You know folks....

[AFK]

At the end of the day, we all have to come home.  Yes to family.  Yes to friends.  Yes to household pets.  They are all important.  But we also have to come home, to ourselves.  No one lives in our head but us.  No one has to maneuver the ocean of thoughts that fill our head but us.  No one else has to deal with those things that challenge us, that haunt us, that tease us, that torture us.  Our minds are a table for one.  Only we get to see what is on the menu.  And if we're lucky, we even get to decide what is on the menu. 

Society seems to want us to believe that happiness can be derived from externalities.  This is especially true during the Holiday season.  Crass commercialism tells us it's all about getting and giving "THE gift".  Whether it is that diamond ring she's always wanted, or that table saw he needs so he can build that fence around the yard.  But, then you have those seemingly noble types who say, "well, it's just about friends and family."  Being with the ones you love.  It is a very noble thought and sentiment.  It certainly does have an appeal, and far be it from me to discourage such a happy Hallmark moment.  For many in our society it works.  Or at least, they think it works.  Having friends and family and some gifts under the tree and some turkey on the table....Holiday Perfection.  It fills your heart with warm and happy fuzzy feelings.

But, as I said at the beginning, even when surrounded by loved ones, we still have to come home to ourselves.  When they are all gone, when everyone turns in for the night, there we are, alone, with OUR thoughts, with OUR worries, with OUR realities.  Home for the holidays is great, but it depends on what home you are talking about.  You can make a warm and cozy home for the family, but that may not be enough for the home in our heads.  We will nonetheless put on a great show.  Throw on a sweater.  Throw on a smile.  And throw down some mashed potatoes.

And it is a sham.  A shameful sham.  Not shame upon the individual, but shame upon the society.  The society that encourages us to throw on the sweater and smile, and to just be happy damnit!  It's the holidays.  No one is supposed to be unhappy on the holidays.  No one is supposed to be unhappy when surrounded by people who love you.  What the fuck is wrong with you?  Just get the fuck over it and sit up straight and laugh.  You're getting a brand new shiny.  You're getting apple pie for desert.  You are getting a big hug from Uncle Al.  What the hell man?  Oh, okay.  So you've got some shit going on.  Well, take some Zoloft and join the party!

And THAT is the sham.  THAT is the shame.  This society goes out of its way to avoid actually dealing with the demons.  With actually dragging them out, putting them on display, dissecting them, and figuring out how to make them go away, or at least, make them shrink.  Delving down deep is just not something we are supposed to do.  We're just supposed to take the goddamn pills and cope.  Just live with the demons.  Like they are somehow benign parasites, and not ones that are constantly eating away at our very selves.  Parasites that are actually turning us into different people.  And so the way to deal with that is to find the quick and easy superficial, surface level symptom blocker.  It's bullshit, and that shit needs to change.  But it probably won't. 

So, we just have to go it alone.  We have to find the strength within to figure out our own way.  But we also need to find the right people.  People who understand what it's like to sit at that table-for-one.  People who've seen the menu, and understand what's on it.  People who know that happiness cannot be found in plastic and jewels and superficial socializing.  People who get what it's like to be alone in a sea of humanity. 

It's fortunate that we all managed to end up here.  At least we can be alone together. 

[LMNO]

It's fortunate that we all managed to end up here.  At least we can be alone together.  

Well said, man.


And seconded.

[Richter]

You started out almost like "Konstantine" by Something Corporate, and ended up Spider Jerusalem.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

RWHN, sometimes late at night, when I'm all fucked up on contraindicated pills, Columbia comes and talks to me.  She's not that grand lady anymore, as depicted by the statue of liberty...No, she's a toothless old whore in a miniskirt, with tattoes of brand name logos all up and down her back, and the horrible things she whispers to me in the darkness aren't the sort of thing anyone should ever have to listen to.

She talks about fucking everyone over and making money like a rock star.  She tells me that individuals aren't important, only "security" and the bottom line matter.  She tells me that people are the tools of the state, and that the state is the tool of the demagogues, and that the demagogues are the tools of the bottom line.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, was it?  America wasn't supposed to be some horrible ghoulish thing slobbering beside our beds and telling us horror stories.  The American dream has become a nightmare from which we can't awaken, because we've forgotten how to do anything else.

She laughs, RWHN, she laughs in a horrible old voice that stinks of 220 years of cheap cigars and the mushy kissing of moneyed ass.  And she's laughing at us.

