Politically Correct Holiday Stories by James Finn Garner

Title:  Politically Correct Holiday Stories For an Enlightened Yuletide Season

Author:  James Finn Garner

Hardcover:  99 pages

Published: 1995

ISBN:  0028604202

Twas the night before solstice and all through the co-op
Not a creature was messing the calm status quo up.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
Dreaming of lentils and warm whole-grain breads.

We’d welcomed the winter that day after school
By dancing and drumming and burning the Yule,

A more meaningful gesture to honor the planet
Than buying more trinkets for Mom and Aunt Janet,

Or choosing a tree just to murder and stump it
And dress it all up like a seasonal strumpet.

My lifemate and I, having turned down the heat,
Slipped under the covers for a well-deserved sleep,

When from out on the lawn there came such a roar
I fell from my futon and rolled to the floor.

I crawled to the window and pulled back the latch,
And muttered, “Aw, where is the Neighborhood Watch?”

I saw there below through the murk of the night
A sleigh and eight reindeer of nonstandard height.

At the reins of the sleigh sat a mean-hearted knave
Who treated each deer like his persunal slave

I’d seen him before in some ads for car loans,
Plus fast food and soft drinks and cellular phones.

He must have cashed in from his mercantile chores,
Since self-satisfaction just oozed from his pores.

-“Twas the Night Before Solstice”, Politically Correct Holiday Stories by James Finn Garner, pages 1-2

I first came across James Finn Garner’s schtick of running long-standing and beloved stories of western culture through the PC sanitizer in high school when I read his Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.  What made that first book so funny was that it was original and pointed out the ridiculousness of the then small voice of the PC police.  Oh, if only we knew then how that voice would grow and become the bully it is today!

In this holiday version of the original book, Garner revisits our favorite Christmas stories, some with more success than others.  The first is a modernized and sanitized version of Clement Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, and the best offering in the whole book.  The narrator of the story (a man or woman, we never really know.. though, it sounds like a shrill hippy-feminazi) argues with the Santa about everything from Christmas trees to Barbie dolls and toy guns.  Ultimately, Santa capitulates and exits, leaving this admonishment:

“I pity the kids who grow up around here,
Who’re never permitted to be of good cheer,

“Who aren’t allowed leisure for leisure’s own sake,
But must fret every minute -it makes my heart break!”

-pages 8-9

And in place of the traditional “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” this Santa calls out as he flies off, “Happy Christmas to all, but get over yourselves!”

This particular section of the book is, in my opinion, the only part of the book worth reading.  It’s clever and pulls into focus exactly what is at stake with the PC craziness and who suffers the most.  Children are more and more being forced to worry about what they say and how it might be received.  They are forced at ever earlier ages to consider how their words and actions might be taken out of context.  From the kindergartener who was expelled for sexual harassment because he kissed his classmate on the cheek, to Maggie’s own classmates (fifth graders) calling her a racist because she likes asian things (HELLO? she’s asian!) or labeling another classmate as a racist because someone said she is one.  It’s become the new bad-name to call each other whether it is true or not, and whether they even understand what it means.  It’s the “Your mother wears army boots!” of the next generation.

Other stories included in this book:

Frosty the Persun of Snow – Frosty, a gender non-specific persun of snow, organizes a march to D.C. with the goal of making congress enact changes to end global warning.  Unfortunately, an army of snowmen showing up on Capitol Hill tends to draw the media’s attention, and where the media goes, so do those pesky hot lights.

The Nutcracker – Clara organizes committees to talk to the mice and get them to come to an agreement instead of fighting, then refuses the Nutcracker’s invitation to visit his kingdom, calling it a tactic to portray womyn as “docile, helpless and easily manipulated with identities and backgrounds of lesser importance” than that of males, and that they perpetuate their abduction fantasy.  Yeah… political correctness and communism just sucks the fun out of our holiday stories.

Rudolph the Nasally Empowered Reindeer – Basically, Rudolph is a bitter, angry loner who takes the opportunity of Santa’s need for his glowing nose to rape the jolly old elf into concessions that ultimately leave his fellow reindeer unhappy and then he leaves them to organize his Laplander cousins.

A Christmas Carol – All I can say about this one is that Dickens’ original story of keeping the spirit of the season in your heart all year round has been redone, revisited, and remixed so many times that, unless you can really knock it out of the park, another version of it just becomes white noise.  Garner’s attempt is mediocre at best, and portrays Cratchit as a impotent subversive, Fred as a milksop without any sense of self, and Tiny Tim… oh, excuse me, Diminutive Timón as an opportunist. 

Overall, Politically Correct Holiday Stories by James Finn Garner was just meh.  I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Here’s a clip of my favorite PC Christmas Story 🙂

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Viral Video Wednesday ~ What’s Ur Sub?

Happy Wednesday Everybody 😀 Today’s VVW is all about the subs.

I’m not talking about “What’s long, hard and full of seaman?” I mean subscriptions. To what YouTube channels do you subscribe? What videos made you subscribe to them? What’s their current video?

Here are mine:

asathecomic has a strange, but hilarious sense of humor. He’s easy on the eyes, I might add. Often his videos are social commentary, but he can also sing.

