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Current Rants Past Rants Associated Tomfoolery The Suspects Worship Goes Here About the Ranter Updates: New Q&A all about me in the sidebar under "All About the Ranter". Also a small synopsis about each person under "The Suspects". 404 |
Date:
January 1, 2003
Currently Thinking New Years resolutions exist so we can get most of our yearly quota of screwing up done early on. Philosophy of the Day Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyways. Current Celebrity Infatuation Santa Clause: For so efficiently putting one over on the world by that whole good kid/bad kid list. Can you really tell me that kid who beat me up every day in public school deserved a new bike? Bastard. |
'Tis the Season to Ask No Questions
Happy New Year! Yes I know I haven’t updated for over a month and a half. Things got in the way such as essays and exams and other school related evils. But here I am! I’d like to say that I’m writing on January 1st just to wish you good tidings and other such fluffery, but the reality is that I’m stuck at work. On New Year’s Eve I am at work, and the only champagne glasses I hear are the ones ringing inside my head after 4 1/2 hours of rhythmically banging my head against my desk. But at least I’m gouging my company for 2.5x normal pay rate. See? I am optimistic! I am sure that you’re all reading this now as you are recovering from hangovers and need some good ol’ fashioned cynicism to wipe away that yule tide cheer and get you back to the normal dreary, work-a-day cesspool state of mind that you have come to depend on. Oh what fun! I’m only kidding of course. Here in PorkchopLand we are very fond of holidays and the merriment that they bring. I usually work every holiday except Christmas because I get a wonderful pay rate and most holidays to me are just another excuse to drink and end up worshipping a porcelain God, so I can only really comment on holiday merriment in Christmas form. But Christmas is the best type of holiday! The kind where you get stuff! Of course, anyone over 12 has to go and buy stuff for other people so it really comes down to a guessing game in which you attempt to find the best ratio of stuff that your gift recipients actually want compared to stuff that they pretend to like but will return later. So the presents are good, but lose some of the magic as you get older. So I began to wonder, what keeps people so excited about the Christmas season as they progress in age? The general sense of caring and seasonal cheer is nice, but one still has to get to that point. Aside from the religious factor, which I have NO opinion on (by which I mean I have absolutely tons of opinion on it but refuse to divulge it here), I think it’s because Christmas is a unique holiday. There’s so much preparation, planning, decorations, complete household transformations into a resemblance of Santa’s Workshop, freaking TREES in our living rooms which in any other time of the year would be a serious sign that we should vacuum more often, thinking about what to buy for others, giving to those less fortunate, figuring out who will visit who’s house on what day, etc. Christmas is a really complicated holiday. When I see my mom rushing around the house I envision that this must have been what it looked like as Eisenhower planned D-Day. Only I’m sure Eisenhower didn’t have an all-consuming obsession with the proper flavor of gravy. Christmas has a lot of obscure practices embedded into it. I could think of reasons for most of them, by either religious backgrounds, tradition, or media and commercial endorsement, but one thing I could not think of any reasoning behind was mistletoe. For one thing, mistletoe in its Latin form means “dung on a twig” which I know is what I want to be thinking of when I play tonsil hockey with someone underneath it. Most people also know that it is a) a weed, b) poisonous, and c) sucks the life out of every other thing that it manages to get attached to and envelop. I’m sure this reminds you of an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe you met them under the mistletoe so this would have significance for you, but I still can’t see how someone in years of olde managed to equate this to Christmas. The other one is the tree. Who had the bright idea of yanking a freaking tree into our homes? Not only that, but one with NEEDLES all over it? Granted, it may be the only tree that is still green at that time of the year, but one would think that would be a hint. So every year across the world, millions of fathers are yanking in trees large enough that the timber from it could build them a second house, enduring stab wounds and lacerations while he curses like a sailor with Tourrette’s Syndrome. Of course nowadays it’s illegal to cut your own trees and so you have to buy it from one of the billion lots that spring up all over the place charging astronomical prices for something that, let’s face it, they had no part in producing other than learning how to work a chainsaw. So we pour millions of dollars into the tree whacking business (who are the real powerholders in our society) and are thus helping to fight the terrorists. Or maybe I’ve been watching too much CNN. In my family we always get to the tree lots late in the season when they have been picked over by the really militant Christmas families who have been camping outside the lots in a line since the previous February like Star Wars geeks in order to get the best tree. You know who I’m talking about. These are the people who have ‘decoration wars’ with neighbours and nativity scenes on the front lawns and a life-size talking Frosty the Snowman which will remain there for a total of 3 minutes until the neighbourhood teenagers find it. Anyway, we always have a much smaller choice of tree each year than the average family and I always feel sorry for the ones leftover, especially the scrawny toothpick trees that no one will ever want, the ones that have had their little lives unceremoniously cut short and for what purpose? To sit on a lot for 3 weeks and then be tossed into the chipper. I want to take these trees home with me just so that their deaths won’t be squandered. You may accuse me of being a tree hugger, but have you ever talked to a tree? Chances are that if you do, its reply will be much more intelligent than the average person’s. Of course I can’t take all these trees home. I don’t know where I would put them and I don’t have that much money to buy them all. Plus the lot attendant, who has a gold tooth and looks like he is part of the mafia, is convincing me that I don’t want THOSE ones… I want this other tree, the best tree on the lot (which by now isn’t saying much), defined by it being the most expensive tree on the lot. Of course I’ll take it because if I don’t I’m afraid that I may wake up tomorrow with a severed reindeer head beside me ala the Godfather. It’s unfair in this one-tree Christmas world. So my family isn’t a huge observer of holiday practices. We’re usually spread out all over the province and this is the one time of the year where we can be assured that we’ll all get back home to see each other. And it’s at times like those where I am reminded of those who do not have family to spend time with, and I may know one or two of them. This time of year is hard for them because it puts so much emphasis on family so that the comparison is harsh and unforgiving. Family isn’t always linked by blood, however, and I only hope that these people find solace in the knowledge that others are thinking and caring about them. Because I am. … Yes, that was actual compassion without sarcasm coming from me. Don’t get used to it, it probably only happens once a year. This holiday does weird things to people. -Porkchop |