thisiswhatyoushalldo

These guys have gathered some convincing evidence that Santa does indeed exist.  

Have a great year and always brake for Penguins (It’s a silly game. Tip: jump just before the flag).

Putting Christ Back In Christmas

There it was, half constructed in the driveway � a wooden manger box, built to exacting specs that my father had dug up through extensive research at some dumb library in Chicago.

In the back of the garage, a wooden loom for making woolen clothes � another of Dad�s projects. Mom was about halfway done making the bolts for this year and next week she planned on making the robes.

It�s August 2004 and Christmas � my father�s version. It’s ight around the corner. He is so into this Christmas thing – so embarrassing to neighbors and friends.
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It started about three years ago. We were all in church on Christmas Eve and Dad had a revelation � that�s what we call it around the house � a revelation. He realized that Christmas, the current celebration of our Christmas holiday was being done wrong.

�December! December! No, No, No� he shouted during the third verse of �O Holy Night.�

�We have to get home. Christmas in December! It�s for Pagans,� he declared

We were whisked out of the church and Dad ran home in the old Saturn station wagon as fast as he could, ignoring intersections and stop lights along the way.

Leaving us all puzzled and a bit scared in the car � he dashed from the car and into the house � ambling the stairs two at a time. We sat in the car, still stunned.
Mother reached over and closed the driver�s side door and we all made efforts to get out of the car � me, my sister Annie and our little brother Jake � 3 years old and still full of traditional Christmas wonderment, dressed in Christmas pajamas and wearing Santa Clause slippers.

We found Dad upstairs in his office, reading a deeply highlighted copy of �The Bible Code.� The Code had become his tome, his book of books and rarely these days would he make a decision or settle on a plan of action for himself or the family without first checking it. Torn notepapers drooped from the edges of nearly every page and yellow Post-It notes were sticking out all over the top of the spine, providing him quick access to his new road map.

�The Bible is just part of God�s plan!� he cried out. It�s all in HERE,� he thrust his Code in the air. Tears were running down his face. He had a pencil and graph paper in his hand.

�We are celebrating the Messiah�s birth on the wrong day! Can�t you see, it is the wrong day! It is so simple. Why don�t people take the time to study this tremendous book and get the REAL message of our savior!�

I looked at my older sister Annie. She was 14 and in all honesty it was a Christmas miracle just getting her off the cell phone and into church on Christmas Eve. If Jesus was born a 16-year-old beau-hunk, and she was afforded the chance to flirt with him, then perhaps she would be more eager to enjoy the holidays. But her idea of a good Christmas is a trip to the mall and congregating with her boy-crazy bunch of friends as they shop. Jesus was not part of her holiday plan.

I stared at Annie and she stared back. Dad, we were both thinking, had gone off the deep end.

He pulled us all by the hand and raced downstairs to the kitchen table. He had three bibles, his annotated Bible Code, a few notebooks with lots of scribbles and some graph paper and he began explaining how the Bible Code, when drafted onto a graph paper matrix, using the original Greek and Aramaic texts, meticulously detailed the exact date and time of the birth of Christ.

Mother was staring, jaw dropped and the rest of us didn�t move. Dad had gone a bit mad. Worse this time than before when he realized a new Biblical source determined some iffy stock purchases that proved futile and expensive.

�Here we go again.� I thought to myself � giving Dad that old all-to-familiar smile of acceptance, tinged with some embarrassed regret.

�It all comes down to Rash Hashanah!.� He shouted, using a telescoping pointer on a grease board full of statistical dates written in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Grease pen in hand he furiously flung dates, times, codes and cryptic markings across the board. Turning and staring each one of us down, I saw and excitement in his eyes that was just short of joyous and perhaps closer to maniacal.

�September, 11 the year BC! Jesus was born on 9/11!�

He was on fire now. Yellow highlighter in his mouth and three different colors of markers in his hands; the notes on the board were being applied furiously.

�Look, look, the matrix clearly illustrates that Joseph (Yosef) and Mary (Miriam or Miryam were in Bethlehem (Beit Lechem) and stayed in a succah, a stable.

