From Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, of which I am watching the 1999 faithful reproduction starring Jean Luc Picard himself, Patrick Stewart:

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before,”tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”

“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”

“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind Spirit. Say he will be spared.”

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.”

Even before the yearly Thanksgiving celebrations have commenced, a yuletide tradition has begun again in earnest. The Christian Right, labouring to find another rallying issue for Conservatives to come together on, have taken up the cause of defending Christmas from the evil doers. Not content with an 85 percent majority Christian population, the Conservative face of religion in this country demands that Jesus be in every single advertisement across the country. Because, of course, Jesus approved of low prices. Failing this, the Right has decided that the other fifteen percent of Americans have started a “War on Christmas,” and have taken up arms to defend her clove-scented loins from the despoiling Atheist masses.

What does the future of this most serious of war zones look like? In years past, I’ve tried to answer that question. But for the last two years, I’ve sat on the sidelines. . . No longer! This blog will once again dedicate itself to bringing you the answers, at great risk to the life and limb of this blogger. We will go out onto the front lines, embedded with the fighting men, in a series I have traditionally taken to calling:

Ho, Ho, Ho, Muthaf*cker!

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Only the geeks among you will get the “pseudo-random” bit!

Yeah, I know it seems early, but if you go anywhere but work and home, there’s all kinds of holiday crap out there.  And I confess to being a sap for the holidays, and it’s got me thinking:

The missus and I are entering our second Yule using our new LED tree lights, and we’re perfectly happy to do a little to lessen the strain on power resources and do minimal damage to the environment.  However, the real problem for me is that I’m very particular about the look of my tree: I don’t like primary colors at all, and prefer more blending, harmonious mixtures.

For years, I’ve used lights I got from some place online that were strings of two different color combinations: one called “Renaissance” and made up of green, teal, yellow and purple; the other was called “Frost,” and had clear, white frosted, teal and blue bulbs.  I put the Renn colors in the center and the Frost around the outside, and it looked amazing.

Well, now that we’ve switched over for environmental impact’s sake, I’m back to primary colors and I kinda hate it.  I actually like the piercingly direct and uniform color of LED lights, and they tend to shoot out long beams of color that make kinda cool patterns and shadows on the wall.

But I see no logical reason to have to sacrifice good color schemes for the environment, except to say that none of the LED manufacturers have managed any level of creativity.  Damnit!  Won’t anyone at GE hear my appeal?