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The holiday season, it’s a time for families to get together, people to put aside their differences and help each, a time of year when the whole of society comes together as one and we share in the harmony and company of our fellow man. NOT! This is the holiday season Hallmark would love to sell you. The kind of bullshit you see on TV and in countless specials, and for what point and purpose? How does any of this drivel make out lives any better? It’s mass commercialism packaged in such as to appeal to the basest instincts we still carry that we shouldn’t be shallow self serving assholes.

But let’s strip away the entirety of the coloring book veneer and look at what it really is. We’ll attack this hydra one head at a time and move forward. First on the list is Thanksgiving. A shallow useless holiday devoted to best excesses of our society. A day when already fat, unhealthy, lazy, useless middle class people gather together to consume exorbitant amounts of food and alcohol in the implied interest of sharing a meal with those closest to them. Now here’s my issue with this, Thanksgiving started as a puritanical holiday first idealized as a celebration for the sickly, starving, and barely functional puritans to commemorate a bountiful harvest. Not the first culture to do it. The ancient Romans would host entire week long events to show their gratitude for good harvests. But the puritans put out this lavish spread invite their peace loving Native American neighbors to dinner and sit down to a meal of quail and venison and preach god’s word to the savage people. And if you believe that story I’ve got some beach front property located in sunny tornado free Kansas just outside Topeka that I’m looking to sell for cheap. Don’t miss this great deal. It’s a bullshit story. The puritans barely had food to survive much less squander and thus chose to eat up and eat hearty while things were still fresh and had less chance of killing them. Somehow in the four hundred years since that first observation it has become a day when people gorge themselves on a myriad of foods and sweets and then spend the rest of the day mired in a personal hell of family and friends.

So enough with the history lesson and borderline evangelical touting of the intended religious ideation. The holiday as it stands today is a time for people to load up their loud, obnoxious children and tote them to all corners of the country to be with family they can’t stand and don’t want anything to do with, all for a free meal and some vacation time. But the relaxation never comes. Somehow there’s always a matriarch that is pulling her hair out trying to get everything done and coordinating the placement of tables, food, seating, which family members are going to be in attendance, and trying earnestly to pry her useless and uninterested husband from the couch for last minute errand to the store for salt, sugar, KY Gel, or whatever last minute trimming has been forgotten. The men sit around and watch a football game as though it were the Super Bowl while drinking ridiculous amounts of beer and chips. The children run screaming through the house, looking for anything to keep them occupied, while avoiding cousins they barely know and dodging grandparents far too steeped in boredom so as to become menaces to the privacy of the child. And that’s all before the meal is actually served. Inevitably there’s the single jaded aunt who’s pissed off for no decent reason you’re ever made aware of, that calls the children to their own table. Now here’s where the tone becomes entirely different depending on which table you’re at.

For the kids that have been relegated to their own table there is inevitably a toddler present that is made to be cared for by their slightly older sibling. All the way up to having to cut up the food and in some cases feed it to the spoiled little asshole. The other kids engage in conversations about how many presents and gifts they believe themselves due for the next head of this beast, Christmas. The conversation very quickly begins to mirror a school yard bout of “my dad can beat up your dad”. Then it becomes a contest of who has more friends, who got the best gifts the previous year, which game console is better than the next, why one kid is better because he has more games or accomplished some asinine feat of uselessness in a game no one cares about. Then it moves to a public verbal beating of the kid who wants books, hot wheels, movies, or computer related trinkets, over the latest video games, toys, or trend. Finally the entire thing culminates in the kids wanting nothing to do with each other or pairing off to tease and ridicule others. All of this occurs with hardly so much as a raised eyebrow from the parents.

