The Pope gave his annual Christmas Eve Mass homily tonight in which he deplored the commercialization of Christmas which has eclipsed the birth of Jesus Christ. As a non-religious deist observer I agree with the pontiff. Conservatives have been alerting us to a war on Christmas for almost a decade now. Yes, there is a war on Christmas but they have the wrong culprit. It is our commercial culture that has successfully defeated Christmas. Another victory that can be claimed by the marketers is the consumer-driven Valentine’s Day.

I can hear the Faux News hot air balloons and their “war on Christmas” now. “Those radical secular liberals and their war on Christmas!” Alas, Adbusters the folks who have given us Buy Nothing Day and Occupy Everything now seek to have us Occupy Christmas.

The ideas for Occupy Christmas, which Lasn likens to “shenanigans,” include:

— a Santa sit-in, whereby protesters sit outside a store and encourage people to cut up their credit cards;

— a Jesus walk, where people put on a mask in the Holy Son’s likeness and walk through malls, to create an eerie sentiment;

— a “whirly mart,” in which would-be shoppers fill their carts with products but abandon them at the cash register.

I do like the shopping cart abandonment tactic. It reminds me of some of the actions Saul Alinsky outlined in Rules for Radicals.

I’m going to use my Black Friday to go see a documentary at E Street Cinema about the rebirth of the electric car. But while I wait for it to be closer to the time for the arrival of my government funded public transportation bus, I happened to see this tidbit on the current event that is Black Friday.

An angry (and strategic) shopper in Los Angeles pepper sprayed about 20 people trying to get X-Boxes 360 on Thursday night, sending at least one person to the hospital. In North Carolina, a shootout broke out at 2 a.m. outside a mall where shoppers had gathered. Yes—it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Happy Black Friday, everyone!

These people give me hope for humanity (not).

Ever since I left retail hell as a young twenty-something over a decade ago, my anti-consumerist & anti-corporate feelings have only intensified. Every year I shudder in disbelief as throngs of possessed people kick down doors on Black Friday to get at the latest “deals.” In some cases people have been killed as the shoppers trample over their fellow-man like a herd of wild elephants running from a mouse.

This is why I can’t help but agree with people wanting Target to revert back to the 5 am opening on Black Friday instead of making their employees come in at 11 pm on Thanksgiving Day. Personally, I’d rather support Buy Nothing Day and not even take part in Black Friday at all, but nonetheless there’s no reason to open the stores on Thanksgiving.

In our consumerist culture, marketers and retailers fuel the herd. Now don’t get me wrong I love my gadgets and etc. but I’m tired of being told what is the hot item that I absolutely must have. I don’t want to be the one waiting in line for the newest Wii or iPhone. I definitely don’t want to be the person waking up at four am to wait in line for the chance to acquire said device for a low price. If it’s a good product and I have a need or want for it then I’ll consider purchasing it if it’s something I can afford. But I refuse to become obsessed with getting it at all costs.

“In the middle of taking the pictures, she pulls out this cutely wrapped onesie and says, ‘Oh, here’s a free Disney onesie. We’ll just need your email address,’” Gill recalls. “It weirded me out. I just gave birth, please lay off with the Disney already!”

via The Next Great American Consumer: Infants to 3-Year-Olds | Adweek.

This new mother had every right to be concerned about what that photographer was doing. Also, the fact that they want an email address is also concerning.

An advocacy group that accuses Cisco Systems of aiding the Chinese government in monitoring and apprehending members of the banned Falun Gong organization said Friday that it had new evidence to suggest that Cisco specifically tailored its technology for that purpose.

via CorpWatch : CHINA: Group Says It Has New Evidence of Cisco’s Misdeeds in China.

Shame on Cisco.

Black Vagina Wears Afro, Mexican Vagina Says ‘Ay-Yi-Yi’ in Douche Ad
With a product as inherently ridiculous as specialized cooter soap, Summer’s Eve ads are necessarily destined for ridiculousness. But this racially stereotyped vagina hand campaign really steps it up to the next level, awfulness-wise! Good job refusing to rest on your lemony-fresh laurels, Summer’s Eve.

I love pointing out failed marketing when it is so blatant. You would think we could get past things like this as a society.

Oh he loves life as it is—most certainly. I look forward to what it could be.

The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking.

I didn’t ask to be here Mr. Franzen. I was put here. The prospect of pain is too much to bare. This is why I hope for the chance of the singularity to come about so that I won’t be confined to this humanness and all its weaknesses. As far a anesthesia goes I don’t get mine from social media or technology like some would. Maybe it’s from my consumption of information and quest for knowledge? Either way I am able to block things about this world full of flaws and defects.

And yet pain hurts but it doesn’t kill. When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s” is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer.

You think you’re so clever don’t you? To go through life painlessly is to not have lived you say? Tell that to the sufferers of the world. I get your point on consumerism in your piece however. To continue, I should say If I had one “love” as you call it, this would be to make the world better because it is so screwed up. This is why I’m an activist, a liberal and a progressive. I have this real attraction towards fighting against injustice you could say. But even though I may “love” something I still choose anesthesia for life’s other faults.

Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.

Yes, what you say above is the real cause of our anger and pain and despair but I don’t see how or why I would want to embrace that.

The sign is part of a new effort by Sarasota County to sell advertisements at public parks, and is the latest of numerous programs across Florida and the nation to use marketing of government-owned resources to generate new revenue during the recession.

via County selling advertising space in public parks — Commercial Alert.

While I’m generally against corporations marketing to people via advertising on public property I can see why this is happening. The people need services and if this is the way to keep them going then you have to do it for now I guess. Hell, if corporations would advertise on homeless shelters and the result means more beds and services then why not?