Good Tidings & Great Pain – Ch. 6, Christmas Future
We all know someone who does it. We may even have been guilty of it ourselves. I call it the “I had a dream” speech. It usually goes something like this:
Oh my God! I had the weirdest dream last night. It was so freaky, but it felt really real. I was wearing roller-skates, and I was trying to skate down the hall of the place I used to work, but the carpet was really thick so I couldn’t, and then my mom showed up, but she wasn’t really my mom… and she was only wearing underwear, and speaking some language. I think it was Portuguese.
“Fascinating,” you think. “When will it end?”
And she kept yelling at me in Portuguese, or German or something, and pointing at my roller-skates until this giraffe showed up, with a really short neck that made her run away. Isn’t that so weird? I mean, a GIRAFFE? Really? And THEN…
By this point, you feel your eyes glazing over, and your brain’s magnetic field has turned to static. You will do anything to make it stop.
Here’s where it gets good. You were in it! Remember that burger place we went to that time? Well then somehow I was there, and so were you, and your hair was totally different…
The rule of the “I had a dream” speech is that if it takes more than 15 seconds, your friend or loved one has the right to stuff something in your mouth to make you stop.
Nobody told Sarah Palin the rule. I know this, because Chapter 6 of Good Tidings and Great Joy is her “I had a dream” speech, only worse. She is telling you about a dream she never actually had, and just makes it up as she goes along. It’s a vision of the future in Anchorage, Alaska. And it lasts more than 15 seconds. It lasts seventeen pages.
SEVEN. TEEN. PAGES.
Sarah Palin believes that these seventeen pages are fascinating. She expects people to read these 17 pages. I’m here to say that if there’s anyone left who bought this book, or was given it as a Christmas gift, who is still reading it at this point, this is where they snap the book closed and put it on the bookshelf next to Glenn Beck’s The Christmas Sweater to gather dust for all eternity.
San Francisco logo is to Palin book, as garlic necklace is to vampire? It can’t hurt.
Here’s a little sample of the fascinating prose.
December 2028, Anchorage, Alaska
“You’re early, Nana,” Tripp says when he answers the door. I’m always surprised at how tall he is, though I swear he sprouted up yet another foot since starting college.
“Holy. What are they feeding you here?” I ask, tipping my trifocals to peer up at my strapping grandson, the newest recruit on the Seawolves hockey team. He’s dressed in team sweats.
“I haven’t had moose chili all semester, but the dorm food’s decent and Costco’s food court is just down the road,” he says. “So, I’m eating, Nan.” Two other big guys show up behind Tripp. He introduces his teammates from Michigan and Minnesota. “We’re just about to slap some pucks on the outdoor ice,” Tripp says apologetically. “Want me to bag it so we can beat the dinner rush?”
My Christmas dinner with Tripp has become one of my favorite annual traditions. Normally we meet in Wasilla when everyone comes home for the holidays. However, I had business in Anchorage that day so I decided to surprise him on campus by taking him out early… “
Bla bla bla bla for 17 completely italicized pages.
Not even any Portuguese. No giraffes. Nobody in their underwear. But 17 mind-numbing, interminable pages about her fantasy visit to her grandson Tripp’s college campus in the future. She has dubbed this section, “Vision of Christmas Yet to Come… If the Militant Atheists and SecularLiberals Have Their Way.”
Here are the highlights of that narcissistic morass where others refuse to tread:
- Everyone on campus has vacant, dead eyes because the Christmas spirit has been drained out of them.
- There is not a Christmas celebration to be found, only Solstice and Saturnalia ones which involve writing down bad things on slips of paper, tucking them in to a man made of twigs and setting him on fire.
- The University of Alaska offers lectures called “The Christmas Myth: Rediscovering the Pagan Roots of a Hijacked Holiday” and “Should You Trust Your Parents Again? Recovering from the Santa Lie.”
- Sarah Palin “would rather go vegan for a day than sit through these lectures.”
- A school administrator compares the annihilation of Christmas celebrations on campus with the end of slavery. Sarah Palin is horrified. “I inaudibly gulp. Did this gal just compare me wanting to celebrate Christmas to the evils of slavery?”
NO! You did not! You made it up! It is your own fantasy persecution, and is literally manufactured outrage! And whatever editor allowed the sentence, “I inaudibly gulp” to be printed in a book should die the death of a thousand paper cuts.
(I break for soup)
(I return in a better mood)
- Decorations on campus include fake pineapples and other tropical fruit, and there is not a candy cane in sight. Administrators wear “synthetic mukluks” outdoors, and Birkenstocks indoors. Holiday tree sales benefit rainforest preservation. Oh, the horror.
- She is so appalled at the murder of Christmas that she is tempted to say, “Yippee Skippee” in a sarcastic tone. She is tempted to say, “No kidding, Sherlock,” also in a sarcastic tone. But ever the diplomat, she bites her tongue so as not to offend people she hates for not wanting to offend people.
