Rants.

Thoughts on Christmas by Ben Stein.

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

I was recently forwarded this Rant in an email (sadly it also came with more thoughts that while good, were not written by Ben Stein, but only attributed to him -- please always double check the validity of your forwards!), and thought it expressed a lot of what I feel around the holidays -- many seem very worried about how Christmas is going to offend people. At the library where I work, there's been complaints from staff about how we shouldn't label any of the items "Christmas" unless we're going to add a label for every other holiday out there, too. The irony of this argument is that we do put labels on other genres -- but the ones that have enough material to justify adding new labels. There are Christmas labels for both adult and youth material, but Easter labels only for youth, as Adult doesn't contain enough Easter material to have a section devoted entirely to it. We have a Mystery section. A Science Fiction section, we also label Hanukkah items in Children's. The labels are to make it easier to find the desired items, not to make anyone feel uncomfortable. If books on Cinco de Mayo were wildly popular here, and we stocked hundreds of items on them, I'm sure we'd have a Cinco de Mayo section, too, but as it stands, there are 6, and having a section for 6 books really doesn't make sense.

God bless, and Merry Christmas.

Rat-ta-tat.

Explosiony fun.
Fire.
Lots of Fire.
Big file, sadly.
But worth it.
Boom.
Glowy.

Umarmung.

So through sundry means, I found out that Sept 29th is International Hug a Vegetarian Day. So I expect many hugs, 'cause that's what I am.
Random fact I got when I visited the site: ' “Umarmung” means hug in German. Germans talk funny.'
I dunno about the talking funny (unless you count German with a Spanish accent, heh), but it's good word to know

God bless, all.

Advice.

I'm back at the library, and I don't know how many of you know about this, or know about my thoughts in regards to this, but here's the deal; for a long time now, I've been planning to start a webcomic. A bit of an undertaking, I know, but it's really been a passion of mine. As things stand now, I've researched what I'd need to do to get it out there, looked at money-making options, I have a website analysis account, a fairly solid idea of the look and feel of the main characters, many, many pages of comic ideas (the funniness of them depends on how awake I was at the time of inspiration, and how twisted my sense of humor was feeling) as well as some fully sketched comics. The main thing really holding me back right now is how to start the dang comic. The introduction is something you can't do again except in a pretty much invariably lame attempt to go back and make a prologue or something. Which I don't want to do. Anyway, Matt Boyd of MacHall (one of my most loved and well-respected webcomics) has this advice. That is all. Also, the other two webcomics mentioned there are some of my favorites, too, except I *gasp* haven't finished reading Real Life. Oh dear. Oh well.

Also, read the ad on the left at Real Life. If it's the same one, it's *funny*. If it's not there, this is where it linked because I clicked on the link in respect for the hilarious banner, but the merchandise turned out to be pretty funny, too.

God bless.

Sari.

Cool.

The new Star Wars video game looks awesome. ...and I'm not usually a big star wars freak. Or any type of Star Wars freak, big or small.

Beyond that, if you haven't heard, I'm cut off from internet at home until further notice. So don't expect to see me 'cause you probably won't. :/

Also, I'm going on a S.A.L.T.S. trip on Friday, so you probably won't hear from me for a while. :)

God bless, all.

Sari.