Bah, humbug

It is the season to be jolly, apparently. The jolliest people are, of course, retailers, who are doing their impersonations of Scrooge McDuck swimming. The rest of us are just happy to have some time off work and an excuse to eat until our arteries congeal and drink until the tile floor looks comfy.

Don't get me wrong, Xmas is a lovely time of year, but I have some issues with it.

1) It's Xmas not Christmas.
This celebration stopped being about Christ's birthday when shops started advertising how many shopping days there were left before Xmas. I'm glad we have the holiday but lets stop pretending it is a religious holiday. To the 16% of Australian's (check your country stats here) who actually attend church, feel free to ignore this point. And yes I'm aware of the irony here.

2) Xmas cards.
I understand the idea of sending correspondence to family and friends and given the "holiday season" it only seems logical to catch up with people. But I'm under 40, so I have Facebook, Twitter, Email, Linkedin, mobile phones, and know how to use them. Sending cards feels like people the world over are taking a vow of technophobia in order to contract hand cramps and level a rain forest.

3) Xmas lights.
I think the goal of Xmas lights, if I am understanding them correctly, is blind people in the space station orbiting Earth. In the day and age of climate change, when we really should be cutting down on energy usage, we decide to set up a whole lot of lights to blind people. It has become a competition between neighbours and streets to see who can have the most gaudy display of flashing eyesores. The winner is usually the person or street who wake up to the electricity bill in January realising they need a second job and to sell a kidney.

4) Caroling.
Why is it that people only remember for the other eleven months of the year that they can't sing?
Which also brings me to:

5) Xmas songs.
I'm not talking about the traditional carols here, I'm talking about the saccharine odes to love and presents that bombard the airwaves from every pop singer/group the world has to offer. These "artists" were barely tolerable in small doses as it was, but the competition to have the highest selling drink coaster means you can't even go near a TV or radio for fear of diabetes and the desire to hug a puppy.

6) The celebrity biography.
Speaking of stocking stuffers, every Xmas there must be more celebrity biographies bought for Dads the world over than any other time of year. In fact, it is safe to say that the book reading statistics are built on this Xmas tradition of buying a book no-one wants to read for people who don't read in the first place. Is it really a surprise that so few people read when the only book they start each year is about the mundane life of somebody with decent hand-eye coordination or a backstabbing politician proposing to tell all, but really just relating the party political line of events. I'd prefer the socks.

With that said, Merry Xmas everyone!

Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket.

Social media

In internet terms I'm somewhat of a noob. I was late to Facebook, I held out on joining message boards and forums, I even had a personal campaign to avoid the vapidness of Twitter. Now, of course, I am happy to admit that I was wrong. Social media is awesome.

There are some down sides of course. I'm not a huge fan of the salespeople posing as real people on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and the various forums I frequent. There are only so many times per day that I need to be told that my penis is not big enough, that I could be making money on Twitter by being a douche, or that someone I've never conversed with has a book for sale.

What I love about social media is the friends I've made, the great conversations I've had and all the catching up I've managed to do with friends I don't get to see regularly. I have just joined Linkedin and discovered a friend of mine has two start up companies (check them out: http://www.cockjox.com/ http://tidyclub.com/). How would I have found that out between now and the next time we catch up for a beer?

Anyway, you can join me on the links below. We can chat, I'll be funny, quote some science and talk books.