I swear I had a video of Billy Idol singing White Christmas. Only that video is “no longer available.” Or was it some sort of nightmare? Oh well. Here’s a great song from the Idol, relevant to the season, called Plastic Jesus. He’s still cool, at least sometimes, even if he did not write the song himself.
“We’ve got Gary and Joseph instead of Mary and Joseph in order to symbolize ACLU support for homosexual marriage, and of course there isn’t a Jesus in the manger,†said Chairman Tony McDonald. “The three Wise Men are Lenin, Marx, and Stalin because the founders of the ACLU were strident supporters of Soviet style Communism. The whole scene is a tongue-in-cheek way of showing the many ways that the ACLU and the far left are out of touch with the values of mainstream America.â€
The scene will also display a terrorist shepherd and an angel in the form of Nancy Pelosi.
This was brought to my attention by the Democratic Underground.com site. The holiday season is here and of course the wacky Christian right will be complaining again about the “attack on Christmas.” In other words, they will try to impose their idea of Christianity on the rest of us and then whine about liberal bias when they are stopped. You would think they would have better things to do with their time.
Historically, Christianity fought usury, for example, which would seem to be an useful struggle in an age of too easy credit and pay day loans. This is something that truly afflicts the poor this time of year. Instead, you have Christian Faith Financial which will lend you money using your paycheck as collateral for an absurdly high interest charge. According to the site, “fees charged on payday loans online range from $15 to $30 on each $100 advanced. Stated another way, annual percentage rates for payday loans generally range between 400 and 1000 APR. ”
It’s not really interest, though, they assure us, it’s more like a fee. That’s what I call Christian charity! A nice anecdote might be the Post-Purchase Deity Evaluation Form. Or the Frontline piece, “The Secret History of the Credit Card.” As it turns out, these usury laws were only recently overturned. That means, of course, that we could put them back if we chose.
Wikipedia Entry on Usury: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury#Usury_in_scholastic_theology
Post-Purchase Deity Evaluation Form: http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ebeach/deity.html
Christian Faith Financial: http://www.christianfaithfinancial.com/leads/leadform.jsp
Frontline, “The Secret History of the Credit Card”: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/
“This page is devoted to those expressions so hackneyed and insufferable that they should be forever banned from the nation’s news reports.”
from Tom Mangan’s Banned for Life
Mangan is a bit of a crab, and on the curt side, but for all of the right reasons. Since this is the “holiday season” here is a relevant entry from November 17:
Rounding the Corner
Holidays bring out the trite in writers everywhere. What say we banish this banality for all time:“Christmas is just around the corner.”
The fact that I removed a “Tis the season” from a story just yesterday tells me my work is not done here.
Posted by tmangan at 11:32 AM
He also has an ongoing list of his “most hated expressions” which should be printed on a magnet and posted on every writer’s refrigerator. Here they are:
” ‘Tis the Season” at Christmas. Campaign “war chests.” Downpours that “couldn’t dampen the spirits” of all those upon whom the rain fell. “Play in Peoria” in any story or headline relating to the central Illinois town of my birth. “The good news is …. the bad news is….”
[avi width=”320″ height=”240″]http://onemorelevel.com/games3/double-wires.swf[/avi]
Here’s a cool game, and it’s fun to watch like this, but it won’t work until you get to the site, here.
