Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year Quick Hits!

Thanksgiving

Hey guys, I’m back! So how was your Thanksgiving? Oh, mine was great. Get this: I ate a lot! Of turkey! Half of my family, though, is vegetarian, so they abstained from the most sacred part of the holiday. Which I thought was bullshit. You can’t take the Turkey out of Turkey Day any more than you can take Woden out of Wednesday – am I right? To whom do you sacrifice your Wednesday goats?

Woden is like Gandalf crossed with the Gorton's fisherman, with a dash of bloodlust.

Christmas

And do you know what you get if you take Christ out of Christmas? Right! You get sent to hell, to eat your own poop for all eternity! More literally, though, you get “Mas,” which is Spanish for “more”. Gotcha, consumerists! Or maybe it’s an acronym, short for “Muslims/Abortionists/Satanists”. Take that, Muslims, Abortionists, and Satanists! In your unsaved faces!

I can’t really keep up this obnoxious tone, so I’m just going to say that I hope you had a good Christmas or whatever. I’ve always loved Christmas season. Sure, Jesus’ birthday party has been co-opted by corporate fuckheads, but since I’m of the opinion that Jesus is exactly as much my savior as the Verizon nerd is, I really don’t give a shit about that. And consumerism is always annoying. I’d argue that it’s actually more tolerable during Christmas season. I just get tired of 10-plus months of body wash commercials telling me to “Lather. Rinse. Repeat as Sexessary.” Don’t get me wrong - it’s fundamentally good advice – I just don’t sexessarily think that a brief marketing shift in the direction of wholesome Holiday Cheer is such a bad thing. Christmas is the one time of year when most commercials aren’t designed to give men erections and women eating disorders (boners vs. bonier?), and I appreciate the new pandering angle.


Really, I think your opinion about Christmas-season-minus-Christ is bound to hinge on your opinion about your family. For me, the prospect of a few festive, work-free weeks with family is exciting. But if you’ve written poetry about how you’re like a rose that grew from a pile of shit festering in a sewer, sustained only by the flicker of sunlight that ever-so-briefly snuck through the grate every day at dawn, then you might not see the attraction. I respect that. I get that.

New Year

Finally, Happy New Year! Hope you had fun. My New Year’s Eve was pretty subdued this time. I even stumbled into doing some designated driving. Because sometimes people don’t choose to be heroes; heroism is simply thrust upon them by drunks in the dead of night. Which makes heroism not unlike being raped, if you think about it. At any rate, if I DD every New Year until I’m 30, I might finally atone for last year’s inexcusable display, which, if you don’t feel like reading that post, can be summarized thusly:

World: Welcome to 2008, Shawn!
Me: (throws up on world)
World: What the fuck, man?

So this year started much better than last, and I’m excited for it. The country is, in so many ways, in the shitter, but I think there’s a general sense of hope - an audacious hope, you might say. But it’s not just a passive dream that things will get better. It’s a willingness to face all obstacles head-on - to laugh in the face of despair - indeed, to fuck despair in the mouth. It might sound clichéd. It might be jejune. But it’s there, goddammit. And no one has tapped into – maybe even driven – the zeitgeist like Bob Harper:

He’s not asking you “Are you ready?”. Time waits for no man. No, friends, he’s TELLING you “Are you ready!”. Which makes no sense at all. But you know what? Neither does the stock market.

But I really am excited. Barring a meltdown of which I’m certainly capable, I should graduate from boring-ass college this year and enter the boring-ass workforce. Look out for me, world! And again, sorry for throwing up all over you last year. That was not cool.