Christmas Songs

  "The Twelve Days of Christmas" - Nobody celebrates all twelve days, and nobody wants to get a shitload of birds and people as gifts.  Also, too repetitive, and too many lazy parodies.

"Dominick the Donkey," "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" - These are silly children's songs, and have no business being on the radio mixed in with all the "regular" music, even if it's a rock cover.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" - I get that it was a different time and all, because women were expected to play hard-to-get, but the concept is dated and problematic by today's standards.

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" - How does shining a bright light allow anyone to see through fog?  Doesn't fog reflect light?  I can suspend my disbelief as far as flying reindeer, because magic and all, but the light is explained as just ordinary red light.  It makes no sense.

"All I Want for Christmas is You," "Last Christmas," "Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You," and many others - Stop confusing Christmas with Valentine's Day.  I know love songs sell, and Christmas songs sell, but do we really have to combine them?

"Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" - Has anyone actually done this?  It's like riding is a sleigh or eating figgy pudding and sugar plums.  We keep singing about it like it's an activity we all do, but I don't know one person who does this.

"Jingle Bells," "Carol of the Bells," "Silver Bells" - Why are there so many songs about bells?  Anyone remember the Sweeny Sisters SNL sketch?

"All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" - This is just a stupid song, and the whistling is annoying.

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" - I can understand telling your children not to shout, but does Santa also punish children for crying?  What if I'm crying because someone is shouting at me?

"Winter Wonderland," "Let it Snow," "It's a Marshmallow World" - Snow is a pain in the ass, especially for those of us who have to drive in it.  All we do is complain about it.  So why do we sing songs where we pretend to love it?  What about "Little Jack Frost Get Lost?"  That's a good song, but it gets very little airplay.

"Away in a Manger," "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," "We Three Kings," and many others - I appreciate and respect that the birth of Jesus is important to religious people, but why do secular radio stations keep adding them into the mix?

"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" - We're roasting marshmallows and telling scary ghost stories and tales of glory?  Is this Christmas or a camping trip?  The only ghost story I know for Christmas is Scrooge, and I don't think one is enough to justify that lyric.

"Hanukkah O Hanukkah," "The Hanukkah Song," "Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel" - The Jewish calendar doesn't always synch up with the Gregorian calendar.  If Christmas falls on Hanukkah, fine, add these songs to the list.  If not, play them earlier.  Hanukkah isn't "Jewish Christmas."

"We Wish you a Merry Christmas," "Here We Come A-Wassailing" - These are songs about obnoxious drunks bothering people for free booze in public places.  Basically, it's SantaCon.  Don't sing songs glamorizing wassailing while simultaneously condemning public drunkenness.  It's hypocritical.

"Christmas Shoes" - The only reason most people even know this song is because of all the backlash it got.  That being said, all the criticisms are valid.  Patton Oswalt can explain better than I can.

"The Holly and the Ivy" - One of the oldest known Christmas songs and it hasn't aged well.  Half the words don't even rhyme in modern English, and the forced-connection between holly berries and the birth of Jesus just feels like a stretch.

"Good King Wenceslaus," "I Saw Three Ships" - Nobody knows all the words to these songs, but they show up in movies a lot, usually to signify Victorian times or that this is an old-timey sort of Christmas event.  The music to these are actually sort of nice, but like I said, nobody can remember the words.

"O Tannenbaum"/"Oh Christmas Tree" - The problem with this song is that it's translated from German, and depending on who did the translating, you might not be singing the exact same English version as the person next to you.

"The Little Drummer Boy" - Who read the Bible and decided it didn't have enough characters already?  Also, it's already kind of weird that a baby is being given gold, frankincense and myrrh, (I know, it's symbolic), but does the baby also want a drum solo?

"The Peanuts Theme Song" - This is not a Christmas song.  Just because Peanuts had a few Christmas specials doesn't make the main theme a Christmas song, and yet, it keeps getting thrown in the mix with all the actual Christmas music.

