Tag Archives: art

Christmas Part 5: Concerts

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JamesShepherd

That’s me in the shepherd costume on thr far right, by the way. What is it about the holidays that brings out the performer in everyone? It always seems to be the more traditional modes of performing, too. Christmas concerts rarely get more contemporary than Sinatra. For whatever reason, churches and schools are always pulling out all the stops for their Winter production. The amount of work that goes on is quite amazing. Recently, I was helping decorate 100 Lava cakes for the Christmas concert at my wife’s school. You may have heard the carols before and the children onstage might not all be yours, but experiencing your own community when they put on a show is a precious thing. Remember how important you are as an audience member.

Christmas Part 4: Commerce

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iwantyou-copy

For all the spending that goes on every Christmas, there seems to be a flurry of editorials dedicated to making you feel bad about said spending. You’re harming the Earth! You’re creating consumer debt! Don’t you know that there’s more to life than material things? It’s the same song and dance year in and year out. Don’t get me wrong, I see their point. There’s more to gift giving than spending a lot of money. We have to do all we can for the environment, because if Copenhagen’s any indication, our government is simply not interested. Still, there’s something missing from the “Buy Nothing” philosophy of Christmas.

The money generated from Christmas essentially pays most retailer salaries for the fiscal year. What would happen to them if Christmas never came? Is it a good thing for those people to be out of work? And how about that Chinese plastic crap they sell? The Chinese don’t need that money. All they’d do is spend it  on education, labor laws, and environmental regulations.

There is no one philosophy that explains everything. Our society is so interconnected that it takes variety of perspectives to figure out what to do. It’s complicated, but if we listen to the people that are affected by our actions, we can come up with actions that will result in some real change.

Christmas Part 3: The Grand Tour

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It’s funny how Christmas changes as you become an adult. After you leave home, you inevitably curb that personal freedom a bit every December to head back home for Christmas. When you start to work, you find staff Christmas parties are an integral part of any office culture. Once you find that special significant other, you find that your trips home and staff parties to attend double. All of a sudden, you are on a Christmas grand tour.

Traffic and inclement weather are only the start of your worries. You haven’t met with these people outside of work since last year’s Christmas party. If it’s your significant other’s staff party you may not have seen these people before at all. Seeing family can be even more awkward. How has everyone been this year? Will they like the gifts you brought? Will the apple pan dowdy you made pan out at dessert?

The Christmas grand tour is a whirlwind of preparation, travel, and society. You can drive yourself crazy making sure things are just so. But when you turn that doorknob, and smell a Christmas Tree or taste a Christmas dish, you know you are not in a place of scrutiny or judgment. Christmas is not a competition, but a common interest that at least once a year gathers all: friends, family, and co-workers alike.

Christmas Part 2: The Logical Christmas

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What do stories like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, It’s a Wonderful life, and A Christmas Carol have in common? Now, I’m not talking about snow, Santa, and the Baby Jesus. That’s just trimmings on the tree, so to speak. If you were to take a critical survey of Christmas movies, poems, and literature, you might notice a few thematic trends. The protagonists all make a transition from a place of despair and doubt to a place of hope and belief.

Some people balk at this, claiming that these stories teach you that leaving behind your logical faculties is the key to happiness. While it’s true that these tropes have produced some truly awful Christmas specials, it addresses an issue that everyone (in the Northern hemisphere at least) has to deal with every December. The days are getting shorter and colder. The trees are black and bare. Those of us with central heat argue that there’s no reason for us to fear not making it through the winter in our modern society. Yet for reasons we cannot explain, we feel depressed. The negative thoughts and questions of our lives seem more present in the dark of winter. Are we good people? Are we living up to our potential? Do we really deserve all that we have? These thoughts begin to influence our decisions. At some point it’s not enough to know logically that winter will pass, that hope is real and just around the corner. We adorn our houses with the light that we so miss from brighter seasons. We give each other gifts so that we can symbolize in something physical. Some people even do daft things like erecting trees in their houses.

