WHY I LOVE THE HOLIDAYS

Apparently I am an excessively negative person. The holiday season is all about good cheer and happiness, and inculcating a warm sense of fellow feeling among people. It's also about going broke buying expensive crap for relatives and getting into a right Donnybrook while waiting in line among thousands of cannibals at the local big box, as well as demands for charitable contributions from organizations you've never heard of and don't support.
Saving the pet hamsters in war zones or something.
And it's about salmonella.


It's about murderous shopping frenzies that start when forks are laid down, and continue non stop till a bleak hour five or six days after Thanksgiving, when a grim wet dawn greets you, and all your money is gone, and the methamphetamines have worn off.

Followed by a month of weight loss pills and antidepressants.
As well as office holiday parties and overwork.

Life is never so bad that grim and reality-based foreboding can't make it better.


Remember that salmonella I mentioned?

There you are, Sunday evening in a crowded departure lounge (several flights delayed), sick to your stomach from Aunt Dorabelle's famous turkey stuffing -- so good you even ate some of the succotash (ugh) and sweet potato pie -- plus having spent several days surrounded by hundreds of people, you now also have the flu and covid but you don't know it yet, and you know you will get nearly no sleep before being back in the office bright and early. There are children throwing up nearby. Some teenager is showing off his rap skills. He's so white he glows in the dark, has no sense of rhyme or rhythm, plus an addenoidal voice that's intensely irritating, and his entire song seems to be about setting fire to shopping malls as a sexual act. There are an awful lot of procreative verbs and nouns in every stanza.

While you are in a holding pattern over Denver, I will be waking up from a restful night's sleep, and contemplating my first pipe of the day. What shall I smoke after coffee?
Is it still raining? The hills are so beautiful just after dawn, almost pearlescent.


[Atalaya, manufactured by Cornell & Diehl for Low Country Pipe & Cigar, blend compounded by Jeremy Reeves. Virginia, Turkish, and Perique. An easily rubbed broken flake. Earthy, sweet, slightly spicy. A faint floral note verging on grassy. Medium strength. Perfect for Autumn weather. Altogether a darn good product.]


I feel for you. I really do. I'm radiating warmth, cheer, and happiness.
Have you considered adopting an emotional support hamster?
You can dress it in a little Santa costume.
It will look so festive!



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