Angry Birds:  a game in which Genocide and Suicide Bombing are how one wins the game.

Birds catapult into buildings in order to destroy the Pigs who have been stealing their eggs.  Black Birds explode and White Birds drop exploding eggs.    

Let's not forget, also, that this is also fueled by revenge--the birds are "angry"---and destruction without a sense of justice is the aim.  It's about the thrill of wrecking havoc.

Angry Birds is a child of 9/11.  And it is one of the most popular games out there.

Am I the only one who finds this disturbing?  I've never played it; I don't feel the desire to play at suicide bombing.  And I would never tell other people not to.  After all, the desire for murder and suicide lay within us all.

It's difficult to maintain empathy during the holidays.  A lack of empathy could be defined as evil, so it's easy to be evil during the holidays.

The caffeine and sugar intake is higher than any other time of the year.  People are getting buzzed and tweaked.

People aren't just demanding, and pissy when someone else takes their drink, or their drink is wrong.  

People glare.  While I was on bar, I'd be glared at by at least half customers.  Sometimes they would remind me what their drink was.  Sometimes they would tell me how to make it. 

This is an amazing, unwarranted lack of distrust.  

But I bet people feel very paranoid around this time.  This is a time of great judgement: Is the present good enough, cost enough, Did I make dinner right, Do my grandkids really hate seeing me?  

There's a lot of Mandatory Family Attendance. The holidays aren't about what you WANT to do, but enacting rituals which will, using Magical Thinking, result in Happiness or Comfort or a sense of Safety.  

Believe me, it doesn't work.  

This is the most accurate metaphor of Christmas I've seen.  

If you don't believe me, work retail during December.

Love this.

Jani Leinonen has wonderful political artwork as well.  Such as...

This documentary illuminates street performers and political activists who have committed acts of civil disobedience to get people's attention.  We all should hope to be as brave and clever as these geniuses.  

They fight revolutions using violence that doesn't require blood and death.  I greatly admire their works and feel inspired to commit similar acts, but I wonder at my own cowardice.  I also wonder if these acts inspire change---or are they seen as other forms of entertainment.  Things that titillate, but leave one feeling comfortable enough to go home and forget.

Below is the preview of the film.

I didn't include the entire photo of the hysterical woman because I thought the contents were too melodramatic.  But I kept the Hitchcock movie ad because we need to keep this in perspective: the NYTimes wants us to remember that there is entertainment out there which will make us forget this.

That's not a bad thing, really.  And I'm sure the Hitchcock movie will be wonderful and a bit more meaty than usual Hollywood fare.

The real question isn't Why Does This Happen?, but rather, Why Doesn't This Happen More Often?  A paraphrase of Woody Allen.

The causes:  a preliminary and shallow summation would include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, family violence.  Evil---only under the now emerging definition as the "absence of empathy" which I find more accurate and sympathetic.  I feel for the gunman, who committed suicide.  Obviously, his suffering was tremendous and could not, for whatever reasons, couldn't get help.  The real story is, Why did he kill his mother?

Eighteen children died: shouldn't we be relieved that those children don't grow up into bodies which will experience pain and maybe manifest mental disorders not unlike what our gunman suffered?  

Retail: The first born child of capitalism.  Or, at least, one of the first kids born.  Perhaps the Monopoly is the first born Son and Retail is the first born Daughter.

I'm sure Marx would vomit as aggressively as if he ate bad oysters if he saw the retail job market today.  Culturally retail jobs are located at an employment "dead end."  I was informed recently by an acquaintance that the idea of the employees at Walmart should strike wanting better insurance etc. is ridiculous; after all, he said, the fact that such "retarded" and "uneducated" people "who can't even count" have a job at all is something they should be grateful for.  Asking for better treatment (or equal treatment) is, I suppose, Stupid.

I said nothing.  I usually said nothing in public.

People who live off retail jobs are usually at the poverty line.  I myself have been in this position, more or less, for the past decade.  Despite all of my extreme education, I'm still in retail.  I don't hate it so much.  There are things I quite love about it.  

I don't think it's dehumanizing.  I don't think anything is dehumanizing---after all, we are all unalterably human.  No work or machine could possibly change that.

Is it undignified?  Oh, yes.  But I don't think the employers are to blame for this.  I blame the customers.  Customers are monsters.  Selfish, cruel, invasive, greedy, people demand perfect service from people who cannot express any negative emotions.  Not all customers are like this; some go to the other extreme.  Some want to know every detail of your life, or feel as if the professional relationship which exists is also a kind of friendship.  

Christmas makes it worse.  

Retail may not require much intelligence, but it isn't easy.  The customers who complain most about customer service are always those who have never had to work retail.  Or if they did, they have eventually moved up the economic food chain and see themselves as evolved.  They have transcended retail and therefore are better than those trapped in it.

Fuck them.