The Matrix, Society and the Religions that Imprison us All

by Christopher Barr

Morpheus: What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

The Matrix is a visually stunning film about a computer programmer for a large generic software company by day and a computer hacker by night, who is recruited into a group of freedom fighters led by a man named Morpheus.  This computer hacker, who goes by the alias Neo, is told by Morpheus that he is living in a dream world that is controlled by artificially intelligent machines.  Neo naturally resists this absurd tale until it is proven to him. 

Upon waking up on the other side, in the real world, Neo is told further detail as to what the machines want with humans and what happened to civilization in the first place.  Clearly the machines of our creation outsmarted us and in turn, enslaved us to generate enough power to maintain their complex circuitry.

Neo learns that his home wasn’t real and more tragically on a personal level, he wasn’t real, at least the life he led.  Understandably he required time to adjust to the reality of his situation.  Prior to this revelation, Neo just did his own thing, under his own radar and that was his problem, which is why his life wasn’t fulfilling.  Neo was unaware of his servitude to a controlling system and that’s how this film parallels so profoundly with our world and the illusion we all live daily.

The Matrix was a program designed by machines to provide mental stimulus for human bodies connected to these machines as a source of power.  In the film the Matrix, Neo exists in the sixth version of the program, prior to that, there have been multiple versions with flaws in the program much like, but far more complex then, Microsoft’s Windows operating system versions.

Like the machines in The Matrix, our reality is filled with control, transnational corporations and the global banking cartel have bought and paid for their own puppet government, to help push their agenda for global dominance and monetary superiority.  This world that we all share is in a state of irreversible decline because of the greed and power that these corporations hold over this planet.  I would love to say that if we all just pitched in, we might be able to actually reverse this impending calamity, but I’d be lying.  I wish I wasn’t, I wish we could get it all back or start at zero and do it right this time but all the evidence, in every field of hard science and study, point to the extinction of our species.

What do you do with this information?  Especially on that scale, what do we do?  There are groups and grass roots organizations out in the world fighting; they are fighting to take back our planet from those that stole it from us all.  The problem is there are too few fighting and too many switching the channel to the fiction of reality TV or to the fantasy of religion.  There are too many that haven’t the mental faculty to sustain thought long enough, in order to decipher the complex ‘Matrix’ that’s been pulled over their eyes.

We live in a society of fear, a society where hurting someone’s feelings holds more weight than asking why something is the way it is.  We live in a society of pacified consumers that believe that God is looking over them and Jesus is set to return during the rapture.  This line of conformity thought will be the death of us all.  This may seem extreme but again, the evidence is piled high in support of this unfortunate trend.

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

 

Societies function in a number of ways, but arguably one of the most important ways, is the controlling of the populace.  People out of control can cause a society to crumble, so in order to prevent this capitalistic disaster in modern society, governments and corporations must use various levels of mind control and propaganda.

There are a number of potential disarmaments those that rule over society keep in proper check.  Peace can never come to pass, people can never fully get along and the population must be kept sick and ignorant.

Peace is kryptonite for the profitability that fuels the massive military industrial complex.  The world is a business so business must be everlasting.   That’s why people can’t be allowed to ever get along.  In order to continue governmental war programs, there must always be a threat to safety.  People must be kept in a state of fear of loneliness because the fear helps them go along with, dependency, otherwise insane acts of war.  

People that are intellectually and spiritually one with themselves don’t need things to help define their lives.  The person that is awake to the realities of the world, enhances their lives with other people and nature, not with how much designer clothing they own or what brand of cell phone they carry.  So it’s important to governments, corporations and their shareholders that the population is kept fearful and insecure about themselves.  That’s how you sell them things like wars and in the same breath, a juicy genetically modified big mac at McDonalds.

Which comes to, keeping a population sick and ignorant; sick people, physically and mentally have their strength, energy and will sucked out of them.  Smart, educated, healthy groups of people can see the deceit and lies the government passes as laws and freedom.  This world functions as a money and power gathering system for less than one percent of the population.  To continue this form of power over the majority of the people, the use of religious dogma and a law system allows the ruling class to control the world.

It’s a very sick and twisted reality that in most cases doesn’t make any sense because of the obvious question.  Why?  Why do so many people have to suffer and be kept from living a fulfilling life with the benefit of equal opportunity, equal rights and an education to help them on their life’s journey?

