Sleet and Hail: semi-angry rants that should be taken no more than semi-seriously

The Excess of Christmas
Why am I writing about Christmas now? Because one part of my family is celebrating it this weekend. We've already purchased gifts for our gift exchange. This is where we buy a gift for "Man" or "Woman" and play a game to exchange these gifts (some call it a "White Elephant" gift--we roll dice to select the wrapped gifts we want, and we can take opened gifts from others).

Hey, the game itself can be sort of fun. But does such an exercise proves that gift-giving at Christmas has evolved into mere obligation? We're supposed to give non-personal gifts to generic "Man" in the family, rather than select a gift for a person we care about to express our feelings. We do it not out of love, but because it's what we do.

Well, I got the DVD Borat for this gift exchange. Usually the gifts are something like a wallet or a flashlight or a screwdriver. If I can pull off getting Borat back for myself, I probably will.

Media, Celebrity, and Royalty
The American media spend far too much time trying to make us care about celebrities that we either don't care about or shouldn't care about. Do we also need to be forced to care about the British royal family? What are the British royals to us? Nothing. I will never bring myself to care about any of them. There's no reason for any American to watch any interview with Chuck or LeRoy or whatever Diana's kids' names are.

Weather and Grammar
It is grammatically incorrect to say the temperature is hot or the temperature is cold. Temperature is a number: this number can be called high or low if you wish. "Hot" and "cold" are subjective terms to express subjective feelings of the weather. So you can feel hot, you can say "It's hot in here," but you can't say "The temperature is hot in here." Wouldn't it sound stupid to say "The weather is low today"? Yes, it would. The temperature can be high or low, and the weather can be hot or cold.