Post-Christmas Catchup

Ich Bin Ein Berserker: Seahawks defensive end Patrick Kerney
celebrates his umpty-millionth hit on Redskins QB Todd Collins.
If you squint real hard, you might be able to see me. I'm a tiny speck
of fuzz in the background.

Greg:

Sorry I haven't written for more than a month. I have been distracted by ever so many things, football among them, as well as football most recently, so why don't I just go ahead and start there and work backwards? Hmm? 'Kay?

After a completely schizophrenic season, the Seahawks are in the playoffs. So naturally I spent Saturday shrieking my ever-living 'nards off at the Hawks-Redskins Wild Card playoff game, which my beloved Seahawks won quite handily 35-14. The score was not always that lopsided, as those dastardly Redskins conspired to edge ahead in the third quarter. But lo, my beloved Seahawks pulled their helmeted heads out of their spandex-clad asses and scored - what, like 21 points or something? - in the fourth quarter, thus ensuring that they would live to play the Green Bay Meat Packers (that was their original name - nay, I poop you not) Saturday next at Lambeau Field. Quick highlight reel: Hawks defensive end Patrick Kerney, the only man whose biceps can be seen from the space shuttle, flattened the poor 'Skins QB Todd Collins any number of times even though the 'Skins defense had him triple-teamed. Triple teamed. They devoted three strapping young lads to foiling his progress, yet they could not stop this hammer-willed juggernaut of unquenchable force. (Do you write comic books...or porn, for that matter? -Ed.) Nearly incomprehensible amounts of ass were kicked, and I was not only on hand to witness it, but used my lungs to propel my team to victory. I am hoarse as heck even today, four days later. I left it all on the field. 130dB at the 50 yard line during the game.


My tiny Christmas Village has expanded to two neighborhoods this year: Lower
New New Gunnswick, and Upper New New Gunnswick (pictured above) which sits
high atop Mount PianoForte in the province of Living Room. Newly added this year
are the Fruit Market and (I shit you NOT!) Dr. John E. Wilson's Dentist Office. Plus
I threw in some moose and bears and foxes and shit just to fuck with the locals. When
Teresa saw all the new stuff, she was approximately 70% less than stoked.

Christmas was good to me. I got, among other things, a new job. I'll leave the details on that to a future epistle, but suffice it to say for now that it's a gigantic step up. I gave Teresa a string of black pearls. She was so stunned, she hasn't taken them off since except to shower. Aaron got a digital video camera, and was likewise speechless. I got Seahawks slippers, Seahawks socks, and a 2007 edition Seahawks knit cap (so I can look just like my heroes of the gridiron). When paired with my Seahawks bathrobe and Seahawks jammies, the entire ensemble makes me look like the Hugh Hefner of the frump-slash-sports fan set. I couldn't be happier.

Speaking of happier, did I say that I got a new job? Yes, yes I did. Well I'll leave off the details again, only to say that I'm really going to miss the people I work with at Real. It's sad to leave, but leave I must. As a parting gesture, three of my colleagues re-carpeted my office with astro turf while I was away over the holidays. They even put little hash marks and a goal line on it! Now every time I walk to my desk and sit down, I shout 'TOUCHDOWN SEAHAWKS!" (The lady in the office next to mine is going to stab me in the gizzard for making her jump all the time. I just know it.)

It seems like it was barely four years ago that I was sitting in Myrtle Edwards park on a bright sunny day, just across the way from the RealNetworks corporate HQ, mulling the prospect of accepting an offer to become just about the only on-staff copywriter here. I knew that meant that I'd have to give up the thrill of being a freelance copywriter-slash-bill collector. I knew it meant that I could no longer work from home in my underwear...well, not all the time. But I took the plunge. And four years later, here I am with a wicked case of carpal tunnel syndrome, a bunch of people that I'm going to miss horribly, and an office full of turf to show for all my hard work. RealNetworks now has at least a hundred and thirty eight writers, all of whom are more bitter than me. I call that progress. Adieu, mes amis! Beau heau heau heau heau! (Is that how they weep in France? -Ed.)

Inside joke to the people at Real: At least we'll have the holiday party! Oh wait, no we won't. Psyche!

By the way, congratulations on your new gig! It's not very often that you get something that uses every one of your talents. It's about time, though. You deserve it.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Malaise: Rhymes With "Holidays"

Totally gratuitous photo of Seahawks'
wide receiver DJ Hackett that has nothing
to do with this letter except that he's
ossum.

Greg:

Sorry to hear about you losing your job. What a freakin' pain in the arse. And what timing, too - right before the holidays! It seems like the fourth quarter thing to do: freak out about the books (because you were a dumbasss and, oh I don't know, created a revenue shortfall or something) and fire some completely innocent person. Teresa also got notified last week that her current contract in the IT department of Starbucks would be cut short by ten months; viz., it will be ending on November 30th instead of way the hell next year some time. Good thing we all have bills and mortgages, otherwise job loss wouldn't be so stressful. Shit. Which reminds me of the classic Shakespearean rhetorical quote: "Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?"

So while we're at it, let's just sweep the rest of the woe out of the way so we can get on to happier things. A recent rainstorm has revealed that my roof leaks, and I have no means of getting up there to fix it at the moment. Nor do repeated pleas to contractors do any good. The guy who was supposed to finish the shower in my MIL in August still has not shown up, despite repeated threats to do so. I often wonder aloud what it must be like to be a contractor and be so immersed in cash that one can let work just slip away. Apparently I am in the wrong line of work. Every time I see some guy driving a shitty old truck with the words "General Contractor" on the side of it, I think to myself "There goes another recalcitrant millionaire".

Perhaps there's an upside. Perhaps by the end of the rainy season, natural hydrometrics will have given me a brand new skylight right above my fireplace.

Other stuff to bitch about: I went in for my second sleep study, the one where they strap you to a CPAP machine and then crank up the pressure until you look like Dizzy Gillespie. (No, honestly, every time the mask slipped my cheeks would inflate. It was 80% less than awesome.) When they came in to get me up in the morning, they were all "You did great! Your EEG shows that you slept a lot better and your blood oxygen was higher! Wow!" And I was all, "That was fawking hawribble! I had a dream that I was being suffocated by Dizzy Gillespie! Worst night of my life!" And they were all "Well, to tell you the truth, we do try to crank up the pressure as high as we can through the course of the night." And I was all, "Wow, I wish I could get a job where I could torture people for fun."