- The horrible politically correct university has created a “manger scene” to welcome the rebirth of the sun, with a girl baby, and Darwin, Einstein and Edison as the wise men. There is also a crucifixion scene in which a skeleton adorned with a Santa hat hangs on the cross to symbolize the death of the Christmas myth.
- The bathrooms are now unisex and contain foot washing stations because the Muslim students were having a hard time ritually washing their feet in the sink.
- She comes across the ending of the annual Eid celebration and wonders if they sacrificed a camel. A camel like the one she saw when she went to the Middle East more than once to visit our troops, on account of her patriotism, and the fact that she has to mention the troops in here somewhere.
- Tripp shows up still in his hockey gear and says, “Nana? Where’d you go? You disappeared like a willow ptarmigan.” He has had to abandon hockey practice early because men are banned from the facility to make room for Muslim women who don’t feel comfortable exercising in front of them.
Apparently, “militant atheists” and “secular liberals” are all about the blatant tax-funded promotion of Islam. Or, Palin wants to fan the flames of Islamophobia and sell more books to the lowest common denominator of fear and intolerance. You decide.
Our little jaunt into the future is now over. But, have hope! It doesn’t have to be all doom, gloom, and political correctness.
Let’s look at the other version of Christmas Yet to Come… Christmas carols in the quad; Christian students daring the student at the Santa Crucifixion booth to a debate; the Fellowship of Christian Athletes; and finally after six attempts the 81-year old Mitt Romney is the new President elect.
It’s your future, people. You decide.
I’ll be slogging my way through the last chapter…
Who is the publisher of this piece of crap??? Same as her others? Please inform so I can boycott and send my thoughts on to them.
Trying to follow her thoughts is like navigating the mines of Moria: full of twists, turns, monsters, and very, very dark.
No, Pippin, no! Don’t drop that pebble over the . . .
Uh-oh. Now you’ve done it.
Speaking of dizzy witches, rumor has it Liz Cheney is abandoning her quest to lose Mike Enzi’s senate seat in Wyoming. Claims family illness or somethiing. Anyone hear anything,anywhere about this?
Is this a joke?
Seriously, did The Quitter actually make up 17 pages of crap to buff up her faux war on Christmas?
Oh god. She is looney.
My dream is a flying pilot bread cracker continuously flys about her head till she reaches sanity.
Hey, at least it would be entertaining.
And don’t tell it or her, but Russian Christmas is starting.
Has Sarah ever read the Qur’an or for that matter the Bible?
I think Sarah Palin IS a synthetic mukluk!
I simply had to share this dream. If you don’t watch the video, it will be over soon. Nowhere near 17 seconds.
http://austinisafecker.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/labradoodles-and-nightmares/
Throw you assegai and hold your ixwa in reserve in case silwane doesn’t have a sense of humor,Madame Zulu.
🙂
Roar. Woof.
Holy-Schlamoly Batman! This goes waaaaaay beyond the ole “taking one for the team” and goes into the “permanent starting QB for all eternity” and just perhaps –dare I say it? Dare, DARE!– First ballot unanimous Hall of Fame inductee!
I do, however, of course like the part of her futuristic ruminations whereupon the winter solstice celebrations have been rescued from the usurpers.
Todd Palin does not have a job.
Track Palin (??) does not have a job.
Bristol Palin does not have a job.
Willow Palin does not have a job.
All depend for their livelihoods on the half term, half wit.
None of the Paylin’s has been seen in or near a place of worship for at least four years. (“Too busy”)
None of the Paylin’s shows any interest in furthering their education, travel — nada.
Yep, a rill inspiration to others!
Karma can be slow, but this group of lying hypocrites will get what they deserve eventually …
I love the smell of a## whooping in the morning. Night and afternoon as well. 🙂
Thank you for taking more than one for the team, Jeanne!
I cannot fathom a so-called “book” with inaudible gulps.
Cretinism at its finest.
And Mecca baby. Your just jealous because we can read and write.
How do you live vibrantly, BTW?
Seriously.
With those mechanical things…?
And a lotta batteries.
Hmm…if one gulps “inaudibly,” does that mean that no one is around to hear said gulp? If so, one can reasonably deduce that no one was around in the context of Palin’s “dream sequence.” The woman is truly a (vibrant) loon.
Well, Jeanne, that bowl of soup looks very tasty and nourishing. You’ll need it, after slogging through that rot.
And if you need some further cheer, check out Robert Reich’s new year message:
http://www.alternet.org/video/video-robert-reichs-message-new-year-change-starting-happen?
Yikes! I will never buy a book with a Sarah Palin by line. I will however buy a fun look at Sarah Palin written by Jeanne Devon.
…..a Palin in colleges. I fixed it for you,ben.
