Well, I got a whammy this year at my office Christmas luncheon. We played dirty santa, and apparently someone took the word “dirty” to it’s fullest. Cheered by the sights of others receiving gift cards to the likes of Best Buy or Starbucks, or receiving really cute Christmas dishes (some with candy and cookies on them!) Heck, even my own cheesy gift (one of the M&M’s candy jars) was stuffed to the brim with packs of M&M’s. And chocolate is, of course, always a worthwile gift. By the time the first item I had opened (a really cute Frosty the Snowman and gift card to Lowe’s) was stolen from me, most everything was either frozen, or not something I really wanted. So, I gathered up my wits and courage and braved the dwindling pile of gifts under the tree.

Alas, wits and courage apparently failed to invite “luck” along with them. And I wound up with, what my husband terms, “The Worst Christmas Gift Ever”.

I don’t like Bingo, and I don’t know anyone who does. My one-year-old would not be able to play with it for several years because of the small balls that he could choke on. Even better, the person who had bought it left the $9.97 Walmart price sticker on the side. I had pondered what to do with this toy, and realized that instead of putting such a cleverly horrid gift such as this to waste by throwing it away, we will keep it in the closet all year, and at next year’s party, it will be wrapped again, and will be waiting for its next victim under the office luncheon tree.

Merry Christmas everyone!

My Dearest Reader,

I write to you under the direst of circumstances. In this place where I have been trapped, the laws of time and space have no meaning. I am trapped in a state of limbo – a purgatory of sorts, if you will. There is little to sustain me in this place and I feel my mind slipping away, succumbing to the strange sound of bad 80’s music whispering so softly in the back of my mind. It is as if I am waiting in an eternal line-up of poor wretched souls, also trapped in the same damned fate:

I have been stuck in a check-out line at the grocery store since Thursday night.

You see, my friend, this is the era of automation. Every day, customer service dies a little more as corporations cut prices by cutting back labor costs. It began with the self-serve gas stations. We saw it, and it was good. Now, it is rare that we ever go inside of a gas station as we can pump our gas and pay the bill without stepping more than a couple of feet away from the car. As this type of automation becomes more of the social norm, it is being instituted everywhere.

Over a year ago, grocery stores began to implement self-checkout lines so customers could scan in their own items and pay at the station without having to bother interacting with another human. At once I embraced the grocery self-checkout, for when one is in a hurry and has only a couple of items, it will be your friend. Unfortunately, many grocery stores (or Wal-Marts) have restrictions on these particular self-checkout lines. I give you the three major flaws of the grocery store self-checkout stations:

1. People over-estimate their own intelligence in figuring out how to use them

2. Murphy’s other law is that you and twenty other people will have only two items to ring up, but some asshole with a cart full of unscannable shit will get in line ahead of you

3. Rules 1 & 2 will apply every single time you try to use the self-checkout line

On Thursday night I ran to the grocery store to pick up some chocolate chips so that I could walk everyone through a graduated chocolate chip cookie recipe in keeping with the Thanksgiving holiday, but upon getting into the self-checkout line, I was stranded here. That’s why my news post came so late – I had to type it from my cell phone. In fact, yesterday was a voting day in New York State, and I feared that I would not be able to vote, but some merciful soul came by with absentee ballots. A couple of seniors standing in line behind me were so delirious by then that they actually ate the ballots. I am not sure what day it is or even what time it is, just that I’ve been standing next to a rack of magazines for so long that I think my proximity to Britney Spears’ picture on the cover of US Magazine may have given me a raging case of scabies.

Please, send help. I must go now – some woman is trying to fit her ATM card into the machine that spits your receipt out. She must be stopped.