"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "Jingle Bell Rock" - Even by the 1950s standards, these songs barely rock.  Elvis Presley and Bill Haley rocked harder than this and their music was already softened for white audiences.  By the mid-60s, this type of "rock" was already a relic.

"White Christmas" - The number one selling song of all time!  That's impressive!  Too bad all it does is put me to sleep.

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" - Unfortunately, this starts around Thanksgiving.

"I'll be Home for Christmas," "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays" - I can see the appeal for people who are far from home and miss their families (especially the line "if only in my dreams"), but for a lot of people, the travelling and scheduling are a hassle.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" - This is a good idea.  Too bad modern commercialism has to make every Christmas bigger, longer, brighter, louder and more expensive than every previous year.

"Santa Baby" - I'm really not sure what this song is even going for.  Is it a commentary on consumerism?  Is it a tribute to high society?  Is it just a song for the sake of being a song?  I don't know.

"We Need a Little Christmas" - The idea that Christmas cheers people up when they're feeling depressed doesn't really hold up when you realize just how many people get depressed because of Christmas.

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" - Thanks for making me feel like an asshole.

"Some of My Favorite Things" - This another song that has no business being on a Christmas song list, but for some reason, it gets mixed in very often.

"Mele Kalikimaka" - This is not an actual Hawaiian phrase.  It's just the words "Merry Christmas" with letters swapped out from the Hawaiian alphabet.

"Evergreen Solstice," "Hail Holly King," "Yule is Come" - I love the idea of getting the winter holiday back to its Pagan roots, but these types of songs get very little airplay, if any.

"The Night Santa Went Crazy," "Wreck the Malls," "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" and many others - I love the sarcastic, subversive, rude, or just plain silly songs, but they can be a bit overplayed, probably as a response to all the "traditional" overplayed songs.

The entire musical score from "The Nutcracker" - Has anyone actually sat down and watched this whole play?  Does anyone know what it's even about?  Yet every song from this show has to work its way into every Christmas movie trailer to let you know "This is a Christmas movie."

Christmas song medleys - Stop doing that.  Pick a song.  Chances are, whatever bits of songs you just used are going to show up later on in the same playlist anyway.

"Deck the Halls" - Actually, this one is fine.  I can't find any flaw with this one.

Tell Me Something I Don't Already Know

Why do people tell us things we already know? I don't mean just the situations where maybe you were misinformed and thought this was new information to me. I mean those times when you know very well that I know what you're about to say, and tell me anyway. I've been thinking about this lately, and I've come up with a list of reasons:

