Fah who foraze (fa-la-la-la-la)

This is one of those things you don't wonder about, until one day you do. Just what are the Whos down in Whoville singing at the end of the show? All that baw-hoo-bor-ray stuff?

I guess I had it wrong, because I never heard any "fahs" in it, nor did I hear "doraze". But these are Seussian lyrics, and there is a sort of weird beauty to them. They almost make sense, they almost say something.

They seem to summon, to gather, to announce in an inspired sort of way: come unto me, fah who foraze! Dah who doraze! Fah (la-la-la-la) who forage, dah (dah-dah-dah, a made-up melody without words) who doraze: and what a beautiful topaz of a non-word this is, as it has both "adore" and "gaze" in it, a real star of Bethlehem feeling.

While they sound like innocent childish syllables of what is supposed to be gibberish, they also come close to Latin: the tune is hymnal and bell-like and even fervent in its joy, almost a chant. "Fah who rahmus/Dah who dahmus" is an exhortation, an "all ye who" feeling, a "we who gather" to "dah dah dahmus". It's a strange Seussian scat-song full of meaningless meaning.

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome Christmas, come this way!

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome Christmas, Christmas Day!

Welcome, welcome! Fah who rahmus!

Welcome, welcome! Dah who dahmus!

Christmas Day is in our grasp

So long as we have hands to clasp!

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome Christmas! Bring your cheer!

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome all who's far and near!

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome Christmas, come this way!

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome Christmas, Christmas Day!

Welcome, Christmas! Fah who rahmus!

Welcome, Christmas! Dah who dahmus!

Christmas Day will always be

Just as long as we have we!

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome Christmas! Bring your cheer!

Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Welcome all who's far and near!

Hitler's dog

If Hitler's dog could speak,

I think it would say everything.

Her body pressed into the snow

ears laid back in fear

shrinking from the Master's touch

the fatal caress.

Her name was Blondie,

she was his favorite,

and he killed her later on,

testing out the lethal properties

of cyanide.

If Hitler's girls could speak

I think it would say everything.

The fixed and fevered eyes

The crazy tilt of a pillbox hat

So stylish in the spring

and yes, a wave

a wave could say anything

not hello or welcome 

but a gesture of contempt

you may worship the supreme gift

of my presence

(you are fortunate I spare you

it could change at any minute)

I do not know what gave rise to this, the

 It's All Lies theory, when you see such as this.

And these were the chosen, the Aryan adored!

Slung around by the feet.

Babies by the pound. By the ton.

Enough to last a thousand years.

And ah the symmetry, the perfection, a sort of magic

the honest appreciation of conformity

the glory of it

the absolute assurance of its rightness and beauty

for if no one sticks out

we are all the same 

we move in unison

our hearts beat in unison

we think in unison

we are One.

and all the sweet tots 

in their kindergarten wagon

courtesy of Uncle Adolf

the Alpine innocence of tumbling colorful children

the short pants the innocent eyes

did no one doubt

did no one

how does the world know

even now

who this is

ugly little man, bad teeth

no charm

harsh roaring voice

no charm at all

"and yet, we were hypnotized"

The youth were told again and again

that the world belonged to them

or would

if they conformed

if the will was beaten out of them

or just removed

vacated 

so that ideology could be installed

into an empty vessel

but this was before

they had guns in their hands 

and were told to go save Germany

Happy little prance

bizarre Hitler dance

Goering looking on in embarrassment

for all this will reach the people

some day

like his cowering dog

who dares not disobey

his Blondie whom he kills

like Eva whom he marries

in a suicide pact,

a unique kind of reception.

The world squeaked through

by the skin of its teeth

but only with the forces of the world

to bring it down

and many say now

we got it all wrong, he was misunderstood

and none of it happened, it was all posed

These are not real babies, they are animated dolls

the skeletal inmates are dummies

it's all a plot

we won't look at this evil

so don't look, don't look

(we won't look)

and then 

again we won't look

Goebbels' Diary, 30 May 1942: " He [Hitler] has bought himself a young German Shepherd dog called “Blondi” which is the apple of his eye. It was touching listening to him say that he enjoyed walking with this dog so much, because only with it could he be sure that [his companion] would not start talking about the war or politics. One notices time and time again that the Fuhrer is slowly but surely becoming lonely. It is very touching to see him play with this young German Shepherd dog. The animal has grown so accustomed to him that it will hardly take a step without him. It is very nice to watch the Fuhrer with his dog. At the moment the dog is the only living thing that is constantly with him. At night it sleeps at the foot of his bed, it is allowed into his sleeping compartment in the special train and enjoys a number of privileges….that no human would ever dare to claim."

