Delusions of reindeer

Up-front disclaimer: I like Christmas. As a coyote with a walk-on part in another pantheon myself, I also fully approve of, and support, Diwali, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Sun Dances, Nirvana Day and Ukrainian Christmas. In fact, any open and joyous celebrations of the cosmic oom that haven't been co-opted by politicos or retailers.

Politicizing of religion, or vice versa, is a weighty topic for another time and place. What I'm on about here is Christmas Muzak. Trite and overdone, I know, but anything to help keep the Short Guy's butt from dragging, what with all his unassisted effort posting over the past week. Especially considering the size of his butt, and how close it is to the ground, already. I digress.

In a store last week, I noted with alarm that consumer traffic was way up, its awareness of its surroundings was way down, and supplies of the really good cheap bittersweet chocolate were non-existent. All while I tried to avoid gettin' my tail stomped. Not pretty. But the capper was the shitty 'seasonal' muzak, all crap when it was issued, and completely unimproved by age. Or overplaying. I mean, in this setting, if there's gonna be any pained yowling goin' on, it should be mine.

The Petfinder recently published an article stating that retail surveys show that piping in unending seasonal music beginning in October or so, boosts sales. Gotta love those surveyors.

My trite objection: Retailers never play the better hymns or carols. There's good seasonal pop, too, but nooooo. Might remind people of the true nature of of the holiday, blah blah blah and they don't want that. They go instead for the scummy dregs of recent popular Christmas music, played by the scummy dregs of cover bands, knowing full well that the jackhammer effects of The Little Drummer Boy, Holly Jolly Christmas, Rockin' round the Christmas Tree and, dog help us, any random track from the Boney M. Christmas Album, ad nausæum, puree customers' brains to the point where they'll buy anything. It is useless to resist. Ka-Chinggggg!

Okay, I'll make one (trite) exception. Snoopy's Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen, 'cuz it's about a dog. And the harmonies are terrific. Now, excuse me. I need to go bite a retail surveyor. Or a retailer.

Interesting Links

How to fight with other bloggers
DIGESTIVE TABLE by Amy Young
the Bad Sex Award Blood Scarf
Ottawa is 6th Angriest City: We Feel Fine

Asteroidea questions for the ESIs

Over at Asteroidea Press, Megan and Coyote are having an interesting discussion about blogging. Megan asks:

How blogging fits into my writing; how it's changed me; and the nature of the blogging community are all things that are currently vexing me. Maybe you ESIs need to have a meeting and come up with something entertaining to counterpoint my eventual blather.

After some blather from Coyote in which he disavows knowledge of a blogging community, (seriously, he does) Megan asks more questions:

Were all you ESIs friends before the blog started? Are you better friends now? Different friends? Think of new live relationships, new e-relationships, or old acquaintances that have developed into something different because we're all putting our words out there. That's community, no?

If I was engaged in an intimacy challenge, I might try to answer these questions.

p.s. Megan also did an excellent job of describing a phenomenon she dubbed "blog-brain".

p.p.s. Before I get a citation, I want the Content Review Task Force to know that I realize I am in flagrant violation of Guideline A(4). With Aggie on her intimacy challenge, Coyote off chatting up the cuties, and everybody else apparently too busy shagging to post, it's left to me.

Intimacy may not be for everyone

I hope Aggie's Intimacy Challenge is going well. Here are excerpts of a case study of a fellow who found intimacy so stressful, he attempted suicide:

Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle: For Some People, Intimacy Is Toxic by Richard a. Friedman, M.D

...

Everything seemed to be going well until, one day, the father got a call from his son’s girlfriend. She had not heard from the son for several days, so she went to his apartment and found him semiconscious in a pool of blood. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and slit his wrists.

After a brief hospitalization, where he was treated for depression with medication, he returned home and broke off the relationship. Soon after, he moved to Europe to work but remained in frequent e-mail contact with his family. His messages were always pleasant, though businesslike, full of the day-to-day details of his life. The only thing missing, his father recalled, was any sense
of feeling

....

And then I suddenly understood. He wasn’t depressed or unhappy at all. He enjoyed his work as a software engineer immensely, and he was obviously successful at it. It was just that human relationships were not that important to him; in fact, he found them stressfull.

...

I had a hard time explaining all this to the patient’s father. Finally, I came up with an analogy that I had some hesitation about, but since I discovered that both of us were dog lovers, I gave it a try. I explained that some breeds, like Labradors, are extremely affiliative; other breeds are more aloof and will squirm if you try to hold them.

If we found her...

Suppose she is blogging... Somewhere else... Under a new pseudonym... Sharing stories that show it's not all happily ever after?

And suppose we found her new blog...

Would it be wrong to start writing about it here? and link to her? Yeah, probably wrong, right? Some of the people who were mean to her check in here from time to time. And I know this will sound crazy, but what if we were the ones she wanted to get away from?

I suppose if she wanted us to find her, she'd give us a clue. Maybe link to us so it would show up in the tracking stats.

But it still wouldn't be obvious what we should do. Suppose she's back giving the intimate details that we love so much? On the one hand, I'd want to discuss it with the ESIs and our readers, but on the other hand, I wouldn't want to force her to relocate to another secret blog.

What do you folks think?