holy s*#t it's christmas!!!

with an arsenal of venomous multi-lingual verbal assaults at the ready, i started my day today as i do most with a visit to a starbucks(for decaffeinated green tea mind you...OH THE HORROR!)

when i entered the store, i immediately noticed a change in the environment that both stunned and slightly horrified me. everywhere i looked, it was christmas. christmas songs were playing on the store soundtrack. i immediately glanced down at my watch to confirm that yes, it was indeed november 8th and still something like 7 weeks until fucking christmas.

my cup implored me to "pass the cheer"...



the bags of coffee on display for sale were in christmas colors...



more "pass the cheer" motifs, this one encouraging the purchase of gift cards so that others may share the joy of a warm gingerbread latte...



oh joy, josh grobin has a christmas cd titled "noel" that they're hawking...



how about yet another version of "a charlie brown christmas" to get you in the holiday mood...



and if all this weren't enough, how bout mini christmas trees on all the display tables...



let me go ahead and mention now that the older that i've gotten, the more jaded that i've become about the "holiday season," thanks in no small part to the out of control consumerism that we are all assaulted with at that time of year. and yeah, every year the holiday season encroachment seems to spread even earlier into the year. hell, it's still almost three weeks til thanksgiving!!! this is really, truly out of control.

i think what chaps my ass the most about the holidays is the manufactured niceness that it inspires. hell, the apparent starbucks theme of "pass the cheer" embodies and openly encourages such. now, i'm all for being nice and doing good deeds and all, but why not spread it out over the entirety of the 365 day calender year. it pisses me off that people are suddenly inspired to donate to charity or to volunteer at a soup kitchen when others are doing it clandestinely and without fanfare when the spotlight isn't on at other times of the year.

a recent holiday phenomenon that i loathe is the hundreds of "happy thanksgiving" and "merry christmas" text messages that i can expect to get from people, many of whom i probably haven't had any contact with since receiving last years "happy thanksgiving" and "merry christmas" text message that they sent to me and everyone else in their directory in a blanket text.

last year, i staged a bit of a revolt against this wretched phenom by responding to everyone that sent me such a text with a cheerful "go fuck yourself" greeting.

i shit you not, i really did.

i have actually been thinking of staging a photoshoot for a "go fuck yourself" holiday card. i thought of having me and a couple of strippers laying half naked under a christmas tree with a bottle of jack daniels, a pile of cocaine and bong at our sides.

that might be a wee bit too subversive though, even for me.

i definitely have gotten to do the point where i do things on thanksgiving and christmas that fly completely in the face of tradition. maybe this year i'll just get fucking blitzed and run naked through times square or something.

i hate sounding like a downer or a scrooge because so many people get off on this time of year, and i know that i'm not the first and i certainly won't be the last to lament this point, but this is seriously getting retarded.



guido saints

god save new orleans. god save louisiana. the guido has infiltrated my homeland. the dome on gameday no less. oh the humanity!



thanks to "south mississippi" for emailing the pic in to me.


scott boras profiled in the new yorker

scott boras may very well be the most hated man in all of sports at the moment. for those of you who don't know, boras is the agent of many star baseball players, not the least of which is alex rodriquez, formerly of the new your yankees. ben mcgrath profiled boras in a recent issue of the new yorker...

To the extent that lay people still find it offensive when baseball players command salaries equivalent to those of movie stars and underperforming hedge-fund managers, Boras is a convenient bogeyman, and at every ballpark there are bound to be a few hecklers who let him know it. He was brought up Catholic, and, as he told a newspaper reporter earlier this year, “Being Catholic, who you are as a person, you don’t appreciate any association with Satan.”

read the whole piece here...

the extortionist


jerry seinfeld drops the hammer on larry king

larry king famously does no research on the guests appearing on his show, thus he famously asks stupid questions. well, jerry seinfeld let him have it the other night when king asked if NBC had canceled "seinfeld."