12.24.13

Warning: This is going to be a fairly disjointed blog that has the capacity to bum out your Christmas cheer. There might be coarse language, not to mention profanity and poor syntax. Anyone venturing beyond the following punctuation mark does so at his or her own risk and management will take no responsibility for the consequences. You have been warned.

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Hasn't exactly been a stellar week for god's favorite creatures. It seems not everybody is quite in the Xmas spirit. Poor Santa got capped in the back with a pellet gun this morning in southeast Washington D.C. The grinch purportedly stepped in to help poor St. Nick. Somebody is going to get coal in their stocking!

I have received a few twisted Santas in the old gmail bin from you folks this year, ranging from naughty to slightly demonic. I am merely an information processor folks, a conduit with no animus whatsoever towards the jolly pole dweller. Sometimes though frankly, you people scare me...

Real life is of course the scariest thing of all.

Trouble in Israel today. Gazan snipers killed a poor bedouin working on the border fence, Salah Shukri Abu Latyef, twenty two years of age. Israel, still obviously locked into that eye for an eye stuff, went old testament and a poor little four year old girl was killed in the reprisal attack, supposedly directed at military targets, three additional members of her family were injured. Poor Salah. He was driving a tractor, his first and last day to be working on the border.

Salah Latyef

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri condemned what he called “cowardly” Israeli attacks. "The occupation will not terrify the Palestinian people by these actions and will not punish our resistance and will not halt its readiness to respond to any attacks on Gaza," he said.

“What we are witnessing is Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people,” said Hamas spokeswoman Isra Almodallal, adding that 14 other civilians were injured. “Israel is hitting civilians and not working in any kind of military way. They are targeting innocent people.”

This comes in the same week that there was a thwarted bus bombing in Bat Yam and a knifing of an Israeli border policeman in Jerusalem. Hamas and the other Islamic radicals want to be able to punish Israel with impunity and then are quick to condemn any reprisal attacks. They hide behind civilians in a strategic way and then lament the consequences of those actions.

Islam Shahwan, the spokesman for the Hamas government’s Interior Ministry, praised the killing, calling it a “heroic operation.” Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, condemned the Israeli strikes as aggression against the Palestinian people.

If they do not want to see their civilians killed they need to stop attacking Israel and ease up on the "noble resistance."

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A Washington State legislator called Arizona a "racist wasteland" the other day, pouting over a stupid football game. KJ was watching Phoenix's Channel 3 news and the subject came up the other day. "We aren't a wasteland," the commenter said, the other characterization apparently copacetic.

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One of the best things I did this year was lose my telephone land line. Disconnection is so pleasing to me in this day and age. I can't tell you how I love not seeing the stupid flashing red light and having to listen to messages. Very liberating. On a level with getting rid of the television, something else I have never regretted doing. Or killing Facebook. If I am ever to write a novel I am definitely going to have to disconnect further.

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Several studies show many people have a greater chance of dying around Christmastime. 
Researchers say the three days of the year when certain people's risk of death is highest are: Christmas, the day after Christmas, and New Year's Day.

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Nine gifts the NSA will hate.

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From Alternet:

More than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one copy of the Bible. So how much do Americans know of the book that one-third of the country believes to be literally true? Apparently, very little, according to data from the Barna Research group. Surveys show that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a biblical verse.

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We ate the Carnitas Snack Shack leftovers for dinner last night. Leslie said they were the best carnitas she has ever had and I must concur, they were damn good, well worth the long wait in line.

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I hope that everybody has a great holiday and a wonderful new year. I wish you all good health and lots of laughs, all the gold in china. And offer the words of Robert Hunter; "Without love in the dream it will never come true."

I want to thank those of you that have helped me in the last several years, materially, emotionally, spiritually, hell maybe even on the astral plane? Your love and support, the support of all of my friends, family, readers, is frankly palpable. I am so lucky to be able to grow close to people that I have often barely or never met. Yet we have got to know each other through this strange new, often intimate medium. Thanks for coming along.

Peace out.

Victor Moscoso