Freeze a jolly good fellow

A highlight of the Christmas season every year is gathering my big family together under one roof -- my children, my parents, five siblings and their spouses, and twelve (thirteen by year's end!) nieces and nephews. Everyone is married now, save me and the kids, but I can recall many a holiday when new boy- or girlfriends were part of the celebration.

Tales of our past houseguests poke edgewise into at least one family conversation every year. Each of these dear departed-from-us souls has left behind fond memories, and I imagine that we've provided them with a few stories as well. Like how my sisters and I share a secret language of syllables and partial thoughts that no one can follow, not even our mother. Or how all three of my brothers-in-law swill too much grog every year and end up running naked through whatever neighborhood we're in, losing wallets and shoes and sustaining minor injuries in the imponderable annual ritual.

It's no wonder that the poor dears rarely returned the following year. It isn't that we didn't want to bring them into the fold; we did, and we tried. "Once when Joey was in first grade and I was in fifth, she went to a different school than the rest of us because we'd just moved back here from Topeka and there wasn't room at DR so I walked her to school and one of our friends, whose parents were Irish. . ." But with stories flying and a lifetime of shared experiences providing the framework, the new loves found themselves smack in the middle of what must've seemed to be a verbal maelstrom.

Occasionally my younger brother Andy would attempt interaction through the use of punnery. I know this was a friendly overture to our visitors because the entire family, so far as I can tell, despises puns, mostly because of him. When I was in high school, 11-year-old Andy -- redheaded, bespectacled, buck-toothed Andy -- would hang about ten feet away from my friends and interject punny witticisms whenever he could. My friends laughed (laughed!) at his horrid intrusions which would incense me. "Mom! Andy is bugging us! He's telling stupid jokes again!" My mom would admonish him, much too kindly to satisfy me, "Andy, sweetie, leave the big girls alone, and stop making puns. People hate puns."

Punnitry, for those who've been spared the exposure, is largely the trick of compacting two or more ideas within a single word or expression. It's wordplay at its most punitive. To wit: Punnery is a rewording experience, especially around Christmas time. That's when people exchange hellos and good buys with each other, the time of year when every girl wants her past forgotten and her presents remembered, the time of year when mothers have to separate the men from the toys.

Yes, that kind of punnishment.

Studies have shown a correlation between punderstanding and sound intellect, so the dumb jokes aren't really so dumb. Puns are found in many of Shakespeare's plays and in the Bible, more proof that they appeal to the lofty among us. Still, I loathe puns, which must be evidence that I'm not particularly clever, or so the punnits would have me believe.

This year will be only family and there will surely be a shortage of dumb jokes around the table. To take the heat off poor punmeister Andy, I'm going to surprise my family with a few holiday puns of my own. I won't trouble you with the three pages I've amassed so far but, trust me, much pun will be had this year. Enough to satisfy everyone for years and years to come, I can only hope.

So, Meretricious to all! And don't forget that There's No Plate Like Chrome for the Hollandaise!

Running on empty

Red BULL contains: caffeine, ginseng and guarana (all legal stimulants) sugars, artificial sweeteners, taurine (an amino acid said to lower blood pressure).
Red BULL promises: increased energy, better concentration, sharper cognitive performance, greater endurance, higher metabolism, faster reaction time.
Red BULL delivers: increased heart rate, heightened blood pressure, anxiety, jitters, hyperactivity, insomnia, hypoglycemia, dehydration.

A single can of Red Bull or any other "energy drink" increases your risk of heart attack or stroke. The caffeine-jacked soda pop causes blood to become sticky which is a pre-cursor to cardiovascular problems. One hour after drinking Red Bull, the blood system becomes abnormal, functioning as it would in a patient with heart disease. This effect is seen even in young people.

Take a look at Red Bull's website. The company has aligned itself -- through high-dollar sponsorships, which are nothing more than manipulative ad campaigns -- with the sporting crowd. It started with rodeo; the Red Bull logo is tailor-made for a swaggering cowboy. The company's tentacles have reached into the racing circuit, BMX cycling, extreme skiing, even soapbox derby. You'll find athlete superstars wearing the Red Bull logo in arenas and venues across the globe.

It would be one thing if Red Bull was marketing its product to coke heads and junkies, providing them with a legal daytime buzz. But to suggest that athletes will benefit from the "energy" Red Bull offers is wildly irresponsible and evil. Unlike the electrolyte-balanced rehydration found in Gatorade, Red Bull is chock full of stimulants which cause rapid DE-hydration, making energy drinks exceptionally dangerous when used in rigorous physical activity. Fainting, loss of consciousness, kidney failure, and death are a few of the more troubling outcomes of serious dehydration.

Threatening the health and well-being of rednecks and jocks the world over wasn't quite enough for these bastards. Red Bull expanded its reach into the late night crowd. Barfare like "Vodka Bulls" and "Jaeger Bombs" combine Red Bull's powerful stimulants with a heavy depressant which can lead to heart failure and other health crises. Norway, France, Denmark, and even Uruguay have banned sales of Red Bull completely.

