Customized At Last
After putting entirely too much time and effort into it, I've managed to change the look to my satisfaction. I don't know if it's an improvement over the old look, but it's
mine. Now that I'm happy with the way it looks, I can start posting again in earnest.
It's That Time of Year (Already)
Those of you who have known me for a while will recall that one of my favorite things to bemoan is the ever-earlier encroachment of the Christmas season on the fall holidays. The proper time for the Christmas spirit is, at the very earliest, the day after Thanksgiving. In an ideal world, the Christmas season would begin on the first of December... the day that those children who celebrate Christmas begin to open their Advent calendars, when it is beginning to feel like winter, when there are no holidays between
today and Christmas. And yet....
Every year, we are assailed with premature holiday cheer. Over a month before Halloween, the convenience stores are awash in black and orange. Fresh candy corn is on sale everywhere, and there are even private homes decked out with pumpkins fake or real. It is, of course, far too early to begin decorating for Halloween. The Halloween season (such as it is) should never begin until the leaves have started to fall from the trees in earnest.
It seems that things could hardly be worse, but today, as I innocently retrieved the mail, I saw the first Christmas catalogue of the season. The offender in this case is L.L. Bean, although I know all too well that others will follow. Tomorrow is October 1, which seems to be the day to kick off the Christmas season. Starting now, I face two full months of inappropriate holiday music and decorations, two months in which the spirit of the season is diluted beyond all meaning.
Ah, well. I complain about it every year, and every year, I find that nothing has changed.
Complaints of the Day
You know what's annoying? Those ads with video. There was one on CNN's website just now, and it's very distracting to have some video playing while I'm trying to skim the headlines. These ads even offer the option of clicking to turn the sound on. Um, no. Why would I ever want to do that? Still, those aren't the worst. There is a special place in hell reserved for the man who developed those pop-up graphics that take over the entire screen and block the content you want to read and the links you might actually want to click on. (And it is a man, incidentally; I read a
profile on him a while back in which he attempted to defend his vile creation. If someone wanted to send hate mail, it would go
here, although the real offenders are the people who buy and design the ads.) Worse still, however, are the ones where the "close" button
does not work. These despicable creations allow you to click on the ad itself to be taken to the website advertised, but attempting to hit "close" to get rid of the ad does nothing at all. The ad does not go away. It never goes away. If you really want to read the site infected with one of these ads, you're stuck leaving the site and re-entering until some other ad comes up.
A related phenomenon is the pop-up graphics on TV. I noticed this most recently on FX, while attempting to watch a movie the other night. Their ad for Nip/Tuck not only took up half the screen for several seconds, but it featured sound, loud enough to obscure the dialogue.
These sorts of ads only serve to irritate, and each time I see one, my resolve never to buy the product so advertised grows stronger. And yet, these ads have not gone away, which can only mean that somewhere out there, someone is actually clicking on these things. Some focus group must have said that a pop-up graphic with sound effects interrupting the show they were watching would instill in them a longing to watch Nip/Tuck, and any number of other TV shows, as FX is by no means the only offender. The real question is, where in the world did they find that focus group?
The Pope and Islam, Part II
Having promised (or implied) more long posts, I now feel compelled to deliver.
I'll start with a follow-up to yesterday's post, noting a
further irony in some responses to the Pope's speech.
Employees of the state body that organizes Muslim worship in Turkey asked the authorities on Tuesday to open legal proceedings against Pope Benedict and to arrest him when he visits the country in November.
Muslims worldwide have been angered by remarks the pope made in a lecture last week that they said portrayed Islam as a religion tainted by violence and irrationality.I'll leave you to decide whether that's rational, or whether more people should listen to
Hasyim Muzadi:
"The pope has apologized, and that’s enough, so let’s calm down," said Hasyim Muzadi, head of Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama. "If we remain furious, then the pope will be proved correct."Now, we all know that Christianity also has an unsavory history of forced conversions and violence; e.g., the
Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades. Finally, there isn't as much emphasis placed on moderate reactions, these being relegated to the
final paragraphs of news articles. That said, the response raises two possibilities: one, the Pope was correct, as shown by the violence and threats of violence; or two, moderate Muslims lack a global voice, and allow the radicals to speak for all of Islam.
The Pope and Islam
I'm confused: Pope Benedict XVI, in arguing that violence is incompatible with the nature of God, quoted a medieval emperor who said that the only new things brought by the prophet Mohammed were "evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Muslims are angry at the Pope's apparent characterization of Islam as a violent religion, and some of them reacted
like this.
The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross" saying "you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. ... We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword."
Islam forbids drinking alcohol and requires non-Muslims to pay a head tax to safeguard their lives if conquered by Muslims. They are exempt if they convert to Islam.Others reacted
like this.
On Friday, hardline cleric Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin told worshippers at his mosque to hunt down and kill whoever offended the Prophet Mohammed.I'm just saying....
Yes, yes, I'm aware that the examples I've cited are not the only reactions from Muslims. Still, if you feel that your religion is being unjustly characterized as one of violence, then threats and acts of violence are probably not the best way to get that message across, right?
