Jesus and the Yule Blog
Joys of The Season:
Our new outgoing message on voice mail:
"I'll be happy to address your concerns after the next natural disaster re-calibrates your priorities....."
Is that too bitter?
The perilous life in the Valley of Perception:
"I can never get ahold of you......I am going with someone more attentive to my needs." Message received after spending three hours on the roof installing the new fan motor. Installing, un-installing, re-installing, un-installing, re-installing so that my legal, licensed, insured kitchen can continue to function. Oxygen is important, I have found. The person my angry Mom O'Bride is going with? Illegal, unlicensed, uninsured....working from home. Her Jenn-Air fan probably still works fine, as does the refrigerator in the garage. Thank you, Jesus for dodging that bullet.
"The goddam caterer is using the whole workspace. Where am I supposed to put my coat? You would think THEY (read: us) would have some consideration!" (At the olive harvest party.....guests were supposed to come help pick olives. Everyone else's coat was on the ground, fence or haybale. We were working in a greenhouse on potting benches.)
Pull off a successful dinner party for 27pp in a 150 year old space with one small functioning oven and no exhaust fan. Two curtain calls from the guests. Did I mention the $11 lunch for 60 earlier in the day? Accidentally mix the rental company's two table cloths with ours.....Ten phone calls on my day off. Apocalypse beckons.....We are, in fact, pieces of shit.
Museum fundraiser for 400. Donate all food.....staff paid only. New catering coordinator attempts to take the Director a selection of hors d'oeuvres in her sweaty palm on a two-ply bevnap. I grab her wrist....insist on a properly garnished platter (for a gay man who is director of an art museum....do you think he is visual?) and deliver the goods within a minute. Enemy for life........Not the Director, of course.
Ah....Christmas.
And....will someone please explain to me how Jesus wound up in the tannenbaum? Christmas tree vs. Holiday tree? As an unreconstructed Celt, I thought the whole greenery thing was a nod to our old pagan spirits alive in the various trees.....especially in mid-winter? And don't the the Christians remember the whole thing about moving Christmas from March back to compete or replace the old Roman/pagan Satyricon? (??.....one of those 'S' holidays. Samhain? Saturnalia? Santa Claus? Oh, Soi Invictus.....). I know these fundamentalist whackjobs believe that all history started 6,000 years ago.....but this is recent stuff....say only 1,600 years (Pope Julius I, 336). The closest evergreen to Nazareth, other than sagebrush, would have been the erstwhile Cedars of Lebanon. Damned hard to decorate with your Christmas ornaments, those cedars. And what does Jesus have to say about mistletoe? We have hidden the mistletoe Paige Burks gave us for The Store. In principle it is fine......but picture the demographics of the kissers and kissees in Cachagua. No offense, people........
The reminder that Cachagua is a hotbed of paganism takes only a glance out my window. Some years back, a local absentee billionaire ranch owner stiffed us on his Millenium party. Whatever. As a ''good'' Catholic, though, he put up a Jesus-in-the-manger scene in front of his gate. While I was out of town, some nameless former employees kidnapped some of the principles of the manger scene. On New Year's I got an IM that they had machine-gunned a couple of the ''Three Wise Guys'' in my back garden....(who says Carmel High does not give a complete cultural education?) The remains of one of the Wise Guys is still there, by the sorrel. Hey, some people have St. Francis, or Buddha in the garden. In Cachagua, I have a Wise Guy with .45 cal holes all in him.....The sorrel seems to like it.
And speaking of Tannebaumen....I received the ultimate Christmas card from my brother Steve decades ago.....so don't bother anymore. It was a hand drawn pen-and-ink folded card, with a typical Christmas scene featuring a dog. Steve was studying dead languages at the time, so it was written in Mittelhochdeutch:
"Oh, Doberman. Oh, Doberman. Du hast meine Hand gefressen."
Turn page. New drawing, dog with Santa's hand in mouth.
'' Oh, Doberman. Oh, Doberman. Ich muss das Klavier vergessen.''
Heute muss ich diese blog vergessen.
And remember Jesus when you burn that Yule Log.
Heilege Nacht!
