There seems to be two separate camps when it comes to the subject of christmas: those who love it and those who hate it with a passion. I don't want to get embroiled in any debates on the matter with either side, so I will forgo an in-depth tirade about christmas. One has to admit however, that there are a few strange things about this time of year. The strangest is the myth of Santa Claus.
It's a fairly shitty thing to do to little kids and it's a miracle that most of use haven't remained severely traumatized or turned into to serial killers. As soon as you old enough to stand up on your own ( although you might still be crapping yourself at this stage) all the grown ups around you regale you with fantastic tales of a fat dude in a red suit. This guy has a house on the ice pack in the Arctic ocean. It is populated by little guys who make all the iPads by hand. He owns a bunch of flying cows...moose...reindeer... whatever. Then on December 24th he circumnavigates the entire planet and dumps 8 billion iPads down chimneys.
As a little kid you struggle with all the intricacies of this story, but you are gullible as shit, so you take it for face value. Red suit: check. Elves: check. Reindeer: got it. Is Frosty the Snowman up there too? ..Uh no.. that's another story. Man, that's a lot of work for a still evolving juvenile brain.
As you get a little older some discrepancies in this vast conspiracy begin to emerge and your parents continue to propagate the lie. You repeatedly ask why there are so many Santa Clauses, one in every mall in fact. Your parents give you various bullshit explanations ( I still don't get it). Then you look around your house and realize that you don't have a chimney. You live in an apartment with baseboard heaters.
This goes on for many years until you start hearing rumors from older kids. You refuse to believe anything as preposterous as Santa Claus not being real. You live in denial and one day the bombshell is dropped: There ain't no Santa Claus. Your whole world is in turmoil and your reaction is roughly the same as when some older kid tells you how sex works, " Whaaa-aat!?"
Then it starts to slowly make sense and you realize that Santa Claus wasn't pissed at you when you got socks and underwear for Christmas and that he didn't stop making Hot Wheels that one year.
Now well into adulthood this is all behind us, but sometimes, just sometimes, I wish that there actually was a Santa Claus. Once you get past the obvious requests like nice cars, a couple of hot rods maybe a Gretsch guitar, I figure with those kinds of powers ol' St. Nick would be able to take care of a few other things for me.
1. Electronic Xmas music de-frammer with rigor mortis oscillator.
I hate to start a paragraph with a curse word but...Fuck! Literally the day after Halloween ( another odd, inexplicable ritual) The christmas trees come out at Home Depot and everybody starts blaring christmas "music". Every coffee shop, store, mall, funeral parlor and even those stores that sell huge boots to Goths have syrupy songs emanating from their sound systems.
It's the sheer repetitiveness that makes it all the more insidious. The same tired old songs over and over. If they wanted to punish a patient down at the nervous hospital for having jabbed his fork into another patient's eye, this is what he would be subjected to.
Would anyone listen to music this crappy during the rest of the year ? Didn't think so. Sure Brian Setzer Orchestra does a wild christmas blowout every year, but it sure is difficult to polish a turd. These were shmaltzy pop songs at best when they were written all those decades ago. Some date back to the freakin' 19 th century ( some of them might have been raunchy drinking songs for sailors, but someone changed the lyrics). If I hear that Brenda Lee song one more time, I may just plotz myself.
It would be nice to have a hand held device that would zap these abominations. You walk into a store, aim the gizmo at the speakers and no more tunes ( you could probably achieve the same results with a BB gun, but that will guarantee that you spend xmas in jail). As an added bonus they would melt the speakers as well, which I would have no moral dilemmas in doing so, because malls play shitty music all year round anyway ( as an interesting side note, I recently took an elevator that actually had elevator music playing. I didn't know that that Muzak stuff still existed. A special place in hell for the inventor of Muzak, don't you think?) So come on Santa, get on it, build me one of the devices for christmas.
2. My Own Grease Factory.
Canada is pretty similar to the USA except that is very difficult to find cool shit up here. If you want big-ass tires for a pick up truck they are easy to find, but let's say you need parts for the hydros on your low rider, no dice and it's a 30 hour drive to L.A.
Let's say you have a mullet and 200 bucks burning a hole in your pocket. You develop a sudden urge to buy a Canuck's Jersey. Very easy to find. Let's say you have a hankering for some nice wool pants from the 50's or some smokin' vintage shirts, better gas up the car and stock up on Doritos; it's a long drive to California.
Like my greasy brethren, I go through lots of hair grease and like all of us, like to experiment with different types of product and see what the end results are. The drugstore chains and big box stores only stock Murray's and that slimy green shit made by Dax. I have to order various stuff from a place in New Jersey. I have to wait for Paypal to clear, wait for shipping and pick it up at the post office when the mailman leaves that little sticker on my door. By this time I'm down to Olive oil and used pizza grease.
Santa, build me a grease factory. You can put it right there in the back yard because we have the space.
The factory should have every pomade, grease and slimy shit ever made. Don't bother bringing any combs because the factory should be equipped with an automatic pomp-isizer. Don't forget a fully stocked beer fridge, fucker !
3. A Full Spectrum De-hippie-izer with Quantum Logic Circuitry ( with Smell-o-Vision)
I guess the elves in the electronics division will be busy this weekend because I've wanted one of these for years. It would kind of look like a radar gun and work in a similar fashion. When some hippies come within range, you point the device at them and activate it. The high energy gamma rays would straighten out dreadlocks, clean the dirt and patchouli from their clothing and also clean their filthy dogs. The Quantum logic circuitry would instil some common sense in their pot-addled brains and the Smell-o-Vision would make them smell like Mennen skin bracer and whisky ( this attachment works on other people as well who have bad breath, stinky body odor or excessive flatulence).
There are optional attachments that I would like as well. I want the Hipster Pants Expander, The Douchebag Proximity Alarm, The Bike Thief Instant Vaporizer and Cheap Made in China Crap Repair Kit. Get on it Santa, and this sucker better not say Made in China on the bottom.
That's about it for the big items . Santa could feel free to throw in a couple of Cadillacs if he has some lying around and maybe he can re-route a couple of Jack Daniels trucks for me. I will also send him a list of people that I would like his reindeer to poop on as they do a fly-over. In the meantime, I gotta go, I think I just saw the easter bunny in my backyard.
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