A Heathen's Perspective

From politics to media, from music to spiritual matters, and from obscure issues to the latest hot button topics, comes the blabber from a true heathen, without regard to the breaking wind of socially-acceptable attitudes, yet with an almost sacred devotion to humor in the face of today's polarized, shout-down-your-opponents climate of fear and intimidation. Original content is copyright 2001-2006, The Heathen Monk. All rights reserved.

Name:
Location: Austin, Texas, United States

Unless otherwise noted, the content of this Weblog is Copyright 2001-2007, The Heathen Monk. All rights reserved. Some material may have been assigned to The Human Trust, 2004-2007. A Custom Search Engine is now available, and will be updated as time goes by: Kindred Sites Search Engine ~

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Frank Rich Wishes You & Yours the Very Best of Holidaze Wishes!

I knew it, I knew it! I've been keeping my fingers crossed, and sure enough, Frank Rich wrote on OpEd piece for the New York Times, exposing the "myth of the war on Christmas." Not only that, but the excerpt below includes a text link to Michelle Goldberg's piece at www.salon.com. Who could ask for more than that on this, the holiest of days? Now, I ask you ~ WHO?!

Happy reading, as the kidz say...

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(From Frank Rich's column, today)

Secularists, Jews, mainline Protestants and all the other grinches failed utterly to take Kriss Kringle down. Except at those megachurches that canceled services today rather than impede their flocks' giving and gorging, Christmas is alive and well everywhere in America. Last night NBC even rolled the dice and broadcast "It's a Wonderful Life" in prime time. With courage reminiscent of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's defiance of Stalin, the network steadfastly refused to redub the final scene's cries of "Merry Christmas!" with the godless "Happy holidays!"

As Michelle Goldberg wrote last month in her definitive debunking for Salon, there was in fact no war on Christmas, but rather "a burgeoning myth of a war on Christmas." Most of the grievances cited by Christmas's whiniest protectors - red and green banned from residents' wardrobes in Michigan, "Silent Night" censored in Wisconsin - were either anomalous idiocies or suburban legends. The calls for boycotts against chain stores with heathen holiday trees lost their zing when it turned out that even George and Laura Bush's Christmas card had called for a happy "holiday season."

Entire Frank Rich column, "I Saw Jackie Mason Kissing Santa Claus" (requires TimesSelect)

Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved

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Oh, how I hope John Fibson and every talking head at Faux Snewz chokes on their egg nog today!

And a Merry UnChristmas to All You UnChristians

thanx 4 the pic, Val

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Mary Christmas & A Hippie New Ear, Everyone!

I know, I know. Ya got yer basic Pat Robertson, yer Bill O'Really, and yer basic John Fibson at Faux Snewz tellin' us ALL about that nasty "war on Christmas." Did you happen to catch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last week? When he showed O'Really's claim that both Plano, Texas schools and Saginaw, Michigan had banned Christmas colors or some other equally clueless thing? It got so bad in Plano that the superintendent of schools had to call all the parents to let them know Buh-Bill was talkin' out of his hat! And I hear it was Big News in Saginaw! Fake News...kinda like The Daily Show - Now THAT'S! what I call the XXX-Mas Spirit ~

From Nicholas Kristof's OpEd piece today, here's a prime quote from Mr. Bill:

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(I'm tempted to think that Mr. O'Reilly is actually a liberal plant, meant to discredit conservatives. Think about it. Who would be a better plant than a self-righteous bully in the style of Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy? What better way to caricature the right than by having Mr. O'Reilly urge on air that the staff of Air America be imprisoned: "Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the F.B.I. and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything.")

Kristof's "A Challenge for Bill O'Reilly" (Times Select required)

Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved

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So, I'll say it...you can't stop me...hell, here I come, dammit ~ MERRY FREAKIN' CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD GESUNDHEIT!

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Are you like me? Would you enjoy copying and pasting some lovely, warm and unfuzzy pictures from the DrugstoreCowboy's "family album" for yourself and your friends? I'll just betcha you are! So, here's a fine, fine, slow to load, but worth every penny, link to one of my favorite, unappreciated Web Humorists ~ we're talkin' fantabulous fotos here! Click your way to:

The Wizard of Whimsy!

...and hang with the Wizard for a few. Might bring a smile to your face. Seeya in 06!

