Christmas cards

Today I wrote out all my Christmas cards. Expect them in the mail forthwith. We didn't have theme-appropriate stamps, though, so please excuse the American flags. Also, I might have accidentally bought gay-themed cards, but I can't decide if I should apologize for that or not.

NOT SORRY!

Thus far, I've received one Christmas card. It's from my dentist, who, to be fair, I see more often than many of my family members. (Hawaii really needs to fluoridate its water supply, it's ridiculous how weak my teeth are.) Cards are usually the only decorations I have, at least since my tiny circuit-board Christmas tree fried its connection points and stopped blinking.

I did decorate a tree last year with my sister. She has all of our childhood ornaments and a fake tree with the lights already built in, which has got to be the greatest advancement in Christmas technology since pre-paid postage boxes.

STUFF!

Here are the ornaments. You can see the perfect crescent where my sister was sitting while she unwrapped them.

The tree came out beautifully.

Human for scale.

Submission

Classic Wonder Woman is a little odd. If you ever happen to cruise through some of the original 1940s comics, you'll notice a great deal of light bondage and domination/submission themes. The creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston, was into that sort of thing.

He also invented the systolic blood pressure test. Yowzah!

Even though the sexual subtext is about as transparent as a jellyfish, I can't find it in me to be offended. I don't know if it's ye olde tymey charme, or my postmodern detachment from what used to titillate less jaded audiences, but there's something kind of wholesome about it. It's sleazy, but in a kid-friendly way--like grubbing for presents at Christmas.

Sure, Christmas tends to bring out the greedy despot side of children everywhere, and then the rest of us have to endure a billion Christmas specials peddling the myth that it isn't about the presents. (Kids aren't fooled, by the way. You can turn off those Rankin/Bass demons.) But look how happy they are when they get the presents that they want! Isn't that cute? Look at that smile!

Like I said, sleazy, but wholesome.

Happy Holidays, I guess.

Arbitrary rules for holiday parties

My co-worker A was considering buying a Christmas sweater last week. She called me over to look at a couple of sweaters online, one with reindeer and the other with--well, also reindeer, but smaller.

Dramatized here.

We got to talking about the sense in buying an item of clothing that you can only really wear for about six weeks out of the year: immediately after Thanksgiving up until December 26. Even if the sweater isn't explicitly Christmas themed--snowflakes, for example, instead of Santa Claus or a Christmas tree--it's really only suitable for the Christmas season.

This is holiday party arbitrary rule number 1.

Warming up to the topic, we discussed the context in which one would wear a Christmas sweater. You can wear a Christmas sweater to a holiday party, but you can only wear it to more than one holiday party in a season if the parties aren't frequented by the same people. For example, you can wear it to the office party and then to your family's home for Christmas dinner, but you can't wear it to the office party and then wear it again to a bar get-together with some folks from work, because the same group of people will see you in it. Arbitrary rule number 2.

"No pictures! They'll be up on Facebook!" Matt cuts in at this point.

"And you can't wear the same party outfit to the same party two years in a row," I said, stating arbitrary rule number 3. "You need to wait at least three years between parties to wear the outfit again."

I guess at this point, Matt just couldn't handle any more feminine nonsense. He stood up and said, "I love how you just make up this arbitrary rules, but you say them with such an air of authority and confidence, as if they were real, actual things that people do!"

And we all had a good laugh.

BUT--allow me to describe my wardrobe saga of the holiday season thus far, since I went to three parties this week and will be hosting another one tomorrow. I wore my 2012 Holiday Tea dress at the President's Party last Thursday. I'm going to wear my 2012 President's Party dress to the Holiday Tea on Monday. I wore my 2012 Valentine's Day dress to Thanksgiving 2013. I'm going to wear yesterday's post-Hanukkah party outfit to Valentine's Day 2014, and 2009's Christmas Day outfit to 2013 Christmas Day because it's time again.

Choose, unless you wish to stay here for evermore, To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide You will always find some on nettle wine's left side...

I'm never going to wear last Friday night's party outfit to another party again, because I didn't realize I was going to be the most casually dressed person there, BF. 

