On resolutions, and my newest one.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. That’s not to say I won’t resolve things around the New Year.

Years ago I stopped doing New Year’s resolutions. Not because I consider myself perfect, and those of you who like to kick people off pedestals will easily remind me I’m not. No; it was part of an overall package of self-reform I underwent years ago. I didn’t even come to it over New Year’s. I resolved to do several things: To stop gift-giving only for Christmas and birthdays; to stop tithing an exact 10 percent, down to the penny, to my church, but to give generously; and to make resolutions as needed, and not just at the beginning of the year or month.

Hey, if you need to quit huffing paint, do you wait for the New Year? No; it might be February, and you only have five brain cells left before your IQ drops to the point that you’ll soil yourself every time the phone rings. So you put down that spray-can now. And the same goes for any resolution: If it needs to be done, don’t put it off. Don’t procrastinate till the New Year.

And its corollary: If it doesn’t need to be done, don’t obligate yourself to do it simply because it is the New Year and everyone around you is asking what your resolutions are.

Speaking of which, people are asking me, naturally, what my resolutions are. I’m successfully resisting the temptation to say, “I’ve resolved to have you murdered and your body never found.” After all, the cops would suspect me first. But seriously: I just tell ’em I make resolutions as necessary, and not for New Year’s. If the Holy Spirit convicts me to change, I have no business putting him off till it’s convenient for me to do it. And I’m not going to arbitrarily change things simply because I have to change the calendar.

That said, I do have a new resolution, which I started last week. It’s ridiculously minor, but to some folks it’s actually ridiculously major, which is what triggered it.

I’ve resolved to capitalize less.

I told you it was ridiculously minor.

On being hard to shop for, and why I’m not.

I’m easy to shop for. Here’s why you don’t believe me.

Some years ago I was told, “You’re hard to shop for.” Which is baloney. I am easy to shop for. Just get me coffee.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love coffee. (They don’t always know I love tea, and that I actually drink as much tea as coffee. They always assume my big giant travel mugs contain coffee, ’cause there’s no tea-bag string dangling from the side. You’re supposed to remove the bag, people.) They know I like to hang out at Starbucks™, not for the ambiance but so that I can overdo it on the free refills. They know I don’t just drink it black; though I tend to drink it black, I also drink it with cream, with flavoring, as espresso, as a latté, iced, whatever. They know I drink dark roasts and light roasts, medium roasts and espresso roasts. They know I drink decaf after noon. They know I don’t have a favorite; that coffee is the favorite.

Knowing all this, somehow they can’t figure out that I would really like coffee for Christmas.

On bigotry.

Hatred is not the only fruit of bigotry. Apathy and contempt are the more common ones.

Bigotry, pure and simple, is the assumption that you are better than someone else. Not because you’ve earned that position; it’s because you just are. You were born better, raised better, went to a better school, have more money, or have age and wisdom over others. (Or the advantages of youth.) You live in the greatest country in the world, or practice the best religion in the world, or follow the best ideology. Or you have the best parents in the world, or the noblest ancestors, or you have the purest genes.

In some cases it’s because you believe you did earn it: You have your wealth because you worked for it, or you have your social connections because you made the time to develop them—and others don’t because they’re deficient. So you made yourself better.

Of course, it’s not too big a leap to the assumption that you made yourself better because you’re innately better. That’s the subtle nature of Objectivist bigotry.

In any event, bigotry is the antithesis of Christianity. The scriptures teach that we are not the best, but the worst, because we were born slaves to sin, and have embraced that destiny. But God flipped that around by graciously providing a way out—if we humbly recognize that we are the problem, and he is the solution. We are wrong; Jesus is right.

Well, often we Christians assume that because God is the solution, we’re not the problem anymore. Which is why 80 percent of our nation thinks themselves Christian, but those who act it are few and far between. (And I’ll admit right now that I suck at acting it.) A whole lot of us are, contrary to what our religion stands for, bigoted.

When Black Friday comes.

“Black Friday” from Steely Dan’s “Two Against Nature” concert. The only good Black Friday out there.

Today is “Black Friday,” which in the States is the day after Thanksgiving, widely reported as the biggest shopping day of the year. It’s not really. That’d be the Monday after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is when half of America, groggy from having overeaten the day before, spends the day lounging and eating leftovers—no longer obligated to cook all that food.

The other half is either in the merchandising business and is obligated to work; or consumers who decide they actually want to brave the crowds and contribute to the madness.

Hence the name “Black Friday.”

Defective Mr. Squish products.

In which Leonard gets in trouble for selling crap.
(Mr. Squish, CSU Sacramento Hornet, March 1991.)

This is the first appearance of the glass-filled Mr. Squish plush toy. I actually wanted to manufacture them, you know: Cheap fuzzy dolls that would make a tinkling sound whenever you moved them, because they were stuffed with a combination of ceiling insulation and shards of safety glass from busted windshields. (I drew the glass a lot more jagged in panel 3.) I didn’t just want to joke about Mr. Squish merchandising being made from inferior product. I wanted to take the joke further, deliberately make inferior product, and have people buy it anyway, enjoying the irony of it all.

Social media, October 2011.

SATURDAY, 1 OCTOBER.

Ah, Cracked. Sometimes they get it exactly right… despite their sophomoric fixation with naughty words. “4 Idiots Who Show Up Wherever Religion Is Discussed Online,” 1 October 2011.

SUNDAY, 2 OCTOBER.

Had Jesus given us nothing but teachings—no miracles nor resurrection—would we skip reading the Gospels like we skip reading the Prophets?

TUESDAY, 4 OCTOBER.

She. “You like pushing the envelope, don’t you?”
Me. “Envelopes are meant to be ripped open.”

The Have Nots once again yelling at the Haves.

How Occupy Wall Street is like the Chinese democracy movement.

This may sound familiar. But history does tend to repeat itself.

Way back in 1989, a bunch of young Chinese students got fed up with the way things were going in their country and decided to occupy a public place—Tiananmen Square, Beijing—and stage a non-violent public protest. They wanted the powers-that-be to stop hoarding the powers they had. They wanted something more democratic. Their protest lasted about seven weeks, and spread to a few other cities; Shanghai, Wuhan, Xi’an, and so forth. They got the world’s attention.

What triggered it? Deregulation. China was finally moving from a fixed economy to a market economy. Ultimately that was a good thing, but at the time it triggered some upheaval. Since prices were artificially low, suddenly there was an economic recession, high inflation, and job insecurity. College graduates were frustrated that there would be no place for them in the new economy. So they wanted some more say in the way things were run. They wanted democracy.

They didn’t get it.