Thank God It's Over

I'm always glad when the holidays are over. I always seem to get depressed, although when I go to services at my church, especially when I'm ushering, it can actually feel kind of, (do I dare say it?) festive.
I've injured my shoulder, and I think it's a sprain or bursitis. Makes it hell to drive the van.
I have a New Year's resolution. By December 31st, I resolve to be out of this job and into something that is actually clerical. I'm classified as a Senior Clerk. People who don overalls and climb up and down busses and get down on their knees and actually do physical labor are not clerks. I'm getting ripped off. Time to look for something in another city department.
Didn't pay the phone bill, and got the phone and my internet service disconnected. Paid the bill and decided to take Comcast up on their three for one offer-phone service, internet high speed and cable television for $100 a month. It's good for one year and they don't make you sign up for anything else. I even have my own spam free e mail account. And I can watch TV again (my reception sucks).
And now to bed.

I'm BAAAAAACCCCKKKK!!!!!!!

For all of you fans who just couldn't stand it that I had not blogged for months, FOR MONTHS FER CHRISSAKE, I apologize. I realize that my words of wisdom are like drops of spring water on your parched souls. Fear not. I will never subject you to another drought (until I get depressed again).

D got two rear windows broken in her SUV tonight. She was upset of course, but what really bothered her was that the two sleeping bags in the rear of the car were not taken. It would be one thing if someone broke into her vehicle in order to get a sleeping bag that they would then use to keep from freezing to death. But it seems that absolutely nothing was taken. In other words, this was not a burglary. It was an asshole who just broke her windows for the hell of it. Welcome to San Francisco.

Welcome to San Francisco, where everyone is a little bundle of rights. Last week, as I was driving my city van, I heard a thump on the rear of the van. I stopped to see a bicyclist in the rear view mirror. I thought, did I hit him, did I nearly hit him, just what the fuck happened? He went to the other side of my van and took his bicycle and banged it against the other side of the van. Then he rode off.
I thought, "Gee, wasn't that lucky for you. I mean that you did that to me, as opposed to a psycho who would have run you over when you were right in the back of their car and decided to put his or her vehicle in reverse.
Dude, let me tell you something. This city is filled with people who are as filled with road rage as you are, and they are far more formidable than you. One of these days, you are going to fuck with the wrong person, and they are going to use their vehicle as a weapon on YOU.
I think it's time to talk about bicycle fascists in San Francisco. Among certain people, the automobile is evil. Therefore, they use bicycles. I have no problem with that. My only problem is that bicyclists think that rules that apply to motorized vehicles do not apply to them.
I remember one encounter with a biclyclist that could have resulted in serious injury to the bicyclist. He was dressed in black, riding a bike that was painted black, and that stretch of Mission Street had a blackout of their street lights. I almost ran him over because I couldn't see him. He had no lights on his bike.
Bicyclists go against red lights, they change lanes without thinking whether other motorists can see them, and they are not infrequently assholes. I was standing on the sidewalk, reading something when a bicyclist who was riding his bike on the sidewalk, ran into me. He rode away, and cursed me out for not having seen him and getting out of his way.
I think it's time that bicyclists understand that the same rules that apply to any other vehicle on the road, also apply to them. If they won't understand that, then it's time that the much larger number of vehicle owners make them understand that. A good place to start would be to ticket bicyclists who don't observe the rules of the road. Another would be to make bicyclists light their bikes after dark, and allow the police to confiscate bicycles that are not lit-on the spot.
The alternative is for motorized vehicles in the hands of people the bicyclists don't know to run them over.

I killed a mouse tonight

I have just committed an act of cold, bloody, premeditated murder. When I got home from work tonight, I saw a mouse in my kitchen sink. I knew I had a mouse or mice in my apartment (which is why cleaning it up is a task that I must do this weekend). But I digress. I took a bottle and kept trying to squoosh it. Eventually (it was a pretty fast mouse) I did. Now back will come the baits, traps and poisons. I am not squeamish about the extermination of little rodents who take up residence in my apartment and refuse to pay rent.

