Damn the Futurists

I don't blame the MTA or the TWU for the trouble the strike caused last week. I blame the Futurists. You know the Futurist, the guys who sat around at the beginning of the last century dreaming up what life would be like in this century. I remember seeing moving side walks in the City of The Future. At the Worlds Fair in 1930 and 1960, everywhere moving side walks. Would we even need a train and bus system if we could just hop on a side walk and eventually get there without walk too much?

I'm not looking to get a completely useless project like the Plattsburgh Pool Transport System going. That system was doomed to fail, what with the large amount of water raised high overhead in downtown Plattsburgh and the fact that summer barely last 3 months. Frankly, who would want to swim every where they went in the summer any way?

What I want is the promise that the Futurists gave us in the department of not walk places. The best they could do in the last 70 years was the escalator. I don't want to disparage escalators. I fear and respect them. If we want to get rid of the threat of transit strikes lets make city transit obselete by giving people a fast and easy way to get to work without the hassle of waiting for buses and trains. Give us our moving side walk.

Christmas; if anything ever needed attacking...

By now many of you have seen news coverage (mostly on FOX News) about the attack on Christmas or the "War on Christmas", being waged every day by secular interests in the US. I've lost count of the number of commenators and religious leaders who have their panties in a twist over how communities and businesses have started down playing Christmas celebrations and the very phrase, "Merry Christmas."

Frankly, this is a really great smoke screen to divert your attention away from issues that really are news. For instance two Republican leaders and a very high level aide have come under investigation recently for doing some very nasty things.

We can't pay attention to those things however, because that would be promoting the "criminalization of politics." It's better, apparently, to tell every one that their sacred, time honored, tradition of buying their family love is at war.

Some organizations have gone as far as boycotting businesses that discourage their employees from saying "Merry Christmas." Fine, these employees have to say "Happy Holidays." Anybody notice the roots of the word "Holiday." Looks a lot like Holy Day to me. It couldn't have many come from the Old English words halig and deay, meaning holy and day, together denoting "religious festival" and "day of recreation"?

There are so many Holy days right around now that, perhaps businesses and individuals just want to make sure every one feels comfortable. I live in New York and I learned quick that, at least here, Happy Holidays makes real sense.

Are their real concerns that Druids celebrating the solstice have some how infiltrated Walmart and are slowly subverting Christmas? I doubt it. It's more likely that this droning about Christmas helps keep us asleep. Helps us to forget that their are people who have taken advantage of the US internally and externally. Helps keep our attention from securing safety, securing our future and securing our freedoms.

Requiring stores and your neighbors to wish you a Merry Christmas because it's your holiday sounds to me like the tantrums three year olds give in toy stores around this time of year. Noisy, prolonged and, in the end, completely pointless. If you want to find an oppressed community in this country don't look at the Christians. If there is one group that has money, organization and representation it's the Christians.

I think it would be better to look towards the Fecalists, the wonderful people have been persecuted since their inception. Let us at least pause and give thought to their beliefs for this holiday season, two of their holiest days; Ponderous and Riddance. On Ponderous Day they are called to think and discuss "If a Bear shits in the woods and no one is their to smell it, does it have an odor?" And of course the celebration of Riddance in which they are asked to "Shit or get off the pot." Both of these have absolutely nothing to do with the "War on Christmas", except that they too are full of crap.