History has shown us that we can't expect responsible behavior from corporations. They have an apparent duty to shareholders to make money, unfettered by ethical considerations. That's why the Food and Drug Administration has been appointed our trusty watchdog. As soon as they've finished banning every natural supplement found in any organic health food store, I know they'll muster the energy to take on Red Bull.

That day can't come soon enough. Many of us are tired of running on empty promises.

the Advent Conspiracy

Consumerism allows people to create the illusion of giving without having to sacrifice anything personal. Buying loads of useless or unneeded crap, wrapping it up in mountains of toxic paper and ribbon, presenting it, often by mail, to recipients we rarely see seems a requirement for anyone who isn’t Scrooge.

Let's try something new. Give presence this holiday season. Give time and attention, spend creative energy, become less fractured and manic, more unified and peaceful. Refuse to spend your useless gift quota ($450,000,000,000 spent each year in the U.S. divided by the American gift-buying population -- that's your required outlay). Donate some of the money you didn't spend to Living Water International, an organization working to provide fresh water to undeveloped countries.

A lack of clean water is the leading cause of death in under-resourced countries. 1.8 million people die annually from water-born illnesses, nearly 4,000 children every DAY. It's estimated that $10 billion would solve the world's fresh-water crisis. $10 billion. Our national priorities are beyond fucked up.

the Edsel's missing poetry

In the mid-fifties the newly-public Ford Motor Company sought a name for its soon-to- be-released experimental car, known in its design stage as the E-car. After in-house marketers came up with 300-odd names which were felt to be embarrassing in their pedestrianism, the company approached Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marianne Moore, an icon of the popular culture, known as much for her wild passion for baseball and boxing as for her poetry. What Ford wanted was a car name that “flashes a dramatically desirable picture in people’s minds,” from a woman who seemed to know mainstream America. What they got was “Anticipator,” “Thunder Crester,” “Pastelogram,” “Intelligent Whale,” “The Resilient Bullet,” “Mongoose Civique,” “Andante con Moto,” “Varsity Stroke” and then, as her very last try for the name magic, “Utopian Turtletop.”

Understandably disappointed by Moore’s ideas, the company hired a marketing firm. When the agency forwarded a list of 18,000 possible names, it fell upon corporate executives to choose the best among them for final consideration. Every day an appointed panel of executives would assemble in an appointed projection room to watch as thousands of names were flashed across a screen in six-inch high letters, to oblivion unless someone shouted, “Stop!” and gave reasons for his enthusiasm.

None of the final contenders, neither “Corsair” nor “Citation” nor “Ranger” nor “Pacer,” made the grade in the end, and Ford returned to its earlier idea — one that had been rejected for years by the Ford family — and named the car after company scion, Edsel Ford.

Of course, the Edsel was a spectacular failure on many levels, marketing most notably. Later consumer surveys revealed that the public strongly disliked the name, associating it with Edson tractors, dead cells (batteries) and weasels.

Ode to a floater

Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid, I see you there, lurking on the periphery of my vision. But when I try to look at you, you scurry away. Are you shy, squiggly line? Why only when I ignore you do you return to the center of my eye? Oh, squiggly line, it's all right. You are forgiven.
-Stewie from Family Guy

twiLight the horror

I'm compelled by admiration to link to Eric's post on our shared blog Not My Tribe. As a mother of girls in the thick of an Edward-the-dreamy-vampire lovefest, I felt particular pain upon reading his take on the Twilight phenomenon. I'm going to read the book this weekend, desperately seeking leeway to temper his indictment of those of us who've allowed our daughters to enter the seedy genre of 'tween romance.

A priesthood serving only beauty

If only everyone could feel the power
Of harmony like you! But no, for then
The world could not exist; no one would want
To spend time taking care of life’s low needs;
All would be given over to free art.
We are but few, we chosen, happy idlers
Who look disdainfully at petty usefulness
And form a priesthood serving only beauty.
Isn’t that so? But now I feel unwell. . . .


-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, moments before his death, in Aleksandr Pushkin’s play Mozart and Salieri. Mozart died on this day in 1791 at the age of forty-five — allegedly at the hands of friend and fellow composer Antonio Salieri — while composing his final work, the Requiem. . .

The wit of Robertson Davies

""I am full of holy joy and free booze," said Cobbler. I feel moved to sing. It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue. It makes a man spiritually costive, and plugs him up with hard, caked, thwarted merriment. This, in the course of time, poisons his whole system and is likely to turn him into that most detestable of beings, a Dry Wit. God grant that I may never be a Dry Wit. Let me ever be a Wet Wit! Let me pour forth what mirth I have until I am utterly empty — a Nit Wit."
—from Tempest-Tost, by Robertson Davies, who died on this day in 1995