10 of the worst things to come out of the 70's

We live in wonderful times.  We have availability of technology at our fingertips for an affordable price, we have so much entertainment we literally don't have time to watch or do all of the things that divert us from our work.  All that we are now has come from what once was.  Both the good and the bad.  Well, the 70's were a piece of the past.  I'm not sure what we gained from the 70's but I can sure remember what we left behind!

10.  Disco - We should get this one out of the way right off the bat.  Disco was one of the hallmarks of the 70's  Movies were made about it,  Clothing was designed around it.  It was a whole other way of life.  The problem is that Disco sucked.  It says so on multiple t-shirts and I believe most things I read on t-shirts.

9.    Pet Rocks - In the early west there was such a thing as Snake Oil.  Snake oil was supposed to cure you of myriad ailments.  Later there were other devices created that claimed all kinds of spectacular results from hair growth to muscle physique.  The pet rock on the other hand had no pretense (except that it was a 'pet')  It was the first success of the 70's that proved that the American populous is willing to buy nearly anything and you don't even need a claim!  Ugh.  Now of course there are countless worthless things that we are probably better off without.  Thank goodness most of those things are on the Internet.

8.  Video Games - The Magnavox Oddessy was born in the 70's If you have never heard of it or seen it, it was the first. It was not anywhere like the games we enjoy today, think of the cave paintings being the pre-cursor to Davinci.   The first game system consisted of white blocks on a screen.  How many colors?  1.  Was it fun?  Like disneyland in a box.  Then came PONG also of the 70's.  Sounds too?!?  sweet!  Space invaders?  OOOOHh yeah.  The march goes on and on.  So were I guess they aren't bad at all really, but they are a productivity killer.

7.  Groovy - This term really only meant anything in the 70's.  It was the hip word for COOL.  It was groovy.  If things are good, they are groovy.  Now groovy means something that is kind of retro-cool, or something with a lot of grooves in it.  There was a time when people tried to revive Groovy into popularity.  It really only came back as goofy.  Optimally it's a dumb word only useful for friends with words.

6.  Astrology - No, this really wasn't born in the 70's, but it feels like it was.  The idea that the position of the Sun, the moon and the stars when you are born will determine not only what kind of person you are, but every event of your life was really attractive around this time.  Ever heard the hippy song 'Age of Aquarius'?  Well, it was huge back then.  The obvious question is of course does everyone born on the planet at the same time have the same future?  Pish posh, of COURSE not!  Everyone is born at a different location on the earth so they would have different destinies than other people born at exactly the same time.   Astrology has been around so long it has to be valid right?  So it wasn't born in the 70's, but it was the 70's that spawned the now timeless pickup line 'What's your sign?'

5. Johnny Knoxville - If you don't know who this is, he is the star of a show that was aired on MTV that used fame aspiring men to do stupid stunts designed to at least humiliate the participants if not harm them.  Young Mr. Knoxville was born in 1971 and while I don't bear any personal animus towards the individual, I feel like showing people glamorizing goofy self destructive behavior is just the perfect thing to come out of the 70's

4. Movies - Naturally movies did not originate from the 70's, but the BLOCKBUSTER did.  JAWS was the first movie in my recollection that had such a huge following and hype that followed it all summer.  Hollywood decided what bit of celluloid would be sufficient for the public at large and they would push it in every way possible.  Originally the blockbuster happened during the summer but now we have blockbusters any time of year (pretty much).

3. Keep on Truckin - Another term that lived and died in the 70's.  Usually accompanied by a person shown from the perspective of the ground with a ridiculously large foot stepping out as though they are really happy to get where they are going.  When I was a kid in the 70's I thought it meant keep on driving trucks.  I had no idea that truckin meant...It took till this blog for me to find out.  Keep on truckin was a cartoon strip that was very popular at the time but has since fallen into obscurity.  Robert Crumb was the creator.  It was a visual take on the song 'Truckin my blues away'.  Which I've never heard.