When it comes to television and ratings, for some reason the 20-something demographic is the highly coveted viewer for many stations. And I am not sure why, because a lot of them (or you or your peers – whomever I’m speaking to) really don’t know what the hell is so funny anymore. For some odd reason, television producers are bringing back things that were cool right around the time the now-20-somethings were born, and many of them are hanging on to the principle that these things used to be cool and funny, yet are no longer what they once were. Their prime has passed. Let them go. Aren’t sure which ones I’m talking about? Here are two for you:

In 2002, VH1 began producing a series of shows called “I Love the 80’s”, in which the 1980’s were relived and remembered. As you probably already know, the series was such a huge success that a follow-up series called “I Love the 80’s Strikes Back” was created, as well as some spin-offs for the 70’s and 90’s which were clearly inferior to the original series. The “I Love the 90’s” series, as well as its follow up series, was a good idea but well before its time because we just left the 90’s and there’s really not a lot of wistful reminiscing going on. As for the 70’s, I am guessing that it was not as successful because the people watching VH1 were born in the 70’s and 80’s, and do not really remember those things about the decade.

As an aside, a couple of years ago, my parents and I flew out to Hawaii to meet up with my brother who was on his way back from Iraq. My brother and I shared a hotel room, which I’ll never forget because this was before I was married so we had the same last name. The stupid person at the hotel kept arguing with me because I was insisting that she give me a new room with two beds as originally requested. When she finally referred to me as “Mrs.” I corrected her, saying that I would be rooming with my brother and no way in hell were we sharing a bed. I think she got the point after that. Anyway, I remember when we checked in to our room, he turned on the television and in the course of flipping channels he found VH1, which happened to be playing a marathon of “I Love the 80’s”. Instead of going outside to the beach, we stayed in our hotel room for the next two hours, watching and pointing at each other to say things like, “You totally wore that!” I do love the 80’s and I really loved the first two series. My brother and I were born in the 70’s, grew up in the 80’s, so these shows are filled with things that we can relate to and remember. (And yes, I totally saw the original Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back in the theater. It was gnarly, dude.)

Last week, VH1 released the third in the series, “I Love the 80’s 3D”. The first two series were great so I wanted to see what they came up with for the new series since the first two were pretty comprehensive. I mean, how much 80’s crap can you dig up? So I watched a couple of different shows and yes, they’ve run out of ideas. Unfortunately VH1 is now digging around at the bottom of the barrel for anything 80’s that has yet to be mentioned in a television program. It was funny the first couple of times, but the cow has been milked and is now dry.

The funny thing about this new series is, the majority of people watching seem to have been born in the 80’s, which is strange to me because anyone born in the 80’s won’t remember any of this that they’re watching. In fact, last night I was sitting down with another person to watch some TV, and in the course of flipping channels we found the new “I Love the 80’s 3D” on. The person sitting next to me, who was born in the early 80’s, says to me rather excitedly, “Oh! Let’s watch this!” After about ten minutes, I turn to them and say, “Do you remember any of this?” to which they respond, “No.” In fact, a couple of friends rented a movie this week and instead of watching it, decided to watch the new 80’s series as well. Funnily enough, they too were born in the 80’s, and thus, do not really remember much about the 80’s so I can’t figure out what the fascination is. I have since talked to co-workers and classmates, and from what I can understand, the only people really into the new series are people who do not remember the 80’s.

In the same way, when David Spade was on SNL, he was a short, cynical guy who was surrounded by some very funny people. His Hollywood Minute sketch won him the most fame, and this is what people most remember him for. However, when his best friend Chris Farley died, David Spade ceased to be funny altogether. Spade tried a few different things, including a couple of unfunny movies, a pseudo-amusing television show, and a slew of Capital One - ‘No’ Guy”>extremely annoying commercials. None of them really boosted his career like it was in the SNL days, or when he played Chris Farley’s scrawny little sidekick.

Recently he has decided to return to his roots, that is, return to the skit people liked him best with, and is now starring in a new show on Comedy Central called “The Showbiz Show with David Spade”. The previews looked good, and I talked to a few different people about the show after it had aired, and all the 20-somethings that I spoke with gave me the impression that it was incredibly funny. So I watched. At least, I tried to. God, did I ever try. It was so painful! He could barely read the cue-cards properly and had to re-read some of his lines two or three times. After about ten minutes I had to change the channel. David Spade used to be funny, but he will never be what he once was unless he learns to read.

