What in the world is wrong with Fred Phelps?

For those unfamiliar with Phelps, he is the head of the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, KS.  They are best known for their protests at the funerals of soldiers saying that all their deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are the fault of the United States acceptance of homosexuality.  He has also been known to blame natural disasters on the same “problem”.

Well, it seems Mr. Phelps has now moved on to blaming things on Santa.  The economy?  Santa’s fault.  Dead soldiers?  Yep, Santa. To get this point across to the masses, the church wanted to post a sign detailing all of this in the Washington state capitol. (The SpokesmanReview has the story, but requires paid registration) Steve Valandra, a spokesman for Washington’s Department of General Administration, when e-mailed the text said, “Holy cow. I guess we’ll consider it like all the other requests.”

You can see the whole poster here, but I’ve reprinted the text below.  You can also sing it to the tune of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” as demonstrated by a video the church made, which I refuse to link to, but you can find it if you insist.

Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell!

You’d Better Watch Out Get Ready To Cry
You’d Better Go Hide I’m Telling You Why
Cuz Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

He Is Your Favorite Idol You Worship At His Feet
But When You Stand Before Your God
He Won’t Help You Take The Heat

So Get This Fact Straight You’re Feelin’ God’s Hate
Santa’s To Blame For The Economy’s Fate
Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

Don’t Leave Your Kids With This Red Fright
Just Like The Priests He’ll Rape ‘Em At Night
Oh Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

You Tell The Children He Is Real
You Know That’s Just A Lie
To Justify Your Own Vile Sins
That’s The Only Reason Why

So Get This Fact Straight That You’re Feelin’ God’s Hate
Santa’s To Blame For The Dead Soldier’s Fate
Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell!

While I am all for religious freedom, and these people have every right to say whatever they like, you have to seriously wonder what is wrong with them?  Sure the world is messed up, but blaming Santa for the world’s woes?  I guess maybe the homosexuals have been cleared now?  They are somehow now blameless for the deaths of the soldiers, it’s all Santa’s fault!  Good to know.

Comparing him to child molesters?  Saying he will take you to Hell?  What in the world did Santa ever do to these people?

Some of the stories I find online just make my brain hurt.

Every December 23rd brings the most magical of holidays… Festivus!

As I always say when I discuss this, I never thought much of the television series Seinfeld, but I do thank them for giving us the concept of Festivus.  Sure I don’t think any of us need to go through the “Airing of Grievances” (that’s what Thanksgiving dinner is for) or the “Feats of Strength”, but it still makes a nice concept of families spending a holiday together without all of the trappings we have added on to the existing ones.

I have already shared many of my thoughts about this pseudo-holiday in my Festivus 2006 and Festivus 2007 posts, and they all still hold true.  As I only got to begin my Christmas shopping this past weekend, and the UPS man brought me an arm load of Amazon packages today, I realized, yet again, just how silly this whole gift giving thing has gotten around Christmas.  I am sure next year I will repeat the majority of it, and I will kick myself again, but every December 23rd I can smile and think of a happier and simplier version of the winter holidays.

Happy Festivus everyone!

Ever gotten to spend an hour in a store just watching how it operates? It can be interesting.

I’ve been cleaning my house lately, and decided to get a large chunk of DVDs out of my life, along with some older video games. Seeing as I wasn’t interested in spending a lot of time putting them on eBay, I decided to take them to the local Hastings to sell them. Let’s just say I got the distinct feeling they would have much rather not seen me come in.

Before I say anything else, I need to mention that Hastings has a large banner outside their store saying you should sell your used items to be able to afford gifts for Christmas.  This says to me that they are still welcoming used items during the month of December, and I honestly did take into consideration if this was the best month to do this trade-in, but with the banner there I figured why not.

