The madness begins.

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I knew it when I turned on the television the day after Hallowe'en and saw a snowman in a red hat with a white puffy ball on the end of it. To even find a reminder that Thanksgiving is the holiday between Hallowe'en and Christmas you have to watch the Food Channel.

I hate trying to live my normal life this time of year. The simple act of going out for lunch in the middle of a work day to a restaurant within ten miles of a retail center becomes a mad scramble for survival, dodging people driven into a consuming frenzy who are intent upon decking the walls with your sodden carcase if you get between them and the Cabbage Patch Doll of their dreams.

All I wanted was a Quarter Pounder. Would you be a good chap and remove the taser electrodes from between my shoulder blades?

Someone has, I'm sure, already written a Holiday Season Survival Guide, some pithy little tome about handling sleeping arrangements for guests, buying wrapping paper on Boxing Day, not feeding the poinsettias to the cats, and maintaining your weight through all the festivities. A Google search on "holiday season survival guide" returns more than three thousand webpages alone.

I can find out how to avoid tomaine poisoning while making sure the turkey is golden brown and delicious^TM.

I can find out how not to strain my voice while singing Christmas carols 'round the piano with my cousins.

I can avoid motion sickness while driving over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house through the use of Dramamine or Bonine.

I can avoid overspending by setting a budget.

Now, would someone please tell me how to buy laundry soap between November 1 and January 31?

There's a guide that I haven't seen written yet, and someone should. It would be called "Scrooge's Guide to Not Completely Interrupting Your Lifestyle and Habits Just Because the People Cruising the Wal*Mart Parking Lot and Lumbering Walrus-like Down the Aisles Are, By and Large, Fucking Morons in Santa Clause Hats, Ho Ho Ho."

It would have chapters like "Buy everything you need for November, December and January by October, or Learn To Wear Your Clothes Inside Out", and "Learn to Shop at 2:00a.m. When the Milk is Freshest Anyway", and "Earplugs: The Essential Accessory."

Earplugs? Of course, earplugs. It is not necessary to listen to anything said by the booger-chomping congenital mouth-breather ringing up your purchase. Really. Watch the prompts on the little card reader device, and you'll be fine.

Why earplugs, you ask? Manheim Steamroller. Mariah Carey. Whitney Houston. Barbara Streisand. Tom Jones. Bruce Springstein. God help us, Lee Greenwood.

It is impossible - let me be unequivocally clear here: FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE - to go shopping at a chain store without hearing the music of the season butchered by this group and the rest of pop music's icons. There was a day last year when mljm and I were out - I don't remember why, but I must have been very very bad to be punished in this way - and visited easily a half dozen stores, and in each one we heard while there the same Mariah Carey musical abortion. It was inescapable!

I have a message for KUDL, our local "easy listening" station: being conservative and just starting with, say, "White Christmas" in 1942, did you know that there are 63 years of recorded music you can draw from to play during your "All Christmas All The Time" bullshit you're soon to start?

Remember Bing? Remember Kate Star and Doris Day? Remember Perry Como? Sorry, sorry, you're right. Mariah's got better tits. What was I thinking?

Lest anyone misunderstand me, I do not hate Christmas. I like having the house decorated, and I like going to the parking lot down at Crysler Stadium and buying my tree - a Scottish pine about six feet tall - from the Cub Scouts, and I like walking around the Independence Square listening to instrumental versions of my favorite carols piped over small speakers on top of the buildings, and I like stopping in at the Main Street Coffee House for hugs and a capuccino with a background of tinsel and lights.

What I object to, just to be clear, is the huge miscalculation that retailers and entertainers have made, to whit: that we consumers like having the season forcibly shoved through our collectively clenched jaws down throats and into bellies made nauseous by the icky-sweetness of Ronald McDonald on ice skates.

I object to the what has rightly been called a feeding frenzy of consumerism that makes impossible the simple act of buying a bar of soap in safety and relative quiet.

Stock up folks. While there's still time.

Comments

GBD

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Another Alton Fan!

We had pictures taken with him, and have flames on our Kitchenaide!