Thursday, December 18, 2008

Tuesday's Top Ten: Worst Things About Christmas

Look, I know it's been a while and December hasn't been my best showing around here but in my defense there's this thing called Christmas and it eats a lot of your time and occupies your otherwise free time and so posting comes at a premium but to make up for lost time and show my sincerity I plan on posting 100 times before Christmas. That's right my friends, 100 times before Christmas to make up for lost time. It may kill me but I'm posting new Top Ten Lists (albeit not on Tuesday as I've missed several lately) and Wednesday's Women (same thing) and just all kinds of random, goofy, funny, insightful and generally interesting things that I might have missed the last several weeks. That means you can feel confident visiting all types of goofy hours and getting new material almost every visit if I can drop it so hang with me, sit back and re bookmark me as i plan on making it interesting...
Anyway back to the post at hand, I love Christmas but I hate these 10 Things about it and I'm sure you either do to, or will after I shine a flashlight on them and my reasoning to why they suck:

10.) Snow Accumulation - Winter Wonderlands are fine in theory. People even sing about them but nobody really wants them when they get there. They're like family members or old friends you bump into in public, you think it'd be nice to see them but once it comes, they get old fast, they stay too long and you tire really fast of them. That's snow in a nutshell. It doesn't even have a practical use. It's the least necessary weather of all.

Rain --> Crops grow
Sun --> Plants grow and white people tan
Wind --> Sometimes makes hot days bearable
Snow --> Makes you late to work, if not impossible to get there.
Snow --> Makes you come out of a warm house and shovel your driveway or dig out your car
Snow --> Gets dirty fast and kills shoes, makes your car look like used toilet paper and turns into ice which results in unexpected spills.

Snow isn't useful at all. California, Florida, Texas, I tip my hat.

9.) Egg Nog - Just a bad idea. I hate it's smell. I hate it's taste and I'm not sure but it maybe not even made of nog. I'm not sure about it but you might be able to paint your walls with it. Definitely not an endearing part of an otherwise great season.

8.) Gift Getting - Definitely not fun. Getting free shit at any other juncture in life is a good thing. On any other day, you give me something free I'm happy (you can keep the herpes though). Gift receiving on the other hand, not so great. Then you have to make sure you've gotten something for somebody else and then you have to make sure you spend at least as much as they spent on you. Then you have to act like you like whatever space taking, useless nonsense they got you and you have to act like you're a cancer patient and they just gave you another 6 months to live and kiss ass excessively and put your dignity in a napkin and flush it down the toilet at least for a week. Not fun at all. I'd much prefer nobody got me anything and didn't expect anything and that way we don't have to put on any heirs on December 26 and we can be as big of assholes to each other that we might potentially be to one another on that particular occasion given any number of circumstances. You can't curse somebody out that got you seasons 1-3 of the The Wire or a $50 gift card at Macy's. You're obligated to play nice no matter what for the next two weeks or so. Barack Obama needs to go out and buy gifts for everybody in the middle east the day he's inaugurated so those dictators have to take it easy with him at least for a little while.

7.) Gift Giving - You poor, poor bastards. That's what I say to myself anytime I see some guy in a mall in a Bath and Body Works or Lane Bryant during the holiday season clearly not shopping for himself and clearly not having a good time at all shopping for something someplace he's not comfortable in and he's not confident that she'll like it. It's the worse. The worst part about it? There's no guarantee you'll find something on the first try. You might even have to go to the mall more than once if unsuccessful and fight the hordes of other poor bastards and deal with traffic and snow and cold and hunger.
Not to mention, shopping is all about perspective and guessing from other people's perspectives. Always a bad idea. I'm a 24 year old, barely mature black dude. I know next to nothing about 60 year old white women in affluent neighborhoods and yet if one of my white friends got my mother something for Christmas I'd be obligated to guess what a 60 year old white woman from an affluent community's interests are.


6.) Black Christmas Music - I know I'm black. I don't need to prove that to myself. I look in the mirror and see black person every time I use the bathroom, so without the need to impress any African-Americans who may be reading this, I can say with absolute confidence that I HATE black Christmas songs. Absolutely loathe them with all my being. I don't know why but black people cheese up serious things for me. National anthems, funeral songs, comedies and last and without a doubt certainly not least, Christmas music. Only one black person I can stand at Christmas time and that's Nat King Cole. His Christmas Music is class. He never sang "Let it Snow" over a bassline. He never held on to a Christmas note for longer than 10 seconds to my knowledge. We all know he can sing and he's soulful but he didn't try and make the birth of my Savior into an R&B record.

oh it pains me to say it because I'm quite fond of R&B. You all know that much, but I'm not trying to get my freak on Baby Jesus. Just sing the damn song without showing off. Give me the driest rendition of all the holiday classics as possible. Please.

5.) Crowds - And I'm talking people everywhere at this time of year. Stores, malls, highways, even church (People you've never seen before show up in December for church and end up in your seat when you arrive I find the most tacky). Why is everybody out when I have Christmas spirit? Do they know they're ruining it?

4.) Chirpy People - Look, I know when Obama was elected last month there was a general euphoria for about a week where everybody was happy and content and the victory served as an opiate for everybody in general. I was one of those people. Thing is my natural disposition is a lot darker and I don't like having to sustain a chirpy, upbeat outward bubbliness if it's avoidable and the holiday season is entirely too long to be that nice. How you happy and just spent $300 during a recession? That doesn't make sense.

3.) A Christmas Story - Look, nothing at all against holiday movies. Home Alone, Grinch Who Stole Christmas, A Christmas Carol, Rudolph....cool. but A Christmas Story is too much. It's not so much that I hate the movie as I know that it's going to come on like 400 times the week of Christmas and it's not that great that I have a stomach for that kind of a pounding. Godfather trilogy, I'm all for AMC playing to death. You can never get tired of that one. It's just in your DNA that if you flip past those movies on tv channel surfing that you have to watch all or parts of any of those movies each time. Never gets old. A Christmas Story ain't Godfather though.


2.) Harassing Salvation Army Guy w/ Bell Outside of The Store - I know your game and I don't respect it. You prey on people who buy groceries dolo and if that isn't bad enough you do it during the holiday season where people are supposed to feel compelled to give and it's just dirty pool. Straight up. Why should I give you money? We're in the midst of an economic downturn. I got people I know to buy for with my stipend of a Christmas budget, I don't even know you. Why not try and get money during Spring when people have it and might be generous after the government cuts them a check?
Dealing with the Christmas Tree and Decorations - It's just illogical. You're wasting effort, time and money to entertain other people and give them something to look at. Strippers don't entertain unless Pacman Jones or somebody who thinks their Pacman Jones is making it rain. Why should we?

1.) Running Into People You Don't Want To - You HAVE to shop, there are huge hordes of random people shopping whenever their schedules give them time and there aren't but a handful of popular places to get the best deals so that creates the perfect storm of uncomfortable in the form of running into someone you'd rather not. Nothing you can do really. It's just Russian roulette with a loaded gun. Unless your online shopping game is tight you just have reside to the fact that you're coming across some clingy person who wishes to stay in contact long after you've given them the cold shoulder and it's just part of the game unfortunately. The sooner you get through the checkout line the sooner you should get back to ignoring said person and forgetting they exist. Good luck.

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