A Christmas window

Merry Christmas to all our readers. Happy Holidays if you want. Whatever. I’m feeling rather Grinchy this year. I’ve done my Christmas shopping which I hate because I hate shopping, I hate malls, I hate the crowds. The materialism of it all kind of turns me off. I’m writing this mainly because I thought I should post a Christmas message and this photo I took while suffering the Christmas crowds in shopping malls.

I called this article Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or Whatever because of the debate that’s going on in Christian, western nations over what the hell to say to someone at Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever season.

It’s been a pretty sad year, the Middle East is still a mess. (Well, the world is still a mess – no news there). I had such hope, like a lot of people when things started heating up in the Middle East and we thought we were looking at the “Arab Spring.” I thought then that people in the Middle East were moving forward, all citizens would achieve dignity and equality and freedom. I was so excited about the revolution in the Middle East, I wrote about 30 articles, just like a real life journalist and sometimes my articles beat Huffington Post and other sites for placement on page one in Google. Really! I thought, “times, they are a-changing.”

Boy, was I wrong. Tunisia, where it all began is having, shall we say, “issues?” Egypt’s a goddamn mess – well what did you expect when you elect a religious government? A step forward? Nope. You just got a glutton for power in a different disguise. Israel and Palestine? That’ll go on forever, keep building settlements instead of settling it, and duh, you expected world peace? What kind of retards are ruling these nations? Oh, yeah. Old men. Don’t brains shrink as one grows older? Obviously, this is the case. Apologies to old men not involved with this.

Anyways, Syria remains a mess, the world does nothing, human rights abuses mount, so I asked a friend of mine why the world does nothing and he said, it’s got something to do with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.S. Some are paying, some are fighting and some are orchestrating. If I was Assad’s very fashionable wife, I would get me the hell back to the U.K., and do some Christmas shopping and, just never go back…

The gun debate in the U.S. continues after some kid, screwed up by Big Pharma drugs slaughtered innocent children at a school in Newtown. Latest thing is the talk about arming teachers in the schools. Everyone’s buying guns and it’s scarey. American is bound to become one of the most dangerous countries in the world to travel to. You never know when you’ll be walking down the street minding your own business and you walk right into a wild west shoot out. Government travel warnings sites will have to place warnings about travel to the U.S.A. Has everyone gone crazy this year?

And this is the year, personally, I slipped from that class called the middle class. My wage increase this year as smaller than one percent, meaning that I entered into that space where more and more people are finding themselves. We all know food prices have increased by more than four percent.  The price of gas is up.  Public transportation is up.  Rental increases go up, by legislation, 3.1% in 2012. Whose wages are keeping up with the cost of living?  Not mine and probably not yours.  So I called the rich owners of my apartment building to protest my rent hike. No luck. The rich bastards wouldn’t budge an inch or rather, a penny. At least I voiced my opposition to my rent increase and my low wage increase. Soon the cable company will be sending their bleeding-hearted sob story letter of the price increases they’ve suffered and how they did the right thing and to passed it on to “you,” the consumer. I think I learned somewhere in my history class that Karl Marx said the middle class would disappear. I guess that old man was right.

My mother tried to calm me down by saying, its universal. And its been happening for ever, everywhere, even in third world countries – especially there.

Anyways, I’d better finish this rant on a more positive note. It’s Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays whatever (especially for the ruling class who own everything, eat  cake and shop). I think people should get over the politically correct thing to say. Everybody says Happy Hanukkah and Happy Eid when it’s that time of the year, so what gives?  Why is it so politically incorrect that can’t people say Merry Christmas at this time of the year?  What’s at work here???

This Christmas time, my family has done something nice. We all pitched in $20 each and have enough in the pot to donate to Operation Smile. So some child somewhere is going to have an operation by some good doctor and end up with a happy smile. That’s making a quite a few people very happy in the end.  That happiness will begin with some kid somewhere and his or her mother.

Anyways, it’s Christmas or whatever. Let’s see what happens in 2013.