It’s quite possible the answer lies in the ego and the narcissism psychologically bound to the human psyche.  This is why it’s important to understand that those truly in power, and I don’t mean the most powerful man in the world, the president of the United States, who’s clearly a powerful avatar or more likely a puppet for the real power, the true elite of the world aren’t sick people.  No more then you and I are sick in the Freudian sense, they just so happened to have been born a Rothschild or a Rockefeller.  They would struggle with similar conflicts toward the internal convoluted workings of the society of the mind.  They have good relationships with people and bad, they have kids and marital problems.

 “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” -  Einstein

English writer and public speaker, David Icke in his lectures says the elite are from secret societies that worship crazy animals and plan world wars.  Although I don’t think this is entirely false I do think turning these people into mythological shadows isn’t a compelling psychological way to understand them.  Neither is suggesting they come from a long blood line of lizard people that cover their skin to appear to look like ordinary people.  This even furthers us away from understanding people with immense power, by turning them into a crazy conspiracy theory, right up there with alien abduction.  The one thing we should take from David Icke is never assuming all that we know is all that there is.

 “Our civilization is founded on the suppression of our instincts.” - Freud

Human beings, no matter what race or intellectual background they come from, are subject to reality perception and not reality itself.  That perception comes with a belief system attached to it, where we believe things about the world.   When we are affected by the physical world our sensory data correlates and deciphers that information in our brains and forms a version of understanding, our own version of what the information means to us and the space outside of us.  So this begs the question, after all this processing is complete, how much of what is real is left?  How do we know what is real if this form of filtering and self-propagandizing lies within us all?

Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

Do we live in a Matrix-type world?  Do we live in a holographic world where illustrations of reality bang off the edge of the universe and reflect back to a time we call present?  What are the dangers of expanding consciousness?  What is outside of subjective human consciousness, and are we just witnesses to the real world or bad interpreters or observers of it, but lack the right to actually participate in it?  These questions are all in The Matrix, and the film leaves many of them open-ended.  They opened the door and hoped the audience would walk through it.

We do live in a Matrix of sorts, we, like the machines, create the world we live in by using the tools we are programmed to use.  They use programming and we use our imagination as our filler.  The properties that create thought appear to have no bias with what’s real and what isn’t.  Its primary concern is self-preservation so if what we believe protects us in some way, then that’s all that biologically matters.

Are we not a species of complicaters, do we not take our understanding of language and imagination to an extreme when we invent reality?  Are we not all inventors and does consciousness fuel this invention?   Consciousness is a memory/experience recalling system with the primary purpose of recalling the past to navigate through the present as part of the bio-systems self-preservation drive.  

“Here we experience the consequence of a doctrine which has been preached from all of the housetops: that the State is the highest goal of humanity and that there are no higher duties for a man than to serve the State. I see in this a regression not to paganism but to stupidity. It may be that a man who sees his highest duty in the service of the State actually knows no higher duties; but there are beyond this, other men and other duties - and one of these duties, which for me, at any rate, is more important than service to the State, calls on one to destroy stupidity in every form, including this particular stupidity.”   -Frederich Nietzsche

What is normal is only normal now, that seems obvious but we all come from a history where the world was flat and sea-monsters controlled the vast oceans.  We lived in a time where God created the world as we know it and ghosts tormented the living during the shadowy dark of night.  But the truth is people made it all up.  This story is ancient and comes from a time when fundamentally we didn’t have all the answers but we had this working brain and imagination.  We didn’t know why we were on this planet or that we were even on a planet for that matter.  We didn’t understand why some people lived for a certain amount of time and then died.  We didn’t understand how some of us contracted diseases and others didn’t, why some of us died at an early age and others flourished.  We didn’t understand what caused weather, why it snowed in some places and not in others, why thunder and lightning crashed down from the cloudy sky, and why tornadoes or hurricanes occurred.

We’ve been living in civilization for the last five thousand years which is roughly 0.2% of our evolutionary history.  That leaves 99.8% when we were hunter and gathers in the wild of nature.  That’s the reality because it’s only been recently in our history that we’ve institutionalized religion as the source of creation.

