A couple weeks back, I ventured into the cold and spent the better part of a Saturday shaking my torso in an intermittently successful attempt to keep a PVC hoop from hitting the ground at my feet.  The occasion was a free hooping workshop, organized by our friend Marie and taught by Lara of SuperHooper.

In the way old days (or, to put it another way, back when I was young),  it was called a Hula Hoop, a term trademarked by the good people at Wham-O! toys.  These days, it’s mostly just called a ‘hoop’ and the spasmodic torso gyrations intended to keep it aloft is called ‘hooping’.  Or so the kids tell me these days.

Bah!  In my day, we didn’t have these fancy circle things.  We had rocks.  And we were thankful!

Why would I do this?  My wife has taken up hooping these days.  I tried to be supportive yet uninvolved, my usual strategy whenever she picks up a new hobby.  Nevertheless, she managed to snare me.  “Of course, it’s better to make your own hoop, so you can customize the size,” she tells me, then gets me to help her make hoops for each of us.  Because, of course, I need one too.  For those of you interested, she discusses the process in depth here.  Please note that the PVC material we used is not typical.  We used it simply because the usually recommended materials were not readily available in our area.

Much to my chagrin, I’m amused at making the damn things, and find it amusing as well that I’m somewhat able to keep it aloft.  This is a far cry from my childhood, when a hula hoop demonstrated gravity far more effectively than centripetal force.

Then comes the decorating.  Her hoop winds up being purple with reflective fish stickers and lots of purple ‘bubbles’; the very picture of whimsy.  My hoop is black.  I add four thin bands of red.  Yep, I’m done.  I decide to use “elegant simplicity” as a code word for “lazy”.  Fortunately, none of this mattered at the workshop.

I actually enjoyed it.  Yes, I’m shocked and appalled as well.  It was not a den of hippies, as I’d feared, nor was I the only male there, as I’d hoped.  Lara was a fun and friendly teacher, and I learned quite a bit more than I expected.  I also got more of a work-out than I expected, and the chill factor proved to be a boon once we’d gotten warmed up.  The Saturday workshop had an afternoon and an evening session, the latter featuring a variety of LED hoops that SuperHooper makes.  It was, as the kids say, wicked cool.

I think I made a generally positive impression, given that I was a gray-hair who was having fun with this and not self-conscious about it.  Amy, of course, made a great impression as she always does.

Of course, there was also a Sunday session that we couldn’t make.  Oh, well, maybe next time.  As it was, I was sore for three days afterward.  Damn exercise.

It’s that glorious time of the year again, when Bill O’Reilly starts whinging on about how Christians are under fire and hotly persecuted in their own country.  Personally, I didn’t know that Bill O’Reilly lived in Vatican City.  Here in the States, however, we seem to have a bizarre split personality thing going on with the winter holiday season.  Half the time, we’re going on about the great Melting Pot that is our country, and the rest of the time we’re bitching about how immigrants are trying to take our country away and why do we have to push #1 for English and how all the Founding Fathers were Christians.

[As a side note, you may surmise that I have some dislike for Bill O'Reilly.  Consequently, I am amused that he's losing some of his right-wing hate-squad fans to Glenn Beck, who's even more loopy. ]

That, essentially, is the biggest problem with this country.  We have the highest of ideals paired with the lowest of common denominators.  We want the government to protect us from everything, but we don’t want to give them the money or power to do so.  We want everyone to respect out beliefs without anyone infringing on us with their beliefs.  We want to rule the world, but we hate paying attention to anyone else.  And so forth.

And so naturally the holiday season brings our contradictory nature into sharp focus.  Charity and goodwill and all that touchy-feely stuff, so long as everyone is celebrating Christmas.  If you suggest that maybe a school pageant shouldn’t glorify Christianity at the expense of the muslim or jewish kids, then the knives come out.

Ah, believers.  I love ‘em when they actually live up to their beliefs.  The rest of the time, they suck as much as everyone else.

So here’s a few things I like to toss into the mix in the War On Christmas.

1)  Christ wasn’t an asshole.  You should follow his example.

2) White middle-class Christians never sound convincing when they whine about being persecuted.  Mostly, it’s just pathetic.

3) NOBODY KNOWS when Jesus was born.  Early sources put it in the sprintime.  It wasn’t celebrated in December until sometime around 350 AD, when Rome started making a real push to spread its influence and co-opt pagan groups.  Consequently, the “Reason For The Season” is the same as every other Winter Festival that developed in every other social group that had both agriculture and winter:  “we’ve got enough grain stored away to last us until springtime, so let’s party!”

Thank you, and good night.

Somebody recently pointed me to Clay Kitten Shooting, a cute flash game.  Apparently this is the second iteration of the game, as someone was so horrified that they wrote an angry letter to the creator, which prompted an upgrade.  Of course, if shooting kittens horrifies you that much, you can play this version, which features the creator’s head . . . made to look like a kitten.

