Christmas. Impending.

I hate Christmas. That in itself isn't so strange. What really makes me think is that I've always hated Christmas. Even when I was a kid. I'm tremendously annoyed by the overt commercialism of the whole thing. I want to know at which point someone decided "THE ALLEGED BIRTH OF THE SON OF GOD MEANS WE SHOULD ALL BUY EACH OTHER EXPENSIVE THINGS AND LINE THE POCKETS OF THE LEADERS OF THIS COMMERCIALIST EMPIRE WE CALL THE FINANCIAL WORLD". Somehow, I doubt it's what the Virgin Mary had in mind while the Almighty was fiddling with her loins. "Hey," she thought. "I could make money out of this."

It also irks me immensely that very few Christmas "traditions" have any basis in, well, anything. Like the Christmas Tree. As far as I can research, the entire reason we even have Christmas trees is because - get this - Christmas occurs in winter. Although there's a kind of pleasant detachment to this; at least one key part of what we now consider Christmas isn't in any real way connected with the religious significance of the event.

I guess this kind of divides the Christmas crowds. On one (fairly small, I'd wager) side, you have the religious Christmas folk, believing in angels and the son of God and mangers and hippies in Jerusalem. On the other side, you've got the commercialist Christmas people, believing in dollar signs, plastic trees and K-Mart dockets. This division's kind of relieving, but it still doesn't give any apology or reason for the centuries we've utterly retarded the original "spirit of Christmas".

Being from the southern hemisphere myself, I have to say that the "Christmas trees are because it's winter" ideal doesn't hold a lot of water. Our Christmas is usually around 109°F, humid, and spent sitting as close as possible to an air conditioning unit in a crass attempt at at least spending Christmas a degree or so below body temperature. Somehow, having a lump of slowly melting plastic disguised as a tree, coated with white shit out of a can disguised as snow and draped in ten-year-old balding tinsel is a fairly poor impersonation of winter. But hey, who am I to disagree with "tradition".

I don't believe in a whole lot about Christianity. Or any religion, for that matter. The limit of my involvement with religion is "It helps people get through their lives, then good for them". Which I think is fair enough, and you're welcome to it. However, I'm constantly stuck with this slightly comedic vision of Jesus returning - as he's so eloquently promised - only to be handed a red and white candied cane and a gift-wrapped toy with a large "MACY'S" tag on, and a crowd of gaping Christians waiting for him to be impressed.

DVD special features

These things irritate me. Why? Because they're all the same. They were fun to begin with. "Oooh! It shows how they made the boat sink!", "Oooh! An interview with the director!". But that's exactly what you get on every single DVD. I just watched The Emperor's New Groove. The movie's great. Possibly Disney's best. But the special features on the bonus DVD...stink. Sure, I'd love to see how they made the movie, and look at a bunch of preproduction designs and whatnot. It's fascinating stuff. But I don't want to see it narrated by two fecal goitres dressed in costumes rejected by The Wiggles claiming by means of subtitled nametags to be producers or directors or somesuch of the film itself. Sweet Jesus, these guys look like they'd have a hard time negotiating traffic on a one-way backstreet.

What further annoys me, particularly with the more average DVD (i.e. the ones without a bonus disc or whatever), is that the special features usually amount to being nothing more than clips from the movie interspersed with random interview dialog with the actors, telling you things you already knew. Example? Mel Gibson's Payback. Right. You've just watched the film. Unless your eyeballs are in backwards, you know fairly well by the end of it that Mr. Gibson's character is a bit of a moral enigma. He makes his own rules, and generally obeys them. He has a goal and intends to pursue it. So what do you get on the "special" features? Random out-of-time clips of Mel leaping about like a gibbon on speed with the voice-over from the interview, "My character makes his own rules, and generally obeys them. He has a goal and intends to pursue it..", et al. Give me a break.

And who ever watches the theatrical trailers? HM. THERE'S THE ENTIRE MOVIE SITTING THERE. I COULD WATCH THAT, OR I COULD WATCH THE TRAILER INSTEAD. HMMMM.

Conclusion? "Special" features are for "special" people.

Technology, communication, independence.

I yearn for the days when you could go for an evening walk without a phone in your pocket so that God only knows who can call you to tell you something that probably has no real bearing on your life. I'm sick of seeing people in supermarkets actually call home to ask if there's any Uncle Toby's Oats in the cupboard before buying a box. Sweet Jesus, there's a thing called a shopping list. I'm sick of being sat on trains with a horde of school children, all pointlessly SMS-ing each other and calling each other from feet away. I was on a train once, and bore witness to a foursome of teenage girls -marrying- their mobile phones to each other..replete with one phone regaling the other trio with a digitised desecration of the Wedding March, followed by the four phones - including the self-proclaimed minister phone - "getting it on" by means of the vibrate function. I'm not against technological dependence. I'm against communication dependence. The constant need to be in contact with people, oft cases people you don't really know to begin with. After all, that's what internet addiction really is, in most cases. I'm not addicted to surfing the 'net and staring at site after site of potentially entertaining crap (although I concede that a lot of people probably are, and I'm not talking about pr0n...much), I'm addicted to conversing with the people I've come to know through it.

Mobile telephones are for ringing up on, usually in emergencies or in cases of extreme importance. SMS is teh sux0rs and should never be used unless under duress of castration, and if you can't deal with being away from the ability to communicate with people, get a life.

I love both the irony and honesty in that last sentence.