Since the CPAP experience was so damn fun, I decided that I'd try to attack the snoring problem by losing weight (which was a viable alternative, according to my doctor), and that I'd try to lose weight (and save some gas money) by becoming a bike commuter. So I went out and bought enough bike clothing to make myself look like a gigantic neon sausage. Then I put a bunch of blinky lights all over everything so I'd look like a 25 MPH Christmas Tree. And then I put a rack and panniers on my bike. So now that I'm all outfitted, now all I need is to grow some lungs - at least enough to do a 17 mile round trip every day. I've been practicing by doing 50-block sprints. Fortunately, there's a really nice bike path that starts only five blocks from my house and goes all the way to Everett, which is about 22 miles from here. That's nice because it means that I can actually sprint that distance without having to stop for traffic. Well almost never, that is. There are some crossings. Anyway, I've been doing this for a few weeks now and the net effect has been that I've actually gained two pounds and it looks like I've added a couple of panniers to my flanks. To wit, I am becoming mightily thick from the obliques down. If I get any thicker, I shall don a garland of acorns and look like a 25 MPH oak tree.

Gotta run. I'd love to talk more, but it's only a few minutes before kickoff (Seahawks @ Rams) and once that ball leaves the tee, my IQ plummets drastically. I become such a yawping, mouth-breathing pithecanth that I have to coat my tongue with Vaseline lest it turn to jerky.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Best. Christmas. EVER.

The nave of the chapel at Epiphany Parish, Seattle.
Beautiful church, charming pageant, saucy parishioners.
What's not to love?


Greg:

Merry Boxing Day! If I were British - or Canadian (...that's "British Lite". -Ed.) - I'd be wrapping up some cock-a-leekie soup for the charwoman, or putting a shilling in my knickers for a blessing from St. Heiner. Or something like that. I'm sure my British constituency will correct me.

But speaking of holiday traditions, Teresa and I did the unthinkable on Christmas Eve morning. We went to church! I thought it might be a laff riot to go see a children's Christmas pageant, so I rummaged around on the InterWebs to see if there was one we might crash. And lo, the InterWebs didst reveal that a children's Christmas pageant shone 'round about Epiphany Episcopal Parish at 9:30AM, and even provided a map to show me the way there. (It is my confirmed opinion that online mapping services should be outlawed inasmuch as they enable people like me to crash children's Christmas pageants, and should be therefore likewise be regarded as a Tool of Satan.)

So we donned our gay apparel and made our way there with plenty of time to spare. Epiphany Parish, as it turns out, is a stunningly beautiful turn-of-the-century church with a parochial school attached and a very young and joyful congregation. The minister, Father Conklin I believe, greeted us warmly at the door, and asked us if we had children in the pageant. I said no, which prompted him to ask again, very politely, just exactly what the H we were doing there. Several smartass replies sprang to mind, such as "reviewing the show for The New Yorker" or "prowling". But instead I told the truth. I said that my father was an Episcopalian minister, that I was raised Episcopalian, and even though I had converted to Buddhism years ago, I still celebrated Christmas. It's one of those answers that makes the querist's brain lock up, as Father Conklin's did, freezing his smile just long enough for me to see his teeth go completely dry. He said Merry Christmas, I guess, and we took a seat.

The pageant was a scream. The Angel Gabriel had to read her lines from out of her sleeve, which meant that she didn't have an extra hand to keep her halo from falling down over her eyes repeatedly, which also made the whole thing a sort of Sysyphean proposition for the poor girl. The dozen or so toddler-aged heavenly hosts seemed befuddled at the birth of the Christ Child and needed to be prompted - LOUDLY - from the pulpit to rejoice, which they then expressed by frenzied bouncing. And at the curtain call, the Virgin Mary held her infant son high above her head and made him bow to all four corners of the sanctuary. Best. Christmas. Pageant. EVER. We wept with joy.

But the thing that made me really love this congregation was the Wassail party in the congregation hall afterward that featured two bowls of Wassail. One of them was completely inocuous but the other was fortified with The Blood Of Our Lord And Savior John H. Daniels to turpentine-like strength. A napkin was placed next to it with a simple caveat pencilled on it for potential meddlers: wArnIng - AlcOhol! I guess it's true what the holy scriptures said about Episcopalians: where there's four, there's a fifth. Even though I don't drink, I seem to enjoy people who do. And of those who do, I enjoy those most who do it most brazenly. Epiphany Parish seems to have beauty and brass in equal measure, and I may just adopt it as my Christian holiday venue of choice.

Afterward, Teresa and I donned our Seahawk apparel and went to the Blessed Sanctuary of The One True Religion to watch the Seahawks host the San Diego Chargers. It was a very exciting game, but heartbreaking nonetheless. Our beloved Seahawks came from behind in the third quarter only to be vanquished in the last 30 seconds of the game. The loss was made that much more poignant by the incredible effort that the Seahawks put forth to beat the team that is arguably the best in the NFL right now. The upside is that because our division rivals the San Francisco 49ers lost that day, we're still in the playoffs. Not exactly the way you want to get into the playoffs, mind you, but we'll take it anyway. We'll just have to wait and see what the future will bring. Go Hawks.

The rest of the holiday was spent gorging myself on candy until I was blue-in-the-lips from insulin shock (...he kids. But not much. -Ed.), so my memory is spotty. I'll have to piece the events together from the tears in my clothing, the angry voicemails on my telephone, and the numerous warrants stapled to my front door. I'll write again when I have a clearer picture.

Cheers and Merry Christmas,

-Thaddeus

The New Gunnsberg Miracle: A Christmas Story

Gunnsberg (founded 2005) as it currently appears on my sideboard.
Mount Fridgidaire is visible in the background.

Greg:

As our uncle Gerald used to say, "Merry Christmas, old man! How's your cotton pickin' liver?" I didn't know exactly what he meant by that then, and I still don't know for sure now. Still, I understand the importance of visceral fortitude during the holidays, especially when it comes to things like aunt Margaret's rum balls. As it is with jumping off a bridge, one must first take at least thumb-gauge measurements to make sure that thirty-two feet per second squared moving vertically won't equal sixty four days in horizontal repose. So I repeat Gerald's greeting here as an invitation to take a dipstick to your innards before you joyously leap off the lip of your beloved holiday bottle of Thunderbird. How is your liver?

As of yesterday, the Gunn household experienced its first miracle of the Christmas season. I don't know if I told you before or not, but when I first erected my tiny porcelain Christmas village last year, Teresa rolled her eyes at it in disgust. It's chotchkes, she said, psuedo-Bavarian miniature kitsch, nothing but a dust magnet, and if I had a pellet gun - ! But manifold pleadings and cajoling and threats of insanity held her at bay, at least for the remainder of last Christmas season.

And then came this year when I re-erected Gunnsberg (which makes it New Gunnsberg, I guess) and she perceived - correctly - that my tiny village was now suffering from urban sprawl. Oh dear GAWD! she cried. Mary, Joseph and diaper-wearing Jesus, how did this happen?!

