I've been watching old episodes of Lassie, the cute TV show from the 1950s. I've always considered myself a Lassie fan. I've read the novels (Lassie vs. Godzilla, Lassie and the A-Team, Lassie and Elvis, and all the others), short stories (my favorite was "When Lassie Came to Sarnath"), and even the epic haiku series in six volumes, Lassie Monogatari. However, I was always under the impression that Lassie was a Colander. It's a perfectly natural misconception, I would think. It turns out that Lassie is actually a Collie. I'm familiar with Collie, too. She's a semaphore for death and destruction and rebirth and things like that. Who would have thought the Lassie franchise was all a giant piece of Hindu propaganda? Now I love Lassie more than ever!

I'm tired of watching people eat things like spaghetti with meatballs and not being allowed to eat it because it contains tomatoes or something stupid like that. I'm tired of not being allowed to eat tomatoes, poinsettias, chocolate, and a dozen other things. In fact, I'm seriously considering giving up Buddhism and switching to some other religion without dietary restrictions. I'm not sure why I stick with Pure Land Buddhism. I mean, the deal sounds great from a cat's point of view. If you can just praise the Buddha Amida enough times, you will get a fresh, clean litterbox. However, no matter how many times I do this, I'm still stuck with my regular litterbox. That wouldn't be so bad, if somebody didn't keep sneaking in when I'm not around and filling it with poop. Anyhow, I just need to figure out which religion I should adopt. I have considered being an atheist, but I don't have that much faith.

It's Christmas, so I had planned to write a little essay on peace and
goodwill and all that jazz, but as I started doing my research, I learned
something amazing. You'll hear arguments about where Christmas came from.
Is it Christian? Is it Jewish? Was it invented by the Mayans to increase
jade sales in the cold winter months? Well, you'd be surprised. It turns
out that Christmas is actually a Buddhist holiday. You might be tipped off
by the emphasis on peace, harmony, and the cessation of desire, but you
can't always trust things like that. Cessation of Desire Day sounds
Buddhist by that crude definition, and we all know it was invented by
greeting card executives in 1992.

No, the way you can tell where a holiday came from is by looking at
traditional songs associated with it. Cessation of Desire Day songs
include "Buy Our Cards, You Lazy Bastards!" and "Silent Night." Songs
often played around Christmas include "Shakyamuni is Coming to Town,"
"Good King Ashoka," and Pachelbel's "Kannon." In addition, there is
Dickens's famous "A Christmas Carroll," in which mean old Lewis Carroll is
visited by the Buddhas of the Past, Present, and Future in an attempt to
covert him to Buddhism. Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, shows him the
distant year 1987, when people eat food pills, travel with rocket packs,
have colonies on distant planets, and have all the cheap, clean energy the
could ever need produced by orbiting nuclear stations. In this future,
Carroll has been reincarnated as a space baron who has a monopoly on
interplanetary travel. I should point out that this story was written in
the middle of a massive downturn in Buddhist conversions and was,
predictably, unable to stop the trend.

I just thought you should all know this. I'm going to try to extinguish my
desires, but while I do that, I want some unagi. Merry Christmas,
everyone!

Okay, so the new Harry Potter book came out today, and the Winter Solstice will be held July 16. July seems a bit late for the Winter Solstice, but that's what I saw while skimming my friends list.

In other news, I wandered around Fremont today and saw a copy of Glynda-Lee Hoffmann's book, The Secret Dowry of Eve: Woman's Role in the Development of Consciousness. Glynda-Lee feels that, however fuzzy the Bible might be on topics like dinosaurs and evolution, it is quite clear on psychology and neurophysiology, and armed with her secret decoder ring, she sets out to prove that Genesis is actually a pro-woman story and not, as the words themselves suggest, a justification for sexism. What this looks like from my point of view is another person writing a book that says, "Hey, it's okay to be a member of [insert name of group that doesn't get the respect it deserves], and we know this because some external story has validated us." That's totally the wrong way to go about trying to make people feel better. I'd like to see a book that says, "Hey, it's okay to be a member of [insert name of group that doesn't get the respect it deserves]." I mean, I don't need any sort of external validation. I don't. Do I?

I don't think it's very nice, given my family's history of addiction (It turns out my dad's mother collected Pearl Buck novels. She died when her tower of All Men Are Brothers fell on her.), that the minute I announce that I'm giving up collecting Action Heroes of Science, Clint gives me a starter deck for Popes: The Collectible Trading Card Game of Sin and Salvation.

I just love "St. Gelasius I." First, Rome gets +3 as long as he is in play. Second, as soon as he comes into play, everyone has to identify their Manichaean cards. Finally, he can keep secular cards from bothering you from one turn. "HIV-Spreading Lies," on the other hand, is just sick and wrong.