your sins, like you take the garbage to the dump, and then, once the chore of emptying out all the ick in your soul is done, you can spend the rest of the day swimming. It's like, y'know, a maintenance chore -- one of those things that you have to do every week or so, so that your soul doesn't become stinky and attract flies and stuff.

I bet it works, too.

I also spent a few minutes chatting with a woman who works for an ambulance service, as a driver. I don't think she's a paramedic -- what she does is pick up and drive around people who are in wheelchairs. She was cool, too. She was going to spend tomorrow fishing with her father.

Um, I guess that's the most interesting folks I talked to, and now we're going to go off to roozle and sunspiral's beginning of summer party.

Here's what snapped it all into focus for me. Flemming Rose, the editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, a right-wing paper, realized that Muslims are offended by physical depictions of Muhammad -- drawings and the like. He thought this was stupid. So he decided to get artists to draw Muhammad in cartoons.

So: a person decides to do something offensive, purely because it's offensive, in order to see how the people to whom it is offensive will react.

We have a word for that here on the Internet.

It's called "trolling."

And once you realize that, the whole thing makes sense. . .

September:
Jyllands-Posten newspaper of Denmark:
"MUHOMMED IZ The SUXX0RS!!!1!1! IZLAM SUXXXX! MUZL:IMS SUX!"

Almost every Muslim who hears about this:
"It's a troll. Ignore the troll. Don't feed the troll."

Jyllands-Posten newspaper:
Is mostly ignored.

A couple Muslims, here and there:
"D00d, you're being an asswipe. Stop it."

Nothing much happens. Months pass. Then the Jyllands-Posten newspaper gets it buddies involved -- after all, if your FIRST attempt at trolling fails, get a bunch of friends together and troll again:

"LOOKAETZ THE WEEERD MUSLIMS ALL OFF#ENDED CAUZ MUHOMMED SUXXXORS!!"

Again, not too much reaction, until, finally, JACKPOT! Finally, they get a troll to bite on the OTHER side!

They are given the gift of Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, who bites exactly the way that Jylands-Posten HOPED someone would bite.

"OMG! WTF!1 YOU I KEEEEL j0000!"

Now, things have gotten good -- once you've got trolls on BOTH sides, THEN you're cookin'.

'Cause, at THIS point, you can't even be a REASONABLE person on either side without outside folks thinking you're allied to the trolls. And, in effect, at this point, if you're a reasonable person making reasonable points about the importance of freedom of the press, and secular society, or about the importance of multicultural respect, and treating other people's beliefs with dignity even if you don't agree with them -- well, then you ARE allied to one set of trolls or the other.

At this point, the only thing that reasonable, mature people can do is post the whole thing to LJDrama or fandom_wank, and point and mock the whole kerfluffle.

The problem is that this has become a flamewar with real flames. I mean, when we talk about incendiary rhetoric now, we're talking about actual, literal incendiary devices to go with it. And this rarely happens on the Internet, since few browsers have implemented POIP -- Petrol Over IP.