It's a Wonderful Life: chicken on a spit!

This thing comes on every year and I get caught up in it, even worse than Taxi Driver. And I forget every year that it's the longest, most suffocating piece of drama ever created. A festive favorite about a man who wants to commit suicide because his life has been an exercise in futility and failed dreams, capped off by a totally unfair charge of bank fraud.

Ah! It's a Wonderful Life. Ringling, tingling Christmas trees, Zoo-zoo's petals, bleeding lips, newel-post knobs nearly hurled across the room. Chickens on a spit, bar brawls on Christmas Eve, irrelevant songs about Buffalo Gals, and wild-eyed overacting all around.

Dis guy, see, he's like, um. Kind of disillusioned, like, cuz. His Uncle Billy, who's half nuts but was the father in Gone with the Wind so sort-of famous, has lost the eight thousand dollars that the Bailey Savings and Loan has earned in the past fifty years or so. He sort of dropped it somewhere and the Big Fat Man, the Bad Man, Lionel Barrymore in his most Grinchimous role, went and spent it on a hooker or something.

So da guy, this George, he decides he's worth more dead than alive (do I hear silver bells?), and stands there not jumping off a bridge. Then this old guy in a nightgown jumps off the bridge, and. . . the rest is history.

Oh, I shouldn't be so cynical, but this thing - this long thing, this three-hour marathon of hopelessness and small-town suffocation - it's about the farthest thing from festive you could imagine. Even Scrooge has glimmers of hope in it, but this - . George acts like some sortofa downtrodden saint for two hours and forty-nine minutes, then he kind of explodes and screams at his wife and family and tells them he basically hates them for holding him back and completely destroying his life.

His . . . wonderful life.

OK, I have a few problems with the logistics of this thing. When they get married and have to give all their money away to save the bank, Donna Reed gets chickens going on a spit in this old ruin of a house, the one they use-da throw stones at for luck. And they move in to it? make it habitable? On his salary of $2.70 a week or whatever-the-frick-it-is? Raise a family? George wears the same suit for 17 years, for God's sake.

Jimmy Stewart overacts. I'm sorry, but he does, he overshoots. He smears his facial features around with his hand, his hair is wild, he looks like a candidate for the psych ward, and finally he mumbles to his hokey old guardian angel (the guy in the funny shirt that ties up in front because buttons hadn't been invented in the year 1300) that he wishes he'd never been born at all.

Kind of the ultimate in nihilism, wouldn't you say? Jimmy Stewart, the guy with the 6-foot imaginary pet rabbit, the guy in whatever-else-he-was-in, all those Westerns and Mr. Smith and whatever, attempting to annihilate all traces of his existence on earth. A holiday special?OK, another big problem. He has this obnoxious friend named Sam Wainwright who keeps saying, inexplicably, "hee-haw". A dumb-ass par excellence, he lucks into a strange new business just before the war breaks out:  plastics. This assures he'll be obscenely wealthy doing no work at all.

He's George's best friend, for blippin' sake, and George is all stressed out and wanting to kill himself over 8 thousand dollars when 8 thousand dollars isn't even POCKET CHANGE for Sam Wainwright. In the dramatic ending when everyone turns their linty little pockets inside-out for George, he gets some kind-of-a cable from Wainwright saying, in so many words, "your measly little problem that you were willing to die over is peanuts to me. I'll give you three times that amount and change. There, feel better now?"

I doubt if he would. But think about it. Would Wainwright ever let George be dragged off to jail for such a shabby little amount? Money is power, right? Wainwright could make Old Man Potter dance like a jerky little marionette on a cold winter's night, and George is all stressed out about jail? (I liked his idea that Uncle Billy should go, instead. Made sense to me.)

But hey. He might get conjugal visits from that, who's that little floozie anyway? Jeez, what's she doing in this thing? Spozed to be a family show?

