So today Booman asks in the Open Thread:
What are you doing to help destroy Christmas?
(As if our help might be needed.)
Read on for my lengthy reply.
What am I doing?
Refusing to clomp clomp clomp along like a good consumer sheeple.
Refusing to be sheared.
Refusing to follow the various Judas goats that the PermaGov sends to deceive us.
Refusing to go the for the old wolf in sheep’s clothing routine.
And MOST of all…growing guard dog canines. (Better to be a sheep in WOLF’S clothing, these hard days.)
And ready to rumble.
(Gonna be a rough winter, y’know…)
Merry Christmas.
GROWFFF!!!
ATTACK SHEEP
AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME
Christmas?
Don’t tell ME when to be happy.
So last Wednesday I took an express bus back from Manhattan to the Bronx, where I live. Maybe 10 PM. It had been a long, hard working day (Playing the Big Apple Circus. Great gig. Really. An old-style one ring circus. Fine musicians playing functional music for joyous people. Children especially. The real thing. I run away and join the circus every chance I get. Bet on it.) I was carrying about 35 lbs of equipment; a light snow was falling and it was quite cold so I thought that I would treat myself to a $5 bus ride that lets me off right next to my cave rather than fight the subways and walk the long walk from the subway to my neighborhood.
Uncharacteristically, I dozed off on the bus. Even more uncharacteristically, I missed my stop. By about 3/4 of a mile.
No buses, no cabs, no NUTHIN’ in that particular area. Not at that time of night. Hilly, but my place was downhill. Suburban-looking more than urban. Houses, trees, a small shopping village, some few high rise apartment buildings…the works. Old New York, middle class version thereof. (I live in the servant’s quarters WAY downhill from that area. Bet on that as well. One third the rent and a better clientele, if y’know what I mean.)
Luckily I had worn my Maine gear. Down coat, big gloves, a hoodie. Plus I had good running/walking shoes on. (New Balance. The best. I don’t care where they are made.) So I started hoofing it. With my 35 lbs of gear slung on my shoulders.
Half asleep. hungrier than hell, trying to laugh at my stupidity instead of complaining. Legs, feet, arms and body all in fine working order, making good time on the slippery streets. Carefully, but all in balance. Making GOOD time. Urban athletics. Street skiing.
And suddenly…at the top of a steep ridge overlooking a small park on that cold, GOD it was clear night…epiphany time!!! Almost uncontrollable happiness as I looked out over the working class neighborhoods spread out below me for literally miles in every direction. In all of their shining, scuffling, funky, burning, headed-upward-because-there-ain’t-a-whole-lotta-down-left-to-go glory.
Epiphany time.
I got yer “Christmas”. Right THERE!!!
Don’t tell ME when to be happy.
I can figure it out all by myself, thanks.
“Black Friday”, INDEED!!!
Christmas.
A sleeple holiday, now.
Nothing more.
I got yer Christmas. Right HERE!!!
VAYA!!!
Merry change of government.
(Christmas gonna be a little late this year. In November. Watch.)
Later…
AG
