Flinging holiday snow

In case you were unaware, many warriors feverishly defended Christmas this year from godless and other-godful rabble rousers. As they have succeeded advancing the calendar to this fateful day, what will they do with it? What does “Christmas spirit” look like? Will they lead by example through their wishes of unity and forgiveness, or take sardonic swipes at dissenters?

Stacy Campfield can’t pass by a chance to reprobate his “Democrat friends [sic],” wishing them a “gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice” (that’s for you, Steve!). One of the six meats chimes in with Christmas wishes on behalf of “the spiritually neurotic Jew, the athiest [sic], the Methodist and the rest” (though this neurotic Jew is busy defending Chanukah). Terry Frank recycles last year’s message of small-government-Jesus (Newsflash: Jesus supports tax cuts!)

Fortunately, there are those bloggers who recall the true meaning of the holidays: mass commercialism, nostalgia, mixed messages about grown men’s laps, and, of course, dogs with antlers.

Thesaurus: valuable blogging tool

The colorful language of bloggers:

It’s easy to dismiss this dedication to a hermeneutic of fear as passe

[Phil Wilson]

And from bliblical to “sumthin’-”secular:

socially engineer the views of an aggrieved ecosecular fascist minority

[Six Meat Buffet]

Though sometimes the perfect word is hard to find:

more of the same tedious, dull, dreary, mind-numbing, tiresome, lackluster, monotonous stuff

[Marketing Monster]

And lastly, the most colorful phrase of the day:

The leather clad wannabees that have stuffed you into their codpiece

[Whitescreek Journal]

Cotton to the cornucopia of colorful cacophony!

Morning Mishmash

Ever play a silly game where each person successively adds a sentence to a story? Here is my blog version this morning. Take 16 random blog entries, pull a sentence from each, and piece them together. This morning’s experiment:

You can’t casually hand a man a sack of hard candy and expect successful tossing! The notion would strike them as silly. Please go and say hello to my friend, the Stewman. It seems his chocolate business is running smoothly. (An attractive addition to your holiday baking). I was assigned the task of identifying the “special gifts” my colleagues and I had promised to distribute at a dinner. Do you ask the recipient what they want? The gift that keeps on costing. The current savings rate for US citizens is below zero. I’m mightily pissed about this. That’s going to foment even more resentment. And it is a disaster. Will Al Gore blame that on your car’s tailpipe, too? (He has a little trouble keeping a good, consistent distance from the microphone.) I feel a little narcissistic writing this.

So, not all experiments are successful. Anyway, go read them in context.

Kindergarten politics

By the time we became teens, most of us developed simple heuristics to classify the trustworthiness of our peers. Those who shared secrets with others were gossips. Those who kept confidences were trustworthy. We all probably remember those kids in a third category who would proclaim to anyone within earshot that they “know something you don’t know,” making sure that we recognized how special they were because of their proprietary knowledge. I classified those as immature, insecure ninnies who I eventually learned to ignore.

By the way, Stacy Campfield knows something we don’t know.

Briley and the Scene: The story about the story

Councilperson Emily Evans is quite nettled by a recent story in the Nashville Scene where Jeff Woods rehashes Rob Briley’s recent events.

So, it leaves me wondering if this article was meant to satisfy the prurient interests of the writer, the reader or both because it sure wasn’t news. There is a real, human cost to exploiting these types of stories well past the point where one has ceased to educate and inform the public.

Woods admits as much in his story, following up “Until now, it has gone unreported in the media” with, a dozen words later, “Their relationship was common knowledge at the Capitol.” But, to conclude that “it has gone unreported” would be to omit this. And this. And the post and comments here. And to fail to read between the lines here or here.

Though, to be fair, the above stories only hinted at infidelity. The Scene story was the first to brand the Scarlet A.

Done working? Move to Nashville.

Last month, U.S. News and World Report rated Smyrna one of the “Top 10 Places to Retire,” prompting some to urge Nashvillians to make the trek down 24:

“Some people are moving out here from Nashville because of our parks and nature trails,” Doris Jones, 71, said in the article. She moved to Smyrna after her husband, Clyde, retired in 1985.

Now, Money Magazine, apparently unmoved by Civil War memorials and an abundance of of golf courses, overlooks Smyrna and names the Hillsboro Village and downtown areas of Nashville in its own Top Ten list.

According to Money Magazine, Nashville’s greatest competitors for your golden years include San Jose, Boston, Phoenix, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle.

The other cat-like creature in Sommet

While Nashville watches the Sommet Center’s chimney for a proclamation on the Predators’ future, its other sports franchise has left, without much fanfare.

Does anyone really care that the Kats are leaving Nashville? Jennifer sure doesn’t. GoldnI just wants to know how this impacts the Preds. Meanwhile, the Kats’ own message board is hosting online group therapy for the three or four fans.

And, for the 98% of readers who don’t know, the Kats were Nashville’s contribution to arena football, a cross between the Sunday pastime and pinball.

UPDATE: Nemesis Girl confirms that Jennifer/Finn does not care, and locates another half dozen fans commiserating at the Tennessean forums.