'Tis Not the Season for Me

The most pathetic, miserable time of year starts tomorrow. Goddamn the holidays, & goddamn all the puke for which they stand.

Really, is there anything more painful than ignoring every dysfunction in our lives -- & doing it for a month and a half out of every flippin' year?

I do love my family & friends, I swear. But I love them because they're flawed, like me (though usually they're more subtle about their shortcomings). The last thing I want to do is sit around & pretend we were all invented by Norman Rockwell, complete with the fat uncle who smells like rum punch & Chesterfields yet retains his jolly sentiment when he plays Santa Claus every year.

Such families -- such people -- do not exist. Never have, never will. I've done enough genealogy over the last five years to know this.

'Tis the season, for those of us with seasonal mood patterns anyway, to get depressed, sleep until noon every day (claiming we "worked from home" in the morning), & gorge on pure starch constantly. I always make sure to keep a bag of flour, a soup ladle & a spare bucket of insulin handy this time of year.

Besides which, turkey sucks ass. Yes, I said it. Did these flightless freaks of nature never learn to drink water? No matter who cooks them, no matter how lovingly & carefully they do it, no matter how freely the damn things range before someone whacks their heads off, turkeys always taste like tree bark, only drier and stringier. Trytophan helps with depression, apparently, but only if you're willing to eat a U-Haul full of Butterballs. Goose I can stand, but who the hell actually cooks geese anymore?

One thing exists to make the holidays survivable: rich, yolky eggnog, by the half gallon. Also, lefse.