I’m getting around slowly today. Le Duke and Duchess are out of town and I am not in any hurry to get things done. When the cat is away….

The good news is that I am finished with my Christmas shopping. If I haven’t gotten you a present, you are s.o.l. my friends. I’m finished, done, finnito. I’m not buying any more. If I have forgotten you gift wise, know that I have probably forgotten you in real life, too. I’m kidding. I rarely forget people. Sometimes there are people I wish I could forget.

But, remembering keeps us from making the same mistakes twice, usually. It’s called Classical Conditioning. Yeah, I’m in Psych 101 this semester, remember? Now I can make cliche’ references to having learned things in Psych 101 just like they do on hip young people’s television programs. Yeah!

Thinking about stuff is cool. I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff lately. Mainly coming up with brilliant ideas about how to wrap Christmas presents, or rather Grismas presnents, so that they look like things that they are not. You know, wrapping a magazine so that it looks like a lampshade or a pair of jeans so that they look like a cordless drill or a basket of chocolates so that it looks like ’67 Mustang. Stuff like that. One thought I had was about how Christmas shapes us into better people, sort of.

It tries to anyway. Despite the fact that we are an overconsuming mass of wasteful people, we try to better ourselves through Christmas. As children, we are taught, most of us anyway, that there is a magical fat man who breaks into our house to bring us presents. That is, if we a good boys and girls. If we are bad, we get a sack full of coal and switches. Ah, fear tactics. It could be worse, Santa and his “friends” could take you into the street and beat you.

As children, all we want is to open ours presents. From the first day that there are presents under the tree, we want to open them. As an adult, I have discovered that the true joy of Christmas is the building anticipation. It’s like a roller coaster. The excitement builds and builds and then fifteen minutes later it is over and then you have this big mess to clean up. Wait, um… that sounds like something else…. I’ll explain it when you’re older.

We learn to be good boys and girls. We learn patience and what it means to wait for good things to come to us. We also learn to go crazy-go-nuts and spend way too much money and eat too much delicious holiday food.

Just out of curiosity I searched for images of Santa and it took seventeen pages before I found anything that was for adult’s eyes only. It made me smile a little inside to know that there are sixteen whole pages of Santa that are not yet totally defiled by giant rubber phalluses.

Anyways, I have rambled on long enough. I need to go accomplish something today. More soon. ~SC