geez louise, an entire week has slipped by me here. despite my best efforts to ignore the holidays, it has been a holiday week and a pleasant one at that. the theme seems to be one of distinguishing the difference between the baby and the bathwater, which might really expand to be the theme for the entirety of my past five years.

This christmas and last found me unenthused, or maybe even negatively enthused, due to the growth in self righteous christian posturing and politicalizing. the christian right, which seems to make up the majority of american christians, strikes me as holding such uncompromisingly unchristian viewpoints that the whole movement has offended me___ especially so, since the advent of the war in iraq. the truth is, that christmas doesn't have to be about the hypocrisy of christian ideologues promoting the dissemination of western corporate commercialization, their fear-based foreign policy, their advocacy of the death penalty, and their bigoted unacceptance of gays, liberals, abortionists, and non-christians. christmas can be a holiday of love and generosity, peace and goodwill, despite the efforts of these self-proclaimed christians to spoil it for the rest of us.

a lot has been written this year (bill reilly, et al) about putting christ back into christmas, blaming the secularization of the holiday on the leftists and the aclu. these writers completely missing the ironic point that the real culprits are the people calling themselves christians, they are the ones who have turned the holiday into one that would cause jesus to spin in his grave, had he not purportedly already vacated it 2000 odd years ago... hmmmm, maybe that's why they figure it's ok to do so.

cmas is over for this year, but next year I encourage everybody to go ahead and celebrate, call the holiday whatever you like, but focus on love, generosity, peace and goodwill. that's what I'm gonna do, because I believe that's the baby. the rest is just bathwater and ought to be thrown out.

that said, I had a lovely day with my friend aliza yesterday, and would not have traded it for all the neato tech gadgets and modern appiances in the world, not even for a supersoft cashmere turtleneck, although one would be nice if I lived where the weather suited it.

this week has been good, michelle's been in denver, but also in touch and it's always good to be in touch, and she's a good phoner. tim had oral surgery and a birthday but bore them both well, I bought myself a 160gb external hard drive and have backed up all my myriad data, the paintings and drawings are coming along well, the postcards for the show have arrived, I ordered spanish language cds in anticipation of my trip to guatemala, denise and sara visited and are doing fine, and the waves have been gigantic and fun to watch, but too dangerous really to play in. and as mentione, I had a nice day with leez. my apartment is a mess, but that's ok.