And....Go!

From Mental Floss

Lots of people think that the X in Xmas is a secular watering down of the word Christ. You know, a "we love to celebrate the holiday but don’t believe in Jesus" sort of thing. However, that's not the origin of the X. 

The X actually comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of Χρήστος. And if that’s all Greek to you, Χρήστος, of course, means Christ. 

According to Etymology Online, the abbreviation dates back to 1551, when it appeared as X'temmas. Around 1100, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle used Xres mæsse, where Xp- or Xr-corresponded to "Chr."

Be that as it may it has become the secular version of the winter holiday in the Western world.  We celebrate Xmas, a holiday of love and light and friends and community.  No deities allowed.

And Xmas is coming.  I'm not starting my program until after the first of January because I have a project kicking my arse right now.  I want to finish my stocking before Xmas, but I don't think it's going to happen.  And yet I am not giving up now.  

This week-end we're putting up the tree.  Well, first we're moving furniture and then we're going to see about a tree.  I have no clue how big of a tree this year, we might end up with a small one perched on the coffee table, but there will be some kind of tree.  I'm going to wait a few days before decorating to see how the kittens react.  I have lots of kitten safe ornaments, thankfully.

Tonight is the last party in our dungeon.  It's closing due to lack of funds.  Actions have consequences, especially in an election year and especially when your reliable subscribers are members of the LGBTQ community.  The community will carry on.  Since we're Moving All The Furniture today I doubt we'll be going.  I should feel bad about this.  I do not feel bad about this.

Some friends are coming to help with the furniture.  I don't have food to put out, which seems more than a little rude.  I might throw in a batch of muffins.  On the other hand we're offering beer and wine, neither of which really goes with muffins.  I am uncertain.  I'll share what we decide.

Next week-end is Festival. which is the big fundraiser for our local charity hospital.  Kitty and I volunteer all year.  I won't get all political for it because it's not my show, unless people are utter assholes in which case the rainbow scarf is coming out.

This is the first year that we've actually been able to celebrate Xmas with just our family.  We celebrated with Kitty's family when we were first married. which was interesting.  In California Kitty kept saying that there was all this tension.  I thought I was in a sitcom.  In Colorado everything was calmer but they really don't have enough air up there so I was bound to the couch most of the time.  And travel was always a bitch.  With my family it was crap, the joys of being an ACoN and all.  Most of the years here Kitty had to work for Xmas, which happens when you work in an ER.  So we hit this year and realized that we don't have any family traditions.  So we're making some and adopting others.

On Xmas Eve we're adopting the Icelandic tradition of exchanging books, making cocoa and cookies and curling up to read,  We are both book people who have need seduced by the internet, and we want to get back to paper.  So books and a quiet holiday eve it will be. 

On Xmas day we're adopting the time honored Jewish tradition of  Chinese food (said firmly tongue-in-cheek).  We're ordering a feast, staying in comfy flannel and watching holiday movies.  We may invite our friends to join us, but they have to bring their own flannel.

Small gifts will be exchanged, of course.  I have a scarf for Kitty almost off the needles, and then a hat.  Past that I am making a hat for me and then scarves.  Lots and lots of scarves.  This will be the year I re-start the weight loss, so no sweaters yet and I'm not a big glove person and I don't like handknit socks (there, I said it) so scarves it will be.  They make a nice layer over the tank top and flannel shirt uniform of an Alt-left woman in the Pacific Northwest (also said with tongue-in-cheek)

I have about five chapters to finish on Understanding. and then about five or six on Least Expected, which is a new one I just started publishing.  I'll finish those over the next few days and be able to publish all month.  Maybe this year I'll be able to finish a few, although right now The First Run is kind of scaring me.

I think that's caught up.  

Re-stating my intent

I started this blog three years ago this month.  I very quickly fell away from the project I intended for 2014.  I believe I want to re-visit it for 2016, with a few modifications.  So I'm re-publishing my statement now.