🙂
Found a great positive review on Amazon:
By Joel Cruz
This review is from: Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas (Hardcover)
Finally! At long last someone has said what has needed to be said. One brave soul has trumpeted it from the rooftops. Forget about the Iraq War with their hundreds of thousands of innocents dead. Remove your mind from worrisome drone strikes hitting children and families in Afghanistan. Our returning soldiers–battered, maimed, wounded in every human way possible, and now, most likely jobless, could not have returned from a more glorious conflict than the War on Christmas. This annual melee, swift on the heels of the Satanic orgy of demon-worship and candy corn that is Halloween, should be front and center on the radar of every God-loving, red-blooded American. While women line up for their holiday abortions and those godless gays don their stylish gay apparel, Mrs. Palin has reminded us that the fight for Christmas is the fight for our very souls. As the Pilgrims exchanged gifts with the Indians, as Paul Revere rode up and down that night to warn us of the British plans to take our guns and Christmas trees, and as Ronald Reagan reminded the Soviets when he said, “Mr. Gorbachev, it’s ‘Merry Christmas!”, so we must take a stand against the liberazis who intend to topple the entire edifice of Western Civilization through their insistence on wishing one and all a “Happy Holiday.” Being a Christian nation, the celebration of the Divine Child born in Bethlehem that cold, snowy night is the cornerstone of our republic and our society–certainly not the anti-family liberal aggrandizement of unwed teenage mothers or families with two dads. In concise, two-syllable words and plenty of illustrations, Mrs. Palin calls us to battle, Constitution in hand, Bible in the other, and the Declaration of Independence in the other against the forces that would steal our Christmases and in doing so, return to the greater, snow-white America that we love. Mrs. Palin, I doff my tri-cornered hat to you and humbly lay my godless degrees in Bible, history, and theology at your Alaskan feet!
Two thumbs up!
Bwahahahahahahahahaha….deep breath. ..hahahahahahaha…my sides hurt….hahahahahaha.
You made my day Jeanne.
Now I know why a book can be published so fast when I have been working on one for 5 years. What have I been doing all that research for when I could just take all of my brain cells, except 1, out and make a bunch of sh#$ t up? Of course I also work 2 jobs so it limits my BS making time and leaves me out of the “living vibrantly” crowd. I do make some time to do what I can for those with less than I have or people who have the need for at least a smile. And I rilly want to enroll at her fantasy university. Sounds like a very interesting place—even if it was born out of some kind of drug induced fog….
Spot on Benlomnd2
I’m just hoping your therapy sessions after reading this book won’t go on for years.
You would think that Palin, being such a fine Christian, spending so much time in church, and being so devotedly immersed in study of the Bible, would be familiar with Jesus instructing his followers to wash each other’s feet. I mean, it’s gospel.
But no. In her paranoid “dream” she sees footwashing stations, and takes it as an accommodation to Islamic (rather than Christian) practice.
So let’s remind her.
John, the 13th chapter (New International Version):
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
amen and halle-damn-lujah, !
Wow, I thought that was a job for the pedicurist. Turns out, it’s Jesus! Thanks, slipstream.
first clue it’s fantasy…a Palin in college… 2nd clue.. Dorm food is decent….
LOL!
Jealous that they are all independent and responsible adults? Stop lying about kids for once. Jeanne’s done enough of that.
And this is WHY Tripp’s had a college fund for 4 years now. You’re disgusting Ben. NONE of them had issues with school. One graduated normally. One graduated on time after having done well in school all her life. and one graduated EARLY. They all attended post-secondary education of some sort and the BOTH have good jobs and have since legal working age.
Grow the hell up Ben.
So what you are saying there, Mecca, is that three out of three are college dropouts?
Okay. Thanks for helping benlommond make his point.
Karl Rove math,Sweetie? One graduated normally. One on time and one early. Then both have good jobs. 1+1+1=2. Might I suggest this-if the Kool-Aid you guzzle is green,it’s prolly anti-freeze. Might I also add with a name like Mecca,the Palinistas will prolly crucify you as a Muslim,or at the very least a Gene Pitney fan. You might want to stick around for a while. I’m thinking the 16 inch guns will be dropping some grief on your dear,sweet head shortly. Have a nice day! 🙂
None had issues with school. I gathered it was the other way around,something to do with school bus brake lines being cut and maybe other vandalism.
My darling Mikey,
Gene Pitney = Mecca? My late husband the Duke would approve, and he blesses you from rock and roll heaven. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Mag,I love you!!! 🙂 🙂
http://youtu.be/n_IXw1UOQJ8
I LOVE this song… even tho it’s horribly tacky….but I loved it when it FIRST came out…!!
Chuckle… my first troll !!
Beauty school is not a college.
Intending to enroll is not the same as attending/being in college. I don’t recall seeing anything where their occupation is listed as “Student”… commercial fisherman, dermatologist office, hair dresser, reality show, but not “Student”….
As for Responsible.. that has a wide open definition…. which I won’t debate.
Gulp… a troll. Does it look like Santa?
Just wondering…
You mean (inaudible) gulp. ;-D