So I explained to her that last year, the day after Christmas, I was only crossing the street when time and space folded - folded, I tell you! - and suddenly I found myself at Tweedy and Popp Ace Hardware - barely six miles from here - and lo, gloriously low prices on last year's Christmas decorations didst shine 'round about the Seasonal Aisle, and I was sore afraid. I was sore afraid that if I did not avail myself of these deep, deep discounts on tiny, tiny houses that they would be snatched up by those less deserving - Filipino ladies with pellet guns, for instance. So I dug deep and secured not one, not two, but three more tiny porcelain houses, a covered bridge, and a freakishly out-of-scale horse and carriage. (I reasoned that the citizens of New Gunnsberg needed a means of ingress to and egress from Kitchenland and Mount Fridgidaire and, commensurate with that, a mode of transportation. I figured a giant with a horsecart was as good as any.)

So the triumvirate of Hardware Coots at the checkout counter eyed me suspiciously - me, a middle-aged man with a Jesus-load of tiny porcelain domiciles. I was not their kind, apparently. They clucked and cocked their heads and plugged their armpits with their thumbs. They asked one too many times for a price check. Apprently they wanted to make me stand still so they could get a real good look at Mister Dolly Houses. They were mostly wearing coveralls of various dirt-tones and splat-o-flage patterns, accessorized with - who knows why - day-glo orange deerslayer caps. I was in my usual North Face bourgeousie deluxe "steers & queers" model parka, convertible "tree-hugging faggot" pants, and Asics "they sell men's clothes were you got them, boy?" trail running shoes. Not to mention my half-horn-rimmed Giorgio Armani eyeglass frames with a very large "aim fist here" sign on the nose bridge. (Insert banjo chorus. -Ed.)

So the Head Coot says to me - real suspicious-like - he says, "Looks like you take a fancy to these little houses."

To which I replied, "Not so much, really."

So he says, "Why for not? It looks like you got you a load of 'em."

I said, "Yeah - because they drive my wife completely nuts!"

There was a moment of silence and then the Three Coot-A-Teers exploded into guffaws, slapping the counter, bending at the waist, and fanning themselves with their day-glo deerslayer caps. One even underscored his joy by throttling a scythe.

"That's a good one!" they hollered, "We gotta try that!" And with that I was on my way, my city-boy faggot ass miraculously un-kicked.

So yes, my purchase remained hidden in storage for the rest of the year until two days ago when Gunnsberg made its seasonal reappearance on the sideboard. Then my treachery was revealed. Teresa watched the rise of New Gunnsberg with arms crossed and as much scowl as she could muster, muttering threats and accusations whenever possible.

BUT! Just as Aaron and I arranged the last of the little fir trees and streetlights, plugged in the power strip and threw the switch, I caught a glimpse of Teresa's face in the golden glow pouring from the tiny windows. Her features softened. A smile crept across her lips. And then she uttered the unthinkable: "It's cute!" It was a Christmas miracle! The tiny, invisible citizens of New Gunnsberg had softened my wife's ice-cold coal-black heart, warmed her cockles with the Yuletide spirit, and insured their survival for another year. There would be no pellet gun assault from the Filipino infantry! Christmas was saved!

And that's why chickens wear hats. The End.

Cheers and best wishes for the holiday season to you and yours. And if this letter made you laugh once or twice, that too is a Christmas miracle.

-Thaddeus

The Last "Dear Gregory" Ever

Home Street Home. I used to live in a '74 Mav just as ugly
as this one. It didn't have a 42-inch HD Plasma, but at least
the seats reclined.

Greg:

Settle down and stop weeping already. It's not what you think. I'm still going to write to you. It's just that this thing I use to write letters to you - Blogger, I think it's called - is asking me to upgrade to something called a "beta". As I am inextricably drawn with crow-like fascination to all thing shiny and new, upgrade I must. My viscera compels me. Be forewarned, though. My experience with the InterWebs has taught me that it is a capricious and multi-headed beast, and oftentimes takes all your hard work and makes it as though it never existed. So that means the hundred some-odd letters I have written to you could - and probably will - vanish as soon as I upgrade.

By the way, I'm lobbying to change the name of the InterWebs to ¡Shiva The Destroyer! I'll write more about this in the future on my soon-to-be-established technology HateSite, Dubba Dubba Dubba dot I Fucking Hate The Internet dot Com. There will also be an online petition to destroy all the InterWebs, and of course the usual number of hoaxes delivered with the appropriate authoritarian air. In the meantime, enjoy this incarnation of Dear Gregory while you can because as soon as I hit the big shiny "upgrade" button, in the terlit it all goes. Just you wait and see.

Speaking of in the terlit, Christmas is lurking just around the corner which means I'm not nearly done spraying the money hose on everything I see. As we all know, my shortcomings are legion, but chief among them are my ossum credit rating and my propensity for buying Christmas presents. It seems I'm equal parts miser and spendthrift. I have no problem whatsoever purchasing things for other people, but when it comes to myself, I completely freak out. Maybe it's that "deserving" thing, as in wondering if I really deserve it. I've really got that neurosis really bad. (And that one about throwing away bread, as in I can't or I freak out.) I spent a lot of time when I was younger feeling like I didn't deserve to eat. Man that's grim. No wonder I was 6'2" and 150 pounds at age 17. And it's no wonder I lived in a 1974 Ford Maverick when I was 27.

But all of those cheery thoughts aside, I've been entertaining the idea of buying a new TV for some time now (no pun intended), but can't quite bring myself to pull the trigger. (TV as you know is a necessary tool for football- , movie- and PBS-obsessed persons like myself.) On the other hand, if Teresa wanted me to buy her one, we'd've had it yesterday. But no. I took six years making comparisons and test driving before I bought my car. I've only spent about 18 months comparing TVs, so I suppose I have another (...plus nine, carry the five...) four and a half years to spend comparing sets before the suggested retail drops to my Magical Rock-Bottom Ultimate Dream Price of $59.99.

So yeah. And then to make matters more complicated, Aaron - who now specializes in digital video for Best Buy - told me that the best image wasn't from the plasma model I was thinking of. The best image was to be found on an LCD model which is umpteen pounds and tuppence more expensive. (Naturally. -Ed.) And then - and then! - this guy I work with, Mike Woo, gets all up in my grill about how the one I want doesn't have the right contrast ratio or some boo-shit. Daaaamn.

Look, either I'm going to have to reach deep into my magical ass and pull out a couple grand to spend on myself - HORROR OF HORRORS! Or I'm going to do the unthinkable. I'm going to shitcan my TiVo and go back to reading books aloud while Teresa recreates the action with sock puppets in front of an oil lamp. You know, just like we did when we were kids.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Feeding My Architectural Obsession

Strange But True Psuedo-Fact: My favorite type of roof is the rare
hipped gambrel. This morning I sprained my hip, which gave
me time to read up on gambrels. Coincidence? I think not.

