weemba@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (01/02/88)
["There are things far worse than to be bracketed, Xman."] We didn't celebrate Christmas in my family. As Jews, we weren't very ob- servant, but we didn't go for any of those Gentile customs either. Being poor, with 3 family birthdays in December-January, sure made it a conven- iently ignorable holiday. (Birthday presents are another thing. I got them--not counting the vests and sweaters my Bubba knitted for me--once every five years. I wonder how much the K&E slide rule I got for my 15th birthday is worth now?) And as for the present angle of Hanakkah, forget it. Just forget it. We got gelt. Chanakuh gelt! Boy oh boy, "Here's a quarter, son, now go play some pinball." At least in those days it was 3 games for a quarter, five balls per game. Heck, that turned out to be real great when I got to Princeton. All these pampered rich kids had been spoiled by their dad giving them weekly poker money, which they would just lose every week. Me, I was a pinball wizard on the last non-electronic machine that was still on campus, and nobody could take that away from me! Haha! (Well, they did take the machine away by my junior year, but that's another story.) For some reason, my sister was big on the holidays. Her idea of celebrat- ing Christmas was waiting for "it" to snow, whatever "it" was. "It"'s bad enough that as Jews we weren't supposed to celebrate Christmas, what was worse was that she never did understand that "it" snowing on Christmas was a waste of a snow day for school. And I'll never forget the one Thanks- giving where our family was running extra broke, and so ended up eating take out Chinese food for dinner. I thought "it" was great, but did my sister? Nooooooo. So my dad had to go out and get her a turkey pot pie to stop her bawling already. Did I ever mention that my sister was the weird one in the family, anyway? (Not counting my cousin Scott, my cousin Barbara, uncle what's-his-name, I know I'll remember it right after I post this, and any of my grandparents or greatgrandparents, oh the stories they tell me about "granny Annie", my mother's mother's mother, that is.) Like my sister used to be a member of the religion-of-the-month club, and my parents always encouraged her, "Oh, so you're a witch this month, how very nice that must be." But one time it went too far, and she came home Catholic--the school slut had converted her-- and started calling us "the people who killed her Lord". Well, that broke my folks' equanimity right then and there, they kicked her out and said she wasn't allowed back in until she gave up Catholicism. She held out for five minutes; it was dinnertime, and we were having cheese lasagna. Anyway, I didn't give a flying, leaping, or otherwise aerially conveyed bowbity bowb bowb what someone does for Christmas, with or without public monies even. I don't care if private monies from the backbone are being use to celebrate Christmas by propagating all sorts of articles on Christ- mas, both pro and con around the USA. Well, OK, I cringe a bit at my land- lady, who leaves these little cutesy pie gifts like so many dog droppings for me once a year. It's not that I'm against getting gifts--I am--it's just that the ones my landlady gets me are always appropriately inappro- priate, would you believe? I've got a lot of books, oodles and noodles of books, on shelves by the shelfful, and I don't ever vacuum, so of course one year she gets the brilliant idea of giving me a feather duster, hint hint hint. But jumping jolly grandmothers, Jesus H Christ on a bicycle built for three, I'm allergic to feathers! Sheesh, the nerve of some of these deeply religious folks. (If it isn't clear, I wish to emphasize that I do not believe that all deeply religious folks would in fact or in deed give me a feather duster for Christmas. Besides, my landlady is a Unitarian. I'm not sure if a Unitarian can be a deeply religious folk.) But the latest spew of "offensensitivy" articles, I think they're still going on, I'm see- ing articles KILLed all the time, it's a massacre, it's Pork Chop Hill all over again, now that offends me. Which can only bring me to the subject of this article. Enough prerambling. Let's get Woody Allen films out of the work place!! Do we really need all that religious shit? 2000 years of Christian culture have made jokes, like the one about belief in a supreme intelligence, except in certain parts of New Jersey--you know, the one where Diane Keaton in "Sleeper" asks Woody if he believes in a supreme intelligence in the universe, and he answers, "Yes, except in certain parts of New Jersey"--that one really went over in Prince- ton, let me tell you--funny. I mean, sure there's all these non-religious aspects to his movies, but without 2000 years of Christian dominance, how could Woody Allen have been such a Jewish nebbish?? Well, huh? Could he have made Jewish delicatessen jokes so, uh, ryely? (Did Woody, in fact, make any rye Jewish deli jokes? I don't remember. I do remember the one in "Love and Death" where he makes fun of Dostoevsky and the wheat fields, but that's not the same thing.) Yes, folks, this is terrible. Does anyone know if Woody spent any govern- ment monies in making his films? If so, this looks like it could be a serious violation of the "wall" the first amendment puts between Church and State in this country. But this shame and scandal need not be ours alone. Any Brits out there want to comment on the religious significance of Monty Python? Why, I don't even know if Mo'Py' is C of E or not. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 They can all go to hell. Of course, some should go before others. One has a responsibility to make discriminations. --Simon Lacerous