Things That Piss Me Off Tuesday ~ the war on Christmas edition

It seems like I have just been shaking my head a lot lately.

A lot.

Do you ever look around, watch the news, talk to other people and wonder what the hell happened to the world?

It's Tuesday, time to be pissed.

Claire Davis, Caleb Medley and every other person shot in the head for no good reason
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm more sensitive to these shootings because I spent way too much time in a waiting room with the family of a guy shot in the head for no good reason. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to it all. Maybe I'm just being irrationally pissed that there is a beautiful 17 year old girl in a hospital not too far from here fighting for her life after being shot in the head with a shotgun at point blank range.

Have you seen what a gunshot can do to a head? Like....really seen it? I have.

Have you seen what a shotgun blast can do to a body? Like....really seen it? I have.

Shit you not.

In college, I studied/worked/volunteered at LAC+USC Medical Center. We had a LOT of gunshot victims come through, but the one that tends to stick in my memory banks the most was the patriarch of a family shot in the abdomen by a shotgun one Sunday afternoon. Trust me when I say that you really don't want to see what happens to a human body when a shotgun gets anywhere near it.

Last year, the day after the Aurora shooting, I ended up in a waiting room alongside Caleb Medley's family. He was the most seriously injured in the shooting that lived, and was shot in the head. His journey paralleled the one my friend who I was there to see was on for a long time, and still does in ways that most people can't understand or comprehend. Brain injuries of that magnitude are not something you just recover from. It changes everything. Permanently.

So, I've seen, in person, what a shotgun can do. I've seen, in person, what a gunshot to the head can do.

I cannot for the life of me fathom what a shotgun to the head can do.

There is a family that has to see that now. That has to live with it. That isn't sure if their daughter, Claire Davis, will live. If she lives, they have no idea what the rest of her life will be like, but the one guarantee is that it won't much resemble what it would have been before last week.

Perfectly good, perfectly innocent people, killed or maimed, for no damn reason.

In the days since this most recent shooting, there has been the struggle to find the motive, always more complicated when the perpetrator is dead. Just this morning, it's becoming clear that there is more to the story, there does appear to have been warning with this one, there does seem to be a history of direct threats, and even though the target wasn't hit, an innocent bystander was. There are those who rant about how we can't focus on the shooter because that gives them glory, but don't understand that doing so ignores the simple fact that we absolutely must try and figure out what motivates people to hurt others this way.

The gun arguments started within seconds of the news hitting, like they always do. The people standing on soapboxes screaming at each other about what they want, ignoring any valid point anyone else makes, yelling and circling back to the same points over and over and over again while nothing changes.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.

Based on that definition, I do believe the entire country has lost its damn mind.

Just because it is probably unconstitutional doesn't mean anything will change
In a totally unsurprising turn of events, a federal judge said yesterday that the NSA's pesky little habit of data mining domestic phone calls is indeed probably unconstitutional, not that there was ever really any question about it.

Now that it is seeming more and more likely that the courts will rule this direction, this particular case was limited in scope to only the plaintiffs involved....which is interesting to say the least. So the NSA can't legally collect your information, but they still do it, but you have no remedy unless you sue them.

Seems legit.

Not.

Essentially, the end point of this is simple. The federal government is just going to do whatever the hell they want, regardless of the actual rule of law. Constitution, schmonstitution.

I'll refrain from letting my Luther out in this here post, but I can assure you that there has been clapping, snapping and high kicks.


Oh yes, I have a Luther.

A few lucky people have been lucky to meet my Luther in person.

Well.....I think they should consider themselves lucky....

It's Your Fault Kanye is a Douche
No, really.

He does it for you.

He doesn't do any of this for him. Nope.

He's making the news more for his on-stage rants these days than anything else, and the most recent one is a doozy....I mean, aside from awesomely bizarre videos with a jiggling Kim who's hair defies the laws of physics.

It's just a shame that the industry is hell bent on holding him down.

Also...you should watch this.


The War on Christmas that isn't and other manufactured reasons to be pissed off
I don't even know where to begin.

Bear with me. This might be a little disjointed and rambling.

There isn't a war on Christmas. Honest.

Some people celebrate Santa. Some people celebrate the birth of Jesus. Some people celebrate winter solstice. Some people celebrate Hanukkah. Some people celebrate Kwanzaa. Some people celebrate Festivus. Some people don't celebrate anything. Why does what someone else celebrates or doesn't celebrate have to have anything to do with you?


No one is assaulting Christmas. Laws and court rulings that mean that other religions must be permitted to display in public spaces as well don't infringe on your Christmas rights. They just mean you have to scoot over a little and make some damn room for the other people.

You know, like a loving your neighbor thing.

Who said that, again?

Jesus.

I could talk about how all those claiming that their Christmas rights are being offended seem to have missed almost all of Jesus' teachings. I can promise you that he would have been way more concerned with feeding the starving and helping the ill and taking care of poor children than he ever would have been with whether first world people 2,000 years later got to celebrate his birthday as loudly as they want. This article does a fantastic job of that and you should go read it.

I could talk about how Jesus wasn't born on December 25th and not even in the winter at all. I could talk about how Christmas was banned for years in colonial America. I could talk about how Christmas trees are actually pagan. I could talk about how the celebration originated more as a winter solstice thing. I could talk about how St. Nicholas didn't really have much to do with Jesus. I could talk about how elves are a recent addition to the lore of Christmas. I could tell you that Santa could be purple and kids wouldn't give a shit as long as he brought gifts...and then tell you that basing Santa's whiteness on Jesus' whiteness is a flawed freaking argument because Jesus wasn't white. I could talk about how Jesus probably wouldn't care about your exterior illumination problems and would probably ask if you've donated to charity instead.

I could.

But then I'd probably offend someone.

Happy Festivus, y'all.