The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Family tradition is for us to have a Christmas gathering for the extended family a couple of days after Christmas, and this year is no exception. It’ll be all aunts, uncles, cousins and close family friends at my parents’ place tonight, gathered for dinner, followed by a gift exchange and then…the jam-and-karaoke session. Mom and cousin Anna will take turns on the piano, uncle Jorge will break out his acoustic guitar and amp, cousin Kara will bring her flute, brother-in-law Richard and sister Eileen will try the new Yamaha keyboard I got them for Christmas and I’ll be playing you-know-what. That will probably be followed by karaoke. True to Asian stereotype, Mom has not one, but two karaoke devices, both capable of displaying lyrics on a video monitor.

(Also true to Asian strereotype, I have a karaoke machine in my house; I inherited mom’s old karaoke box. It’s so old that it takes eight-track cassettes.)

Of course, the point of this posting is to announce that tonight’s main course is one of my favoutire dishes, lengua. That’s beef tongue in mushroom sauce. Mmm…tongue…

This is from last year (with a little polishing up), but it’s worth repeating.

While I do believe that some traditions should be put to rest, I also believe that a lot of tradition-bashers are poor-impulse-control cases. Having abandones any actual tradition or culture of their own, they fill the void with a couple of Utne Reader platitudes, a mild revulsion for anything even vaguely Judeo-Christian, even if it aligns with their beliefs, a pro-pot slant and a half-formed belief in eye-for-eye karmic payback.

Standing for almost nothing, they tend to fall for just about anything.

Chris Baldwin’s summed it up pretty handily — and perhaps unintentionally — in a Bruno comic from last year:

To borrow the line about Klansmen and Martin Luther King Day: C’mon, Bruno, how hardcore a secularist must you be to not want a day off?

Of course, those of us who celebrate Christmas would argue the exact opposite: here we took a beautiful Christian holdiay and destroyed it through corportization and “We’re white, we’re straight, we’re sorry!” guilt.

(There’s a Randroid who would take another tack and say “here we took a beautiful commerical holiday and destroyed it in usual religious fashion.” Haven’t we developed some kind of Ayn Rand repellent yet?)

In the end, I believe that intent counts.

I’m certain there is no malice, no implicit “convert or die” message and no forcing of one’s beliefs on others when someone wishes someone else a Happy Chanukah, Eid, Diwali, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Tet or even Festivus, the actions of certain vicious zealots notwithstanding. Balanced minds do not see any implied Hitler overtones at Oktoberfest nor Hirohito/Tojo insinuations at the sushi house, and neither do they see the Crusades in Christmas.

When people say “Merry Christmas”, most of them are really saying “Happy Holidays, and I’m celebrating them Christmas-style. You do your thing, and I’ll do mine. Come by for drinks.”

That what I’m really saying, anyways.

No matter what you believe, enjoy the break from the hustle and bustle of 21st century life. Be nice to each other. Hug someone you love.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Racism/Sexism/Homophobia is a nasty three-headed rottweiler that’s been beaten with a rubber hose and hasn’t been fed for days, which is why one always gets bitten when approaching it. This is why more critical accounts of the origins of Kwanzaa are hard to come by: there doesn’t seem to be a way to publish one without being accused of hanging with the pillowcases-as-hats crowd.

In this post, I wrote:

My own feeling is that although Kwanzaa’s roots are pretty dubious, but I’m still looking for a non-drooling-right source to corroborate the evidence gathered against it.

Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle, who wrote a controversial Kwanzaa poem, came through for me, providing me with two articles that don’t come from what I refer to as the “drooling right”.

(I find FrontPage too “drooling right”, just as I find IndyMedia too “loopy left”. My own political leanings are along the lines of Eric S. Raymond, who wrote: “Liberals, by and large, are fools” and “Conservatives, by and large, are villains”.)

The first is The Truth About Kwanzaa, written by an African-American woman.