Cartoon rage

I admit it that the current cartoon rage over the cartoons of the "prophet" Mohammed has somewhat unhinged me. When the Danish Prime Minister said that the government of Denmark does not censor a free press, and the slimeballs who supposedly represent the Muslim community of Denmark decided to take their roadshow to the Islamic world to stir up hatred against Denmark, my blood pressure went up, and I decided to buy two Danish flags, buy Danish ham and cheese, and most importantly, talk to as many people as I could about this issue as I could.
I am just as angry as they are. The Muslims I mean.
However, since I realize that going ballistic is not good for my health, (and unlike them, I don't want to die since I don't expect seventy two virgins to greet me upon my demise), I decided that I have to remain calm and just explain to as many people as possible just what the real issues are in this controversy.
I also introduce a bit of humorous whimiscal blasphemy ito the issue. www.mohammeddance.com is a good place to start.
We (meaning the west, meaning all of those countries that represent the west like western Europe, Canada, Australia, much of eastern Europe, have our values that we value as much as the Muslim world does theirs. We value our freedoms that have evolved over centuries of hard experience as much as Muslims value the "revelations" of their pedophile prophet. Sometimes I have a hard time talking to the members of my denomination (Unitarian Universalist) about this, since we are the kind of people who believe in the inherent dignity and worth of every individual human being. I have to explain to my fellow UUs that our values are not shared by Muslims, or rather those Muslims who take the Quran at face value, that is as the infallible revelation of Allah who is the only true god.
Christians and Jews have in their scriptures the so called golden rule. What you don't want other people to do to you, you don't do to them. Muslims have no such rule. If you are a good Muslim, you treat people differently, dependent on whether thay are Muslims or Infidels. You don't take Christians or Jews as friends. You only take Muslims as friends. Your allegiance is not to the country that gives you citizenship. It is to the worldwide ulema, the body of Islam, that you owe your true allegience. This is in the Quran, which is the word of Allah who is the only true God. The Quran was not written by people (however divinely inspired) but by Allah himself, who is the only true god.
Furthermore, Islam does not seek to coexist with other faiths. Islam seeks to rule over them. This is part of Muslim scripture, and cannot be reformed, because the Quran cannot be reformed or reinterpreted. The words of Allah as stated by the "prophet" cannot be changed, or done away with. Which means that we in the west have a very big problem. We cannot have these people, or too many of these people in our countries, because they have no desire to integrate into the countries that they immigrate into. If you thought that the Communist party was a problem because their allegience was to another country , you aint seen nothing yet.
Western Europe is already dealing with this, and for many countries, it may already be too late. More tomorrow.

Cartoon Rage

I assume that most of you have read about the rage that Muslims around the world have taken over the cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper that supposedly dissed the Prophet Mohammed (piss be upon him). The Muslims consider that any representation of the Prophet (piss be upon him) as blasphemy. Therefore, they may attack Christian churches (who aren't even Danish), attack embassies of countries that not only have never colonized Muslim countries, but voluntarily give foreign aid to those countries, that have given citizenship to Muslims of those countries, which means that they give free healthcare, free education, and welfare benefits, to people who despise the countries and the people who inhabit them as infidels who should be forcibally made to submit to the vision of a psychopath who lived in the eigth century.
More tomorrow.

The Holidays are Over. Thank You Jesus.

During the "holiday season" (roughly from Thanksgiving to New Years Day) I go through a low level depression. I don't have enough money to give a lot of presents to people, and I resent having to feel good on command. I figured out how to get through the worst of it, (that is, Christmas through New Years Day) by doing the following.
Christmas is the day that Christians celebrate the coming of the son of God on earth, that is, the birth of Jesus Christ. Whether I believe that Jesus Christ was actually God on earth is irrelevant. When you read his parables, you must admit, that at the very least, he was the equal of Buddha as far as giving humans good advice as to how to live in this world. Christ's birth, and the subsequent redeeming of man from sin (which is the Christian take on it) is the whole purpose of the holiday.
Santa Claus was the invention of the Knickerbocker Club, an association of upper class wealthy merchants who lived in New York City. The merchants of the Club, many of them descendants of the earliest Dutch settlers in New York, were racking their brains trying to figure out how to increase holiday sales of their merchandise during the "holiday season." Saint Nicholas, redefined as Santa Claus, was their marketing tool.
And a fine marketing tool it was. Santa Claus in his sleigh, bringing presents to little girls and boys, overshadowed the actual meaning of the Christmas holiday. Today, Christmas day is the day of merchandise, of holiday sales, of the bottom line, of the day that department stores make most of their profits. The birth of Christ is almost a sideshow.
The actual Saint Nicholas was a bishop in Anatolia ( now Turkey, before the Muslims invaded) around 300 AD. Saint Nicholas was noted for his charity to the poor. One story about him is that he anonymously gave three bags of gold to a destitute father who was about to sell his daughters into prostitution because he had no dowry to offer to any prospective husband for any of his three daughters.
I dealt with Christmas by treating it as it was, as it should, and used to be. The celebration of Christ's birth.
I ushered at our candlelight service at my church. I said Merry Christmas to all who attended at the conclusion of the service (where the Gospel was read, carols were sung, and prayers said). Then I went down to my favorite watering hole to chug down a pitcher of beer before going to another service.
This service is THE Christmas service to go to if you're ever in San Francisco on Christmas Eve.
Grace Cathedral is the Cathedral of the Episcopalian Church in San Francisco. It is truly breathtaking. It is at the top of Nob Hill, across the street from the Pacific Union Club, the Fairmont and Mark Hopkins hotels.
Choirs, orchestras, carols, organs, Holy Communion (which I received-and made the sign of the cross without embarassment), lots of priests (male and female), incense, and an overflow crowd that ran out of places to sit.
Every Christian Church celebrates the birth of Christ at Christmas. But no Church does it with so much theater as Grace Cathedral.
After the two services, Christmas day was an afterthought. I spent most of the day in bed eating poached Salmon.
I was scheduled to work on New Years Eve. I showed up and left 30 minutes before midnight (an hour before I was supposed to get off work). Went down to my favorite watering hole again, fifteen minutes before the New Year arrived). Met a buddy of mine and his significant other. My friend, who is Jewish, told me something about one of the party favors being distributed at the bar. There is a kind of party favor that consists of a rectangular metal case that a handle is attached to. When you rotate the handle, the rectangular thingy rotates and makes a whirring noise. My friend told me that during Purim, the Jewish holiday when Jews celebrate their deliverance from the evil Haman, Jews rotate these whirring thingies whenever the name of Haman is mentioned, thereby drowning out his very name with whirring noise.
The next day, I went over to my friends house along with about twenty other people to celebrate the New Year. Good food, good conversation, good people. A perfect New Years Day.
Now to lose the weight.