2. CB Radio -  Breaker Breaker 19.  What's yer handle c'mon? Citizens band had been around longer than the 70's BUT it was immortalized in the 70's with C.W. McAll's Hit song CONVOY.  My whole school bus would go quiet when that song would come on.  Those that knew the lyrics would put on their best non-descript trucker drawl and start talking along.  In my mind, this was the first RAP music I had ever heard.  There was no singing.  It was just CW telling his story about how he and Pig-Pen (the driver of another truck carrying pigs) evaded Smokey (the police) and went coast to coast delivering their payloads.  Trucker fever was alive and well in the 70's.  I don't know wether they were truckin when they did this or not.

1. Peace baby - The peace sign.  I always thought it looked like a birds foot in a circle, sometimes not.  It was made popular by Picasso.  Make love not war.  That was the idea.  The hippys were the long lost fore-fathers of the kids in the occupy movement and the peace sign with the accompanied index and middle finger sticking up in the air was their sign.  I remember seeing the peace symbol everywhere.  it was in graffiti, it was on stickers, it was in cartoons, it was everywhere.  Most kids now figure the peace sign to be something that an anime character will flash so everyone can see how cute they are.

Live in the now man!  See ya in another 15!  Thanks for reading...tell your friends!

10 things we would do if we could time travel

Many times the vacant hours of work are encumbered with the speculations of behaviors giving different fantastic situations.  Lottery winning;  What super powers would be best;  Time travel.  Time travel is actually the most likely of the trio.  What would we really do?   This blog will be difficult enough to write without tying myself down to any theoretical model so I'll accept all of them and apply them as I see fit.  So there.  I suspect that you would do some of them and not bother with others, but these are the things I would do.

10.  Get rich quick.  -  Sure we would but how?  What's the best way?  If you are really a time traveler, you really can't afford to make it all in one swoop.  Even if you are betting on the 1989 super bowl, you need to remember who it was that was playing and who won.  You assume that you could make a big bet for a one time haul, but people would wonder.  Stock market is worse, you'd have the SEC looking into your dealings because you aren't are part of the people that they know that make money.  On the other hand, all you'd really need to do is put your money into mutual funds etc the good old fashioned way and just keep going back in time and adding to several different funds.  by the time history catches up to you.  You have more money than Croesus.

9. Warn yourself - How many mistakes have each of us made in the course of our lives?  I for one can't really count that high.  Some are bigger than others of course and those are the ones I would do without.  in fact, I would very much like to go back in time and tell myself to NOT TAKE UP SKIING.  It's fine for all of you, but I damaged my knee in such a way that I really could have done without the experience.  Of course that is one among several mistakes made that I could sooner live without.

8. Look at where you used to live because it's not there anymore. - Going back in time for most people would involve going back to things that you find familiar now.  After my own father died, I had an opportunity to go visit his house when he was growing up.  The people that took ownership of it changed it to the point that it was hardly the same structure.  I did not have a lot of memories of that place, but the ones I have are dear.

7.  Give key information to the right people - The problem with being me or you is that none of us are so influential that we will put our mark in making life easier or better.  If we have a time machine, we could make a stop off to certain people that would prove very influential.  Take for example the supreme court's ruling the corporations are in fact people.  We could go back and tell some justices to pull their collective heads out and think about the future of what they are asking for.  We could go back and give all of our current science to companies we like and see if our current time becomes better.  Of course the problem with playing this game of second guessing is we have no idea what the other path would hold.  Sure many of us might think we have a good idea, but honestly we don't.  There is no way to know what would happen to current time if you change the past.

6.  Kill Hitler -  Sure who wouldn't?  Go back in time and destroy who is arguably the worst monster humanity has created.  But lets look at this.  Is it really Hitler that was bad?  or he just the catalyst for a bunch of people that were really pretty bad themselves?  Who knows.  Maybe if they didn't have him as a focal point, they wouldn't have been able to allow all the other atrocities to go on.  Hard to say.  Ultimately Hitler was defeated in a war he couldn't win.  but like a Terrorist with a nuclear weapon, even though he was doomed to failure, he did make his mark.