Greg:

I'm sitting at my favorite writing chair - my only writing chair - wedged in by a sack of ice the size of Baby Jesus' head. I sprained my hip in the shower this morning, an injury I thought was reserved for geriatrics and prison romances. Luckily, I had an appointment scheduled with Calhoun. (...alternatively referred to as "Baby Jesus' Gift to Chiropractors" and "Dr. Brian Graham". -Ed.) Within half an hour of the incident, I was in his office having my ball and socket reacquainted with much limb-wrangling and a loud POP. Now I have to ice it and give it time to think about what it has done. The upside of all of this is that it gives me time to catch up on my reading, which is great because I just bought two new books on architecture.

Stop pretending to be asleep and pay attention. They're both actually very interesting books. And no, having a party boner for early 20th century domestic architecture does not make me a ponce. I don't pretend to snore when you start spouting off about the history of lint, so cut me some slack.

Okay. So. The Abrams Guide to American House Styles is a compact, complete and accessible guide to every manner of shack that has been erected on these shores since Cotton Mather was in knee pants. And it has lots of pretty color pictures, so you'd love it. Strangely absent: the late 20th century McMansions, or as I like to call them, Toilet Farms. If you're like me and you ogle Second Empire rooflines and Craftsman beamwork with a leer middle-aged men usually reserve for photos of the Olsen twins, then this is the book for you.

Incidentally, I picked it up at Powell's when I went to visit John last weekend. He says he can't recall having a brother named Greg, and seemed to be only feigning a recollection of me. He seemed happy enough, though, to receive the All Clad skillet I gave him for a Christmas present even though he kept calling me "Skip" and asking me about my time in The 'Nam. Speaking of music, John gave me an original model Waring blender (...invented by the Bandleader Fred Waring back in the '30s. I shit you not. -Ed.), the kind with the big, beefy chrome base and the glass pitcher. It has the only two speeds you'll ever need: "blend" and "pulverize a dachshund". This is no Procter Silex 25-speed made-from-plastic weenie model. It has enough torque to split wood. I'n so crazy about it that I don't think I'll ever use it. I'll just gaze upon it lovingly from time to time.

Oh - the other book I got at Powell's - it was The Most Beautiful House In The World by Witold Rybczynski. (...whose surname was horribly mangled in a blender accident. -Ed.) The book is about how we give life and meaning to the dwellings that we create for ourselves. Beyond that he has some very interesting things to say about the process of design being more like play than anything else, and in doing so, elevates play to a defining attribute of humanity. So you see, all the goofing off I do at work is actually an indication of my advanced evolutionary state. (No, actually it's not. -Ed.)

Maybe my obsession with domestic architecture has to do with the fact that I parted from my own home so early. What was it - at 15 the first time and then before my 17th birthday for good, I guess. Not that it bothers me, but I don't see other guys with architectural fixations unless they're in architecture school or co-starring on Queer Eye. Or maybe my fixation is so strong at the moment because this is the homey time of year and I live in a space that has no window frames (to speak of) and could really do with some crown moulding. You can practically hear the walls crashing into the ceiling. That's just not right.

So in closing let me say that if you're looking for the perfect Christmas gift for me, get me a gambrel-roofed, six-dormered two story Cape Cod with clapboard siding, a central brick masonry heater, a Japanese bath on the second story, a pergola on the kitchen end, cased doorways, box beam ceilings, quarter sawn cross-braced solid wood interior doors and plate rail wainscoting on the inside.

No, I haven't been giving this much thought at all.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Joy And Other Truly Depressing Shit

17% Receiving fruitcake
12% Sled and livestock parked on roof
9% Cranberry caught crosswise in own or others' craw
6% If another fuckin' person says fuckin' Happy fuckin' Holidays
to me, I swear to fuckin' God I'll park this fuckin' Buick Roadmaster
right on his fuckin' gizzard. You fuckin' see if I fuckin' don't!

Greg:

Hope you have recovered from your birdmeat-induced coma. I binged on stuffing, then attempted to purge by burning off a thousand calories on the HellClimber. Some quick math proved that I had ingested at least thrice that amount in one sitting. The point of that fact pierced the gunnels of my soul, causing darkness and despair to leak in.

The sleet outside the window of my garret continues unabated.

Speaking of which, Monday night it snowed about an inch, which meant that the entire town of Seattle came to a slushing, grinding halt. Buses jacknifed. Cars were abandoned. Bars were filled. Pregnancies were created.

So what better time to revisit one of my favorite subjects - positive thinking! Right now the ghost of Alan Watts is sitting in the porch of my ear, whispering that thought itself is the problem. "For if you're thinking, then you're always living in the world of symbols. Can you dig that, man?" I shall poo-poo him for the moment and turn my attention to the ghost of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale who I have trapped in acetate, viz., on a special four cassette edition of "The Power of Positive Thinking". I've damn near worn all the tapes in the collection threadbare in the seven or so years that I've owned them, and am now looking for a digital replacement set so I can rip it and carry it with me always on my Sansa e260R Rhapsody. (You're searching through your comedy bag for some witty way to use the term "Pocket Peale", aren't you?)

The reason I'm bringing it up is not just because the Happy Holidays are really a bubbling cauldron of hate and despair for most people. I'm also bringing it up because of an article I came across in today's paper about current research on happiness. Oddly enough, some of the research echoed what Peale said in his book over 50 years ago: if you want to experience more happiness, simplify the things that make you happy. The article goes one step further in suggesting a very simple exercise. At the end of each day, write down three good things that had happened and analyze how they had occurred, or rather, what about the event made you happy. It surprised me to find out that an idea that Peale formed through his philosophical and religious dialectic seems to have quantifiable results when put into practice. That's not an easy thing to do when working with something as elusive and subjective as "happiness".

It all sounds very naive and simplistic, I know. But so is Zen. (You knew I was going to get back to Watts, didn't you?) I thought I'd give the exercise a try anyway and see what happens. I'm going to put a notebook in the nightstand and see what I can recall each night before I go to bed. Hopefully I won't discover anything truly negative about myself...like that I become overjoyed at the sight of a well-heeled white Republican falling into an open sewer and dying.

Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes. I'll see if I can track the results somehow in my correspondence. In the meantime, I can say that I am positively gleeful in anticipation of my trip this Saturday to Portland. I'll be seeing our co-sibling John. You remember him, don't you? Gap-toothed smile? Boyish good looks? Swings a mean pipe wrench? We'll be having dinner together Saturday night at an East Indian restaurant called Plainfield's Mayur and doing an early Christmas thing. There's a joke in there somewhere. (Two non-Christian brothers meet to celebrate Christmas in an Indian restaurant. One turns to the other and says - I got nothin'. -Ed.) Let me know if there's anything you'd like me to pass along to him, like perhaps that he has a "brother" named "Greg".