Now at the adult’s table the conversation hinges on career, attitude, life style, parenting, discipline, why one cousin can’t seem to keep a girlfriend or why another isn’t married yet, or the ultimate topic why one set of snot nosed trouble making dick head children is better than another. There are always the parents that think they have their lives together and flaunt it without the slightest hint of modesty. They parade their honor roll kids around and espouse how well their doing in school and social clubs and the GPA, negating the fact that the kid is already in therapy for anxiety, hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since he was two and views the rest of the world as owing him a living. Then there are the nosy aunts that think they have some kind of sage advice to offer about how to manage one’s life and keep things in perspective. Then you have the grandmother that pesters the oldest single male at the table about when he’s going to find a nice girl, settle down, and start a family. All the while someone else at the table yells to the kids to quiet down, someone comments on how dry the turkey is, someone else is on the phone with a personal call, a screaming newborn is flinging food wildly into the air, and finally there’s an inquisition going on with one of the younger adults about grades, relationships, and career goals having to fit more in line with what the inquisitor was after at that age.

Paints a very beautiful picture huh? A masterpiece of chaos and insanity and it’s all done in the name of satisfying a social norm that has long outlasted its usefulness. In the age of teleconferencing, email, text messaging, and other forms of global communication, the ideation that Thanksgiving serves as anything more than a tradition held over from before the invention of the microwave is just ludicrous. You cram absurd amounts of people together in hopes they will get along for just one meal and when the gravy goes cold, everyone departs to their own corner of the world. For most though, the day doesn’t end there. Dinners are served early, children put to bed or left with sitters so that parents can slumber before the real reason that this pedantic ritual survives: Black Friday.

The one day of the year when people assemble en masse despite freezing temperatures, incredibly long lines, and sacrificed time with the “loved ones” that are supposed to make the holiday all worth while, and they do it all for one reason, to ensure that the ungrateful brat they brought screaming into the world can have the latest Jerk Me Off Elmo and other assorted useless shit.

We’ve reached the part of the story I like to call a complete indictment of our capitalist ideals. Huge retailers shave off insane amounts of money from the stickers of merchandise in hopes of attracting scores of people to their stores. People die, riots ensue, theft skyrockets, and all in the name of higher profits for companies already too bloated to provide even the most basic customer service. So these insane deals are put together, people stand out in the cold at odd hours hoping to be among the first into the store so that they can buy the latest combination toaster back scrubber and it’s all so that they can perpetuate the idea that they actually care about whoever is going to end up saddled with the thing.

Black Friday should be a head unto itself but because it can’t possibly stand without the mass commercialism brought about by Christmas, it’s lumped together. Christmas is intended to be a religious sacrament, a day when Catholics honor the coming of their savior, despite recent evidence pointing to a birthday in the spring. Christmas comes out of the old veneration for the winter solstice but has since been turned into a gift grab. It’s not about family, togetherness, or good will toward your fellow man. It’s about who can buy the most expensive shit for people they don’t really care about, who can throw the biggest party, who has the most friends.

People buy big expensive gifts in order to accomplish two things. They are trying to inconspicuously buy the affections of people that can’t stand them any other time of the year, and garner as many gifts for themselves as they put out. There’s an unspoken expectation, just as with birthdays, that if you purchase something for someone they have an obligation to reciprocate. So we spend copious amounts of money on a slew of valueless objects in the hopes of engendering better feelings upon those we associate with, while sitting through countless parties that seek to steal your soul, and all in the name of getting into the “Holiday Spirit”.

And we haven’t even begun to cover the true commercial end of things. From about two weeks before the day that venerates gluttony until the first week of January, advertisements everywhere tout new products, big savings, and bigger selections. The major companies choose the final months of the year to release their newest crop of merchandise in order to capitalize on the seasonal expectations. Video games, consoles, TV’s, cars, trucks, amusement parks, toys, board games, clothes, shoes, cell phones, cruises, shit even music is released en masse during that brief window of time and retailers are galvanized into working longer hours, increasing staff, and pushing higher levels of notoriety all in order to get as much retail market share as possible.