Christmas is over. Thank you Jesus.

As Christmas approached, I went into one of my holiday depressions. There is no doubt that Christmas is not one of my favorite holidays. I am supposed to feel full of good cheer. I am instead, depressed as I usually am (although it is a low grade depression, the one I always have).
I always say that I discovered the true meaning of Christmas the year that I was working as an ambulance medic in east Oakland. Ghetto kids mugging an old lady to get money for Christmas presents. A suptuously appointed home in the Oakland hills where we got a call to find that hubby had thrown his wife across the room, breaking her tailbone, and being met at the door by their daughter, who, when we arrived, pointed her face toward her mother with an expression of "here we go again." People getting plastered and crashing their cars into traffic barriers, and wasn't it nice that they didn't kill anyone else in the process?
I try not to take Christmas too seriously, except for the exchanges that I go through with my sisters family. Every year, on my birthday, my sister sends me a check for a hundred bucks (which I consider rather nice, considering that I don't even remember the day that SHE was born). Every Christmas I send the family a Honeybaked ham (the largest one they offer which is sixteen pounds, which will feed her, her husband, her nine kids, all grown, with eight of them married, and seven of them with kids of their own).
For the most part, I do not send cards, I do not give presents, and my great relief is when the whole process is over, which occurs on December 26.
I finally figured out how to celebrate Christmas without jumping off the Golden Gate bridge.
Here is my secret.
Every year, my church (the libs in my congregation insist on calling it a "Society", but I continue to consider it as a church. For your information, my church is the First Unitarian Universalist CHURCH of San Francisco) . On Christmas eve, we hold two candlelight services. One is the family candlelight service, which is held earlier in the evening. The other is the later candlelight service held at 8PM.
I was one of the ushers for the 8PM service. We sang Christmas carols that acknowledged that the whole purpose of this day was to celebrate that Jesus Christ, the son of God, was born. Whether He was born on December 25, or whether the Catholic Church decided to preempt the pagan solstice celebrations by planting the date here doesn't matter to me. What mattered to me that was that Jesus Christ, the son of God, was born. I don't care about the date.
It occured to me that the real meaning of Christmas had nothing to do with shopping, had nothing to do with Santa Claus (who in real life was a bishop in Asia Minor now referred to asTurkey, who, when he was confronted with a father who was ready to sell his daughters into prostitution, had anonymously given three bags of gold, so that the father had dowrys, so that his daughters could marry).
After the service, (where I had a great time saying Merry Christmas) I went to my favorite watering hole where I had a pitcher of beer.
After finishing up the pitcher, I took Muni to go the midnight service at Grace cathedral.
You talk about smells and bells. The Episcopalians really know how to do Christmas.
Orchestras, choirs, organs playing Bach, holy communion (which I partook of) and holy water, (which I crossed myself with) .
Christmas is a celebration in which we celebrate the birth of Christ. There is no other meaning to it.