HMonk

Thursday, December 01, 2005

HMonk: Sites Worth a Visit

Alternative News and Forums
AlterNet
Never Give Up (formerly the AlterNet Forums, now located at CafeUtne.org)^
Air America
KOOP radio, Austin (now streaming audio)
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Democracy Now! (also on LinkTV)^
ACLU TV (Freedom Files)
BuzzFlash.com
Austin Chronicle
Liberation Video^
The Village Voice
CJR Daily^
GOP Hypocrite of the Week (from BuzzFlash)
Velvel's Book Outlines, compiled for the TV program "Books of Our Time"

Bloggers
DailyKos
Texas KAOS
firedoglake^
MediaGirl.org^
Moment of Triumph
Campus Progress
Hullabaloo
BopNews
Smirking Chimp
Boing Boing
Remain Calm
Velvel on National Affairs
Talking Points Memo
World O' Crap
The Free Speech Zone
Media Matters
PERRspectives
TomPaine.com
Whiskey Bar
Jeff Barr's Blog^
Writer's Blog
Talk Nation^
C|Net's Music Blog (featuring John Borland)
The Daily Mac (All things Mac, and a whole lot more)

OpEd Columnists, Decent Online Mainstream Newspapers
The Los Angeles Times^
The Houston Chronicle
The Guardian, UK
The Washington Post
Slate (includes email option to daily stories from top newspapers)
NYTimes Columnists
Recommended - Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Frank Rich:
UPDATE, OCT. 2005 ~ The NYTimes is now charging you for access to their OpEd pages, rather than allowing
registered users a week's access to their articles.
BBC News, International

Blog Directories, Updated Blog Subjects, Entries of Interest
QuackTrack^
BlogCruiser ^
Technorati^
Blogwise
blogs now
Peek: The Blog of Blogs
BlogHub

Online Activism
The Apollo Alliance^
A.C.L.U.
Equal Exchange
STATS (what's behind the numbers, & who screwed with 'em)
True Majority
The Justice Project.org
Progressive Activism in Austin, TX
FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
Campus Progress
BuyBlue.org | Vote With Your Wallet!
National Priorities Project
Center For American Progress
Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS)^
MoveOn.org
act for change (from Working Assets)
BlogPac.org
Veterans Against the Iraq War (VAIW) (direct link to Kevin Benderman's "A Matter of Conscience")
The Apache Shores Warrior (a local citizen watchdog Web site, Travis County, TX)

Non-Profits
Southern Poverty Law Center
Tolerance.org
The Intelligence Report
The Center for Public Integrity
Doctors Without Borders
ReligiousTolerance.Org^
Driftwood Wildlife Association

Streaming audio, live political events
C-Span

Music, PBS, BBC, NPR news and entertainment
KUT FM
CBC.ca
Frontline^
Sundance DocDay
Weekend Edition (link from Oregon PB to both Sat & Sun programs

Online Research
The Internet Archive^
The Center for Constitutional Rights
Columbia School of Journalism (Who Owns What)
Cornell's Legal Information Institute
Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC)

Language, Translation Helpers
Merriam-Webster Online
Michael Quinion's World Wide Words
Language Tools from Google
Babel Fish Translation
Blue Pencil Online

The Blogosphere's Stock Exchange
BlogShares

Stocks to Watch
The Heathen Monk

Tech News
c|net news
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Wired
Red Herring's Tech Business Blog
Broadcasting & Cable (has one fine blog, too)

Humor
The Onion
The White House
Daily Show w/Jon Stewart
The Beast
eBaum's World
The Wizard of Whimsy
The Frown
StrangeCosmos

Indie Publishers, Record Labels, Photo Exchanges, etc.
Intervention Magazine: War, Politics, Culture
Chelsea Green Publishing
stock.xchng*
Jaded Bum Music (editorial & link to file-sharing articles, 2003-2005)
Utne Magazine and the forums at Cafe Utne

Web browsers
Firefox (the" firefox.com" domain was granted to Mozilla from Kevin Karpenske)
iCab

Blog News Readers
Atom Enabled

Site Design, Scripts for Bloggers
RSS Validator
Motet Conferencing Software
Dynamic Drive
The Template Factory

*the "on the rox" pic & hidden link to "Sites Worth a Visit" comes from the stock.xchng collection of xtapis
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(note: Please ignore the posting date of this entry. It's intended simply to ensure that "Sites Worth a Visit" always appears below the list of archives).




Please note and comply with any and all copyright terms and policies you find at each of the Web sites shown above.
Finally, in order to maximize disk space, certain entries are deleted after a suitable amount of time has passed. For example, the American Amnesty International conference held in Austin months ago, and International Women's Day from March of this year, have been deleted. This in no way detracts from the blog owner's support for either group or annual celebration.

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