The first Asa video I watched and the one that got me to sub his channel is “7 Youtube ‘Don’ts!’ – STOP IT!!!!!!!!” It’s probably the video that introduced me to the idea of viral videos in the first place. If you like VVW, thank Asa… if ya don’t… 😀

His current featured video is “We Make YouTube – [Eminem – We Made You SPOOF]” which oddly kind of calls back to the previously video. He does a lot of other stuff too, I promise.. lol. While writing this, Asa made a new vid Dragonball Evolution Sucks?!? (FAN REVIEW), but I didnt’ feel like rewriting this.

Cory “Mr. Safety” Williams, owner of smpfilms channel, looks like Sylar from Heroes, I swear! I have featured his videos on past VVWs, including the first video I saw, Mean Kitty, and the Numa Numa parody. I’m not sure if I subbed for the Mean Kitty music video, or if it was one of the “how to deal with Sparta” vids, so I’ll share the one with the Witch Doctor, because it cracks ME UP!

The channel’s feature vid is called “What Goes Up…” and Cory gives the following description for it:

If you’re not of a fan of my “artsy” videos, don’t worry… I’ve got a dumb one coming right up! Tony and I had fun with this video and we hope you do too : )

Of course, there is FRED. Fred, the eternally four-year-old boy with an alcoholic mother, enprisoned father, and a C-Span watching grandma, who has a crush on Judy (she hates him) and a problem with a bullly named Kevin. Fred has an anger problem and a YouTube stalker, he takes medication, ran for class president, ran from Kevin, sleeps with the cat with rabies and thinks the neighbor’s pekingese dogs are squirrels. I love FRED! He was also recently on i-Carly, where we got to see the real guy behind Fred, or rather… got to hear his real voice.

Fred goes to the Dentist was probably the video that made me subscribe. His voice, his screams, the idea of his mother… lol… I hit the yellow sub button before I even knew it!

Fred’s newest video is a Thank You vid for reaching a million subscribers. BTW, for those who might not know…. Fred is the #1 sub channel of all time 🙂

My first time seeing Tony “The Wine Kone” Huyen was actually with him in a YourTubeNEWS video segmant called the WTF Factor. I laughed so hard, and had to go and look up TWK himself and subscribe.

His featured video is a Q & A with him. Here’s the description:

Do you have a burning question you need answered? Ask away on Twitter or here or wherever. It could be YOU who I call an idiot next!

http://twitter.com/thewinekone

 

Probably, by far the most disturbing channel I subscribed to is Mr. Pregnant’s. I actually have to admit that the following video was one of the very first videos I ever saw on the Internet (I had a long period of time with no ISP in which YouTube and a lot of other things happened). AND I first saw it on Grouper, before I had even heard of YouTube. Apparently, though, due to copyrights on the song, the original video has been pulled from YouTube. It was originally made with the song “Big Girls Don’t Cry”.

Kinda sux now… not even half as funny as the original, but such is life.

I had messed up on the copy/paste and put the same vid as above here, so I went back to grab the right one. But now there doesn’t seem to be a MrPregnant feat vid, so here’s the one that pops up on my YouTube home page for him:

Before I knew he was on YouTube, I was subscribed to Mark Day‘s video blog at MySpace. Mark Day is originally from Scotland and lives in San Francisco. He’s a social commentator with an interestingly twisted view of things. Plus, he’s Scottish… and if it isn’t Scottish, it’s CRAP!

My first experience watching Mark was at some random video site, which made me check him out on MySpace, which then sent me to his YouTube channel to which I subscribed. This is that video WARNING: Video contains adult content:

I messed up putting Mr.Pregnant’s correct current video in this post, putting it over Mark Day’s current feature video. So when I went to grab Mark’s current vid’s code, I found he had a new one up. So here it is. I’ll warn you, though, it does have some offensive material in it.

Red State Update is another of those MySpace-YouTube crossovers. Hailing from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Travis and Johnathon, aka Jackie and Dunlap, are a comedy team providing politcal satire for the masses. Conservative and Republican, they’ve also appeared on CNN during the ’08 campaign offering their YouTube question. Dunlap is a total goof, who opens his mouth and inserts both feet with politically incorrect statements, while Jackie is a grumpy (but loveable) old man who tries to maintain some amount of respect, grunting in between swigs of beer and puffs on his cigarette.

I honestly couldn’t tell you what the first video I saw was. I watch them regularly, though less often of late. So I’ll give you my all-time favorite RSU video. Last year, Dunlap was promoting Jackie Broyles for President, to which Jackie vehemently denied his candidacy. His refusals did NOT stop Dunlap, however, and the following is one of those campaign vids. I actually have this video memorized…

Their current featured video is a bit strange for them…. Dunno if I like it very much, but it’s okay… The description says:

Non-actors Billy Bob Thornton and Joaquin Phoenix share laughs, swap stories, and discuss tricks of the trade in this enlightening one-on-one.

I guess I’m sub’d to more channels than that, but I think my kids have done some of the subbing…. lol… I’m thekoolaidmom at YouTube, too, if you wanted to see what all I’m doing there. One of these days I’ll get a cam and make some of my own videos.

So, You’re turn…. What channels do you subscribe to? What video made you click the sub button? What’s your fav of theirs? What’s their current featured video? Leave a comment sharing your vids or, better yet, blog it and leave the link so I can check your VVW out 😀