Melting My Christmas Bah-Humbug

Everybody who knows me realizes I'm not a big fan of Christmas. As I've said before, Christmas is a great idea that was ruined by commerce, along with enough sticky-sweet schmaltz to induce a diabetic coma.

Don't worry, I won't be negative this entire post, but I get the bad out of the way before we get to the good. Think of it as surviving until Boxing Day. (December 26. Praise God!)

Members of the British Royal Navy ham it up
for Christmas aboard the HMS Ocean

Consumer Reports recently released a survey describing the top 11 annoyances people said they have with the holiday. 

Among them are crowds, bad holiday music, Christmas shopping and being forced to be nice. I'm usually nice, but why do I have to be in a certain mood because somebody says so?  Especially when it's some obnoxious person in a holiday advertisement telling me I have to be happy to buy their worthless, overpriced product with money I don't have and if I don't buy said product with a smile on my face I'm a worse person than most serial killers out there.

And you wonder why I say "Bah-humbug."

The only one of the eleven in the Consumer Reports list  I don't experience is "disappointment with gifts." That's only because if somebody was nice enough to try to get me something, at least there were thinking of me. Who cares if the gift was iffy?

 In any event, it's nice to see sometimes that some people out there in Christmasland get it.  A few people are appropriately kind and goofy and fun and giving during the holiday season. Here are at least two examples.

There's a guy in Reading, Pennsylvania, who wishes to remain anonymous, who goes out into the streets of the town and passes out $100 bills to people who look like they could use  the help, according to The Reading Eagle, the local newspaper.

The guy is copying from another philanthropist who does similar stuff out in Kansas City, but this kind of copying is just the ticket.

Here's a vid out of Reading that explains it all. Very nice to watch:



Next, for the more fun, goofy aspect of the season we go to members of the British Royal Navy aboard the HMS Ocean. They've been away from home for 217 days and are getting a little punchy. The good news is their due home this Friday. The better news is while out there, they lip-dubbed soliders, in hilarious fashion, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You."

Turns out it's Mariah Carey approved. Said she in a Tweet after she saw it: "This is the best thing I've ever seen, you guys just made my day! Happy, Happy Christmas xoxo to the troops"

I have to agree with Mariah that this did put me back in the Christmas spirit. As in being happy because I am, not  because I've been ordered to. It will give you some cheer, too. Watch:

Muppets are Communists! Stop Them!

Thank goodness for the ever-vigilant Fox News for alerting us to the latest menance. Turns out the Muppets are anti-corporate communists who are out to destroy America and our way of life.

Fox uncovered the evidence in the latest Muppet movie, called, predictably enough, The Muppets. In the film the villian is named Tex Richman, who wants to buy and tear down The Muppet Theatre and drill for oil on that spot.

By painting the oil guy as a villian, the makers of the movie, as well as Hollywood in general, are indoctrinating our kids to hate corporations and the oil industry, so says Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center, who appeared recently on Fox's "Follow the Money" program to make his comments.

Say Gainor:

"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message,"

He added:

"They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry... They hate corporate America. And so you'll see all these movies attacking it."

Well, how un-American! How dare the Muppets do anything but portray the oil industry in a positive light! As Gainor points out, we need the oil industry to help fuel ambulances, keep hospitals heated and lit and all kinds of good stuff. I guess we need more movies about ambulances with full gas tanks and hospitals that are comfortably warm and well lit.

Frankly, I've always suspected those dastardly Muppets, despite their sunny, humorous exterior. I can find the dark side of all the characters, now that I think of it.

Kermit the Frog is the obvious one. He sings about how it isn't easy being green, an obvious appeal from radical environmentalists to let them rid the world of pavement and buildings.

At first glance, Miss Piggy seems glamorous enough, for a pig anyway, but certainly she's like those protestors who dress up in gowns and tuxes to mock the very rich.

Rowlf the dog reminds me of Ed Asner, who is well known for his liberal, decidedly left of center views.

Fozzie Bear is always saying "Wocka! Wocka! Wocka!" which is clearly coded instructions to those insurgent Occupy Wall Street protestors.