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Happy Mycoprotein Loaf Day!

Please pass the steaming faux meat cylinder!
Who can resist a delectable slice of space age food science?

Greg:

Holiday related question: On this most meat-centric of all American holidays, who would not want to sit down to a steaming loaf of mycoprotein that is shaped like a marital aid and is roughly the color of GI Joe?

Just about everyone as it turns out. Since Teresa and I are vegetarians, we don't usually have people beating down the door to spend Turkey Day with us. As mouthwatering as the above description sounds, we are hard-pressed to have anyone take us up on such a feast. Nor do we get invited over often. It seems that people don't like to eat meat in the presence of vegetarians.

Don't get me wrong. We're not vegetarian zealots who preach the gospel of meatlessness. I think people like that should be humanely dispatched and then eaten. My perspective is this: I really don't give a rat's meatless ass what anyone besides me eats. I am the sole guardian of my own piehole. What other people put in theirs is their business. And people, please don't apologize to me for eating meat, or go into some lengthy explanation about how you eat less meat nowadays, or only eat fish, or ask me a thousand questions about where I draw the line on meat. ("Do bugs count?" "Oh fuck no. I eat cockroaches and earwigs by the bucketload.") Doing that only consumes too much of my favorite dish: air. So, let me say this as politely as possible: Please shut the fuck up and unapologetically eat your meat and leave me alone to eat my weeds, twigs and berries.

There is only one reason why I don't eat meat. I had a dream that freaked me out seven years ago and that was pretty much the end of my career as a carnivore. The dream was this. I had a beautiful white cow as a pet, one of those really pretty white cows from the Hindu paintings, you know, the kind that look like they had their makeup done at Elizabeth Arden. (Side note: Elsie the Cow chotchkes and ephemera make great Christmas gifts!) My cow was very dear to me and would come when I called her by name (Felice - not my favorite name, but who am I to argue with my subconscious?) and would give me big, wet, sloppy cow-kisses like she was some kind of gigantic Labrador retriever. Then one day I had to go away, so I left Felice in someone else's care. When I returned, they gave her back to me nicely butchered and wrapped up in several little white paper packages. And then they handed me her severed head. My shit was freaked out beyond repair. I haven't eaten meat since.

Teresa once told that story to a Malaysian woman who is Buddhist by birth and who works in the commissary at Microsoft. Her response was, "Whoah - that is sooo Buddhist!"

So yeah, my vegetarianism has less to do with being Buddhist than it has to do with how a dream I had "freaked me out hardcore" as we said back in the '70s. I haven't found an imperative in the Dharmapada anywhere that says that you can't eat meat and be Buddhist. Then again, the Dharmapada isn't about imperatives, and likely would not proscribe the placement of knitting needles in the ear canal either. It's real big on the common sense through logic thing.


No vegetarians were harmed
in the making of this product.

In case you were curious, here's what is on our bill of fare for the feast today. We switched gears this year and instead of the mycoprotein phallus, we'll be having Stuffed Field Roast brand Celebration Roast with homemade roasted vegetable brown gravy. Rounding out the ensemble cast will be skins-on smashed red potatoes, sauteed green beans, mixed wild green salad, my own special tangerine cranberry sauce, and sourdough bread stuffing with all kinds of leeks and nuts and shit in it. ("Shit" here is used in the Detroit Metropolitan vernacular, which translates as "various comestibles and gustatives of superlative flavor". Example: "Dat shit yo moms made for dinner was da shit, boyee!" -Ed.) For dessert, I picked up two large tarts at Le Panier in the Pike Place Market. (...which is something he also did back when he was single, however this time we're taking about baked goods. -Ed.) I got a traditional pumpkin tart, and just for the sake of decadence, also picked up a belle-helene which is a tart so delightful and all-consuming of the senses that it comes with a special knife so that you can commit seppuku after eating it because, hey, life just isn't going to get better than that. (Knife not included. Death optional. -Ed.)

One last note. There's a great essay by (say it with me now) E. B. White called "Death of a Pig" which describes his experience caring for an ailing pig, and in some points, bears congruence to my dream about Felice. ("He had evidently become precious to me, not that he represented a distant nourishment in a hungry time, but that he had suffered in a suffering world.") It's also interesting to consider while reading it that it comes from the author as "Charlotte's Web". Just don't read it at breakfast.

Happy Thanksgiving.

-Thaddeus

The War On Christmas Part I: Full Metal Teepee

If you can't take the day off to celebrate Indigenous People's Day,
(Monday, October 9th), at least find some time to pray in the
direction of Sherman Alexie.

Greg:

I'm pissed.

I fuckin' walked into fuckin' Lowe's fuckin' Home and fuckin' Garden fuckin' Center (fuckers), and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a quarter-acre CHRISTMAS DISPLAY. They got plastic Christmas trees, wreaths, garlands, lights, and those horrendous inflatable 6-foot-high snow globes with a blower in 'em that makes it look like Santa is in the eye of a Tony Montana-sized coke-storm. So what's wrong with that? It was SEPTEMBER FUCKIN' TWENTY-FOURTH! Last time I checked the calendar, we had a whole three months before I had to sit up all night with a shotgun waiting for the fat man. Fawk!

Look, do not for a second think that I'm siding with that toothless, gum-bumping douchebag-with-a-microphone who says there's some kind of ACLU-endorsed "war on Christmas", but goddamnit - I'm about to start one! Are you with me? Then rally the damn troops.

So like any war (with the possible exception of the invasion of Iraq), this war has a plan. I already brewed one up. I knew push was gonna come to shove, so here's how we're gonna shove Dasher, Dancer, and Jesus all the way back to December 24th where they belong.

1. Celebrate the shit out of every holiday between now and December 24th, starting with Indigenous People's Day on Monday, October 9th. (Thought Monday was Columbus' Day? Think again.) As an added bonus, Canadian Thanksgiving Day (or Thanksgiving I: Maple Leaf Rag, as I like to call it) is celebrated the same day. If you're not going to throw down a feast, at least go into Lowe's and ask them where the Indigenous People's Day decorations are. When they shrug and gape at your requrest, stage a sit-in until they give you donuts and beer.

2. Buy Halloween decorations. As a matter of fact, buy all the Halloween schwag you can, including those crazy little ghost candles and stuff. When retailers start seeing a "Halloween bump" in sales, they'll start painting their faces and worshipping Satan faster than you can say "revenue stream".

3. Celebrate Thanksgiving II: The Kreusening (November 23rd). I've given it this title to differentiate it from Thanksgiving I, and to underscore the fact that you should get =/~ drunk as a lord in celebration; that is to say, become "fully kreusened" by internalizing the final stage of the brewing process (or as my wife used to say, become "ale battered"). Honestly, it's the only decent and noble way to honor the brave Native American soldiers who vanquished the white teetotalers at Roanoke Island in 1590. It's either that or take a stone hatchet to a Puritan. Your call.

