grrgoyl

We had Christmas four days early this year, because we're grown-ups and can do as we please -- and we got socked with ten inches of snow, Tery took a four-day weekend, and wanted toys. 

So I'm writing this on my new tablet.  It's pretty damn awesome, like my phone but three inches bigger; and after a few short hours playing with it, my phone already seems comically tiny and I can't imagine how I did anything on it (just now Tery brought it in from where it had lain forgotten under today's mail, and I cried, "Nobody wants a Charlie-in-the-box!") 

Not to mention the wi-fi network I had to set up to get online with the tab is pretty sweet, and surprisingly painless to establish, considering my adversarial history with all things wireless.

So maybe we can expect to see more updating from me in the future.  Merry xmas to all of us.

My second-best present was the book "Harry Potter: Page to Screen," which is gorgeous and truly so enormous we might need to add a new wing to the condo just to house it (you know those corny fantasy films where the wizard leafs through a spell book the size of a coffee table? This book is about that big.  If you were reading it before bed and fell asleep with it on your chest, you'd be crushed instantly).  Still, for all its girth, it took a full five minutes of paging through before I found one picture of Snape.  >:(

Tery enjoyed her presents as well, being as they were mostly running-oriented.  So I would say the Christmas of a Thousand Dreams (as I've been marketing it all month) was a roaring success!

Unless you count my cynicism bordering on anxiety about certain recent  political developments--I'm referring to some very scary legislation that you'd never think stood a chance of getting passed in America (NDAA and now SOPA. Look them up if you think I'm overreacting).

Not helping my near-hysteria in the slightest was the arrival of an email from my dearest friend H, an isolationist in the best of times who now sounded like his paranoia had reached critical mass in the six months since our last communique.  His email was peppered with links supporting his thesis that "the internet has been compromised" (hence my protecting his identity here).

I'm including here my response, because I think it sums up pretty well my present feelings, and my blog, in addition to entertaining me, has proven to be a great source for future historical references.

"Once upon a time I would have said, 'Oh, H, my adorable conspiracy theorist.' Not any more.

I didn't click on any of your links because frankly, I already know too much. I don't want to know these things I know, and I damn well don't want to learn any more. I want to go back to being angry about stupid things like picking up Tery's socks one more time, or that every time I go for an oil change it costs me $500 (forever finding maintenance jobs to do on my 14-year-old car). I don't want to think of my government as sinister, and I don't want to live with the fact that the people we're hoping will fix things are a very big part of the reason things are the way they are in the first place.

I want to live in the Fox News bubble, or no-spin zone or whatever they're calling themselves these days. I want to point at Occupy and say "dirty lazy hippies." I want to read my Snarry, play my Angry Birds, watch my Netflix and imagine that none of this has anything to do with me.

I want to tell Morpheus to give me the blue pill, please, and I want a steak, medium rare.

I sign online petitions. I signed about a million of them to try to stop NDAA, and now I'm signing a million more to stop SOPA. And I've written to everyone including Obama about both. All I get back are dog-and-pony-show form letters, and I know it's a fucking waste of time, but I feel like I have to do SOMETHING. And I can't march with Occupy because they have their big actions on Saturday when I always have to work, and anyway I don't want to get pepper sprayed and/or end up in Gitmo one day.

Everyone says the answer is to vote out all the incumbents. But November is 20 years away, and anyway MyFriendDeb asks "and replace them with who?" And she's right. Which of them can we trust? A lot of Occupiers say Ron Paul, and I know he's on the right page for economic reasons, but his position on the rest of the issues kind of sucks.

If I could have a Christmas wish this year, it wouldn't be for world peace. It would be for everyone to behave, for the politicians and the bankers and the 1% to stop thinking of themselves and their secret agendas and to just give a shit about their fellow human beings for a fucking day. It would be for America (and the world) to go back to a place I'm not scared to live in."

That's my naive little wish.  Naive because H is convinced there's a far bigger end-game, somewhere down the road, and all these little grabs of power and erosions of our rights are quite, quite deliberate and straight out of some tyrannical playbook. 

It isn't just the two of us. Check out the mad ramblings of Rick, the radical refrigerator repairman, a full two years ahead of his time. Perhaps not so radical anymore?

I've already said too much.  Happy Holidays everyone!

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