Culture defines our reality now and it also teaches us but equally divides us.  This is the result of human beings asking a question that makes us uniquely different to other complex organisms on this planet, the question is ‘why?’.  We seek out reasons for why things are, we are constantly probing paranormal phenomena to explain the observable.  It is because of this ability that we’ve been able to advance the species from hunting and gathering, to exploring the nature and vastness of the universe, but it’s also why we are easily led to believe in absolutely absurd notions of reality, and the origins of our species that was so-called precipitated by a grand architect.

We, as a species, are ‘why’ obsessed and that is our gift but it is also our curse.  It’s our gift for those who explore advancements in medicine and for those who dive deeply into the philosophical questions of the nature of reality and the human experience.  That’s what I’d call the ‘progressive why’ and then there is the ‘conservative why’, this why is still screaming and yearning for answers to our collective ‘why’ obsession but it doesn’t have the proper cognitive mapping construct, to use when seeking answers to their questions. This ‘conservative why’ is the true virus on this planet and its eminent destruction.

So what did we do?  Early man formed descriptions of our little place in the world and with our limitations and lacking points of reference; we tried to figure it out, to feel secure in it and to keep our people safe.  We started to talk about it, we tried to understand it, we started to tell each other stories about the world and pass those stories onto our young, in order to protect them from the varying elements that existed in it.  Our stories of the world became the history that we made up and this is where our problem lies today.  We forgot or more likely have been misled about how our factual history originates from storytellers and not from bibles.  This is the true birth of human beings on this planet.  We all still drink the Kool-Aid and take comfort in our old stories of Gods and monsters.

"We have a choice.  We have two options as human beings.  We have a choice between conversation and war.  That's it.  Conversation and violence.  And faith is a conversation stopper."  -Sam Harris

Religion destroys spirituality; I just recently viewed a very disturbing video that took place in the fall 2013.  I will not post it on this site due to its graphic nature, but I sat through it myself in order to be reminded of the extent ignorant people are willing to go to unknowingly protect their ignorance.  The title of the video was called, “Suspected Witches Burned Alive by Christians in Kenya.”  This video took place in a wooded area where about 100 Kenyans gathered around a trench while five or six others, whipped and beat five suspected witches.  They throw brush on them and kept beating them into the trench.  They set the brushes on fire and kept beating these heretics until they couldn’t fight back anymore, falling over into the fire brush and burning to death.

This is morally and rationally inexcusable, but the bible told them to kill heretics, stone them and burn witches.  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.  Whoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.  He that sacrificeth unto any god, save to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed.” Exodus 22:18-20.  For all the ‘faith’ that can be found in religion, there appears to be a hundred times that in fear/hate.  These people on the surface are scared of evil and demons in the world.  There is a true belief that witches are real just as Romanian’s in rural areas still fear vampires.  The problem with religion is; if it were all true, and we are in the service of God, then we must follow his commands, we must kill all non-believers that threaten our peace on this planet.  But the truth is, it isn’t real, it’s made up by governing rulers in totalitarian civilizations, which only wish to control their populations.  This is the true face of religion, believe in our lie without any threats or you die.

The problem with belief is its complex.  Often people believe but have no reason as to why they believe, stating that it’s just a feeling they have.  Some people are Christians but later confess they don’t think Jesus walked the earth and that he’s the son of God.  Or Muslims that don’t read the Koran but follow its scripture, they believe but they don’t know why.  There are of course religious people out there that do believe and feel they know why they believe.  Maybe the problem isn’t really religion but how we organize our thoughts in our mind; how we just think something is real and follow that thought without the benefit of deductive reasoning, to somehow validate the thought before we send it out in the world.

The coordinates to connect the dots are founded in knowledge, not merely information.  Asking the question of ‘what’s this all about’ will never do.  We must as individuals and a species get past this way of thinking that things will be figured out for us.

Neo’s journey in the Matrix was a personal one but it was also for the future of mankind.  It was about the fight to wake up and see the world for what it truly is, an illusion.  It was about seeing the controlling forces that keep the world in its level of enslavement.  This story was like the Buddha’s journey so many years ago in Northern India and also a retelling of the allegorical plight of the prisoner in Plato’s cave. 

Neo, was helped by Morpheus because the illusion of the Matrix was too real to question.  Therein lies the problem in our reality, people think it’s all too real.  The true sign of intelligence is an individual who is constantly wondering about the world.  For the rest of the people, they seem to all think they are doing everything right in their lives.  Without the help of metaphors for hope like Morpheus, most of us won’t get the chance to even chose between the red pill or the blue pill. 