We’ve completely bastardized a holiday that is only supposed to be acknowledged by practicing Catholics and all in the name of consumerism. From what I actually know about Chanukah, yes there are eight nights of gift giving but for most Jewish families the emphasis still lies with the acknowledgment of the religion. Christmas is acknowledged by heathens, agnostics, and even cultures that have no veneration for the mythical figures from the bible. Society has stuffed the celebration down our throat so much that those who choose not to buy into the dog and pony show are called Scrooge, a Grinch, or any other of a number of anti holiday characters put forth in a media meant to up play the childhood indoctrination level and vilify those that operate differently. If you choose to speak unkindly of the season or refuse to acknowledge the spirit of giving, then you’re labeled as having something wrong with you. But what about the people who don’t acknowledge Guy Fawkes Day? Or the October Revolution? Both of those things were big events but because they don’t make major companies money (okay Guy Fawkes kind of did, but that’s another rant) they’re relegated to simply cultural holidays unworthy of even the most basic TV special or retail sale. Christmas has become completely bloated and over rated. Movies are released to capitalize on the time people have off, programming is changed to emphasize the season and really it does nothing to promote a sense of camaraderie with your fellow man. People are more concerned with making sure their thankless offspring have the latest toys and games than offering a warm meal or clean clothes to those less advantaged.

It was bound to come up, so let’s face it now. Are we really so debase as a culture that we need an entire commercially sponsored holiday to be decent and kind to one another? Has the foundation of our civilization crumbled away to much as to require that we devote an entire time of year to not being nasty, self serving, narcissistic cretins? If it truly is required that we have sponsorship of large companies and a forced idealism put in place in order to show any measure of compassion to our fellows than we have bigger issues than just breaking down the imposed consumerist culture.

Birthdays & Halloween & Puscifer, Oh My!

Alright kiddies I’m back, and hopefully there are still some of you out there to read this. Sorry for the long delay and the angst ridden post of last time. Emotions got the better of me and left me seeking solace to something that wasn’t really broken to begin with. Oh well, you live you learn. Anyway enough with the disclaimers, so much has been going on since last I checked in here that I almost need a scorecard to keep it all straight.

Let’s start from the beginning; I had a birthday, which was royally kick-ass. Major props to everyone that showed up and watched me drink my fucking face off. So much fun, such good times, such wonderful friends and from what I remember, it was a super awesome night. I got to catch up and hang with my old friends Melissa and Andrew from Mt. Sierra which was a treat in and of itself. The Greeks showed up which made the night all the more awesome because I had my TA sisters present, I do wish more TA members could have been there but there’s always next time. Then there was Natalie who made the trek all by her lonesome, kudos to you. And then of course my cadre of buddies Jeremy, Eddie, and Mark came out to share in my drunken stupor. Christine made a rare public appearance and I thank her for that, much love. And of course my dearest and oldest friend good old Dean. He stayed sober to enough to get me home in one piece and even made sure I got into my own bed. What a guy. So many awesome people made that night so incredible I don’t think I’ve ever had a better birthday!

Then there was Halloween. Oh good god gravy that shit was so incredible. I got to roll down to San Diego with the Greeks to see the one and only Maynard James Keenan live and in the flesh as he did his thing on stage as Puscifer. Not only was the concert ridiculously amazing, but I had the privilege of being reunited with some of my TA brothers and sisters that I had the honor meeting back in August. We had such a good time with fun costumes, great stories, and of course plans to meet up again this coming Friday at the Baked Potato for a Volto show.

I’ve had a great past couple of weeks, despite fighting unyielding tooth pain, and a 24-hour cold. Good times with the best friends money can’t buy, and a genuine camaraderie with a caliber of people that getting harder and harder to find. I joined TA on a whim as a means to support my favorite band and hopefully to get something to tide me over until the release of their next album, what I got instead was a family of like minded, funny, engaging, and truly beautiful people that have shown me a true sense of belonging and the best times I think I’ve ever had in my life. Here’s to you, all of my friends, TA brothers and sisters, my Mt. Sierra peeps, and all others that I have had the pleasure of knowing. May the Jager keep flowing, the music keep playing, and the good times keep coming.

Until next time remember, “There is no problem in life so big or complex that it can’t be solved by throwing ridiculous amounts of money at it or killing everyone else involved!”

-T