Check my new blog: hellfood.blogspot.com

I’m dropping the paranormal digest for now, because I’m unable to dedicate the time to make it useful in such a way that benefits me. The new blog is as much for me as an audience.

Christmas has always been a secular holiday for me. Growing up in a non-religious home, I just assumed Christmas was about giving gifts and seeing family. However, my school always made us sing (in music class) religious themed Christmas carols. The Jewish kids always were excused, and if I had known better, I would have opted out as well. In band, we always played Christian themed songs, though, I have to admit, I really liked playing them. I didn’t know any of the words, but when you’re playing in a group, it’s very rewarding to see it all come together. The music is of a style that no one writes in any more, and some of the the music is written by some of the greats, such as Handel. It was fun a lot of times, and I never even thought about the Christian themes, and it never had an impact on me.

So today I found myself listeming to the Classical Christmas channel on XM radio, simply because I really enjoy the old style songs. You don’t hear much harpsichord these days. I also have to respect the vocal arrangements. Truly great stuff.

Now while this might sound like I’m being sympathetic to the Christian side of Christmas, I would like to point out this just is reserved to the musical construction of these songs. Bill O’Reilly would consider me part of the War on Christmas, since I say “Happy Holidays.” I don’t go to church, and I think it’s an awfully big coincidence that Jesus would be born at the same as the Pagan feast of Saturnalia of early Europe. So if you catch me listening to Handel’s Messiah, don’t wish me a Merry Christmas. Either leave me alone or wish me a Happy Holidays.

This week the “people in the know” were all outraged to learn that the “podfather” (a pretentious name if I ever heard one) Adam Curry was caught editing the history of podcasting on Wikipedia. Curry tried to blow off the incident as his own ignorance of the Wiki editing system. Um, the so-called inventor of podcasting can’t figure out how to edit with Wiki? Yeah, right. In any case, Curry ended up taking a lot of heat from the blog and podcasting community. Dave Winer also added his two cents, I’ve seen Kevin Mark’s side of it from #joiito. So what do I think?

I think Curry has become obsessed with the title of “podfather” and sees this as a way to get back into the national spotlight. Really, before podcasting Curry was just the big-haired VJ from MTV who as long past his prime. Yeah, I know he did some “cool” internet things with On-Ramp and THINK, Inc, however, he was no celebrity then. Now, he’s back in wired, he’s on Sirius, and a million people are reading blogs about him. Ego gone amuck.

I don’t know if we’ll ever really know who started podcasting. Maddox surely has his own opinion, and a video of Kevin Marks showing of podcasting a full nine months before Curry’s ipodder script is now available. If I had to guess, I would say a lot of people talked about it, played with it, and by a stroke of luck, Curry became the podfather. No one should denigrate what he’s done to push podcasting, but someone needs to give him a kick in the nuts so he can get back to pushing podcasting again, and not just himself.