Probably the biggest sign of who is a hack as a writer is the person who writes seasonally relevant editorials. For example, some whiny or sappy bullshit on valentines day, some thanksgiving editorial or anecdote at thanksgiving, and what not, and so on. That is without a doubt the absolute bottom rung of writing. So when you flip through your magazines or newspapers and see these un-hilarious editorials, remember just how fucking lazy a writer has to be to not even bother coming up with anything better to write about then to puke out some shallow and generic observations.
So without further ado:
You may have noticed the xmas season is approaching fully swinging. Now as a grown man I need to say it is kind of hard not to acknowledge how ridiculous the whole thing is. Hey everybody, lets put a tree in our house! I hope I don't ruin the surprise for anyone, but santa claus isn't actually real. But I suppose that's not the only thing that xmas is about. I guess some people associate christmas with religion and the whole bible story about the birth of Rudolph in Santa's manger is a central aspect of their beliefs. Not that I have a problem with those of us who prefer to put the religious aspect front and center in everything. For them xmas has a whole other meaning than just the tree and presents. But not for me.
I actually feel dumb admitting it but I get something out of christmas anyway. I guess I'm sentimental but I appreciate being with my family and giving them shit and also getting presents myself, especially since my family is pretty rich. Also my family are nice people who I probably would like even if they weren't rich.
The sort of warm feelings I associate with xmas have somehow persisted in me all the way into my adulthood, which is corny and lame but I don't give a fuck so fuck you. However, some people get worked up over this whole thing and take their excitement with them pretty much everywhere. To work for instance. Last week I was sitting at my workstation listening to a little daft punk or something when a bunch of the office ladies started putting up xmas decorations. There was some discussion of whether putting up decorations counted as a part of work time or if it would come out of your break time. It was decided that it qualified as work time, at which point I immediately stopped working and sat in my chair watching the ladies decorate.
I think this illustrates a difference between men and women which is not meaningful but is amusing. If my office was mainly men the probability of decorations going up would be roughly equal to the probability of meeting a socially well adjusted person at a gun store. In my experience it seems unlikely that a room full of men would put a lot of work into decorating their office. But with women its like a fuckin santa-motherfucking-H.-claus wonderland in there! Its pretty awesome.
We used to have this decoration that was a big smiling plastic santa face. The thing about is that it is around scale size of a normal human head. In part due to its size and plasticness this santa face is incredibly like a santa mask, except with no eyeholes. So last year I taped it to my face and wandered around the office bumping into desks. Since this was obviously insanely hilaritous I wanted to repeat the show for my boss and our department head this year but I couldn't find the santa face.
So I spent half an hour going through the boxes of unused decorations looking for it, and what I found instead was a paper doll chain of santa clauses. And the santa depicted on the doll chain was like the old European santa. You see the North American version of santa, which is the correct one, was designed I believe by Coca Cola in the 1600's. It is the image of santa that we in north america pray to for our presents, fat, jolly, red coat and pants with fluffly white trimmings. But there is also like this European image of santa which looks more like a red coated Archbishop or something, and he wasn't even fat.
I always had the feeling like the European santa would have lame gifts, like he would bring you wooden shoes, or a goose, or a day off work at the steam factory. No toys, just an incremental relief from the drudgery of your existence.
So I prefer the Coke santa. Ho-Ho-Ho, spend-more-money!
One of my all time favorite xmas phenomenons is the release of the factory produced xmas album by the factory produced lip syncing stars, whichever of those who are taking their turn on the xmas album cash grab this year. One year it was Britney, Xstina, NSync and whoever, next year its the Jessica Simpson, JT, Maroon 5 or whichever other pop music franchise sucks, I have kind of lost track to be honest. The only xmas album I plan to buy will be Ron Artest's.
Anyway, you can tell which pop star is cashing in on this because these album usually hit the shelves of gas stations, Walmart's and 7-11's around mid september where they sit like sleeping musical streptococcus until around december 21st. I for one am impressed with the xmas spirit of these "artists", should xmas spirit be defined as get whatever you can get while the getting's good.
In conclusion you may have noticed I have no actual point to make about anything, but that's the spirit of xmas! Actually it isn't but I am too lazy to bother trying to make a point. So see you later.