curtis.wiggins – Curtis Wiggins

A Day in the Life

Chad was running late this morning. He hoped it wouldn’t take much longer to get through security. It had been an hour already, and he was only halfway through the line. If he didn’t make it inside by 4 AM he would miss his first period class.

Still, Chad was glad he went to one of the smaller schools. Matthew Gaetz High only had twenty thousand students. He preferred the smaller class sizes, anything over a thousand students and he felt like the personal touch got lost. He had heard the off-world high schools routinely had over half a million students. Hell, Elon Musk High he heard just topped two million. He couldn’t imagine.

Chad’s phone beeped, another gunfight broke out this morning in the west sector, near the Quantum Mechanics lab. Great, that would slow down the security checkpoint even more. He hated Quantum Mechanics, why’d he have to study that, it’s not like he would ever use it. God, he hoped he could get a better job than quantum mechanic.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. He would be inside in another hour. He was looking forward to heading up to the automat on the twelfth floor for breakfast. Twelve always had the best maple bacon honey sriracha pancakes, and at two hundred dollars was quite the bargain.

Chad was a junior this year, and it had its perks. He could commandeer a seat from a lowly freshman on the cross-high tube. This was no small thing, since he had screwed up and scheduled back to back classes, Intelligent Design Biology and Early American Sitcoms, in opposite wings of the school. It was 20 kilometers (12 miles) by tube, and if he had a seat he could finish up last night’s homework before fourth period.

He hated that all measurements had to be in two units. Why was that. Why did God’s America have to be the last holdout, even Liberia and Myanmar had gone metric. Of course, Liberia had no choice. Once they joined the African Union, the rest of the Goldies in the AU forced them to convert. He remembered studying the Three Day ANSI/SI War in the World History. And of course Myanmar no longer existed, having long since been annexed by Indo-Pakistan.

Chad wondered if he would have time to visit the shopping mall on six after breakfast. Probably, since he would definitely miss the beginning of first period, might as well skip the rest of it and go shopping. He pulled out his phone for a quick Buddy-Hack-It® of the attendance database, and he was all set. A nice leisurely morning jostling with five thousand other students for the last pair of ultra-violet tactical shorts. Should be fun.

Chad thought he should check the tube schedule, the transfer from twelve to six was always tricky. Heh, “tube”, he remembered reading it was named after the old underground subway in London, back before London was nuked by the terrorists. He’d like to visit one day, thought it would be interesting to see, if he could afford the rad-suit rental.

It’s not like he would really miss anything in first period. His first period God in Government class was so boring. He only took it because it was mandatory by Junior year, along with God in Medicine and God in Human Reproduction. Yeah, the “holy trinity” classes, super boring each one. It sucked too, if only he could drop one class, he could make it home before 10 PM, but no, without the three “God in” classes he could never become Senior. He had heard about some students doing that on purpose, staying in high school for six or seven years, even longer. There was a legend about one kid who stayed in twelve years, but Chad didn’t believe it. Still, not a bad idea if one wanted to avoid the pressures of college.

Chad was lucky, he would qualify for financial aid. For the kids that didn’t, going to college was damn near impossible. I mean who can come up with eight hundred thousand dollars a year, plus room and board. Nope, if you didn’t make it to college it was either live on the streets, or take a job in one of those 2 billion square foot (185 million square meter) Amazon fulfillment cubes.

He’d take life on the street any day, once you entered one of those giant cubes, you never came out again. They all now required you to live in on-site housing and attend on-site church services. Of course, you could use your three vacation days a year to leave the cube and go somewhere, but most people just stayed and slept in for the three days.

Nah, life on the streets would be just fine. I mean, that’s probably where he would end up after college anyway. It was pretty easy, just get a tent and a shopping cart and you’ve got it made, all you had to do was keep track of which shelters had food when, and the No Place Like Homeless® app made that easy to track. Sure, his parents still felt there was a stigma to being homeless, but they were from a different generation. They, with their easy 21.9% mortgages and first time homebuyer assistance, they didn’t get the fact that kids out of school these days just didn’t have access to those kinds of easy living resources.