The Shawshank Dedemption and the Hope for Freedom

by Christopher Barr

“We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka.  It’s so clear, you see, that if we’re to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever.  And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor.”    - Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”

The Shawshank Redemption was a masterful film about the road to freedom.  It tells the story of a successful banker, Andy Dufresne, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover.  He is sent to Shawshank Prison in New England where he spends the better part of two decades, never losing hope in spite of the dreadful consequences of prison life.

“These prison walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts anyways.”

Shawshank is about not giving up on yourself, not allowing fear to dictate what you do or don’t do with your life.  Andy maintained hope when others around him didn’t, like is best friend on the inside, Red.  Red let the fear of those prison walls get the best of him until he met Andy and he gave him hope.  Teaching him that not only is hoping a good thing but the best thing.

The film is about hope and friendship but it is quite critical of religion.  Religion in this film and in life is the oppressor, it’s what keeps us caged and obedient and it is used in this film for that very reason.  The Warden is a man of faith, living his life by the teachings in the ‘good book’ but is also a horrible, detestable man as well.

Institutionalization is very much a theme that runs throughout the film.  Focusing on an older man named Brooks, who was the prison librarian.  There’s a scene in the film where Brooks holds a knife to another inmate’s throat ready to kill him.  It’s later discovered that Brooks was paroled and was afraid of leaving, so he figured if he killed someone they would let him stay.  Brooks has been at Shawshank for 50 years and now he was a free man, living in the fast moving world.  But that freedom terrified the man to the point of suicide, hanging himself his a crappy old apartment.  This was what he believed was his only way out, later when Red is released we are led to believe that he too might kill himself, but he doesn’t because Andy taught that there is more to life then to be afraid of it.

“There's not a day goes by that I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So go ahead and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.”

How do we live with ourselves?  How do we live with the things we’ve done to ourselves to those around us?  How do we seek redemption?  We do it by first forgiving ourselves because we are not the sum of all our parts.  People make mistakes and lives get lost but we must live on, we must exist, we must never forget the bad things we did in our past, with the hope to never repeat them.  That’s redemption, living with what you have done but not letting it sink you into despair.

For Andy, the poster of Rita Hayworth on his cell wall became his window to freedom, at first figuratively then quite literally.  The fantasy of Rita Hayworth helped fuel his need to escape, she became his hope and his light in such a dark and dank place.  Then at the end, Andy went through a poster of Raquel Welch to access his tunnel and crawl to his freedom.

Many of the inmates, after being in the prison for a while become dependent on its routines and schedules, to such a degree that escaping was not even an option.  But for Andy staying was not an option as he fought to maintain his humanity in an institution that only wishes to strip it away.  Andy in the beginning had it rough, being raped and beaten on many occasions, but he stuck to his plan of escape like a true chess player, a plan no one saw coming.  But he did it because he realized that the meaning of life starts from within ourselves and freedom is for us to live our lives on our own terms, not behind the prison walls of oppression but on the sandy beaches of Mexico.

“I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”

Anchorman 2, Network and the Synergy that's Sold Out the News

by Christopher Barr

“Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the Gospel. The ultimate revelation! This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damn force in the whole godless world. And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people.”  

- Howard Beale (Network, 1976)

Anchorman 2 follows the legend of Ron Burgundy, a true legend in his own mind.  The movie is a wacky comedy with crazy characters and over the top jokes, on the surface.  Underneath it is a very contemporary telling of what went wrong in America, the fact that the country has sold itself out and lost its core values in the process.

This movie takes place in the late 70’s and early 80’s but feels very now as it deals with self-indulgence, racism and corporate integrity or lack thereof.  The concept of synergy is discussed in a Will Farrell movie, briefly but discussed.  Synergy from the corporation stand point is what occurs when corporations interact congruently, when they financially benefit by merging with or acquiring another corporation. 

What does this have to do with Ron Burgundy?  It has to do with corporations altering the broadcast news to suit their corporate agenda.  In the case of the movie, Ron was going to do a piece on airplane parts falling off of planes in mid-flight and then crashing into the earth killing people.  Seems like a responsible story to bring to the public, only problem is, the News Corporation and Airline Corporation fall under the same multinational corporate umbrella.