5.  Save an endangered species! - when I grew up I remember seeing a video where a farmer had killed what was the last male passenger pigeon.  Then the female died without any eggs.  I don't remember much but that scene from that cartoon.  But how many species could we save while we are looking to go back and right wrongs or at least change things.

4.  Make a KILLER Magic trick - Ok, so the trick requires you to find a spot of land that will be untouched by anyone.  Find a unique tree that would be fairly inviolate.  Now take a deck of cards and tell the person you want to impress to pick a card out of the deck.  random or not.  Take their card and go to the tree and climb up it and find caved and healed into the tree the card they picked.  After the trick is done and they are amazed, write yourself a note to make sure and go back in time and carve that card into the side of that tree about 10 years prior.  Oddly enough, this is also a good way to find out if time machines exist at all.  I already know the answer, but you can find out for yourself.

3.  Go tell Stephen Speilberg and Robert Zemeckis  how it REALLY is -  Most people have seen Back to the future.  To a lesser extent the 2 other movies that made up the trilogy.  At the time the movie was wonderful and had the most current clothing trends etc.  Now puffy hunter vests and cassette tape walk man's seem to be at best a little goofy.  But that second movie made some pretty direct predictions about how the future would play out.  well, now we can go back and tell them how to REALLY make the movie and people will be freaked out by the accuracy!

2.  Kill Hitler, but this time do it right. - Everyone knows if you go back in time and Try to kill Hitler, you'll mess it up the first time or someone will prevent you from doing it or something will happen that will make it not quite work out the way you thought it should.  So you gotta go back and correct yourself.  This will also test if you can talk to yourself in the past or if it will make you both explode or something.  I have a feeling that rule was put into place by script writers so their stories would work.








1. Make your mark - Ok, now that you've solved your problems, the worlds problems, you've become rich, and you've made the world a better place, it's time to get some glory.  Go back and find a discovery that would have been discovered by someone else and jump the claim.  put your name in the history books.  Sure this is cheating, but really what part of time travel wouldn't be?  I think I discovered Dinosaur fossils.  Or maybe relativity.  Not sure, but it will be something big.  Maybe I'll put some pipes in the side of a mountain that make no sense.  That sounds cool.

February already?!  Where has the year gone?  Why doesn't anyone say that?

10 ways to convince people you've seen a ghost

I've said it before, I'll say it again.  I don't believe in ghosts.  But I really like the idea of ghosts.  It's very entertaining.  The whole idea that you can come back and annoy people when you are no longer alive is really very appealing.  See the world, get revenge,  find out secrets.  A whole world of amusement is open to the dead.

I realized that getting people to believe that you have seen a ghost requires extra things that will sway them to your ghostly point of view.  These are tips that will help you convince other people that you have seen, are seeing, or will see ghosts.  Maybe you'll get your own cable TV show, who knows?

10. - Yell a lot - Nobody will believe you saw a ghost right then and there unless you yell like you've just been stung by a giant bee.  Say things like 'Holy crap, did you see that?' and 'I can't believe what I saw'.  Then tell them whatever you like about the ghost you just saw.

9. - Claim to be a skeptic - This is such a weird phenomenon. For some reason we are more likely to believe someone that is unaffiliated with the thing they are talking about.  So if you are trying to convince someone that you have seen something otherworldly you should establish that you are a skeptic beforehand.  It's advisable to set this up with enough distance between you and the ghost story that it wouldn't be considered a preface.  Otherwise you risk them not believing you to be a skeptic and therefore believe that you are just another flighty ghost story person.