---

---

Time wasting in the Bay Colony was a criminal offense. As early as 1633 the General Court decreed:

No person, householder or other, shall spend his time idly or unprofitably under pain of such punishment as the court shall think meet to inflict: and for this end it is ordered, that the constables of every place shall use special diligence to take knowledge of offenders of this kind, especially of common coasters, unprofitable fowlers and tobacco takers, and to present the same.

A year later the Court fined two men the heavy sum of twenty shillings each for "misspending their time" - David Hackett Fisher
            Albion's Seed

---

---

So what is the modern Puritan ideal?  Well, from reading the blogs and websites devoted to this ideal in theory it involves being submissive to god and you husband and raising children who are submissive to god and their father.  But in reality this is what they seem to aspire to:

• Keeping perfectly clean houses at all times (Or just long enough to take the show-off picture)
• Wearing skirts every day (and bragging about it)
• Look entirely perfect, slender and ethereal  (Even though they rarely exercise)
• Creating three home cooked meals a day (made with lots of processed crap and rarely complete meals)
• Being well read (even though they only ever seem to read books put out by Vision Forum and Jane Austen)
• Doing handcrafts like proper ladies (although this is usually paper and glue.  If any sewing is involved it's simple lines only.)
• Having the equivalent of a college education (even though they never leave home and usually stop homeschooling around the age of 12 when they have to start looking after little siblings)
• Run a home business (even if it's really a multi-level marketing scheme)
• And of course all the while having ideal relationships with everyone.

This is the question then, can you have this so-called perfect life, this Puritan ideal, even while being irreligious, liberal, feminist, lesbian and a Dominatrix?

I believe you can.

This year I intend to:

• Keep my house clean.  Keep it vacuumed and dusted at all times, keep the bathrooms clean, keep the sink empty, and re-organize all the closets and cupboards.  All of this as best as my body will allow.
• Wear either dresses or feminine tops and skirts every day, no matter what I'm doing.
• Cook three meals a day, all with fresh, nutritious food  Our life doesn't work this way anymore.  I cook once a week and then we heat as we go,  I'll continue to do that.
• Work my way up to my first 5k, 200 push-ups and 100 sit-ups, as well as mastering the bicycle for transportation.  At this point I'd like to get back on my bicycle.  If I can ride 5 miles by the end of the year I will be very happy.
• Read 24 books in 12 months, 12 of their favorites and 12 off the ALA Banned Books list.  Of books I already own so money isn't an issue.
• Read the entire bible  And continue to compare it to Stargate.  Because it still works so well.
• Complete 6 embroidery projects
• Complete 12 knitting projects
• Complete 1 large quilt  
• Work through a number of real college lecture series
• Write a novel as my home business  Or at least finish all my stories.
• And stay happily married to my wonderful wife.

If all goes well I'll even throw some volunteer work in there, but since I have yet to set that up I can't promise anything.

Watch this space.

Sigh

So a thing happened yesterday.

A lot of pundits are saying that uneducated white Evangelical people voted that way because of economic policy.  Because they felt left behind in the world and they feel like Trump will help them.  That's partly true.  A lot of others are saying it's because white Evangelical people are really racist, misogynistic, homophobic, jingoistic nutjobs.  That's partly true as well.*  But I think both groups are missing the point.

There is a big swath of this country that doesn't want to look at us.

Us as in anyone who is LGBTQ.  Us as in anyone who is of color.  Us as in any woman who doesn't know her place.

These people remember the days when everyone in their world was, or at least appeared to be, white moral christian Decent People™.  Being a Decent Person™ and male automatically got you the best job you could handle, no fancy, complicated education required.   When you went to work you only had to answer to better Decent People™, usually male, who were obviously better because they had more money.

When the world was made up of Decent People™ men looked like men, ladies looked like ladies and sluts you could grab looked like sluts you could grab.  You didn't have to think too hard about how you approached people, and you almost never made a mistake and got embarassed by it.

 When the world was made up of Decent People™ brown people were only around to do menial labor and then went away somewhere.  They knew how to behave around you and if they misbehaved it was over there where you didn't have to deal.  It was all their problem.   

When the world was made up of Decent People™ all that immoral stuff was hidden away downtown or in New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco or maybe over in France where Decent People™ didn't have to look at it. They didn't have to explain it to their children.  All they had to do was say that so-and-so was a confirmed bachelor or a spinster who lived with his or her roommate at most.   No icky discussions needed.