Let these things go, people. They are no longer as funny as they once were. They used to be funny. That’s all. Turn the channel and watch something else.

As the centuries pass, evolution and transition of management can push an institution farther and farther from the reason they were established in the first place. And the Catholic Church is taking a lot of poor, lost souls with them. This makes me furious, as the Catholic Church has demanded that members of this sect put their trust and faith completely into the institution and Catholic leaders – those in robes and pointy hats – to guide them to… Heaven? Goodness? Brownie points with Jesus? Get out of hell free cards? I wonder if followers even know anymore.

Around 300 A.D., Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor, became a Christian. Wanting to add more followers to the faith, he legalized the religion and decided that Christianity would be a lot more popular if it looked like many of the other religions of the time, and decided to copy what they were doing. Thus, the “church building” was born, with pulpits, stained glass, appointing more hierarchy of authority in the church than was originally established and, of course, robes and pointy hats, among other things. The Christian church (followers of “The Way”) drifted away from its original meaning. Nearly two-thousand years later, many branches of the Christian faith still cling to these additions that Constantine established.

They had the right idea though; they really did. In the beginning, some person or persons saw the basic teachings of Christ and his Disciples, and saw that they had value for a full spiritual life in God. They took these teachings and, seeing as how they would be appropriate for everyone to participate in, institutionalized them into holidays and rules and regulations. Take Lent, for example. It seems to be some deranged, watered-down version of fasting. Fasting has been a spiritual principle embraced by many religions, not just Christianity. It is my personal opinion that someone saw the value of fasting and decided that everyone should do it. This basic spiritual principle became institutionalized for the masses, and the personal knowledge and growth behind it was lost. Fasting in itself is a wonderful thing if a person is doing it for all of the right reasons. It is completely useless to the spiritually retarded. In the same way, I can see how Lent would be a very valuable practice, if doing it with the correct intent.

The Catholic Church has been busy over the centuries. Wars have been waged in the name of God and of His Infallible Word, but as society has evolved and changed and ultimately moved away from the Bible’s view of morality, the Catholic Church has changed its doctrine again and again and again, often contradicting said “Infallible Word of God”. So is it any wonder that now, after centuries and centuries of changing doctrine and saying that it is okay to behave in a way contradictory to the Bible, the church has now released a statement that the Bible cannot be believed in its entirety?

So now, the Bible is not infallible after all. I’m not surprised. Personally pissed, but not surprised. Angry on behalf of Catholics everywhere, but certainly not surprised. I wonder if it is still considered the Word of God? I’m guessing no, since it is no longer considered to be believed in its entirety. I’m also wondering which parts we’re supposed to believe and which we aren’t. Actually, this really doesn’t matter, since it is required for all believers to put their faith solely in the leaders of the church, and their ability to make you spiritually “right”. It’s true, isn’t it? Members of the Catholic Church are required to put their trust not in God, or in their Savior, or in their Holy Virgin Mother, but in church leadership. Let’s face it: Most Catholics have never even cracked a Bible, and when you ask them about basic Christian principles, they don’t know. How do I know this? I’ve talked to a ton of Catholics over the years, asking them these very things, and they never know anything about anything. They defer to their priest, saying they’d have to ask him first. I can’t tell you how many times that one has been said to me in absolute seriousness.

Ok, I’m going to throw this out; you can take it or leave it: In the proverbial end times when Christ raptures the church and judges all mankind, based on what is taught in the Catholic Church, all individuals will be personally responsible for how they lived their lives, their personal faith, and morality. You, personally, will be called to account for your own life, your choices, how you lived, and what you believed – that is, the act of your faith and knowledge of God. The Book will be opened, and it will be you and God, and God will tell you your fate, depending on how you lived. No priest or formal religious edict can change it, for God is eternal and He is the final authority.

Whoa.