Then Yeshua the Messiah came from heaven, to the earth, the manger or feeding trough is mentioned where Mary laid the baby after the birth. There is mention of Ruach Hakodesh (Holy Spirit) and the shepherds. It mentions the angels who announced the birth to the shepherds, and the star in the sky announcing His birth. All the details from the Gospels are present and there is probably much more in this matrix than I have shown, since it didn’t take me too long to develop it as is. �

�Dad, we know all that. If you had stayed in church just a few minutes more, Pastor Green would have covered it as well. It is the Christmas story.� Annie said. She blew some more gum into a bubble and rolled her eyes.

�But wait, that is just some statistical groundwork to show that the basic crypt of the code is valid,� he added.

�Now, review the basics of the code transliteration, and factoring in the addition of the modern day Roman calendar and its dominance over both the traditional Jewish calendar and the Greek. Now, we cannot simply say Yeshua was born exactly on September 11, 3 BC. But what do we know of the birth and the virgin conception? A human conception last 270 days or so. Let�s back up from September 11, 3 BC, remaining mindful that 4 BC is a statistical leap year and then we get 254 days. That means 18 days backwards in December 4 BC, should be the exact date of the conception, factoring a 31-day month for December. We can then target the conception to December 13, 4 BC based on a 271-day average human gestation period for male babies. I should mention that the Hebrew word for pregnancy is “herayon� So, talking the results of the Bible Code, we can easily postulate:

hey resh yud vav nun.

Translating the Hebrew to the corresponding numerical value:
hey=5, resh=200, yud=10, vav=6, nun=50; or total=5+200+10+6+50=271

�Certainly, by now this should all be making sense�? Dad explained.

I was baffled. Jake was eating a Band-Aid. Annie had picked up her cell phone and was just seconds away from dialing out. Hopefully she was calling for help.
Mom reached over and patted Dad�s shoulder and handed him a paper towel to wipe his sweating brow.

�No, dear. Most of us don�t understand any of this at all,� she added.
Oops, I thought. She is just encouraging him now. This could go on for years. My eyes began wondering over to the Christmas tree and the presents awaiting my full attention.

Dad turned around now and looked at us; leaping over to the tree and announced, �This Family would be a God-like Family as we have always been, and would celebrate Christmas in a true Christian manner.�

I didn�t like where this was going.

He began gathering the presents and announced that Christmas, the birth of Christ would be celebrated on 9/11 from now on � to do otherwise is not honoring the savior.

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Well, that was Christmas, 2001. The terrible terrorist attacks of 9/11 were still very fresh on everyone�s mind and Dad seemed to have taken it particularly hard. But he was no longer reading every word about it in the paper and no longer sitting blankly in front of Fox News for another clue as to how this happened to our nation.

Instead he found his solace in the Biblical Code and worked hard to get God�s message out as detailed in the cryptic lore which he compared to a fifth book of the Gospel in its importance to mankind. He preached, taught, professed and spoke to everyone and anyone that would listen

Since that day, our family has seemed to regress into some form of archaic Christian clan. Dad began insisting we learn Greek and Aramaic and we were enrolled in a Rabbinical Torah School to help us learn the Talmud.

Each August we begin preparations for Christmas. Dad builds a new and realistic manger and stable and mom lovingly crafts traditional and accurate robes and cloth for the manger scene. And each night on 9/11, he lights a bright star on the house and we reenact the manager scene, acted out exactly as it was depicted in the Bible Code.

During the month of September, it is as if our traditional Presbyterian family went Jewish. We celebrate Rosh Hashanah (because Mary and Joseph did) and we live �among the Jews� for the entire month in our little Ohio suburb of Middleton.

I got to the point, eventually, where I enjoyed the robes and homemade sandals. It was kind of fun. Out among the �civilians� – roughing it. We didn�t have to bath or wear underwear or brush out teeth and except for the nativity scene, staged nightly the first ten days of the month on the front lawn, the whole thing was kind of fun.

