Today we honor Saint Valentine, who was beaten and beheaded on February 14th for performing illegal marriages in third century Rome. Happy day of torture.
I would like to celebrate the day by expressing my gratitude for a number of failed loves. For one thing, if that handmade valentine with a drawing of a black widow had done its magic back in preschool, I could be married to a concrete salesman today. Really. I looked that guy up on the internet.
For Christmas this year, a friend of mine gave a pair of yellow underpants with a picture of a trumpet on the butt to a very polite five-year-old boy. The five-year-old very quietly said thank you and managed not to cry in front of my friend, which seems rather remarkable to me.
ETIQUETTE: If someone gives you an absolutely horrible gift, you need to figure out a way to thank them while still maintaining your integrity. Don’t lie and say you love it unless you want to receive more of the same in the future. It’s best to take an oblique route. At this point in time, most people are onto the “This is so unique” or “You really shouldn’t have” evasion, so try to get to the heart of the sentiment behind the gift. A simple and sincere “Thank you; this was so thoughtful of you” should work if the person gave you the gift from the heart. It’s not necessary to hide the gift in your closet for years and haul it out every time the giver comes to visit, but hold off a bit before donating it to Goodwill. Maybe that orange feathered hat will grow on you.
SUPERSTITION: Giving a gift of shoes will make the recipient walk away from you. A gift of a handkerchief will bring the recipient sweat, tears and/or illness in the coming year. Giving a gift of knives or scissors will sever your relationship with the recipient. The only way around this one is if the recipient gives the original giver a coin, thus “buying” the knives or scissors and breaking the curse. The gift of an umbrella will also sever a relationship, most particularly a courtship; don’t try the coin trick with this one, because it won’t work. Giving a clock or watch is associated with death.
The second Christmas of 2012 is winding down. Time for some Pia Zadora.
I guess I’m posting from the future, because we already had Christmas yesterday. If it’s only Christmas Eve for you today and you need to get some excited young ones to bed, allow me to suggest some videos from XmasFlix’s YouTube channel to get them a little less excited about a visit from old Saint Nick.
Santa doesn’t seem nearly as magical when you learn that he lives in a split-level furnished with naughahyde and dingy wall-to-wall carpeting:
Here’s one where Santa’s world is both bizarre and mind-numbingly boring at the same time:
Of course, you could always just lower their expectations about what presents Santa is going to leave for them under the Christmas tree:
When we were kids, my brother and I got chocolate advent calendars from Germany every December. Every day, we could pop open a new window and find a differently shaped piece of chocolate in there. One day it was a beach ball, one day it was a sunflower. The 24th always featured a larger piece of chocolate shaped like a star. It was very hard not to open the windows ahead of time. I seem to remember my brother and me devising new rules governing when it was acceptable to open the next day’s window, and then at a certain point I think we just would see how many we could get away with opening before Mom got mad.
I think I have finally found an advent calendar where I am not tempted to open the windows ahead of time. Courtesy of Metafilter, I bring you Jul!
That was just Tuesday. The more I’m looking at this, though, the harder it’s getting not to open all of the windows. Well, at least it’s not going to give me cancer like that chocolate one is going to.
I got a scented candle yesterday from a co-worker that actually smells really good. This is kind of astounding in my book, a scented candle that I like. I may have mentioned this before. This afternoon another co-worker started burning a really horrible smelling scented candle, and for a while I considered lighting my candle and instituting a scent war, but I thought that wasn’t very considerate to the rest of the office. Also, I had already taken my scented candle home.
ETIQUETTE: It is bad manners to place new candles on display in one’s home without lighting the wicks first and then extinguising them. It looks stagey and artificial, and furthermore is sort of “ha ha, I have electricity and don’t need to use candles for light” braggy. Of course, the point can be made that lighting the wicks and then putting them out solely for the purpose of not having new-wicked candles on display is a little stagey and artificial, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people have electricity nowadays.
SUPERSTITION: There should never be three lit candles on stage in a theatrical production, especially for the actor nearest the shortest candle for whom it is said will soon be visited by death (or marriage); some believe it is unwise to even have three lit candles in one’s theater dressing room. This can make the staging of Hanukkah plays rather tricky in some circumstances.
Do I post this cute snowman cartoon:
even though it was made in Germany in 1944? Or do I post this crazy Santa cartoon made in the US in 1934 even though it features a blackface character?
Cartoons, why do you do this to me?
This starts out not making much sense, and then… wow. Stick with it until 8:23, where you may behold the vision of murderous rage in a child’s eyes.
This cartoon is pretty cute, but it also teaches a valuable lesson. Mainly that hobos should stick to riding trains, and kings should stick to riding in man-powered boxes.
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