Christmas Pills, New Year Thrills, and Dicking around the Holidays

I had planned on steering clear of this blog until the new year. But I've got insomnia and perhaps pounding out a bit of drivel here beats counting sheep. It's been an interesting time thus far with the family in Arizona. Lots of campfire stories haunted by ghosts of familial dysfunction past. But primarily just stuffing my pie hole and vegging. Serious vegging. Which makes up for the lack of vegetables in my diet this week (unless the coco beans from chocolate count).

My sister Lynn is good at pulling on threads of dormant memories I'd thought were lost to me forever, unraveling a tapestry of singular moments in time. An elementary school teacher's name, a neighbor's eccentricity, commercials on TV, jobs held as a kid, the kinds of candy found at our little corner shops.

Each one of these off-hand remembrances lets loose a flood of imagery, at once dated and yet timeless, uniquely local yet universal. Penny candy back when it cost one cent. The lady across the street with the one crazy eye who would peek out her shutters all day. Silly shit like this, one memory tumbling into another like a string of dominoes toppling over.

I've been focused on the personal rather than the political this week; in fact, I haven't much been paying any mind to the goings on in the US or the world.

I'm vaguely aware of a would-be terrorist managing to thwart our vaunted security, almost blowing up a plane coming into Detroit International from the Netherlands and that Jon Gosselin's apartment in NYC got ransacked (whether by evildoers or his own publicity-hungry hand). Both important topics to be sure, but uninteresting to me this particular week.

Dick Cheney continued to make an ass of himself unabated this week, but that's hardly news. I swear the guy would laugh with glee upon learning Santa's sleigh had been hijacked by terrorists, the reindeer booby-trapped with high explosives and the sled filled to overflowing with bags of mustard gas before being crashed into the side of a children's orphanage if he thought it would cause some embarrassment to the Obama Administration. I don't say this in defense of Obama, who has disappointed me in many and varied ways in 2009. Still, as they say, a bad day golfing is still better than the best day at work. Obama/Biden are my "golf" to the Bush/Cheney "work" in this analogy.

Cheney's just plain bad news, the evil ogre under the bridge. And to think I had some vaguely positive things to say about the guy as SecDef during Desert Storm. I guess back then he was still at least partly Anakin Skywalker. He's clearly embraced the dark side since then (perhaps he always had and I just didn't see it). Some might call him Richard but to me he's the ultimate Dick.

Thankfully, I needn't concern myself with things politico right now as Maureen Dowd seems to be taking care of this for me. Dowd's piece today as usual echoes my thoughts from a political perspective to a tee. Though, oddly, she neglects to mention Jon G. But that's okay. Thanks, Mo.

We're off to see some sights in Phoenix this afternoon and evening. Specifically, the Desert Botanical Gardens and then the Zoo Lights. Film at 11. As for New Year's Eve tomorrow, it'll be a low-key affair, I'm sure. Very much unlike the drunken Vegas group hug I stumbled into this decade through. Both have their charms depending on your perspective.

I'm moving on to a new phase of my professional career come the middle of January so I need to start mentally preparing myself for that now. Finally, a New Year's Resolution I can keep! I'm headed out of the safety - and madness - of corporate life back into consulting again. Both have their crisp highs and deep lows - much like the Bose Wave System, according to their commercials - but at least with consulting the lows are transient (of course, so are the highs). So I'm nervous but excited.

I will say that the Christmas pills make this time of year bearable. Just be sure you have a festive container for said pills. Said containers make fantastic gifts. What are Christmas pills? Why they're the pills you put into the Christmas Pill Containers. Little magnetic twist-in-half or head-pops-open Snowmen or Santas or other similar figurines. Containers that some might assume are meant to contain other items (candy, spice, etc.). But they are in fact meant to contain pills. Screamers. Uppers. Downers. Laughers. The pills that get you from Thanksgiving to New Year without going insane. Rush understands this. As a bonus, they double as great Christmas Tree Ornaments.

"... She goes running for the shelter / Of her Santa's Little Helper / And it helps her on her way / Helps her through her busy day ..."

In any case, "talk to you" in 2010 ...

