Dear Great Aunt Whoever,

Please don’t buy me this for next Christmas.

So, another Christmas has come and gone.  The hustle and bustle is over, and there’s nothing to do now but wait until New Year’s Eve.

Today is now Boxing Day, a day for sitting around bored, returning gifts, and maybe something about giving gifts to those less fortunate than you.

Well, in case you were wondering (and you weren’t), here’s the presents that I got for Christmas:

Two “Pearls Before Swine” books:  The Sopratos and Pearls Sells Out, both by Stephan Pastis.

The Book of Useless Information, The Ultimate Book of Useless Information, and The Best Book of Useless Information Ever, all by the Useless Information Society.

The newest Alex Rider book, Crocodile Tears, by Anthony Horowitz.

For my stocking stuffer I recieved the Encyclopedia Britannica Student and Home Edition CD for my laptop.

Oh…and two “Bloom County” books: Happy Trails! and Bloom County The Complete Library Volume One: 1980–1982 both by Berkeley Breathed.

Now, I was too polite to say it to everybody when I opened these two specific presents, but I think it’s about time that everybody out there know this one simple fact:

I hate “Bloom County”.

As well as any of the follow up series done by its creator.

I know it probably should’ve been wiser to inform my family that one Christmas about maybe two years ago when I recieved Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best, but I didn’t.  Because I was much too polite to inform them that a better gift would’ve been the assurance that I wouldn’t get anything relating to Opus the Penguin.

I still am.  That’s the reason that I’m blogging about it here instead of saying it to their faces in hopes that maybe two months from now they’ll see it and won’t think too ill of me for saying it this soon after I recieved it.

What’s the reason I dislike it so much?

Well, anyone who’s seen this blog before should know that I lean politically right.  “Bloom County”, however, leans so far politically left that it fell over (In fact, in Happy Trails! one of the characters actually state “Maybe it’s time we reconsider Communism.”  It’s on page 24 for those who think I’m making that up.)

Sure, “Pearls Before Swine” leans left as well, but it doesn’t make nearly as many political jabs in an entire year as “Bloom County” does in the average month.

I’ve put up with so much left-wing propoganda from comics, television shows, and an entire series of teachers I’ve had through High School, that I actually feel like the Secret Police is going to burst through my door and drag me away to Siberia for writing what I do on this page.  I don’t need anymore, thank you very much.

So, for future reference, no, I don’t care if “Opus” is still currently running in the newspaper, even though you may feel an unsatisfiable urge to show me this, even though I know, and the particular comic that was running that day made me want to use it to catch my vomit (based on a true story.  The part about me being shown the comic, not the vomit part.)

In conclusion, if you can’t decide between new socks or a “Bloom County” book to give me as a gift, please give me the socks.  At least I won’t have to set them on fire to keep my feet warm.

Arrrgh.

So, Saturday Mom put in Amadeus, or whatever it’s called, the movie where Mozart dies, into the DVD player.  She had been reading books about Salieri and/or Mozart, and she felt she had to watch the movie.  Now, I had never seen this movie before, but Mom did tell me something about it.  She told me how the movie portrayed Salieri as being a once-famous composer who was quickly fading from the public eye when Mozart came about, and became so jealous that he Rejected God, and claimed that he and God were now enemies.

In reality, however, Salieri didn’t really think about Mozart much, because his fame was never jeopordized by Mozart until he was nearly dead.  Mozart actually didn’t become the famous composer he is today until he died.  Futhermore, Salieri never turned his back on God, and actually became more religious the older he became.

When I first heard of the inaccuracy of this movie, it generated nothing more than a simple roll of my eyes.  You see, I assumed that the movie portrayed Salieri as being sort of the villain, and the whole rejecting God bit would be sort of a subplot.

Well…As I mentioned before, she put the movie in Saturday.  She had audio commentary on, so I didn’t hear much, but she also had the subtitles to the movie on, as well (No, nobody in this family is deaf, we just like to have the subtitles on because Baby has a tendency to talk over the movie.  We don’t even think about it anymore, really.) so I did get to catch the basic plot.

See the above title.  It will tell you exactly how I feel about it.

As it turns out, Salieri is actually portrayed as the very sympathetic tragic hero throughout the movie.  Plus, far from being a subplot, the rejecting God bit turns out to be the main plot of the entire movie.  The story is told by Salieri to a priest, whom he constantly mocks throughout the entire tale for believing in a merciful God.  The priest appears to not be able to come up with an answer to any of Salieri’s questions about God’s motives, and seems to be questioning his own faith by the end of the movie.  Salieri’s perspective is never refuted throughout the entire movie.

I used to think that the decision to portray Salieri as a blasphemer was simply a stupid way of adding drama to the story.  Now, after seeing it, I can hardly stand to have this trash in the house.  This is perhaps the most anti-Christian movie I have ever seen in my entire life.  And I’ve seen V for Vendetta.

Not only that, but the story is based entirely on lies.  Not half-truths, not historical innaccuracies, lies.

So, that had me pretty upset.  Then I overheard Chao and Gameboy talking about how the obviously complex CGI in the 2007 Transformers movie was still beaten out by what’s generally regarded as fake polar bears in The Golden Compass.  I realize that it’s incredibly old news, but I had never heard it before, as I didn’t follow the Oscars, Golden Globes, and whatever other stupid “we know more about movies than the general public” awards they have.

Anyway, my first thougt was WHY THE @#$%ING HELL DID THEY DO THAT?!  Of course, there’s only one answer: they enjoyed Christianity being portrayed as the ultimate evil.  Of course, when four Muslim extremists fly planes into various inhabited public areas, we have to do our best to not hate Muslims, and realize that they were extremists.  However, Christians are obviously all villains for not supporting homosexuality, abortion, etc.

So, now I was downright pissed.

That night, when I was praying to God, I honestly considered praying for the end of the world.  I had never, ever thougt about doing that before.  I was actually scaring myself.

So, I’m here to tell you hate evil and injustice.  But don’t hate people.