So these days what do I do?

You've seen, if you've been reading, some of my life now. Some of my past. You can see why I wouldn't trust the holiday season. No one gets out of it alive. Hell, the whole notion has become, in America, an excuse to torture yourself with friends and family and never actually do what you want.

Because the holidays aren't about you. They're about fulfilling some imaginary goal or togetherness and happiness that only happens when Jimmy fucking Stewart has a moment of Zen.

And to hell with all of that. To hell, I say, with the promises and presents. To hell with the parties and the icons. To hell with the presents and the turkeys and the balls a-dropping.

So this year I went down to my bar, yeah, they're open, and I had a few drinks and toasted the bartenders and staff. I went back upstairs to my apartment and I sat down and I wrote some more. I turned on some random music. I had myself a perfectly normal day.

Except the mail didn't come and the stores were closed.

The holidays happened anyway. The year turned over, and little children got wrapped shit in boxes. It isn't like I changed the tide of the world or even wanted to. Because the voice of one person can't be heard over the din at all, you know this. So how could the silence of the same even be noticed?

And it isn't as if I care. I'm not out to tell you all to never celebrate a holiday; that would be beyond dumb. I'm just sharing mine with you so that maybe you'll understand why it is that when DGrove and The Kirk tell me to hit up “the footnote” holiday bash I bow out.

It isn't that I don't love the guys (though from what I hear Laszlo and Belden were wearing each other's shoes on their heads this year) I just can't get behind all of this hoohaw going down.

Anyway. I decided that I should really just find something to celebrate for myself. So I'm celebrating the end of the holidays. The end of the madness and the fucking tourists crawling Goddamned everywhere all day. The end of people standing outside of stores trying to sell what they just bought for more money because someone is hard up for that exact gift. The end of Dick Clark and MTV blaring bad, tinny, music along Broadway. The end of all of that crap and noise.

Because soon it'll be Valentine's Day, and Easter, and May Day, and whatever else the fuck goes on that they have to write in calendars every year in tiny tiny fonts that make the moon phases seem important to me.

It never stops, and it never will, but I have to pick a time for it to restart the cycle, so why not early January? If these fucks can choose random dates for their shit then so can I. I want a holiday card for it. "Congratz! The fucking Holidays are over, and now you can go get drunk alone without guilt again!"

Maybe we can give each other store bought cupcakes. Nothing that takes effort or work, you understand. I just like a good cupcake. Don't you?

But anyway there you go. I hope for your part the holiday season was decent, but keep it the fuck away from me. Now go have some left over fruitcake and rum. Go!

Get!