The tree was trimmed and bedecked with lights. A twinkling homunculus wreathed in tinsel and bearing glass globes of stunning fragility. The house surrounding the tree was similarly masked in holiday colors and dotted with small displays of pseudo-religious merriment. The stockings were stealthily stuffed with tasty treats and whatever presents might fit therein. The bulk of the presents were artfully stacked beneath the tree, tags proudly declaring the givers and receivers. The provisions were laid out to be at hand most efficiently when time came to prepare the holiday feast. A month or more of planning and preparing, of scheming, sneaking and white lies all lead up to this whitest of all possible white Christmases. And yet...
The holiday meal was prepared and eaten on the eve of the 24th. Likewise were the stockings and presents exchanged that evening with some small fanfare. Not in and of themselves bad things by any means, just facts to add to the following thesis. The 25th, Christmas, was a day like any other. More so than might at first be thought, and shrugged off. A misstep in the alarm setting process caused the day to begin at roughly noon. Immediately after which, this computer was infected with a most malicious strain of internet-aids that required a large portion of the afternoon to eliminate. A few hours were spent at a friends house playing Halo 3 and watching New Grounds. The evening was dominated by Guild Wars and Hulu, and Christmas Dinner consisted of a sandwich.
None of this is intended to be a complaint, or a gripe, or whining. These are a series of facts that support the following: For a day that a large part of the year leads up to, you'd think someone (anyone, me maybe) would have at least pointed out the fact of the occurrence of the day to someone in a tone other than sarcasm.
I'd like to point out that while the overly religious do in fact make a spectacle out of the day, they do so in a church with long winded anecdotal readings from their chosen holy text. Personally, that's about as anticlimactic as my 'average day' Christmas.
Seriously. Why, aside from consumerism, do we allow such a build up of this day? Families coming together? If your family is estranged enough that they need an arbitrarily designated holiday to visit you, then you have other problems besides planning sleeping arrangements. Devotional excursions with loved ones? Again, you can make time to be with people in July, why wait till the ground is frozen and travel is problematic? Time off work? Look, I refuse to sound like a broken record about this but: The end of December is no more a valid time to do things to raise the quality of your life than ANY OTHER TIME OF YEAR. And don't give me that tradition crap, doing things simply because that's how they've been done in the past is a special kind of simple that should require the use of helmets.
The Catholic Church, over its long and prestigious career, has established forms of behavior that some people don't even know they are following. That's not to say all people, but think about the number of people who are in stores the morning after Thanksgiving to shop for the day Christ was born. Now statistically, a large portion of those people are not Christian. Large numbers of those people are in fact either avid believers that there is no God (and therefor no Christ), or are members of a religion that is in fact angered by Christian beliefs. And yet there they are, at 4 a.m., kicking and punching and gouging and trampling to get at that goddamn Elmo.
Church and State may not make the best bedfellows, but the news the day after Thanksgiving is pretty much just a peep show of Capitalism and Christianity jerking each other off.
Also: Halloween. Candy. Costumes. Children expecting handouts. Expensive decorations of a style that can only be described as 'hot topic goth'. Door knockers that say spooky things and speakers blaring 'sounds from the crypt'. Oh, I'm eevil cause I wear spiderweb patterned clothing and coffin earings and crosses. I can't even continue with that train of thought as its causeing blood to trickle from my tearduct. Once again, Thankyou Christians for turning what was an important event to quiet the fears and superstitions of rural europeans into a fucking holiday centered around your obnoxious and patently NOT CUTE children.
Adam got me a Domo-Kun plush. Hojo did not. Therefor, today, PRAISE ADAM!
12.26.2008
12.18.2008
Brave Gnu Whirled
For the very very unobservant there is a new page layout.
Also new is the 'Niq's Flotsam (and Jetsam)' link over underneath your blog links. That leads to a receptacle I'm gonna dump my core into every so often. If I have a reason to write (such as the potentiality that one of you might read it), I find I will produce at an increased pace, which will only help me improve. Also, free time wasting blog related activties for you poor cube-dwelling saps. The one thats in there already I tossed off (must...not..make...masturbation..joke) this evening with minimal effort as I watched Season One of Highlander. See what a random mental image of a grody Waffle House can become?
IN OTHER NEWS: Niq has the chance to make 9 thou more a year by walking across the hallway at work. An assistant manager (stocking and operations manager) position is open and my friend is the one filling it. COMPLICATIONS: its Aeropostale. *shudder* Also Men's Wearhouse has eliminated my position, the only other salaried person in the store besides the actual Store Manager, so if I leave... he's gonna have to hire at least 3 part timers who wont know what they are doing... just to replace me. He is tired of being dicked around by the company anyway and said If I go he's gonna go too. CONCLUSIONS: 1. Niq needs to decide if he can dress like an asshole fratboy EVERY DAY to make more monies. (im pretty sure he damn well can). 2. BEHOLD THE WAKE OF DESTRUCTION THAT FOLLOWS NIQ! IT CRUSHES STORES AS IF THEY WERE YOUR MOM. THATS RIGHT, YOUR MOM.
HOJO FHTAGN!!!
Also new is the 'Niq's Flotsam (and Jetsam)' link over underneath your blog links. That leads to a receptacle I'm gonna dump my core into every so often. If I have a reason to write (such as the potentiality that one of you might read it), I find I will produce at an increased pace, which will only help me improve. Also, free time wasting blog related activties for you poor cube-dwelling saps. The one thats in there already I tossed off (must...not..make...masturbation..joke) this evening with minimal effort as I watched Season One of Highlander. See what a random mental image of a grody Waffle House can become?
