Some Nativity Scenes Are Wayyyyy Too Creative

Some news outlets and activists say there's a "War on Christmas" conducted by those who say "Happy Holidays or put up a holiday tree, instead of saying "Merry Christmas and putting up a Christmas tree.

A rubber ducky nativity scene:
Bathtub fun!

The real war on Christmas, though, is bad holiday, er, Christmas decorations. One guy, Mark Oestreicher, a youth minister, has a fun tradition of posting photos of some of the world's worst nativity scenes on his blog.


Apparently, there are a TON of bad nativity sets out there. Oestreicher has a series of rules that weed out a lot of Nativity sets from contention. His rules:

"I’ve only included nativities that were made as nativities (though there are a few notable exceptions to this rule that I couldn’t resist). In other words, I haven’t included photos of the dozens of lego nativities, superhero nativities, Star Wars figurines nativities, Barbie doll nativities, Coke can nativities, alcohol bottle nativities, and others I’ve received."

Even so, he's got Nativity scenes whose characters are all roosters, penguins, moose, frogs, rubber duckies, chipmunks, naked trolls, pink elephants, and bacon and sausage.

I'm guessing that if you give a devout Christian a Nativity set made of naked trolls as a Christmas gift, it might not be appreciated.

A sausage and bacon nativity scene to
get your hunger up

Oestreicher even shows a Nativity scene that doubles as a kitchen timer, which just has  Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus, and of course, the timer. Oestreicher's comment on this is: "Ding! Ding! Baby Jesus is Born!"

If not that, at least that batch of Christmas cookies you've got in the oven.  Same thing, really.


If the Nativity Scenes here are not enough for you, go over to Uglychristmaslights.com, where they have an archive dating back 10 years of um, incredible Christmas decorations. They are rapidly adding photos to their 2012 collection, so check back often.

Blind Drunk Guy Goes Blind From Booze; Docs Cure Him With Booze

Well, this is certainly an interesting, if not terribly inspiring medical story.

A guy in New Zealand got really drunk on vodka at a wedding. He was diabetic, too, and the combination caused a type of methanol poisoning that made him go blind.

Sometimes, alcohol can restore sight to patients like this. I honestly don't know how this works In any event,  the local hospital didn't have any medical alcohol. So, doctors went to a nearby liquor store, bought some Johnny Walker, set up an IV with the stuff and our diabetic hero got his sight back.

It took about ten days, but the Johnny Walker worked. I wonder if they will add this incident to their marketing campaign.

I also wish  makes more illnesses could be cured by booze.

Funny and Tragic: She Robbed Bank, Talks it Up on YouTube

There's a young gal in Nebraska who police say has been busy lately. She robbed a bank and stole a car.

The police investigation was easy. The woman, Hannah Sabata, 19, went on YouTube and discussed her bank robbery and car theft, according to Omaha.com

Hannah Sabata displaying money from her bank robbery
in her YouTube video

The video has her holding up signs describing her bank robbery and theivery.

She even chose her wardrobe carefully. She wore the same outfit in the YouTube video as she did during the bank robbery.

So the cops arrested her pretty quickly, , given it was all laid out for them on YouTube and all.  At first glance the whole thing points to extreme stupidity. That's probably involved. But while all the Web sites and blogs (including this one, to be honest) are picking on Sabata, there seems to be a lot of sadness behind the odd humor of this story.

If you watch the whole video, it's plain that the girl is messed up, and has  given up on pretty much anything. It looks more like a break with reality than anything else.

It's not like I want to give Sabata a free pass. You do the crime, you do the time. But the girl does need help.

 In the video, Sabata explains, in captions superimposed on the blurry images about her reaction to her own bank robbery. "I told my mom today was the best day of my life. She just thinks I met a new boy," it reads, while she displays some of the more than $6,000 she is said to have stolen from the bank.

The picture on Omaha.com of Sabata being taken into custody makes it appear as if she's having a grand old time with this whole experience.

On her deviantArt page, we learn this about her, from what she wrote a year or so ago:

HELLO! My name is Hannah Sabata, and at the time I am 18 years old.

I live in Hicktown Nebraska in a small, sinking home surrounded by many trees and broken-down cars.
I was born 12-08-1992
My social security number is 504-31-5555   
Hahaha just kidding.

Interesting facts:

I can stretch both legs behind my head at the same time
I can do the splits
I can stand on my head
I have HIV
I'm married
I'm pregnant
I've been to jail
I've been to Boys Town
I've been homeless
I have ran away
My hair has been every color (Yes. I promise you.)
I've saved my grandmother
I'm often mistaken as Asian :0
But I do have 11 different nationalities!
I get straight A's in school

Apparently, she had the kid, and things didn't go well, if you take what she says in her YouTube video. She says:

 "The whole system is just a game. But more specifically, because the goverment stole my baby and they took him away before I could even gake him home and they charged me with neglect. I may not be a mother anymore, but I can still find purpose."

