My Whacked Christmas Thoughts

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Greetings and welcome to the broadcast. So it's the merry
time of the year, with Christmas literally right around the corner,
although I guess I'm not really supposed to say Christmas,
supposed to say happy Holidays or whatever. And naturally here

(00:23):
in south central Pennsylvania, there are people out there with
lots of lights and decorations in their yards. Some are good,
some are not so good, and some are just playing shit.
The one neighbor down the road this past Halloween, he

(00:44):
had three skeletons out in his yard sitting around in
a circle. He has decided to leave the skeletons out
there for Christmas. He has put Santa hats on each
of the skeletons, so now they are Uletide skeletons, if
that makes any sense. Then there's the other neighbor who

(01:06):
has his yard full of inflatable Christmas characters like he
does every year. It looks like a deranged collection of
festive inflatable condoms. And I know every year I keep
saying that I'd like to go find Santa Claus somewhere
and sit on his lap and tell him what I
want for Christmas. I never do it, though, I guess

(01:28):
I just lose the nerve this year, though, I'm definitely
gonna do it. I'm gonna find one of those Santa's
out there, and I'm gonna wear the leggings I wear
at the gym, and I will be sure to have
a full bulging erection when I sit on Sandy's lap.
I'm not sure what sort of a reaction this is

(01:49):
going to bring, but it should be interesting. Nonetheless, at
the very least, I'll probably be getting a bag of
coal in my stocking. Christmas shopping is concerned. I haven't
even started yet. Usually I like to do my shopping
like twenty minutes before the store is closed on Christmas Eve.
That way, you tend to get some good bargains that way.

(02:13):
It was like the one year, oh maybe a few
days before Christmas, I went into a victorious secret in
the wall. This is back when there were malls, and
I was looking around and the nice young lady asked
me if she could help me. I said, yes, I'm
looking to buy some panties and she goes, are they
for a special someone in this holiday season? And I

(02:36):
respond by saying no, they're actually gonna be for me.
That is when she summoned over the manager, and the
manager told me very politely but certainly, that perhaps I
should go do my shopping elsewhere. It's like, fine, be
that way. I was gonna buy the bra set with
the panties, but you know, if you want to don't
want to take my money, then whatever, I'll go someplace else.

(03:00):
Just go fuck yourselves. But getting back to Santa Claus
and sitting on Santa's lap, I was, I just reminded
myself of a little situation right when I was like
seven years old, and I went and I sat on
Santa's lap at some place, and Sanna asked me what

(03:21):
I want, and I told him what I wanted, and
knowing that the fat bastard probably wouldn't bring me half
what I needed. There's when it came tind toly even.
It was little candy canes and the cup there next
to Santa's throne, and he told me to take a
candy cane. Well I took all four of them that
were in the cup. Well, you would think the world

(03:44):
was about the end. Sanna looks at me like no, no, no,
you don't take all four and then there's like a
security guard standing there. Why there's a security guard standing
next to Sanna. That's another story. I don't understand, but whatever,
and he's like, no, no, no, you put those backs.
You're not supposed to take all of them. That's bad. Fine,

(04:05):
whatever here, I'll put them all back. I don't want
you to stinking candy canes any which way. You have filthy,
no good mother. So can you tell that I have
apparently some issues with the holidays. I'm one of those
people that gets seasonal depression, so the holidays aren't always
a joyous occasion for me, and I often don't look

(04:28):
forward to the approach of the holidays season like some
other people do. And then when you add in the
incredibly depressing Christmas music, it really makes matters really really bad.
And to listen to it drawn on everywhere you go,
it's like I'm dreaming of some sort of Christmas. It

(04:54):
makes me want to stand in front of an oncoming train.
To add insult to injury. I remember, like in the
second grade, during Christmas, they showed us this film about
I think it was about Jesus, I don't know, something
like that, and one of the scenes it was like

(05:15):
one of those claymation type movies, and looking back, it
really wasn't a very good film to begin with. But
there was this scene in which a bunch of rampaging
Roman gladiators in their chariots go charging through this town

(05:36):
and they run over this this baby lamb it was
it was, and they kill it. It was horrifying. I
started crying. The rest of the kids in the class
started crying. How traumatic, What a what a way to
depict you know, Christmas. And then add the unholy background
music bom bomb, and now all of us kids are

(05:59):
on the verge of severe depression because of what we
just witness in this shit ass movie. But this was
back in the seventies when when traumatizing kids was not
only normal, but it was accepted and encouraged. So take
it for what it's worth, Jesus aids Christ no wonder,
I'm not really that fond of Christmas to begin with.