"I got Silence on the Radio with a Driveway full of Snow" - Moonlight Mile '09 (Apologies to Jagger/Richards)

I really wish I liked shoveling snow as much I as do shoveling shit. I'm speaking metaphorically about the latter, of course; I do in fact like shoveling actual snow more than shoveling actual shit. If the weathermen (and women) are right, we should get socked pretty good by old man winter tomorrow here in the Philly area. Dylan might have been right that you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but apparently you need them to tell you ad naseum as to when and where the white stuff will be falling. More Al Roker than Bill Ayers, though they're both equally likely to be accurate in their predictions.

Should the weatherguessers beat the odds and the white stuff does arrive in force, I'll at least need to make an appearance on sidewalk patrol to avoid becoming even more of a neighborhood pariah than I already am. Whatever happened to enterprising teenagers looking to make a buck mowing lawns and shoveling driveways? Not that I ever did it as a kid but I just thought that was because I was lazy. The kids were always helping out us harried adults doing these kinds of chores for loose change on TV shows, after all. And television doesn't lie.

My God! As I'm writing this and flipping channels, I come across my fav, Dr. G, and hear immediately from the voice over that she is "cutting into the scrotum sack." #?@?! Like Pavlov's dog, these words cause my male reflexes to kick in, hands moving down to protectively shield the groin area from the Medical Examiner's blade.

There's a big close up of the good doctor's face as she's hacking away with relish - I'm just glad they don't actually show you what her hands are busy doing, apart from a couple of crude courthouse sketch-artist grade diagrams. The doctor is whish, whish, whish with the scalpel, the grand maestro conducting her cadaver orchestra. And all the while she's babbling away happily about the specific and putrid odor of a dissected bowel. Apparently she'd carved that up just prior to her current Bobbitsque act on this poor, dead dude's genitalia.

I have no idea what the context of all this is having arrived late to the party (and I'm surprised to say I've not seen this particular episode). That said, I do know I feel a helluva lot better about my lot in life suddenly. Things can always be worse. Except for that guy on Jan Garavaglia's slab with his ball sack sliced-n-diced and his bowels emptied into a bowl. I bet he'd kill to shovel snow given a choice between that and a guest appearance on Dr. G (it's not quite the same as doing Letterman). Three words you don't want to hear applied to you: standard Y incision.

And the next thing you know, Dr. G is out of this dude's bowels, out of the morgue and on the road to shop for supplies at a big ol' medical supply "mall" (sort of the Walmart of forensic sundries). Great segue, guys - I'm still gagging from the gross-out of the last examination and now Dr. G is trying a new pair of jumbo rib cutters on for size and checking out overhead exam lights on this little "lighter side" field trip. She seems out of her element among the living, outside the confines of that ghostly crypt that is her domain to me.

One quick Activia / Jamie Lee break and we're back in the exam room again, with more slicing and dicing and blood-filled silver bowls, followed by a good hose-down. The doc is back where she belongs!

"She turns her attention to the chest cavity."

Look, Ma! No more cavities! Cavities in teeth: bad. Cavities in chests: generally pretty good. It's a place for the heart to go - pretty much all of us have one of ample size, except for the Grinch and Dick Cheney. But they're special. And I hear they have machines that pick up the slack. And besides, the Grinch had that problem fixed by one Cindy Lou Who. Perhaps one day Dick will find his too. Meanwhile the machines will suffice.

The rest of us, we need our cavities and can do without Dr. G-types poking around in there.

Well, time to prepare for the snow. I'm all loaded up with Inglourious Basterds and Star Trek on Blu Ray now so I'm prepared for the weather.

Of course I forgot to buy rock salt earlier and it seems now that the public has drained the local supply (damn hoarders). Perhaps I'll be a pariah after all. I could always just nail a cardboard sign onto the telephone pole next to the sidewalk: Ice. Don't slip. After all, it's the thought that counts and that is at least as thoughtful as actually shoveling and salting the thing down. In my mind anyway.

Personally, I think the people doing the walking should be doing the shoveling (they've already out there in that shit and they're the ones that need to get somewhere). Meanwhile, I'm going nowhere pretty fast.