Mr. Crankypants went to the grocery store yesterday. The piped-in music had a woman’s voice whining about dreaming of a white Christmas. On the drive home, Mr. Crankypants turned on a vapid classical music radio station. They were playing an overly cheerful recording of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland,” as performed by the Pops Orchestra of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Later in the day, Mr. Crankypants walked down the street. Some store window displays featured bizarre-looking fake snow.

Apparently, Christmas consumerism in the San Francisco Bay area must include bizarre fantasies of cold weather, deep snow, sleighing, and other things that are extremely unlikely to happen in this climate. Mr. Crankypants believes that this is the strongest evidence yet that the Christmas consumer season has morphed from a marketing ploy into a full-blown psycho-pathological delusion.

As Ebeneezer Scrooge put it so eloquently: “Bah. Humbug. Christmas humbug psychosis.”

For me, one of the best things about a major holiday is going to work the day before that holiday. Take today, for example, which is the day before Thanksgiving. Everyone is a little more relaxed, so you tend to make a little more time to chat with people. “Hey, you all ready for the big day?” you say. “You starving yourself so you can eat more tomorrow?” Then you tell each other what you’re going to do for the holidays — staying home with just a couple of family members, driving to a big family gathering in another state, having relatives over to your house, whatever. Depending on who you’re talking with, one of you might mention that it’s going to be hard this year because someone died in the past year, and you can say that because you know the other person is thinking about the same thing because someone in their family died in the past year. And maybe you talk about your favorite Thanksgiving food, or whether or not you watch the football game, or the Macy’s parade on television. Then, if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to go home an hour or so early — or if you’re like me and can’t leave work early, there is at least less pressure and you can take time off in the middle of the work day and write a short blog post about how much you like going to work the day before a major holiday.

For years, Internet users have been dealing with “trolls,” people who deliberately derail online conversations by writing cruel, crude, off-topic, and/or mean-spirited posts. Different trolls have different motivations, but generally the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them — thus the Internet saying, “Please do not feed the trolls.”

But what happens when someone engages in “live-trolling”? For example, a male student showed up in one of my older sister’s college classes wearing a t-shirt that read “I [heart] vaginas.” This is a great example of live trolling — derailing a live conversation (in this case, a college class) with a t-shirt slogan that is obviously intended to piss people off, and distract them from the work of the class. You can read how Jean handled this situation on her blog.

Trolls are not very intelligent life forms, and need to be hit upside the head with a big stick in order to get their attention. When trolls appear on this blog (as has happened once or twice), I usually call them out, give them one chance to apologize, and then when they don’t apologize (trolls are notorious for acting hurt and misunderstood when someone calls them out), I delete their comments — there is no better way to stop the feeding of trolls than to remove their posts. I’m sorry that Jean is not able to treat live-trolls in her classroom the way I treat online trolls in this blog. She does not get paid enough.

In the past two days, we have had two people call at the Palo Alto church looking for money and/or shelter. I’m not going to talk about the specifics of either of the people who came here, because they deserve their privacy. I will say that we felt compelled to call the police in one instance, and in the other instance the parish minister gave the person both money and a ride to the train station.

These two visits prompted me to think about some of the ways I evaluate people who come to churches looking for money or shelter, and I realized that I have never tried to think systematically about this subject. Nor am I ready to think systematically about this subject now. But I thought I’d share some random thoughts based on experiences over fifteen years of working in both urban and suburban churches.

