Things that matter. Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? (Snow. For fuck's sake, snow. Can't we just... never mind.)

 So.  Today is Christmas, for those who care.  I am, of course, inclusive, so my message is this.  May we all be touched by the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!  Regardless, take a look outside.  Depending on where you live, the weather outside may be frightful.  Or delightful.  What is it supposed to be?  A couple of years ago, the weather was so delightful that I fired up the grill.  I put a nice spice rub on some Cornish game hens, threw some wood chips into the smoker, and that was the centerpiece of Christmas dinner.  (Chinese food here sucks.)  This year?  Kinda rainy, but temperature-wise, were it not for the rain, I'd ditch the oven and fire up Ye Olde Smoker again.  Um... this is not supposed to happen.  I live in a nice, little multicultural neighborhood, so there's no part of this year's consumerism-day that will be white.  (According to actual white supremacists, I'm not white.  Go read about "concept creep.")  There's supposed to be snow on the ground.  Perhaps old and dirty rather than freshly fallen, but I do not live in a pleasant climate.  It snows here.  Normally.  Or at least, it used to.  Gee, if only I had a scientific explanation.

Oh, wait.  I do.

What matters?

Coffee.  Coffee matters.  Let me take a moment to enjoy my Sumatran beans.

[Moment...]

Blah, blah, climate change.  {Peanuts adult-voice.}

There are so many things that just don't matter, and are not worthy of any great kerfuffle.  At a personal level, one can have hardships and tragedies.  As I write, with no particular plan for the morning, muscular dystrophy comes to mind.  Why?  Dunno.  It is a thing that sucks.  Those afflicted by it have to deal with a thing that truly sucks, and there is spillover-suck, because their friends and especially family have to deal with that suck.  Yet it is "suck" at a personal level.  The world is filled with "suck" at a personal level.

And then there are the big things.  I'm looking outside my window, on December 25, in the Great Northern Regions, where weather is supposed to "suck" in a much more mild sense of the word, "suck," and it doesn't suck.  But the thing is, the weather not sucking is a sign of a greater suck.  It hasn't really snowed yet.  OK, so that's been kinda nice, in some ways.  And hey!  Fewer traffic accidents in my part of the world!  So there's that, right?

But there's a greater suck hidden beneath that lack of suck.  No snow because waWA-WA-WA (turn on your Peanuts adult translator).

Tell me something sucks.  Many things suck.  I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about Kenny G.  Speaking of things that suck.  But in the scheme of things, scale of 1-10, how bad is that suck?  (Here is the weirdness of being a grammar nerd.  I enjoyed the process of turning "suck" into a noun, but doing so caused me to cringe at, "bad."  "Suck," is normally a verb, in which case, I would have written, "badly," as an adverb.  However, having turned, "suck," into a noun, I had to correct for that modification by writing, "bad," which would otherwise have been a common grammatical mistake.)

Anyway, what is the scale of the Kenny G.-suck?  In auditory terms, if we define the poles as 1 = Miles Davis (greatest musical genius in human history), and 10 = actual, literal nails on a blackboard, where's Kenny?  Seriously.  I dunno, 5?  Annoyingly bland, but there are many worse sounds in the world, and I defined the scale in a way that condensed musical awesomeness to a very narrow range, such that I must put Miles pretty close to some merely decent but derivative work of indeterminate origin.  How worked up can we really get about the Louis Armstrong-overdubbing incident?  I mean, if you really feel hurt by that, aren't you kind of being a snowflake?

Hey, look outside!  You know what I don't see?  Snowflakes.  Kenny G., I can ignore.  Climate change, I cannot.  One matters, the other does not.

In the great scale of suck, then, I pose the question.  What matters?  I have been asking variations of this question repeatedly.  What is the scale of an issue?  What are the stakes?

So I look outside.  On another Christmas, in the Great, Not-White North.  Eh?  No snow.  Again.  Dude, this fucking matters.

And it's kinda nice for me!  For now!  I'll let you decide for yourself how I balance those two statements.

Regardless, my only real purpose this morning is to emphasize again my basic rule.  Always ask yourself, does this matter?  When posed with a question, an issue, a problem:  does this matter?

Muscular dystrophy is an example of a condition that matters deeply to one who has it, and to the family and friends of those who have it, but its effects are constrained.  If you asked me to list the most important problems, it wouldn't make my list.  And it certainly wouldn't make my list of most important medical problems.

Obviously, we'd start there with COVID.

Climate change matters because of the scale of the impact.  COVID matters.  Scale of the impact.  These are a few of my favorite the most important things.  These are things that matter on such a scale that if you are going to bother me with something else, you need to justify it.

You know that scene in a science fiction plot where the aliens show up and all of humanity needs to get it together to fight the aliens, and former-adversaries need to put aside differences to deal with the new threat?

Well, we've got a couple alien-sized threats.  Climate change.  COVID.

Merry fuckin' Christmas, all of humanity come together, 'n shit.  Why?  Climate change.  COVID.  Dude, I so don't give a rat's fucking ass about your shit.  Why?  Climate change.  COVID.  Scale.  What matters?

I'll add one thing.  The total overthrow of truth and democracy.  Is that two?  Fine.  Call that two, and throw in an almost fanatical devotion to the pope, but they're coming from the same place.  Of course, we must distinguish between having partisan officials ignore a vote tally, and minor changes to voting procedures.  Apply the what-matters rule.

We cannot address issues of global importance if Trumpist forces complete an autocratic takeover of the political system.  So that matters.  Again, though, drop-boxes and extended voting hours are not the same as having partisan officials throw out a tally.  Stop it with that.

And basic truth.  We cannot address big problems of any kind without facts.  Facts matter.  (Feelings don't.)

Facts matter, at their core, perhaps more than anything.  They are the precondition.  We cannot address climate change, nor COVID, nor anything, in an environment of lies.

OK, so I think I'm pretty much covering it.  Democracy matters.  Truth matters.  COVID matters.  Climate change matters.

Got somethin' else?  This is my measuring stick.  It's December 25, in the Great, Un-White North.  No snow.  Still.  Again.  Tell me why I should care about your shit, again?

This one feels appropriate.  Gary Lucas, "Christmas In Space," from Skeleton at the Feast.  It's a medley, and he throws in some Hendrix, because he's Gary Lucas.