That reminded him. Matthew Gaetz High was hosting an Urban Survival Workshop next year. He hoped it wasn’t too late to sign up. MG High was the only high school in the state progressive enough to offer it, and it only came around once every four years. The overnight parking lot camping session even simulated life in a real homeless camp. He couldn’t wait, it was going to be awesome.

The gunfire off in the distance snapped Chad out of his urban survival daydream. It seemed lighter than usual today. Sounded like it was coming from the Creationist Chemistry lab this time, that was different. He wondered if the student factions had changed. He would need to check his Gangz® app before entering, just in case he needed to change his route.

It seemed like forever, but he was getting closer. The line was moving faster now. Looked like just another twenty minutes until he reached security. It might turn out to be a good day after all.

Tales from a Redneck

Volume 1: Doing the Impossible

by Bobby Fairhope, Redneck

It was a Friday night, and as usual me an my buddy Jimmy were down at The Rusty Tire, our favorite bar close that’s enough to go to without havin to drive into town. We was sittin at the bar, carrying on as usual, when this lady, and I use that term loosly, and her friend started carrying on with each other even louder than we were, to where me an Jimmy couldn’t even hear each other no more.

So I exchanged some polite words, and then some not so polite words, with her asking if her an her friend could keep it down a bit, and providin some friendly, and then not so friendly, gentle instruction on how she might be more ladylike.

She did not seem to appreciate this.

This went south rather quickly, and at one point she turns to me, and you know what she said? She says “Suck My Dick!”

Now I must admit that took me aback for a moment. I was familiar with the phrase, having used it myself many a time. And I knew it was as often as not a likely indicator that a fight was about to break out. But I had never ever before heard this particular phrase from a woman, and me bein a literal minded fella, I was a bit perplexed as to the logistics of it all.

Jimmy must have been equally perplexed, cause he had nothin to say, and when I looked over at him, all he could do was shrug and give me a little helpless grin that basically said “I don’t know boss, you on your own with this one.”

But then it came to me, I had the answer. I turned back to her, and I say “Tell you what honey, you show me a dick, and I’ll suck it right now!” Oh, I had her on the ropes now, I just knew it. But without stoppin to think, she says back to me, “You mean to tell me, if I show you a dick right now, you’ll suck it?”

“Yes ma’am” I say, wonderin if maybe I had stepped in somethin. But what? I was certain my logic was airtight. No, I definitely had her on the ropes. What was she gonna do now. What could she do?

Well folks, before I could finish that thought, she walks around behind Jimmy, reaches down, and pulls down his trousers. And of course Jimmy don’t wear no underwear, so there it was, starin back up at me. Lookin just a little more happy than I was comfortable with. Jimmy and I would have to have a long talk about that later, but I digress.

Anyhow, point is, that’s the moment I learnt a very important lesson. And that lesson is this: Just because you know somethin to be impossible, that don’t mean everyone around you knows it too.

The End

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

If money were water…

Money is by definition an abstract concept. We’re good imagining the amount in our wallets, or checking accounts, but when we get into the millions, or billions, and beyond, it gets difficult to conceptualize. To that end, consider this random exercise to equate money to water, just to help visualize things.

The human body needs about a quart a day to survive. That’s 91.25 gallons a year. Or to help visualize it, picture two 55-gallon barrels, per year. That’s how much water you need, just to survive.

The poverty rate is about $13,000 / year. If we accept that is the bare minimum to survive (and certainly one could argue it is not), then we could, for the sake of argument, draw a relationship between the minimum amount of water to survive and the minimum amount of money to survive.

So, if you are living at the poverty line, that is the water-based equivalent to having 2 barrels of water to live on for the year.

If you are making $75,000 a year, that’s equivalent to 531 gallons of water, or about 10 barrels of water to last the year. Huzzah, you can probably afford to bathe this year.

10 barrels of water is easy to visualize, but we’re going to talk about the super rich now, so we will need something bigger.

