Well the holidays are all over now (well they will be at the end of the day at least) and everything can go back to as close to normal as it gets. The next couple of months are going to be a little crazy. I’ve got three business trips coming up; Memphis, San Francisco and Indy, and likely weekend trips to Lexington and Atlanta. I’ll get to drive to Indy and Memphis, but I’ll be flying to San Francisco. I’d love to drive to San Francisco but it just ain’t practical. Anyway that’s me till the end of February.
I’ve been watching a lot of stuff on DVD since Christmas, got the Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder complete box sets for Christmas, thanks Mom. I’ve just barely cracked into them so far. I’ve been distracted by a little four dollar treat from the Great Escape. It’s one of those multi disc el-cheap-o packages of mostly public domain movies. This one has twenty movies that have some, sometimes quite slight, connection to racing, or cars. They are all B level or worse films but they are all pretty interesting for one reason or another. The older ones have plots of varying levels of ridiculousness and tons of stock footage, one even has some glorious clips of European Grand Prix racing. The real jewels though are three movies made in the seventies. One biopic of Richard Petty starring Richard Petty, he’s not bad actually, and the dad from The Christmas Story playing Lee Petty, There’s some fun car chases with vintage iron and seventies NASCAR racing. Then there is the sublimely bad, a movie about a couple of dope smugglers and one about the most unlikely California Highway patrolman turned repo men you can imagine. They make Cannonball run look like Citizen Kane. What’s cool about them though is that they got made at all. You can just imagine the filmmakers hitting up their families and friends for money and maxing out credit cards to finish the things. The scripts and acting are pitiful but they still manage to put up some interesting car chases.
Then there is another movie that I just got my hands on Monday. I couldn’t watch it Monday night, I had to watch something to review for Cinegeek Monday night so I didn’t get to watch it till Tuesday, but I’ve seen it three times since then and I didn’t get in till about two am last night. It’s Gran Torino Clint Eastwood’s latest movie. It is amazing. A perfect movie. When you get a chance you have to see it. I’m not saying anything else about it so I don’t ruin it for you, if that that’s possible, but it is fantastic.
Well I got just enough time to get this posted and then get cleaned up to meet some friends for lunch so I’ll cut this off for now.
Happy New Year everybody.
On December 8, 2008 · Comments Off
Man I hate to gripe about this, I feel like I’m about to do a stand up routine about how bad airline service is but this is ridiculous. Amazon’s got a 12 Days of Holiday special going on. What the hell is 12 days of holiday? Is it Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday? Or maybe it’s the 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. Which Holiday, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Pearl Harbor Day, Hanukkah, Christmas, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, New Years Eve, New Years Day, Ground Hog’s Day, Valentine’s Day, wait that’s twelve holidays maybe that’s what they are referring to. I love Amazon and I don’t believe that when somebody tells you to have a “happy holiday” that they are denying the role of Christ in Christmas, and even if they were that’s there business, at least they aren’t telling you to go to hell. After all this is the Holiday Season. It stretches from Thanksgiving to New Years Day. There are several different holidays in there some religious some secular. If you want to wish me Happy Holidays, thank you. If you want to wish me Merry Christmas, that’s fine. It you want to wish me Happy Hanukkah (I’m not sure that’s appropriate and I’m too lazy to look it up), I’ll take it. If you want to wish me well for any reason I wish nothing but the same for you. But everything has it’s limits.
12 Days of Holiday
Like I said before, what the hell does it mean? Of course it means 12 Days of Christmas. It’s an as obvious as you can get reference to the Christmas carol 12 Days of Christmas. That’s the first thing that everyone is going to think when they see it. It’s a straight substitution of Holiday for Christmas. If there actually exists someone out there that is actually offended at the word Christmas is this really going to mollify them? If they are so sensitive that the mere realization that other people are celebrating this day is 12 Days of “Holiday” really going to ease there consciences? Wouldn’t if have to be more along the lines of 12 Days of Introspection and Reflection on the Oppression and Destruction Visited on the World by Western Civilization? Actually that’s got a bit of a ring to it. Merry Day of Introspection and Reflection on the Oppression and Destruction Visited on the World by Western Civilization, okay maybe it doesn’t.
I enjoy a good euphemism and nice turn of phrase as well as anybody else, but when you start to screw around with the meanings of words you start to piss me off. I’m not talking about the natural evolution of language. Because by the definition of “natural” and “evolution” it’s something a body can keep a handle on. It improves communications, but this arbitrary substitution of one word for another just ends up making understanding one another even more difficult.
— Update —
Wow, I put up post about Amazon’s 12 Days of Holiday promotion and the next thing you know it’s Amazon’s 12 Days of Christmas promotion. Coincidence?