It has been brought to my attention that I haven’t been updating nearly enough in the last couple of weeks. All I can say is, well, it’s the holidays! I’ve been busy!
And now I’m not. It’s just wonderful.
Perhaps I can update more tomorrow, when my arm has recovered from the afternoon spent writing at work. It really hurts! Besides, I’ve covered all the important stuff already.
I should tell you, I should tell you…I should tell you, I should tell you…
(c) 2008. All rights reserved.
So I checked out Austenbook earlier this week and it is totally and completely awesome. I happened to notice that at the bottom of the page, it said it was inspired by Sarah Schmelling’s Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition). I thought to myself, Hey, I like Shakespeare, so I bopped on over to check it out. After having read Shakespeare for Dummies and the play synopses located therein, I now have a basic understanding of what Hamlet was about, so I found this rather amusing. Now I need to actually read Hamlet. I’ve read several of the other plays and I might even have Hamlet at home thanks to the wonderful Shakespeare treasury I got at the Planned Parenthood Book Fair this spring. I just can’t remember now if I bought the tragedies or the comedies. One of the sets was missing a volume, so I left that set there, but now I don’t remember which one I bought. Oh, well…I hear the bookstores are a wonderful place to be this time of the year…Or actually, any time of the year!
I felt an urgent need to update you all about the awesomeness that is mentioned above, primarily because I felt an intense and urgent need to procrastinate again. Ah, procrastination, what would life be like without you? Oh, that’s right…it would suck horribly…
And now to look forward to a weekend full of chick flicks, romance novels, and all things Christmasy! Woo!
(c) 2008. All rights reserved.
But this time it wasn’t mine. Well, okay, it reminded me a lot of mine, but this time it wasn’t me, I swear. This was an article from Wednesday’s Iowa Falls Times-Citizen, or rather, it was a letter to the editor of that newspaper. Here is what Jory Rapp of Alden had to say:
It saddens me, as well as angers me, to think that it has become so “politically incorrect” to say, “Merry Christmas.” We are so afraid of offending someone for one reason or another that stores won’t put Merry Christmas in their ads, school concerts are called “winter concerts,” and such ridiculous rot as that. It seems like it’s wrong to offend everyone else; everyone, that is, except for the Christians.
If memory serves me right, wasn’t our country founded on Christian beliefs, values, and morals? We trusted in God to establish, guide, and bless our country, yet now we spit in His face and are outraged at having Him be part of our country and its government. Then we have the audacity to moan at the shape our country is in and ask why God allows certain things to happen. If we would look to the Bible and the history of the Israelites, we would see what happens when people turn their backs on God, when they choose to worship other gods and idols. We are headed down that path and if we continue to kick God out of everything, one day we will be standing in the midst of a disaster asking, “Where are you, God?” and His answer will be, “You didn’t want me around, so I left.”
This Christmas season, I will remind my children that we celebrate because God chose to send His Son to this earth as a baby to one day be the Savior of all mankind and that we are to share that gift with others. I wish everyone a very blessed and “Merry Christmas.”
I thought this was very well written and I pretty well agree with it. If Ben Stein can stick up for “Merry Christmas” even though as a Jew, he doesn’t celebrate it, why can’t the rest of us? “Season’s Greetings” has got to be about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The holiday is Christmas. If you have a problem with that, go back to wherever you came from. Or celebrate Festivus.
And now, on to snarkier matters…
It appears that the Idiot Brigade is back in full force. I swear I got stuck behind every idiot driver in Grundy County Wednesday. I was nearly hit by someone who decided to switch lanes without making sure there was no oncoming traffic and then again by someone who decided to take his half out of the middle while I was trying to pass him. If he’d come any further into the left lane, he could have knocked me right off the road. And then yesterday I was nearly run over by some idiot at a stop sign who was watching around the corner instead of right in front of him, where I happened to be walking. Jerks. What is it about winter that brings out the idiot in people?
On a more positive note, thank God it’s Friday! I am so looking forward to the weekend. No getting up for work and struggling to make it through the day, no idiots to deal with on the road because I fully intend to stay home and be exceedingly lazy, nothing but chick flicks and romance novels. Oh, and Christmas present wrapping. And Christmas card writing. And maybe a little bit of 4-H paperwork. Woo! I love weekends!
Merry Christmas, y’all, and happy Friday!
(c) 2008. All rights reserved.
Oh, Snoopy, how right you are!
(c) 2008. All rights reserved.
…After all, I was seriously upset last night. I suppose it’s a stupid thing to be that upset over, but I think the reason it bothers me so much is that music has always been such a huge part of my life that it really irritated me to see a performance where it looked like nobody really cared. They were shooting for mediocrity and barely achieved even that. I was always taught to strive for excellence. Those kids (the fourth graders in particular) had a serious problem with projection; we sat about as far away from the singers as you could possibly get and could hardly hear them most of the time. At one point we couldn’t even understand what they were singing because they weren’t enunciating at all. I remember quite vividly a lesson I received once on enunciation during kids’ choir practice at church. Let me tell you, I enunciated perfectly after that.