When the world was made up of Decent People™  everyone went to the same church, or at least to a similar church, and everyone played by the same rule book.  You didn't have to worry about if they were going to do anything to you and yours because you knew how they would behave.  They even taught kids the rule book in the schools.

Remember, these are not intelligent people. Dunning-Kruger is a thing.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of those of low ability to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.

They don't understand the world like those of us in the 40% do.

I've been following their websites for years now and from what I can tell they honestly believe that there is a global conspiracy to make them look and feel stupid.  We're taking their jobs away, going to close up their churches, dumbing down their children, forcing them to have to teach their children to be immoral, and so on.  I know this isn't true, you might know this isn't true, but they believe it.  They believe that we have been inventing new rules, new technologies, new businesses, new cultures, new marriage and new genders just to make them look stupid when they can't navigate it all, and that we are laughing at them.  

They believe we are the bullies.  

And like all bullies we attack harder when they complain.  No, you can't use that kind of language.  No, you can't not hire those people.  No, you can't keep that job.  No.  No.  No.

For the past few decades they haven't been able to do anything to stop us. Life has become more confusing and more difficult and whenever they complain it just gets worse. It's a giant conspiracy to drive them into the nut house and into the poor house.one pronoun at a time.  Now they have elected the ultimate Bossman, with his buildings and planes and wives, and he has been saying everything they've been feeling.  Now that he's in charge they can say it too.

What do they want?

They want us to disappear.  They want us to go back in the closet, back to the ghetto, back to the asylum, back to the reservation, back to our home country, back in the shadows.  If we're going to be out in public they want us to obey their rules, be respectful and deferential, not wave our relationships around, look or act very male or very female and never be anything in between.  And while we're at it they want us to take our new technology and new cultures with us.  They want a world where you can do the work with pencil and paper, no computers or smart phones needed.  They want a world like you see on the police procedurals, so popular on TV, where the older white male is in charge and everyone knows their place, including the geeks who do all the computer stuff for them.

The problem is that the world doesn't work that way.  

If they want us to go away, I say we go away.  Leave them to their spaces, where they only have to deal with Decent People™.  We will take our people and go away to the coast, to the North East, to the cities.  We will go away and leave you alone.  We will disappear from your lives.

For the record nothing will change.  People of color will still enjoy their cultures.  Women will still work to support their families.  Gay people will still fall in love and form families.  Trans people will still go on building lives that fit them.  Computers will keep on taking over the world.  We just won't try to incorporate them anymore.  They don't want to look at us, they have made that clear so we might as well stop forcing the issue.

Granted this means we will no longer shop in your stores, work with your businesses, visit your tourist destinations, help you out when disasters hit or in any way support you economically except through the barest minimum of taxes.  And I will be supporting the Calexit and Cascadia movements to succeed and even stop that much.  Granted you're likely to say that you'll do the same.  I think that's just fine,  The less we have to look at each other the better.  Very Low Contact is our best plan here.

Now we get to see how well that will work.

______

Politico has spoken on this subject as well.

______

The Friendly Athiest also spoke about last night.  One of his commentators, EIR, made a very good point which I would like to expand upon.  

If you voted for the 3 time divorced, married to a stripper, accused pedophile, who embodies greed, shows no humility, has displayed zero knowledge of the bible, threatens to deport American citizens, brags about grabbing women in the pussy, lusts after his own daughter and has a picture of himself on a porn mag cover with a porn actress over a woman who has never cheated on her husband. showed him Christian forgiveness when he cheated, attends church regularly, and who asked a former missionary to be her running mate you have no business calling yourself a Christian or taking the moral high ground.  You literally just elected a man into office who is the exact opposite of everything your deity stood for.  I can only assume that whatever is speaking in your hearts is dark and twisted and evil and you can never be trusted to ever do the right thing.

St. Mark, who wrote the original gospel, as near as we can tell, may have had some good ideas but you people are not following them.  Not in the slightest.  So don't even talk to me about morality.  Ever.