Blackmoor Vituperative

If I had to pick one Christmas special that sums up what I consider the “true meaning of Christmas”, it would be Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

“Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos, far and near. Christmas Day is in our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be, just as long as we have we. Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand.”

Christmas (or Yule or whatever other name you want to call it) is not merely some religious festival. It is bigger than that. Christmas belongs to everyone — that is the entire point of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”. And that is the lesson that Grinches who want to limit it to their tiny religious set-piece need so desperately to learn. Christmas is no more a “Christian” holiday than Tuesday is a “Norse” day of the week. Christmas is a human holiday, for the whole human family.

Someone is really happy to have her cone off. 🙂 It’s an animated GIF: click the image to see it full size.

You may have been cordially invited to the 8th Annual Blackmoor Halloween Party! If so, keep reading. If not, avert your eyes!

Costumes are encouraged! Snacks, drinks, and Halloween Chili will be provided. If you have special dietary needs or are prone to complain about what is offered, bring your own.

You may bring guests and/or children, but you are responsible for their behavior.

We have abundant amounts of room, including a couple of private rooms. Regardless of where you sleep, you will need to bring your own bedding (such as a sleeping bag or inflatable mattress). You may also reserve a room at the nearby Best Western Plus Crossroads Inn & Suites.

Please RSVP, so that we can plan appropriately. Thanks!

When:
6 PM, Saturday, November 2, 2012
Let us know if you want to arrive early!

Where:
Castle Blackmoor
70 Starling Ln.
Troy, VA 22974-3278

This is a note to my nieces and nephews who are, or will soon be, going to high school. I hope it’s helpful.

The second-best thing about high school is that it’s exciting, because everything that happens is the Most Important Thing Ever. Every minor error is the worst mistake in the history of the world. Every small success is the most epic victory ever. Every thoughtless word is the cruelest and most unforgivable crime since time began. You get the idea. Compared to high school, being an adult is pretty dull, if you’re doing it right.

The best thing about high school is that it ends. Eventually you will get a real job, and someone who actually cares about you, and you’ll figure out what love actually means. You’ll realize how completely out of whack your priorities were just a few years ago. And then, a few years later, you’ll realize it again. Hopefully, by the time you are in your late 20s, you’ll actually have some clue about what’s important and what’s not, and you’ll look back at yourself at 16-20 and you’ll chuckle at yourself because you were such a complete idiot.

The worst thing about high school is that some people don’t get the memo when it’s over. You’ll meet people who keep treating every day like it’s an episode of Gossip Girl, well into their thirties or even forties. At first, that might seem entertaining: they are the life of the party, and nothing that happens to them is ever trivial. Every moment of every day is filled with Drama with a capital D. Unfortunately, no one maintains that level of teen-age narcissism without severe deficits in their character. They might be unable to hold a job. They might be unable to maintain a healthy relationship. They might have substance abuse problems. Whatever it is, they won’t take responsibility for any of it: pathological narcissism like this comes with a persecution complex. Everything bad that happens to them, in addition to being the worst thing to ever happen to anyone, is someone else’s fault. Conspiracies abound. Other people nurse hidden grudges. Betrayal is around every corner. If you don’t agree to be part of their narrative, to play a supporting character in their High School Melodrama, you’re part of the conspiracy against them.

Spot these people early, and avoid them. Their entertainment value is not worth their cost to your sanity. And please, please, don’t turn into someone like this. But how do you avoid it?

When something terrible happens to you — your mother gets cancer, a traffic accident makes you late, your girlfriend or boyfriend’s car gets vandalized — stop and think for a moment about how it affects people other than you. Remove yourself from the equation, and see what the picture would look like if you weren’t at the center of it. Alternately, imagine what it might be like if this had happened to someone you don’t even know. If you’d heard about this on the news, would you still consider it a tragedy? If not, then maybe it’s not such a tragedy for you, either. If so, for whom is it tragic? Try to put things in perspective. It’s not always about you.

If this is all obvious to you, then that’s great: I sincerely hope it is. I hope that you are a more mature teenager than I was. But just in case it’s not obvious, I hope this has been helpful.

I am imposing a unilateral un-grimmening! No more grim tidings for at least one week. Time for Christmas cheer and good will.

As a start, here are my favorite Christmas specials and movies, in no particular order. Some are great. Some are just terrible. Some make me laugh. Some make me cry. I love them all.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the real one, not the Jim Carrey abomination)
Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
(Mexican) Santa Claus
Gremlins
Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
Silent Night, Deadly Night
Elf
Bad Santa
Scrooged
Star Wars Holiday Special
Hogfather
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Merry Christmas!

While visiting my mom, one of my sisters, and my sister’s family a few weeks ago, I took a few minutes to change my Champions Online password because I received an email that made me suspect my account might have been hacked. I logged in just long enough to do that and then logged out again: a minute, perhaps, at most.

I did not realize that my 6-year-old nephew Malakai was looking over my shoulder while I did so (children are sneaky). Later that day, he presented me with the drawing on the left, which he had done entirely from memory. Note the things he noticed and remembered: not just Grimknight in the foreground, but the waving police officer and the insectoid spaceship behind him! I was, and am, amazed.