Tanker trucks? Bigger. Swimming pools? Even bigger. Great Lakes. Okay, that’s too big. Dial it back.

Let’s try something really big that most of us have seen, at least in pictures. The Amazon warehouse (or as they call them “fulfillment centers”).

A typical Amazon warehouse has about 800,000 square feet of space, and is about 36 feet high. That’s nearly 30 million cubic feet of space. If filled with water (if it could be filled with water), it would hold 215 million gallons, or about 4 million 55-gallon barrels. Keep that in mind 4 million barrels.

As of today, there are eight people on the planet with a net worth of over $100 billion. If you are one of these individuals, that means you have, in our imaginary water-based economy, the equivalent of 12 million barrels of water. That’s enough to fill at least 3 Amazon warehouses. Elon Musk alone would fill 8 Amazon warehouses. (If you’re wondering, Jeff Bezos could only fill 6 of his warehouses, sorry Jeff.) In fact, the eight hectobillionaires combined would fill over 40 Amazon warehouses. That’s almost one fourth of all the Amazon warehouses on the planet.

Make America Great Again?

You wanna Make America Great Again? Yeah?

Alright, let’s talk. Let’s talk about what made America great in the past.

We, with our allies, won World War II. That was pretty freakin great, right? You know how we did it? Blood, guts, sacrifice? Sure, and lots of it, but… That sacrifice would have all been for naught had it not been for our secret weapon — Science.

We used the first ever digital computer to calculate accurate firing tables so our tanks could blast the living fuck out of Nazi tanks, while the Brits used their first ever digital computer to crack the Enigma encryption and read secret Nazi communications.

Meanwhile our scientists were developing better bomb-sites and navigation/positioning systems so we could bomb the Germans more accurately at night. Or giving us radar, a nifty bit of tech that more or less won the Battle of Britain. All while our A team of scientists were out in the desert doing nothing less that learning how to split the motherfucking atom.

So how did we win WWII? In short, we Scienced the fuck out of it, that’s how.

Landing a man on the moon, that was pretty great. I really hope I don’t have to explain what a giant metric fuckload of science that was.

How did we tame the Old West? Science. You don’t think repeating pistols, telegraph lines, and transcontinental railroads just appeared by magic do you. That was good old 19th century science leading the way.

How’d we cure polio, measles, small pox? Science, science, science.

Built the Panama Canal, and the Hoover Dam? Science and more science.

Predict hurricanes? Science

Microwave popcorn? Science

Every electronic device from light bulbs to cell phones? All Science.

The mother-fucking Internet itself? A giant heap o’ fault-tolerant packet switching Science.

Pretty much every great goddamned thing this country has ever done has been the result of Science.

So with all that history, if you still don’t believe in science, how about you take your anti-science, anti-vax, climate-denying, flat-earth, conspiracy-theory tinfoil-hat-wearing ass and get the fuck out of our country, because this country was built on science. And quite frankly, the rest of us are starting to get tired of your bullshit dragging us down.

Et Tu, Pepe…

Let’s talk about the Republican party and their new obsession with “cancel culture” for a minute. Ever since I can remember, the Republican party claimed to support businesses and business owners, as the engine that drives prosperity. They favored minimal regulation, and in many cases deregulation, arguing that market forces would produce the most effective outcomes. In other words, there was no need for government to tell businesses what to do, they would do what market demanded, or they would not survive.

Additionally, since the 1980’s, the Republican party has also claimed to be the party of “family values.” Unfortunately that often translated into “no gays”, but the were ostensibly the party that supported and protected families, and in particular children.

So one has to wonder, when a business that produces entertainment for children, for example a Warner Bros. or a Dr. Seuss Enterprises or a Hasbro, decides that the market is telling them that some of their product no longer aligns with the values parents want to expose their children to, and said companies decide to remove or revise their product to more closely align with the values of their market, a market targeted specifically towards children, one has to wonder why Republicans are upset.

Clearly they’re not upset that businesses are responding to market forces rather than government “interference.” They can’t be upset that businesses are aligning their values to benefit children.