Oddly, my cats aren’t the slightest bit concerned when they hear a mew conjoined to a shotgun blast.

Jeez, gotten pretty dusty around here.

Well, I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things again. Sorry for the long absence.

Okay, not getting anything done. Sorry.

I don’t like Twitter.  Don’t see the point, really.

I became aware of Twitter a couple years ago, when I found it through Girl Genius, my favorite webcomic.  Phil Foglio, author of Girl Genius,  was using Twitter as a platform for the serial adventures of Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer! Othar is a side character in Girl Genius, a dashing adventurer of great genius and dubious judgment whose mission is to wipe out all “sparks” from the world (including, ultimately, himself).

When I started reading Othar’s Journal, I was otherwise unaware of Twitter.  I followed links to a few other people’s Twitter logs, and was deeply underwhelmed.  About then, I heard a report on NPR about Twitter, with some techie raving about how Twitter was this brilliant program that allowed you to post on the web via text messages from your phone.  Upon hearing his explanation, I continued to find Twitter deeply underwhelming.

Twitter was briefly the Next Big Thing, then sort of faded from view, mostly becoming popular with people who think text messaging is a doorway to brilliance.  Then, inexplicably, it became the Next Big Thing again in the past months.  Suddenly everyone was talking about Tweeting and Twitter and how brilliant it was that millions of people could instantly post what they were having for breakfast.

What struck me as odd was the number of journalists who adopted Twitter as a viable method of reporting.  I remember one NPR reporter talking how she’d be Tweeting from the Mall during the Inauguration.

Anyone who’s spent more than twelve minutes in my company knows that I have an inevitable contempt for anything falling into that classification conjuction of Popular and Pointless.  Indeed, my contempt is sufficiently acrid as to scar the surfaces of nearby furniture.  Hence my befuddlement when friends and family attempted to persuade me to join Facebook.

And hence my current befuddlement that some of my friends are now inviting me to Twitter with them.  Do these people not know who the fuck I am?!? Perhaps they have me confused with Michael Anguiano, or maybe Michael Anguiano.  Or perhaps even, heaven forfend, Michael Anguiano.

I am not those people.

Think you know me?  Then don’t invite me to Twitter.

Sadly, I’m probably related to that last guy.

Okay, this isn’t breaking news, but I felt the need to comment on it.

A week or so ago, RNC Chairman Michael Steele was on CNN’s “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News.”  When asked whether Rush Limbaugh was really the leader of the Republican Party, Steele said no.  “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh’s whole thing is entertainment,” was his reply.  Of Limbaugh’s show, he said, “Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly.”

I feel bad for Michael Steele.  He has the unenviable task of trying to drag the Republican party out of its collective double-wide trailer and back  into the cultural mainstream of this country.  He’s also struggling under the burden of being the very first African-American chairman of a political party whose demographic involves a sizable sub-rosa element of racism.  That he was elected to the position at all speaks to the general awareness of the Republican leadership that the party has grown increasingly hamstrung by its willingness to cater to divisive and extreme elements.  His dismissal of Rush as an entertainer, rather than a political commentator or leader, speaks of intelligence and courage.

Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, is a raging asshole.  I would be saddened if he were to fall down a sewer and die, because some undeserving city worker (probably African-American) would have to climb down there and fish his fat cadaver out. Limbaugh glories in being loud and ugly.  He has no qualms about being ill-informed or misrepresenting the facts.

Three things in particular stick out in my mind about Rush.

First, his career as a loudmouth was largely unsuccessful until he stumbled onto the format of “unguested confrontation” . . . because he was unable to deal with actual guests or a neutral audience.  At least Bill O’Reilly does his right-wing stand-up routine with actual guests in front of a potentially mainstream audience.  Does anyone even remember Rush’s sojourn as a commentator on “Monday Night Football”?  No, because Rush got booted about twenty minutes after he opened his mouth.   That was sadly typical of Rush’s track record.  Now he only rants in front of a group of slavishly adoring “Dittoheads” over AM radio.

Second, Rush is an unabashed whore for ratings and doesn’t bother with things like integrity and principles.  When informed that he had misunderstood and misrepresented a reference made by a Clinton Administration official, the Limbaugh response was “That’s their problem.”  Other commentators (Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy), when informed that they had similarly misunderstood and misrepresented that comment, were good enough to issue on-air corrections and apologize.  Rush couldn’t be bothered.  And, no, that’s not an isolated incident.