If the Christian focus of the previous link bothers you — although I’ll bet that a Buddhist one wouldn’t — there’s a Telegraph editorial that expresses some doubt about its authenticity, along with some remarking on how you can’t say “Merry Christmas” anymore.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I do it again: here’s Tony Pierce (who’s a black hipster from L.A.) on Kwanzaa. I also found this Dartmouth Review piece.

Thanks, Kathy, for the links!

If you want to discuss Kwanzaa further, feel free to make a comment. I’ll be on and off the computer all this week.

In this post, I reported — in reference to the YULBloggers — that YUL is the airport code for Montreal’s Mirabel airport. Aaron informs me that YUL is actually the code for Pierre Elliott Trudeau (formerly Dorval) airport, and YMX is the code for Mirabel.

As you may have guessed, I never fly to Montreal — I either drive or take the train.

I managed to forget to add one link, so here it is. Striding Cloud makes the same observation that I did while watching The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: the “Riders of Rohan vs. the Elephants” battle scene feels like an homage (or, if you’re more cynical, a rip-off) of the “Snowspeeders vs. the Imperial Walkers” battle scene from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. I was half-expecting Eowyn to yell out “Use your tow cables and go for their legs!” The Legolas bits in that battle were pure Luke Skywalker — so much that George Lucas should be in tears, exclaiming “Finally someone steals an idea from me!“.

However, I couldn’t figure out the sense of deja vu that I got when he slid down the elephant’s trunk in his classic “Sk8r Elf” style until I read Striding Cloud’s post: it’s the same thing Fred Flintstone does in the title sequence for The Flintstones! If only Legolas screamed “Yabba-Dabba-Doo!” while doing it…

In this post, I made a reference to “Boston’s Deepest Blogger”. The problem is, I originally didn’t link to the right blog. The error has been corrected, but let me state for the record that Jay “Makeoutcity” McCarthy is Boston’s Deepest Blogger.

The title of Boston’s Cutest Blogger goes to The Redhead, of course.

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Once again, my thanks to David “Ranting and Roaring” Janes for organizing the Carnival, and to all the Canadian bloggers for providing me with such rich linking material.

It would appear that the Carnival has a logo:

David’s also provided a schedule for the next few Carnivals:

• Next Tuesday, December 30th: Jim Elve of BlogsCanada, the definitive listing of Canadian blogs, takes the reins.
• Richard at Just a Gwai Lo mans the Epiphany shift on Tuesday, January 6th.
• Michael at Discount Blogger’s run is on Tuesday, January 13th.

Send them links!

And finally, the last part of my contribution to Carnival of the Canucks. Hope all these links give you lots of reading and entertainment over the holidays!

Damn, that Matt Goyer is one righteous dude. He interviewed at both Amazon and Microsoft and got job offers from both! Even better, he took notes!

(He took the offer from Microsoft. Congrats, Matt!)

Speaking of righteous dudes, here’s Gideon Strauss, whose blogger convivium I attended last Saturday (and forgot about the time, which means I’ve have to catch up with Sean and Keitha at Ashley’s and Chris’ wedding in Canmore). I’ve mentioned before about how he likes to ask The Big Questions, one of which is “Why do you get up in the morning?”.

Ghost of a Flea points out…egad…another William Shatner album?!

Anne Galloway of Purse Lip Square Jaw writes about machines never forgetting.

And finally: Shame on the Liberal Party for trying to shut down a blog that makes fun of Federal Liberal Party Leader and Not-So-Honourable Prime Minister Paul Martin.

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I’d like to thank David Janes for inviting me to write this installment of Carnival of the Canucks. It was an honour and a privilege!

Be on the lookout for next week’s edition, hosted by Jim “Blogs Canada/Officially Unofficial” Elve!

Her name is Raymi, and yes, she is a minx. Not safe for work, because she has a predilection for posting pictures of herself, many of which are saucy shots of her in various states of undress. Strangely enough, I discovered her blog by way of L.A. blogger Tony Pierce. The current page (there don’t seem to be any permalinks) has a photo — and I remind you, not safe for work — that I’m certain Ray and Roast Beef from Achewood would appreciate.

