Warning, extreme randomality.

Fic rec - short and heartbreaking post "Human Nature/Family of Blood" Joan drabble, White Lie

puppetmaker40 linked to both of these: The Life and Death of Jesse James (about the real wreckage left by a sockpuppet) and When the Fan Hits The Shit (about a phony charity scam pulled on Lord of the Rings fans. Think it couldn't happen to your fandom? Yeah, that's what we in the Rupert Giles fanclub thought too.)

parrotfish has an article about interracial marriage statistics in England and the US.. This, along with a side conversation I've been having makes me want to write an analytical meta about primate behavior and "othering" but it's not jelling into anything coherent. The basic gist is this: We are all primates. In all times and places and cultures under it all, we exhibit primate behavior, including "othering" - the suppression/brutalization of whatever is "not us" for any given value of "us."

This is NOT, however, to say that "we're just like that so what's to worry" because that's NOT THE POINT, not to mention untrue. The point is that we can and *should* rise above that, just like we recognize and rise above a whole hell of a lot of default human behavior.

But every time I try to get this to turn into a thesis, I end up with a melange of Tom Lehrer singing "National Brotherhood Week" and Pratchett ("humanity is where the falling angel meets the rising ape") and Captain Kirk saying "I will not kill... today." (That latter being a fairly good summary of the point that I'm flailing towards. Our unadulterated basic nature is pretty shitty. But we can recognize that and not be assholes... today.)

And because the Presidential race needs help and the backlash against the far-right attacking a 12-year-old kid is getting nasty, the good old "War on Christmas" is being dusted off early. Doubtless I'll get to a good meta/rant on this later, but right now all I can think is the unadorned thesis: Don't these "warriors" realize that when they attack businesses which *do* actually have Christmas stuff but say "Happy Holidays" for the purposes of including all customers, the warriors are 1) fairly obviously conflating Christ and Mammon, about which the Bible has a few things to say and 2) fetishizing the words "Merry Christmas"? Not Jesus, not the religion, but four syllables that do not appear anywhere in the Bible?

(I am suddenly reminded of a friend who was Born Again. It was the fashion in her church to say "Luke 2:12" when looking for something. Not the actual verse, not the object being searched for, just say "Luke two-twelve" in the knowledge that Jesus would - eventually - tell her where to find said object.

She went utterly ballistic when I pointed out that was ritual magic.)



Even I have no clue why I'm posting this or how (un)popular it might make me. And yet I'm about to hit post anyway. If anyone responds, maybe the stuck essays will rattle loose.

I'll be typing up the fic and the Sarah Jane essay tonight. They have the added advantage of thought and coherence.