Fantastic little post by Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software, creators of the most excellent Avernum series and other cool old-school-style RPGs.

We weren't planning on doing anything for Christmas this year. Aaron's parents came and went early in the month, so the tree-trimming party was pretty much it. We planned to spend the weekend vegging and doing not much of much.

Last night, though, I discovered that I was missing my carol fix. Every year since I was an undergrad, I've been in one choir or another, and though I always griped about having to sing Christmas carols every bloody year, it turns out that a carol-less Christmas is kind of sad and lonely, whether we're actually celebrating or not. So we packed up the toddler and went off to the Christmas Eve candle-light service at the UU Church. Readings included the Gospel of Luke, Robert Fulghum, and what is apparently a traditional UU Christmas homily starring Charles Dickens as the "spirit of Unitarian Christmas Past." (A bit of searching shows that Dickens actually was a Unitarian, at least briefly, but that several folks hold claim to "the first Christmas tree in America," or even New England. But it is nice to know that Garrison Keillor is full of it.)

So I got my carol fix, and even got to light a candle, while Aaron and Z sat on the floor with a coloring book and crayons. Z was great, except for a few funny moments in the readings, where the combined laughter of the congregation scared him to tears and we had to take him out. Poor little over-sensitive guy.

Today we stuck with our do-nothing Christmas plan. I spent most of an hour playing with Z in the bathtub, he went down for a nap, and so did we. We all basically slept all afternoon, then had Chinese takeout for dinner. And after dinner there were presents! Z had a couple of gifts, and I took pictures of the unwrapping with my Christmas gift to myself, a new digital camera. I'd been wanting something small I could tuck in my purse and carry around with me, and spambrian pointed me to the Pansonic Lumix. 12 luscious megapixels and a glorious 5x zoom, and the whole thing is about the size of my cell phone. I <3 it!

So without further ado, I present to you "A Low-Key Lanterman Christmas."

Full Screen Here

Wishing you all a fine and happy Winter Solstice. Remember, anything you do tonight, you can do longer than on any other night of the year. Live it up!

Joie!

From Healthcare for all, except most of us by the highly imaginative Jerry Battiste:

If Senator Joe Lieberman happens to say, fall down a flight of stairs right through a plate glass window and into an active hive of Africanized-honey bees, you won’t see him waiting in line at the emergency room.

Or, let’s say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi contracts some vile disease, like the Ebola virus. Though she might be hemorrhaging from every orifice in her body, she’ll have a team of doctors and nurses at her beck and call inserting corks as needed to stem the flow.

Let’s say Senator Harry Reid and Senator John McCain come to fisticuffs and McCain grabs a chair and begins to hit Reid in the face with it repeatedly. Then, in a sudden burst of adrenaline Reid rises up, turns his pain into anger, grabs McCain by the throat and throws him, Jujitsu-style, across the aisle and into the Speaker’s Podium. Both men would undoubtedly suffer multiple broken bones, bruises and blood losses.

But because they are members of Congress their bank accounts would not suffer one bit.

Members of Congress have one of the best health care plans of any human being on the planet, and it’s all free.

Seems to me that makes them the absolute worst deciders of what should be done about health care. They are not stakeholders.

When you type a search into Google, it kindly pulls up the most common searches starting with what you've already typed as suggested autocompletes. Like the search on Twitter, this can quickly give you the "pulse" of the public (at least, in this case, of the Googleverse) on a particular topic. For instance, type "can I get pregnant" into the search field, and the autocompletes provide compelling cases for the need for frank and scientifically accurate sex education.

Type "Joe Lieberman [any letter]" and all sorts of results come up; you can even compose an alphabet song from them! (Having a toddler, I've been hearing a lot of alphabet songs lately.) Sing it with me (to this tune):

a is for Aetna,
b is for betrayal,
c is for cloture,
d is for douche (or douchebag, dikipedia, or "droopy dog"),
e is for Emperor Palpatine (not kidding),
f is for filibuster,
g is for "Glenn Beck,"
h is for" health care, "
i is for "insurance contributions," "is a douche," or idiot
j is for jokes,
k is for... uhm, nevermind, there isn't one for k.
l is for lobbyist or liar,
m is for "must go" (top of list)
n is for "net worth," "next election," or ninja (?!?!?!)
o is for "open secrets"
p is for "public option," "party affiliation," or Palpatine
q is for quotes
t is for traitor or turncoat
u is for "when is Joe Lieberman up for reelection" (apparently Google doesn't require that u start the first word)
v is for "voting record"
w is for "weasel"

and I'll stop there. There you have it, the wisdom [sic] of the Googleverse.

While googling, I ran across a blog post reference to Rachel Maddow's coverage of a Republican "prayercast" against health care reform. That clip offers some chilling insight into how at least some Republicans and/or conservatives are viewing the matter, and how disconnected their arguments are from anything we might even loosely call "reality."

I will say no more about that clip here. What did amuse me was the "automated advertisement" on the blog post:



Kind of sums it up, doesn't it?

Maybe we could just have our Senators and Representatives put up their votes on ebay.

I got an A! Woo-hoo!

See around the one minute mark:



*Yes, I know that calamari consists of squid and not octopus, I could couldn't resist the pun. I apologize to any squid or octopi that might be offended.

Doesn't this just fill you with Christmas cheer and goodwill toward your fellow man?

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum -- Same-sex marriage bill, as written, called a threat to social service contracts

"Catholic Charities, the church's social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington's homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church...'All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,' Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.* "

Lovely, just lovely. How very Christian of them.

The Washington Post article fortuitously links to the website for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, and that site has a handy directory page with Chancellor Belford's email address. I don't often do this sort of thing, but I'm just disgusted. These people should be ashamed of themselves. Using this kind of threat against innocent people to blackmail the city into discriminating against yet more innocent people? WWJD?

So here's my email to Chancellor Belford. Feel free to send your own. And don't forget to include some cheery holiday greetings. Bet she doesn't have to go to a soup kitchen for her Christmas dinner.

Dear Chancellor Belford,

In response to the Washington Post's article "Catholic Church Gives D.C. Ultimatum," I just want to say how admirable it is that the church's religious mandate to discriminate against gay people trumps it's religious mandate to help the poor. It has certainly enhanced the church's public image to be seen punishing the innocent to make a doctrinal point. I'm sure this is exactly what Jesus would do. Congratulations on so thoroughly exemplifying everything the Catholic Church stands for. Merry Christmas to you and yours!

-----------------------------

*"Exemption language" refers to the proposed same-sex marriage bill up for vote next month, which says that "Religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians."