if you're trying to make sure that the gypsy hinders my reputation, he already have.

bring it on.

yes.

are you being sarcastic? if not then noone cares enough to stop you and noone is trying to. it is a conservative fantasy that evil secularists are trying to take away their christmas enjoyment, and that some avant quirk of modernity will rob christmas of its true substance. my theory is it comes from their repressed knowledge of the ridiculousness of their beliefs and the anger at projected onto the other that arouses from the shame and guilt they feel for experiencing the misery of their traditions, like most other forms of conservative pyschosis. its up to us to make this fantasy a reality, and wreck christmas for everyone else. it is our duty to destroy it and punish anyone expressing christmas cheer, ban all outdoor decorations and set up a gestapo like force to bust into people's homes and destroy their trees and break up any illegal celebrations. this ruthless taskforce must not hesitate in mercy when stamping on and firing point blank at little timmys ps3 or little jane's new puppy. any mention of santa claus or christ should be enough to get people fired and all attempts to send cards should be intercepted and burnt by the postal authorities. we can erase it within a few generations when we work together. this would give the daily mail brigade exactly the type of persecution they so desperately want so they can burst forth in a shrieking orgy of self righteous defiance, allowing us to easily acertain and thin out the less desirable ranks of the populace, sending them to work in the water mines or if we are feeling gracious into the merzcell. december 25th (or whatever it's equivalent in the metric calendar) will become annual celebration of secular modernity day, a minor state holiday not generally noticed by the populace.

liberals and gays are stealing christmas

not on my frikkin watch

if your watch is found to have an illegal obscene motif such as reindeer or elves it will be incinerated and you will be charged with possession of contraband.

Christmas is fun. . . you drink egg nog, you decorate a tree, you play piano and sing songs, you exchange gifts, you watch christmas movies, you have a big dinner, you get really drunk, peace on earth and good will towards men, and yes, it's a celebration of the birth of Christ in place of the pagan celebration of the solstice. Christians You just have to ignore all the commercialism around this time of year.

good times

And despite wanting to go on a killing spree today (I went to Target. . . need I say more?) I believe this.

I don't think this conservative fear is a fantasy, just misplaced. This is the one time of the year that the true anti-consumerist philosophy at the core of Christianity is apparent but it's never self-conscious. Instead, its somehow turned in on itself and this 'good will toward man' humanism. Consumerism is taken as an effect of this secular humanism but what they are really angry at is the consumerism that robs both humanism and Christianity of their spiritual value. Again, no good Christian would curse A Christmas Carol which epitomizes Christmas humanism critical of consumerism.

thats alright.. the Ghost of Al Gore will catch up with them inevitably haunting their conscience.




yes, as long as you realize that those assholes are not truly Christians, and the cyclical totalitarianism they practice is not Christianity."Pure and undefiled religion is this, that you look after the orphans and widows in their distress.."

both pbradley and suchfriends invoke the idea of the 'good' or true christian. now i'm not saying this to be cynical or out of spite but i have never known one of these to exist in my personal life anyway. perhaps there are some out there, if so i'd like to see them. isn't christianity too fragmented and diverse for a set of characteristics narrow enough to converge in an archetypal good christian? also i would question the massive bias in our cultural towards seeing an inherent goodness in christianity. even when taken at its most pious, inoffensive and banally positive there are dangerous and morally shaky presumptions. i find the commandment thou shalt not steal simply evil. i find the idea of jesus's crucifiction as redemption for our sins to be horrendous. i find it to be the most masochistically arrogant act i'd like to imagine. the idea that jesus got gifts from wise men on his birthday and on that very same day you too little boy or girl will get a present - to be closer to the source of our selfish materialism rather than the outcome of our corruption. Are not the properties of christmas that pbradley mentioned that are destructive to humanism and christian agape precisely those very same properties that are integral to it ie. covering up the wound of crucifiction with a crude material gift? a tenuous link could also be made with the whole feeding thousands with a small quantity of bread and fish thing and the capitalist view of the enviroment as an infinite resource to consume. i think it is a mistake to view christianity as being corrupted by man and instead view the characteristics of man's corruption as stemming from his christian civilisation. i've always seen the jesus myth as an apology for imperialism and our ideas of selfish individualism rather than a way out of them. isn't the idea of worshipping this tortured rebel a way of making sure noone stands up to the roman empire of today? isn't original sin just a way of instilling guilt and control? any christian who would follow that fucked up pyscho yahweh is simply wrong. what's worth salvaging from christianity? Surely not following christ to the cross? isn't he blocking our way beyond that fear anyway? isn't much of the relegion too ridiculously fictitious to be considered anything beyond kitsch insanity?