• At one church, I could track the price of one hit of heroin by the requests we used to get for specific amounts of money. When lots of people needed eleven dollars to pay for a ticket from where we were to the VA hospital in another nearby city, I knew heroin was going for eleven dollars. When lots of people needed ten dollars to pay for a taxi cab to the unemployment office in the next county, I knew the price of heroin had gone down to ten dollars.
• When people I do not know get close to children or children’s play areas, and when they do not move away immediately when I ask them to do so, I am very likely to call the police, and it doesn’t matter how polite they may be.
• When someone asks me for money for a motel room because they just happened to be passing through town and suddenly got stranded overnight while their car is being fixed and their credit card isn’t working until tomorrow because a hold got placed on it when they filled up their gas tank, I am likely to believe them the first time — but when they come back six months later, obviously don’t recognize me, and give me the same story all over again, I am very unlikely to give them money.
• Sometimes people are normally polite to me, they make an effort with their appearance, and they actually attend worship service in a respectful manner. I am far more likely to offer help to those people, no matter how questionable or dodgy their story might be.
• I’ve had many people show their scars to me. Socially I am a fairly conservative New England Yankee, and having to look at scars kind of grosses me out, and makes me want to get rid of the person without hearing their story, and without offering any support. I have learned to not look at scars when they are displayed, so that I can concentrate on listening to the person instead of throwing them out.
• I once had someone ask me for money. He was wearing clothing that looked more expensive than anything I could afford. I didn’t give him money. He got aggressive with me. I’m still not sure if he was an upper middle class white guy who lost his job who was genuinely in need and had been reduced to begging and who was just naturally aggressive — or if he was a con man. Either way, I didn’t give him the money for a motel room for which he was asking.

I don’t know. I’m afraid I have gotten way too cynical about these things. Now whenever someone from outside the church asks me for money, I start with the assumption that it’s a con game. I don’t like that about myself.

Mr. Crankypants is seriously impressed by the brazenness of the health care industry. Dan, Mr. C.’s stupid alter ego, went into the hospital back in August. A few days ago, Dan got a statement from the San Mateo Medical Center. The hospital charged Dan’s insurance company more than $10,000 for a 24 hour stay. The insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, decided that they would reimburse all but $546 of that amount. Dan now owes the San Mateo Medical Center $546.

So where does the $546 come from? Of course they didn’t tell Dan what that money paid for. The statement Dan received does not tell what that $10,000 went towards, nor does it tell what the insurance company refused to reimburse the hospital for.

Mr. Crankypants has got it all figured out. The hospital and the insurance company have figured out how much they can nick people for before they start to get complaints. You stay in the hospital for a day, they figure they can nick you for about half a grand. Oh, sure, if Dan were to ask them what that $546 went to pay for, they would make something up provide documentation listing all the charges, and they’d show that the insurance company refused to reimburse a few dollars here, a few dollars there — nothing that you could really complain about. And besides, Dan was in the hospital, right? He can’t deny that he got the treatment, right? (Of course he can’t deny he got the treatment, they kept him drugged up most of the time so he has very little idea what they did to him.) So Dan, being essentially stupid and good-natured, will pay up.

Mr. Crankypants, being essentially evil and mean-spirited, is in awe at the techniques of the hospitals and insurances companies. This takes greed to a whole new level. Yes, Mr. Crankypants is in awe.

Oslo, Norway

A spokesperson for the Norwegian police confirmed that they are investigating whether the Nobel Prize Committee intended its award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama as a sophisticated form of trolling.

A source close to the investigation, who requested anonymity, confirmed that police here believe the award was designed to provoke U.S. bloggers and talk radio hosts into screaming themselves senseless.

In related stories, both Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh were rushed to local emergency rooms early this morning when they passed out after expressing their outrage that Mr. Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Moore reportedly collapsed when he screamed, “But he’s still escalating troop levels!” while Limbaugh collapsed after screaming, “Sarah Palin would’nt’ve allowed this, this is what happens in Obama’s America!”

This afternoon, my older sister, the one who lies in Indiana, called. “We’re going to the Indiana State Fair,” she said. This year, she said, the food to try is chocolate-covered bacon. “Everyone says that it’s one of those things that sounds gross at first, but when you try it, it’s really good.”

I’ll bet it is really good — you can’t go wrong combining sugar, fat, and salt. I did a little Web research on this new food phenomenon. According to Wikipedia’s entry, chocolate-covered bacon dates back to at least 2005. But last year chocolate-covered bacon was the big hit at the Minnesota State Fair under the name “Pig Lickers,” which means that this year it is appearing at all the best state fairs across the nation. Biggest thing since deep-fried Pepsi.

Given the realities of Bay Area culture, I’ll bet I won’t find any chocolate-covered bacon around here (although I might be able to find vegan bacon-substitute covered in low-fat fair-trade chocolate). Well, I may have to drive up to the California State Fair in Sacramento, just so’s I can buy me some Pig Lickers.