As far as the “taking away their childhood” argument, aside from the Bible’s advice to “put away childish things”, I would point out nothing is gone. He may be less accessible to children, but Pepe le Pew is still out there, available for adults to stream in all his inappropriate touchiness glory. Those six Seuss books will be available in used book stores and on eBay for generations to come. (Let’s be honest, they were not exactly best sellers to begin with.) And if you want to assign traditional gender roles to your potato, well, you know, have at it. No one will stop you.

Here’s what they are really upset about. They don’t see anything wrong with unwelcome advances and uninvited touching directed towards women, and by telling them Pepe is not a good role model for children, we are taking away their “right” to treat women this way.

They don’t see anything wrong with laughing at grossly stereotypical Asian or aboriginal caricatures, and by telling them we don’t want children to make fun of others based on their race, we are taking away their “right” to make fun of others.

They want men to be real men, and women to be real women, and potatoes to… well, be real man-potatoes or real woman-potatoes, and by telling them children should be free to define themselves in their own terms without society telling them what little boys and little girls are supposed to play with, we are somehow taking away their “right” to be manly.

And they will argue that our generation grew up with Pepe le Pew and Asian stereotypes and clearly heteronormative Mr. Potato Head, and we turned out just fine. To that I would reply, yes, we turned out okay, but you know who else grew up watching Pepe le Pew? Harvey Weinstein grew up watching Pepe le Pew. Jeffrey Epstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K. all grew up, like us, watching Pepe le Pew. And the list goes on.

Maybe you don’t want to use your experience to speak for an entire generation. Maybe you, like me, had parents that went to great lengths to explain you do not treat women like you see Pepe le Pew do, any more than you learn gun safety from Elmer Fudd. Maybe today’s parents don’t want to have to explain why a cartoon skunk is allowed to get away with inappropriate behavior.

So, to Republicans, I would say this. Calm down. The market is working exactly the way it is supposed to. And really, you’re not losing anything. If you want to spend your evenings watching an over-sexed cartoon skunk groping a hapless black cat, have at it. If you enjoy outdated Asian stereotypes, please, read away, or better yet, check out “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, you’ll love the Mickey Rooney character. And if you insist that your potatoes have a penis. Well, unlike you guys, we’re not judging.

Winning and Losing

I’m old. Let’s start with that. How old am I? I am the-triumph-of-victory-and-the-agony-of-defeat years old. Specifically, I am I-remember-when-being-a-sore-loser-was-considered-a-serious-character-flaw years old.

Yes, when I was young, people who could not accept defeat without whining, or could not accept victory without taunting, were considered morally lacking.

I knew there was going to be a problem when I realized they no longer kept score in children’s sports, I just had no idea exactly what or how big the problem would become.

Without keeping score, there’s no way to know who won and who lost. Without knowing who won and who lost, there’s no way to learn how to lose, or to win, graciously, and with dignity and respect for their competitors, and for the competition itself.

This “everybody’s a winner” mentality sounds great on paper, but it’s not reality. In reality, when there is a contest, somebody wins, and somebody loses.

But today we have a whole generation of participation trophy winners who think everyone is being unfair to them because their candidate lost. They think we should throw out the score, ignore reality, make up any excuse they can, and declare their guy the winner, because… Waah! we just want it SO bad! Waah! he CHEATED! Waah! it’s just NOT FAIR! Waah! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!

No one ever taught them the lesson that, when you lose, and you WILL lose (everyone loses sometime), you accept it, stop arguing with the umpire, go congratulate the winner, examine what went wrong, and dedicate yourself to doing better next time.

We desperately need to bring back scorekeeping to children’s sports. And now. No less than the future of our republic depends on it

The United States of Capitalism

I was recently reading one of the right-wing pundits talking about the evils of socialism as presented by AOC, Sanders, et al, and according to him anyway the entire Democratic party.

However the socialism he described was not the universal healthcare, affordable education, or other progressive talking points I’m used to hearing. It was the full blown marxist-leninist socialism and collectivist communism of the Soviet Union, communist China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. etc.