8. - Provenance is everything - I love the antiques road show.  watch it for any length of time and you learn that the story around and authentication of a particular item is at least as important as the item itself.  Got an old sword from the Civil war?  probably worth 500 bucks.  Got an old sword from the civil war that has DNA evidence of Robert E. Lee on it ?  now it's 50,000 bucks (the aforementioned example is not a quote.  Ask Lee's ghost).  So if you know who lived in a rickety old house and you can document that someone was murdered there or committed suicide then (for some reason) we know that it's much more likely to have ghosts in it and is therefore much more believable.  In fact, I don't know any of any haunting that doesn't have a good back story.

7. - Whisper - Ok, yes I did say yell a lot, but that was if you are seeing a ghost now.  If you are going to tell a story about a ghost you've seen before, you need to lower your voice to a hoarse whisper.  Give people a reason to listen.  Whispering ALSO has the added benefit of allowing people to hear background noises while you are telling your tale of the wierd.

6. - Don't play with dangerous toys, you'll see a ghost - For some reason ghosts and the devil seems to go hand in hand.  A ghost story gains stature if you were having a seance, or maybe playing with a oui-ja board before hand.  These tools of dubious effectiveness are often assumed to have at least a little influence in seeing something paranormal.  For some reason people still believe that devices will illicit connection to the spirit world and so if you preface your story with 'me and some friends were playing with a deck of Tarot cards one night...' Your story will have 7% more credence.

5. - Did you hear that? - I touched on this with the first element.  It's important to verify any ghost sighting with someone else to establish a witness.  Never say what you heard right off, let them say that so you can agree with it.  That way 2 of you have heard something otherworldly.  Open ended statements like 'Is it just me, or did it get colder in here?','Can you hear something?'.  On a side note, this is also a very good way to cover up intestinal distress...'I think I heard something.'

4. EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomenon is those ghosts trying to talk to you.  People have figured that Ghosts are trying to talk to us so as early as Thomas Edison there have been inventions to capture ghosts talking.   What do they have to say?  oh, lots of things like 'get out' and 'baloney' and 'your ratings suck'  Actually it appears that whatever they are trying to say is insignificant compared to what you think they said.  Go back to the old family tape recordings and you'll hear all kinds of background noise.  Isolate any of those noises and play with the speed and the frequency of the sound and eventually you'll hear aunt Tilley saying 'meatloaf' just to be part of the family reunion.  People LOVE these! and they add a lot to your story.

3. - Ghost cams! - Even more than EVP's people really love seeing things on camera's.  Since ghosts themselves don't like to show up on camera very often, we have a new video phenomenon called ORBS.  These are little balls of UNEXPLAINED light that float around in the picture.  Take a series of pictures anywhere with a digital camera and look at it on your computer.  Surprise, you'll find some little orbs in there somewhere in one or two of the pictures.  These are ghosts because they could not be anything else.  Of course if you can actually film a real ghost doing something like flipping you off that would be even more convincing.

2. - Temperature readings - Ghosts need power to operate just like we do.  Since they can't eat or get fat, they have to take the power directly out of the air.  When a ghost is getting ready to manifest itself, you'll feel the area around you getting colder as the ghost in question saps the area of energy.  Get some thermal readings of actual temperature around you and there is EVIDENCE.  If it gets colder around you.  It MUST BE A GHOST!

1.- Have a prop - I used to have a haunted TV.  It was freaky.  You would be watching TV and all of the sudden it would start changing channels and then it would stop on some other channel.  Sometimes it would re-scan the channels or turn the TV off all together.  I don't know what departed individual decided to use my TV as a conduit to the living, but it was really annoying.  Oddly enough, once they stopped construction down the street, my TV stopped being haunted.  So if I am telling a good ghost story while in the area of this TV, it might suddenly turn on or change channels and EVERYTHING would be immediately verified as true.






I'm not saying that any of these things prove or disprove the existence of spirits.  I'm saying that if you want someone to believe you about ghosts, you should use some of these things to help you.  This list is by no means exhaustive but try some out the next time you are out by a camp fire.