But that’s not how the Catholic Church is set up. The spirituality of the believer has somehow become the responsibility of the church leaders, and followers of the faith are blindly handing their souls over. Now that the Bible cannot even be believed, it secures an even bigger trust in church leaders, that is, in human beings. And as the times keep changing, the policies of the Catholic Church move farther and farther away from basic teachings in the Bible.

So I’m only going to say this one time, and I’m not going to repeat myself so listen up and listen well: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS BARELY EVEN CHRISTIAN ANYMORE.

Oh my God, I feel so much better for saying that. I can’t even explain how good that feels.

I detest how religion has become convoluted and confusing, filled with all kinds of rules and regulations and all sorts of extracurricular crap. After all, did we not learn from the Hebrews who, after receiving the laws given by Moses, added over one-thousand additional rules and regulations to them? Of course, if your high priests had a good chance of dropping dead in the Holy of Holies once a year, you’d probably be a bit paranoid as well. But still, my point is, leave it to humans to make things even more difficult than they have to be.

What, then, do we do? Well, if you believe in the Bible at all, it’s time to get rid of the asinine idea that to get to Heaven, you must “be a good person” and “go to church”. I have been through the whole of the Bible, and I have yet to see that anywhere. Instead, I’m going to simplify it for you, because I don’t think Jesus wanted things to be so difficult. What did the early church do?

In Acts 2, verse 42, it says they: “dedicated themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” Think of these as the “Four Food Groups of Christianity”, if you will. Try those, and I think you’ll find it easier.

The man thought about it and told him he would just have her shipped home. The undertaker asked, “Why would you spend $5,000 to ship your mother-in-law home, when it would be wonderful to have her buried here and spend only $150.00?”

The man replied, “A man died here 2,000 years ago, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance.”

Dear Myself,

What did you do this weekend?

Your pal,
You

Hi Pal! Thanks for sending me an email. You know, I feel so close to you, like I could tell you anything. In fact, I’m going to upgrade you from “pal” to “best friend evar”! We’ll be a dynamic duo – like Britney Spears and Cheetos!

I had a great weekend! On Friday I did a lot of homework while listening to the two brats upstairs. At one point in the evening, something strange came over me! I marched out into the hallway, up the stairs and started pounding on the wall outside of their apartment. Finally, the father came outside and stared at me like I had a booger on my nose, but I am pretty sure that I didn’t. He was gaping at me as if he wanted some sort of explanation for all the pounding so, calmly, while I was still pounding on the wall, I said to him, “I’m just trying to give you an idea of what it sounds like inside my apartment, except that it’s above your head and usually accompanied by screaming in Japanese, which I cannot understand, but it sounds something like, ‘AAAAH YIYIYIYI CHICKA WAH WAH BLAH HI-YAH CHIN CHONG FRIED RICE YAH HOW AAAAAH!’ This, now that I think about it, sounds strangely similar to either karate-porn or George Bush trying to order some take-out. Whatever it sounded like to my upstairs neighbor, his two sons and wife were now poking their heads out from the door, and they were all staring at me like I was deranged. Meanwhile, I’m still pounding on the wall. He started wrangling the family back inside and was retreating to the safety of his apartment when I called out to him that if he wanted to talk some more, I’d be right outside.

After they shut the door, I went back downstairs and finished my homework in peace. By the time I wrapped everything up it was pretty late, so I went to bed.

On Saturday I went to school, where I take classes with a lot of idiots. I like to sit on the far side of the room with more of the adult-types, away from the kids. This is mostly because their conversations make you dumber, just for overhearing them. For example, one of them was talking again, like he always is, and was saying all kinds of stupid things about the recent earthquake disaster. I think his words were something like, “The earthquake isn’t on the news – no one knows about it.” And all of his idiot friends sitting around him were agreeing, saying that nothing is on the news. Immediately my I.Q. started to drop and I was trying to tune him out when the moron tries to share more of his worldly knowledge with: “Hey, what happened to Saddam Hussein? Isn’t he dead?” To which one of his friends perked up immediately with an authoritative voice saying, “Yes, he is.” But before I could start banging my head on the desk to make it stop, class was over. I threw all my stuff into my bags and ran out of the room.