And ever notice how awry Dr. Bunson Honeydew's experiments go awry, to the repeated detriment of the hapless Beaker? Obviously, he represents an attack on chemical corporations' business. And notice how Dr. Bunson Honeydew has no eyes. That's a leftist accusation that the chemical industry turns a blind eye to the health and safety of the public.

OK, maybe Gainor is being a bit melodramatic. After all, so many story lines in movies involve underdogs who defeat the powerful. It's a standard American meme. Aspirational Americans want to get ahead through grit, honesty and smarts, and they relate to the underdogs.

And corporations, whether good or evil, tend to be powerful. Since movies like the Muppets need a powerful villian, a fictional corporation is a good stand in.  Surely Gainor doesn't think that a fictional oil baron in a kid's comedy movie is anticorporate, communist propoganda.

Oh wait, he does.   We're all entitled to our opinions, I guess.

And, um, Mr. Gainor, The Muppet movie was presented to us by Disney. Isn't Disney a big corporation that the communist Muppets are supposed to hate?

In any event, appropos of nothing, the Muppet movie kerfuffle has me taking a trip down memory lane. My past is goofy, and a Muppet related memory is a classic example.

When my sister Lynn and I were really little, we were enamored by this little Muppet ditty, which to this day I still find catchy:






I would do the mahna, mahnz part, and Lynn was "Doo, doo, doo doo." When I'd get carried away on the Mahna, mahnas, as the character in the video does, she'd cuff me in the head, I'd calm down, and quietly, say, "mahna, mahna," she would happily offer a "doo doo doo doo,"  and the whole process would start over. Ah, we were such well adjusted kids!

I hope it doesn't mean we were budding communists.

One Tough Vermont Flower

Granted, it's not been the harshest late fall/early winter around St. Albans, in northern Vermont, but I'm certainly impressed with the flower that's pictured.

This flower at my house in northwestern Vermont
continues to hang in there as of Dec. 4, despite
early winter weather. 

As of today, December 5, it's endured temperatures that dropped into the upper teens, soil frozen rock solid, thawed, and refrozen, several inches of crushing, slushy snow, strong winds and next to no sun. The flower is in a pot that was part of a beautiful arrangement this summer and early autumn on my deck.

I took the pot off the deck a couple weeks ago, put it near the back door, ready to remove the dead plants and take inside, and I forgot about it. Stoically, our flower kept blooming. And no, it's not freeze-dried like that. It's actually still alive.

I might leave it outside to see how much harsh weather it can survive. But who thought something so delicate looking could be so tough?  Hope I have the strength to match a little flower.

Pepper Spray the Hot Christmas Item

This year the hot, really, really hot Christmas season must-have is pepper spray.

It's everywhere. My eyes are watering as I type this. Between the Occupy protest movement pepper spray attacks by police, the woman in the Walmart pepper spraying fellow shoppers to get her hands on a sale item XBox, this is the Christmas of Pepper Spray.

And, like any successful marketing campaigns, pepper spray now has a host of associated heroes, memes and sub-products. You can finish your entire Christmas list with the stuff, or at least get those pesky relatives and friends out of your hair.

Little Cindy Lou Who, who is no more than two, gets
a holiday greeting from the evil Pepper Spray cop

Lt. John Pike, the cop at UC Davis that made himself famous by striking a casual pose and heavily pepper spraying peaceful demonstrators, is sort of the Ken doll to Pepper Spray Barbie.

As Salon so poetic notes, if you want to vanquish the enemy, render him absurd.  Pike has become such a hit, an Internet meme, that there's a Tumblr site devoted to pictures of Pike spraying iconic images. Action Figure John Pike!  The real John Pike must be so proud.

The Tumblr site had Pike inside iconic artwork and photographs, spraying everything from the Mona Lisa, to the Beatles, to Snoopy to Beyonce in the "Single Ladies" video.

My favorite, because I'm such a meanie, is Pike in a scene from Dr. Suess's "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," spraying the hell out of Little Cindy Lou Who, who's only two.

On Amazon, wags found thge page for Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Strean 1.3% Red Band/1.3 %Blue Band Pepper Spray and had a hilarious field day with product reviews. Go to that Web page, it's a great, fun time waster reading the 340 or so mostly mocking product reviews from both satisfied and dissatisfied customers.