(06:23):
But when you think about it, if they were to
show a film like that in the schools nowadays, the
kids would be so traumatized they'd probably end up making
sculptures with their own feces and would have to undergo
twenty years worth of psychotherapy. It would have really been
better off if they had just shown us some sort
of avant garde Christmas porn, just saying and mind you.

(06:52):
Probably a week later, after this Christmas Film Festival disaster
at the elementary school, we we spent Christmas Eve at
my aunt's place. She had this little apartment in Winchester, Massachusetts,
and my mom and my dad and myself we went
over there and she made us dinner and we had

(07:14):
a relatively quiet evening until disaster. Near disaster struck, we
were eating some oriole cookies and my aunt had just
had bitten off some of the cookie and she started
choking on it. It was like something straight out of hell.
All of a sudden, She's like gagging, bellow. It was like,

(07:41):
oh my god, what do we do? What do we do?
You know, her poodle dog Fufu was freaking out. My
mother is like, oh no, what are we gonna do?
And I'm like screaming because I've never never really seen
a person choking before, so this was kind of a
new scenario for me. Finally, after enough of the wow wow,

(08:03):
wow wow ya, she finally hacked up a gob of
orio cookie into the palm of her hand and had
stopped choking. Thank God, so all went well as well
as it could be. But needless to say here I

(08:23):
am I'm further traumatized by Christmas yet again, and it
kind of ruined my appetite for orio cookies for some
time afterwards. And I don't know if I've mentioned this before,
but in my family back in the day, especially back
in the seventies into the early eighties, we would rotate

(08:44):
houses as to who would host the holidays, either Thanksgiving
or Christmas. Usually it was between my mom at our house,
or my sister's house, or my aunt or my uncle
up in Maine. He would often host Christmas up there,
and so every time we would go up to his

(09:06):
house for Christmas in Maine, he would have not one,
but two Christmas trees he would cut down. He had
this huge parcel of land behind his house. He had
like one hundred acres, most of it was wooded, so
he'd have a choice of any free Christmas trees he wanted.
He'd take two and put them together in the living room,
so he'd have the one ginormous tree that would be his,

(09:30):
you know, Christmas tree. Granted it was quite nice and different,
but every year when we go up there for Christmas.
My uncle and his wife Dottie would always get me
the same gift, and I was usually a pack of
underwear tidy whities. And I did not want tidy whities.

(09:52):
I wanted toys as a kid. I wanted like a talk,
a truck or something. I did not want friggin underwear.
But of course I would get the underwear. And now
it's time for the grand reveal and you're opening your gifts.
You have to hold up the gift so everyone in
the room can see it and admiring it and go

(10:13):
ooh and ah, look at that. So I would unwrapped
my underwear and hold it up for everyone in the
room to enjoy and act like I really appreciated it,
when in fact I wanted to take a cigarette lighter
and torch the goddamn things. Of course, my sister, being
the perennial wise ass that she is, would say to me, oh, look,

(10:36):
now you have underwear with no yellow and brown stains
on them. Thank you, Linda, thank you for demoralizing me
even more. I really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you.
But while I'm on the subject of gift giving, it's
now my understanding that it's becoming more and more acceptable

(10:56):
to regift items to other people. So, in other words,
at sweater that someone gave you ten years ago that
you really didn't wear or didn't want, you could just
wrap up and give to somebody else, or give it
back to the person who gave it to you in
the first place. So there's there's the ultimate coup de gras.
So I've always wondered who would be that cheap and