• I'm quizzing you. Let's say I'm the boss, and I'm hiring you to operate a machine, and I say "Tell me how this machine works." Obviously, I'm not asking you because I don't know; I'm asking to see if you know. The more detail you can give me, the more I'll see you as familiar with the topic, and if you go into extreme detail, I might even say "That's good enough" before you finish.
• You're testing your own knowledge. I just finished explaining a topic to you, and you're not entirely sure you understand it. So you say, "Let me see if I got this," and explain the whole thing back to me using slightly different words. The hope is that I'll either wait until the end, and say "Good, you got it," or I'll interrupt you at some point and say, "Wait, no, that's not what I meant." It's tedious for me, but I can tolerate it because it's necessary.
• You're excited about the topic. I ask you, "Hey, have you seen this movie?" It turns out this is one of your favorite movies of all time, so you excitedly start rambling "Oh, wow, how about when you thought the bad guy was this guy, but it turned out to be the other guy all along! Oh, and that part where he jumps from the roof, and the other guy is like, 'how'd you do that!' And then the boat blows up, and he goes flying! Holy shit!" Technically, you're telling me details that I already know, but I understand that you'd probably say the same thing if you were talking to an empty room. If your enthusiasm is contagious enough, I might join in quoting lines and describing scenes along with you.
• You're laying groundwork for a conclusion. Let's say we're discussing a crime scene, and I just gave you a ton of evidence to work with. It would be silly for you to say "His brother killed him," and not give reasons. You would have to highlight specific pieces of information first, not unlike those geometric proofs that we all learned in high school. "Given, the bullet casing landed next to the door. Given, the brother is left-handed. Given, the window was open." These are all things I already knew, but just didn't see them within the context of your conclusion.
• You're making sure we're on the same page. You tell me that a friend of yours is a vegetarian. Maybe we both understand the word "vegetarian" to mean the same thing as "vegan," but then again, maybe I'm thinking that your friend is ovo-lacto-vegetarian. You might add that your friend eats no animal products at all. If we're on the same page to begin with, it might seem strange that you told me something I already assumed, but if we didn't mean the same thing, then your additional information was an important clarification.
• You're framing an opinion. Let's say we're both looking at a painting. You don't need to tell me which parts of the painting are blue and which parts are yellow. I can see that. However, if you tell me that your reaction is that the painting makes you feel nostalgic for childhood, I would have no way of knowing why you feel that way, unless you point out specific aspects of the painting. My understanding of your mind isn't based on WHAT you tell me about how the painting looks, but HOW you tell me.  Additional tip:  If I give you a lengthy explanation of my opinion, I'm probably fishing for you to continue the conversation by providing perspective of your own, coming to a meeting of the minds.  So don't be that guy who just leaves me hanging, nodding quietly without injecting any thoughts of your own.  Give me some feedback, please.
• You're speaking to more than one person. This seems almost like a no-brainer, but it technically is a form of telling me what I already know. If I'm sitting with a group of people, some new and some who have been here a while, maybe half of us know what's going on. Since it would take too long to separate us into groups based on what we know already, it's much more efficient for you to address the whole group, saying something like, "For those of you just joining us."
• You're telling a popular story.  Sometimes, people like telling the same stories to their friends over and over.  Think of watching the same stand-up comedy video over and over, or think of a child who wants to hear the same bedtime story every night.  Maybe it's just an inside joke between friends, where it would feel absent if you didn't say it.  Personally, I'm not a fan of this kind of repetition, but I understand it can be a source of comradery.
• You're venting.  Maybe the thing you're telling me about is upsetting you in some way, and you just need to rant about it to anyone willing to listen.  Maybe you're having trouble organizing your thoughts in your head, and using me as a sounding board is the only way you can work through it.  Some of the things coming out of your mouth are probably going to be specific facts or general ideas that I'm already familiar with, such as "I need that car to get around," or "That guy had no right to insult me like that," or "The whole government is corrupt."  Yes, this might be tedious for me to listen to, but it would be incredibly insensitive of me to tell you to shut up, or to start nitpicking on the details of what you're saying.
