Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about spirit, a happy playlist, and Tannenbaum!

"Christmas is a spirit that flows from one heart to another. It is more precious than rubies and better than your gold. How do you feel about this?"

Ho-ho-freakin'-ho, my friends! Santa left some prompts in my inbox this morning, so let's see if I can put them to good use.

I think I may have said this before, but I'm not one who gets the Christmas Spirit anymore. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's kinda hard to get excited about it when Christmas stuff shows up in stores starting in August...and if you think it goes away around January then you've never touched anything saturated with glitter. That shit never goes away. Walk into any store that puts their decorations up in the same location each year at any other time, and you're bound to find glitter buried in little nooks and crannies in the carpets, and at the backs of the shelves closest to the walls, and all around. I swear, it multiplies...and yet each time Christmas comes around, we dump more and more of it onto the unsuspecting public. There has to be a better alternative to making things shiny! Science has created underwear that traps the smell of farts  , but we're stuck with glitter that doesn't go away.

Imagine how pissed off you'd be if you didn't even celebrate Christmas and accidentally touched some holiday decor while making your way through Target, or got stuck with a shopping cart that was previously used by the lady down the street from you who goes balls-out decorating each year with the silver wreaths and shit. That'd be all I need to swear off winter for good.

Maybe it's just me, and how heartless time has made me over the years, but the Christmas Spirit doesn't magically flow into me, like a contagious cold does. My therapist and I were discussing "feelings" last week, and he came right out and asked me if I ever felt anything about anything. Without hesitation, I was like "I used to, but not anymore, for the most part." Like love, or hate, or anger, or elation, or anything like that. Nope. Nothin'. And when I do catch a case of emotions, it's very fleeting at best...I'm over it in a day or two. So that probably explains why I'm not a holidays person...not Christmas, not Halloween, or Arbor Day, or Presidents Day. I'm not into any of it. Let's just exchange gifts and eat a nice meal and watch some relatives snipe at each other for a few hours and be done with it, ok?

Greed and commercialization have ruined most of the holiday sentiments for me. You go through a lot of trouble for one day of the year, and half the Catholic population doesn't even care that it's the day their baby Jesus was born. And for non-Catholic religious people, Dec. 25th is just another cold, shitty day (most years, in my part of the world). It's a cold, shitty day where most businesses (with morals) are closed. God forbid something happens on Christmas Day, like running out of salt for your mashed potatoes, and you have to go to the 24hr gas station and either hope they have some (where you'll pay four times the grocery store price) or pray the bitter counterhelp stuck working that day filled up the rollerdog condiment bar with plenty of little salt packets that you can shove in your pockets. And don't get in a car crash, because your insurance company wants no part of it on that blessed day. And definitely don't die, because that just involves all sorts of people who don't want to be working on the holidays, and you'd be separating them from their families, is what you dying is doing, you monster.

And don't tell the people who got rubies and gold for Christmas that their spirit is more meaningful. It's not. Don't try to sell off holiday cheer at the local pawn shop, because you're gonna have a bad time. I couldn't even sell a textbook I barely used last year in school, even though my neighborhood pawn shop goes out of its way to advertise their book buy-back policy; if they won't take a business course book, they're not paying pennies on the dollar for your heart's rendition of "Silver Bells".

So, to sum it all up, while Christmas Spirit is all the rage this time of year, it doesn't easily pass from one person to the next. It holds no monetary value, and for a country founded on religious freedom, we seem to get off a lot on shoving Santa down everyone's throats. Know what I want for Christmas this year? A few gifts, plenty of drinks, some family time, and peace on Earth and quiet. That's how I plan on not rollin' down your chimney with care this year.

"What songs are on your happy playlist?"