When I got home I made some white chocolate raspberry brownies. I don’t have the recipe with me, but I’ll try to share it at another time.

That evening my WoW guild had a raid in Blackrock Spire, so I spent the rest of the afternoon fishing for eel. My character is an alchemist, and to make a certain potion I need a certain type of fish. So for a mere two and a half hours, I was able to obtain five fish. Just to let you know how annoying this is, it takes two fish to make one potion. But that night we raided and it was fun, because basically we get to hang out with our friends, trash-talking and getting some really crappy loot that no one wants. Well, that isn’t exactly true because one of the better daggers in the game dropped, and I got a nifty belt for my shaman. But other than that, it was a whole lot of crap that no one wanted. We raided until about 1am and afterwards I went to bed.

On Sunday morning, I had every intention of getting up and going to church. But I was so tired that I didn’t. I had not heard from the children thus far, so I spent a nice quiet morning doing absolutely nothing. In fact, I can’t even remember what it was that I did. In the afternoon, I made some pretty nifty cookies that call for honey-roasted peanuts, chocolate chips, and diced bite-sized peanut butter cups, which were pretty basic, but not bad. Then I sat down to watch TV.

On Saturday night, the Sci-Fi channel was showing an all-new original Sci-Fi movie, “Dungeons and Dragons 2”. Now, I’ve noticed that whenever the Sci-Fi channel shows a new movie, it usually means bad acting, no plot, cheesy effects, and Lou Diamond-Phillips. I really wanted to watch this movie because I knew it was going to be absolutely terrible and I wanted to review it for the site, even though I was a bit reluctant after being told it was 2 1/2 hours long. However, I am willing to sacrifice myself for the site, and because I was raiding, I taped it. Do you see how I sacrifice myself for you? On Sunday afternoon I sat down to watch. Unfortunately for this movie, all of the aforementioned was true except for Lou. Too bad, because I’m thinking he would have improved it.

The movie opens with some cheesy graphics and a really bad storyline. It was like the opening to a really bad 80’s video game, bad effects with a horrible voiceover trying to suck you in to what they want you to believe is a plot – something about danger and adventure and mystery, and it really wanted to be Lord of the Rings, but was absolutely horrible. Ok, so the story opens and it’s a medieval theme – of course, because it’s Dungeons and Dragons. And there’s a duel because there’s always a duel, and the Lord goes home to his mage wife. Then! For no reason at all! A man bursts into the door of their home and gives them a strange non-gripping tale of two people from his village who got lost! Oh nos! So the Lord and his mage wife go off with this stranger for no reason at all to find the village people! They go into a strange cave where there is a green toxic mist swirling all around them. The mage wife with the big boobs jumps in front of them saying, “Get behind me!” and starts casting a spell: “Frodo! Yar yar hump hump!” The green mist goes away and they find their village people, dead. If only they had been the actual Village People, because a quick chorus of “YMCA” would have made this movie a hundred times better. But no, it was just some dead extras. Looking around some more, OH NO, Lord Han-Solo informs them that THIS IS NO CAVE! IT’S A DRAGON!!!!!1111ONEONEONE

Fifteen minutes was all I could stomach of that piece of crap and I shut it off.

That night, redshift, hulk, and I hung out and watched Old School. Then I made the long journey home (I walked across the street) and read some of a new book that I just bought at half.com, called The Historian. It’s quite good, but I’ll review it at another time.

And that was my weekend. Thanks for emailing me. Wasn’t that fun? Let’s do this again sometime.

