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What's the biggest monster this Halloween?
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Q: How do you catch a unique rabbit?
A: Unique up on it!
Q: How do you catch a tame rabbit?
A: The tame way!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Mykl on Monday October 22 2018, @05:04AM (15 children)
Most horrifying thing this Halloween is the continued hegemonic encroachment of US holiday traditions into non-US parts of the world. We don't have Thanksgiving or Black Friday here (YET), but Halloween looks like it is in Australia to stay.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jjr on Monday October 22 2018, @12:19PM (4 children)
I'm sorry, but you're doomed. Here in Spain we didn't have these too, but about 10 years Halloween (specifically people in costumes and kids performing the trick or treat) started substituting the All Saints celebration and while we have both, Halloween is gaining terrain each year. And for Black Friday, since the online shopping explosion like 5 or 6 years ago, all big stores promote a Black Friday nowadays. At least Thanksgiving has no place here.
I'ts like the Borg, resistance is futile.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Monday October 22 2018, @07:57PM (3 children)
IT would be pretty fucked up if we got the shithole countries like Australia and Spain to celebrate God's American Thanksgiving ha ha ha.
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(Score: 1) by jjr on Tuesday October 23 2018, @12:04PM
In the world we live nowadays.... never say never ;) but yeah, preeeetty weird.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:46AM (1 child)
A little-known fact about Thanksgiving is that it celebrates the result of abandoning communism. Yep. Marx wasn't the first to come up with that bad idea.
Initially, the settlers agreed to share nearly everything. They would work the fields together. They would harvest together. They would equally share the results. Even the clothes washing was a shared duty.
Men objected to women caring for other men. Women claimed they were too frail for the farming work. The farming barely happened, leaving people near starvation. Many died.
After a couple years of this, they were desperate. The governor abandoned the original plan. He allocated individual plots of land to all the families. This changed everything. Women worked, and they brought along their kids to work. The resulting harvest was plentiful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 09 2018, @07:42PM
Actually, Abe Lincoln basically just pulled the whole thing out of his ass. [abrahamlincolnonline.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 22 2018, @02:41PM (4 children)
civilization has a name for it. I can't remember if it's "cultural win" or something like this.
it's basically like the roman empire helped spread christianity, and christianity survives even though the roman empire went to hell.
we will still be wearing blue jeans when the sun turns supernova.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:46PM (1 child)
It's called a "Cultural Victory" in the Civilization series. Though, that wasn't an option until Civ III.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:36PM
I really liked putting a town in the one available square after tricking my enemies with open borders and then throwing a couple of saved up great artists into it and flipping the surrounding towns.
Blue Jean and Rock & Roll
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday October 28 2018, @04:34PM
The unofficial uniform of the Human Race. What will the aliens make of us?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @04:23PM
The sun is too small to turn supernova.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday October 29 2018, @02:09PM (2 children)
It ebbs and flows even at the demonic source, USA. Keep a close eye on post-thanksgiving opening times. Used to be Sears, Boston Store, Radio Shack, Toys R Us, Comp USA, GatewayPC, Gander Mountain, they'd all open at like 4pm on Thanksgiving, but now they're either out of business or opening Friday morning, sometimes even at normal time. There's no real point in opening a legacy brick and mortar store if you're not gonna have customers because people just order from Amazon online anyway. They also put a lot of PR effort into showing enormous crowds at opening, but two hours later its a ghost town as you'd expect.
Its been many years since a store opened on thanksgiving evening or at midnight; at least WRT stores my wife actually shops at with her sister. In fact even weird early morning stuff like 2am or 4am is pretty much gone. Sunrise on Friday is the "new" 3pm on Thursday.
Something oft overlooked WRT shopping, especially post-thanksgiving christmas black friday shopping, is its often a very feminine social activity (chix like to shop, news at 11!). Honestly my wife and her sister enjoyed going out at night as a crazy adventure to drink coffee and catch up on their girlie gossip under the clandestine cover of "christmas shopping". Sure technically they're doing some gross hypercapitalist BS but in practice they're doing feminine gossip while sipping coffee and very lightly exercising walking around, and if they buy grannie some collectible figurine or whatever BS because they're together when they see it, eh, its not the worst thing in the world. Retail brick and mortar is collapsing such that fewer people every year have to serve them, and its not really all that much worse than being a cop or fireman or doctor or sysadmin over the holidays anyway, so I can't even feel all that bad for the retail service workers, heck its part of the job they knowingly signed up for..
If the point of black friday is sipping coffee while gossiping like fiends at midnight in a hunting pack of your normally distant female relations, good luck shutting that stuff down with a PR campaign of "marx was right capitalism sux retail workers of the world unite". Its like trying to halt the entire marriage industry because of blood diamond PR campaigns, I'm sure it feels really good and righteous while also being completely and utterly ineffective because its missing the point of why people actually participate, which usually has nothing to do with progressive virtue signalling.
In summary why people complain about shoppers is mostly a failed attack against a straw dog that doesn't exist anyway.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Tuesday October 30 2018, @04:26PM (1 child)
I modded you up for writing well.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 30 2018, @08:08PM
Not quite. Try again?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @08:00PM
Err, hate to tell you this, but this 'holiday tradition' is mostly Scottish and to a lesser extent Irish in origin, a bastardised and sanctified vestige of the old Celtic Samhain festival, and I know there are a number of Scots and those of Scottish ancestry in Australia (got relatives down there), ditto wrt the Irish, so the tradition shouldn't be that much of a stranger to your shores.
Yes, the 'Scottish Holiday', as one late Victorian USian writer WASPishly called it, has been well and truly Borg'd. commercialised and 'made theirs' by the USians then re-exported globally, even back to the source (e.g. I see lots of carved pumpkin lanterns here now instead of the neep lanterns of my youth, I suppose it makes sense as they're a hell of a lot easier to carve), but that's the USians for you, Cultural Magpies..brash noisy Cultural Magpies...
As an asides, some of the 'Witch' costumes I've seen on sale are neither part of the Scottish or American traditions, but bear a hell of a lot of similarity to the costumes worn by some of the witches in various Animes, albeit usually cheaply faux-Gothed up a bit versions, so I'm assuming a Chinese/Eastern influence is now working its way in to the mix.
Besides, what are you complaining about? you Aussies should be used to the USian hegemony by now as they've pwned you lot since Gough Whitlam got 'Royally backstabbed' at the behest of the USian TLAs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @01:01AM
Interestingly, of all the traditional 'feast' days, Halloween is my favourite. It's one of the only day of the year where the neighbours actually talk to each other. Until about 5 years ago, I knew the people on either side, and a few other random people. But, since the recent growth in popularity of 'trick or treating' in Australia, I've met pretty much half the street and people from the surrounding area.
Contrast that with Christmas and Easter, where families get together, but in general don't really socialise with anyone else. Easter has faded quite a bit where most people wouldn't even know anything was going on if it wasn't for the 4 day long weekend. But Christmas day is still like a ghost town where all the shops are closed and tumble weeds are blowing down the street. There's a bit of life in the middle of the city where people are generally ignoring it, but these are no longer big holidays with deep cultural meaning beyond a few days off work for anyone but devout religious folk.
A good thing about the way Halloween has developed here is that since it is summer time, the trick or treat hours are light, and kids only 'trick or treat' houses that are decorated. So, you don't have to turn the lights off and hide in the back room pretending you're not home if you don't have any candy.