As an example of the superiority of capitalism over socialism, he cites specifically East Germany vs West Germany, and North Korea vs South Korea. He further sites both India and China and their move away from a (marxist) socialist economy to a more capitalist economy. In these cases he points out how the people are economically more successful, taller, healthier, happier etc. under capitalism.

And I agree with him. Soviet style socialism is bad, m’kay. Collectivist communism is objectivly a failure, it has not been economically successful anywhere. Ever. And given that this style of economic model tends to be coupled with authoritarian or dictatorial political leadership, it is a thing that should be avoided at all costs. I think most of us can agree on this.

So, therefore… I am fully willing to adopt a West German / South Korean style of capitalism. I should add, Germany has had socialized medicine since… wait for it… 1883. South Korea took a little longer, they did not decide universal health coverage was a good idea until… 1976.
Of course, India and China are late to the game, having more recently emerged from the darkness of a socialist economy into the bright light of capitalism. They didn’t get universal healthcare until 2014 and 2011 respectively. Better late than never.

So while I have yet to hear any progressive Democrat anywhere arguing for centralized planning, government control of the means of production, or the proletariat overthrow of the bourgeoisie, I do agree with the AOC/Bernie crowd, in that we should adopt West German / South Korean style capitalism, including it’s universal healthcare, post haste.

And seeing as how Germany and Korea successfully adopted universal healthcare, and in doing so neither became the next Venezuela. Seeing as neither saw the collapse of their representative form of government and somehow managed to continue on as democracies, I think it’s safe for us, having a long history and tradition of representative democracy, to proceed. That is, as long we avoid coupling this with a leader having authoritarian tendencies.

On second thought, maybe we should wait just a bit, and not try this under the current president…

A Tale of a Flapper

So I’m in Ace Hardware, picking out a new “flapper” for the toilet tank (that’s the bit that always gets stuck when you have to “jiggle the handle”).

In our Ace they’re always friendly and helpful, whether you want them to be or not. This is the “country” Ace Hardware, not the “city” one, in the “city” one they’ll usually leave you alone. We live about halfway between the two, but the traffic is always lighter driving towards the country, and I’d rather deal with that even with the accompanying friendliness, than the traffic driving into Brandon on a weekend.

So anyhow, the Ace Hardware guy is helping me, and I’m letting him, even though I’m pretty certain I know exactly what I need. This is our conversation…

Ace Hardware Guy: Watch ya need to fix?

Me: Toilet.

AHW Guy: (nods approvingly)

Me: Need a new flapper.

AHW Guy: Aisle 20

(We walk back, maybe another six steps from where we were)

AHW Guy: We got lots to chose from

Me: I see that.

(The really did have a very impressive selection of flappers, probably more in one place than I’d seen before.)

AHW Guy: We got the basic “korky”. In red AND in black.

Me: What’s the difference between the red and the black.

AHW Guy: The color.

Me: Of course.

(We eventually determine the red one has greater resistance to chlorine, which all water supplies have, unless you have a well. And then only if you add chlorine yourself. This was a much longer conversation about water supply chlorination than I’ve ever had with anyone. Ever.)

AHW Guy: (proudly) We’ve even got the Flow-Master® now.

Me: Ah yes, the Flow-Master®. Good product that. (Like I know…)

AHW Guy: It’s more expensive, but worth it.

Me: Sure.

I can only assume it is the “Cadillac” of flappers. But since ours is more of a Ford Pinto of toilets, I settled for the “korky”.

The red one, not the black one, I’m not an animal.

The Best a Multi-National Corporation Can Get…

(…for their advertising dollar)

I’m beginning to think some of you people don’t understand how advertising works.

Gillette created a two minute commercial that suggested perhaps men shouldn’t be dicks. Some people love it, applauding the effort of men encouraging men to be better. But others are bent by it, seeing it as insulting, condescending or even emasculating, part of some kind of continuing “war on men”.

Both views completely miss the point of this ad. This purpose of this ad wasn’t to help men be better men. It wasn’t about addressing toxic masculinity. It wasn’t made to “raise awareness”, or “open a dialog”. Some of those things may happen as a result, but they are side effects.