Third, Rush is a hypocrite.  Way back in the 90’s, I had no idea who he was, so I gave him a fair chance and watched his television show for a week.  I formed a very low opinion of him and he’s been kind enough to live down to it ever since.  I particularly remember one show where he whined about how a political cartoon misrepresented him as being overly fat.  Ten minutes later, he’s ridiculing celebrity attendees at a PETA event for looking stupid.  More recently, he has attacked those opposing the Iraq invasion as unpatriotic cowards, while he himself avoided military service due to a “persistent boil on my backside”.  And, a couple years ago, he was exposed as being addicted to painkillers (Oxycontin, as I recall), after years of describing drug abusers as lowlifes who deserve the harshest possible punishment under the law.

So I applauded Michael Steele for his characterization of Rush Limbaugh as a mere entertainer.  Indeed, on an “All Things Considered” interview about bipartisanship, Limbaugh himself came out and stated that he has no constituency.   His only responsibility, he said, was to keep his ratings up for his sponsors.  Little wonder that Rush was snidely dismissive of bipartisanship as stupid and unnecessary . . . it’s easy to dismiss the need to work together when you don’t have to get anything done.

Unfortunately, Steele caved almost immediately.  Hardly a surprise, but still lamentable.  Rush’s audience of conservative gun-toting bible-thumping redneck white males is still a substantial portion of the Republican demographic, to which the RNC must ultimately look for fund-raising.  So when Rush predictably shrieked his wounded outrage, Steele apologized.

Just as well, I suppose.  I despise conservatism for its “me-first” philosophy and a short-sighted devotion to protecting business interests at the expense of actual human beings.  Since the Republican Party is the flag-bearer for the conservative movement, the best thing for this country is for Limbaugh to keep the Republican Party from being able to get anything done or work with anyone else.  The more Rush can keep  the Republicans irrelevant, the happier I’ll be.

Breaking News:  I’m not on Facebook!!!

There’s kind of a story there.  See, blogging requires a certain level of devotion that I evidently don’t have.  Part of the problem is that just a general change of scheduling, so that I’m preoccupied with other things at the times that I had previously spent on the computer.  Part of it is that I have recently been somewhat disaffected with writing in general.

Of course, this blog is mostly about bitching and random commentary, which requires a reasonably predictable schedule.  My wife’s blog, Random Bits Of Projects, is a different kettle of fish.  Her blog is about various projects and craft bits, so it doesn’t depend of regular updates.  Her readership is people who need something useful about a project they’re doing, and so they’re just as likely to go to an old post as a new one.

On the other hand, bitching about things will tend to get stale pretty fast.  You have to keep adding new stuff to keep a readership, or else you’re just talking to yourself.  Not that I don’t do plenty of that. And, yes, I’m getting to my point.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a networking site.  That’s mostly a matter of having a presence and then people find each other.  You don’t have a readership so much as you have an extended circle of friends and acquaintances.  Since I don’t really have such an extended circle, it’s not held that much . . . okay, it’s not held any attraction for me.  None.  Yet my brother Andrew has been pushing me to join Facebook since the middle of last year.  I can see why being on Facebook would have value for him, since he’s always been more likely to have friends. 

The first time he brought it up, he was enthusing about a particular friend from college with whom he’d reconnected through Facebook.  I’ll spare you my commentary on the friend involved, but let’s just say my assessment is a mixture of annoyance, distaste, and contempt.  Not that I was the best person in college.  I certainly don’t see why anyone would want to look me up after all these years.

To sum up:  I don’t want to look anyone up, and I don’t see why anyone would look me up.

So much for Facebook, right?  Nope.  My brother insisted.  Indeed, over the Christmas holidays, I got the big push from both  him and my sister-in-law.  And so I wound up with a page on Facebook.

Mind you, I’ve spent most of my life being somewhat out-of-step with the people around me.  I don’t regard this as necessarily a good or bad thing, it’s just how things worked out.  It started out primarily as cluelessness, but now it’s various shades of being mildly obtuse, overly principled, somewhat indifferent, and occasionally contrarian.  So I dealt with the familial pressure simply by being relatively indifferent.

My wife, however, felt that this was a reasonably important family thing, so she signed me up.  Honestly, I didn’t really care one way or the other, but since I was signed up anyway, I figured I’d go through with it and at least make myself available.  Apparently this was important to people.  I logged in and did the necessary changes to the page for which I had been signed up:  changed the email address and password, changed the privacy settings, and so forth.

But apparently Facebook didn’t want me.  I tried to log in again and couldn’t.  It wouldn’t recognize the new email and password, but also refused to recognize the original email and password.  I spent a bemused hour trying various combinations thereof, to no avail.  And so I’m not on Facebook.

Ironic?  Not yet.

The irony is that my brother has dropped off Facebook.  Said that it was “too much to keep up with”.  My sister-in-law quickly followed suit, citing the same reasons.

Yes, I’m the worst blogger on the face of the earth.  I haven’t posted in, what, over a month?

Oh well. 