So if you’re concerned that you are celebrating a Holiday that is based on mere Christian/Pagan/Saturnalian traditions, or on things that aren’t real, ask yourself this. Is happiness you feel from Christmas real? If your answer is yes, then you understand that the celebration itself is its own reward. As long as we have the long, dark winter months, we will have Christmas.

Christmas Part 1: Shopping

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When most people think of Christmas Shopping, the word “Scrum” comes to mind. The malls become choked with sweaty bodies all dashing in every direction to reach store shelves picked clean of taste or value. And how the heck are you supposed to buy for adult loved ones? Let’s face it, if they want something they usually have a job that gives them money to buy said thing whenever they want it. You can try to mitigate that using lists, but the people writing them feel greedy and the people reading them feel daunted when their shopping budget just got spontaneously high-balled. When the inevitable Visa hangover comes in the mail you think to yourself, Why did I just do this? Why do any of us do this? Are we so under the spell of corporations and money-making enterprises of all sorts that we prostrate ourselves, year in, year out, on the altar of mass consumption? Boy, those corporations sure have us licked. I once saw a corporation eat a live puppy once. True story.

Or so I used to think. My wife, Sara, loves giving gifts and shopping for gifts. However, she laments that her shopping stamina is not up to par with her mother, who can go 8 hours without so much as an Orange Julius break. To Sara, when you give a gift, you are not just placing filthy lucre at the foot of a torch-lit shrine to Sam Walton. A gift is a symbol of how well you know a person. It is, in effect, your relationship in effigy. Finding the perfect gift is kind of like a game. You try to pick out the person’s hopes and desires from observations you’ve made of them over the past year. The search isn’t always fruitful. Sara will still ask her quarry if nothing comes up. But if you’ve got that kind of information about your loved ones, be it a snippet of conversation, or a glance of a magazine open on a coffee table, wouldn’t you act on it? Even if navigating the retail landscape is confusing, you get a little peek into their world, their experience. That, my friends, is a gift that all the realities of modern manufacture and consumerism cannot cheapen.

The Search for Intelligent Life

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Flying_Saucer _Aliens _-_GPN-2000-001993

When I heard the news report that the British government was closing down its UFO hotline, I thought to myself, if this was the start of a Doctor Who episode, this would be the exact moment where my organs would be sucked out for use in a hilariously impractical death ray. Fortunately, either Earth isn’t prone to those kind of threats, or human organs just don’t make very good death ray fuel.

I’ve always felt the question of whether you believe in extra-terrestrials or not is an asinine one. It’s not a question of believing. Aliens either exist or they don’t. That’s like asking if I believe in Hungarians. Besides, no one wants to be the guy who said, “I believe that humans are the most advanced form of life in the universe” when the giant head of Morena Baccarin appears over New York City. Not even a lifetime of slavery in a distant galaxy will let you let you live that down.

Savage Authority

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I have a conundrum for you. Let’s say a certain Churubusco High School in Indiana is being sued by the ACLU. The school had banned two female students from all athletic and extra-curricular activities for one year for appearing in some photos where they were in lingerie, licking phallus-shaped lollipops. Dan Savage, a sex advice columnist whom I have read for many years, spent the intro of his November 10th podcast episode carpet f-bombing the whole situation. How dare they stifle these girls’ freedom of expression! Their bodies are theirs to post on MySpace where “only their friends can see them”. Here comes the conundrum. Why do I think that suing this school over this is a galactically stupid idea?

Now again, I wouldn’t be ranting about this unless I read Savage’s column, or listened to his podcast. They are entertaining and open up an important dialogue about our modern moral values. However, if he’s willing to beat up a principal over this, he has no idea how these situations work. The reason this suspension seems like an authoritarian beat-down is that the schools can’t talk to the media like the ACLU can. They can’t provide details of sweet jack all if it isn’t approved by their lawyers. Details like where they got the photos, what else the girls may be in trouble for, or complaints from other parents regarding these girls’ behavior.

Still, even though the photos were taken off of  school grounds, since they made it into school grounds, that turns it into something the school needs to deal with. It’s not going to matter that the photos were posted in a private area of Myspace (no pun intended) if the girls have several hundred friends. Even if the school did nothing about it, the photos would probably  be used against the girls in some other way, which would have the girls’ parents screeching into the principal’s office waving around a bullying lawsuit with the fury of 1000 Elizabeth Hasselbecks.

What will the lawsuit accomplish anyway, even if the girls win? Posting racy pictures online is still a bad idea. They will make you look flakey and desperate for attention no matter how enlightened our society gets. Meanwhile, the school will have to make some cuts to pay for their legal fees. What do you think will be the first to go? Athletics? Nah, the soccer moms would tear them a new arse. How about services that fewer students use, like drug counseling, or special needs? Oooh, I know! They could cut sex education! And if you think that the Principal should have thought more about his students’ welfare before going on his crusade against women’s bodies, ponder this. If he’s like any other school principal in the country, between dealing with this lawsuit, his staff, and hundreds of other students and parents, he has no time to think of anything but his students’ welfare.

You know, I deplore censorship of any kind. I also think sexual expression is a beautiful thing. Even so, this should not be the hill we die on for those ideals. The administration of Churubusco High School made a tough call, but this punishment pales in comparison to the kind of difficulties these girls will face in the future if they think this behavior is okay. Photos like that could damage their careers and relationships. Now that the girls know better, they can avoid all that. Freedom is the supreme value of our time, but if we send our kids to these schools to learn how to make decisions and think for themselves, we have to appreciate the lessons in all their forms. Even the ones that get you kicked off the volley ball team.

No2010 and the Death of the Left

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You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan

-John Lennon

Last week the Olympic Flame was diverted from its intended path in front of the BC Legislature by protesters. The downtrodden and disenfranchised of this province rose together in glorious revolution to disrupt an integral cog in the all-consuming Olympic machine – the photo op.

Every time I see the No2010 protesters on the news, I am filled with armrest-ripping rage when I see their flakey, malnourished leaders make  a speech on the evils of capitalism. Is it because I’m just shy of my 30th birthday? Is it because my factory farm fed existence is being threatened? Have I sold out to the corporate machine, put on a blazer and started selling real estate?

Not exactly. Well, at least I’m not selling real estate. I’ve been following protests like these in the news since the so-called “Battle of Seattle” at the meeting of the G8 countries in 1999. In that time, wars have broken out, oil prices have skyrocketed, the cost of computer storage has plummeted, and every year these protests seem to be less about affecting actual  change and more about making noise and ruining things.

The Olympics are a particular sore spot for me because it is only tangentially related to the problems the protesters are trying to address.  Are any of the torch runners greedy land developers? Did any of the snowboarders widen the sea to sky? Should the Olympic flame be blown out as Terry Fox’s mother might carry it to the podium? Most of the people involved with the Olympics are simply trying to achieve their hopes and dreams. Disrupting that proves nothing. If the protesters are complaining that society sees them and the poor as human garbage, they do themselves no favors by acting the part.

You might say that making an out-dated and kyriarchal sporting event slight less enjoyable is a small price to pay in the never-ending class war between the rich and the poor. Over time these efforts will result in the anarchist paradise that supposedly we’re all hoping for. But let me ask you this.  Is there any mention on the No2010 website of actually talking to government officials? Will they be sending any bills to Parliament? The Legislature? City Council? Strata Council? Are they knocking on any doors? Raising campaign funds? I must admit I haven’t been looking all that hard. There’s only so much rhetoric I can take at one time. I did find a lovely Riot 2010? Riot Now! pamphlet, though.

Even if No2010 achieved its goal of stopping the Olympics, then what would happen? There never seems to be any plan with these movements, be it No2010, the Green Party, the Marijuana Party, or even the current NDP. I think that there is such deep-seated hatred of authority in these organizations that any kind of leadership or coordination is immediately shouted down. Meanwhile, the BC Liberals will probably be in power for the next 100 years. You can be sure they will pass any dumb idea that the Fraser Institute can cough up. It’s not because the Liberals are necessarily on the take. By the time the Fraser Insitute presents an idea for a bill, they’ve got all sorts of studies and petitions that make the legislature’s job much easier. The only people who even pay attention to protesters are running paranoid military juntas. Canada is nothing of the sort, so we’d do best to start acting like it.