(11:20):
cheesy to give back a gift that they had received before, Like,
come on, you can't go out and buy somebody something else.
Although I understand, yeah, some people have difficult financial times,
so buying gifts is not always an option, but even still,

(11:41):
come on, now, the ultimate insult is to keep regifting fruitcake.
That stuff is like bombshelter food. It lasts forever, and
it's so goddamn hard. In most cases, you can use
it as bricks to make a house. You know. One
of the first things that Trump can do, and he's

(12:01):
so fond of signing executive orders, is to sign in
order that bans the sale and or distribution of fruitcake
in the United States. That would be a grand idea
that I could get behind. But what I do love
is the people who do the very last minute shopping.
Now I'm guilty of that myself, as I have previously mentioned,

(12:25):
but some are even worse than me. It's always kind
of humorous if you if you go to a Walgreens
right before they close on Christmas Eve, because they're about
one of the last places left open. And these these people,
usually they're guys rushing in to get that last minute
gift for their wife and or honey and in some

(12:46):
cases both. But yeah, so they're in there in a panic.
They're looking through the gift boxes of perfume and the
gift sets of hot Cocoa and the company Little Peede
Days and stuff like that, and they're you know, oh,
what do I get? What do I get? And it's
usually a bunch of them in one aisle, and they

(13:07):
look like nuclear physicists who just triggered the chain reaction
on a bomb that's about to go off. In their faces,
it's kind of a look of gloom, hopelessness, and sheer desperation,
because you know, if they don't get that gift, they're
probably gonna be denied twat at the very least, so

(13:29):
they better get on it. Christmas is right around, just
a few hours away, and here you are, like five
minutes before the doors lock up on the Walgreens and
you haven't found anything yet. However, in defense of the guys,
let me just say that anyone out there who is
shopped for a woman knows that it is almost an

(13:53):
impossible task. They're never happy no matter what you get
them just doesn't quite suit them. And then, like one
particular female that I know, she's like, you buyer a
surprise gift and she's all pissed off because she didn't
go along to help pick out her surprise gift. Well,

(14:16):
how was it a surprise if you're there when I'm
picking it out to be a surprise. So this is
the mentality that you're facing, and it's impossible. You might
as well try and go figure out cold fusion. It'd
be an easier equation to solve than figuring out that
of the female brain. So the point to my little

(14:38):
story here is that women do contribute to this last
minute frenzy that some guys have to go through on
Christmas Eve, because God forbid a couple of weeks prior
to Christmas, should you ask what the woman wants? You
would think you're asking for a tooth extraction or something

(15:00):
thing because they go ballistic on you and you end
up at Motel six for the next two or three days.
Ask me how I know that. So the women do
contribute to this last minute shopping problem, inadvertently or directly,
I don't know. It's part of the mentality they do

(15:20):
to torture men, to make us feel diminished in our capacity,
if that makes any sense at all. And then, even
though women won't tell you what they want, there are
some things you should never buy a woman, such as
the case on one Christmas Eve when one guy who

(15:43):
was obviously looking very gift as well for a female companion,
he was looking at the cases of slim fast If
he was in fact considering that is a gift for
his significant other, I can guarantee that on christ Morning
you're going to find this guy hanging from the wires

(16:05):
of the Christmas lights out in the tree in the
front yard, with a knife sticking straight out of the
middle of his forehead. I can truly begin to understand
why some people just give cash and be done with it.
For that matter, I much rather buy gifts from my
dogs than for most of the humans. I know, because

(16:26):
at least the dogs appreciate the Christmas gifts more than
the humans. And granted they chew up their gifts within
ten minutes, but they still enjoy them. Just saying, and
I can also appreciate why there are many people who
don't even bother to celebrate the holiday season. In some ways,

(16:49):
they are probably better off than the rest of us.
Not to sound like a scrooge or a grinch, but
they're not putting themselves through the hassles of buying gifts
or getting gifts, or decorating the house, or making dinner
or buying tidy, whitey briefs. For that certain nephew, it's

(17:13):
a lot simpler for them. And I do know of
some people to families in particular, that actually do not
celebrate Christmas until like a month after the fact, so
in other words, their Christmas is January twenty fifth. That
might sound a little strange to the rest of us
traditionalists out there, but it's easier. Shopping is easier, not

(17:39):
so many hassles, and traveling, not getting a family together,
not everyone's rushing around at the airport with all the
other last minute travelers. So that does make a certain
amount of sense and doing your shopping. If you want
to get some deals, some of the best deals to
be found in any store is usually on December twenty.