What would Brian Boitano blog? My best guess is that if Brian Boitano had a blog, it would be rather like 2xy.org, better known as The Goluboy Chronicles. “Fresh and frooty” in every sense of the phrase, Goluboy (Russian slang for “gay”) is as visually mish-mashed as Times Square, Picadilly Circus or Shibuya, but just as info-dense. In addition to daily entries, there are also a good number of music and movie reviews that I often go by.

Mention The Hebrew Hammer, and suddenly, he’s everywhere! While at a Christmas party for Tucows’ Marketing, Product Management and Research and Innovation (The! Best! Department! Ever!) departments, I made mention of The Hebrew Hammer to Greg Frank, who was looking for some Chanukah viewing for a quiet December 25th. I also mentioned it to The Redhead, who’d never heard of it, either. But Marc “Weissblogg” Weisblott, who rants so well, has, and uses it as a launching point for ranting about “Jewsploitation” — the Jewish version of Blaxploitation, as in Shaft Super Fly et al.. There are no permalinks on his blog, but this rant is the top story as I write this. Just read the whole page; he’s a mensch, and it’s all good.

(A little note: if they ever invent “Flipsploitation”, I’m hoping for a role similar to Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch. When we played “Starsky and Hutch” as kids, I was the only one who wanted to be Huggy — he was cooler than Starsky and Hutch combined.)

“A” from The Meatriarchy seems to be a bit down on Accordion City: he says that this description of Portland, Oregon reminds him of our fair city. I get the feeling that what would make A happy might make me miserable, and since I’m the damn mayor of Accordion City, I shall invoke my powers and say “Hey buddy, there’s the door…”

I’ve never had a client tell me “You are very rude…I hope you burn in Hell”, but Eva has. Eva has great stories from the world of customer support.

Where would we be without hastily scribbled notes on serviettes? First of all, a “serviette” is Brit/Canuck English for what others may call a “napkin”. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, you may not realize the number of ideas that were born on a serviette — the Laffer curve (a cornerstone of conservative economics), the lyrics for several pop and rock songs and the El Torrito spec, which made CD-ROMs that PCs could boot from, to name a few. Now Michael O’Connor Clarke, in his blog, Uninstalled (formerly I Love Me, Vol. I) shows us serviettes that make the whole planning process easier.

Roland Tanglao: Tech news maven, Blogware reseller, all-round cool guy. I finally got a chance to meet him at BloggerCon!

A media whore like me never forgets his first interview, and mine was with David Akin. It was over cans of Guiness in our hotel room at the Luxor Hotel in Vegas, where he was interviewed me about a VB-based video slurping-and-stremaing project that I worked on with Chris Cummer. He suggested we make up hacker names for the interview (this was for an article on the DefCon conference), and I went by “Rice Cube”. Heh.

David has an interesting report on the popularity of Apple in Tokyo and one on how it’s harder to get a job at an Apple Store than it is to get into Stanford. He also a posting about how Canadians would rather pay for WiFi by the hour than by the day, according to a study by Decima Research. My fellow Canadians, that is just crazy talk.

Speaking of WiFi and blogging, be sure to check out WIFLblog!

Whether or not you agree with the war effort, you’ve got to say that this guy’s generosity is nothing short of amazing. A filet mignon on a flaming sword to you, sir, and to The Blog Quebecois for pointing it out!

Breakfast never looked so pretty! Aaron Straup Cope’s This is Aaronland features a gorgeous photo illustrating what he learned about breakfast from the Italians.

If you are a lover of pop and rock, add Overheard at the Bar to your daily reading right now!

If the relationship between culture and technology, especially internet technology, is of interest to you, Paul Kelly’s As We Know It should be part of your daily reading.

And last, but not least for this entry, let me tell you about Accordion City’s supreme photoblogger, Rannie “PhotoJunkie” Turingan and his incredibly cool Advent calendar. I was supposed to submit something, but things have been a little bit crazy at work lately. Perhaps next year?

Next: the last installment of my contribution to Carnival of the Canucks!