The only purpose of an ad like this is to get as many people talking about Gillette as possible, while spending as little money as possible to do it. That’s it. Nothing more. If you sell an cheap commodity product, one that is virtually indistinguishable from your competitor’s product, the only thing that matters is brand recognition. You want people equating your name with your product. Exclusively if possible. That’s what this ad was designed to do, get as many people as possible to mention Gillette by name. Brand recognition.

That has always been Gillette’s strategy. And if you don’t think it works. Try this: name two other brands of razor blades. Are you sure about that second one? Okay, name a third.

And it worked brilliantly. I’m guessing many of you have heard something about the controversy, but haven’t seen the ad. And I’m guessing those of you who have seen the ad are like me, and only watched to see what the fuss was all about. But the beauty of it is, it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it or not, or if you even know what it’s about or not, the end result is you’re talking about it, and mentioning Gillette by name while doing so. Mission accomplished.

And by the way, they spent zero money airing this ad. To date is they have bought no air time for it on TV, or as a paid ad on websites. It was uploaded to YouTube. That’s it. They parked it on YouTube and let the “influencers” have at it. And they did. And now literally everyone on social media is talking about it. And it cost Gillette next to nothing to produce and literally nothing to air. Like I said, mission accomplished.

Of course, using controversy to generate publicity is nothing new, but doing it with a controversy that’s widely viewed as positive rather than negative, that’s something of a holy grail in advertising. And from that standpoint, Gillette nailed it as well.

They generated a huge amount of free publicity, for very little money, and got to look like the good guys while doing it. Folks, this is the stuff of advertising legend. Somewhere the ghost of Don Draper just popped a boner so hard it cracked open his coffin.

The Days of HallowThanksMas

We are now in the holiday season, a time of year when multiple holidays have become so prevalent they begin to merge together into one big two month long holiday. Some people respond to this by insisting everyone say “Merry Christmas” to them and taking great offense when this doesn’t happen. These people call this time of year “The War on Christmas”. If it were a little more like an actual war, with guns and bombs and tanks and such, it might be kinda cool, but as it is, the name does not live up to the hype.

I take a slightly different approach. Over the past few years I and others have been referring to this time of year as “HallowThanksMas”, as a way of indicating the merging of three of the larger holidays of the season. But, even this is insufficient, as there are far more than just three holidays. Let’s take a holiday moment and look at them all…

July 5th

Not a holiday, per se, but it is rapidly becoming the new beginning of the HallowThanksMas season. This is the day Walmart first puts out their Christmas decorations.

Halloween

October 31st, the official beginning of HallowThanksMas. This is the night our children get dressed up in costumes and go door to door begging for candy. It celebrates the twin values of childhood obesity and panhandling.

All Saints Day

The day after Halloween. No one celebrates this day. Except maybe Catholics. Maybe. Once upon a time.

Dia de los Muertos

Also the day after Halloween. This is still mostly celebrated by those of Latin American descent, but the anglos are starting to take notice. I predict Dia de los Muertos will quickly become the new Cinco de Mayo, what with anglos becoming increasingly disillusioned with Cindo de Mayo once they learn it is not, in fact, Mexican Indpendence Day, but instead celebrates a small but significant defeat of the French. After all, if we celebrated every time the French lost, we’d be celebrating all year long.

Blackout Wednesday / Drinksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving. This day has replaced New Year’s Eve as the night non-alcoholics get blackout drunk and do stupid things. Fun fact: This holiday was once sponsored by Four Loco.

Thanksgiving

The last Thursday of November. After the previous night of over-drinking, we celebrate a day devoted to over-eating. The traditions include preparing gigantic poultry-based meals while hungover, watching Detroit lose a football game, arguing about cranberry sauce, throwing shade at relatives, both present and absent, slipping into a life threatening food coma, and preparing one’s Black Friday battle strategy for the following day. Some traditionalists even include a giving of thanks, but this has become increasingly optional and downright passe.