This weekend during my Saturday class, our professor showed a video of some strange Yoko Ono-type artist. Of course I cannot recall his name so you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. His paintings and drawings were not what I would consider “artful” and his music was more of a bizarre emotional expression and statement than traditional compositions. For example, at one point in the documentary, said artist was creating “music” by rubbing a feather against a cactus while his long time friend was ballet dancing to the sound it made. I’m being serious. The piano compositions were all structured noises by banging on the keys – something I have been required to do in music theory classes, but not as actual pieces of music. His loud banging was a composition based on the Holocaust, so the distressed noises made sense after seeing the title, although I still can’t figure out why anyone would pay money to listen to it. The composition was certainly a thought-provoking statement, but not necessarily beautiful. I appreciated the documentary in that it was completely different than my perception of art, and my understanding of other people’s idea of art was stretched just a bit farther.

As they talked a bit more about this gentleman, I was suddenly struck by the idea of finding quality in life, in a way that I had never thought it before. Or perhaps the idea had struck me previously, but it had become lost or even drowned out by the hustle and bustle and the responsibilities that come with life.

Since that morning, every day, strange things have been speaking to me about living a rich life and I have been forcibly compelled to re-evaluate my life as it stands now. Don’t get me wrong – my life is good. Overall, compared to many other persons, I have been blessed. But like everyone else, we all make choices based on the different things that have happened to us, situations that we are in, or decisions that lay before us. What I have found is that my motivations and priorities are out of whack – I might even say “jaded”.

Let me explain. As I was re-evaluating my priorities, I realized that I have been immobilized by what everyone else feels is important. And when I say “everyone”, I mean the media and our current culture with its very ridiculous ideas of what it means to be successful and live a worthwhile life. In short, this means hanging on every word of the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” so we can raise bitchy, worthless children who can appear on MTV’s “Sweet 16”, as we ourselves have become bitchy and worthless with all kinds of misguided priorities. Perhaps I’m not explaining myself clearly. I feel that I, like many others in our generation, have no idea what we really want in life, because we have become immobilized by the general consensus of what it means to be successful and important as a human being. We are constantly being told what we should want, how we should live, what we should strive for – and we stifle our own ideas of what we want to achieve and how we want to live.

I find now that I have lived for many years in a state of limbo, not really living or striving for what I find desirable or important for fear of failure – and I define “failure” as “not achieving the status of what the current culture deems as ‘cool’ or ‘successful’”, and after many years of living under this pressure, I have forgotten what was important to me, or, in short, what will give me a full and rich life. I must throw off the shackles of society and seek out what it is that makes my heart beat, dare I say pound.

Last night, during my drawing class, my professor was showing another professor some of the drawings that I have done over the past few weeks in his class, and they asked me how long I had been drawing for. Reluctantly, I told them this was my first semester back to school in over a decade, and I have never drawn before this. They stared at me in disbelief. An hour later, after the other teacher had left, my professor dragged me outside of the classroom and told me that I should consider a career in art. I laughed and said to him that a very long time ago I had been a music major but dropped out of school because a music degree doesn’t exactly pay the bills. He said to me, “Salary isn’t important. It’s about the quality of life, going after what it is that you enjoy.” It didn’t convince me to become an art major; after all, aren’t all professors supposed to sway you to major in their subject? But it did stop me in my tracks, for there, once again, was the message of seeking out what will give me the quality of life. It is those blatant messages, every day, all week, that are calling me to attend what I have ignored for so long – my own wants.

The only problem is, I have no idea what that is anymore because over the years I have allowed other things to drown the “me” out of myself. My job is great; it pays the bills and it looks fantastic on a resume. For someone who didn’t finish college, I have done very well for myself. The jobs I have had, other people would give an arm and a leg for. And yet, I am not happy doing this. Hobbies and recreation? I feel that in some way, that too has become immobilized by the idea of what I am “supposed” to enjoy.

It’s ridiculous and I am taking my life back. I am going to find out what it is that I enjoy and I’m going to go for it, no matter how afraid I feel. Perhaps that is why my biggest and only fear is the unknown. I don’t know why I’m writing this on the internet, because I’m usually a very closed person – sharing my feelings doesn’t exactly float my boat.

So there you have it; the verdict’s out: I’m insane. Until I can sort out the meaning of life, I’ll be glued to the TV to watch King Peen’s Making the Band 3, since that’s what we’re supposed to strive for. Just kidding.