4. Celebrate Christmas. Yeah, I know, you're all "what the hell!" But hear me out. Just hold out on celebrating until December 24th, and then keep that party goin' 'til Twelfth Night on January 6th. Do not let up. Ya don't stop the punk rock, especially when it comes to the biggest feast of the year. And as a matter of fact, walk right the hell out of work on December 24th and don't come back until January 6th. If they try to fire you, tell 'em to go suck a yule log. Sue them for impinging on your religious freedoms. What're they gonna do, condemn you for celebrating a Christian holiday? Not in George Dubya Bush's America! Nosiree!

Here's my last thought: I'm thinking about creating a foam Baby Jesus In The Manger hat, kinda like those Cheesehead deals you see people wearing at Green Bay Packers games. I mean what screams "Christmas" louder than wearing a manger-nested Christ Child on your head?

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Merry Gregmas!

Oyez, oyez, oyez!

Faithful rise, be counted, and be of good cheer!

'Tis Gregmas, the Greggiest day of all Septembertide!

This would be totally appropriate attire for any Gregmas celebration.

Dear Multitude:

Even though Dear Gregory has been published since the dawn of the Jet Age, precious few Touchers of the Hem, Adherents to the Peanut Butter Diet, or Readers of This Blog realize that September 13th is the Feast of Gregmas. To wit, it is Greg's birthday, just as Christmas is the birthday of my friend Chris T, or Criticalmass is the birthday of J. Robert Oppenheimer. (J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, or in his words, "Shiva", once gave his teacher a poisoned apple. I shit you not, and neither does last week's New Yorker. Look it up. -Ed.)

I assume that you who are in the majority are now confounded and befuddled. On one hand, you have a whole new square on the calendar to devote to revelry - such a boon! Ut hoy! you cry, and reach for the hookah. But in a trice you realize that you spend every other weeknight practicing the hookah, and this holiday begs for both uniqueness and propriety. What to do?

Fuddle no longer. Below I have compiled a short list of Gregmas facts, customs and traditions. Most of the objects required for celebration (...and worship, if you're so inclined... -Ed.) can be found in the average home (...the exception being the tuba. -Ed.) Enjoy, revel, and Merry Gregmas!

TRADITIONS
Tradition The First: Immediately upon arising on the morning of September 13th, make a very strong pot of coffee (it should absorb 98% of the available light), fashion a sandwich from peanut butter, bananas and mayonnaise on Roman Meal bread, and grumble while eating your solitary breakfast over the kitchen sink.

Tradition The Second: Six to eight times during the day, seize your tuba with a great deal of ardor and play the piccolo part from "Stars and Stripes Forever".

Tradition The Third: Suffer from the ill-conceived notion that drinking an entire 8-pack of Little Kings Cream Ale won't get you drunk because "the bottles are so small". Re-think your original hypothesis later when you find yourself in an unrecognizable quarter of the Detroit megalopolis (specifically Hamtramck), surrounded by surly Poles demanding to know there whereabouts of their pierogis and their daughters.

FACTS
My brother Gregory Ives was born on September 13th, 1671. Try as they might, the folks went quite a stretch with no kids - that is until 1962 when I was born. That's why I was named after the patron saint of lost causes. But that's beside the point. The amazing fact about Greg is that although he is three hundred and thirty five years old, rare pharmeceuticals with uncanny moisturizing properties have preserved his ancient flesh. He doesn't look a day over 53.

Greg subsists entirely on peanut butter. "If it's good enough for the koala bear, it's good enough for me!" he has been known to shout.

Do not be misled by his sunken chest and chalky legs. He often crushes Volkswagens with his bare hands.

His favorite movie: Fitzcarraldo. Or is it Nosferatu? Can't remember. Maybe it's Nosfitzcarratu. Anyway, he has a huge poster from Aguirre: The Wrath of God which he can scarcely tear his gaze away from, and he often tries to emulate Klaus Kinski's evil leer, even going so far as to don a tin conquistador helmet at times to heighten the effect.

CUSTOMS
On Gregmas Day, it is customary to write The Gregory a letter, which he will respond to with silence by the bucketload. So sayeth the lore of Gregmas. Believe me, I've been writing to him for years, and I have yet to see one blot of ink on a shred of paper in reply to a single one of my epistles. On the other hand, he does call "all the gol-damn time" as they say in the red states. Anyhoo, if you like, you can write to him by posting a comment to this blog. (Clog. -Ed.)

It is also customary on Gregmas Day to spend a great deal of time in the bathtub. (That is after the sandwich and the tuba thing. You don't want to do either one of those in the bath. -Ed.) This is to re-enact the Miracle of Gregmas. After six to eight hours in the tub (something Greg does each and every day), your skin shall be verily furrowed with wrinkles from stem to stern, much as The Gregory's skin was once. Then one fateful day, he combined lanolin with turpentine and methyl-ethyl-ketone (MEK) and created the Burnishing Glaze of Brass Instruments and Eternal Youth. And lo, his smooth and youthful hide didst shine like the horn section of the Burbank Police Boy's Band during the Bataan Death March, and he aged no more. You can accomplish the same effect by rubbing yourself down with Mop-N-Glo. Give 'er a whirl. It's a holiday, after all.

And finally, it is customary to purchase several if not hundreds of items from The GregMart for your self, friends and family. Because hey, why give Jesus all your money?

You'll Drink It And Like It

You can't quit the Schmidt. You jes' cain't.

Greg:

There has been a disturbing-yet-amusing development with this whole "people are reading your mail" thing. You'd think that folks would be content to sit back and watch the conversation unfold naturally with the same bemused detachment reserved for Christmas pageants and dog fights. I mean, this is after all a correspondence between you and me (save for the fact that you never ever write me back, so it's actually more like the one-way conversations people have with Baby Jesus - wait; correction: all people except psychotics). You'd think they'd be content to listen in on the party line without interrupting the conversation with a "wait - which one of you guys is Greg?" You'd think we could just serve 'em free Schmidtties right outta the Sport Pak and they'd like it. Oh mais non. That is where you'd be tres wrong.

DG reader-slash-viewer-slash-voyeur-with-an-opinion Dale Zeretzke has made it clear that he wants to hear more discourse on the topic of cognitive science. Jesus H. Gall Bladder of Christ. How do I respond to that? Considering the current forum (viz., a "private" correspondence between you and me), it's akin to having the mailman hand deliver a letter and then tell you, "Just skip to the last paragraph - the one where he confesses." Or like getting dressed and hearing a disembodied voice say, "I like the underwear you had on yesterday a lot better." Dale has gone and busted down the fourth wall on this whole thing.

