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Some notes to consider this Christmas

After last week's attempt at developing a new alphabet, where every incidence of the letters "io" and "il" came out, seemingly randomly as either Õ or Š in the print version of Pique , I'm having even more serious doubts about self-driv
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After last week's attempt at developing a new alphabet, where every incidence of the letters "io" and "il" came out, seemingly randomly as either Õ or Š in the print version of Pique, I'm having even more serious doubts about self-driving cars. It turns out to have been a software communication problem. Clean when it left my computer, clean when it left the editor's desk, clean when it left the production computers, virtually unreadable when the printers put it to paper.

The Roman alphabet found its way to England about 1,500 years ago. It was mashed around for centuries, much as the country was, but morphed into the 26 letters we know today by 1630, along with a few leftover runes, æ, œ, and a double ss I can't even make with any font I have. The runes were gone by 1820. So, for almost 200 years there's been a general agreement the English language is composed of 26 letters, upper and lower case. Õ and Š are not among them.

It takes two computers, one with a newer version of the same software than the other, to mess that up.

As annoying as it may be, no one was hurt, although a couple of friends were confused and several others were worried about the emergence of unwanted side effects from some of the things I may have ingested during the psychedelic era. But if software can create this mess what might it do if, say, you're preoccupied doing something you believe is constructive while your software-controlled, autonomous car is driving you to an important social engagement?

But that's not what this week's piffle is about. In a rare occurrence of jumping on a decrepit bandwagon, I'm throwing my weight behind the boycott of the seasonal song, "Baby It's Cold Outside." Unlike the handful of humourless crusaders of the #MeToo movement who are so out of touch with reality they, with a straight face—which is, after all, the only kind they have—claim it's a date-rape song, I'm boycotting it because it sends the wrong message to both young and old people.

Since I believe it's a song with a strong feminist-rallying cry about a fully actualized woman who wants badly to throw off the uptight, double standard social strictures that keep her from spending the night with someone she'd like to make merry with, you may wonder what I find so unacceptable. Well, it's the line, "But maybe just a cigarette more."

Really? How unromantic. Yuck! I mean, at least we could update it to maybe just a vape more, indicating there was hope this vibrant young woman would kick the habit and not die gasping for breath several years hence.

But since the delicate among us, the victims of victimless offences, want to ban Christmas songs, I've got my own list.

First and foremost is "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Having been a delicate child—no, really—I have to admit that song more or less put me off Christmas for much of my childhood. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Starting with simple manipulation—you better watch out, not pout, not cry—and escalating into the fascistic practice of making lists and checking them twice to find out if you're naughty or nice, it reaches its apex with the totally perverted activity of watching children when they're sleeping and awake and noting whether they've been bad or good. Lock that stalker up! There were entire Decembers when I could hardly sleep thinking about that fat old man watching me.

A close second in the creepy carols category is "Frosty the Snowman." While I'm sure the humourless MeTooers object to the total exclusion of snowwomen, which I sympathize with, the pathology of this tune goes far, far deeper. This is a story about the snowman apocalypse, snowman zombies coming to life, pretending to laugh and play with children, encouraging them to run away, terrorize the town square, ignore lawful orders of local police and threatening everyone with, "I'll be back again someday." And they wonder why some of us grew up to be outlaw bikers.

Very much like the social oppression of "Baby It's Cold Outside," Christmas carols not infrequently were vehicles to reinforce the WASPish proscriptions on personal choice and freedom. "Winter Wonderland" is a good example. It's a song about two people in love who build another zombie snowman. Only this time they pretend he's a parson who, presumably when he comes to life, asks if they're married. Taken aback, they admit they're not but quickly say they'll allow him to marry them. While this may have been another date rape muse by the man to get the woman to believe they could be married—by a zombie snowman?—I believe it's far worse than that. For in the very next verse, they build another snowman, pretend he's a carny, a circus clown, have "fun" with him and wait for the children to knock him down, thus condoning violence against people not entirely like themselves. Twisted? Oh, yeah.

And how about the blatant racism of "White Christmas?" The not-so-subtle swipe at LGBTQ community in "Deck the Halls," encouraging people to don their gay apparel, as though you can identify gay people by the way they dress. At least that insult was countered in "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" when the chant was to make the yuletide, which this year runs from Dec. 21 to Jan. 1, thus encompassing the entire holiday season, gay. Way to strike back.

Of course, there are the socially unacceptable practices encouraged in, for example, "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer," where a pack of thuggish ungulates mercilessly bully poor Rudolf just because he suffers from rosacea; "Do You Hear What I Hear," that turns a hat trick by taunting the vision-impaired, the hearing-impaired and the learning-impaired by heartlessly asking do you see what I see, hear what I hear and know what I know; "Jingle Bell Rock" that promotes speciesism and animal cruelty by prodding an overworked horse to pick up his feet; "Mistletoe and Holly," encouraging the obese to overeat; and finally, the eponymous "Christmas Song," inappropriately referring to Inuit people as Eskimos.

Since I'd rather have my fingernails removed with pliers than listen to "Little Drummer Boy," that pretty much leaves "Good King Wenceslas" as the only acceptable Christmas carol—which, of course, should righteously be called a Holiday Carol. I'm good with that because it's my favourite ... except for "Baby It's Cold Outside."

So have yourself a merry little Christmas. Just be careful about what you listen to. Or listen to whatever you like and tell all the killjoys to go soak their heads.