IN OTHER NEWS: Niq has the chance to make 9 thou more a year by walking across the hallway at work. An assistant manager (stocking and operations manager) position is open and my friend is the one filling it. COMPLICATIONS: its Aeropostale. *shudder* Also Men's Wearhouse has eliminated my position, the only other salaried person in the store besides the actual Store Manager, so if I leave... he's gonna have to hire at least 3 part timers who wont know what they are doing... just to replace me. He is tired of being dicked around by the company anyway and said If I go he's gonna go too. CONCLUSIONS: 1. Niq needs to decide if he can dress like an asshole fratboy EVERY DAY to make more monies. (im pretty sure he damn well can). 2. BEHOLD THE WAKE OF DESTRUCTION THAT FOLLOWS NIQ! IT CRUSHES STORES AS IF THEY WERE YOUR MOM. THATS RIGHT, YOUR MOM.
HOJO FHTAGN!!!
12.03.2008
Bombastic Bibliophilia
Or: What Words Do To You When Your Not Looking
I've recently rediscovered the joy of writing short stories for the sheer unadulterated hell of it. In any downtime I find myself with (usually either mornings at work between finishing the A.M. duties and when customers start coming in around noon, and evenings before bed) I've been either grabbing a pen or opening a new text doc respectively. There's a release in shoving still steaming sections of my psyche whole and quivering onto a ruled sheet of wood pulp or syphoning a desperately struggling stream of consciousness through my fingers into the memory banks of my trusty box. The conversion of thought to image and image to eloquent description is intoxicating in its convoluted mechanization.
Several of my readers have commented more than once on the incessant and multi-directional nature of the flickering witchlight that is the focus of my subjective consciousness. It's always been slightly startling how easily that mindset transfers to a more permanent medium, how effortlessly one scenario (often one sentence) can be extrapolated into a fuller, more perfect union of thought and word.
At one point or another, every student of the written word believes that they might (just might) be capable of writing the next Great American Novel. I'm as guilty as the next guy of this self appreciating behavior, however I (unlike the true greats) got over it. I've tested my teeth against the raw strap that is the full length novel, and found myself (sadly) lacking. Not lacking in style, form, or capability of completion, only in the belief-of-self needed to sustain a constant review and self-editorship of a work of significant length. Thus I now turn my hand to the blunt art that is the shaping of short stories. A sculpture chipped with agonizing patience from a half ton of marble with tiny hammer and chisel can weather centuries without noticeably changing (whether or not its worth looking at to begin with), conversely a block of ice can be hacked into an angel of dazzling translucent beauty with a chainsaw within a half hour, delighting every eye that falls upon it, until the collective heat of the bodies at the party melt the damn thing of course. I've heard time and again that wordsmithing short stories is in point-of-fact a much more difficult endeavor than the long con that is full length fiction. The voices that express that particular opin are of course authors of multiple novels who found they lack the ADD needed to scatter shot slivered fragments of their personal mirror across the pages of compilations and instead spend their time inscribing half a thousand pages as a warm up. Cum Granis Salis people.
And that, in a honey roasted nutshell, is what's on channel Niq tonight.
Offer unto Hojo laudable exclamations of approval and adoration.
I've recently rediscovered the joy of writing short stories for the sheer unadulterated hell of it. In any downtime I find myself with (usually either mornings at work between finishing the A.M. duties and when customers start coming in around noon, and evenings before bed) I've been either grabbing a pen or opening a new text doc respectively. There's a release in shoving still steaming sections of my psyche whole and quivering onto a ruled sheet of wood pulp or syphoning a desperately struggling stream of consciousness through my fingers into the memory banks of my trusty box. The conversion of thought to image and image to eloquent description is intoxicating in its convoluted mechanization.
Several of my readers have commented more than once on the incessant and multi-directional nature of the flickering witchlight that is the focus of my subjective consciousness. It's always been slightly startling how easily that mindset transfers to a more permanent medium, how effortlessly one scenario (often one sentence) can be extrapolated into a fuller, more perfect union of thought and word.
At one point or another, every student of the written word believes that they might (just might) be capable of writing the next Great American Novel. I'm as guilty as the next guy of this self appreciating behavior, however I (unlike the true greats) got over it. I've tested my teeth against the raw strap that is the full length novel, and found myself (sadly) lacking. Not lacking in style, form, or capability of completion, only in the belief-of-self needed to sustain a constant review and self-editorship of a work of significant length. Thus I now turn my hand to the blunt art that is the shaping of short stories. A sculpture chipped with agonizing patience from a half ton of marble with tiny hammer and chisel can weather centuries without noticeably changing (whether or not its worth looking at to begin with), conversely a block of ice can be hacked into an angel of dazzling translucent beauty with a chainsaw within a half hour, delighting every eye that falls upon it, until the collective heat of the bodies at the party melt the damn thing of course. I've heard time and again that wordsmithing short stories is in point-of-fact a much more difficult endeavor than the long con that is full length fiction. The voices that express that particular opin are of course authors of multiple novels who found they lack the ADD needed to scatter shot slivered fragments of their personal mirror across the pages of compilations and instead spend their time inscribing half a thousand pages as a warm up. Cum Granis Salis people.
And that, in a honey roasted nutshell, is what's on channel Niq tonight.
Offer unto Hojo laudable exclamations of approval and adoration.
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