On the Ninth Day of Christmas ... I put my fingers in my ears and closed my eyes really tight

I just saw a news item talking about 30 billion dollars' worth of unused gift cards floating around, presumably after having been given as gifts. As Jerry Seinfeld once said, a gift certificate is "an I-don't-give-a-damn diploma". If you know someone so poorly, or care so little about them, that you can't find them anything, that says to me that this person should not be on your Christmas list. If the person is just really hard to buy for, then I think it's his responsibility to present gift options, sort of like a bridal registry. If he can't think of anything, then he's just waived his claim on a present.

In our family, after years of mutually-agonizing attempts to Christmas shop among four hard-to-buy-for people, I finally talked the rest of them into doing away with the whole gift thing. The others were skeptical, but eventually admitted it was a good idea.

I don't understand why more people don't do this. I keep seeing all this commentary about how stressful and expensive Christmas is... people going thousands of dollars into debt... people having nervous breakdowns... people getting in steak-knife fights over their Christmas dinner because Uncle Dave and Cousin Alice can't stand each others' politics, spousal choices, religions, or favorite sports teams... and every year I wonder WHY THE HELL DO YOU PEOPLE DO THIS TO YOURSELVES???

Spent too much on Christmas last year? No problem! Send out a blanket email to everyone, stating "I'm not doing Christmas this year. Don't get me anything, I won't get you anything." If anyone is stubborn enough to get you a present anyway, give it to the poor.

Family gatherings too stressful? Don't go! The effort of making your advance apologies to everyone will be a lot less than the effort of patching up the hostility resulting from the annual arguments.

Too much work to decorate and cook and shop and groom and otherwise do the whole "Martha Stewart on amphetamines" thing? Don't! Like Nancy Reagan used to say about drugs -- JUST SAY NO!

For Christians, recall that the magi brought gifts for Jesus... NOT for Joseph, Mary, the innkeeper, each other, the local Roman garrison, the census staff, the people in Bethlehem to be counted in the census, and the various animals in the manger. Just for Jesus -- and that was, obviously, something of a special case. If you know anyone who might be the second coming of the Savior, feel free to get him a gift.

For non-Christians, this isn't even your holiday. Enjoy your free days off work, or the Christmas snacks people bring in to work, and don't get involved otherwise. That's what I do, and my many Christian friends don't seem upset about it.

Stop tormenting yourselves and others, stop sending billions of dollars into the pockets of the foreign corporations that make your lead-coated Christmas purchases, and stop driving us sensible people nutty with your chaos.

Goodbye to Milo, my best little friend

Dyson

I was in a mall bathroom yesterday, where I encountered an interesting gadget called a Dyson Airblade. It sounds like it should be an extreme sport, but it's for drying your hands after you wash them.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm fairly old-fashioned, and would probably guess, correctly, that I'm a paper-towel man when it comes to public bathrooms. I find the only good use of a hot-air dryer to be warming up my hands on a cold day, but after examining the Dyson and deciding that it probably couldn't hurt me, I tried it out.

There's a narrow slot to put the hands in ... too narrow. My hands aren't especially large, but I kept brushing the housing, which means I was trading germs with the previous guy and leaving my own for the next one.

The high-speed airflow comes out in a thin, blade-like stream which doesn't dry hands nearly as well as you'd think. It isn't warm,either, so all things considered, it's a step backward from the already-inadequate dryers we've been using. I still ended up finishing my bathroom visit by wiping my hands on my pants.

I understand Dyson vacuum cleaners are pretty popular - maybe he sucks better than he blows.

The Fine Folks at...

...whatever company took over Haloscan comments removed Haloscan from the blog template I sent them just as they promised to do on their website.

So, all the old comments are gone. That leaves me more than a little sad.

While You Wait

While you're waiting to see what happens to this blog and its comments, I'll tell you what I've been doing when I shouldn't have been neglecting this blog:

One of Brother's last posts might have you believe I've been engaging in political activity designed to anger him, but no, not that--I've been all caught up in my new bicycle.

If "all caught up in" makes it sound like love, that's not far from the truth. I got my new bike in early March and within days I think I told TZM, "If my new bike was a person, I'd marry it!"

Why do I love my new bike so much? I didn't know riding a bicycle could be so comfortable--I don't know why I never got a cruiser-style one before. And, I feel about 8 years old when I ride it. It's just too much fun pedaling around on it. I've ridden it to work, to stores, to the local library, to the park, to everywhere!

Between my bike and the bus, I can imagine being car free. And, I'm thinking other people should aspire to being car free more and more of the time, especially with the latest oil spill mess in the Gulf. Hey, maybe this is an activity which will anger Brother! But he's way too interested in physical fitness to ever be completely against something that offers some exercise.

Maybe this is a good reason to move.

Maybe my comment fiasco is a good excuse to move to Wordpress or to create a new blog on Blogger for us. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Crap!

Haloscan comments died on Feb. 10, 2010. I knew that but didn't do anything about it while I could. Now I think I'm going to lose ALL the old comments and have to start fresh. @#$%!

If you ever commented here--you 4 or 5 people know who you are!--please know I appreciated your comments and wish I could keep them attached to the blog posts, but I don't think it's going to work out that way.

I'm sure there's a lesson for me here about not abandoning a blog....

Born in the USA?

No, this isn t about presidential eligibility -- that s being fought over by people much more qualified than me. I m talking about the song.

I was riding in a car with a much-younger co-worker when Springsteen came on the radio. She had somehow never heard the song (had only a vague idea who The Boss was, in fact), and I got to talking about how popular the song was, way back in the Eighties when my friend was a toddler.

The thing that has always seemed weird about that song was its popularity as a sort of patriotic anthem, which makes no sense at all when you actually LISTEN to the depressing lyrics about the mistreatment of returning Vietnam veterans. I told my young friend that Springsteen was lucky he was so poor at enunciating his words... people really just liked the one line they could understand -- born in the USA .