Yet Again...

I am ringing in the new year in typical fashion... at work. This is no hardship, as I consider New Year's Eve to be "amateur night"- a lot of establishments price-gouge, and there is a lot of dumbassery as "in vino veritas" reveals that there are a lot of knuckleheads in the population. No need freezing outside with a couple million of my closest friends, or slogging back home on the 4 train blinking as the dawnzerly light streams in through the windows (North of 149th St, the train leaves the tunnel and travels on an elevated track) after dropping seventy-five bucks for the privilege to drink bottom shelf champagne. No need to navigate roads plagued by impaired drivers, or having to deal with the gendarmes. Yeah, I usually spend the night in low-key fashion.

I have to say that, while not an overly pessimistic person, I really don't see things getting any better in 2011. 2010 was a pretty piss-poor year, especially when viewed as a coda for an overly optimistic 2009. I get the feeling that 2011 will be another "lost year" following a lost decade. My personal situation is not so bad, but the feeling of "potential squandered" still haunts the whole damn country. I apologize for being a downer... how about a video for a nice little bit of power-pop as a "riff" on my "amateur night" comment?

A Shameful Anniversary

December 29, 2010 marks the 120th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which the U.S. 7th Cavalry killed almost three hundred members (mostly women, children, and elderly men) of the Lakota Sioux nation- "a thing to melt the heart of a man, if it was of stone, to see those little children, with their bodies shot to pieces, thrown naked into the pit.". The Wounded Knee massacre followed decades of broken treaties, and the near extirpation of the bison on which the plains people largely subsisted. Of course, by the time of westward expansion onto the plains, the slaughter and forced relocation of the autochthonous peoples of the Americas had been well underway for centuries.

Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is probably the best introduction to the horrific treatment received by the indigenous people of the Americas. It is a read that haunts the reader long after the book is put down.

Of course, the latest ill-timed right wing screamfest results from President Obama expressing his support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. After centuries of wanton slaughter, broken treaties, and heinous mistreatment, many Native Americans are mired in poverty- making light of their plight in an effort to count coup on a political opponent is simply despicable.

Thom Hartmann devoted a goodly chunk of time to the Wounded Knee massacre on his 12/29 show, so a nod of the naked noggin is due to him.

White Supremacists, Kiss My Ás

It seems that white supremacists are in a snit over the casting of a black actor as Norse god Heimdall in an upcoming movie based on a series of comic books (insert joke about white thupremathists being thor). Gadzooks, they are a whiny bunch of emo kids. To make the schadenfreude even more delicious, one of Heimdall's nicknames is white god, or hvíta ás. It's really amazing what sets off the knuckle-dragging, teabagging set. As an added betrayal by **snerk** the comics industry, Batman has started a French franchise with (gasp!) a Mohammedan. Perfidious purveyors of puerile prose with pretty pictures, you leave right wingers with no recourse other than reading actual books... ACTUAL BOOKS!!! Monsters! Idris Elba should tell the white supremacists to blow his Gjallarhorn.

I have my own beef with Marvel's imagery, though, I mean Asa-Þor has got a red beard! Jumping Jörmungandr on a pogo stick, "redbeard" is a common cognomen for the god of thunder!!! Thor also, for the record, looks dynamite in a bridal gown.

I just want to add that I am not knocking comic books, even though (with a couple of notable exceptions) I've never really been into them- it's a noticable lacuna in my otherwise solid geek credentials. I am most certainly, however, knocking white supremacists- fuckers give us shavepates a bad name.

Felt Old and Decrepit Today

The last couple of days have been a slog- I arrived at work around 7PM on Sunday to avoid driving through the blizzard at its peak, and ended up leaving at almost 4PM the following day. Upon arriving at home, I found that the snowplows had left huge piles of snow at the sides of the local streets, so I had to carve out a parking spot. My next door neighbors (who are wonderful) let me park in their driveway while I dug out a parking spot. I usually help them shovel snow because they are both getting on in years- they got help from a former co-worker yesterday. Anyway, I spent a couple of hours digging out a spot. A couple of hours of grunt work at the tail end of a thirty-hour endurance tour left me completely wiped out- I ate a quick dinner, brushed my teeth, and passed out for the next fourteen hours.

I woke up around noon, still aching from shoveling, and made plans to meet an old friend who was in town visiting his parents. I met my friend and his father, a retired professor of the Slavic languages department of a major northeastern university. My friend's father had just finished a physical therapy appointment- he is recovering from a minor stroke. The good professor's charmingly accented baritone was hushed, his burly frame was diminished... thankfully, his sharp wit hadn't been dulled by his stroke (as an aside, I always find that the ability to be funny in a second language to be a clear-cut mark of intelligence). I snapped out of my "cripes, I'm hurtin' for certain" mood, and remembered how fortunate I am.

Succor for the Sucker

The snow removal technician has finally arrived to clean out the lot, so I can finally get my ass home after an all-night slog on the job. Yee-haw!





Next year, the organization should award their contract to this guy.

Oh, and incidentally, happy birthday to my great and good friend J-Co, who is always up on the "Community Calendar" even though he has relocated to the Boston area.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

The New York metro area is experiencing a blizzard that is expected to dump anywhere from ten to twenty-four inches of snow on the ground, accompanied by gusts of wind approaching those of a category one hurricane. I'm a snug as a bug in a rug an ootheca here at work. I came in early so I could relieve a beloved co-worker (and because I'd rather be safe at work than driving through a foot of snow a few hours from now, after digging my car out of a snowbank). I have an overnight bag packed, and enough yerba mate to keep a small army of gauchos buzzing. Yeah, I'm dug in for the duration, and have no desire to hit the roads until the sun is high in the sky, and the plows have done their job. Just to refresh the memories of my readers, this is what I will see tomorrow after the sun comes up:

Merry Christmas!

I am at work right now, it's been a quiet, peaceful day spent at a truly enchanting spot. A co-worker of mine came in for a few hours and brought his lovely, polite young daughters to keep him company. They left a couple of hours ago, so I have the place to myself. Yeah, we may be understaffed and overextended to a certain extent, but I really can't complain about my circumstances.

Last night, I had Christmas Eve dinner with some great good friends, a family that I'd known since I was a young-un. Stopping by on Christmas Eve for a couple of hours was always a tradition- my characteristically nice friends had a Christmas tree buying routine that would have matched a De Beers diamond merchant's techniques for ruthlessness... they would go to a lot where some poor schmo was selling trees around 5 PM on Christmas Eve, and offer the guy five bucks. Invariably, the guy would say, "That's a thirty dollar tree!" and my friends would respond, "There's nobody else here on the lot, is it a five dollar tree or a zero dollar tree?" They'd bring the tree home, and, in a fashion that would have made Tom Sawyer envious, they would throw a Christmas Eve tree-decorating party. Even when they were still in high school, they had this devious scheme down pat. Their callous treatment of Christmas tree vendors aside, they have always been unfailingly hospitable, generous people (their house, like ours, had an "open door" policy- nobody was turned away). Anyway, I went over to their ancestral abode for Christmas Eve dinner (including Yorkshire pudding made by a Yorkshire native) and a heaping helping of nostalgia. My friends' spouses and kids were over, so I got to hang out with three generations of my awesome extended family at a time I couldn't get out of town to be with my nuclear family.

I'm grateful to have such awesome friends.