Black Friday

The Friday after Thanksgiving is the first of four annual shopping holidays. If there was ever a holiday that resembled a “war on” anything it is Black Friday. This is the day, immediately following the day we gave thanks for the wonderful bounty that is our life of plenty, when we go out and beat perfect strangers to death for a flat screen TV. This is both the largest shopping day of the year, and the day with the most small appliance related rectal injuries of the year.

Local Saturday

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the second of the shopping holidays. Local Saturday is an attempt to encourage shoppers to shop local. It does not work, as most people who actually would shop local are instead spending their day visiting friends and relatives in the hospital due to their Black Friday related rectal injuries. This holiday will soon pass the way of All Saints Day, nothing more than an interesting relic of a kinder time.

Cyber Monday

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the third of the shopping holidays, this one devoted to online shopping. This holiday was born of necessity, back in the dark ages when people only had Internet access at work. While this is no longer true, the holiday continues as a fun productivity-killing tradition. Why go shopping from the comfort of your home when you can do it on the clock instead. By the way, tradition says you are not allowed to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so choose wisely.

Christmas Eve

December 24th, the night before Christmas, and the final of the annual shopping holidays. While the previous three were devoted to online shopping, local shopping, and full combat shopping, Christmas Eve is the day for panic shopping. Christmas Eve is the reason, and the only reason, that drug stores sell perfume and clock radios. It is also a time for gathering, drinking a little too much, and letting the kids open just one present, so they will finally shut the hell up about it and stop harshing your eggnog and wine induced buzz.

Christmas

December 25th, the big one. This is the day everyone has been telling you that you must mention by name when wishing others well on any of the previous holidays. It is the only holiday allowed to use the word “Merry”, all others must make do with less jovial “Happy”. It is the day we celebrate keeping our consumer driven economy afloat for just one more year by giving toys to kids, and worthless do-dads to everyone else. There is also a religious element to the day, as about five or six deities all claim this as their birthday, so… Happy Birthday Santa!

Boxing Day

December 26th. That weird day Canadians celebrate that no one else understands.

Hanukkah / Chanuka

Sometime in December, nobody really knows for sure. Also, nobody really knows how it is spelled, which is kinda nice, because any guess at it is pretty much valid. From what I understand, Hanukkah is the Jewish version of Christmas, only without a baby Jew in a barn. Also the presents are spread out over eight days because of this eight candle candelabra thing. The presents are a little different as well, consisting mostly of chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. I will admit, for some reason the chocolate does taste better when shaped like a coin.

Ramadan

Sometime in November or December or January, again nobody really knows for sure, but at least we can agree on the spelling. Ramadan is like the Muslim version of Christmas, only without anything even remotely like Christmas, and instead you can’t eat or drink during the daylight hours. They were smart putting this holiday in the winter months.

New Years Eve

December 31st, the last day of the year. This used to be the night everyone got drunk, but that is no longer fashionable, especially since the advent of Blackout Wednesday. So instead we face the end of another year, facing an uncertain future and our own impending mortality with all of the fear and regret as before, but now without the alcohol. I recommend skipping this one.

New Years Day

January 1st, the first day of the year. This used to be the day we watched the college football championship, but for reasons no one understands that no longer happens until a few days later. Activities include: eating black-eyed peas, for some reason, and pledging to join a gym, because dammit this is the year. Personally I recommend drinking the booze you skipped the previous night, and listening to the Black-Eyed Peas.

Epiphany

January 6th. Another one just for the Catholics. I think it’s like a Catholic Boxing Day. In some areas it is celebrated by having young boys dive into really cold water to retrieve something. For the rest of us, it means it is the last acceptable day to drag that Christmas Tree out to the curb.

Kwanzaa

I don’t know, I wanna say January sometime, or maybe March? No one takes Kwanzaa seriously because it’s so new, but I say that’s not fair. All holidays were new at some time right? Plus we’ve adopted other new holidays, like Blackout Wednesday. Yeah, honestly I don’t know anything about Kwanzaa, but I am all for adding a new holiday, even if people will insist on saying “Merry Christmas” to it.