That time of the year again?
Okay now I'm kinda pissed off. Why? Let me lay down the wisdom here.
I love Halloween, as many people know. And not just because it gives me a day to dress up and go out wearing what I ~would~ wear every day if I had my druthers (or because of the spooky stuff and candy and all that), but also because it's kind of the 'gateway' holiday - for most of the year you don't get much in the way of interesting holidays - a barbecue here, Sunday dinner there, whatever - but Halloween brings some of the ~best~ parties ever, ~almost~ a celebration in itself of the really boring part of the year finally being over. Then just a month after that is Turkeygiving, when I get four straight days off work (lucky, I know) and the big family get-together to eat enough food in one day to feed everyone in Zaire for a year is just day one. And after ~that~ it's only a month before the Big Two come about - you know what I mean.
Well, this is a prety cool progression and is really all there is to make slogging through the onset of winter (and the whole last third of the year at all) tolerable, but the problem comes when Thanksgiving is over and the whole goddamn planet swallows three hundred CCs of Jaegermeister and LSD and goes balls-to-the-walls holiday insane. Holiday shopping binges result in even more rage-inducing traffic than normal ~and~ it's about that time (around here) that the snow starts flying and everyone seems to have to retake Driving In Snow And Not Dying 101 the fuck again. So basically it's good to know that year-end and two of the biggest best holidays are coming, but the final countdown is a time when the only way I can survive is by becoming even more of a hermit than I normally am - I get what little shopping I need to do ~done~ in a day or two and then shun the world outside my door like it's a guy with leprosy and AIDS covered in paper cuts.
It's ALSO the time of year that I have to work extra hard on putting together some decent new compilation CDs to listen to in the car because like FUCK am I going to turn on the radio - the only thing you get on the airwaves are commercials (to an even greater extent than normal) and those very same 13 songs that every speaker from here to Polaris seems to continuously vomit as if it's a protective chant and Yog-Sothoth is waiting just outside your door.
Well, I was making a call to a Toys r Us store just as I was leaving work yesterday because heaven knows I need more freaking robots, hell yes I do. And as I'm on hold I suddenly pay just enough attention to the crackly, static-laced music crap coming out of my phone to notice that IT'S A GODDAMN CHRISTMAS SONG. It's the second of November - SECOND OF NOVEMBER - and they're already spouting this crap. I actually shouted out loud in my car there; good thing I had the windows closed or someone might've thought a moose was getting raped.
It's happened. It's finally happened. The whole month of November has been assimilated by Santa Claus and the Borg-elves and Thanksgiving has been relegated to nothing but an afterthought. It used to be that I only had ~one~ month of this claptrap and drivel to deal with every year but now TWO? Now I have to spend one SIXTH of every year of my life cutting myself off from the media like a backwater West Virginia secessionist in order to maintain my sanity? FUCKING HELL WHAT IN THE-
Alright, maybe I'm overreacting. But... damn it, fucking commercialism. I HATE it when this happens.
See, just as some part of me deep down likes to connect occasionally with the spiritual side of Halloween and genuinely contemplate what it means and ~should~ mean to life that we all eventually arrive at death, that same part of me likes to get into the old-fashioned "peace on Earth, good will toward men" feel of Christmas. But all this hard-core media blitzing that happens every year always conspires to do for the holidays what the 90s/2000s deluge of FF7 fanfiction did to that game - wear it completely the hell out to the point that I want to hurl heavy objects at the next person who utters the name of it.
So... yeah. The last portion of THIS year might be a little more nerve-wracking to get through than the last few. But oh well, head down and shoulder forward, press your way through.
Peace out.
I love Halloween, as many people know. And not just because it gives me a day to dress up and go out wearing what I ~would~ wear every day if I had my druthers (or because of the spooky stuff and candy and all that), but also because it's kind of the 'gateway' holiday - for most of the year you don't get much in the way of interesting holidays - a barbecue here, Sunday dinner there, whatever - but Halloween brings some of the ~best~ parties ever, ~almost~ a celebration in itself of the really boring part of the year finally being over. Then just a month after that is Turkeygiving, when I get four straight days off work (lucky, I know) and the big family get-together to eat enough food in one day to feed everyone in Zaire for a year is just day one. And after ~that~ it's only a month before the Big Two come about - you know what I mean.
Well, this is a prety cool progression and is really all there is to make slogging through the onset of winter (and the whole last third of the year at all) tolerable, but the problem comes when Thanksgiving is over and the whole goddamn planet swallows three hundred CCs of Jaegermeister and LSD and goes balls-to-the-walls holiday insane. Holiday shopping binges result in even more rage-inducing traffic than normal ~and~ it's about that time (around here) that the snow starts flying and everyone seems to have to retake Driving In Snow And Not Dying 101 the fuck again. So basically it's good to know that year-end and two of the biggest best holidays are coming, but the final countdown is a time when the only way I can survive is by becoming even more of a hermit than I normally am - I get what little shopping I need to do ~done~ in a day or two and then shun the world outside my door like it's a guy with leprosy and AIDS covered in paper cuts.
It's ALSO the time of year that I have to work extra hard on putting together some decent new compilation CDs to listen to in the car because like FUCK am I going to turn on the radio - the only thing you get on the airwaves are commercials (to an even greater extent than normal) and those very same 13 songs that every speaker from here to Polaris seems to continuously vomit as if it's a protective chant and Yog-Sothoth is waiting just outside your door.
Well, I was making a call to a Toys r Us store just as I was leaving work yesterday because heaven knows I need more freaking robots, hell yes I do. And as I'm on hold I suddenly pay just enough attention to the crackly, static-laced music crap coming out of my phone to notice that IT'S A GODDAMN CHRISTMAS SONG. It's the second of November - SECOND OF NOVEMBER - and they're already spouting this crap. I actually shouted out loud in my car there; good thing I had the windows closed or someone might've thought a moose was getting raped.
It's happened. It's finally happened. The whole month of November has been assimilated by Santa Claus and the Borg-elves and Thanksgiving has been relegated to nothing but an afterthought. It used to be that I only had ~one~ month of this claptrap and drivel to deal with every year but now TWO? Now I have to spend one SIXTH of every year of my life cutting myself off from the media like a backwater West Virginia secessionist in order to maintain my sanity? FUCKING HELL WHAT IN THE-
Alright, maybe I'm overreacting. But... damn it, fucking commercialism. I HATE it when this happens.
See, just as some part of me deep down likes to connect occasionally with the spiritual side of Halloween and genuinely contemplate what it means and ~should~ mean to life that we all eventually arrive at death, that same part of me likes to get into the old-fashioned "peace on Earth, good will toward men" feel of Christmas. But all this hard-core media blitzing that happens every year always conspires to do for the holidays what the 90s/2000s deluge of FF7 fanfiction did to that game - wear it completely the hell out to the point that I want to hurl heavy objects at the next person who utters the name of it.
So... yeah. The last portion of THIS year might be a little more nerve-wracking to get through than the last few. But oh well, head down and shoulder forward, press your way through.
Peace out.