So, I walk in with my two boxes and some loose DVDs and set them on the trade-in counter.  The woman was checkign out some customers, no problem, and she finally turned to look at me when done.  She scanned the stack with her eyes and went “Oh… a buyback” and she starts looking around for another employee immediately.  I told her I was sorry for the hassle, “Ohhh… that’s fine… let me find you someone.”  She pawns me off on to another employee who also goes, “Oh… I love buy backs” and rolls her eyes.  Again, I aplogized for the hassle, “Oh, that’s fine…”

Okay, look, I get the point, you don’t want to do it, fine, but you have a banner up saying you will, so suck it up and do your job and don’t make me feel like an ass for making you do it.  Yeesh.  They told me it would take a while process, that I should look around or do whatever.

As I wandered around the store for the next hour, stopping only once so they could ask if I wanted store credit or cash, I was amazed by not only their pricing, but how busy they were.  I mentioned this on StarterTech today, but I saw the newest version of The Nightmare Before Christmas marked at $29.99. If you go over to Amazon, it is $20.99.  This is just one of many examples of the pricing I saw, but yet if you went up to the check out, it was ten people deep almost the entire time I was in there.

How?

How is it people can not be aware of much lower pricing out there in the world?  Heck, even Walmart is cheaper and it’s only a few blocks away!  Here’s another great example, Gilmore Girls season 1 is $14.99 just about everywhere now.  Amazon, Walmart, Target all have it at that price.  Hastings had it at $45.99.  Admittedly that is below the original suggested retail price of $59.98, but still, it’s insane.

After my walking around for an hour, shaking my head, I finally got called back up to the register and was informed they couldn’t take everything I brought in, but they would give me $223.08 in store credit for what they would take. Believe me, you don’t want to know how much stuff that covered.  I agreed to it, used every cent of my store credit (mostly on sale items so I didn’t feel like I was being take advantage of), and left.

I think my days with shopping at Hastings are over.  If this was an isolated day of snarly customer service, I would excuse it as the season, but I don’t think I have ever been in there that the staff didn’t snarl at least once.  Think it’s just me?  Wish it was, but it isn’t.  The Kirksville store has a horrible reputation in town, and just about everyone has similar stories of the service from them.

Oh well, just another place I don’t have to worry about wasting my money in.

Is it just me, or is there just no sense of Christmas spirit this year?

Maybe it’s the economy, and the never ending bad news that seems to come with it, but I just have no Christmas spirit this year.  I had to go to Home Depot today to shop for a new shower faucet set, and even looking at their Christmas decor, it just didn’t seem as bright or enticing as usual.

I think it may also be partially that I am slowly finding myself turning in to Clark Griswold from the Vacation movies, specifically Christmas Vacation.  Each year I am hoping to recapture that sense of wonderment I had as a child about Christmas, and with the ever more depressing news, like the lose of 533,000 in November, it’s just hard to feel cheery about much of anything.  I’m not in the mood to shop for gifts, no matter how hard I try.

Maybe it will finally click once I get around to watching my normal bevy of favorite Christmas movies, but I sure hope something kicks in soon and gets me excited about it.

Remember the picture of my dinner from last Thanksgiving?  Pretty wasn’t it?  I was going to share a picture again, but 2 hours after finishing our dinners… we’re still waiting on the turkey to be done.

Now mind you this is not the fault of anyone here, it is the fault of we got a new convection oven this year, which is supposed to cook faster… well… yeah, about that… um… yeah, not so much.

So the turkey looked to be done when the rest of dinner was ready, but once we cut into it, it wasn’t, so we ate all the fixings… just not the turkey.  While disappointing, it wasn’t a deal breaker.  Oh well, just that many more turkey leftovers… bring on the turkey goulash!

Otherwise, sinus problems made my day miserable, but the rest of dinner was excellent.  mmmm stuffing and gravy…

One of my hard rules on this blog since I started was no serious discussions of religion… with the exception of Scientologists.  Well, welcome to me breaking that rule.

I have not attended church with the exception of weddings and funerals since December of 1985.  I remember that so clearly because it was Christmas Eve of the year I was 14 that I finally spoke up that I had no interest in going to midnight mass.  I have nothing against people worshiping in the ways they see fit, so long as it does not infringe on another person.