You may have been cordially invited to the 7th Annual Blackmoor Halloween Party! If so, keep reading. If not, bugger off.

Costumes are encouraged! Snacks, drinks, and Halloween Chili will be provided. If you have special dietary needs or are prone to complain about what is offered, bring your own.

You may bring guests and/or children, but you are responsible for their behavior.

We have abundant amounts of room, including a couple of private rooms. Regardless of where you sleep, you will need to bring your own bedding (such as a sleeping bag or inflatable mattress). You may also reserve a room at the nearby Best Western Plus Crossroads Inn & Suites. A sober driver will be available to drive drunk guests back to their motel rooms — your safety is important!

Update! All of the private rooms are spoken for (if you haven’t already arranged for one, you don’t have one). However, we will have tons of open floor space on the first floor, and you are welcome to bring an air mattress and crash. Just be aware that you may have trouble getting to sleep until the party is over. Also, don’t forget that there is a nearby motel, and that a designated driver will be available to shuttle people to the motel.

Please RSVP, so that we can plan appropriately. Thanks!

When:
6 PM, Saturday, November 3, 2012
Let us know if you want to arrive early!

Where:
Castle Blackmoor
70 Starling Ln.
Troy, VA 22974-3278

I love Christmas. It vexes me when this or that group wants to claim it as “theirs” and declare that no one else can have it. It vexes me when someone dismisses it as no more than an excuse for crass commercialism. Christmas isn’t about some guy being tortured to death, and it’s not about feral crowds and shopping. It’s not about this or that religious festival which coincidentally happens to be held at the same time. Christmas is about love, hope, good will, generosity, friends, and family. It’s about reaching out to people that you’d normally ignore, at best. Frankly I wish we — and by we I mean everyone: atheist, Jew, Buddhist, Christian, Pagan — would take Christmas back from the Scrooges that want to poison it.

Christmas is no more a “Christian” holiday than Tuesday is a “Norse” day of the week. It’s just a name: the actual holiday is much bigger than that. Christmas is a human holiday. Christmas is about love, hope, good will, generosity, friends, and family.

(I originally wrote this on Roger Carden’s Facebook page, but it got realy long, so I am posting it here, instead.)

I’ve mentioned this once or twice before. I’ll mention it again, because I think it’s something people don’t usually think about. I could be wrong, but it’s my dime, so here it goes.

There is some overlap between those who agree with me on “issues” and people whose company I enjoy, but it’s by no means 1:1 correlation. It is not necessary to despise those with whom we disagree, but by the same token, it’s by no means certain (for me, anyway) that I’ll like someone who happens to agree with me.

Personally, I’m either agnostic, atheist, or pagan, depending on how whimsical I’m feeling and how dark it is when I take out the trash (it’s a long way, through lightless woods — it’s the scariest thing I do in my day-to-day life). There are people I consider friends (real friends, not just a-name-I-see-online friends) who are Jewish, Buddhist, Quaker, Mormon, and yes, Christian. There are people I consider friends who are agnostic or atheist, as well. And of course there are people whose metaphysical framework is completely unknown to me.

There are also people wearing all of those labels whose company I avoid.

While I personally see no correlation between people who profess to follow [insert metaphysical framework here] and people who are pleasant, honorable, and interesting, I don’t see an inverse correlation either. There might be religions that serve as accurate predictors of the behaviour of people that follow them, but if so, I’ve not seen it.

I don’t believe that people’s behaviour is based on their religion. I believe that people choose their religion based on their character. A pleasant and honorable person raised Shinto will find Shinto explanations for their actions. A hateful and close-minded person raised Shinto will, too. If you’re kind, or unkind; honorable, or dishonorable; compassionate, or hateful; reasonable, or unreasonable — I really don’t care why. Not much, anyway.

I admire kind, honorable, compassionate, reasonable people, and I try to be more like them. This was not always the case. I hope that this indicates some marginal improvement in my own character.

I am taking a break from the evil and general unpleasantness of the real world for the rest of the day. Susan is napping on the couch, Vixen is napping on my shins, and I am going to call my mom and say hi before settling in with a pitcher of screwdrivers and The Lost Skeleton Returns Again.

The Lost Skeleton Returns Again is a sequel to the famed Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. I watched that the other day for the fifth or tenth time. Great fun. Last night we had some folks over and watch Godzilla vs. Biollante and Dark And Stormy Night. Dark And Stormy Night is also a Larry Blamire movie. Jennifer Blaire, who plays Animala in the Lost Skeleton movies, plays Billy Tuesday. Billy Tuesday is a real doll, a regular firecracker, see? She’s awesome. I also got a kick out of Brian Howe’s character, Burling Famish, Jr. His monologue next to the fireplace where he describes his uncle Sinas Cavinder is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

Anyway, that’s my plan for Saturday. I hope yours is nice. Yes, there are terrible people in world, and awful things happen, but those things happened yesterday, and they’ll happen again tomorrow. Focus on the good things, once in a while. Like today, for example. Today is a marvelous opportunity to focus on good things.