chickleta’s Neighborhood

This was taken with my brand-new camera!! I'm also taking a photography class this quarter, so there will be more photos to come, no doubt.

This is the dog of a family friend. Look for me in the news after I dog-nap her.

This really has been an amazing decade, hasn't it? There's been a lot of change: technological, political, and personal.

This time ten years ago I was 11, in 6th grade. Over the decade I've graduated middle school and high school, gone to college, held a job, had my first drink.

My great-grandparents died, several cousins were born, and we added two dogs to the family.

I saw The Lord of the Rings for the first time, watched House on TV, and read some of my favorite books like The Count of Monte Cristo and Jane Eyre.

I and my family have been a bit battered, some more than others, but we've all come through as stronger people with more understanding and compassion.

So what will this decade bring? I'll be graduating college, and then...who knows? Bring it on, 2010.

I read this article a little while ago, and a discussion that spawned from it, with arguments about who owes what for whatever was done here in the past by the dread English, Spanish, etc., leading up to weird and unwieldy U.S. statutes all the way through the 1960s. 

Merry Christmas from my dog.

People will say Axial Tilt [Saturn/Mithras/Jesus/Santa] is the Reason for the Season.

One thing is certain, and eternal; in the northern hemisphere, these are dark days with little sunlight. Celebrating the waning of the year by lighting strings of lights and candles, decorating with shiny objects, spending time with people close to you, and eating special rich foods is something to cherish, a way to foster good will and create lovely memories. It's a way to launch ourselves into the cold days of winter with the satisfying sense that our lives follow the cyclical pattern of the sun, moon, and rotation of our earth.

Adding personal components of religion and mythology can be satisfying for many people. I admit that when some of those people insist that those components are the one true way to do things, I am put off and put out. The most we may owe them is a perpetuation of some of the pagan decorating traditions that might have otherwise been forgotten if not for their co-opting by the Catholic Church. But the seasons are important to me personally. It's impossible to imagine living my life without taking joy in the astronomical phenomena that produce the seasons of varying warmth and light in their turn. I take comfort in the pattern, and would still do so if I lived somewhere that never got cold in winter, or if I lived in the southern hemisphere and watched the pattern played out in reverse. 

This is not the time to discuss biblical stories of creation, how the bible was put together by a fickle emperor and then later massaged into different forms by different religious leaders who used it for political agenda, or how those stories are parallels to stories told thousands of years earlier by fearful people who needed ways to explain astronomical, meteorological and geological conditions they did not yet understand, to explain the wonders and terrors of life and death, and to band together against groups with more powerful leaders than theirs. 

This is not the time for that because a lasting truth is that people like to believe in stuff bigger than they are, they like it to be mysteriously powerful, and they like to put a familiar human face on it. They like the notion of strength from vulnerability, and the little guy championing over the big guy. They like an eternal father figure, in some cases an eternal mother figure, and the symbolism of those figures is far more important to most people than concrete explanations for how the world actually works. Unexplainably wondrous and mysterious works by someone who's looking out for us are way more palatable to a lot of people than the still being uncovered scientific wonders of neutrons and amino acids. 

And people like to have parties. Coming up with an excuse for a party is harder for some people than others. For many of us, the opportunity to look forward to something shiny and fun is enough. Throw in the luxury of giving people gifts wrapped in pretty paper, and it's a big winner. No wonder Christmas is a continuing hit. For most people, the only slightly off-kilter aspect of it is the name, invented by people who could not appreciate a celebration unless it was attended (or better yet, replaced) by the solemnity of religious ritual. 

I enjoy thinking (heretically to many,) that we really are all celebrating the exact same thing, just with different faces on the various rituals we perform each year. 

If you believe a God with human characteristics set the Earth on its axial tilt, and later caused a young girl to give birth to his corporeal son as a reminder that no matter how much anyone's life sucks, he's still out there in ultimate control, and that all this is the true or only "reason for the season," I hope you have a really great one this year, and this song's for you.

If you just really dig having end of year fun, or like to groove on seasonal changes as I do, this song's for you.

What would it take to get you to start a new life on a new world?
Sponsored by AVATAR. In theaters December 18. Buy tickets now.

 Nothing short of a catastrophic natural or political disaster. The vast majority of my ancestors were not explorers; they were refugees, in a sense. They fled poverty, hunger, and religious persecution. I couldn't leave my home for anything less than that, either.

What's the worst book you've ever read?

If a book is really, really crappy I will put it down. Crappy as in bad prose and a boring plot. So "worst" to me means books that I have read all the way through and still hated. Wuthering Heights is definitely up there. I hated all the characters. I mean, really loathed them. I wanted them all to die horrible deaths. Heart of Darkness gets the prize for most boring book. It wasn't very long, but good heavens was it tedious.

If you could hang out with any movie character for a day, whom would you choose as your sidekick?
Sponsored by The Official AVATAR Community on TypePad. See AVATAR in theaters December 18, 2009.

Listen, "Avatar Community", if I get to hang out with any movie character I choose, I'm gonna pick a leading man, not a sidekick. Let's be real.

If I had to pick a sidekick specifically, you can't go wrong with a wizard, elf, Dunedin, or a stouthearted hobbit, could you?

What’s your favorite movie quote of all time?
Sponsored by The Official AVATAR Community on TypePad. See AVATAR in theaters December 18, 2009.

Perhaps not of all time, but certainly of Christmas time:

"Fra-GEE-lay....must be Italian!"

Followed very closely by:

"Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls!"