The Road

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If you’re like me, nothing clears your head like a good road trip. All the half forgotten worries of everyday life melt away when your only concern is the next town and whether you have enough fuel to get there. Funny little wisps of ideas float through your mind. Most sail off behind you like roadside dandelions, but a select few have the honor of leaving the car with you.

Here’s one idea from my most recent trip. This is a wonderful and ultimately mortal part of my life. Friends are getting married. Babies are being born. Behind all that joy is a great sense of consequence that I’ve never experienced before and probably never will again. If there is an exact point in time where one truly becomes an adult, I think I may have found it. It’s that moment in time where you’re suddenly responsible for a new generation of people. The sense of control is very fleeting. Our children and families are their own people, and sometimes it’s a struggle not to get swept up in all the carry-on. But once we make that fateful step into the rest of our lives, our deeds become legend, prologue to all that is. The memories will provide strength, caution, and laughter to all our friends and family in the present and future.

So to my friends Phuc and Xuan, my sister-in-law Jen and her fiancée Ryan, to my cousin Verena and her fiancée Jay, to my friend Tarra’s sister Kirsten and her fiancée Jeff, and most of all to my wife Sara and all my other friends I am experiencing this with. You are all magnificent. It is an honor and pleasure to pay witness to any one moment of this, and you’ve given me all of it. Godspeed, all of you.

You are making Perez Hilton a Martyr! Stop it!

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It pains me that I should comment on something like this, but the insanity of this story is going unchecked. Perez Hilton was allegedly punched by Will.I.Am’s manager and within minutes the internet lost its mind. Men who don’t even read Perez Hilton’s site were jumping to the fore with “GOOD, HE DESERVED IT!” What the hell? Then you have this other gallery of hypocrites pulling their pants up to their chests and saying “Weellll, I don’t think Perez should’ve been punched, but he is trash and a provocateur, etc. etc.” Bull-tweet. They all subscribe to the same baffling brand of mob justice that makes people go ape-spazz over cartoons of Mohammed. And for what? How many people do you know, Mr. Digg Commentor, or Reddit/Mixx/wasteoftime.com commentor, that have been made fun of by Perez Hilton? Answer? Zero. None. Nai. Nada. Sorry to drag you back to the real world where people work hard and pay taxes, buddy. Will.I.Am just had his best sales week ever, and his biggest problem is this twit with a netbook? He should be so lucky. If you want to call Perez names for crying his eyes out on youtube, that man (for lack of a better word) is crying his way to the bank with the extra traffic and ad revenue from his site.

For all the rants on the ubiquity of celebrity news, I’ve been able to avoid all the specific causes of what happened and what Perez said about the Black-Eyed Peas. I still don’t care about it. The only celebrity news that I care about is the kind that’ll lead to the Marvel Avengers movies. If I have any questions, I go ask my wife. That’s it. What I am angry about is the hypocrisy surrounding the idea that he should be silenced when we as a society have decided that we want to read what’s on his site and give him a ton of ad money to update every day.

Perez doesn’t deserve to get punched in the face. He doesn’t deserve to have his website taken down either. All the verbal abuse that the internet can dish out won’t affect him, he’ll just throw on a crown of thorns and dance around for your amusment. Look, I know it’s horrible that celebrity news has taken up such mental space in our society, but it seems like the more we fight it, the more we feed the beast. In fact, I don’t know why we have this demarcation line between “Important Stuff” and Celebrities. Haven’t we already voted with our attention and our dollars that it’s just as important as Iranian Revolutions and Shuttle launches? We can’t innoculate ourselves from tragic heroes and comic villains, it’s practically in our DNA. Instead of just complaining about it, we need to understand what void people fill up when they log on to TMZ or Access Hollywood. The answer will be just as important as an electric car or fusion power.