So there's a huge, sad backstory going on here. The whole bank robbery/YouTube thing is an obvious cry for help, but she also probably thinks at some level she's beyond help.
Yes, I suppose we can laugh at how easy it was to catch Sabata. All the cops had to do was watch YouTube. But even though we don't really know her, we still want her to somehow get back on track.

For what it's worth, here's her YouTube video:

The Mall From Hell Is near Sacramento, California

For some reason, I don't like shopping malls. It's just my bias. They're fine, really, if you like Cinnabon, especially.

But most of them to me are boring, selling the same stuff to the same people over and over. Yawn.

But some malls are worse and more starstruck than usual, and my nomination for the worst mall is the Galleria Mall in Rosewood, Sacremento, California.

The ill-fated Galleria Mall in suburban
Sacramento, Calif. burning in 2010

Why is it this particular mall always has bad karma?  A brawl on Black Friday led to a viral video of two guys really going at it. Apparently, they were fighting over tennis shoes. As if a 1.3 million square foot mall only had one pair of shoes for two morons to fight over. Plus, later, a car was trashed in retailiation. 

This isn't the first round of bad publicity for this mall. A couple years ago a flash mob showed up to sing Christmas carols, but their bouncing and dancing almost collapsed the place, leading to a hasty evacuation. (Structural engineers later declared the place safe for more Christmas shopping)

The flash mob incident hit right after the mall reopened after a crazy guy barricaded himself inside a GameStop store set a huge blaze in the mall  in Oct, 2010 for no discernable reason.

So I'd be afraid to do my Christmas shopping at this mall. Imagine trying to buy some clothes as a gift at the Gap, and I don't know, maybe locusts or poison frogs would kill me before I had a chance to swipe my debit card.

This mall sounds like the place the B-52s sang about in their 2008 song "Funplex," a place that sounded in the song to be a delightful horror.  I'm especially intrigued by the referenence to the Funplex food court restaurant called the Taco Tiki Hut. Sounds wonderfully tacky. I'd eat there, just for goofs. The B-52s paint the scene in their lyrics:

"I'm your daytime waitress
at the Taco Tiki Hut
I'm your daytime waitress
Here's your stupid 7-Up"

Yep, pretty much sounds like the service I get at a typical mall.  I wonder if the Taco Tiki hut also has stupid draft beer. I'd need it in that mall.

It still would be fun to start a Taco Tiki Hut franchise, just to see what would happen.

Just for fun, here's the video for the B-52s "Funplex" As always, they're hilariously chaotic. I want to invite them to my next party. Watch:





 

My Annual Burning Ritual

It's not exactly Burning Man, but every year about this time, I set the pile of brush, branches and tree trunks ablaze in my St. Albans, Vermont yard. I did this year's burn on Saturday.

Momemts after starting the brush
pile burn, the fire roars

It's the stuff that I've cut away from my property over the year. As any Vermonter knows, the woods always tries to encroach on our properties, taking back what we've taken away when we built our houses.

And since it's been such a dry year, the wood itself was dry. One match, a few sheets of newspaper, and away it roared. In seconds.

Which is why I chose Saturday. The inch or two of snow on the ground meant it was unlikely the fire would spread beyond where I wanted it.

I had a LOT to burn. I had a larger, separate pile of wood from which I dragged branches ans sticks to drag into the fire once the original blaze I started calmed down.  We had cut a lot of dead trees over the past year.

Because of that, I'd planned sort of interim brush pile burn between last December's burn and this year.

I was going to do the interim burn in March to get rid of some of the brush I'd accumulated. I  figured it would be snowy and wet and mushy that time of year, with no way a fire could spread. Instead, we had a drought, wind, record 80 degree heat, and a burn ban. So I skipped the March burn, because I didn't my fire to spread and burn down half of St. Albans.

Which left me with a forest full of dead wood to burn. I swear the pile of brush took up maybe 5 percent of my one acre lot. Some of the brush had to go.

I guess I'm a bit of a pyromaniac,  so I love to do the burn. I suspect a lot of other people like fires too.  Its primordial. Fire is the basics of heat and light. Flames are mesmerizing. Fires are a source of comfort, when we want to stay warm. Fires are a source of terror, when they threaten to burn down our homes, or kill us.

A closeup of my raging backyard burn

As I was pitching more wood into the fire, it crossed my mind that it would be really awful if I tripped and fell in. But I also thought about how efficient this was, taking a huge tangle of wood, and converting it into a tiny pile of ashes.

I know a lot of people believe a brush pile burn is wasteful, and polluting. I suppose it is.  I'm not sure how best to get rid of the branches in a more green fashion. I supposed I could rent a wood chipper, but that pollutes too.  There was nothing usable in the pile for people who burn wood for heat. (I'd already given away the wood that was usable for wood heat)

So there was mixed emotions all around.

