Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Tis the Season...
Whore! Whore! Whore! Un-Meeeerry Christmas! So This miserable day's reared its fat, trance inducing head once again, and rather than eggnog, I'm full of piss and vinegar. Yes, dysfunctional families and emotionally distant relatives get together once again to hug, exchange gifts, reminisce about the same stories all over again, remember why they can't stand their family members then go back to their hateful lives.
What's my beef with Christ-Mass? I hate it from quite a few angles. I started hating it almost exclusively because I hated the annoying Christ-Mass Carols and movies which always circulate around the season of yuletide. Eating things which are overly sweet make me feel slightly dizzy and nauseous. It's such a perfect metaphor, because almost anything saccharine in life will make me feel that way. Ever since I was a toddler, if I heard a love song on the radio, I would complain that my "tummy hurt". I had no idea why. I'm fucked up, but what's new? At least when I was young, I was amused by the novelty of having boxes in shiny wrappers under a slaughtered tree, and waiting for a special day to shred the wrappers to see the new stuff I got. I never believed in Santa or much of the other Christ-Mass mythology, not because I was some sort of deductive skeptic as a kid, but only because every Santa I saw looked different, and my house had a chimney which would have turned Santa into ground beef if he tried to get through it. Plus, my parents never really force fed stuff about that imaginary character down my throat, only stuff about God and Jesus.
From there, I started hating Christ-Mass because of how phony it all seemed to me. Little time bombs go off in people's heads which say, "Let's all start putting lights on our houses and getting gifts for each other for no reason other than that the calendar says to!" They go around being nice to each other, only because it's been dictated that they do so. These self absorbed, loathsome, bitter and soulless zombies start putting on their happy faces, and start getting together. I don't even know why that has to be. Maybe it's all what keeps them from totally killing each other. Though, ironically, it brings out the worst in people, anyway. I gleaned this bitter knowledge working retail for two Christ-Mass seasons. People get really competitive, and they get really standoffish. In December, I see the most customers when working in [Pages] bookstore. I also see the most irritable and repugnant. I had quite a few characters show up, who I wouldn't mind mandating the needle for if the world were my ideal world where euthanasia was not only accepted, but mandated in many cases.
Another thing which made me start to not bother with the holiday is that I became a staunch atheist during my last year of high school. I partook in it for a couple years as a filthy nonbeliever, but then I saw the absurdity in that. I would rather celebrate the fictional birth date of Patrick Bateman or Flat Stanley. I'd honestly rather celebrate Horus, Krishna, Dionysus, or any of the other mythological characters the Jesus character is an awful parody of.
So that's all been said. I'm not sure how coherent it all is, but it's fitting, Christ-Mass is a fucking mess.
The only benefit out of all of this is that I got oodles of shifts at [Pages] bookstore which will give me bigger paycheques to help fund my literary habits, and also add a couple more pennies to the Gallowmere Piggy Bank.
I decided I would boycott Christ-Mass in 2004, and had my first non holiday in 2005. I called it X-Mas-X, back then, but that was a little ridiculous. It gives the day more attention than it deserves. 2006, I was a little divided, on the issue, but ultimately went with no celebrating. Once again, this year, I find myself comfortably not doing anything Christ-Mass related at all. Even better, my immediate family's in New York visiting relatives and embracing their symptoms of the cunsumeritis virus. So at least they're not around to get in my way. I'll be the first to admit, I have some schizoid tendencies. It doesn't mean I'm totally antisocial or anything. I can get on well with people, and I don't ever try to be a dick or anything. It's just that I feel a little weird when people are in my space too much. I need my solitude. Like right now, I can't say I miss my family at all, which to other people, must sound like the most heinous thing to say. Essentially, I can do without the company of others for long periods of time without feeling sad or pathetic about it. Whereas some of my friends always need the reassurance of other people, need their contact, need them to go places with them, etc.
People can still be important to me though.
So as it goes, today will just be my first real day off all month. I'll probably watch movies all day. I was hoping my order of Blade Runner, Hukkle, and Freaked would get in by then, but just like any other Christmas, I didn't get what I wanted. I kid, just a little non-eponymous gallows humour there. Then I'll probably clean up and maybe even redecorate my padded cell, I have a bookshelf sitting around that needs to be put up. My calves have been getting paper cuts every day when I have to wade through the pond of books I have lying around in here. With the time I have left in the day, I'll expect something random to happen, and end my period of solitude. Things like that normally happen. Any time that I think I will get a good 24 hour period to be alone with nothing but my thoughts, something interrupts.
