Well, another christmas has arrived, and I have discovered, or rediscovered I should say, that I am terrible at wrapping presents. Abominable. Just plain awful. I do not know how I forget this during the year, but I do, and I did. But, having just finished my wrapping job, I now know again, and will try to hold onto this knowledge until around, say, the middle of January. Now, a couple of you may say "Oh no, Luke, I'm sure you can't be that bad. I've seen some pretty poorly wrapped presents in my time." As a retort to this, I will merely describe what a few of my gifts look like. One looks a little like Santa's sack... made out of wrapping paper. There are tears in it. Unavoidable ones. I squeezed them together as best as I could, not bothering to use more wrapping paper. I had used a whole roll, and using more just seemed like a waste. Fortunately, the tears are in places where you can't really tell what the gift is. Another present is held together with a single piece of tape. I'm not quite certain how I managed to do that, but I did. That was all the adhesive it needed. A single piece. You can imagine what it looks like. Or maybe you can't. I'm having trouble picturing it myself, because it was such a traumatic experience. Yet that's not even the worst of it. The very worst present that I wrapped used maybe a cubic foot of wrapping paper. That wasn't a typo. I'm not talking about a square foot of wrapping paper. I'm talking about a cubic foot. I have reason to believe that it left the second dimension and entered the third because of the contortions that I was putting it through.

Now you understand that I really am a terrible wrapper. Maybe it's because I'm white. (hur hur.) But, before you get the wrong impression, let me clarify: I'm not sad that I can't wrap. Quite the opposite. I'm ecstatic! Somewhere between the sixteen layers of extraneous tape and ribbons tied in new and ugly ways, two things happen. First, it entirely obscures the nature of the gift! Too many presents have been ruined for me by an excellent, efficient wrapping job. Even if you can't tell right away by looking at it what it is, as soon as you pick it up, it's texture or sound gives it away. This is unfortunate, as I really enjoy surprises. My wraps take care of this in a fascinating fashion! When you look at it, it looks like a pile of paper! When you pick it up, it rustles... exactly like paper, and loud enough to cover up any incriminating sounds! It even feels like paper! It works! Second, it makes the presents that I give the most interesting looking, hands down. I could give somebody a gift card (which I would never, ever do, but that's a rant for after Christmas) and they would open it first because it looks like anything between a tie fighter and a trombone. So, because of my horrible wrapping skills, it turns out that I'm one of the best wrappers I know! Surprise!

Has music ever really changed since... oh, since it was invented? Troubadors and... girl troubadors, whatever they're called, were singing about forbidden love, lost love, fulfilling love, cheating, sex, adultery, animals, social improprieties, etc. etc. etc. (three etcs., because the third one is necessary. There's a lot more than the examples listed.) just after gregorian chants went big. I know. I've read the poems. I haven't heard the music, because so much of it was lost, but I bet it was aimed at the same kind of demographic, with the same intention. It puts quite a hamper on arguments that people change over time. The same things that appeal to people today appealed to people 1000 years ago. How much larger a time frame do you need? 10,000? Would you like to claim we were different when we were supposedly monkeys? We haven't changed. We haven't evolved. Darwin was an idiot. We want the same things we've always wanted. Sex. Money. Power. It's enumerated in the music. Before that, in the poems. Before that, in the stories. If you published a modern retelling of Gilgamesh, you'd barely have to change anything to make it a bestseller. That's estimated to be around 4,700 years old. If our basic nature hasn't changed in that long, why? And if you say that basic natures don't change in evolution, only appearances, I will cut you. If they don't change, what do we have to argue about? Appearances? So "Man" used to look like "Monkey." Sure, okay, why not? If he still had the same basic nature, he was still a man. A monkey's a monkey because it acts like a monkey. If you found a monkey that acted like a man, I would call that monkey a man. But monkeys do not act like men. Why? Because their basic nature is that of a monkey. A man is only a monkey if he acts like one. Evolution does not give us the excuse to act like monkeys. It gives us yet another excuse NOT to.