Annie on the other hand didn�t take it so well. The fights were epic. She was mortified to the point of tears and her mood this year really changed right around the middle of July when she realized her joyous summer days at the pool, where she worked as a lifeguard and wore the skimpiest little bikini she could find , would be end soon. Her life as a civilian would be traded in a few short weeks for robes and head coverings and a strict Hassidic observance of the Sabbath. At 17, she swore this was her last year at home and she was counting the days to her 18th birthday and a chance to leave.

Jake, well, Jake didn�t know no any better. Now 6 years old, he was still full of mystery. He still got Christmas presents and Christmas � although Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh themed gifts had started to run their course; the gifts came, only in September. Jake would get some of the neighborhood kids to come over and help him each fall as he watered and fed the mules and the animals Dad rented each year for the manger scene.

Life had taken on a new rhythm all its own.

That is, until Easter – – – but that is a whole different issue.

— Merry Christmas, 2004, RW.

Special thanks to George Saunders and Roy A. Reinhold (whoever you are, you delightful scholarly wack job.)

With just five more shopping days until Christmas, I think it is entirely appropriate to re-introduce the world to the magic of Mr. David Sedaris and the Santaland Diaries. Read by the author, this classic of modern Christmas and commerce is streaming audio in Real Player format and a 128k stream. Next to a Thanksgiving Day listening to Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, Sedaris’ Christmas tale is a must-listen holiday treat. Gather the family around the wireless and enjoy.

David Sedaris

Bonus: Not an audio clip but the Scary Photos of Santa Gallery is a Hoot!

(If you are like me and think of Real Audio as part of the evil empire, download and install the free, simple and very, very effective Real Alternative classic media player - less memory, no fussing with the registry and unlike Real Audio, this little gem doesn't dial home and tell Time Warner what you are doing on line.>

I have about 700 or more bookmarks, all stored away on my computer. Firefox does an okay job managing them and helping keep them organized but sometimes they become a bit unwieldy. And sometimes there is a site you have on you system and home and you can’t remember what it is or how to get there and you want a centralized place to get it. Lots of different tools have been developed to help with that (Yahoo has a bookmark manager. You can go to Furl or Backflip.) But after reading about del.icio.us on Metafilter, Fark and Tabletalk, I decided to give it a try.
I really like this. It uses a heirachical filing system, much like the way Gmail organizes their conversations. It allows you file a link in several different places and makes retreiving them easy. And my favorite part of the site is you can see what other people are bookmarking/linking as well. Kind of like and unfiltered Metafilter or Fark.

Great fun.

Give it a try.

I watched season three’s penultimate episode of the Wire last night and was, as is always the case, blown away by the best written, most tightly directed and grippingly real television show on the air.
Most of my friends aren’t fans of the show and never give it a chance, which is a clear shame.
I once compared The Sopranos to Shakespeare, and to King Richard III in particular for its plot twists and ability to have real redeeming characters.
But the Wire? It is Faulknerian in its scope and its depth. The multi-dimensional characters, interacting in a multi-dimensional narrative played out in the all-too-real world of drug wars, organized crime and inner city police department bureacracy.
If you haven’t gotten on board, do so.
Keep an eye out for season one, now out on DVD. Season two and three will run off and on in reruns on HBO and HBO On Demand as well as a release of season two scheduled for this spring.
The Hollywood rumor mill is whispering that the show may not return next year, which would be a travesty as the emotion tied to these characters is heart wrenching.
I hope HBO sees the light and brings The Wire back for an other go ’round.

So, Sprint and Nextel are apparently in merger/aquisition talks. Which is kind of tedious. I was wonderfully informed Friday that I got a promotion at work and will begin a new function as a supervisor for the retail sales support team. And although all the talks about Sprint and Nextel are just rumor and third and fourth hand regurgitation of unnamed sources, it stills causes some anxiety. At the least, I expect a few years for any shake out from a merger of the two companies, but still . . . coming from a guy who has been laid off three times in his life, there is always the little voice in the back of my head worrying about the long term future.