X-mas VS Christmas; a linguistic rant

Alright people. I've got something that I think needs to be said and I've decided to say it here. I'm going to lay some linguistic knowledge down on you guys because there's a term that gets put down every year, and I'm tired of it. Since we're now at the beginning of December, I'm already seeing people saying Xmas is derogatory, or that it's a secular attempt to take Christ out of Christmas.

To which I respond with either an eye roll or a deep, resounding cry of bullshit!, depending on where I happen to be. Listen, people have been abbreviating Christ as X for a good long time. There are references to certain abbreviations for Christ as far back as 1021, in Anglo-Saxon. Here's a little explanation. The New Testament was written in Greek, and Christ is spelled, pardon my latinization of this, Christos, which starts with the letter Chi, which looks like an X. Enterprising scribes, deciding they were writing the name Christ thousands of times while transcribing the bible abbreviated it X, or Xr (once again using latin letters). The labarum, an amalgamation of the symbols Chi and Rho, the first two letters in Christos, is still used as a religious symbol among some groups.

OK? It's not derogatory, it's not secular, it's lazy. Do I have a problem with laziness? No. To lift a line from Sherlock Holmes, I'm the most incurably lazy devil ever to stand in shoe leather. I just get so sick of seeing this same debate over and over again, every year on the internet.

Book Review: Dr Sleep, by Stephen King

Since I can't seem to work on my novel, I'll come on here and talk about someone else's.

I'll be honest: before I heard about Dr Sleep, all I knew about The Shining was from snippets of the Kubrik film. That's right, I've never seen the damned movie all the way through and after reading the book and what Stephen King thinks about it, I'm glad I haven't. That's right. I said it.

Nothing against Stanley Kubrik, but I'm of the opinion that if you're going to base your movie on a book, you should probably, oh I dunno, base the damned thing on the book. The only thing the Kubrik film takes from the book is the names of the characters and the base plot. Jack Nicholson, though a great actor, plays Jack Torrance as crazy from the get go. Of course, look at Jack Nicholson: mofo looks crazy at the best of times, I don't believe him as a good guy driven insane by alcoholism and ghosts.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled program.

I read The Shining in preparation for Dr Sleep and I'm glad I did, because without it, I would have been completely fucking lost. Sure, I would have understood the story; they explain enough about the shining itself and what happened to Danny and Wendy to get the point across. But just understanding the plot and point really isn't enough, especially with a King novel. One must understand the subtext, the little references and nods to other things, and there are plenty of nods to The Shining that I would have missed had I not read it.

Dr Sleep is, of course, the sequel to The Shining, and follows Danny Torrance after that fateful winter in The Overlook Hotel. Danny, when we meet him, is an alcoholic, following in his father's footsteps, with a temper to match Jack blow for blow. We see him hit rock bottom and begin the laborious climb back up with the help of AA. Danny is an orderly at a hospice and has discovered that his shining can ease the patient's passing, earning him the nickname Dr Sleep.

During the course of years over which this book takes place, Dan makes contact, at first through the shining, then email and finally in person, with a girl named Abra Stone, a girl whose talent makes Dan's look like a flashlight compared to a lighthouse. Abra has gotten on the wrong side of a group of vampire-like entities called The True Knot. The Knot feed off the essence of children with the shining, which they call steam. Abra oversees them killing a boy for his steam and eventually The Knot starts gunning for her.

I really don't want to say any more. This book is amazing, King truly at the height of his power. I bought it on Thursday and was done on the next Monday. If you're a King fan, like I am, read this book, but I do recommend reading or re-reading The Shining first. If you've just seen Kubrik's film, definitely read The Shining first.

Book Review: Joyland

Stephen King is the kind of writer I wish I was. Book after book, year after year, the man keeps truckin', no matter what. He's responsible for perhaps half of the reading material on my bookshelf right now, and was the author of the first book over 1000 pages that I ever read. I can even remember what book it was. I read the unabridged version of The Stand during the month of October during my seventh grade year.  The Dark Tower series remains one of my favorite series ever.

Now that you know where I'm coming from as a SK fan, let me get to the point of this: Joyland, the second of King's books published with Hard Case Crime, the other being The Colorado Kid, another book on my shelf. This book follows Devin Jones, most often called Dev or Jonesy, during his summer job at the amusement park called Joyland. For the most part, we follow the 21 year old through the normal new job stuff: learning where stuff is, the lingo and the technical bits of running the park. We also see him "wearing the fur", and no, I'm not going to tell you what that is. Read the book. There's a cast of colorful characters throughout the book, which every Stephen King fan expects.


I really don't want to say too much about what goes on, or this article will start to be spoiler-laden. All I will say is that it took me a little under 3 days to read the book. While it's not a beefy tome by any means, I'm surprised at how quickly it went. A very fast read, but now I'm bummed out that I've finished it. A great book for anybody who likes Stephen King, mysteries or gets off on the whole carny thing.

Vlog: The Hobbit or Why the fuck is this movie longer than the audiobook.

Words cannot describe this movie. Even my video devolves into rambling nonsense.