the Ayn Rand Christmas Special

Christmas Shrugged, and you would too!Wow, looks like it’s Tory Day here on the ol’ raincoaster blog. Take a snapshot; these don’t come around too often. Mostly we’re all about the nude hot-tubbing with Rage Against the Machine, making blood sacrifices to Cthulhu, and sharing pot brownies with the United Slackers of Anarchy.

We certainly are being far more inclusive than it was ever our intention to be this Yuletide season. Sure, we’ve posted Christmas on Acid, but hey, I live in Vancouver; like this pandering to the druggies is anything unusual. The Charlie Brown Kwanzaa was a bit of a stretch, it’s admitted, but if you’re gonna be un-PC, I say be un-PC all the way and damn the torpedos of all races, creeds, and colourways. Boymongoose’s Bollywood 12 Days of Christmas has a rockin’ beat that I couldn’t pass up, and the same can be said (in its own delicate Coward-ly way) for Hanukkah in Santa Monica. As for the 12 isms of Christmas, who doesn’t have a spare Nihilist or Surrealist in their circle who feels all too marginalized at this time of year?

So here I am, holding my nose and posting the synopsis for the Ayn Rand Selfish Christmas Special, from the 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time, which I found via Master Cowfish.

Ayn Rand’s A Selfish Christmas (1951)

In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts — and therefore Christmas — possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as “anti-life.”

del.icio.us: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
blinklist: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
Digg it: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
ma.gnolia: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
Stumble it: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
simpy: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
newsvine: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
reddit: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
fark: The Ayn Rand Christmas Special
Technorati me!

A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies

Just what it says. If you don’t know Ralphie and the gang, I suggest you brush up on your American nostalgic holiday television special knowledge ASAP!

You’ll shoot your eye out!

del.icio.us: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
blinklist: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
Digg it: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
ma.gnolia: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
Stumble it: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
simpy: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
newsvine: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
reddit: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
fark: A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
Technorati me!

conspiracy carols

Christmas Cthulhu

Sometimes I think the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents. We live on a placid isle of ignorance amidst black seas of chaos, and it is not meant that we should voyage far.
The Call of Cthulhu
Howard Phillips Lovecraft

 

 

I curse the demon impulse of senseless, animal curiosity that drove me to break the seal on my late uncle’s journal, that led me to open his heretofore mercifully long-forgotten trunk, that incited me to this frenzy of ceaseless probing until I had the answers, the answers to every unthinkable and unspeakable question it had ever been my doom to encounter in my quest to learn what really happened to my late, and much-beloved mentor and uncle.

 

A lifelong bachelor, he had left me, his only living relative, his entire estate, diminished as all must be in the fullness of time but still enough to enable me to tender my resignation from my position as a researcher at Miskatonic University and devote myself to the genealogical and mythological studies which my parents had always discouraged. They were very practical folk, and the mere hint of anything eldritch would get me stern looks, an interminable lecture about staying “grounded,” and temporarily banned from the swimming lessons which I loved so well.

 

Would that I had listened to them! Alas, I was callow and had no concept of their knowledge, or their burden. It is mine alone now, so I write it down in this journal, the last of the Whatleys, and soon I will take recourse to that revolver which glitters so seductively in the smoky dusk of my study and end my accursed existential burden forever.

 

But not before a warning. I must ensure that the next generation is freed from this unspeakable bondage to which we have, all unknowingly, been enslaved.

I will not review the discoveries and events which led to my final, apocalyptic realization; my psyche is tender after the abuses it has endured, and it would serve no purpose but to waste time; if you want the story, it is here, in this journal, and in the papers and artifacts my uncle left in that horrible, thrice-accursed trunk carven of no wood native to our wholesome planet.

 

I will say just this: you must look behind the tinsel trappings of the season for there all is revealed. Part the glittering strands and your eyes will catch a glimpse of something cyclopean, something squamous, something partly rugose, something which once walked the Earth and now lies dreaming in his sunken city of R’lyeh.

 

You doubt? You consider these to be the ravings of a madman? Then I challenge you with my last breath, as I pick up the handgun which my great-grandfather used to exterminate that which his daughter brought forth into the world, the thing that he buried by the seashore, the thing that came for him twenty years after, I challenge you to lift up the hoary waxen disk that long ago recorded sounds made by no human throat, take it to the turntable, and play Jingle Bells backwards.

del.icio.us: conspiracy carols
blinklist: conspiracy carols
Digg it: conspiracy carols
ma.gnolia: conspiracy carols
Stumble it: conspiracy carols
simpy: conspiracy carols
newsvine: conspiracy carols
reddit: conspiracy carols
fark: conspiracy carols
Technorati me!

how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas

Corporate Santa says Ho, Ho, Ho, where's my cheque?

 

Let me know if this works; Gawd knows I tried for years unsuccessfully, but then I didn’t have the benefit of these half-dozen irresistable pony pitchin’ tips! Stolen from Bridlepath.

 

Your parents will probably remember the time you begged for a hamster, and then after a few weeks it sat ignored on your bookshelf with a smelly cage. You have to understand that having a horse isn’t all fun; sometimes it’s dirty, frustrating, and just plain hard work. Are you sure you want a horse?

Your Long Term Project

Even if you are sure you want a horse you probably won’t be able to convince your parents overnight, or even in a week. It may take months for them to decide to buy you a horse.

But don’t give up. Many people have to wait until they are in their 30’s, 40’s or even longer before they get their first horse. Convincing your parents to let you have a horse may be a long term project. You may have to prove you are committed and you might have to make some compromises and sacrifices…

And so on, all responsible-like. Not a word about getting blackmail photos or hiding their cigarettes. But if these tips fail, try those two. In my experience you can get almost anything that way.

del.icio.us: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
blinklist: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
Digg it: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
ma.gnolia: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
Stumble it: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
simpy: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
newsvine: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
reddit: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
fark: how to talk your parents into getting you a pony for Christmas
Technorati me!

evil Santa generator

Evil Santavia the Generator Blog. This Christmas, don’t settle for the same old Santa; build your own, complete with zombie parts, horns, soiled bandages, and all the fixin’s!

Nothing says “Season’s Greetings” like a Sinister Santa! If you just can’t get enough, download some Evil Santa Wallpaper to keep your compy company on those long winter nights.

del.icio.us: evil Santa generator
blinklist: evil Santa generator
Digg it: evil Santa generator
ma.gnolia: evil Santa generator
Stumble it: evil Santa generator
simpy: evil Santa generator
newsvine: evil Santa generator
reddit: evil Santa generator
fark: evil Santa generator
Technorati me!