Just because I don’t go to church doesn’t mean I have no faith, I just don’t see why a person has to go to a designated building, on a designated day to display their faith.  Even at 14 I saw too many people that were holy only for that one hour on Sundays, and never at any other time.  I just had no interest in going anymore, but that’s just me.

When I did go to church, I was raised in the Episcopal church, and I still consider myself Episcopalian.  For those of you unfamiliar with the faith, it is better known as the Anglican Communion in Europe, and was the church formed by Henry the VIII when the Pope would not grant him a divorce from Anne Boleyn.  To say that the Episcopalians tend to be a bit more liberal than most Christian faiths would be an understatement.  We allow our priests to marry, we have no confession, as I have always explained it, “think of us as Catholic Lite, same great faith, half the guilt.’

So, imagine my surprise when I learned there is a rift in the church being brought about the “conservative” Episcopalians.

… excuse me?  The what?!?

“Conservative Episcopalians” sounds to me like “vegetarians that eat meat”, the two don’t go together well in a sentence.  That isn’t to say that Episcopalians aren’t a diverse group of people in everyday life, but when it comes to matters of the church, it just seems odd.  At the core of their fight with the higher ranks of the church is over the acceptance of gays into the clergy, the blessings of gay commitments and, the one that shocks me, women being allowed into the clergy.

Women have been part of the clergy for quite some time now, and there was even a British sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley, which revolved around a female member of the clergy.  That has been around for quite some time now, so I find it odd people are taking issue with it now.

So far six dioceses in the United States have broken away from the church and have aligned with a new Episcopal church from Argentina.  Why Argentina?  I have no clue, but it appears that is where this movement has come from.  I find it odd that six complete dioceses have voted to leave the main church, and that says to me that their ministers are leaning that way to begin with, and convincing their congregations to follow along.  My question is if these people were so unhappy in the church, why hadn’t they left already for another church?  Maybe it’s just me, just seems a little over dramatic the way it was done.

So, why do I blog this?  For some reason it cracks me up that a church that was formed as a revolt against another church, now has a splinter group forming as a revolt against it.  As for me, if I still went to church, or was to ever return, it would still be to the main Episcopal church, because, as Eddie Izzard said in Dressed to Kill, “But you can’t do that in Church of England, you can’t say, “You must have tea and cake with the Vicar, or you die!” You can’t have extreme points of view, you know. The Spanish Inquisition wouldn’t have worked with Church of England”

And with that, I leave you with this parting shot also from his show that really sums up the difference between our church and others.

So the Pagan religion I don’t know a huge amount about, but it was this earthy thing. Christianity had split into many different areas – Catholicism still has the fire and brimstone,( beating drum ) “Row, you bastards!” You know… Original sin! What a hellish idea that is! People have to go,

“Father, bless me for I have sinned, I did an original sin! I poked a badger with a spoon.”

“I’ve never heard of that one before! Five Hail Mary’s and two Hello, Dolly’s.”

“Oh, all right…”

“Bless me, Father, for I have slept with my next door neighbor’s wife.”

“Heard it! I want an original sin.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry!”

The Anglican faith doesn’t have that. You’ll never go,

“Vicar, I have done many bad things.”

“Well, so have I.”

“What shall I do?”

“Well, drink five Bloody Marys and you won’t remember.”

Yeah… that pretty much sums up my confusion over the idea we have “conservative Episcopalians”.

I was looking through the recent traffic to my website, and it concerns me…

People are looking up way too many pictures of Heath Ledger as the Joker.

While I certainly have sung the praises of his performance in The Dark Knight,it doesn’t mean I’d dress up as him.  The number of searches I’m seeing this close to Halloween tells me everything that I need to know that there are going to be legions of Jokers out there at parties and bars this year.

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in the costume industry, and every Halloween there was some costume that everyone thought they were being smart doing, but it was the same idea 2 dozen other people had that same day.  The problem with the Joker is just some green hair coloring, some white and black makeup, add a little ruby red lipstick and you’re complte with some ratty clothing.

