‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through Humboldt County

Not a creature was stirring, not even Sheriff Mike Downey

The herb was all trimmed up and packed into bags

For smokers of taste, who will not smoke swag

Me in bed naked, my wife in her panties

It’s that time of month, so it’s the ones that are ratty

When out at the gate there arose such a racket

I got out of bed and put on my jacket

Threw on some pants and picked up my rifle

So they’d know I was serious and not to trifle

I stepped out of the door and into the rain

“To be out in this shit, this guy must be insane”

I thought to myself as I trudged up the path,

“This better be good or he’ll feel my wrath”

What did my dumb struck eyes then behold

But a bearded old man in a late model Olds

I yelled “It’s Christmas Eve, are you out of your mind?”

He said “I’m Jewish, you’re Pagan, why’s this a bad time?

My friends all need weed, and I’ve plenty of cash,

At $3,000 a pound, I’ll take your whole stash”

I thought to myself, “Well that’s quite a laugh,

These days I’d a probably sold it for half.”

He showed me a bag that was packed full of bills

I opened the gate and we drove down the hill

I made up some coffee, and rolled up a jay

And showed him a few of the buds on the tray

“Oh, this is the stuff that my friends all love.

They say that your stuff is a cut above.

They’ll pay what I ask for all I can get.

Did you have a good year? Is it all trimmed up yet?”

“This year I grew more than ever before,

It’s weighed up in bags just behind that door.

You can inspect it while I count this cash,

Hand me that ashtray, and I’ll knock this ash.”

We packed all the weed in the trunk of his car.

I said, “You found me out here, you must know where you are”.

“Oh yes, he said, “I’ll find my way out from here,

And I’ve many more stops to make, far and near.”

He started the car, and then turned on the lights,

And I heard him say, as he drove out of sight,

“Marijuana to all, and to all a good night.”

 

The Thing That Wouldn’t Die

The Thing That Wouldn’t Die

We bought this pumpkin, a few weeks before Halloween last year, partially as a festive holiday decoration, but partially because a cat psychic told us that our black cat Nigel, really likes them. Nigel did, once, many years ago, when he was a kitten, enjoy sharpening his claws, and sitting, on a large orange pumpkin, and looked adorable doing so. However, he has completely ignored subsequent pumpkins, including this one. Although this is not the first pumpkin Nigel has ignored since we talked to the cat psychic, certainly by now, Nigel has ignored this pumpkin longer than any pumpkin in his entire life.

 

I’ve done my best to ignore it as well, but the pumpkin has begun to get on my nerves. This pumpkin takes up a lot of precious real estate on our coffee table. Being round, you can’t set anything on top of it, and being bright orange, you can’t help but notice it. I’ve learned to work around it, keeping my coffee and magazines on the end table instead, although that’s getting a bit crowded with my bong and ash-tray there as well. When I spill bong-water on my American Craft magazine, I try not to blame the pumpkin.

 

For ten months now, this traffic cone of the vegetable kingdom has dominated my field of view. The pumpkin still seemed like a perfectly natural Thanksgiving decoration, and did not seem at all out of place, except that it got in the way of Thanksgiving dinner. We live in a very small place. Our coffee table also serves as our dinner table, so the pumpkin served as an over-sized centerpiece at our Thanksgiving feast.

 

By Christmas, the pumpkin seemed a little strange, but rather than buy a Christmas Tree, we just slapped a Santa’s hat on it. The cone-shaped red hat with fuzzy white, trim looked a little Christmasy, but it also kind of looked like we had Santa’s head on our coffee table.

 

For New Year’s Eve, I thought about hollowing out the pumpkin to use as an ice bucket for champagne, but we had eggnog with homemade blackberry brandy instead, which required no ice bucket. So, the pumpkin sat there through the winter. All winter the pumpkin sat between me and the wood-stove preventing me from seeing the fire within, unless I craned my neck, but we weren’t going to throw away a perfectly good pumpkin.

 

When Springtime came, we had no place to put a vase of wildflowers, because the pumpkin took up too much space.

We let it substitute for an Easter egg, although we’ve never celebrated Jesus based holidays in our household. This pumpkin constitutes the first time we ever had an Easter, or Christmas decoration in our home, but it only happened because we had this pumpkin left over from Halloween. Call us reluctant Christians, at least reluctant to throw away our Halloween pumpkin.

Now, its the middle of August, its 103 degrees. I’m melting, but that pumpkin is still as hard as a rock. We dusted it off again today. No soft spots. The great orange orb sits there on my coffee table, mocking me in the summer heat. “What are you still doing here?” I ask it. The heat is getting to me, I’m starting to lose it.

 

I’m afraid that if it somehow makes it to this Halloween, this pumpkin will somehow be rejuvenated, and last another whole year. I couldn’t take that. I’d have to move out. It’ll be me or the pumpkin if it comes to that. I can’t take it any more. I hope I never see another pumpkin for the rest of my life.

 

Christmysteries

Christmysteries

Well it’s Christmas time again, a time of Holiday cheer and Christmas spirit, and also a time of great wonder. There’s the wonder of a crisp still winter’s eve. There’s the wonder of the miracle of the virgin birth, or at least the first successful coverup of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church. There’s the look of wonder in a child’s eyes when he meets Santa for the first time and thinks, “What kind of sicko creep wants little kids sitting on his lap all day?” and realizes, “If he thinks I’m good, he’s going to break into my house at night.”

 

Christmas makes me wonder too. And so, beloved reader, I offer these Christmysteries as my gift to you this Holiday season.

 

Where did X-mas come from?

 

Why not C-mas, or Chr’ms?

 

Do Jews ever spell Chanukah X-ukah?

 

Does Christmas spirit always mean alcohol, or can it also be marijuana, cocaine or MDMA?

