Apparently Big Tobacco is trying to develop safer cigarettes. That’s right “safer” cigarettes.  Not alternative income sources that aren’t harmful to consumers.  “Safer” cigarettes.  Because people need a way to continue to feel that smoking is okay and they don’t need to quit.

Because I like watching my father, who has mild emphysema, and my mother, the asthmatic, light up and further deteriorate their health.  Because the tobacco farmer depends on them smoking, since there aren’t other uses for tobacco leaves and there aren’t other crops with the same income potential, possibly because big tobacco is single minded about promoting cigarettes.

Yes, it’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again.  Yes, I’m participating, but I’m not likely to be blogging about it.  November’s becomming a very busy month, and not just for the holidays.

Since NaNoWriMo began, other activities have started jumping on the “Pick a Month (often November) and Do It” bandwagon.

So far, the regularly occuring events are:

• National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo) is a running monthly challenge to post in your blog daily. 
  fail at this challenge too regularly to consider myself a participant anymore.
  
• Soctoberfest challenges knitters to knit as many pairs of socks as they can during the month of October.
  Sock knitting is fun, and I like watching the yearly sock-along challenges and Soctober, too, but I don’t like to be told that I have to finish a knitting project in a certain timeline.  It sucks the fun out of it for me.
  
• National Knit a Sweater Month (NaKniSweMo), challenges knitters to finish a ssweater over the month of November.  It even has an official sweater pattern for 2008, which you can purchase on Ravelry. Proceeds go to a no kill shelter.
  Knitters like to organize for knit together events like this, especially ones that can be planned for in advance because they happen every year.  It means we can buy more yarn, our particular crack cocaine-type addiction of choice, with a sense of purpose. For those with signicant others/spouses, it provides the excuse “Really, dear.  I’ll use it up in November’s knit-along.  I swear.”

  As a single girl, I don’t need an excuse to buy yarn.  I just have to smuggle it in past the roomie, who is being a dear and trying to help me practice stash control.
  

The way things are shaping up, it won’t be too long before November is burried under NaLoWeiMo (National Lose Weight Month), NaExDaMo (National Exercise Daily Month), NaPhoMoMo (National Photograph More Month), and a host of other acronymonious events.

To short circuit that, I propose we adopt National Do Something Month (NaDoSoMo).  Pick whatever challenge calls to you, and just do it for a month.  If it happens to be participate in one of the Big Challenges, like NaNoWriMo, go for it.  If it’s a personal challenge, like keeping your house clean for a month (NaHoCleMo) or eating locally (NaEaLoMo), that’s good too.

Just pick something and stick with it for 30 days. Heck, blog about it for 30 days, and that gets you two accomplishments for the price of one.

Tomorrow starts daylight freakin’ savings time, which I believe was instituted by Congress in order to sleep deprive the population once a year for the purpose of maintaining mind control at the current levels. Benjamin Franklin is often credited with the idea which, according to some, makes it pure freakin’ genius.

News flash: not everything that Ben Franklin did was genius. He wrote a treatise where he declared that “in Europe the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion; as are the Germans also,” (and the Irish, too, though this particular excerpt of the treatise doesn’t mention them specifically) which is just a purely screwed up notion. As a person of mixed Irish, German, and Swedish descent I’m so damned pale that people call me “Lily White, queen of the Caucasian people.”

He also wrote a lovely little treatise called Fart proudly. I imagine the kite flying portrait familiar from school cracking a big one using the leg lift technique, or possibly letting off farts in front of a candle and recording the results for science. Put that with your notion of Ben Franklin super genius.

If only daylight savings time could have been largely forgotten like the treatise “Fart Proudly.” I dream of such a world. Until such enlightnment reaches the rest of the world, we’ll continue to “Spring Ahead” and create a nation of shambling zombies each spring.

Freaking congressional bastards.

Where do I begin on this particular episode?