Part of how corporate synergy works is by supporting each other and protecting the sum of all its parts.  By doing this, by changing the news, they become irresponsible and bias which goes against the very core of journalism.  This form of fast food propagandized journalism can now be seen on all major networks with FOX News standing proudly at the top.  The culture is eating itself and the news is reporting none of it, save the odd case here and there about depression.  But generally this is followed by what medication can be purchased at the local pharmacy, to numb your negative side effects toward enslavement.

"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology."

 – Marshall McLuhan

Today the news is filled with a high level of inaccuracies and mistakes that are regularly left uncorrected.  The news sensationalizes its stories and fills its programming with car crashes, kidnappings, murders and high-speed chases along with weekly sex scandals.  The news has poor coverage of important issues that affect our very lives and on top of that the news never covers itself.  Hard news apparently is bad for ratings so the viewer gets info-tainment and advertorials and an increase on conformity of viewpoint and the ultimate suppression of genuine debate.

So why does the news do this?  Why not be ‘fair and balanced’ like FOX News claims to be but clearly is not?  Corporate and government business agendas have railroaded the actual news because if they reported the truth the people would rise up against them.  People don’t realize that they have been lied to and stolen from, by the very rulers they have put their trust in and the very companies that are believed to benefit mankind, not enslave it.

“Television is not the truth. Television's a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business.”

The 1976, American cinematic masterpiece Network tells the story of a suicidal newsman that became a powerful network ratings commodity, only to be killed on the air at the end because his ratings dropped.  The film at the time was praised for its outstanding film making and clever screenplay but it was thought to be over the top.  It was thought to be an exaggeration of the news, it’s only now, years later that we can see just how prophetic the film truly was.  The film covered corporate corruption, manipulation, apathy and desensitization of younger people by the media culture.  These are all contemporary issues that we are dealing with today on an exponential level.  The film also encouraged people to fight back, by standing up and saying that they are not going to take this anymore. The sad news to report is they lost the fight.  At the time in 1976 the film was a call to arms, against the news corporations and unfortunately now it’s a Shakespearian-type tragedy.  

Nowadays these so-called journalists are just McDonald's line cooks claiming to be red seal chefs but they're not, most of them should be ashamed of themselves.  Like some politicians coming in with a good heart, they too have sold themselves out to play with the big boys, and the big boys want to control the score at all times, in their favor of course.  That’s where we are at now, we live in a complete Orwellian-style media controlled circus and it’s looking like there is no stopping it.  I get my news from Max Keiser or RT or LIP TV to name a few, I read from the internet to find out what’s really happening in the world.  It’s the news we need to keep our freedom because the truth is; it’s being stolen from us inch by inch, day by day.

So with movies like Anchorman and the superior Network, it’s nice to see some real truth behind the laughs and the willingness to fight back, against the very corporations that are plat-forming the media these movies are projecting their symbolic message from.

“To those who say people wouldn't look, they wouldn't be interested, they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply -- there is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost. This instrument can teach, it can illuminate - and yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it towards those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box. Good night, and good luck.”   

- Edward R. Murrow  (Good Night and Good Luck, 2005)

Christmas, Religion and a Consumer Holiday

by Christopher Barr

Christmas is a very odd time of year, where there are a lot of false reasons and ulterior motives that are driving lots of people.  It’s like this act, where people all have to play along with this absurd lie.  But then there is the good side that allows family and friends to come together and enjoy a nice meal around the table.

Oh wait, did I forget about all the presents?  That to me is another drawback to Christmas, is the gift giving.  I get that for kids it’s all exciting and surprising, but as you get older it all seems like an act, a role-playing exercise that cost a lot of money in the end.  Did I mention that my favorite Christmas story is A Christmas Carol, especially the first half?

For me, along with the yummy turkey dinner with family, the best things about Christmas are the movies.  It’s hard to pinpoint my favorites because I often have very different reasons for what I love about them.  There are the full on Christmas movies that deal with Santa Claus of some other Christmas themes and then there are the movies I love that simply take place during Christmas.  I’m looking at you Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, I’m not looking at you Iron Man 3.

But to me, I love the ones that use the innocents of Christmas to help support tragedy.  Like in the case of the Gremlins, when Phoebe Cates’ character Kate tells the story of her father going missing on Christmas Eve and days later being found stuck in the chimney dead.  Kate ends her story with, :…and that’s how I know there is no Santa Claus.”  Depressing I know, but I liked the honesty during a seemingly dishonest holiday.  When I was a kid back in 1984, I was in shock, along with the fact that Gremlins is a nutsy movie in the first place.