 

Why doesn’t your family ever get you what you really want for Christmas, like an 8-ball of coke and a night with a hooker?

 

Is “Who-hash” any good?

 

Did visions of Sugarplums dancing in a child’s head inspire the California Raisins ad campaign?

 

Were they drug induced visions?

 

Why can’t you buy eggnog in July?

 

When did people stop using Christmas lights to replace candles, and start using them to make their homes look like casinos and living rooms look like discos?

 

Say this one five times fast when you are drunk: Why wreaths with red ribbons?

 

How do they make a dozen pine cones reek like a whole warehouse full of cinnamon?

 

So the sleeves are green, what color is the rest of the shirt?

 

Did anyone ever like fruitcake?

 

What’s in Santa’s pipe and why are his eyes all red?

 

What’s in candy-canes and why are they the only food product without an ingredient list printed on them?

 

Does anyone over five ever eat them?

 

Since most people just pack the candy-canes up with the rest of the Christmas ornaments, how old are the oldest candy-canes still in continuous use?

 

 Where will we tell kids that Santa lives when there’s no more arctic sea ice?

 

Why do people wait in line for hours, spend money they don’t have, and fight the crowds on Black Friday, when you can invariably find all of the same stuff in about 14 months, in a thrift store for $5?

When were there ever twelve days of Christmas?

What are “lords” and why are they leaping?

Is that like a congressman on the take, or when your landlord commits suicide?

Why would a reindeer’s nose glow?

Santa lives someplace where it’s dark 6 months out of the year. Do you expect me to believe that he finds his way around by reindeer nose light?

Why doesn’t Santa have a fucking Mag-Light? He must have given away a billion of them as presents.

 

Christmas Wishes

Christmas Wishes

Now, I don’t really celebrate Christmas, or consider myself a Christian. I do like to celebrate the solstice in my own way, but solstice isn’t very funny. On the other hand, making a Christmas wish list is an age old tradition that’s about as silly as they come. Christmas is so funny that I wish I could be Christian just for the ironic, “camp” value of it, but the whole incest/sexual abuse thing that’s connected to it really poisoned that scene for me. But I won’t let that stop me from showing you my Christmas wish list. Won’t you please help my wishes come true?

 

I wish Bod Dylan had never made that Christmas album.

 

I wish Santa Claus was a hot young Latina woman instead of a fat white guy with a red nose.

On second thought, this woman would have frightened me as a small child, and no retailer would ever hire me to pretend to be her. I certainly can't afford to wish away any of my few remaining employment options

I wish we could forget the real meaning of Christmas.

 

I wish they had Holiday Inn’s in biblical times. If they had, today, nativity scenes would have three wise men sitting around a table sipping soda from disposable cups, next to Joseph, Mary and Jesus on a Magic Fingers massage bed.

 

I wish mistletoe was a kind of footwear that fired rockets.

 

I wish Jesus were a hot young Latina woman instead of Jewish baby boy.

 

I wish they would stop making candy-canes, and start making candy-crutches and candy-walkers.

 

…and I wish they would make them out of chocolate instead of peppermint hard candy.

 

I wish breweries would stop making “Holiday Brews”. I don’t want any spices, fruit or herbs in my beer reminding me that it’s Christmas. I want my regular beer to remind me that Christmas is just another day full of crap to get through.

 

I wish Metalica would make a Christmas album.

 

I wish “Black Friday” was more like the Steely Dan song of the same name.

Steely Dan, Black Friday

I wish Salvation Army Bell-Ringers would switch to a different ring-tone.

 

I wish, as a culture, we had a better way of celebrating a holiday than by shopping.

 

On the Money, Bleak Friday

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Middle-Class

Bleak Friday

 

Around here, the grocery stores have had real x-mas trees for sale for a couple of weeks already. I don’t know why. Anyone who put up a real tree on Veterans day, will have vacuumed most of that tree off of the carpet by X-mas eve. Either they will have to buy a second tree, or they’ll put their gifts under a spindly, dry, brown piece of kindling.

 

I’ve seen X-mas decorations in stores since before Halloween. I even saw some crossover: Count Santula and his bat drawn sleigh scared the hell out of me at one store this past October..

 

It seems like everyone jumped the gun on X-mas this year, but Friday marks the official start of the X-mas shopping season. Black Friday, as it is called, also coincides, not coincidentally, with “Buy Nothing Day”, sponsored by Adbusters Magazine. Now that AdBusters has unleashed Occupy Wall St., maybe “Buy Nothing Day” will really take off this year. Lord knows that people sure don’t need most of the crap that retailers have on offer, but those shoppers have money burning a whole in their pockets.

 

November 25^th also turns out to be the official start of the professional panhandling season. The Salvation Army deploys brigades of Santa Claus impersonators, who will ring the “opening bell” on the Holiday panhandling season, and suck up all of the easy spare change until Dec. 25^th.

 

This means that if you want to make a living panhandling this holiday season, you are going to need a story, and you are going to have to work it. Like this guy:

 

Go ahead and give it a try. I encourage everyone to panhandle professionally this holiday season. Find a shopping center with a lot of traffic, and get started. X-mas is all about the spirit of giving. You can give holiday shoppers the opportunity to be genuinely generous, just by pretending to be needy.

 

Try to get them to give you at least $20. Use a story like, “My mom’s in the hospital back east, and I just need to raise enough to fly home to see her before she dies.” A little story like that, told with abundant (fake) sincerity, can turn X-mas into your most profitable time of year as well. And, not only can you participate in “Buy Nothing Day”, but you can help people feel the X-mas spirit of giving, without letting the retailers act as middle-men.

 

Personally, I’m not leaving home until next Tuesday.