Christmas lights…

The lights have been hung…yeah!!!! When the weather takes its scheduled nose dive temperature wise I will not feel the need to go outside. I was going to hold off on finishing the job until the coming weekend, but then I discovered the impending shift in temperature and remembered freezing my hind end off last year.

I have a bad habit of procrastinating. I acknowledge this problem and I am trying to fix it…but change is not easy and sometimes I fall into old habits…what can I say, I am human. Everyone has flaws…oh and if you think you don’t, let me point out your biggest flaw…delusions of grandeur.

People are not perfect…perfect is boring…perfect never experiences the roller coaster because they never make a mistake or change their mind…

Oh well…the Christmas lights look good and I actually managed to side step procrastinating myself into a frozen ass.

Buy Nothing…hmmmm

So you know that yesterday I avoided the malls, stores, and any form of retail outlet. I did this because being in the middle of all that pushing and shoving just does not stir up a great holiday spirit for me. Anyway, I was listening to the NPR news summary this morning and I heard about the women who have been pushing this “Buy Nothing” day. Which you know, for the reasons they explain it, isn’t too bad of an idea.

On the other hand though, I have come to realize that for some people this whole shopping thing is like a drug. They have to participate in the rush of having people trampling all over them. They have to go for that bargain. They need to have at least one gift to give that would have cost them more if they had not gone out on Black Friday.

The whole process is like a drug that sneaks up on them once a year and shakes them out of their senses. It sends them scurrying into the malls. Like the lemmings, they rush through this way and that grabbing anything in their path. This urge to shop is the reason why some people (who rightfully need them) have a year’s supply of nose hair clippers, tie tacks or Bathroom readers.

But you know if you pull yourself back from wondering about this whole thing and look at the big picture… At least the need only hits once, maybe twice a year. Very few people end up dead because of it, as compared with other addictive behaviors. Plus there is the added benefit that if you happen to be related to or be friends with one of the addicts you tend to find some pretty cool stuff under the tree…and I don’t know about you, but I’ll sit through the “do you know what I had to get that,” war story anytime for an IPOD that I currently can’t afford to get for myself.

Oh, I may sound a bit cynical, but hey it’s an opinion, take it, leave it, trash it…you know what they say about opinions…

Shopping…I don’t think so…

 

So I am really, really glad that I have long since abandoned the quest for the after Thanksgiving holiday shopping bargain. I would not even dream of wanting to be trapped in the middle of all of this mess.

I guess to some, my attitude may really suck…but I just can not even comprehend the need to make a purchase so bad that I would subject myself to pushing and shoving. Hey, if it is your thing than more power to you…I am just not going to go out there and put up with all of that mess.

Colbert – George – Matt and a whole lot of rambling…

So the Colbert Report this morning really got me. I have been watching him more and more lately. Of course, I don’t seem to have time to watch the show very often, but I have been watching his clips on the internet whenever I manage to click onto my Google Reader. I picked up the feed and have found that it is definitely a way to get my mind off of the overwhelming load of stuff I have to do each day.

I tell you, I have really gotten into Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They just have a great way of sarcastically looking at what is going on in the world. I know there are people who think they are eroding the sanctity of the news, but let me tell you, with the way the news shows have been eroding themselves, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are the least of their problems.

Have you ever noticed – the more ridiculous somebody makes themselves look, the more they scream about other people? They know they are looking like friggin fools. They know that everybody is standing around wondering what the hell they are talking about. So what do they do? They look around for whoever happens to be highlighting their idiocy and they start jumping up and down screaming about how they really aren’t doing anything wrong, it is actually the people who are exposing their problems that are at fault.

Oh well, I guess it is the nature of some humans to do this. I try to combat this in my class every day. A student will get in trouble and immediately it is somebody else’s fault. Don’t you just love it when someone says, “well they made me mad!”

I so exasperate my students because most times I will get both parties together and I will only let each student tell me what they themselves did. If they start rambling off into what the other one did I stop them and tell them that I only want them to tell me what they did. What’s interesting here is that the kids really don’t know how to take responsibility and when I make them step back and look at their role in an event they have too, they have no choice. They have to take ownership of their actions.

Oh well, don’t you just love it when somebody rambles like I have done here today…check out the clip above, it will make you laugh…