• You're comparing notes.  Maybe this is a very specific topic that not many people know about.  You've probably been waiting your whole life to meet someone who gets where you're coming from or who understands and has an interest in this particular topic, so when you meet me and realize that I also have knowledge of the topic, you may find yourself excitedly rambling about the matter, hoping that between the two of us, we can expand each other's knowledge, filling in each other's blanks.  There's one small problem.  Just because you've never met someone before who can talk about this particular subject doesn't mean that I haven't.  Maybe I've had ten conversations about this topic in the past week with other people, and now I'm bored with it.  Then again, maybe I'm just as excited to discuss it as you are.  The best thing to do in this situation is to calm yourself down.  Ask a few questions first, "Can I talk to you about this?"  Maybe even preface the spiel with "You're the first person I ever met who I can talk to about this," so that I know what I'm getting into.
• You're avoiding liability.  I know that I'm not supposed to take a hair dryer into the bathtub with me.  You know that I know that I'm not supposed to do that.  I know that you know that I know... etc., etc.  But for legal purposes, you have to put a warning label on the hair dryer telling me not to take it into the bathtub with me.  I don't feel insulted, because I understand it's a legal disclaimer.  We see the same thing with all those safety videos we all have to watch before starting a new job.  We see the same thing when a judge explains court proceedings to a jury before a trial.  We see it in the fine print of your phone contract.  For the most part, we're half-asleep for it all, but we put up with it because we're used to it.
• You're trying to formalize an idea.  Let's say you're a legislator, and you're in a meeting to discuss a law that has some gray area.  Let's pretend that there's a tax on sandwiches, and you need to define what a sandwich is, so that the tax collectors know what counts.  Sure, you could just assume that everyone already knows what a sandwich is, but what happens when someone sues over being taxed on a hot dog?  Even though the answer might be common sense to you, there needs to be an agreement upon the definition of what a sandwich is before it can be written down.  This applies to everything from framing a new constitution to establishing the bylaws of your local bake sale committee.  It may seem trivial, but formalizing these common sense ideas in writing now may save you some headaches down the road.
• You're an arrogant jerk. Maybe you're genuinely convinced that you're the only person in the room who knows what's going on, and you want other people to see you as the smartest person around. This would be understandable if you were dealing with some esoteric knowledge in a room full of laymen, though it would be more considerate to ask, "Are you at all familiar with this?" before going into a long and boring speech. Here's a tip. If the listener is saying things like, "Wow, I didn't know that," keep going, but if the listener is going "uh-huh, yeah, I know, got it, okay, I said I got it," maybe shut up. However, sometimes people will get into topics that are common knowledge, or at least, common knowledge to this particular group. If that's the case, you can open with a simple, "Okay, we all know about this, right?" or "Does anyone here NOT understand this?" This is where you get the subcategory of "mansplaining," which is the same thing, but with the arrogance coming specifically from a misogynistic place, but we see similar attitudes from gifted children, spoiled rich people, political upstarts, old folks, and very often, your parents who can't help but see you as a child no matter how old you are.  Best tip in this case:  Don't do that.
• Movie exposition. Everyone hates this, but it's a necessary evil. The characters all know what's going on, but the audience doesn't. Rather than fill people in with a voice-over narration, writers will often use the "new guy" who ought to know what's going on, but the characters will explain everything to him as if he doesn't, or the recap scene, such as the mastermind saying to someone, "Let's go over the plan again," or the extremely forced dialog of the leader addressing a subordinate by saying, "As you already know," and then going over the entire plot or backstory. It's frustrating to audiences because it almost always feels unnatural, and has been parodied in movies such as "Spaceballs." Still, even the best writers have a hard time coming up with better ways of getting the exposition out.
• You're socially awkward. Some people just can't read the room. Maybe you're neurodivergent in some way, or maybe you're just used to being alone. You might expound on a topic, not because you want to inform others, but just as a matter of habit. You're saying it because it simply is, and whether or not other people care to listen may have not crossed your mind. Best advice, learn to read the room. Alternatively, you may be attempting to start up a conversation with someone, but haven't learned the art of small talk, so an information dump is the only tool in your box other than standing there in silence. If this is the case, what you need to do is... Actually, I don't know what to tell you here, because we're both in the same boat.

