Christmas Is Not Secular

In the United States of America, where I live, the most popular holiday on the calendar is three days away. The name of this holiday is derived from the phrase "Christ's Mass." This holiday inspires songs with lyrics like "It is the night of our dear Savior's birth/Long lay the world in sin and error pining/'Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth." Millions of people celebrate this holiday by constructing on their property visual representations of the virgin birth of the son of God.

And millions of other people would tell me, with straight faces and apparent sincerity, that this holiday is secular. Some of these people are some combination of lying, insane, and stupid; some are desperately gullible; most are simply confrontation-averse to a fault. Christmas is not, in any way, shape, or form, secular, and it never has been, and it never will be.

Yes, Of Course Home-Field Advantage Exists in the Postseason

I like baseball, and I like probability, and so I especially like thinking about probability in baseball. As you might imagine, this takes me to the mathier corners of the part of the Internet devoted to baseball, and the baseballier corners of the part of the Internet devoted to math, and the most unapologetically nerdy corners of the Internet in general.

What were the best (and worst) World Series, and World Series games, ever?

Two days ago, the Giants won the World Series. Congratulations to them (I guess; I was rooting, fairly stridently, for the Royals to beat them). While I wish the result had been different, there's no denying that the Series was a ton of fun to watch -- it was a back-and-forth affair between two very good teams. The Royals, in the playoffs for the first time in 29 years, rode blazing speed, terrific defense, and a brilliant (and almost totally anonymous) bullpen to the brink of a world championship, while the Giants, uh, have Madison Bumgarner. (And Hunter Pence, who annoys the shit out of me with how many hits he gets from two-strike counts.)

A Holy Day for Fresh Starts

One of my favorite holidays is fast approaching. It's a day when the beauty of spring is in its fullest splendor. It's a day for rebirth and renewal. It's a day with no regrets when anything is possible.

I'm speaking, of course, about Opening Day.

I'm an atheist, which means I don't have the right to observe any religion's holidays. (On occasion I have been mistaken for, beseeched to become, or half-seriously referred to as, Jewish. Alas, I'm not that cool. And I still have my foreskin.) I've never experienced the fullest joy of Christmas or the humble, celebratory sacrifices of Passover. And Easter is particularly problematic -- it was, in fact, my complete inability to believe the story of Easter that first made me wonder whether I was religious.

But I do understand the nature of Easter. Because I've got my own version.

Happiness Is Bad for You

Early last fall, I had the happiest two days of my entire life. Less than six months later, I've never regretted anything as bitterly or as deeply as that weekend.

Saudade, Portuguese for Growing Up

Because I am an insufferable hipster douchebag, I not only listen to NPR, I kill a fair amount of time dicking around on NPR's website. One of my favorite NPR blogs is alt.latino, which explores Latin rock and alternative music, and yesterday that blog had a wonderful, albeit brief, article about a concept I've come, over the past several months, to find incredibly powerful: saudade. (Click the link if for no other reason than to listen to some absolutely gorgeous Brazilian and Portuguese music. If you've never really gotten into bossa nova, you will now.)

On Enmity, Tribalism, and Tom Brady

I hate the New England Patriots.

I don't mean that I find them distasteful, or that I'd rather they weren't successful, or that I root for other teams to beat them (although all those things are true). I mean that I hate them.

I hate their ability to seemingly pull the damnedest rabbit out of a hat you didn't even know they had at the worst possible moment. I hate Bill Belichick, who seems to work very, very hard at being a prickly, amoral, unsmiling, perpetually underdressed villain -- who cheats. I hate every player they've ever had who was cast off by some other team for having a bad case of suckitude but suddenly becomes an All-Pro the second he sets foot in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Come to think of it, I hate that they play in a soulless monument to corporate greed, in a suburb in the middle of nowhere that's closer to the capital of Rhode Island than it is to the capital of Massachusetts.) I hate Julian Edelman, who once punched a friend of a friend in the face at a party. I hate their fanbase, who seem to expect that championships are their birthright, not just from the Patriots but from all of their teams (and, over the last ten years, that entitlement has been sickeningly well rewarded), who have a superiority complex about every other fanbase in the world, and who made going to Game 3 of the 2007 World Series one of the worst experiences of my life.

I hate Michigan Fucking Wolverine Tom Fucking Brady and his fucking shit-eating grin and his fucking hair and his fucking temper tantrums directed at his teammates and his fucking modeling deals and the fucking fact that he left his pregnant girlfriend so he could go out with a Victoria's Secret model and that he's one of the best fucking quarterbacks in the history of professional football.

But what I hate most of all about the Patriots is that I don't really have a good reason for hating them.

Fifty Things I Did in 2013, and Fifty Things to Do in 2014 (and Beyond)

Readers of this blog may know that between the ages of eight and fourteen, I struggled with clinical depression. With the help of some truly talented doctors and therapists, my depression has been in remission (I'm not sure it will ever be "cured") for nearly a decade, but there are certainly days -- and there have been far more of them over the past six months or so -- when those demons threaten to engulf me again.