Ha ha ha! Comedy Eric Schneider, Comedian

Tonight, at sundown, is the official start of the Hanukkah Season. Please join Hanukcat (pictured to the right) as we light the menorah, and take a look back at the origins of this very special time of year.

Hanukkah is an 8 day Jewish holiday celebrating the exorbitant amount of wealth Jewish people make off of the Christian shopping frenzy known as Christmas.

Jews created Christmas nearly 2000 years ago to commemorate the execution of Jesus Christ for impersonating the Messiah. The holiday was originally called “Christ-miss” because it was customary for Jews to sarcastically declare how much they were “really going to miss him.”

To retaliate against the Jews, Christ’s followers claimed that the Jews never actually killed Jesus, and that Jesus got the last laugh by secretly resurrecting himself. In an additional display of blatant defiance, Christians created two holidays: Easter to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, and Christmas to celebrate his birth. They even kept the holiday’s name, but replaced “miss” with the Caribbean word for carnival, “mas”; or literally “Carnival for Christ”.

Stealing the Jewish holiday and converting it into two Christian holidays angered the Jews to no end, so the Jewish Holiday Commission voted unanimously to create a new holiday to compete with the growing Christian influence. They called this holiday, Hanukkah. Directly translated, Hanukkah means “Better than the Christians”. Hanukkah is 8 days long because 8 is more than 1, and it is a constant reminder that one Jewish holiday is better than two Christian holidays. Note: Although pro-christian scholars argue that there are actually 12 days of Christmas (making it, in fact, better than Hanukkah,) it is still officially recognized by the World Holiday Alliance as a one-day holiday.

It wasn’t until the late 1800′s that Jewish people stumbled upon the idea to commercialize Christmas for financial gain. At that time, Christmas was synonymous with selflessness, piety, and charity, however, Jews collectively rejected the notion of one day of good will to balance out 364 days of intolerance, violence, and incessant recruiting.

One Jewish shop owner, who was decidedly agitated by the Christians’ “holier than thou” attitude, convinced a man to sell his gold pocket watch in order to buy his wife a cheap hair brush. Not only did the shop owner turn around and resell the gold watch for 5 times more than he paid for it, later that day, he tricked the same man’s wife into cutting and selling her hair in order to buy a gold chain for her husband’s estranged watch.

Word of the Shopkeeper’s scheme spread throughout the Jewish community, and soon other business owners began to follow suit. Small firms called advertising agencies were established in order to promote consumption, excess, and the importance of buying expensive gifts in order to demonstrate and quantify how much one truly loved another. Thus was born, what we know today as, “the true meaning of Christmas”.

Today, Jewish people around the world still celebrate Hanukkah by hoarding the billions of dollars shoveled into their bank accounts each holiday season by willing, yet unknowing, Christians. Economists believe that by the year 2012 over 95% of the world’s assets will be controlled by Jewish interests as a direct result of superfluous Christmas spending.

During the Hanukkah festivities, Jewish adults give children gifts of chocolates which are fashioned to look like gold coins, as it is difficult for Jews to part with real money. Children use the chocolate coins as currency to play a traditional Jewish game in which players spin a four-sided wooden top called a dreidel. On each side of the dreidel are Hebrew symbols representing the current money lending rates based on the borrowers race or religion. Players take turns lending and collecting chocolate money at the designated rates until one player ends up with all the chocolate.

So ends the story of Hanukkah. I hope it was inspirational as well as informative and uplifting. I wish you all a happy and a healthy.

L’chaim!

Happy New Year everybody! Long time no blog . Where to start… where to start?

Let’s start where I left off: Christmas. For the most part it went well. My sister found out we bought her the iPod when my mom decided to check her voice mail messages over the speaker phone: “Uh yeah… I was calling to see if you still had that iPod for sale?”

I made the suggestion to my sister that maybe it wasn’t so wise to buy herself a $400 gift, which she put on her wish list, a week before Christmas. She pretty much reacted the way I expected she would. “What? How was I supposed to know? Don’t get mad at me!”