I'm sure there are other examples I've missed, and I'm sure that there are situations where a person might fall into more than one category at the same time.

In conclusion, we all have to deal from time to time with telling people things they already know, or listening to other people tell us what we already know.  Not all of it falls into the "arrogant jerk" category, but some of it does, and maybe this list will help us to understand the difference.  I'm sure you probably knew all of this already, but I felt it was necessary to put it all into words so that we're all on the same page.

Power Dynamics Explained

 Imagine that there are 200 people in a building.  No one gets in or out.  Anyone can move about within the building, and interact with each other, but the rooms are small, and there are rarely more than three or four people in a room at a time.  Now imagine that half the people are wearing blue shirts, and half the people are wearing green shirts.  For reasons that don't matter, no one is able to remove, change, or cover up their shirt color.

So far, there doesn't seem to be a problem.  Everyone appears to be more or less equal.  Now let's add one additional complication.  A news bulletin is posted that there are exactly TWO homicidal maniacs in the building.  They are both highly skilled combatants, even if they look like they're not, and can kill or maim any single opponent almost instantly.  Also, they are skilled at passing for normal, hiding their bloodlust until it is time to strike.  It is unclear whether their attacks are completely random, or if they are triggered by some minor perceived offense by the victim.  Finally, we don't know which two people are the murderers.

At this point, there is going to be a small measure of paranoia among the people inside the building.  Everyone knows that there's a 1% chance that any other person might be one of the killers, so everyone is on their guard.  People tend to avoid being in rooms with only one other person, preferring groups or three or four, or being completely alone.  Even still, everyone treats everyone else the same way.

Now for the final ingredient.  A follow-up bulletin is announced that although we still don't know the identities of the two maniacs (they also don't know each other), we have learned that both of the killers are wearing green shirts.

Suddenly, there's a change in power dynamics between those wearing blue shirts and those wearing green shirts.  Even when neither of the killers is present, the fact that two green-shirt-wearing killers exist causes a drastic change in the way that people interact:

Every time two people are alone together in blue shirts, they can relax, because they both know that neither one of them is a killer.

Every time two people are alone together in green shirts, they will become suspicious of the other, acting cautiously and defensively.  Even the killers themselves will become cautious among people wearing green shirts, due to the small chance that the other person might be an equal threat to themselves.

Every time two people are alone together wearing different colored shirts, the person in the blue shirt is going to be careful and defensive, probably being extra submissive to anyone wearing a green shirt, at least when they first meet.  The person in the green shirt, even if not one of the killers, is going to be placed involuntarily in a position of presumed power.

Every time three people are gathered, and two of them are wearing green shirts, the person in the blue shirt is going to feel twice as endangered, and neither person in a green shirt can give any indication of NOT being the killer, out of fear of losing an advantage over the other person in the green shirt.

Every time three people are gathered, and two of them are wearing blue shirts, the people wearing blue will feel that they may be able to overpower the person wearing green.  The person wearing green, even if not a killer, will assume this, and take on a more submissive role, out of fear that if that person is accidentally perceived as one of the killers, the two people in blue might panic and make a preemptive strike.

Every time a person in a any room alone, there is always the perceived possibility that one of the killers may enter the room.  Those in green shirts have the opportunity to pretend to be one of the killers to scare away an actual killer, though not always convincingly.  Those in blue shirts have no such opportunity.

The result is that people in blue shirts can only feel safe when gathered in groups of other people wearing blue shirts, people in blue shirts feel especially endangered in all other cases, and all people in green shirts are always somewhere in the middle, feeling slightly threatened, but not completely threatened.  People in blue shirts must pretend to be submissive when meeting a new person in a green shirt, and people in green shirts must act extra benign when meeting a person in a blue shirt, and act potentially-but-not-definitely threatening when meeting a person in a green shirt.  Everyone in a green shirt feels the need to prove that they are not the killers, and no one in a blue shirt has any real reason to accept their proof.  Keep in mind that all of this was brought about by ONE PERCENT of the population.