Please don’t.

Sure, sure, you loved the movie, but could we please not do this?  There are going to be a lot of people dressed up as the Joker that just shouldn’t do it.  It’s like The Crow and The Matrix all over again, “Oh sure other people are doing it, but no one will do it as good as me!”… believe me, they will not only be as good as you are, but more than likely better.

You have a few days, start thinking of something else… please?

Today marks the second annual Blog Action Day.  While last year was about how to live a bit greener, this year’s theme is “poverty”.

When I first heard what the theme was, I struggled with it.  While I have lived at a lower income (think coupon clipping), I certainly have never been at the poverty level.  How could I possibly wrap my brain around something this complex and come up with a post that would do such a weighty subject the justice it deserves?  I went to my mother and asked her advice, and she said four words to me that turned on the light bulb for me: “Think about your grandfather.”

Dr. Lloyd Antonel, D.O. was one of your old time doctors.  Sure he could have made a lot of money over his career, but he was a doctor for the sake of being a doctor.  Long before I was born he was doing things that may sound insane now, but they proved how he was really there to help people.  One of the stories about him that is from my mother’s childhood is when someone in their neighborhood got injured and they immediately rushed the person to my grandfather not knowing what else to do.  He threw everything off the kitchen table and performed surgery right there in front of his children.  Today he would probably be hit with malpractice for not operating in a sterile environment, but back then he did what he had to do.

My grandfather’s legacy of helping those who were less fortunate than himself goes way back, and he was the type of doctor that if you couldn’t pay him, you couldn’t pay him, or he would take payment in whatever you felt like you could afford.  He was once paid in chickens.  Another time he was paid in the form of a spider monkey… no, I am not kidding.  (The monkey hated my grandfather and would climb the fig tree in front of his office and throw figs at him… no one ever knew why as my grandfather had never hurt the monkey in any way)

As a child he had lived through hard times and he knew what it was like to go without food.  As he made his way through his career, and had made some money… and not more animals, he would donate food to shelters.  If he needed 10 pounds of onions he would buy 100 and donate the extra 90 to a soup kitchen.  One of his favorite places to donate to was the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix.  When he decided to “retire” from private practice he was out of work a full hour before St. Vincents snapped him to get their clinic into shape.

While this was a paid position he worked tirelessly and far more than they paid him for to help those he could.  He did get the clinic in shape, and as he had been a pharamicist before he was a doctor, he figured out how to build them a full pharmacy with donations of sample medications from other doctors around the city.  He worked on this for approximately 8 years before he simply couldn’t do it any more.

What does this have to do with poverty?  Well, it shows you that it isn’t always about money, but offering the talents and services you have in your personal arsenal.  Are you a doctor?  Volunteer at a clinic.  A lawyer?  There are numerous centers for free legal aid.  Plumber?  Help out a soup kitchen with their plumbing needs or those of the people who come in.  There is an endless amount of things any help center could use, and don’t think you won’t get something out of it.  My grandfather thrived in doing this, and sometimes he brought home as much food as he took to them due to them getting more food than they could handle.  (I swear that man’s fridge was always stocked to the top with convenience store sandwiches.)

There is no doubt that finances are tight for many Americans, but have you ever thought about just how much your time and talents are worth to those with less than you?

Welcome to the fourth annual posting of this entry!  Long time readers can skip it, but as I keep adding more readers, it’ll keep getting posted!

Ah, Columbus Day, the day we set aside each year to celebrate a lie. It always warms my heart.

People tend to forget that Christopher Columbus wasn’t looking for North America when he landed here, he was looking for the West Indies. Quite the navigator there. He also believed, until his death, that the entire time he was in this area that he was exploring the Eastern coast of Asia.

Never mind the fact that he also took the indigenous people as slaves and shipped them back to Spain, against the Crowns wishes. Never mind that colonists he brought over here rebelled against him when the New World didn’t come close to what he described. No, no, all those things are just a-ok for a man we should honor with a governmental and banking holiday.