Oh, oh, and I just thought of this: it gets me every year. Why is it that after George yells at Uncle Billy that he's a mental defective, a moron and a lunatic, a squirrel jumps up on his arm? What the - ?? a squirrel? Up to now we've only seen ravens, tortoises, cows, etc. Could this be a foreshadowing of the squirrel from hell in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? (Actually, it screams of "cut the animal scenes, this thing is running too long." But for some reason they left in the squirrel.)

This time around (when as usual I kept saying, "OK, I'll turn it off in another 5 minutes" for 6 consecutive hours), I noticed a few other discrepancies, such as George's mother (Beulah Bondi) bawling and dabbing at her eyes during the final cash-spilling orgy in George's living room. Well, about ten minutes ago when George was on the phone with his brother Harry in Washington, where he just got the Congressional Medal of Honor for filing his nails or something, George repeats to the listening crowd, "Mother had lunch with the President's wife."

Not only do the writers of this thing obviously not know who the President was then, but Mother must be able to teleport herself from Washington to Bedford Falls in a matter of seconds! Hey, lady, tell me how you can be in two places at the same time and I'll buy the patent.

But I gots-ta confess to one thing. No matter how I prepare myself for it, no matter how cynical I try to feel, no matter how cornball I know it will be (and it is), that final scene has me bawling every time. Just bawling. I don't know what it is. The generosity of the people. The look of astonishment on George's face. Zoo-zoo. Beulah Bondi, beamed down from the planet Zargon.

I remember a superb SCTV satire of this scene, in which a succession of ever-more-notable people kept sweeping through the door, from George's brother to the President of the United States to, finally, His Holiness the Pope. It's a potent fantasy, all right - one we wish would come true for ourselves. That one day, in spite of futile sacrifice and grinding toil and zero recognition, something wonderful will happen to make us see that it has all been worthwhile.

This has something to do with the American work ethic, always handing the glory to someone else like that ratfink brother-who-got-the-Congressional-Medal-of-Honor-while-we-got-stuck-with-goddamn-rubber-drives-during-the-freaking-war. Let's face it, there are more Georges than Harries in the world. We all have our lunatic uncles, our goddamn rubber drives. Our eight thousand dollars.

And if George hadn't-a saved Harry when he slid down on that slippery old thingammy on the ice, why then -

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My garden's full of snails!

My Garden by T. E. Brown

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Fern'd grot --

The veriest school

Of peace; and yet the fool

Contends that God is not --

Not God! in Gardens! when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I have a sign;

'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

My Garden by J. A. Lindon

A garden is a lovesome thing? What rot!

Weed plot,

Scum pool,

Old pot,

Snail-shiny stool

In pieces; yet the fool

Contends that snails are not -

Not snails!  in gardens!  when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I see their trails!

'Tis very sure my garden’s full of snails!

Julia Roberts eats like a giraffe

I'm just sayin'.

Mad Squirrels: the true meaning of Christmas

This time of year, God. If I'm not all sparkly and euphoric, I'm rehashing, in detail, every embarrassing thing I've ever said or done, every moment of ignorance or awkwardness, every hurt, every humiliation, or else just contemplating the uselessness of life in general. Great stuff. Very festive.

So I decided to make some Blingees.

Harold blings up surprisingly well, especially if you leave the black-and-white foreground alone and concentrate on background. Stille nacht, heilige nacht.

I like the idea of a Christmas squirrel because squirrels already look so stunned. When they're not frozen to the bark of a tree, eyes staring in bulging unintelligence, they're flapping their fat little tails wildly up and down for no good reason, or doing that blood-curdling "chattering" which is more like a nasty shriek of rage. A good subject for a Christmas Blingee.

He doesn't stand a squirrel's chance in hell.

I already like this picture well enough without blinging it up. This time of year, I miss cats around the house, especially OUR cat, who was around the house for 17 years. Funny how things turn backwards. They shouldn't, but they do. The savage way he bites the string of beads, the frightening unsheathed claws. . . festive.

I wish I could enlarge this, originally a Facebook cover, one of five thousand or so I've made in a pathetic attempt to get someone to pay attention to my third failed novel. Noel!

