Trust the Ferret, the Ferret is Wise

In the United States, today is election day.

Get off your butts and vote.  NOW!

(election day should totally be a holiday, so people can vote.)

Okay, many many things to post about. I expect today will be at least a three post day. First, life and holidays.

For New Year's, we went down to Savannah, near where my girlfriend's family lives. All in all, it was an awesome trip. New Year's Eve was great First, we went down to Tybee Island, where we saw frickin dolphins, not a hundred feet off shore!

See!
See more!

Also, we saw some birds I didn't know what they were but they looked cool.

Then we went on a riverboat cruise in the evening, which took us up the river and then down and back to watch the fireworks over the city. the music was pretty good, the food not so. I forgot my camera, so no pictures of that for you.

It's a long ass drive from Georgia to here, especially on New Year's Day. But we made it fine.

Let's see. Also, I have my school schedule finally set and should finish for transfer somewhere bigger at the end of spring, like I'd hoped to all along. Yay!

So that's the five minute summary of the last couple weeks.

I give you, Trans Siberian Orchestra and choreographed lights.



The same guy also did Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24) the year before.

Last month at work, we started putting up a display of Christmas bargain books. In September. SEPTEMBER. Now there's not only that, but also a table of Christmas cards, and a table of random holiday books. In the first week of October.

I detect the not-so-faint wiff of desperation animating it all. "Consumer spending" has been soft this year, for a simple reason. People don't have money. All the rest of the money people have been spending was coming from their savings, and the mortgages on their houses. And now suddenly the whole pyramid scheme animating the mortgage market has fallen apart, and people don't have thousands of dollars to spare. So people haven't been spending, and the corporate retailers are panicking, because they don't know what to do, how are they going to squeeze out their next quarter of record profits?

So they've played their ace card. Christmas cheer and spending! Now now now! Come and spend! You have to! Otherwise, you're failing your family and kids and everyone you know! It's that time of year, even though it's October!

And then I saw a report on the local news yesterday, about how Wal-Mart had dropped prices on lots of toys to try and kick into holiday mode. And other stores have been following suit. The customers they interviewed didn't care, because it was 90 frickin degrees out yesterday, who wants to go Christmas shopping in the heat? Also, it's the beginning of October.

And they had a professor from one of the colleges around here, I missed his name or expertise, but he was crediting it to desperation too. Obviously I agree with him.

But I probably disagree with him in the fact I hope it fails. I hope it fails because then maybe they'll stop shoving Christmas forward until the "Holiday Season" literally begins in July. And I don't think it'd be bad for the whole edifice of corporate consumer retail bullshit to be shaken up. It's a fragile construct, based on marketing and advertising and other lies, which results in people working jobs selling plastic shit to each other so we can afford to go buy plastic shit from other stores. It's completely fucked up our culture, and it can't last. I hope it doesn't, but I hope it doesn't bring us all crashing down with it.

Aaron of Dresden Codak has had a brilliant idea.  Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day, December 8th.

The rules, from his post:

1) Utopian/cliché Future - "If the Future did a documentary of the last fifty years, this is how badly the reenactors would dress." Think Star Trek: TNG or the Time Travelers from Hob. Ever see how the society in Futurama sees the 20th century? Run with it. Your job is to dress with moderately anachronistic clothing and speak in slang from varying decades. Here are some good starters:

- Greet people by referring to things that don't yet exist or haven't existed for a long time. Example: "Have you penetrated the atmosphere lately?" "What spectrum will today's broadcast be in?" and "Your king must be a kindly soul!"

- Show extreme ignorance in operating regular technology. Pay phones should be a complete mystery (try placing the receiver in odd places). Chuckle knowingly at cell phones.

2) Dystopian Future - This one offers a little more flexibility. It can be any kind of future from Terminator to Freejack. The important thing to remember is dress like a crazy person with armor. Black spray painted football pads, high tech visors, torn up trenchcoats and maybe even some dirt here or there. Remember, dystopian future travelers are very startled that they've gone back in time. Some starters:

- If you go the "prisoner who's escaped the future" try shaving your head and putting a barcode on the back of your neck. Then stagger around and stare at the sky, as if you've never seen it before.

- Walk up to random people and say "WHAT YEAR IS THIS?" and when they tell you, get quiet and then say "Then there's still time!" and run off.

- Stand in front of a statue (any statue, really), fall to your knees, and yell "NOOOOOOOOO"

- Stare at newspaper headlines and look astonished.

- Take some trinket with you (it can be anything really), hand it to some stranger, along with a phone number and say "In thirty years dial this number. You'll know what to do after that." Then slip away.

3) The Past - This one is more for beginners. Basically dress in period clothing (preferably Victorian era) and stagger around amazed at everything. Since the culture's set in place already, you have more of a template to work off of. Some pointers:

- Airplanes are terrifying. Also, carry on conversations with televisions for a while.

- Discover and become obsessed with one trivial aspect of technology, like automatic grocery doors. Stay there for hours playing with it.

- Be generally terrified of people who are dressed immodestly compared to your era. Tattoos and shorts on women are especially scary.

Seriously.

There's enough holidays associated with May 1 that you can pick any one you like to party for.

I haven't made any New Year's resolutions, and don't really intend to, but warren_ellis's New Year Ideas are a lot better than most of the "normal" ones like "use that gym membership, for reals." Or at least more interesting, which I figure is the same thing usually.

Merry Christmas, East Coast, The Coast That Matters! :)

Okay. I'm trying to find some nifty greeting cards for the holidays. And because there's no reason not to, I'd rather they were made from recycled paper, and printed with veggie inks, that kind of thing. This has lead to a couple of findings. One, way too many things try to proudly proclaim "LOOK HOW ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY WE ARE!" on their cards, with like all sorts of new agey things like faeries. Yeah, okay, but that's not really what I want. I want something in the nerd to hipster range, that just happens to be made in sensible ways. I really hope we reach the point soon where making things in environmentally friendly ways isn't something that's needed to be trumpeted, it's to be expected.

And the second is how so many places proudly proclaim their stuff's hand-made. Okay, yes, that's nice. And I can understand the attraction, every one's unique, etc etc. But. Hand-making stuff doesn't mean it's made more environmentally friendly. It depends how you make them. Done right, machine-made stuff is better. that's's why we use machines. They can repeat the same task over and over without getting bored or tired. Once we set things up for them, they can do the same tasks with less waste and in much less time. The only reason most hand-made stuff is "better" for the environment is the scale of it. There's fewer made, if they made the same number hand-made as can be made with a machine, chances are there'd be a lot more waste.

The other thing I want is somewhere nearby. Shipping takes a good bit of energy. For example, buying cards from this neat Australian store wouldn't use less resources, since they'd have to cross a whole ocean to get to me. This place Two Piglets isn't bad, but that's still in California, and none of their designs really appeal that much to me. Maybe I should look at the table full of cards at B&N or something.

I wonder how many LJ posts are going to quote the Guy Fawkes rhyme because people saw V for Vendetta tomorrow.

I'm American, I don't care about some looney who didn't manage to blow up Parliment hundreds of years ago in another country.