Saturday, November 24, 2012

Deck Everyone In The Halls


Yesterday, so called “Black Friday”, a bukkake orgy of consumeristic stuff.

About mid-morning, as I finished my appointment to replace my truck window, Sweetie, being a lovely, kind, and savagely impatient woman, requested I do her a favor, given my proximity to one of the many malls in the Cities. Not the Mall of America, it would have been a short conversation, but one of the larger, somewhat more upscale malls. I adore my wife, and wish to make her happy, and this seemed reasonable. My train of thought being, ‘well, it’s noon, all the people who started shopping last night at 8 pm have hopefully had their heads pop, like a blueberry in a rotisserie oven, due to the shame of destroying someone’s Thanksgiving so that WalMart/Target/Kohl’s/Macy’s/Billy-Bob’s House Of Live Hamsters could make a couple extra bucks’.* Although I do not handle crowds well, and have in fact, over time, gotten worse at being in crowds, I thought I could deal.

In short, zoo. In short as well, holy dammit.

I couldn’t deal. Not a damn bit. In all seriousness, a fairly short exposure destroyed me physically and mentally for several hours. I was shaking. I had stomach acid that could etch stainless steel, giving me an idea for another career, but as creating such an abrasive was not, ultimately, as pleasant as many things, including repeated blows to the melon, I felt it to be an unsustainable path. It was an experience I shall not repeat, save under extraordinary circumstances, and then I’m bringing a cattle prod.

I did complete my mission, and now with some distance, have a few things to say.

I adore Christmas. I love Christmas. I am the spirit of Christmas, it is my favorite holiday. I love to give gifts. Not going to claim any particular hypocrisy, I love receiving gifts as well, but I stone get off on giving gifts. As much as people in general annoy me, especially mindless mobs, I would take a bullet for a friend and I like to show my appreciation and I love to give stuff. I understand the ‘mission to buy stuff’, it’s part of the whole ‘giving’ gig. I love to make my wife happy, makes me all warm and glowwy, and fortunately, she is very good at picking out/up the stuff I give her –
- sorry honey kidding yes I’ll be in the garage –
- and I love seeing her smile. So I get it. But I want to endorse an idea.

One gift, one good gift, for your loved ones. Good does not necessarily equate money, by the way, good equates to cool, heartfelt, smile-causing. Good equals putting some damn thought into it, if your child shows logic skills, get a Snakes And Ladders game, something you can do with your kid, rather than this year’s Torture-Your-Uncle-The-Geologist Barney or whatever the latest fad is. Fuck that shit, live like people, people.

I know this is nothing new, just my two cents, and I am very much a liberal, War-On-Christmas-What-Would-Jesus-Buy, let’s put some awesome sauce into the season rather than blind consumerism, type. 

Note: These two cents have not been endorsed by any major religions. Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell/Saint Sarah, teh Virgin Of Wasilla say, “Buy, bitchez!”

The economy, while oh-so-painfully slowly growing**, is still poor, meaning that I feel safe guessing much of yesterday’s ejaculations were caused by the rubbing of plastic against laser scanner. Credit, by definition and design, is suxxors.*** C’mon people. Seriously?

A Plausible Pile Of Positivity

Now, since this is the beginning of the Christmas season, I am listening to the 24hr Xmas radio. Love it, honestly, I’m a real bug for Christmas, LOVE IT. I want to share a couple favorites. The first two, well, let’s face it, I is a weirdo.

Love Scully and Mulder…

TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP!

Patton Oswalt does the best deconstruction of yesterdays bullshit possible…

I debated including this, due to my enormous machoness, but I assure, I love this song un-ironically, proof, that as wildly annoying Mariah Carey is, she has occasionally shown a bit of talent, and the association with ‘Love, Actually’,  a movie that I also love un-ironically, don’t hurt…

Now, I did notice, and will not post proof because my eyes will bleed, that there are now remakes of the most insipid Xmas song ever, one by the wildly entertaining (in life if not at all in the musical world) George Michael, thrill junkie/idjit extraordinaire, 'Last Christmas'. Life ain't'nt totally perfect...

It's Christmas season! W00t!!1!!!

*Seriously, y’all are Satan. Suck a tailpipe.
**Which brings another thingy this holiday season to be thankful for, that the Lords Of Kolob decided that Willard Romney is to serve a greater purpose, arising with Transformer Jesus**** in teh Last Days, thereby saving us from 4 years of the thorough eradication of the working class in this country so that Billy-Bob, of House Of Live Hamsters Fame, can build a car elevator on his estate next to those Walton scamps.
***Credit card companies? Also Satan. Gonna need a bunch of tailpipes, or all y’all gotta share.
****If you’ve been exposed to the sheer IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION lunacy of the Left Behind books, read Fred Clark’s (Slacktivist) fisking of it. Well worth the time to drop down the rabbit hole.

8 comments:

  1. I haven't done a day-after thanksgiving shopping frenzy in quite some time. Admittedly, in the last couple years it's been because I had little money to spend...

    I did do a little shopping at the Apple Online store yesterday, they had a couple of markdowns on some gear....but that was it, I swear! I mean, except the booze.

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  2. I have a pretty extensive Christmas Music collection, ranging from the Weird Al goodness to Bruck Cockburn. last year I added the Heavy Metal Christmas album....

    I have a couple of songs that local bloogers BlooGal and Neddie Jingo did over a few years, nice little covers including a great version of XTC's Thanks For Christmas.

    There was alocal snot-punk band called the Mighty Deer Lick that would do holiday gigs as the Mighty Reindeer Lick. They had a cassette of their songs which was awesome, but unfortunately the tape has degraded and I can't get a decent digital pull off it, and have not the skill to process it back to reasonable.

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  3. I'm not against Black Friday per se, people want to shop, get the deals, the stores are going to provide, the urban legend is that this is the day each year most stores go in the black, financially, but I can't be arsed to Snopes-check it. But dammit, next year what, it'll start after the end of the Lions game, or if the Lions suck ("if" AHAHAHAHAHA)before. Cripes, give people a day with their families, whats so damn hard about that. Shoppers are still gonna buy their list regardless of when the stores open.

    Xmas music, love the oldies, White Christmas, Santa Baby (Eartha Kitt for the rrawrrr), Baby Its Cold Outside (and Roofies Inside), oh man Guaraldi's soundtrack to Peanuts Christmas. YAY!

    Isn't there some sort of acetone process to separate and strengthen magnetic tape?

    Oooh, XTC - haven't heard that one, but I now need to hear Dear God and Mayor Of Simpleton...

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  4. I've never been into the Black Friday thing- my family's not into overconsumption. The Friday after Thanksgiving is for hanging out and recovering from the turkey/beer hangover.

    Funny, all of the holidays are about hanging out. One year, we didn't even bother opening our Christmas presents until the day after Christmas... we were too busy drinking until dawn and shooting the shit all the next day.

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  5. I couldn't wait for someone to open a gift. It'd be all "open this one! Open this one!"

    Beer, well, scotch, i can really get behind too...

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  6. I am also trying to avoid the 'point and look' encouragement of these media tapeworms who post videos of people acting awful. Won't click 'em, won't post 'em. It encourages the news stories, which encourages the stupid shoppers, and round and round....

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