(P. S. A friend pointed out to me how this resembles the gifs I made of They Saved Hitler's Brain. Only it's a little more. . . festive.)

The only gifts that I could want are you

The real tragedy of the Sydney Siege

Seriously. I am not making this up. This is the decline and fall of civilization as we know it.

Sydney siege casts pall over Christmas shopping

December 15, 2014 - 4:33PM

Sue Mitchell and Carolyn Cummins

Police have sealed off part of the Sydney CBD. Photo: Getty Images

Martin Place siege: Live updates
Dollar brushes fresh lows as Sydney siege unfolds
Business disruption as thousands of office workers evacuated or locked down

Retailers fear the siege in Sydney could further dampen already subdued consumer sentiment in the countdown to Christmas.

"I don't want to be prophet of doom and gloom but you do worry about how this could affect spending," Australian Retailers Association chief executive Russell Zimmerman said.

While major retailers such as Myer and Woolworths said their stores in Sydney's CBD were trading as normal, David Jones closed the doors of its flagship Elizabeth Street store - which is less than two blocks from the besieged Lindt cafe - and customers and staff left the building.

Many specialty retailers in the area around Martin Place were also forced to close and consumers have been prevented from accessing the centre of the city.

"For Sydney city retailers it's going to be a huge drain on cash flow and a huge issue for them," Mr Zimmerman said.

"In the short term people will question whether they go into the city to do their shopping," he said.

"You could also get people questioning whether to shop where there are major crowds. They're going to miss out on a lot of business - this is the time you want people to get out and spend money." (Italics mine.)

The siege is likely to further dampen consumer sentiment, which has fallen this month to the lowest level in more than three years.

Many retailers are already under pressure and have been forced to step up the frequency and depth of discounting.

The Australian National Retailers had forecast that consumers would spend a record $8.3 billion nationally this week but those forecasts could now be in doubt.

"One would hope consumers would look at this and say it's a once only event and its not going to happen again," Mr Zimmerman said. (Oh?)

"I suspect that retailers will need to reassess various aspects of their business moving forward, such as security," he said. (But if it ain't going to move merchandise, forget about it. Hostage-taking happens.)

About 100 stores in Westfield Sydney in Pitt Street Mall were closed, and other main shopping centres in the CBD were empty of people.

Priceline Pharmacy chief executive Stephen Roche said its stores in Westfield Sydney and Pitt Street were closed to allow staff to leave the city.

The seige in the Lindt Chocolat Cafe comes with only a week to go before Christmas, which is the time when retailers make a significant amount of their yearly turnover. (Do you seriously think the hostage-takers are too stupid to know about this?)

Westfield said tenants in its Pitt Street shopping centre were given the option to close and send staff home.

A store operator in the shopping centre confirmed most of the shops had closed, while Martin Place jewellers Tiffany & Co and Fairfax & Roberts also shut and sent staff home.

Global cosmetics chain Sephora was one of the retailers to close for safety reasons. Its first Australian store in Pitt Street opened less than two weeks ago.

Stockland and AMP Capital also told retailers in the city malls and arcades they could close for the day.

"Our advice to all centre managers remains the same: to maintain high awareness and vigilance," a Stockland spokesman said.

With the recent bad weather in Sydney and job-security concerns, retailers had already been feeling the pressure of weak consumer sentiment.

Many shops have been quietly discounting before the traditional post-Christmas sales officially start to entice shoppers.

The retailers say they had been predicting a busy season, but the poor weather along the eastern seaboard had hit them, and they expect the latest round of discounting to continue well into the new year.

It's great to know that at this festive time of year, the malignant spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well. After all, commerce should always trump safety, shouldn't it? It won't happen again, will it? Well, maybe not here, and maybe not now. So get out there and go shopping, you ignorant people! Don't ruin our holiday profit margin with your ridiculous concerns about survival. Surely buying perfume and ties and chocolate is more important than making sure your kids are OK. Or at least, it should be. Don't you know "values" refers to sale prices and not some lame attempt at a moral compass?

I'd say this would all come home to haunt them, but it probably won't. Increasingly, I see a numbing of compassion and concern in the human race that is the real villain in a dehumanized, hostage-oriented world. This is the thing that will finish us, and a lot sooner than we realize.