10 Things that will NEVER be fair

Fair, what a concept.  First I think it would be fair to go over a couple of definitions of fair.  The definition of fair is behavior in accordance with the rules.  The popular definition is that all will be treated the same way in the same manner.   In that way, I'll list a few things that just aren't fair.

10. Life - Ok, lets just get this one out of the way first.  This has been said by parents to children since time began.  The consistent reply to every young persons wail of 'That's not fair!'  Nothing about life is fair, and yet life follows cause and effect and we must deal with it as best we can.  Everything else that follows is defacto contained within life, but we hear this one so often that I had to mention it.

9. Talent - I'm good at a few things but I'm not great at any of them.  I can not think of one thing that I am better at than anyone I know.  I know other people that are very likely better than anyone THEY know at certain things.  After a while I came to realize that there is really no such thing as Talent.  Instead there is interest and drive.  If you work at anything long and hard enough then you will be as good as you can be at that thing.  It may not be possible that you can be the best ever at anything.  Some other people may have better faculties to expand their interests further than you can.  So if they work at it just as long as you do, they will be better when the limits of your mind and body have been met.  No fair.  I have to take solace in the fact that no matter what it is you are good at, there is only one person on the earth at any one time that can be the BEST at it.  Out of billions of people, it COULD be you, but it probably isn't.








8.  Luck - Lady luck is a capricious wench.  I have considered myself both lucky and unlucky as most have.  I think for some reason this is more about how you view the circumstances of your life.  When I look at things on an piece by piece basis I think I'm not lucky at all.  If there is a random element in a game that will determine if I win or lose, I will more often remember the times that things didn't pan out for me.  I still believe that the distribution of random numbers is still statistically straight and all things even out.  On the other hand on a more macro basis I consider myself very lucky,.  I have a great family, I have a great job, I live within my means and I have hobbies I enjoy and am able to do (this blog among them).  How much more lucky do I need to be?!  No fair indeed.  Have you ever noticed that not only is Luck a lady, but it's a Lady that sings when everything is over?  hmmm...

7.  Produce. - This little game we play at the Grocery store is pretty interesting.  When we pick out fruits and vegetables we look at the color, we poke and prod and we try to find the best bits that are available, but the skin of the fruit doesn't necessarily tell us if its good.  Sometimes you get the best looking apple that is just pithy and sour.  No fair!





6.  Technology - This is a horribly unfair thing in life that has really only afflicted us with it's crooked dealings recently.  It seems that every time we buy and learn new technology it gets replaced with something 'better'.  The one I had, well that's no longer really useful at all.  Even though 3 years ago it was the peak of it's advancement.  Just once I'd like to be able to use some technology until it wears out instead of have to replace it because it's simply no longer useful.  No fair!

5.  People - We are taught from a young age to share and play fair for the most part.  The truth is, people are inherently unfair in their tastes.  Lets look at pop music v.s. any specific music that you tend to like.  Pop music is universally decried as crap by people and yet it is what sells the most.  Meanwhile the 'good' music you like is there only because of the bullheadedness of the artists.  Of course we are talking about individual taste.  On a more difficult note people often lie cheat and steal.  It's who we are.  We are unfair.  Hopefully, we try individually to be more fair and thereby make the world a little better place.

4.  Traffic Fines - This isn't universal, but Traffic tickets don't really seem to be fair at several points during their application.  Depending on the infraction it seems that the law is being applied unfairly at the start.  Some people always get the ticket and some people get out of the ticket.  Then you get this arbitrary fee based on your infraction based on the city you are in.  This is not fair because the money you need to pay may or may not be a deterrent to the law you've broken.  Lets take speeding.  I speed.  You speed.  We all speed.  Some people don't and they usually clog traffic with their constant law adherence.  When we get a ticket the fee will remain the same for everyone that broke the law.  Well if I'm a millionaire paying a 250$ fine is not much more than an annoyance.  If i'm a single mother of 4, that ticket is going to really hurt.  So what we are saying by our traffic penalties is that we want to keep the poor safe?  I guess that's noble, though inadvertently so.   Some states and countries actually make your speeding ticket a percentage of your income.  now THAT would hurt in the same fashion no matter who you are.  But it's still no fair.


