It’s only a New Year because they say it is that then; the Year should be said to have started at the Solstice, but the Julian calendar had 30 days, & Pope Gregory XI, who was rebooting it, used it as a template so the months still had 30 (or so) days. I don’t know that if the months had 28 days like the Lunar cycle then the year would end at the Solstice or not. The Solstice is not an event that begins & ends at certain times, it’s when we are going through the part of the Earth’s revolution around Sol where Earth is rounding the bend of the elliptical path it’s following; the angle of Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the plane of the ellipse remains the same, Earth doesn’t start tilting back the other way, she’s just changing position so that the angle of the axis relative to Sol changes. But in the Industrial Age, when they divided everything, including Time, into separate, discrete mechanical units that can be easily kept track of, the end of that year was then, & the start of this year is now, like someone threw a switch, that year off, this year on. At this arbitrary date. Technically, every day is the start of a new year, is it not? I like to count down the WAIT/WALK signals & cheer when they get to zero.
What? You’re the ghost of what? Do I look like some grouchy old Victorian man (hope I have those adjectives in the right order) that needs to be shown his place in the Universe? You gonna show me the time at Disney World when all the parks were full & we couldn’t get into any of them even though we had 5-day Park Hopper passes? The time Dad threw the Christmas tree out the front door?
I am the Zombie of Christmas Present. Get out of my way! I must consume more, or the economy will collapse, making Rich People uncomfortable! The Horror!
Why Cherry is Nasty
The thing is, having comics that were dirty, depicting explicit sex, made them “dangerous”, made them contraband, even though we were allowed to do them that way, Freedom of Speech & all. They weren’t just Fuck Books, they were comics that happened to have depictions of sex acts in them. It was having Fun as an Act of Rebellion. Reaction against it revealed the hypocrisy of the Society of Western Civilization, which we would then mock in dirty comics.
The Christmas War
There is no war on Christmas, it’s Christmas that has been waging war on the Midwinter Seasonal Celebration, in Northern Europe it’s called Yule, that’s where the trees & holly & snowmen & gift giving & Santa Claus come from. Around there, Winter is a thing that everyone has to prepare for, live through, & stay as cheerful as possible by getting together & partying when you’re half way through it. That’s where all the Peace On Earth Good Will Toward Men came from, men here of course being used generically. The Solstice is the actual midpoint of Winter but it’s not observed as being at this one particular time when a switch is thrown; these people didn’t have calendars, they did not think of the year as being divided up into discrete increments, it was that time in the cycle of the Earth’s revolution around the Sun, although they didn’t think of it that way, when days stopped getting shorter & night got as long & dark as it was going to get, & the change was not noticeable from day to day. The countdown to the new year is an industrial way of perceiving the passage of time. In the tropics none of this means shit, there is no Winter. Bethlehem is not in the tropics, but neither is it in the snowy woods, so evergreen trees & snowmen & sleigh bells are not really appropriate motifs for the celebration of the birth of our alleged Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
So Pope Gregory XIII, as he was rebooting the Julian calendar, decided to throw Christmas into the middle of this annual celebration that had been going on for thousands of years that included the Pagans celebrating the Solstice; the Christians had been running around building churches on top of Pagan temples, so this was just more of that. The Christians hijacked the whole season, claiming it as their own. Cultural appropriation. Jesus Christ is not the reason for the season. It never was.
Now I’m seeing a therapist at Presbyterian, Jessica Sanchez. My pulmonologist is Dr. Sanchez. The first psychologist they sent me to was Sanchez.
Managed to get Covid & give it to Sharon. Friday night we went to a burlesque show at the Press Club, an old bar that used to be a rambling old house on this little hill behind the Parc Central hotel that used to be a hospital in the 20s. Had to immerse myself in the crowd at the bar downstairs to get a $6 Car Bomb & do it the wrong way, one is supposed to drop the shot glass of McCarran’s into the Guinness & slam the whole thing all at once. I did them separately, same effect. But what a tasteless thing to call an Irish drink, because of its destructive potential I guess but shit a car bomb in Ireland is not a fun or funny thing. Upstairs there was eventually a very nice strip show.
Felicia was all in gold. She played 3 different versions of “I Want Money”.
Finally sent my worn out Tilley hat back to Ontario or Toronto, somewhere in Canada but it came back, they’re not there anymore & that’s not how they do it now, see, the Tilley hat is guaranteed for life, this was my 5th one, it was a hemp one, I was disappointed, it didn’t have much hemp in it or it wouldn’t have worn out. Now you have to send them a digital image of the damage & they have to agree that it needs replacing & then you have to destroy the hat & send them digital proof that you did so & then they send you another one. I got my first one for $50, they’re $100 now. They honored the guarantee & it’s a mighty fine hat.