And why not?  After all, we're the ones who made her what we are today.  We forgot that the essential drive of the founders, imperfect as they were, was the pursuit of happiness.  But since we're too lazy to pursue happiness, we have people that make it for us, in the form of substance abuse and television.  So we let The Machine™ set the priorities for us, and the result is that whore beside my bed...And she's "only as good as she has to be", as they used to say, back in the year dot.

There's a reason those kids you help fuck themselves up on drugs, RWHN.  They're just fucking themselves up before we can do it for them, because they're a little too dumb to be smart, and a little too smart to be dumb, and they can SEE the Truth, and the Truth is that they're on their own in a world that was designed to use them, rather than for their use.

Is it any wonder everyone hates the holidays?  Is it?  We all get together, and the youngsters can see the old people that fucked everything up for them, and the old folks can look at the youngsters and feel guilty as hell, but project it onto "those hooligan kids", and those of us in the middle can just shovel turkey into our faces and be pretend that we're jolly and that things aren't sliding into the muck.

And that whore laughs and laughs, and I can't get any sleep until I flog myself unconscious with APPROVED drugs.

Or Kill Me.

[LMNO]

You can't really blame the people, can you?  It's been so long since they knew how to look for happiness, they've forgotten how to do it.  The joy and the entertainment, the happiness and the merriment, they're all piped right into your living room thanks to the miracle of fiber optic cable.  The message of "be happy, or else" is delivered by automatons who have been scrubbed clean, and who sparkle more than a tween vampire.

The people have been told repeatedly by these plastic human replicas that the only salvation is from the smiles you get from your family when you give them things that cost more than you can afford.  Because that's what affection means: sacrifice unto poverty.  You don't want to be selfish enough to feed yourself, do you?  You can afford to skip an electric bill payment in order to get your kid a Zhu Zhu Pet.  You only think you can't.  That's what candles are for!

That's right, your true happiness can only be measured by the way people treat you.  And they'll only be nice to you if you give them what they want, no matter what the cost.  There's a part of the "Gift of the Magi" story that most people overlook— The part of the return policy that said, "ALL SALES ARE FINAL."  They couple was left with an unwanted comb and an unneeded watch chain, which ended up in the attic gathering dust, until they foreclosed on the house and were sold at auction to the highest bidder.

So give.  Give until it hurts.  That pang of hunger in your belly?  That's happiness.  That vague feeling of dread when you consider the bills looming in your future?  That's merriment.  That empty, hollow feeling you get when you stare into the cold, blank smiles of your family?  That's Joy.


Happy Holidays, you fuckers.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

That's honestly the best Holiday bash since Neil Gaimen's Christmas Card.

Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.  Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

[Cramulus]

to all three of ye

[LMNO]

All credit to RWHN, who's rant kicked the whole thing into gear.

[Richter]

I saw liberty whoring around like that on the news last year, Roger.  She fucked her way across the Atlantic on a freighter patched together by rust and syphilis to squat for a diddle on the Eiffel tower.

"Youse all oughta thaaank meeh.", she rasped.  "Owarh granfaathers saved alla yooorh graanfaathers asses sexxay yeahs agooh."

Yup, they did.  Now though, my grandfathers are gone, and we're left.  I don't cash in on favors my father earned, I DAMN sure don't ask after any they earned either.  They were too gracious, and knew some things you just DO.  Liberty still had some dignity back then.  Good sense, good bearing, and acted right.  She could haul off all day with a Browning or a rivet gun with equal gusto.  Hell of person, to be like that, sex regardless.  She's let herself go.

She, like the rest of this country, aren't the go getters or the hard chargers anymore.  We just lie back now waiting for someone else to come along and fuck us.  We lay back prone and wait for something that makes us happy.  

This season especially exemplifies that.  Lay back and wait for someone to give you what you always wanted.  Let everone else gratify you with a shower of "Nice things".  
It's one thing to have family and friends, and swap stuff with them as a sign of esteem, because they've got your back as surely as you've got their's, and they're not the worst fuckers to have around.

It's another to bitch and moan your way through the season, whinning over what you want to get.  A gift is not an entitlement, a gift is not exactly what you want.

Grandad never gave us what our infant, Id based modus operandi really wanted.  He gave us wood blocks and college cash.  He gave us the fine example of stoicism, frugality, graciousness, and directed audacity.  It's been years, and it's an example we may never grow into.  
When they wanted things, when they decided to make their dreams of an ideal life as real as possible, he went out daily working to achieve that.  That's something worth growing in to, that's the gift you pass on.