And so the spirit of giving becomes much like a jolly, roiling cesspool under immense pressure. When one dunderhead too many joins into the sludge of the Christmas car parking, the true spirit spews forth from the drivers with such heralds as, "Hey, MOVE YOUR FUCKING CAR, ASSHOLE!" and "EAT MY ASS, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" And this with kids in the car. Thus, we are all covered with the great, steaming, holiday experience of sharing with our fellow man and woman ("Get that brat in the car, BITCH!") as we seek out the special gifts for those we love so well. And, hey; it's only gonna get worse.
And with this introduction, I provide the second installment of holiday video for your viewing pleasure.
To be honest, the magic has seemed to escape the holiday season this year, at least for me. I think the first inkling of its absence manifested in a real irritation at how many ads on TV are taking traditional carols and substituting the lyrics with their own poorly rhymed chants to hawk their wares. The one that really gets to me is when T.J. Maxx (a discount store here in L.A.; I don't know if they have them back east) rhymed "Christmas" with "nauseous," referring to how you will feel when you find out how you're paying too much if you shop at the mall instead of their store.
Then there's the ad where everyone on the suburban street has decked out their upper-middle-class homes with profusions of sparkling holiday lights, and the yuppies next door simply pull out their Audis from the garage and turn on the headlights and have "the best lights on the block." It makes me want to slap them. Really hard.I've been out several times looking for specific holiday gifts and have found them difficult to locate. Luckily, the Burbank Town Center Mall is just a block away from my school, so I have been able to browse through the establishments there on my lunch hour while sampling the menial repast of the food court. The Japanese place is not too bad, but I eschew the sushi. There is a McDonald's, believe it or not, and today I tasted the dubious "food" at Panda Express, where you get chow mein drenched in white vinegar and orange chicken that is actually brown and has never known any sort of citrus.
I also trekked out this last Sunday and spent three-quarters of my time in parking lots, going up and down the rows of cars with dozens of other motorists, hoping for a spot to open up. At two locations I never even got out of the car, simply giving up and heading back home.
This last weekend was WET! There was loads of rain from Thursday through Sunday morning, and the temperatures were chilly (for us). It's also nice to have a number of days in a row when the skies are full of dark clouds, because it lets you really appreciate blue skies when they do return.
We attended the Christmas party of friends in Claremont, Steve and Roberto, last Saturday, and ended up leaving after just a few hours when I noticed the storm causing transformers in the nearby neighborhood to short and flash. It was a wise decision, since the rain started pouring down in sheets when we were just a few miles from home. Again, folks in cold climes will laugh at driving 20 miles in the rain. But then, you're not driving 20 miles on L.A. freeways. (I loathe freeways; thank God Steve doesn't and drives with with aplomb.)Having spent a year or two in Alaska, I know it sounds really whiney to complain that the temperatures aren't getting out of the 50s during the day, but this is stuff we're just not used to. No need to worry, though; this week we should be back up into the mid-70s by Wednesday or so, and the rest of the year promises to play out with clear skies and warm temperatures.
School is going really well, and at the end of this week I will have completed my lecture classes in Illustrator, Photoshop and the XHTML language for the Web. The two really tough courses, though (Dreamweaver and Flash), are still to come in January. Once I've gotten into them, though, I think my Web site will begin to take shape quickly.
We have one woman in our classes who is either profoundly stupid or extremely inattentive; in either case, she is most certainly irritating. She has difficulty creating a new folder on the desktop of the computer, and any task beyond that is an absolute mystery. When the teachers no longer allow her to stop the class for her pointed questions ("Where's the pen tool?" "In the toolbar." "Where in the toolbar?" "In the box with the pen in it."), she will begin to ask her the person sitting nearest to her, still unable to comprehend no matter how much assistance she is given. Then she will openly criticize the teacher for not "walking us through it," which is exactly what has been occurring since the class began. I had the misfortune of being that person next to her several times, and it gets to a point where you have to snap at her just so she'll leave you alone.
All the frustrations of the holidays and schooling melt away, though, once I get home. This has been a shitty, shitty, shitty year for the whole family, by any accounting, and my unemployment has made it even more unpleasant for me (though I'm glad I was out of work when mom died; I didn't have to finagle favor from superiors to take weeks at a time off to be in Arroyo Grande). All I can say is, I look forward to next year, a return of jobs to those without them, and an improvement in finances and an expanding real estate market. I just really want to feel some of the stability in life that I had gotten so used to in years past. I know we can't go back to what was, but something as good or better that approximates the previous experience is what I yearn for.Peace on Earth would be nice, too, but I'm not holding my breath.
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