I tried explaining that I wasn’t mad at her; I was just disappointed that we didn’t have the chance to give her the gift. The real gift was in making her happy and the satisfaction that comes with doing something nice for someone you love. She responded, “I’m happy. I got it for myself. No big deal.”

I don’t know if my point was completely lost on her, but I’m over it now.

Anyway, I ended up staying at Mom’s the entire time my sister was in town. After the fourth straight day, however, I was ready to shoot myself, and more than ready to head home.

I got back to my apartment to find half of it pretty much submerged under water. I wondered if it had anything to do with the email I sent my landlord two weeks before about the sound of running water in the walls? Nah, that couldn’t be it.

Well, it turned out that a pipe had burst behind the wall and the water was coming back into the apartment from underneath the floor, flooding the bathroom, the water heater closet, the computer room and the kitchen. The wet carpet in the computer room smelled like every trace of pet piss, body odor, and cigarette smoke trapped in the fibers had been released. Luckily, the damage wasn’t bad enough to warrant new carpet. God forbid I come out ahead.

So, for the first week or so of the New Year, I had much of my apartment stacked up in my living room. I had plumbers and, water damage restoration guys, and dry wall repairmen coming in every day. They had to knock out huge holes in the walls, through the shower, and in the floor just to find the leak. They fixed leak and patched up all but 2 of the holes in the wall. I guess they wanted to keep a few open just in case any rats wanted to get in out of the cold this winter. That was nice of them. Oh… and just a few days ago, I got a phone call from the landlord responding to my email about the sound of running water behind the wall. Way to keep on top of things.

New subject:

I’m going to CA again next week to do another Real Estate seminar. It was supposed to be my first event as an actual Agent, but my replacement failed his Real Estate exam. Dumb ass! So I don’t officially stop doing my current job until he gets his license and can replace me. Oh well. For those of you who don’t keep up, I was promoted from Transaction Coordinator to Sales Agent.

By the way, if any of you fuckers want to invest in Commercial Real Estate let me know. I could like sell you some good shit, and you could like make lots of money n’ stuff. We specialize in four-plex residential rental property or something like that. I’ll hook you up, dogs!

That’s all I have for now. Apologies to those whom I have ignored these past few weeks. Between the flood, my extreme laziness, and my lack of concern… well I’m sure you understand.

Until next time.

Today marks a milestone in my very short Blogging career! Today I surpassed 1000 Blog views (this started out as a myspace blog). I would like to take this time to thank each and every one of you who have made this possible. I can only hope what I write continues to enlighten and entertain you. To celebrate this occasion, I was going to share with you one of the best stories ever told. Unfortunately, I decided to hold off on that story for now. Do not despair, loyal reader! I promise to tell it very soon.

Today I want to vent. What else is new?

Ok, here’s the back story: My sister, Lisa and her husband John, were planning on buying a house earlier this year in Washington. She went into escrow, and the deal was expected to close right around Christmas time. Because of all the expenses and chaos that naturally comes with buying a new home, my sister had no intention of flying here to Arizona for Christmas.

Unfortunately, the deal fell through and they didn’t get the house. Bad for them, but great for me, because now she’s coming for Christmas! Yay! I’m actually supposed to pick her up from the airport on Sunday.

So, this year, my mother and I decided to do something special for Lisa and bought her one of those 60 GB iPod Videos. It was on her “wish list” but, never in a million years would she expect to get something like that. First of all, it’s pretty pricey, and my mother is the queen of cheap. Often, if you tell my mother you want something for Christmas, she’ll look it up on the Internet, then get something half the price and 1/4 the quality of the thing you asked for and insist the thing she got is better than what you asked for because “they” said it was on epinions.com. The fact that she was able to resist the urge to buy my sister an AM/FM radio and tell her it’s better than an iPod, was just huge.

Second of all, my sister is notorious for getting pretty lame presents ever since she became all domesticated. Last year I think she got a sewing machine, pot holders, and a pizza slicer. So, the iPod was going to knock her socks off!

So my mother and I spent 2 hours on the phone devising this elaborate plan to surprise my sister with this gift. I’ll spare you the details, but it involved packaging it in an old waffle maker box and running some sort of act to piss off my sister. In the end, we were excited about the plan, and very proud of ourselves.