Good and true are very different, at least how I used it. The good Christian, to me, is entirely an idea and a judgment of quality from my own interpretation of what I see as good in Christianity. There is more than enough bad that I see in the faith. I'm not a Christian.

i hate christmas

dawg, wtf is wrong with u?

Christmas is usually pretty cathartic. I get really pissed off at everything, and then I get drunk with people I love and we go on a tirade about how much everything pisses me off.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to SpectralJulianIsNotDead again.

If for nothing else other than the last sentence of this post...

Like a friend of mine said, Christians today see themselves as some kind of opressed minority.

Much like the Jehovah's Witnesses the other day who handed me a pamphlet (numbered in the wrong order) making out the end of the world out to be a good thing.

On a personal note, Kierkegaard. Or, rather, some of Kierkegaard since he's a bit all over the place.

The ongoing debate with Kierkegaard revolves around him not being Christian. There's a lot of people would say that his 'Christianity' is only inches away from Nietzsche's. Personally, I tend to think that Nietzsche is Christian anyway, but I'm often more inclined to agree with my own detractors, in a strange twist of logic.

The thing with Christianity, by which I mean the social Christianity, the Christianity that gives us democracy (amongst other things), is such a saturated epistemic that most atheism is little more than a mourning for lost Christianity, rather than its outwright dismissal. Philosophically, I tend to feel Christianity itself is as much a fight for the 'true' anti-Christ that the now-fashionable 'atheism' forms only an adumbration of that dialogue.

None of this is a comment on anything that's important to the true believers (articles of faith, dogma, trinitarian belief etc etc), which is a whole different thing.

1. santa is an anagram of satan (obvious)

2. there is no god (glaringly obvious)

What an insightful post. Prey tell, where do I sign up to subscribe to your blog? No doubt it's positively glimmering with similar insights of pellucid magnificence.

thanks.

I see what you did there.

BTW, have you ever noticed that god is an anagram of dog? That's some more insightful shit for you right there. Mindfuck, dude.

yeah. right.


the point is that christmas sucks balls.

A friend of mine wrote a song about that precise pun [Dog/ God]. Of which there will be a Happy Hardcore remix by yours truly in the new year.

That sounds very promising. Would be nice if you posted it here when it's ready.

Will try to. Although it'll likely be heroically crap as Happy Hardcore is mystifyingly impossible to get right (by me at least).

I could imagine it's a very thin line between happy/catchy and total cheese.

I think as a genre it lives entirely in compilations. I occasionally try and listen to new-ish stuff or non-compiled stuff, and most of it's in the realm of dogs. I tend to think cheese is reserved entirely for euro-house, but I know what you mean.

I havent heard The Pogues once yet, but im going out tonight... its a great song and all but i dread the point in the night where everyone wants to show how cool they are by gurgling the verses and belching the chorus.

i was crucified as a child

I'm cooking for my relatives who will be coming over on both Christmas Eve and Christmas. I'll spend tomorrow nite with the family but Christmas day my best friend has no relatives in this area are so I'm going to go spend Christmas with him even though he doesn't know it.

Sorry to rain on your parades but I dig Christmas

Good for you, Chicka. :)

we can all learn a lot from this fellow.

shit, i forgot he turned into a christmas-loving pussy at the end.