Our new outgoing message on voice mail:
"I'll be happy to address your concerns after the next natural disaster re-calibrates your priorities....."
Is that too bitter?
The perilous life in the Valley of Perception:
"I can never get ahold of you......I am going with someone more attentive to my needs." Message received after spending three hours on the roof installing the new fan motor. Installing, un-installing, re-installing, un-installing, re-installing so that my legal, licensed, insured kitchen can continue to function. Oxygen is important, I have found. The person my angry Mom O'Bride is going with? Illegal, unlicensed, uninsured....working from home. Her Jenn-Air fan probably still works fine, as does the refrigerator in the garage. Thank you, Jesus for dodging that bullet.
"The goddam caterer is using the whole workspace. Where am I supposed to put my coat? You would think THEY (read: us) would have some consideration!" (At the olive harvest party.....guests were supposed to come help pick olives. Everyone else's coat was on the ground, fence or haybale. We were working in a greenhouse on potting benches.)
Pull off a successful dinner party for 27pp in a 150 year old space with one small functioning oven and no exhaust fan. Two curtain calls from the guests. Did I mention the $11 lunch for 60 earlier in the day? Accidentally mix the rental company's two table cloths with ours.....Ten phone calls on my day off. Apocalypse beckons.....We are, in fact, pieces of shit.
Museum fundraiser for 400. Donate all food.....staff paid only. New catering coordinator attempts to take the Director a selection of hors d'oeuvres in her sweaty palm on a two-ply bevnap. I grab her wrist....insist on a properly garnished platter (for a gay man who is director of an art museum....do you think he is visual?) and deliver the goods within a minute. Enemy for life........Not the Director, of course.
Ah....Christmas.
And....will someone please explain to me how Jesus wound up in the tannenbaum? Christmas tree vs. Holiday tree? As an unreconstructed Celt, I thought the whole greenery thing was a nod to our old pagan spirits alive in the various trees.....especially in mid-winter? And don't the the Christians remember the whole thing about moving Christmas from March back to compete or replace the old Roman/pagan Satyricon? (??.....one of those 'S' holidays. Samhain? Saturnalia? Santa Claus? Oh, Soi Invictus.....). I know these fundamentalist whackjobs believe that all history started 6,000 years ago.....but this is recent stuff....say only 1,600 years (Pope Julius I, 336). The closest evergreen to Nazareth, other than sagebrush, would have been the erstwhile Cedars of Lebanon. Damned hard to decorate with your Christmas ornaments, those cedars. And what does Jesus have to say about mistletoe? We have hidden the mistletoe Paige Burks gave us for The Store. In principle it is fine......but picture the demographics of the kissers and kissees in Cachagua. No offense, people........
The reminder that Cachagua is a hotbed of paganism takes only a glance out my window. Some years back, a local absentee billionaire ranch owner stiffed us on his Millenium party. Whatever. As a ''good'' Catholic, though, he put up a Jesus-in-the-manger scene in front of his gate. While I was out of town, some nameless former employees kidnapped some of the principles of the manger scene. On New Year's I got an IM that they had machine-gunned a couple of the ''Three Wise Guys'' in my back garden....(who says Carmel High does not give a complete cultural education?) The remains of one of the Wise Guys is still there, by the sorrel. Hey, some people have St. Francis, or Buddha in the garden. In Cachagua, I have a Wise Guy with .45 cal holes all in him.....The sorrel seems to like it.
And speaking of Tannebaumen....I received the ultimate Christmas card from my brother Steve decades ago.....so don't bother anymore. It was a hand drawn pen-and-ink folded card, with a typical Christmas scene featuring a dog. Steve was studying dead languages at the time, so it was written in Mittelhochdeutch:
"Oh, Doberman. Oh, Doberman. Du hast meine Hand gefressen."
Turn page. New drawing, dog with Santa's hand in mouth.
'' Oh, Doberman. Oh, Doberman. Ich muss das Klavier vergessen.''
Heute muss ich diese blog vergessen.
And remember Jesus when you burn that Yule Log.
Heilege Nacht!
posted by Txacoli at 12:44 PM
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