But here's the unpossibly ironical part about all this. What did you say when you called yesterday? You said, "Hey - I have a cognitive science question for you" did you not? And that's exactly what I was going to talk about in this letter. So at least for know I can continue my original course without believing that I have given in to audience pressure - not just yet, anyway - and this is not the equivalent of playing "Free Bird" for the fried-to-the-hat gentleman in the second row. That said:

Your question about catatonia and whether it is a response that allows time to process information. From what I know about it, catatonia can cycle with states of extreme excitement like some sort of psychotic mania, so - yeah I know that doesn't answer your question, but I think that catatonia can be a response to acute sensitivity to both internal and external stimulus. To wit: when I was a stone cold coke freak, sometimes my thoughts were whizzing by so fast that trying to grab one and make it come out of my mouth was like trying to steal a hubcap off a moving car. I was so high and my thoughts were so frenetic, I simply could not speak. I imagine that from the outside, I appeared very calm. Likewise, I've read case studies where a person who was just on the catatonic horizon would respond to questions as though they were trying to sort out the conversation from myriad distractions, like trying to carry on a conversation in a very loud barroom. So in that case, I'd say sure - catatonia probably allows the person to limit the only stimulus that they can actually control, which is the sensations created by their own movement. Can a great deal of stimulus cause a person to shut down? Sure, take a look at a baby. Sometimes the only way to get 'em to sleep is to overstimulate 'em by putting them in the swingy-chair or the stroller...or at the controls of a loaded-for-bear P41 Mustang.

That's my free cents - or fuppence as I like to say. Take this as you will as I'm just a layperson who reads the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science for fun.

Speaking of which, it becons me even now. I'm up to h - as in homunculus.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

SPOILER ALERT: King Kong

Is King Kong gonna hafta choke a bitch?

Greg:

There are just two words you have to say to get me into a theater: giant monkey.

To put a capper on the Christmas holiday, I finally went to see King Kong (reasoning that the holiday crowds were gone by now) and lemme tell ya this: it rules. ROOLZ! Yeah, the story is poop. Yeah, Naomi Watts and Adrian Brody need some real dialogue. And maybe a sandwich or something. Christ, those people are thin! And yeah, the monkey dies. But WOW! And HEY! And SHEEZUS H, HOWDEYDOODAT? Here's my synopsis:

King Kong (not his real name), is one endangered-all-to-hell species who lives on the last stick of land on the ass-end of the South Pacific (the ocean, not the musical). His neighborhood sucks, populated as it is with rabid dinosaurs, surly giant bats; and louche, insalubrious aborigines who need a serious bubble-bath and some third-degree orthodonture...and perhaps a good creme rinse. In short: real estate prices on Skull Island must be at an all-time low. And the only job that Kong can find is to kick loads of giant lizard ass day in and day out. Reminds me of our boyhood in the 313. Hard times, to be sure.

Along comes a group of well-meaning honkies with a movie camera and about three gross of Tommy guns. Together they decide that what Kong really needs is to be bused to a better neighborhood. (Again, reminding me of our youth in the 313.) Since the crew fails to establish a simple, congenial dialogue with the giant ape, they resort to the two weapons that have been the cornerstone of every American military campaign: poontang and firewater. Distracted by the willowy form of a breathless honkette, Kong is subdued when the crew's cockswain slam-dunks a jug of Thunderbird into his snout.

Cut to midtown Manhattan. (You call this a better neighborhood?) Kong has now been hornswoggled into working as a backup singer for a minstrel show. Oh, the sheer indignity of it all! Woefully underpaid, and unable to locate his Actor's Equity representative, Kong abandons the gig halfway through, deciding to take his talents to a theater where they'll really be appreciated.

On his way to the Apollo, woefully unaware of the city ordinance regarding unescorted apes on the upper east side after 10PM, Kong gets himself in Dutch with a hilariously quaint 1930's edition of the US Mechanized Cavalry. A heated confrontation ensues. You get the feeling that what Kong would really like to do is crap in his paw and send a monkey turd the size of a metro bus rocketing at that truckload of Army chumps at about Mach 3. (That would've been some OSSUM footage!) But no, what a bruthuh really wants is to get five minutes with his girlie, so he opts to go ice skating in Central Park...where it's safe and quiet.

As whitey is compelled by his evil nature to always keep a good man down, the cavalry drives Kong and his homechicken out of Central Park and up to the penthouse of the Empire State Building. Again, unaware of the city ordinance regarding giant apes in the high rent district, the mayor's airborne goon squad punctuates the letter of the law with a hail of bullets. The big monkey gets not one but several "caps" in his "ass", and does his best impression of Greg Lougainis in the throes of narcolepsy as he plunges to his death. Boo hoo. The End.

I know I probably just ruined the whole thing by giving the plot away, but go see it anyway! S'good! Giant monkey! GIANT MONKEY!

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

Baby Jesus Is The Antichrist

Baby Jesus: Strap on a coupla horns and he's good to go.

Greg:

A perfectly horrifying thought crossed my mind over the holidays. No, not the one about how Regis Philbin may actually be a puppet run by a gang of reprobate squirrels. The other one - the one where Baby Jesus is actually the embodiment of evil.

Think about it. During what time of year are more families and wigs torn asunder than any other? Yeah, that's right. Christmas. It is the season when the meekest of us become whiskey-fueled, wig-rending psychopaths. SUVs, chock-a-block full with holiday shoppers sport bumper stickers that read "I'd Step On Your Mom's Throat To Get A Great Deal On A Tickle Me Elmo At Wal-Mart!"

And what spirit provides the fuel for this season of revelry? Baby Jesus. Ergo? Yes. Ergo. And that is exactly my point.


Baby Jesus: Yo, Mister Potato Head! Ready to bend to my evil will?
Santa: Yes, my Dark Master.

Go ahead. Defy my perfectly circular logic. Have you ever seen two Baby Jesii in the same place at the same time? No. You have not. And you will not. Not unless they're stuffed. Or replicas. The kind of replicas with Cameras for Eyes that send Communiques back to the Factory! And then the Filthy Bottom will send His Dark Agents to Poison My Food! Igor! Bring me the ether! Sswwwffffft!

Much better. Now where was I?

Oh yes. We were talking about Christmas Dinner with the family. It went just fine, except that I think I had way too much coffee beforehand and afterhand and inbetweenhand and may still be suffering the effects of caffeine-induced toxic psychosis. And I've had tons of sugar in the past few days. I'm not too sure if I'm not sleeping at all or actually sleeping a lot faster than I used to. My gums - if you can call them that - are complaining bitterly about the truckloads of Italian nougat that I've been shoveling past them. And here's the kicker: I've been losing weight. I lost 1-2/3rds man teat in the week leading up to Christmas. But then again I've been both working out at the IMA quite a bit and badgering my wife. Wife-badgering, if you haven't tried it yet, is an excellent means of burning excess calories, although it does come with the risk of the wife getting fed up with your juvenile shenanigans and driving a stake of holly through your heart on Christmas night.