(18:02):
But anyways, I think it's time for me to digress
from that particular subject. Let me touch once again on
Christmas music, and that's a that's a big part of
the holiday season, and for some people like myself, it's
one of the reasons why we get depressed, because, as
I mentioned, it's some of it's kind of sad and

(18:23):
drones on and you know what I'm talking about, Especially
if you go into stores, it seems like the music
just plays on and on and on and on. I
had recently heard that this year there's this list of
some of the most hated Christmas songs, and much to

(18:44):
my surprise, one of the top hated songs is Grandma
Got run Over by a Reindeer. Now, that is actually
one of my all time favorite Christmas songs, next to
Rudy the Red Nose Reindeer from Dean Martin. And yes,
I did say Rudy that that was the version of

(19:07):
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer that was sung quite nicely
by Dean Martin. I like it better than the original
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer song. That's my opinion and
I'm sticking to it. But in this festive season, let
us not forget it is also time for the live

(19:28):
nativities that you find in so many of the local
churches and houses of worship. Now, speaking for myself, I
can honestly tell you that going to a live nativity
is not one of my preferred things to do now
or or anytime in the future. I really don't understand

(19:52):
the concept of going to a homemade manger and looking
at a bunch of actors portraying that guy Joe, And
who's the chick there, Marianne I think her name is.
And then there's a baby in a basket or a
basket or something, and you got the animals, goats and donkeys,

(20:16):
and maybe camels or a bull. No, probably not a bull.
That would most likely be a bad idea all around,
although it would make for an entertaining evening, I digress.
Then there's a light display overhead, which I guess is
supposed to be the Star of Bethlehem, which was most

(20:38):
likely in all reality a supernova or a comet that
they were looking at. But that's kind of a scientific explanation,
and there's no place for science and religion obviously, so
and some of these live nativity spectacles are touted as

(20:58):
immersive experiences where you can actually sew. I'll get involved
in this little presentation of what you could say is
a very irresponsible young couple giving birth to a baby
outside in a manger with the donkeys because they couldn't

(21:18):
secure reservations at the end in advance of this entire situation.
And let us not forget the three strange guys who
come showing up bearing gifts out of the middle of nowhere.
It's all kind of really weird when you sit back
and take it all in. In fact, if this were

(21:39):
to take place today, that this happy little group of
people would probably be arrested and hauled off to Central Booking.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason I don't
go to live nativities. So in the few remaining moments
of this miraculous podcast, let me take a minute or

(22:05):
two to discuss your holiday gatherings. Here is hoping that
you will be spending time with family and friends. May
it not be a curse, May it be a blessing
to all of you, and if you're entertaining, try to
keep the food abundant and keeping a check on the

(22:25):
alcohol because some people tend to abuse that. We all
have that one drunken uncle who will consume too much
booze and as he's holding a martini in each hand,
he will go stumbling and falling into your Christmas tree,
destroying your tree and your holiday cheer. Yes, there is

(22:48):
nothing quite like the joy of having to pick up
your drunken uncle off the floor and the destroyed tree
and resulting destroyed ornaments all at the same time. Of course,
as you get your uncle back on his feet again,
he will be the first one to bitch at you
in his slurred tone, asking why you decide to put
the fucking tree right in his way. But such as life,

(23:13):
so nonetheless, please have a happy holiday season. Let me
also take a moment to remind you that the best
gift that you can give yourself is a free subscription
to this verbal assault that I call a podcast. Please
feel free to subscribe. It's probably the best thing that
you can do for yourself today. Anyways, So long for now,

(23:36):
have a brighton merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Bye, bye