To help set up the surprise I told my sister what we got her for Christmas. Every year, my sister finds a way to trick me into telling her what she’s getting for Christmas. I don’t know how she does it, but I always fall for it. So this year, when she “broke” me, I had her convinced that she was getting a membership to “The Book of the Month Club”. Woopieeee!!!

With that little seed planted, everything was set. My mom and I talked every day this past week about how great it was going to be to see her face when she finally opened the gift.

Well today, I got a call from my mother that started with, “Your sister is an asshole.”

My sister bought herself an iPod!

Who buys themselves a $400 gift a week before Christmas???

I’m pretty agitated, and my mother is completely crushed. She already put the one we bought up for auction on ebay.

What a bummer.

Today’s blog entry is brought to you by Wal-Mart, which is where I went last night, intending to do some Christmas shopping. On the way in, however, I ran into the Christmas angel tree thingy where poor kids write their Christmas wishes on paper angels, and hang them on a tree. Then do-gooders, like myself, are supposed to pick an angel off the tree and buy that child the item they asked for. Personally, I think it’s a pretty crappy way for Wal-Mart to boost sales during the holidays, but I’m a sucker for kids, so I decided to pick an angel from the tree.

I started skimming through the angels, trying to find a child that asked for something I could buy without too much hassle. The first few I read were from kids asking for school clothing, but how was I supposed to know what size to get, or what styles they might like? The last thing I need is some underprivileged kid getting beat up at school because of the shitty outfit I got him for Christmas.

The next angel I came to was from Efrain. Efrain was 11 years old and the only thing he wanted for Christmas was a Bible. I’m not religious, but I felt a little twinge in my heart because in my mind, Efrain is this little poor Mexican boy who was taken from his home because his parents beat him, and has since been passed around foster homes where he has endured unspeakable mental, physical, and sexual abuse. I see little Efrain sitting on Santa’s lap, and Santa asks him what he wants for Christmas. Efrain looks up at Santa with hard, yet innocent, doe eyes and says, “Santa, all I want for Christmas is a Bible so I may never lose my way in life.” Of course, in my mind, this all happens in Spanish with subtitles.

I thought to myself, “Efrain, your dreams are about to come true!” I was about to pull his angel off the tree and dash over to the book aisle, when below it I saw an angel from Juan who also wanted a Bible. A few angels to the right of Juan’s was Jorge’s who wanted a Bible as well. All in all, there were roughly 20 children on that tree, all Mexican, (and oddly enough, there were no duplicate names), and they all wanted Bibles. I hate to be cynical, but it appeared to me that some church was just making up fake Mexican children in order to stock up on a bunch of new Bibles. This revelation quickly brought me back to reality. I mean, who the crap asks for a Bible for Christmas anyway? If you ask me, I think even Jesus would be pissed off if he got a bible.

By then I had been standing at the angel tree for about 15 minutes and had yet to find a suitable angel. I was there so long, I think I started making the Wal-Mart Retarded Greater Person feel uncomfortable. I continued to read through the angels, but at by then, I felt somewhat skeptical about every one. I started making up stories about who the kids were, and based on their names, I would make judgments as to whether or not they deserved the item they asked for. I decided I wouldn’t choose a kid if his name sounded like he was tough, because I didn’t want to buy anything for someone who may try to rob me one day. Yeah, I know… I’m an idiot.

Then, I came across Jason’s angel. Jason wanted either an Alan Iverson Jersey or a Julius Irving Throwback Jersey. Jason was 18 years old. I pulled out my pen, and wrote on the back of his paper angel, “Jason, get a job!”

Finally I found Jessica. Jessica was 15yrs old and wanted a CD player, and a few CD’s. I was so drained from picking an angel from that stupid tree, I didn’t even bother doing any Christmas shopping. I went straight to Electronics department, got a CD player, a pack of batteries, and a gift card for CD’s, paid for them, dropped them in the tree angel gift bin, and went home.

Merry Christmas, Jessica!