Oh boy...I love this prompt, and I don't at the same time. See, I have a ton of music in my iTunes library, but I don't make many playlists. I just put that shit on shuffle and see where it takes me...and if I don't like it, I see what's next. I have three playlists...one for a girl who probably will never see that cd being burned for her, and two for an old buddy of mine from high school whose wife up and took off on him with their baby and moved across the country (as soon as I have a few extra bucks for blank cds and postage I'll send them off). And Apple's software has been a mess lately...now if you delete a song from a playlist it gets taken out of your library, and it's a major fucking inconvenience especially if it's something you haven't purchased directly from them. I added a song to a list for someone and took it off because it didn't fit, and it's on a hard to come by cd that I had to order directly from Canada...and right now all my cds are in an 18-gallon storage bin on a high-up shelf in my room. Once I got them all uploaded to my laptop, that was the best place for storage concerns, and it fell on my head awhile back while reorganizing, so shit went flying everywhere and I don't have the patience to go back and look for that cd just so I can have that one song back in my library.

But what I'll do now, here, to play along with the prompt, is I'll open up iTunes, set it on shuffle, and list the songs that come up until I find the first five songs that make me happy. They might not be happy songs, but I'll be happy, and that's what matters (because most songs designed to make people happy generally piss me off). It's not the iTunes Shuffle Quiz, and if you wanna play along with me on that just shoot me an email or read one of the few entries in "I'm Studying You"  where I posted my results several years ago. The "happy" songs (my words, not yours) will be denoted by a link...let's hope this doesn't take me all day.

1. "Start Here" by The Gloria Record (fitting way to start, I guess)
2. "Wicked"   by Ice Cube (but that line about choking like the Buffalo Bills always pisses me off)
3. "Always Coming Back Home To You/Say Shhh"   by Atmosphere ("Say Shhh" is one of the most underrated hidden tracks in all of recorded music history)
4. "Roman Candle" by Boxstep (if you've never heard of them it's ok...a large outfit out of Pittsburgh, and very cool)
5. "Rhymes" by Too $hort (I so wanna include this as a "happy" song, because I smile whenever the Playboy Todd comes up in my earholes)
6. "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"   by The Police (c'mon man, it's a fun song)
7. "Move!" by Public Enemy (not a happy song by not a happy bunch of people)
8. "At Least That's What You Said (live)" by Wilco (also not a happy song, but once it gets loud and the guitars kick in, I wanna invent a dance for that)
9. "Theologians" by Wilco (it's an upbeat piano song, but it's not what I want to hear that'll make me happy)
10. "Make Me A Believer" by Longwave (saw them open up for a few local bands a few years ago...a decent cd)
11. "All I Can Do" by Felt (love Slug and Murs, but I've probably skipped over this song a lot)
12. "Dope Nose"   by Weezer (not the only song by them that makes me happy, but this is fun fo' sho')
13. "I Corinthians 15:55" by Johnny Cash (not a lot of happiness there)
14. "Make Me Whole" by Longwave (why is Apple doing this to me, repeating bands and artists like this?)
15. "People Just Love To Play With Words" by Men At Work (bought the cd from a gas station a long time ago because it was a nice price)
16. "She" by Girlpope (a local and long-defunct Buffalo band with a great sound...and most of their songs always make me smile, but not this particular one)
17. "Miseryhead" by Ours (obviously not a happy song)
18. "Gratitude (live at Budokan)"   by the Beastie Boys (so many good memories attached to this song for so many different reasons)

Well, that's a solid list of five and I figured it'd take me about twenty songs or so to get there. Guess I'm in a better mood today than I was yesterday.

Anyone else in the same camp that thinks a lot of holiday songs start with the letter O? Like, just the letter, and not including words that begin with O. Now, I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but how far away are we from An O-face   Christmas? Isn't that where civilization is degrading itself to? We're still so unholy to celebrate the season mainly by shopping and stealing internet passwords so that we can cop a view of A Very Murray Christmas on Netflix, so this is bound to happen.

And on the fifth day of Spamlings doing the "Invalid Item" , our true love lizco252 gave to us "O Tannenbaum", which isn't even a Christmas song so much as it's a German ode to fir trees. I love it because there ain't nothin' Christmas-y about it...it's just a dude who wrote a song   about how great he thought a tree was. Why are we spam-shaming that? I've got to blame the OG Charlie Brown, for getting it major airtime every year during his holiday special/Jesus is the reason lecture by Linus.