It also really bothers me that in so many public places, we are encouraged not to say anything even resembling a remembrance of what Christmas is really all about. Christmas is first and foremost about celebrating the birth of Christ and his life and works. Secondly, it is about spending time with family and friends and thanking God for the blessings you have had and continue to receive. It is not about shopping and buying and spending and receiving. As a kid, I remember not really caring so much about the family part and the religion part. But now that my mom and both my grandparents are gone, I really cherish the times that I can spend with my family all together. Those times are few and far between. And the older I get, the more I can appreciate what God has done for me in my life and the more I find myself…apparently forgetting to take my hot water out of the microwave so I can have some hot chocolate. Excuse me.
Okay. Yesterday I heated up some water twice in order to make a cup of hot chocolate and I forgot about it both times. I think I remembered it as I was leaving work for the night. Today I’ve only done it once so far. Let’s see if I can remember to take it out of the microwave while it’s still hot this time.
Anyway, I think I’m a little calmer now. I am just so sick to the teeth of all this stupid political correctness garbage. Kids don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance in school anymore because “it might infringe on someone’s right not to believe in God.” You can’t have the Ten Commandments in courthouses anymore. Oh, and by the way, no Christmas carols in the annual Christmas concert because someone might be offended. Really, how much farther are we going to let them take this? If you don’t want to hear Christmas music, don’t go to the concert. If you don’t want to say the Pledge of Allegiance because you don’t believe in it, don’t say it! If you don’t like the way we do things in our country, go somewhere else. Otherwise, shut your yaps and do like the rest of us.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the separation of Church and State, but I think in some cases we’ve taken it a bit too far and much farther than the Founding Fathers intended, Christmas concerts and prayer in school being prime examples. I’m not saying I want to live in a religious state, but seriously, people, use some common sense. By not allowing such expressions of faith as singing Silent Night in a school Christmas concert, we are effectively offending ourselves. I’m offended that kids are not allowed to sing a religious Christmas song at the Christmas concert because it might offend someone else. The community in which I live is predominantly, if not entirely, Christian, and I think it’s stupid that we are not allowed to sing Christian Christmas songs during the Christmas concert.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t done being snarky. I’m sure I probably just talked in circles around my main point of wow, we’re all being stupid here, folks, but oh well. I guess I’d just like to know why what was okay for us to sing as kids in our Christmas concerts is suddenly not okay to sing now. For crying out loud, they could have at least sung something like Silver Bells or Jingle Bell Rock or Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow! While these are all nice songs in their own way, they’re no Angels We Have Heard On High or O Holy Night, but they’re at least Christmas classics. Where were they in the program?
Okay, okay, I promise I’ll get off my high horse now. I’ve been looking at my archives list and I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for over a year! I know, that’s not much for some people. I have one friend who’s been at it regularly for the last five years. But for me to actually keep something like this going this long is pretty cool, especially given that I haven’t been doing a whole lot of actual writing lately. I so need a free time machine.
And in case you were wondering, yes, I remembered to retrieve my hot water from the microwave so that I can have some hot chocolate. Yummy!
(c) 2008. All rights reserved.
Warning: Much snarkiness and ranting ahead. You’ve been warned.
I’ve been feeling rather snarky since about an hour ago. The elementary Christmas concert was tonight and we went. What a disappointment! If we had sung like that, Mrs. Eckhoff would have had our heads. And the music! One song was called Christmas in America and the first lines talked about how “I like shopping at my favorite mall and wrapping presents” and…talk about appalling! Christmas has become so commercialized that it’s just sickening. The song briefly mentioned Silent Night, a Christmas classic, but was anyone actually singing it? NO!
I spent 2/3 of the concert giving my inner critic free reign over those hapless elementary kids. It’s not their fault they had crappy music to sing; they probably don’t even realize the significance of what they were singing. But the teachers should know better! And then when they had a song that featured kids on recorders, they gave the kids the harmony while the melody was barely audible coming from the BOOM BOX ON THE FLOOR. In my day, someone played the piano and it was a hell of a lot better. The funniest part is that it’s the same teacher! Mrs. Eckhoff, you must be feeling the burn-out to have allowed a performance like that.
Okay, I think I’m finished giving voice to my snarky inner critic. Except that it’s truly alarming to see what’s being done to music programs in our schools. With declining enrollment (the entire fourth grade had only 15 kids) and budget problems across the board, I’m sure they think this is adequate, but that’s the problem. It’s not even adequate and to say that this is what passes for adequate is just depressing. I loved being in music in school (yes, I’m a band geek to the core) and I can’t believe that this is what our school music program has devolved to. And we used to actually use the auditorium instead of having it IN THE GYM. It was one thing when we were in high school and you couldn’t fit everyone on the stage in the auditorium, but they would have had more than enough room to fit these kids up there and there would have been more than enough seats to fit the audience.
*shakes head*
*sigh*
If you’ll excuse me, I feel compelled to write a scathing letter to the editor of the newspaper. I probably won’t actually do it, but I am pretty disappointed in our school right now. There are no words for how disappointed I am.
(c) 2008. All rights reserved.
Suddenly they all died. The end. 