Now all of this thought-experiment is pretty straightforward.  There are only two groups separated by one defining characteristic.  In the real world, however, there are multiple separating identifiers, black-or-white, rich-or-poor, male-or-female, gay-or-straight, native-or-foreign, old-or-young, abled-or-disabled, socialist-or-capitalist, cis-or-trans, fashionable-or-unfashionable, tall-or-short, fat-or-thin, nerd-or-jock, police-or-civilian, primary spoken language, and all the various religions.  It becomes even more complicated when the various news outlets telling the public who they should see as a threat becomes contradictory.  One source tells the blacks to fear the whites, and another tells the whites to fear the blacks.  The result is everyone seeing everyone else as different threat levels at different times under different circumstances, and the power dynamics are changing constantly.  You could have two people interacting with both of them acting aggressively out of fear of the other, or just as easily, two people becoming simultaneously passive for the same reason.  You could have groups of people seeing the room in radically different ways, with one person judging the room on black-to-white ratios, and another on male-to-female ratios, getting completely different results where they stand in relation to everyone else.  Then there's the additional complication of stereotyping people's attitudes on one criteria based on another, such as "a person of this religion wouldn't judge someone on color," or "a person with this economic philosophy is also likely to have that view on gender roles."  Another complication is when people start anticipating what other people want them to say or do, assuming that "if this person is in this group, then they would be a threat to me, unless I trick them into thinking I'm in that group, by acting this way toward this other group."  As if that's not complicated enough, let's throw in the added factor of microaggressions and dog whistles.  One media source might imply that if a person uses a certain word or makes a certain gesture, that it has some added hidden meaning.  Let's say someone has an itch and scratches his ear, unaware that the other person has been told that this is a threat.  An observer might feel threatened and assume a submissive role, or feel threatened and become more aggressive in retaliation, or worse, some aggressor-in-waiting might misinterpret the gesture as a "go ahead and be aggressive, I've got your back" signal.  They layers of complexity keep piling on.

The point of it all is that power dynamics are often much more complicated than simply "group A is oppressing group B," and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can get to the root of the problem.  Let's find those initial two killers and arrest them, so the other 198 people can finally relax and be themselves.

Economics Simplified

 Imagine there are only five people living in a small community, and they have no contact with the outside.

The first person is good at farming.  The second person is good at fixing things.  The third person is a good cook.  The fourth knows how to weave clothing.  The fifth doesn't have any special skills, but he can clean up and do other small tasks while the others are busy with their jobs.

After a while, they run into a problem, where they can't keep track of how well each person does his job, and how much of each resource each person is taking for himself, so they devise a system.  Every time someone does his job correctly, he gets a five poker chips, taken out of a community bowl of poker chips.  Every time someone uses a resource, such as food, clothing, etc., he puts one poker chip back into the community bowl.

For a long time, this system works, and the five do their jobs well, they each get a fair share of the resources, and the taking and giving of chips equals out by the end of each day.

Then one day, a traveller comes along and gives them five robots that can do any job faster and better than any human, and they have no need for consuming resources.  At first, this seems like a good thing, because it would give the humans lots of extra free time to relax.

After the first day, they notice a problem.  The robots have done all the work, and there's nothing left for the humans to do.  According to the system, this means that no one gets a poker chip.

When it comes time to eat, no one has a poker chip to place in the bowl, so the food sits on the table uneaten.

The bowl is now filled with all the poker chips that there are, and no one is circulating them.  The robots are working away producing produce, cooked meals, and clothing, but no one is getting any use out of any of them.  The five people are sitting around, hungry, dirty, dressed in ragged clothing, with absolutely nothing productive for them to do.

Eventually, one of them suggests that they need to either abandon the poker chip system or get rid or the robots.  They soon find that the robots are self-repairing, and any attempt to shut one down will result in the robot just starting itself back up again.  So they turn their attention to the poker chip bowl.

One person suggest that they just go back to taking resources as needed, with no poker chips at all, but another person points out that this risks someone taking more than their fair share.

Another person suggests giving each person five poker chips per day, but another points out that since none of them did any work, there's no way to know how many poker chips they each deserve.

Then someone suggest that they pretend to be working, standing alongside the robots and going through the motions, thereby showing a willingness to work hard, even if the work isn't needed.  However, they soon find that they are only getting in the way of the robots' speedy work, and their presence is actually doing more harm than good.

Finally, one of them suggests that they be awarded poker chips for individual merit, for things like writing a poem or making a scientific discovery, but another points out that no one really has the right to decide what achievements have value and which ones don't.

Out of ideas, the five of them leave the community, searching for a place to build elsewhere, where they can get back to the way things used to be.

In the end, five robots worked in a community of no people.  They farmed, cooked, weaved, made repairs, and cleaned up the place, but no one was around to get any use out of any of this.  At least the bowl of poker chips was full.