As did "Scrooge". :D

Jesus crucifixion for our redemption is SUPPOSED to be horrendous, and honestly I would be concerned about the mental health of ANYONE who did feel such a way at viewing an exceptionally graphic Passion icon. Remember, the idea of Christianity is that an all-powerful God, who could do whatever He pleases, literally condescends, having condensing infinity into the limits of our own flesh and existence, to literally court and befriend us. Friendship with God is to be honest and sincere, not a power-struggle. This is the difference between "true" christians and "pseudo" Christians. It is not my business to question the faith of another person, or attach labels, in fact I only use these constructs rhetorically, in my vision, we are ALL good christians, perhaps sometimes acting out more childishly than others, but just as even the worst people are all humans, we are all christians, but this is a fundamental assumption of Christianity, the universal and mutual equality of ALL humans before the Creator.

Its not that Christianity can be corrupted by man, its that people follow their own devices and claim these imaginations to be their Christianity. There is no individuality in Christianity, but conversly there is no conformity. Christianity is not a world of stark contrast or inherit opposites. Just because God loves, does not automatically imply the opposite of God's love is hate. With God, there are no opposites, hence the Alpha and Omega, the Infinity of the Antecedent of Time. In a state of perfection there are no contrasts..

Original sin is not a form of insitutional control, rather it is a point of introvertive reflection. It is not that we are all cursed under the mistakes of our progenitors, rather it is that we continue to make the same mistakte which they made, entirely on our own and of our own volition. This is the freedom of free will which a loving, friend-seeking God gave us. In order for us to be genuine FRIENDS with God, we must be just that, genuine. We can not be coerced by power or circumstance, that is not worship, that is slavery. The entire premise of Christianity is that religion is slavery to legalism and quid-pro-quo, tit-for-tat, and that Christ gives us a friendship with God, and an equality with each other...
hence why the Apostle James, brother of Jesus, summed up Christianity in this, that "pure and undefiled religion is to care for the orphans and widows in their distress.."

go ahead and marinate on that for a while playboy..

"even the sun goes down, heros eventually die, horoscopes often lie, and sometimes why,nothing is fo sho, nothing is fo certain, nothing last for certain but until they close the curtain.."

You ever read Karl Rahner, suchfriends? You might like him.

only because you refuse to stop spinning around in the snugness of your own conclusions, the confusion of your own chattering mind, and the inability to humbly accept that you don't even consciously bring air into your lungs, rather with such statements you are blatantly challenging the universe to stop your breathing. Lucky for you, if there is a God, He is far more understanding and less petty and sure of Himself than people saying similar things to the above statement :)

in other words, Satan, I know you can be a lot more open minded than that. The problem with God, is that people who claim to be open-minded rarely take the time to open their minds to God. I don't ask people to go to Church, or read a bible, or any silly, superficial and fleetingly transitive things like that.. rather, just simply shut the fuck up for a minute if you can possibly achieve a meditation of pure and filling silence of thought, perhaps your heart will replace your mind, and you can experience the God who like gravity was always there without you ever noticing in the first place. That is the great thing about God, He works so perfectly and subtly that you don't HAVE to notice ;)

satan is kind of petty, isn;t she.


i find it pretty fascinating that believing in a deity/creator/overseer is pretty normal human nature. as evidenced by all the indigenous/remote tribes that are discovered/exist.

they generally have a few things in common with us [21st century society]... family, eating, love/sex, and god[s].

why then is it so in vogue to deny that one basic human trait among people / alternative culture today? [well i guess family isn't so cool among the alt culture people either, but probably because they grew up with shitty ones]. i guess a lot of it has to do with the me-centric aspect of society. everyone get yrs. we are our own gods. we h8 rules. we break boundaries. we r cool. let's not limit ourselves. let's break down the establishment because we r punk.

just because it's human nature to believe in god doesn't mean it isn't completely fucking retarded. you mortals are fools.

in before religious argument. i was raised catholic but you will never find a more hardcore atheist than myself.