In the end after I exhausted my burning desire to burn stuff by Saturday evening,  I still had a lot of unburned wood to go. And plenty of brush to cut yet around the yard. So, I will try another burn later this winter.

For you pyromaniacs out there,  a included some photos of the burn and a quick video of the burn.

Once the fire calmed down a bit, Jackson inspects
my handywork with the brushpile

A closeup of the burning wood

Another closeup of embers from my brushpile burn

Why Most Christmas Music is Hideous

I know the Christmas Overlords will take me out to the public square for a stoning, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Most Christmas carols are incredibly grating. 

It turns out I have some company with that opinion. There was a good explanation recently about that hatred for too much holiday music in an NBC article I ran across.

Too many Christmas carols are like this picture: So
incredible  faux cute you want to barf

Here's some of the most pertinent info from the article:

"Endless loops of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or any tinsel-y tune can have a psychological impact known as the 'mere exposure effect,' says Victoria Williamson, Ph.D, who conducts research on the psychology of music at Goldsmiths, University of London. There's a U-shaped relationship between the amount of times we hear music that we like and our subsequent reaction to it, she says.

As Williamson puts it, at first we like music a bit, then we like it more and more until it hits a peak. And then we crash down -- we have overheard it. That's when boredom and annoyance at the repetition of the same sound hits home. "Anyone who has worked in a Christmas store over the holidays will know what I'm talking about," Williamson says. When asked why holiday music seems to have a polarizing effect, driving some people crazy while others like, or at least, can tolerate it, Williamson suggests that music's effect on us in any situation depends on our own psychological state.

There are other problems with Christmas music. So much of it is so sticky, icky sweet. It's one thing to hear a cheerful tune, it's another to be overwhelmed by the cloying saccharine tsunami of the carols. . All those sleighbells and rosy cheeked singers and ho ho hos! What kind of drugs are these people on?

Put it this way. If somebody put a cupcake in front of me, I'd happily eat the sweet treat. Put a one pound bag of Dominos sugar in front of me, demanding that I eat it, and I will rebel, big time.

It's the same with Christmas music. A little happiness goes a long way. Too much and I scream.

The overly cheerful holiday music also seems to demand that you be happy. I'm basically a happy person, but one effective way to make me deeply unhappy is to command that I be cheeful. Who are these insufferable Christmas carolers to tell me how I should feel?   I'll manage my brain and emotion, thanks. You just manage your own, please.

Icky, sticky sweet Christmas carols don't
make my heart grow three times over
like they ultimately did for this
formerly negative guy

This isn't to say all Christmas music is bad. Some is tolerable, even mildy enjoyable. A sense of humor goes a long way in holiday music, but it has to be actually funny. Could anyone please explain to me the appeal of "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer?"  An old woman who forgets to take her medication and is brutally mowed down by an animal is funny? And how does that relate to the holiday, other than the situation supposedly hit on Christmas Eve?

Why not put a little edge into some Christmas songs. No need to make them depressing. Just complex. Take Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home.")  It has a variety of emotions, Love belts the song out without hiding behind false cheer and insufferable Santas.

Then there's Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby," that cheeky, breathless, sexy tribute to over the top Christmas commercialism. The song is a treat.

The music from Dr. Suess's the Grinch is great, too. The lyrics are so goofy you can't help smiling. Who can resist this lyrical description of the Grinch?

"You have termites in your smile
You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile"

The bottom line, though, is most Christmas music is toxicly cloying.   If I for some reason need a dose of seasonal noise, I'm perfectly capable of seeking it out myself, thanks. Otherwise, leave me out of it.

Fire Department Pours Cold Water on Giant Fake Yule Log

The operators of Mosaic Stadium in Regina, Saskatchean  thought they had a great idea. Why not get everybody in the Christmas spirit by showing a great big video of a burning Yule log on their jumbo screens for the whole city to see?

No, this stadium in Canada is not on fire. Just a jumbo
tron Yule log

It turned out to be a not-so-great idea. Because people who saw fire on the screens thought it was the real thing and kept calling 911 to report the whole stadium was on fire.

People even reported smelling smoke, even though videos are not exactly scratch and sniff. Unless some inventor up there in Regina has come up with a wild new invention.

After four false alarms, Deputy Regina Fire Chief Gerard Kay said enough was enough. Could the stadium come up with some other holiday motife for their jumbo screens? "Maybe some snowflakes or Santa or something like that," Kay helpfully suggested.

Kay quickly got his Christmas wish. Stadium operators said Friday they've just switched off the Yule log video, and are putting up a big "Thank You" sign for local fans. And in a few days, another Christmas video will go up on the jumbo screens.

We hope people won't mistake that for a UFO or something.