Dead or Alive

Hello World, Greetings again from our little corner of Paradise to yours, where we can only hope that the weather is not in any way newsworthy, because in, oh, so many places, it's been so outrageously awful that even a reasonably level-headed individual could be forgiven for wondering if the controls of the Kremlin's infernal weather machine had not been summarily yanked from the clutches of our old nemesis Comrade Mischka, and locked in the steely horseshoe grip of the malevolent spirit of Affirmed instead. Of course, they always do the weather on the news, but when you get to the point that the weather IS the news, that's never a good sign - not to mention, the impending sense of doom that the next thing to be on the lookout for will be raining frogs, plagues of locusts and boils, I shouldn't wonder. Everyone knows that once Halloween has come and gone on October 31st, All Saints Day is next up on November 1st, with scarcely enough time to shoo the ghouls and goblins out of the way, and kick them to the curb, before the time to honor the dearly departed - and here, I'm very much not talking about the evil ghost of Affirmed, I can tell you that. And very suddenly, hard on the heels of that, in fact it was November 2nd when I was coming home from church, that I couldn't help but notice that the local merchants all along the main drag in the Queen City of the Sound, had already put up their Christmas decorations on the lampposts in front of the stores. Now, we've all long since learned that it does no good to complain about holiday-creep, heaven knows, so I won't bother. But like Daylight Saving Time, which is now longer than Standard Time, a person can't help but wonder at what point it would make more sense to just leave the decorations up all year round, rather than starting out two months ahead of time, and trampling over all of the other holidays along the way. Poor old National Pickle Day (November 14) was just one of the many victims in its remorseless path, alas. All Saints Day reminds me that our friends at Disney released a new animated feature called "The Book of Life," based on Dia de los Muertos, a holiday widely celebrated in Mexican culture, paying respect to family, tradition, and zest for life. As part of their merchandising efforts, there was a game based on the movie that you could play on your phone, and it used the same graphics and music that people would recognize from the film, as well as snippets of dialogue in appropriate places during the game. ("Santa Gordita!" gets a big workout when you're doing well at meeting the challenges of the level.) The funny thing is that when you run out of moves, or time, and lose on any of the levels, rather than sad music or wailing like other games, you hear one of the characters from the movie saying, "That poor kid never had a chance." It's probably funnier for people who have actually seen the film. "Santa Chihuahua!" Meanwhile, in other news from the beginning of the month, my first week as a temp at least served to re-establish, if only in my own mind, that I can still demonstrate competency in office tasks, without being an embarrassment to myself, or a hazard to others - and which, I don't mind saying, after a year, the issue was very much in doubt. With that first week under my belt, as it were, I admit that it has given me new hope that I may very well, at long last, rejoin the ranks of productive humanity out in the great wide world, with the tantalizing prospect that the long and dark days as a drag on society could be behind me once and for all. It's a small place, with about 15 employees - although since all 15 of them seem to have their own radios playing loud music all day long, on all different stations at the same time, it does tend to seem a lot noisier than it should be. It will certainly be a simple matter to keep up with pop culture at this rate, and I will never have to wonder what Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber are up to at any given moment, that's for sure. And don't even get me started on the Kardashians, believe me. And speaking of cultural icons, they had a big story in the newspaper recently about NBA superstar LeBron "King" James becoming the new spokesperson for Kia Motors, of all things - because let's face it, they obviously think I'm going to believe that someone whose annual salary is higher than the Gross National Product of 20 different nations is going to be driving a Kia, for real. In any case, they printed a promotional picture of the celebrated hoops wizard standing next to one of their vehicles, and as hard as it might seem to believe, he somehow managed to make a minivan look small in comparison. I guess it's a lucky thing that our friends at National Pickle Day didn't ask him to be their spokesperson instead, because he would have made their product look about the size of a Mexican jumping bean - and after all, if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked? Santa Chihuahua! Elle