I know to some, these rules and distinctions seem arbitrary. Lots of things women have to do probably seem arbitrary to men. Hell, they seem arbitrary to me sometimes! But that doesn't make them any less real. And it doesn't mean that other women aren't watching to make sure you follow the rules. "The Simpsons" did a whole episode about it, so you know it's true.

That's arbitrary rule number 4.

And it's the most important rule of all.

Mushrooms, Car Bumpers, and Aging Punks for 2010

And for your New Year, here is a double helping of everyone's favorite game, "What the hell is that?!" It's more difficult to play now that I live in my own apartment and don't have roommates, but fortunately, this is still New York, and there are many opportunities to wonder at life's great mysteries.

First: a Christmas Eve puzzler. Where did this come from? Why was it dropped here?

And does the wine bottle have anything to do with this situation? Writer for scale.

Second: from under my window. Is this edible? Will it aid my "spirit quest"? Why is it growing inside my apartment? Wine cork for scale.

Finally, here is a wonderful article in Honolulu Weekly, my old employer, written about and by someone who would say something sarcastic if I called him my good friend. Dean Carrico reunited with his old punk band, Preachers That Lie, over the winter season and opened for the Misfits last night at the Pipeline Cafe in Honolulu. Seems like as soon as I move to the coolest city on the planet, all the cool stuff starts happening elsewhere.

Oh, well. Go Dean!

Happy New Year.

Jolly

It's a strange word.

That's the only segue I could think of. Christmas is here. Talk all you want about "the holidays," put those light-up Menorahs on the dashboard and cut the mistletoe at Stonehenge, but that's all part of the politeness conspiracy because December is still. All. About. Christmas. (In the Western world. I don't think Iran is gonna have a tree lighting ceremony this year.)

Here are some things I know:

Jesus was most likely born in April, not December.

The Christians appropriated many pagan festivals, most notably Saturnalia, when developing Christmas.

Most cultures in the world have some sort of celebration around the winter solstice because hey, the sun doesn't seem to be around as much this time of year, should we be worried?

Here are some other things I know:

Stores put out the Christmas decorations on Halloween.

All but the most militant of non-Christian families need at least one picture of their kid in Santa's lap.

Americans can't agree on much, but we can all agree on Christmas: there's gonna be a tree, the color scheme is red and green, and the main food is either turkey, ham, or goose. Adults will get blasted on rum and eggnog and kids will get blasted on candy canes. And presents--oh, will there be presents. Most likely brought by a fat guy in a red suit. In Japan, he's called Annual Gift Man and he lives on the moon.

Even the act of NOT participating in Christmas--agreeing not to exchange presents, going out for Chinese food on Christmas Day, scrubbing the toilet and watching anime until your eyeballs bleed kung fu--validates the holiday, as the very reason for your protest is still Christmas. It's omitted, but it leaves a pine tree-shaped hole in your life that other people can sniff out from a mile away.

I'm putting all of this out there for everyone to read because I only want to have the bah-humbug conversation once. We can all agree that Christmas is a holiday cribbed together from various traditions that has degenerated into a celebration of conspicuous consumption. And the music sucks.

There. It's said.

Now, here's a dirty little secret of mine: I love Christmas. I love the colors and the lights and the parties. I love to dress up and get sloppy-giggly drunk with my friends (an activity not strictly confined to December). I love Christmas trees and Christmas lights and garland and the Christmas ornaments we used to put on the tree when I was little. I love getting presents and when I have the money I love giving presents and there's nothing like the hush of Christmas morning when everyone is sitting at home in their pajamas drinking eggnog at 10 in the morning. I never take my Christmas lights down. I still don't like the music, but I do love Santa.

In Ka'u, Santa was always played by this guy named Eugene Dudiot who was burned black as lava from his days out in the Hawaiian sun. (Ka'u is actually called "land of the burned backs," which isn't as cool as its "land of the rebels" nickname, but is pretty accurate nonetheless.) Eugene Dudiot--like "dude," but "dude-wah." Santa Dude-wah.

I'll leave you with that.