Well the crappy time of year is here again. The weathers turned cold and icy and I've had to pull all my banana trees in from the patio. The peppers have died and my herbs have gone into hiberrrrrrnation . I hate the cold weather!
It seems that the cold weather is when we all go into debt. Of course before Bush we had cheaper heating fuel so you used to get a break in the winter. Gas was a lot cheaper than electricity. Not now my friends, I believe my winter bill is higher than my summer bill, thanks George.
We also have to buy all those warm winter cloths that cost so much. Except at WalMart where everything is cheap including the wages and benefits. I'm so thankful for Chinese people who will work for nothing to keep me warm. Who cares if the buttons are poisonous and painted with lead base paint, I just won't chew on them as much.
Then we have the Holidays. Tada! Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, all paganist celebrations lumped together so that you don't notice that everything is going to hell outside. Of course with out them there would probably be a lot more suicides, at least with the Holidays you have something to look forward too and thanks to all your well meaning aunts you have enough scarves, gloves and underwear to make it through to April.
It's almost as if like hibernating bears we have a ritual to prepare for winter {{{January, February, March}}}. We start off with candy on Halloween to start on those layers of fat we'll need to survive the cold winter with nothing but reality TV on the tube. Then comes Thanksgiving! This is your chance to pile on those winter layers on someone else's dime. If you play it right and hit all the sisters and cousins early you'll end up at Mom and Dads where they will load you up with leftovers for a month, which coincidentally brings you to Christmas.
Christmas, that time when the rich feel bad about being rich. They seek out some poor unfortunate family to shower with presents and joy, food and good will. The family learns that if they are lucky and can survive another 364 days, 365 in a leap year, they could be showered with presents and food again. Reminds me of that parable about teaching a man to fish as opposed to just giving him a fish. Here's a new one "Teach a man to fish and you have a self sufficient human being who can survive on his own, give a man a fish and you have a slave forever" . Anyway I'm just being dark, I hate winter! Christmas is your last chance to warm up before the onslaught of cold, snow, back aches, colds, sniffles bla bla bla. Of course there's most of the things you ate at Thanksgiving except they replace turkey with ham, in some cases they serve both. As with Thanksgiving the pecking order remains the same Moms last then out of town with the goody's before your siblings get wise. Then it's the last chance before spring, holiday New Years Day.
New Years day comes in with a bang, why? because we spend New Years eve getting shit faced and even the closing of the frig on New Years day sounds like the bombing of Berlin. This is like the last mind numbing celebration that slips you into the deep freeze and hibernation. An interesting Holiday where the day before is more the celebration than the actual holiday itself. We can't wait to get to our favorite haunt, friends house or if we're lucky stay home and have friends over, the later is really the most fun because you get to get up in the morning and see who passed out on your couch. We consume at lest twice as much alcohol as our cars need to make it through the winter, then we pass out and wake up wishing we'd installed cable in the bath room so we could watch football uninterrupted. New Years day is spent watching endless football, it's like a cram course in college which now pays dividends we have bowls and bowls of football, enough to get us into mid January at least, who knew that FarlyRedikles University and Technical school had a football team?
Thats it, if you haven't made it to this point with enough blubber to make it through to spring you'd best be looking for a condo in Florida because now's when the Big Chill sets in. Good luck my friends see you in the spring.
"I love the smell of kerosene in the morning, it smells like...warmth" ...mmmmmm
Anyone have cheap tickets to Jamaca?