Here's an example:
                           With a simple, nonchalant spraying action, you can be sure to cause great distress among unruly protesters, ensuring that their freedoms of speech, assembly, and protest are eliminated in favor of screaming in agony and writhing on the ground. ...Remember, this product does entail some risk of blowback, however. Careless use could lead to international notoriety, universal condemnation, lawsuits, loss of your job, and becoming an internet meme


And another:

Whenever I need to breezily inflict discipline on unruly citizens, I know I can trust Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray to get the job done!  ...When I feel threatened by students, no matter how unarmed, peaceful and seated they may be, I know that Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray has got my back as I casually spray away at point blank range. It really is the Cadillac of citizen repression technology. Buy a whole case!

Of course, this pepper spray can come in handy just terrifically if you're out shopping, as one California bargain hunter knows. The woman who pepper sprayed fellow shoppers at a Walmart on Black Friday is now another iconic figure in American history.

I just worry this pepper spray woman has started an arms race. Next year, will someone deploy an Uzi to mow down crowds to get his hands on the latest flat screen TV?  So he can watch himself on the news being sentenced to life in sentence without parole, I guess.

Hey, shopping is a contact sport, nowadays, apparently.

I think the pepper spraying Xbox shopper from Walmart should marry the pepper spraying cop. Then they can have kids and start a race of pepper spray resistant kids.

That would be a great comfort to Santa.

Was Outing Teacher's Gay Porno Background Ethical?

The Fox 25 reporter in Boston probably knew the subject of his story an English teacher who has made porn movies, would become the center of a nasty fire storm when his report aired.

That much is true. But now the reporter is becoming a bigger target of community wrath for airing his report.

In this image from Fox 25 Boston, reporter Mike Beaudet, right
confronts teacher Kevin Hogan about his past.

WXFT Fox 25 reporter Mike Beaudet confronted, on air, the Boston area English teacher about his, um, colorful and strenuous moonlighting gig. The English teacher has been in a couple gay porn movies, under the extremely unfortunate name Hytch Cawke.

The porn movies were done before he was hired at the school. So it's not as if he has to leave classes early to appear in his role in "Hytch does Hingham,"or some damn thing.

The English teacher, whose real name is Kevin Hogan, certainly got some criticism with Beaudet's expose.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the public lynching of Hogan. The community has largely turned its wrath onto Beaudet.

Aggressive investigative reporting is fine, the local community seems to be saying,  but if, and only if, the reporting uncovers wrongdoing, and does the public good. Comments on Fox 25's Web site are almost fully critical of Beaudet.

Many people are saying this was just a witch hunt/ambush against Hogan for no good reason. And that might reflect, at least in this case, a more sophisticated view of journalistic priorities and ethics among the public than that held by some news assignment editors.

As a journalist, I feel the tingle and thrill of finding out some juicy story about someone or something, and I'm sure the folks at Fox 25 felt the same way. The instinct is to pursue the damn thing.

But you've got to take a step back and say: "How will this help people understand things, serve a useful watchdog role and make things better?

Yes, that's doughy eyed self righteousness and idealism on my part, but there you go.

There's no question that if the teacher had somehow involved the students in his porn job, or had any other sexual or other improper contact with them, then the reporter should have gone after this guy, big time.

Hogan's supporters, and there are lots of them, are wondering why Beaudet did a report that will ruin Hogan's career. Few people are  seeing how this makes kids safer, or the school better and improve the community.

Beaudet counters, accurately, that teachers' licenses in Masschusetts require that educators be in good moral standing. But people both know pornography when they see it and morality when they see it. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

And if Hogan was in porn films, that's still legal. There's no law against being in such films, as long as everybody involved were consenting adults. Even if the films were lousy. I wouldn't know. I have not seen "Cawkes'" films, "Fetish World" and "Just Gone Gay 8" They frankly don't sound very good.

Hogan's students don't seem to give a damn whether he was in gay porn or not. They want a good teacher, and say that Hogan is good.

The kids in Hogan's school are particularly unimpressed with Beaudet. One students Tweeted. "My English teacher is a gay porn star, #nbd." The hashtag stands for "No Big Deal."  A Facebook page has appeared demanding that Hogan keep his job and Beaudet lose his.  As of mid afternoon Thursday, the Facebook page had 1,450 "likes"

 The larger issue here is, in the hyperconnected world of Google, Facebook and Twitter, this story is much, much bigger than it merits. Which is the case with most things these days. Especially when an initial story causes a huge outcry, like this one.