I wasn’t so keen on The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, which felt like a two-parter rehashing Star Trek V in only a slightly better manner (What does God need with a space ship? Same thing he did in Star Trek V: he needs it to escape this trap.) The biggest problem with Love and Monsters, aside from the Absorba-yutz being silly looking, which undermined his effectiveness as a monster, was that they spent a whole episode on foreshadowing. I might have forgiven them for this if the Doctor hadn’t acted out of character and thus ruined the entire point of the flippin’ episode.

I’m sorry, RTD, but there’s no way the doctor would have left Ursula alive trapped in a half-life as a head in a slab of concrete. He would have told Elton that she was gone, and that he was sorry. Ursula should have died protecting Elton and it should have been at the hands of a terrifying thing, not another green, farting, joke of an alien. Elton should have been left alone, and that should have been the ultimate cost of touching the Doctor. That message, the message that lives touched by the Doctor are often dark and terrible and can never be the same afterwards but are still worth living despite that, that would have been worth spending an entire episode of foreshadowing on. What Love and Monsters actually turned out to be wasn’t worth the time they took to film it.

Dear Bastages, um, people who haven’t seen me all year long who suddenly get the need to see me around Christmas,

I’m happy that you remembered me. I mean, I’ve lived at the same address and had the same phone number since 1999, including the previous 334 days of this year, but Christmas is a time of remembering so I guess I can understand how you might forget that fact the rest of the year. It’s hard to remember where I’m at and how to contact me, given the extreme amount of moving I do. I mean, once in the past eight years is pretty out there. And I’ve got the same email address, too, even.

As you know, secular or sacred, Christmas is a busy time of the year. My problem is this: I only have so many hours in the day (24, just like everyone else) and five days a week 9-10 of those hours are devoted to work. Lazily, I spend another 8 sleeping. Every day even. Add in 1-2 for the gym six days a week and the times that are regularly scheduled to spend with friends who do know I exist all 365 days a year and the time that my family has claimed for family events (and who can blame them) and you can see where I might be starting to have some issues finding time for coffee with you.

Now, I’m not talking about the people I email regularly, who I don’t see as much as I’d like. The fact of the matter is that those people, the ones who’ve emailed me or who I’ve emailed in the past months, get first dibs on the 3.5 hours left after everything else is accounted for in my day and they have to share that time with my remaining Christmas projects. (Yes, I can chat and knit at the same time.)

But the rest of you: I’m sorry. You’re going to have to settle for coffee some time in January. My calendar’s booked solid by people who actually give a damn at times other than December and they deserve my holiday cheer.

Do better next year. You can start by actually (gasp) scheduling time to do something, rather than saying that we “should” get together.

Thank you again for thinking of me. Hope to see you in January.

Love & Kisses,
Toad

Dear Radio Programming Managers,

I would like to begin by stating the obvious. Today is November 14, 2007, and yes, I’ve posted two (now 3) posts tagged Christmas, but just because I’m actually working on Christmas presents for people, does not mean that I am ready for your radio programming to start actually playing Christmas songs yet. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Let’s face it, there are exactly five secular Christmas songs: White Christmas, Rockin’ Round the Christmas Tree, Sleigh Ride, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and I’ll be Home for Christmas, and every single secular and, for that matter, Christian artist has recorded a version of these songs. Played occasionally during the month of December, these songs quickly wear thin. Starting any earlier than November 23rd, the official start of the Christmas Shopping Season, as mandated by the retail marketing bastards trying to brainwash the American public into an army of mindless purchasing drones, buying whatever shit they happen to make available, makes these five songs absolutely enraging.

So, until the entire retail Christmas season is over I’ll be listening to the local station that syndicates the Bob and Tom Show. Bob and Tom’s humor might be uneven in the morning, but at least that station’s programming manager knows what today’s date is and when the station can start playing holiday music without completely pissing off the entire listening base.

Take a gentle suggestion from a regular listener, Radio Programming Managers. Next year, don’t even think about going ALL CHRISTMAS ALL THE TIME before December. If you really want to keep me, and my potential dollars that your advertisers so desperately want, tuned in, restrict the TOTAL HOLIDAY PROGRAMMING to December 23 through 25.

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.