People complain all the time about, well, everything. Anything. I think that humans communicate in exactly four ways: by bartering (business-speak) by boning (speaking though the hips, baby) by being humorous (as the data age is the new industrial age, humor is its coinage) and, finally the most common, by bitching about the state of affairs in the world.
Fox News is an entire network with millions upon millions of followers who have nothing else to do but complain about shit.
The very foundation of journalism is built on criticism and critics mainly serve to complain. OK, look, there are exceptions of course.
But then comes a month and a half of Thanksgiving to Christmas and then New Years (and assorted related semi-religious non-Judeo Christian holidays and various days of merit like Festivus) in which it seems the entirety of American culture is primed to sell sell sell! And buy buy buy! And unveil shiny new cars. And belts. Shiny belts, or purses, or clutches.
Celebrate touchdowns on Thanksgiving by passing the turkey! Go out on Black Friday, stay in on Cyber Monday. Hit your holiday party for the office. All three of them if you're a freelancer like me.
The action is hot and heavy! Deals on plane tickets to warm places like Reno, the Bahamas, Ecuador. My neihgbor is going to Sri Lanka for Christmas and he's Jewish. Viva America!
People complain about this lengthy stretch of consumerism like the plague has finally descended upon Earth. Worse, they are comedians using the holiday stretch as a punchline. The buy-sell, buy-sell, buy-sell routine that marks the high point of our high capitalist culture is cause for concern! Or comedy! Or business-speak (but not so much on the bonin').
Well screw those people. Them. You know who you are. The complainers. So we have a 6-week stretch of car ads, Christmas lights, snowball fights on TV, spam emails trying to sell you things, etc etc. Why not?! Better than stretching the madness over, say, four months. Better than sitting around in mid-January bored mindless by gray skies and cold weather, waiting for Mardi Gras.
Hey, I live in Brooklyn. The holiday stretch in New York City is actually kind of nice. The streets are lit, the shopping is the bomb, the partying holds off the cold. The city gets scenic. It's a great time, a perfect city for that action.
Basically I'd like to officially register my complaint about the complainers. They're the losers and all their complaints are tired. They are complaining because they need something to complain about. Because they believe in a dead age, as if life in the 1950s in America was free of strife and anguish (ok, maybe it actually was). They complain about capitalism, the right-wingers complain about socialism, the pundits complain about each other. So very unnecessary.
Just give it a whirl. The holiday season. Why the eff not?
Oh, and you can buy my book if you haven't already. A gift for someone. Hot holiday action.
All of that was a set-up to post this link:
Ultimate: The Greatest Non-Bitchin' About Sport Ever Invented For Holiday Gift-Giving and General Fun n' Games
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