CSotD: Somewhat Seasonal Merriment
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Wallace the Brave (AMS) and Spud the … um … the Spudacious … offer a holiday take that breaks through the usual seasonal noise. And speaking of noise, I’d rather have a couple of kids come by with an absurd but amusing rap than hear Musak at the store in which nameless singers flail at making traditional carols hip ‘n happenin’
I’d also prefer carolers to show up with cookies instead of expecting me to furnish the figgy pudding or hot toddies or whathaveyou, though I gather the cookie Spud carries is more of a prop than a handout.
Let’s segue straight from those nice creative young lads into Pearls Before Swine (AMS) and the ratings issue Wallace asked about.
Yelp! is an open sewer and is more about engagement than appraisals. That is, if it didn’t attract gripes and bad karma, it would have long since shut down for lack of traffic, but let’s not leap to blame the Intertubes too much.
Back before the online world, newspapers had voice-of-the-people feedback features where people could call in and provide their views on the world, which were rarely very positive, and which often made you wonder, if that was what the editors were letting through, what demented swill they were deciding was not fit to print.
Similarly, talk radio has always been dominated by malcontents and haters while, in restaurants, people who send compliments to the chef are far outnumbered by those going ballistic over some perceived fault in the food or the service or the ambience.
My latest fascination, however, has been the opposite: Enthusiastic suck-ups who respond to Facebook ads by raving about how wonderful the product is. You can tell how impressed they are if you click on their names, because it almost always seems they haven’t posted anything in the past year or two or three and have just come out of their shell because of how utterly wonderful this product is.
Because advertisers wouldn’t be so dishonest as to clone abandoned accounts simply to promote their own products. Heavens to Betsy!
Yes, I kvetch about kvetching.
As Mike Baldwin suggests in Cornered (AMS), getting upset over all the blockheads in the world is not conducive to the spirit, though I get more bent out of shape by people going five miles an hour under the limit than the actual slowpokes, who, I figure, are pitiable old gaffers and probably have families that should be taking away their keys.
The five-unders are just lousy damn drivers, going just fast enough that you can’t pass them but slow enough to collect a herd trailing behind.
I’m glad the dog has long since learned that things I say in the car are not directed at her, but the fact is, they sure aren’t directed towards preserving my journey of spiritual growth.
Still on the topic of preserving your spiritual composure, I differ with Graeme Keyes, though I’m willing to accept that perhaps Britons approach the holiday differently.
Back when I was a churchgoer, I began to avoid Christmas and Easter because the place would be packed full of people who never showed up any other time and I’d find myself annoyed, which seemed counter to the point of being there.
Note that Robert Burns never wrote a poem about a judgmental prig sitting in church disapproving of the woman in front of him, or, if he did, he didn’t publish it.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’m more inclined to avoid the grocery store than the mall just before Christmas, but I think that’s because (A) I get my Christmas shopping done early and (B) we don’t have a mall. We have strip malls, of course, but large enclosed malls seem like dinosaurs in the current world.
They still exist, but they feature a lot of empty storefronts and the offerings in the Food Court are often pretty Spartan. RWO’s “countdown to closing” sign may refer to holiday hours, but there are a lot of malls to which it applies in a more final sense.
By contrast, this is the time of year I most miss living near Montreal, because much as I dislike cities, there is a Silver Bells vibe to Christmas lights, window displays and bundled up people speaking a multitude of languages. A trace of snowflakes from the dark skies adds to an atmosphere that neither Amazon nor the malls can capture.
Meanwhile, back at the mall, Frazz (AMS) explores the growing desperation of a collapsing retail culture. The tradition of making peasants work on holidays is fading as the supply of peasants dwindles, while the sales once confined to Black Friday are, as the kids note, spread out across the weeks leading up to Christmas.
I’m glad to see stores close on Thanksgiving and Christmas, because it’s the least senior, worst paid workers who had to miss holidays, and they’re most apt to have small children they should celebrate with, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking its some spiritual awakening among the Ebenezer Scrooge contingent.
Fezziwig is long dead, but Marley is alive and well and knows staying open just doesn’t pay well enough.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Christmas cards are a fading tradition, and I blame the Intertubes for that, not because we’ve given up writing, though that’s part of it, but because we’re already sharing our news with friends and relations throughout the year.
First of all, we’ve nothing new to report and, second, we’re in relatively constant touch with people who matter to us and the idea of catching up once a year no longer carries much weight.
My interest in cartooning grew from my father, who drew our family card each Christmas. This one was a sequel, casting the grandkids in their parents’ previous roles.
But here’s a not-to-be-missed column from years past, commemorating a real life “I have no idea.”
Finally, I could drink a case of Joni Mitchell, though her Christmas classic reminds me also of interviewing Flora MacDonald, Canada’s Foreign Minister, a delightful, important woman who, when we met, had a pair of black eyes from having caught a crack and broken her nose speedskating on the Rideau Canal.
And laughed it off, because that’s how cool she was.
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