The biggest offense to me is that he was far from the first person to “discover” the Americas. (how does one “discover” a place that is already inhabited?) The Siberians crossed the land bridge with Alaska as early as 70,000 BC, and it was those crossings that gave us the Native Americans. There were numerous other occurrences of people coming to the Americas, but one of the most well documented was Leifur Eircksson in 1005 when he sailed from Iceland to North America and traveled down the coast. Gee, does that come before 1492?

Yet, history textbooks still hail him as the man who “discovered” America. Why is beyond me, but a friend pointed me to a wonderful book called “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” (Barnes & Noble link) that spends an entire chapter delving into this very matter. Fascinating stuff.

If you want to credit Columbus with something, just say that he brought the America’s to the attention of Europe, but leave it at that.

The stock market fell another 369.88 points today.  So what?

While I am sure people will greatly disagree with me, I believe that the stock market has become nothing more than a giant gambling scheme where everyone has forgotten the most basic principle.  The stock market is a long term investment, and short term hiccups should be ignored.

While I understand there are those out there that need to move mass volumes of shares for funds and so on, for individual investors, you should always take the view that any stock is a long term situation.  Occasional bumps in the road, no matter how long they may last, need to be viewed in the overall long term projections you set for yourself when you purchased the stock.

Am I some sort of economic and financial whiz?  Heck no, but this is one mantra I have lived by for eons.  Admittedly I have been out of the stock market for quite some time personally (I owned Wal-Mart for years until it seemed to go into an almost 2 year stall), and my parents got out some time back after some success, but the one rule we all lived by was, “Oh well, the market dipped, we aren’t in this for short term gains.”

This also brings up a point about the major indices that has always driven me mad: they are not the final say to the economic health of the nation.  If it was, why did it not start falling long before the failures began to happen?  Wouldn’t all these great “analysts” have seen it coming and inested more conservatively?  No, they showed once again that the market is more controlled by emotions than by actual facts and analysis.  The market is in freefall, but that does not mean the every day consumer is.

If anything, I would be more prone to buy right now than anything.  I’m not, but if I had money to be gambling with (come on folks, it IS gambling, it’s just very fancy gambling), I would be eying a lot of different stocks right now.  Yes, things are bad NOW, but this is mostly shake out of people that are just plain nervous.  Give it a few weeks and every one will begin regaining their senses, and while the market won’t boom, it will stabilize and people will start focusing on the things in the country that need the real fixing.

In the meanwhile, please don’t go investing in comic books.

If it’s September 19th, then it must be International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Normally I talk about this on the 19th, but since it falls on a Friday this year, and Fridays are Scattercast day, I thought I would give you all the reminder today.  And, no, I will not be doing Scattercast in pirate speak as my throat would give out in about 5 minutes.

The fascination with pirates never ceases to amaze me considering what a dirty, vile lifestyle they led, but I’m just as bad being interested in them.  And, hey, if we can all indulge our fascinations for one day a year, why not?

For those of you have not talked pirate before, the official site gives you a good primer on talking like a pirate.  So me ‘earties, grab ye a tankard of grog and be the best pirate ye can be!

I debated all day if I wanted to say anything this year or just continue with my normal BS posts, but you obviously can tell what won out.

As I said last year, 9/11 has come to mean many things to me, it changed my life in a number of ways; it probably led to me finally sealing the idea I would close my retail store to concentrate on other venues, but it also brought about other changes I am more reluctant to discuss.

For whatever reason, it seems to bother me more with each passing year instead of getting a numb feeling.  Perhaps I should be grateful for the fact that I’m not turning into some sort of machine where something of this magnitude doesn’t effect me, but it also makes me not thrill to this day each year when it rolls around.

I try to concentrate on the things I’m thankful for, the people in my life, and that it hasn’t happened again.

So, what does 9/11mean to you now, dear readers?