3.  Cellphones - These aren't fair to people with fat fingers.












2.  Rebates - I hate rebates, they are very unfair.  For those of you that have shopping done for you, a rebate is a way to discount a product, but not really.  You buy something at full price and then you take the rebate certificate and study it.  After careful study, you will find that you need Proof of purchase as well as your receipt (another proof of purchase) and a picture of the store that you bought it from.  A picture of you opening the product so we can see that it was used and not resold on ebay.  A link to ebay with that item at the time you sent in the rebate showing that you didn't sell the item on ebay.  A ridiculously large manila envelope with environmentally friendly adhesive in which to post all of these items.  THEN,  send all of these things in to the rebate fulfillment department that is usually somewhere in New Mexico postmarked no later than 15 days but not before 7 days from the date on your receipt.  Between 4 and 20 weeks you can expect your rebate to be denied for some reason.  The most likely reason being that they didn't want to pay it in the first place and now it's too late to try to get your money so you will hopefully give up.  Otherwise, you will get your 4 dollar rebate on that crate of facial tissues.

1.  Working for the man - If you are self employed, just think of this as a top 9 list.  If you work for someone though, you should understand that as good as the company is that you are working for, they are paying you less than the money they make from your services.  Sometimes a LOT less.  There are those that would argue that since you have the security of a regular paycheck, you will accept less in payment.  That would be true if your job were TRULY secure.  The last 5 years have shown us that no job is particularly secure.





A new year dawns.  I really can't believe I've written this blog for as long as I have, but reading the last couple of entries, it seems to be rather apparent.  Keep reading!  tell your friends!  Thanks!!!  And Happy New Year!

10 things Christmas Isn't

Ho ho here we are again.  A year has past and now we are quickly approaching the penultimate holiday of the year.  For some reason I've always considered New Years to be a part of the prior year. That's probably just me or maybe it was just an excuse to use the word penultimate.  As an adult, a lot of things change, certainly Christmas. This year I'm going to look at what Christmas probably isn't.  Please note that this list is more of an observation of what Christmas isn't for a lot of people and not just me.  These things do not necessarily fall in common with my own experience.  I still like Christmas.

10. Genuine - Christmas is a lot like Disneyland.  It's got a lot of attractive things about it that aren't really true.  Since this whole list is about what X-mas isn't this would probably be obvious.  But it's a little more than that.  When you are a kid, Christmas is a different place all together.  It's full of delights both vulgar and sublime.  As you become an adult, you realize that Christmas has sold out to everything everywhere.  It's used as the shill to get you to part with some of your hard earned cash.  It started with Coke and that new fangled Santa Clause that we now see as the advertising icon of the Holiday.  But it's more than that.  I don't think there is a Christmas carol that hasn't been re purposed for the sale of goods and services.  I don't blame people for trying to make a buck, but still.

9.  Charitable - Ok Mark, now you're just being snarky.  Christmas is the most charitable time of year!  Yes it is, but with that it becomes the least.  You see.  Once again there are times that we encouraged to give and donate through some money grubbing enterprise that would like you to remember them and their product as you donate.  Even under the guise of giving to the needy we give our money to those who are looking to profit from the season.  There are areas of Christmas that appear to be charitable, but really should be all year round and not just for Christmas.  Look at it this way, there are people that are chronically hungry all year round.  Giving them a feast on Christmas might not be as charitable as giving them a sandwich over a longer period of time.  On this wise, I would point out my own wife, who is one of the most charitable people I know.  Her willingness to help is extraordinary.  My willingness to help is usually much more pedestrian unfortunately.