While most people are obsessing over shopping, I’m watching Christmas movies.  It’s hard to watch them any other time of year so you got to get them all in.  Bad Santa is one of my top musts during the holiday.  This is the story of two thieves and their method of attack.  They plan their heists during the Christmas season while most people are in a frenzy and distracted, these two men can make their move.  It is one of the most hilarious movies as well; Billy Bob Thornton plays one of the most dislikable characters in American cinema and  I loved every minute of it.  He was so depressed and on the edge of suicide I couldn’t help but damn near piss my pants laughing.

Woman in Food Court: Look who's here! It's Santa! Tell Santa what you want for Christmas!

Willie: [yelling] I'm on my fucking lunch break, OK?

Woman in Food Court: The manager's going to hear about this.

Willie: You think you're a threat? You think you can make my fucking life any worse? Go ahead, take a shot!

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is also a must during Christmas, where you have to invite yourself to a Griswold big family Christmas.  It’s a simple story where the Griswold’s invite family, or in some cases not invite, to their home to celebrate the holiday but of course things don’t quite work out as planned, those damn Christmas lights.  There are so many gut-bursting scenes in this movie but if I had to narrow it down, for me, it’s got to be when Clark is left stranded in the attic for the day while the rest of the family go do some last minute shopping.  Clark is at first screaming and yelling for someone to come save him, but settles into the whole not-being-saved thing by playing old home movies while sobbing.  Hilarious stuff, but when everyone gets home and Clark’s wife Ellen opens the attic door and Clark, along with boxes and the film projector fall straight down, wow, pissing pants with crazy uncontrollable laughter.  It gets me every time.

“Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.”

A more recent movie has been added to my favorite holiday fare, is Elf, I love the snow ball fight, it cracks me up every time.  To me the joy of that movie is every scene Will Farrell is in, which are pretty much them all.  Elf was able to capture, phony or not, the true spirit of Christmas thanks to Will Farrell.  He’s like a little kid the whole time and it was simple a joy to watch.

Scrooged with Bill Murray was awesome as well with it’s funny spin on an old story.  Anything with Bill Murray is awesome as far I’m concerned.  Jim Carrey as the Grinch was funny and sad really, but that’s what’s great about the best of them, is they capture in their own little ways, that we must all just play alone for the sake of childhood innocence.

A Nightmare Before Christmas was genius really.  Taking a Halloween character like Jack Skellington and seeing how he reacts to the world of Christmas, “What’s this.? What’s this?”.  This was well done because we all love those fish out of water stories and this one, with its spectacular special effects, stands as one of the best and most beloved holiday movies for a great deal of people, let’s face weirdoes like Tim Burton but we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Christmas is the most widely celebrated holiday in the Western world, it is one of the unavoidable holidays because at least on a consumer level, it’s half of most businesses annual income.  But what about the religious aspects of Christmas and do they still exist or are we all just too consumed with consumption?  There is that debate to ‘keep Christ in Christmas’ but the problem with that in modern society is Christ is PR and money is the new religion, so Christmas has become a series of buying unnecessary products as an obligation resulting from exploiting a false holiday.  The commercialization of Christmas is truly people buying other people things they don’t need, taking away the focus people should be using their money and time for.   But with our minds all directed toward a holiday orgy of stuff, those that rule over us all get to profit in the billions.  After the smoke all clears most people are deeper in debt and stuck in their station in life more than ever. 

Religious people all just play along with their phony holiday, believing it was theirs in the first place, when in ancient Babylon, the feast of the Son of Isis (Goddess of Nature) was celebrated on December 25, long before the allege birth of Christ.  Christmas in Christianity was stolen from the Pagans but the Old Testament showed an angry God that ordered all pagan idols removed.  Christmas, like the religions themselves are all hand-me-downs from ancient times.

There will always be conflicts between believers and the secular non-believers over the level of religion in this very consumer holiday.  Religious moderates and atheists alike will celebrate because they have to really, if they don’t they are seen as spoilers of the spirit of Christmas.  For me though, I’m cool for the most part with all the bullshit.  I certainly don’t stress out over it all because I see it as silly, a good chance to watch a good movie like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, or Elf and maybe for a little while I’ll buy into the spirit of Christmas.

Pass the turkey please….