“Slumdog Millionaire” is a brilliant movie, a Dickensian story in a Hindi landscape.  Danny Boyle should be taken out and shot, so that future generations remember him for this movie.  Otherwise, he might turn out another “A Life Less Ordinary” or “The Beach”, leading to a downward spiral that eventually finds him shilling for some cheap winemaker. 

To be fair, I loved “A Life Less Ordinary” until the last twenty minutes or so, when it bizarrely turned into “A Crappy Disingenuous Fable More Ordinary”.  Of course, I also liked Cameron Diaz in those pre-Charlie’s Angels days.  So much for the past. 

I understand that “Slumdog Millionaire” is facing some controversy in Mumbai for its depiction of life in the massive slums.  Indeed, a Hindi friend-of-a-friend has protested to said Hindi friend that Mumbai isn’t really like that.  Of course, the protesting person is from a well-off high-caste family.  That’s rather like some rich white boy in the U.S. saying that racial discrimination really isn’t that bad and what’s the big deal with the homeless and so forth.  Conversely, everything I’ve read from more reliable sources indicates that it’s a reasonably accurate portrayal:  60% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums, including the central Mumbai slum of Dharavi which alone has a population of one million.  It’s enough to make Charles Dickens shit himself. 

The framing device is the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, but it opens in a jail cell as the protagonist, Jamal, is being . . . um . . . ‘interrogated’.  The police are convinced that he’s cheated his way to the big-money final question.  The movie unfolds in the episodes of Jamal’s life as he explains how he knew or guessed each answer.  The first person narrative is frequently reinforced with images from Jamal’s memories of stories that he hasn’t told yet; we’re reminded that there’s much more to the story than we’ve yet seen. 

While the overarching drive for Jamal is his childhood sweetheart Latika, the key narrative dynamic is the relationship between Jamal and his older brother, Salim.  In an early episode, the very young brothers are each seeking a movie star’s autograph, and their efforts and interaction are a microcosm of how the rest of the movie plays out.  To indulge in a metaphorical hyperbole, Jamal will endure a world of shit in seeking his heart’s desire. 

The cast is excellent, with the key characters being protrayed by three different actors at different ages;  all of them were wonderful.  In particular, I was impressed by Dev Patel as the adult Jamal.  The credits play out over a Bollywood-style dance number featuring Jamal and Latika, both as adults and children, and I noticed Patel’s body language as he danced.  His movements conveyed a completely different person that the Jamal he had portrayed in the movie.  He had so inhabited the character of Jamal that he was visibly different when outside of it. 

Okay, that’s enough from me.  Go see the movie.  Prepare to have your heart wrenched repeatedly, but you’ll leave the theater with a joyous heart. 

And that’s the highest possible praise from a miserable bastard like me.

Several weeks since I blogged anything.  Sorry about that.  I’ve backposted Anguiano Held Hostage:  Day 130 and Day 135 by way of making up for it.  Day 130 is about having a household of newly adopted cats, in which I sound uncharacteristically sweet.  Day 135 also discusses pets, but more to the point is a meditation on the uncomfortable disconnect between the nature of the holiday spirit and its actual practice (or lack thereof) by people.  One of my more pithy discussions,  sadly.  Or maybe just a rant on a classic theme. 

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when we’re reminded of the Christmas spirit by a daily jamming of sales advertisements in the mailbox.  Yes, it’s that time of year, when sappy holiday music blares from public speakers while people use the Baby Jesus as an excuse to yell at salespeople about how they’re ruining a young child’s Christmas.  Yes, it’s definitely that time of year again, when Bill O’Reilly starts his annual yelling about how there’s a War On Christmas, illustrating his principle that the last thing a devout Christian wants to do is demonstrate charity. 

I despise the holiday season.  Perhaps it’s that I’m getting old and (more) cranky.  Perhaps it’s that the increasing commercialization of the Christmas holidays have soured my perceptions.  Perhaps it’s simply Holiday Fatigue, caused by the increasingly early onset of the holiday season, which now starts  the day after Halloween.  Mostly, though, it’s just that human beings are mostly assholes.   

 Ye gods, I despise the holiday season.  I give the gifts, I wish people the best, I drop a dollar into every Salvation Army bucket that I pass.  I try to live the spirit every day of my life.  I just wish people would shut the hell up about how I have to do it during this tiny window at  the end of the year and how Jesus is ‘the reason for the season’ and so on.  I think Jesus has bigger things to worry about than 60% off selected linens at Bed Bath & Beyond. 

Honestly, if Jesus Christ were walking on earth today, he’d slap Bill O’Reilly for being an intolerant jerk who lacks the tiniest bit of Christian charity. 

So here’s my holiday wish to you, dear reader:  I sincerely hope that, throughout this holiday season, you are not the kind of person that Jesus would slap.