Tag Archives: snowman

Beacon

Beacon: (n) a fire or light set up in a high or prominent position as a warning, signal, or celebration.Dictionary B

Flashing lights.

No one likes them.

I suppose they’re okay on a Christmas tree. But if you’re in a room for a long time and the decorations are too garish, it can become annoying.

We were taught that flashing lights warn us of danger or at least, pending inconvenience. So I guess we need them.

Yet by the same token, a world without flashing lights is a sudden discovery of disaster without any way to prepare or avoid it.

Therefore a beacon can be one of the more unappreciated necessities in the world. They appear in our lives at a very early age.

For instance, you’re five years old. The first snow has fallen and you want to run outside and play–throw it in the air and maybe make a snow man.

You are stopped.

A beacon–your mother or your father–steps in and feels the need to take at least ten minutes of your precious snow time to don you in garbs which inhibit your free movement, all because they want you to be warm and not get sick.

Who knows if they’re right?

It isn’t like you can look back and say, “Yeah, because I wore my ear muffs and toboggan, I avoided a cold.”

No, it’s just an annoying flashing.

And then, when you become a parent and find the need to “beacon out” some piece of wisdom or counsel, you suddenly realize that you are the annoying, flicking going on in the life of a child who loved you moments earlier, until you interrupted the flow.

Case in point: I just finished seeing family for Christmas. One of my jobs is to be a beacon.

That means if I see something that could be ridiculous, dangerous or lead to unhappy conclusions, it falls my lot to flash out a warning.

God, it’s horrible.

For you see, everybody wants to be a cheerleader and not the director of the cheerleaders, who has to decide whether the skirts are too short.

Yet a world without beacons would probably end up being one big explosion of light, producing destruction instead of intermittent blinking.

 

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Abominable

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abominable: adj. causing moral revulsion.

What did the Snowman ever do to you?

Why did he end up being Abominable?

Did I miss some news story on Inside Edition? Was the big Snowman caught in bed with Madonna or Pink? Is he doing cocaine in the snow? Is he killing off people in the woods?

Why is the Abominable Snowman considered abominable? What breach in morality causes us to find him revolting?

This is not fair. Just because you’re nine feet tall, are covered with hair in the frigid Yukon, growling at strangers, does not mean you lack the moral fiber to be a damned good Republican.

Is it just that everybody who does not fit the “normal” size, look or social presentation have to be scrutinized until we discover some hidden sin yet uncovered?

I, for one, think it’s time that we stop calling him, her or it abominable. I think “big and ugly” would be better than abominable, don’t you?

I am concerned that moral judgments are being made about a creature we actually know very little about. For that matter, we’re not even sure he exists.

Of course, in our present political climate, we seem to be very good at creating problems out of nothing. So who knows? Maybe there’s a reporter somewhere from some sort of tell-it-all rag who has been following this monstrous creature around and knows that he has nasty inclinations.

Yet that doesn’t stop us from having priests in the Catholic Church. It doesn’t eliminate politicians cavorting with prostitutes. We don’t call THEM abominable.

No, it is a word reserved for the Snowman.

And speaking of that, it reminds me of the reporter who once caught up with the self-assesssed, famous adventurer, Scarsland de Barkel, winner of the First Annual Coveted Explorer’s Award, and asked him, “Mr. de Barkel, have you found the Abominable Snowman?”

Scarsland replied, “Not Yeti.”