 We were once, as children, threatened with having our misdeeds put on our Permanent Record if we didn't straighten out.

Now, misdeeds are put on our Permanent Record of Google no matter how quickly we correct our actions or minor the infraction.  And we have this Google Scarlet Letter even if we didn't do anything wrong, which many people say is the case involving Hogan.

Does Hogan deserve punishment? And if so, should that punishment take the form of permanent Internet infamy?  To the extent that an apparently talented teacher should never get another job in education?

His supporters don't think so, and are using social media to punish Beaudet the reporter.  Maybe Beaudet's report was not exactly newsworthy. Which also puts Beaudet's action on the Google Permanent Record. Maybe his reporting did more harm than good, or no good at all.   Given that, what does Beaudet deserve?

And what about the rest of us? Yes, most of us have not acted in bad gay porn movies. At least I hope not. (For the record, I haven't. Couldn't come up with a good stage name, I guess)

But we've all done stupid things. Everything we do now is writ large on the Internet.   Since there are no innocents in the world, will our world collapse under the weight of a far too big and heavy Permanet Record?

The Smoking Gun Building Is No Misfire

I don't know where this building is, but I'd love to know who painted it. I wounder what business is in there. A gun shop, I presume. Or maybe it's the headquarters for the public records Web site The Smoking Gun. 

Anyway, it's cool.

Chutzpah King: Kidnapper Sues Victims for Breach of Contract

A  man convicted of kidnapping and other crimes has filed a lawsuit against his victims.

Putting new meaning into the word chutzpah, the kidnapper, Jesse Dimmick is suing Jared and Lindsay Rowley for breach of contract.

Police said Dimmick held the Rowleys in their Kansas home against their will. He'd been fleeing a murder charge, wrecked his car on the Rowley's front lawn, then went inside their house and held them at knifepoint, according to authorities.

Jesse Dimmick is suing a couple he kidnapped for
not helping him elude police.

The Rowleys seemed to have hatched a ploy to get out of their predicament. They told Dimmick, falsely, it turned out, they would hide Dimmick from the cops, and Dimmick would pay them.

But those dastardely Rowleys didn't keep their promise. They sat down with Dimmick, played the movie "Patch Adams" until Dimmick got bored to tears and fell asleep. The couple fled while Dimmick snoozed.

I haven't seen "Patch Adams" but it must be slow if it puts an agitated home invader to sleep. But then again, you can't knock the Rowleys for trying to be good hosts and make Dimmick relax.

Dimmick, though, is unimpressed. Says he in his lawsuit:

"I, the defendant, asked the Rowleys to hide me because I feared for my life. I offered the Rowleys an unspecified amount of money which they agreed upon, therefore forging a legally binding oral contract."

Police ended up raiding the house, and Dimmick was shot in the back in the process. He says his medical bills are $160,000, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal, all because the evil Rowleys wouldn't help him hide from the cops.

Now Dimmick is asserting his rights! How dare the Rowleys lie to him! They promised him they'd help him get away from the cops.  He wants $235,000 for this terrible injustice, according to the Capital-Journal.

This all could be retailiation. The Rowleys had already sued Dimmick for $75,000, citing the emotional distress of Dimmick's attack, the Capital-Journal reported.

If you're wondering what kind of lawyer would take on the case for Dimmick, there's no lawyer. He's representing himself.  Well, he's showing the self sufficiency that made this country great, isn't he?

The problem for Dimmick is, it appears the Rowleys have a pretty strong defense. The legal reasoning of their lawyer seem pretty reasonable, to be honest:
1. Nothing's in writing. So how is Dimmick going to prove there was a contract?
2. Nobody agreed on a price. So if nobody made an agreement on specifics, how is there a contract?
3. Had the Rowleys agreed to a deal with Dimmick, they would have consented to doing something illegal. A contract to do something against the law voids the contract.
4. Even if the Rowleys agreed to a deal with Dimmick they did so under duress, voiding the contract.

Dimmick, that old optimist that he is, nevertheless is continuing with his lawsuit. The Rowleys' lawyer filed a motion to dismiss on November 4, so we'll see where that goes.