Still gets to me every year.

I almost had no idea how to approach this in righteous Spam tradition, but I just had a tinkle tinkle upon a porcelain star and it hit me (a thought, not some blowback from the pee)...I should celebrate all who are making an effort in the War On Christmas Classics.

Oh Spambily!

Oh Spambily, my writing fam-bily,
your words do delight me!
Ky (Cinn ) and Lyn's a Witchy Woman write rhymes so taut.
Neva (Prosperous Snow celebrating ) keeps the mood so light.
(Andy~hating university ) Andy wants the Spammer's Throne.
I can't let him sit there alone.

Oh Spambily, my writing fam-bily,
give love to Jellyfish (Jellyfish ) and AmyJo (amyjo-Keeping it real and fun! ).
(ANN Counselor, Lesbian & Happy ) Ann's chipped in her holiday best,
and (Steev the Friction Wizurd ) Steve has nailed the rest.
Don't forget our leader, Beth (lizco252),
who's saved us from Xmas complacency!

That's what I've got for today, you guys. I wasn't making a four- or five-verse epic outta it...it's not even a real Christmas song! It's not like I'm jumpin' on some ol' stale Rudolph rhymes with obvious sing-songy structures anyway...and peace to the red-nosed reindeer for having the sack to help out the same clan who emotionally abused him until they needed something from him. Apologies to anyone I left out, but I think I got you all.

Why are people giving this family shit   for having some fun with their yearly holiday card? Fuuuuuck man, I'd be doin' the same thing if I had a cool-ass family and could send out cards like it's no big deal (and I'm not, because Christmas isn't in the budget this year...sorry). Let these people have their fun doin' their thing...like y'all ain't got bigger shit to get pissed off about.

Just booked my Greyhound ticket back to Western New York for holiday time with the fam this morning, and the ride itself on a Greyhound bus isn't particularly offensive...not like some of some of these rides  . I get it that it comes from the same German place that produced a person who wrote an ode to trees that we in the US adopted for our own holiday fetishes, but there's a whole lot of WTF-ery going on in these pictures that I don't need a translation for. And people pay for the privilege of resting their asses on them!

Remember that asshat that I wrote the Spam poem about a few days ago ("This one's about skill, etiquette, and the Wu-Tang/AIDS guy." )? Oh, I guess he's still scamming and bleeding funds   from his endeavors. I hope his ass gets sent to the jail part of Hell, where he's surrounded by deceased AIDS patients who butt-rape him while singing all the verses to the Wu-Tang record he paid $2 million to get the only copy of. And while he's on lockdown, I hope that Bill Murray actually comes through on that (probably fake) seller's clause in the contract and takes it back for the Wu and their fans, and that it doesn't suck like everything since Wu-Tang Forever  , and it shows up for free on iTunes, and Apple gives a grand to charities that support HIV sufferers with each download. Because fuck Martin Shkreli.

Wanna get rid of your holiday blues, like I'm attempting to? Then watch a video of Stephen Colbert and Henry Rollins serenading each other with "Carol Of The Bells"  . I'll admit I have yet to watch his new show on CBS, so I can't say if he's funnier than Fallon or Kimmel (both of whom I can easily watch online without paywall bullshit, just like his and Jon Stewart's Comedy Central replacements)...but dammit, I didn't know how much I missed Rollins or needed him doing this until I saw it.

And finally, today is my boy Charlie ~ 's birthday...and ~Minja~ has created a place where you can say what's up to him over at "Invalid Item" . So get there and do it, because I love that kid like a little brother, and everyone's birthday is way more important than mine.

And just like that, I'm done for today. Special shout-out to all the name-drops for being a part of this today, and a big shout-out to me, because I need a nap now. Peace, you fill my heart, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!