That's the Japanese equivalent for "Happy New Year." I have to sign off for three weeks as I'm going back to Amerika to visit my son who lives with his mother. Hey, our marriage failed but the divorce is a smashing success!This is a very interesting chat room and I hope the same people (the comrades, that is--no Dr. Cruel or Frenchy) are slugging it out when I get back.
Here's a little holiday FYI that many of you probably already know: When people lament the intrustion of capitalism into Christmas, they're showing that they don't understand Christmas was pretty much always a captilist holiday. In America, the early Puritans banned Christmas celebrations entirely as they thought them tinged with royalist ideas. In 1841 there was not a single ad in the New York Times for a Christmas sale, and it wasn't until 1856 that Christmas even became a national holiday. It wasn't until after the Civil War that the merchants caught on to the commercial possibilities of Christmas, and by 1870 December was retailing's biggest month.
I hope there are no hard feelings between me and any of the comrades. There aren't any on my side, for I believe as Emerson said, "speak your words as hard as cannonballs" and never get REALLY upset when other people do the same. (Sometimes, however, an indignant face adds to the rhetorical force, so I'm not above adopting one.)
So, see you in January in cyber-space and maybe someday at the barricades.
Bill Phalon (Porgie Tirebiter, Bernard Flapdoodle, Bo Diddley and Woody Holiday)
None.
