it's the time of the seeeeeeason for... the highest tendency toward suicidal thoughts. oh, and... um... also for loving you?

this isn't the big thing i am brewing in the back that i promised in my email, just something to tide you over until the season's tidings drive you to drink so much that you don't care how funny (or blasphemous) my blog is.

about two months ago i was wandering through target looking for god knows what. i was so deep into the store that at that point i had probably abandoned my original search, and had begun a crusade for booze and pills. anyhoot, i must have wandered one aisle too far, because, all of a sudden, in the middle of august, i stepped past the camping gear, and into a cornucopia of red and green adorned shelving full of xmas crap.

i know what you're all saying... at this point in american history, haven't you found a cornucopia of xmas crap any time you find things for sale?

for isn't that the true meaning of xmas? buying a bunch of crap you hope won't lose it's novelty, at least until the next birthday, anniversary, valentine's day, mother's day, national pancake day, talk like a pirate day, guy fawkes day, or whichever new holiday we are expected to buy gifts for people now?

no, no, friend. this was the real shit. the light-up snowman lawn ornaments, the wireframe reindeer that will ultimately be positioned to look like they are fucking by some drunken kids walking through your neighborhood in the middle of the night, the inflatable santa claus, the scented candles, and candy canes, the plastic wreaths and over sized novelty bows, singing christmas tree mantle pieces, poinsettia centerpieces looking so... oh let's face it, poinsettias are hideous flowers just begging your dog to eat them and go into toxic shock. the whole shebang was right there in all its tacky loosely jesus-based glory. just kidding, there was nothing even remotely jesus-based about this display (why would there be? this is about xmas, not some religious holiday).

ah yes, xmas in august (and not that good christmas in august where the fire department donates toys to orphans). nothing says père noël like the sterile fluorescent lighting of a megamart, and 102 degrees in the shade.

upon stumbling into this alternate dimension, i thought to myself, maybe this is a fluke. maybe target is the only one. maybe they just forgot to take down last year's display. yes... maybe.

but then, oh what to my wondering eyes should appear in the mail last week?

popcorn factory catalogue!

oh, holy night!

this catalogue is surely the baby jesus version of the first robin of spring.

i think it's safe to assume that the megamarts and shopping malls will try to get people in the frantic buy buy buy xmas mood as soon as is humanly possible, but the popcorn factory brings a little taste of holiday heartburn right into your home and hearth. this harbinger of the holy(shit) season is a whopping 48 pages of uninvited guest, this year, and there is no better place to get those country cheese logs, powder coated imitation flavored popcorn balls, smoked nuts, summer sausage rolls, and various other phallically named hors d'oeuvres that tell your guests, "i don't want you here, and i hope you have a miserable time starting... now!"

lucky for me, i beat the holiday rush by ordering a gross ton (use either definition of "gross" there) of that stuff from a skyMall catalogue about 12 years back. so when you get my holiday snack basket, you can rest assured that it has been aging to perfection in my musty basement, chilling through the winter months, then sweating it out through the summer, year in and year out for well over a decade now. that's how much i love you all (heart <3).

now, those who know me well will know that i refuse to start celebrating xmas until the first "innocent" victim is trampled to death in a post thanksgiving day sale (oh it just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, kind of like i have internal hemorrhaging from getting my ribs stepped on in pursuit of a discount tickle me elmo), but my best sarcasm really does happen when that magical mixture of amoral, self-indulgent consumerism meets TV ratings whores, meets "religion", and suddenly a country full of people who claim to be appalled by the body count during a war consider lifeless human corpses crunching under their beating hooves during a stampede for cheap electronics and novelty theme gift cards to be collateral damage. that's when i get to sit back and, being the last person on earth who still enjoys drinking egg nog, get drunk off a nutmeg and salmonella based cocktail, and watch the world eat itself.

but as much as i enjoy the xmas holiday (i continue to refer to it as xmas, because christmas insinuates some kind of religious under- or overtone, which, as anyone who has tried to convince me to abandon my crusade against xmas will tell you, xmas no longer has. oh the cries of, "it's not really a religious holiday. it's an american holiday". well, that's much better) and all the societal collapse it brings, i couldn't help but feel a bit sad the other day as i rode through town dodging cherry-picker after cherry-picker, hoisting city maintenance workers to the very tip tops of the trees that line the streets and avenues to string up xmas lights.

i thought to myself, you can have thanksgiving, because thanksgiving is just a meal and a mindset. i can celebrate thanksgiving unabated by the encroachment of xmas. but when you mess with my halloween, you messed with the wrong holiday. halloween is sacred, man. it's the one day of the year when kids get to be ungrateful, trouble making little miscreants, and we don't punish them, but rather reward them with candy. it's the day when we all get to dress up and pretend to be someone else... besides the person we pretend to be on a daily basis (i like to pretend i'm malcom jamal warner). halloween is about death, and scary stuff, and gross stuff (not cheese log gross, macabre gross). halloween is about anarchy, raising hell, and raising the dead, and i don't think we'll be coaxing any spirits out of the grave with a tub of artificially flavored popcorn big enough to bury a fat guy in.

and for anybody that is already buying, or putting up their xmas decorations: when halloween rolls around in a few weeks, if the little costumed hoodlums don't set up your artisan reindeer lawn ornaments to look like they are fucking...

i will.