8.  A particularly happy time for people - I remember hearing that there are more suicides around the holidays.  I don't really know if that's true and I don't really care.  I do know that for many people, the holidays just underscore their loneliness.  Now lets turn to the family.  If you are an adult at Christmas, it's a time that increases pressure for you to either go into debt, or find extra funds for the holidays.  Charity and warm feelings don't grow on trees you know.  Bottom line, it takes effort to be happy.  Happy doesn't just happen to you.  If you don't go to the trouble, you probably won't be happy.  The season doesn't really matter, it just accentuates it.  Not really my own feeling, I still like it, I just know it's out there.

7.  WARM - Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, Christmas means cold.  It is the solstice after all.  Now if you are giddy and all into the holiday, you actually welcome the cold, it's fun and it reminds you that Christmas is coming and all the fun that it is!  Or it just reminds you that things are going to get a lot more cold before they get warmer.  This isn't a bad thing as you approach the equator.  I remember living in Arkansas and sure it would get colder, but it wasn't a big deal.  You just hoped it was cold enough to stop school from molding your brain for just one day.  This of course holds no weight at all in Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.  It's probably the hottest time of the year for them.  Which just adds to the weirdness.

6.  Productive - The effort you put into your holiday is usually subtracted from the amount of effort you put into work.  This isn't always true.  Some people don't have the luxury to relax their productive intensity during the holiday, but it does seem the month of longer lunches, extended time off and office slacking in general.  This time of year is really less productive because the time that you normally would spend on the projects of your life, you are now spending in merriment.  Now before I get the arguments of 'hey what's wrong with a little merriment?' Heaven knows that I'm the first to make that argument.  I'm simply saying that Christmas is not really a time of great productivity not only because of the holiday, but because when it gets cold we get less motivated to move.

5.  An entitlement program - The meaning of Christmas is not to become an entitlement program.  What I mean by this is when kids say things like 'Well if you get me that, that can be my Christmas'.  This presupposes that they not only will be getting something, but it needs to be within a certain range of value.  Christmas spirit could not be further from that sentiment.  I will refer you to my gift giving blog entry for more of an idea of what gift giving is about in my opinion.










4.  Peaceful - We wish peace, but with all of the extra things that are happening in our lives, there is likely not a less peaceful time of year.  If you doubt my supposition, just go hang out at a Walmart on black Friday.  The 4 horsemen wouldn't go in there.  They would put off Armageddon to some time in February.

3.  A Surprise - As Children, Christmas is a time of surprise overload.  everything is strange and awesome.  As an adult you understand that someone has to set up those surprises.  That realization is at it's most stark when you are building your kids first bike and you flashback to the first BIG gift you got from Santa (mom and dad) and why mom and dad seemed to be so tired.  It all makes sense but you wouldn't trade any of it.  Besides. there are really very few surprises that are welcome as an adult.

2.  Helpful for weight loss - Man people on a diet are a noisy whining bunch.  So if you are on a diet like I am, you look forward to Christmas with dread and excitement.  I don't fool myself into thinking that I will be staying on my diet during the holidays.  On the other hand, I don't want to loose the ground that I've gained through diligent caloric concentration. Nothing that is created as a holiday treat is good for you.  If it is good for you, it sucks. The meals around Christmas are more or less Thanksgiving minus.  This doesn't bring into account the people dropping off holiday goodies for you to eat as well.  No wonder Santa looks the way he does.  I guess nobody claims Christmas is helpful for weight loss, but sometimes it's hard to come up with 10 things.

1.  It's not the actual Birthday Of Jesus - Now I don't know this for CERTAIN, but since the holiday itself was a nod to pagans I would assume that the actual birthday came about at a different time.  For some people this is a really big deal, so I will not mention the MANY dates that are attributed to Jesus' birth and there are a bunch of them.  I will only say that the Christmas card with the camels walking across a snow covered desert might not have been accurate on several counts.








Don't get me wrong, Christmas is still a lot of fun and I love the holiday.  Just trying to come up with something different for the holidays.

As a special holiday gift to you:

Sometimes the best thing about Christmas is goofy kids.

I wish all the best of the season and a happy new year.