Look, before you click that little X in the upper right hand corner of your browser and close this window forever, I really do have a point. And that point is that I discovered this holiday season that certain emotional episodes may be the result of the emotional interpretation of bodily sensations brought about by diet. To wit, caffeine making a neurotic person's heart go pitter-pat might make them believe that there was something wrong with them physically, and then cause them a great deal of stress which they in turn take out on the family, the in-laws, the dog and whatever. Even people who otherwise have a great deal of emotional integrity might snap under the onslaught of increased sugar and caffeine intake combined with holiday stressors. So my theory is that it's not just the holiday that stresses people out and makes them into a bunch of emotional weirdos. It's the added crappy food/lotsa sugar/loads of caffeine thing that causes otherwise tender, loving hands to curl into the wig-rending talons of the Holiday Harpie. So - long story short - if you're a bona fide nut like me, there are more reasons to watch you diet over the holidays than just keeping your girlish figure.

And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to weeping like a wee bairn - for no particular reason.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

Who Is Warren Christmas?

Il Natale di Buffo Guatto: Gloria im Extupido!

Greg:

You know I never use my letters to talk about the media and current events. I believe that both of those things are like boils and will go away eventually, no matter how bothersome they are at the moment. There's just this one thing that has me freakin' boggled. It's one of those times when you've just stopped paying attention because you thought it couldn't possibly get more ridiculous than this, that human beings can't possibly be that retarded en masse. And right about then, they go and raise the bar - practically build a damn monument to Buffo Guatto, the God of Stupidity. (I just made that shit up. There wasn't a Buffo Guatto until sentence before last. But you can rest assured that he just popped into existence on some corner of the universe, most likely at the corner of Mullet and Meathead in Philadelphia, PA.)

The War on Christmas? I'm agape. I can't even get upset over this one. It's too friggin stupid to believe. And yet it gets enormous airplay on Fox. Then again, enormous airplay on Fox is probably the metric by which all stupendous obtusery should be measured. "Did it play on Fox? How much? Well there you go."

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart copped to it. He and he alone is the enemy in the War on Christmas. And he "will not rest until every year families gather to spend December 25th together at Osama's homo-abortion-pot-and-commie-jizzporium". So there's something to look forward to, certainly.

Okay, but that's not even the best part. Henry Ford pulled this same BS back in the 20s (blaming the Jews), and The John Birch Society, too busy being dicks to come up with an original idea, recycled it in 1959 (blaming the Reds). And then, Bill O'Reilly, taking the ball from - oh what's his name - Zipperhead McDouchebag, the guy who wrote the book - goes and blames the lib-brrlz. My question to Mister O'Reilly is this: do you just not have enough spine to blame, say, the Negroes? Or the Guineas? Or the Beaners? C'mon. At least take a swing at some segment of society that isn't imaginary. Blame the Lithuanians. But he won't, and you know why? Because all of the aforementioned groups are armed. They have zero shit tolerance. They will kick, cut, split, and stack thirty cords of his honky ass and burn it in the pot-bellied stove to offset their heating bills this winter. (O'Reilly fully realizes how much ass he has, owns oil stocks, and therefore fears this.)

Okay. So. Anyway. Screw all that. If we wanna go back far enough, the mere celebration of Christmas is in point of fact a War on Yule. Remember: Christmas is a Christian perversion/subversion of that pagan holiday. Ergo, if you really wanna have a War on Christmas, celebrate Yule. You get to burn stuff, drink stuff, and do the nasty (required). How ossum is that? So strap on a set of horns, quaff some ale, and get as snockered as Buffo Guatto, there's a war on!

Gloria in Obnoxious Dei,

-Thaddeus

Holly Jolly Oligarchy!

These poor lil' bastards will never know what hit 'em.

Greg:

What is it about the holidays that makes everyone freak out? And by "freak out" I mean the most negative inference of that otherwise jolly term. I have seen footage of the Wal-Mart melee and its ilk - shoppers trampled, knuckles bruised, wigs rent asunder - an aggregate of events nationwide which are sadly becoming an annual celebration of carnage and cruelty on the scale of the Omak Stampede. However, the extent to which the proletariat freaks out by and large doesn't alarm me. I only wonder why the proletariat doesn't freak out far more often than it already does, in other words, why it takes an impending holiday to catalyze wig-rending behaviors. No, it is my own state of mind which shows an alarming rise in what I'd call "holiday hubris" that is my real concern.

To wit: This year, I became an oligarch.

Long story short: I freaked out, went to Ace Hardware, and purchased half-a-dozen miniature decorative porcelain houses. I set them up on my sideboard, and proclaimed myself Lord God King Daddy of Holidaytown. It was almost like the Republican Blowout of Y2K4. They didn't even see it coming...until they heard the booming-yet-lugubrious laugh of their new ruler from somewhere far, far across the dining room.

To be clear, I practice oligarchy under full protection of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine. (You may say, "hey - how is that oligarchy if you and you alone are the ruler of this tiny porcelain village?" My nearly invisible co-conspirators in this plutocracy are Seattle City Light who control the flow of electricity and the Uwajimaya Village Apartments who actually hold title to the land under the sideboard on which the village sits. I give both of these parties "kickbacks" each month in the form of "rent" and "utilities" in order to secure their silence and complicity.)

Now, moving on:

My subjugation of that tiny hamlet nearly complete, and the sweet tang of unopposed rulership swollen forty-fold in my bosom to almost Bush-like proportions, I am began to feel the urge once again to brave the winter night and scurry out to Ace Hardware where I might annex another ten - nay, twelve! - porcelain domiciles (at clearance prices).

But then, the wife threw down the kybosh. She claims that there isn't room enough in our 1,080 sq. ft. 2BR 2BA apartment for her, me, several tiny porcelain houses, and my ego. At least twelve of those things would have to go.

So here's my conundrum. There's no court in this land higher than The Wife, so any appeals on the matter are kaput. However, there is rather a clever loophole: there's nothing saying that I can't receive tiny porcelain houses as gifts from my brother for Christmas.

In closing, I implore, if you have an ounce of Christmas spirit, and are in the mood to support an fledgling nation-state and its kindly dictator, please purchase a tiny porcelain from Ace Hardware online (at clearance prices - some as low as $7 American - and free shipping, too...maybe) and have it shipped forthwith to my address. The Fatherland thanks you.

And now I must depart, as I feel the clench of madness in my hinderparts.

Merry Christmas!

-Thaddeus