I Hate Christmas, Part 2

Well, the annual holiday fiasco is finally over and I’m safely back in the Snorklewacker Cave. Actually, the fiasco rating was quite low this year; much lower than it’s been in the past. One major reason for the relatively low level of stress was that we flew down to the family homesteads instead of driving—no 10 hours of slogging down the East Coast Megalopolis through holiday traffic. Just a couple hours of JetBlue entertaining me with XM radio. Why have we not been flying every year?? Also, the family strife and drama was at a minimum this year for some reason. Overall I managed to see three siblings, three nephews, the new(ish) niece, three siblings-in-law, one parent, one step-parent, two in-laws, and four friends over six days. Whew.
As for gifts, I simply must call out these two hideous apple figurine things for special mockery. Aren’t they awful? Egads. Anybody who wants ’em, they are yours, yours, yours. I ship internationally.

Justin Timberlake in a box

Thanks to Danielle for dropping a dime on this one! NSFW. What are you doing surfing my blog from work, anyway, ya slacker?

I Hate Christmas, Part 1

I need to buy a generic gift for the office Yankee swap on Thursday. At the moment I’m nearly homicidally irritated with half of my co-workers, and therefore not interested in giving any of them a gift, and friendly enough with the other half to know that they are dreading the swap just as much as I am. Blah, what to buy? At this point I think the default is food, although that just screams uninspired. Last year somebody tried the ultimate tacky move and unwrapped his own present. (Although he didn’t count on me taking it from him, heheh!) Hmph, I’m not feeling the holiday cheer over here. Christmas is such a pain in the ass. Well, except for the proliferation of chocolate. But I refuse to look for an upside while I’m in this cranky mood.

Number nine, number nine

My oldest nephew turned nine years old yesterday. Nine! Hell, I vividly remember being nine.

• My oldest sister went to college (I drove down with my parents to move her into the dorm)


• I was in fourth grade, which was when I met my first real best friend


• My 27-year-old (!) somewhat hippie teacher read The Hobbit to us in class


• I learned long division—I remember being so crushed when I found out remainders were just a crutch we’d have to learn to live without


• I procrastinated so long on my science project, which was to build a model of the solar system, that I ended up with one of the crappiest ones in the class


• One of my classmates would solve your Rubik’s Cube for a price (geek hustler!)

The week of my ninth birthday, the #1 pop song was “Centerfold” by J. Geils Band, and E.T. came out three months later (I never saw it, though, can you believe it!). And I should mention that Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom also came out that summer, although I didn’t become hip enough to notice that one until around eight years later.

Nine! So old, so young. Freaky to think about it.

Hieronymus Bosch in a down parka

It’s been cold outside today. Cold in an empty-void-of-outer-space kind of way. I was out there wrapped in my warmest coat, two hats, hands inside gloves inside pockets and I could tell you exactly which square inches of my body were not covered in enough layers. (Ankles, bridge of the nose, toes.) And it’s times like that when you begin to grasp the speck-like insignificance of humanity, that the very air around you is not your friend as it tries to suck the life out of your body and the heat out of your skin. It makes me glad that medieval artists didn’t know about physics, because if they had, the center of the most ghoulish painting or carving depicting the horrific depths of hell would not have Satan at the center, but Thermodynamics, represented by a blank-eyed quadruple-fanged serpent with an empty belly drinking the warm life-force right out of its innocent victims, diamond-studded eyes staring with the cruel impersonality of a relentless, mindless force. (Or maybe I shouldn’t have watched any of Queen of the Damned on basic cable last night, a truly awful movie by one of the more awful writers of paperbacks I loved when I was a teenager, because it’s making me feel Gothic and tragic and positively overwrought. Moreover, to expand this parenthetical aside past the point of reason, Van Helsing was on basic cable tonight and I can confirm that it really sucks. I mean, you can’t even watch it for more than a few minutes at a time because the pain in your head intensifies with every second. Normally good actors acting very badly, bad actors acting badly, special effects that look completely cheesy, David Wenham’s appallingly terrible haircut, etc. Yeesh.)

Now I’ve lost my train of thought. Anyway, it was damn cold today and I’m someone who likes it cold. At the same time, for the next several days I’ll be the only person in this big house and that’s exacerbating this cold feeling. I’ve been blasting the TV and the music, and that helps. The next step is tossing this tiny stone into the giant ocean of cyberspace and causing a couple of ripples to remind the world that I’m over here generating heat, using electricity, and just generally being alive. Hey, remind me not to play “Log Cabin Fever” by Split Enz this week, okay? At least, not until Swami gets back from his trip to China.