The Christmas Cannon

This place was still blaring the Christmas tunes tonight, while I was doing a few drivebys to snap some photos. There are actually more lights that I remembered. I totally forgot the cone-shaped spiral trees wedged in between the candy canes and snowman. But it all pales in comparison to Santa's cannon, bringing explosives into the spirit of Christmas.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

So this is my big Christmas back in America. The fact that I have a retail job right now, and every day is an upscale pandemonium adds to the bleary-eyed dizziness of it all. A friend emailed me this week about Christmas in Australia. I guess Santa carries a "Christmas Sack" there and my friend was comparing it to an egg sac or a ball sac. Nice, I like thinking about Santa's nuts.
And speaking of worldly or not-so-worldly Christmas traditions, there is the overdecoration of your home which I think Texans excel at. We have these neighborhoods that people tour to see the lights and wait hours and hours to see gaudy wooden cutouts of the manger scene with flashing Santa lights right next to them. I have a distinct memory of my mom having to go to the bathroom while we were waiting in our car one year, and pooping in the woods. Awesome. Now my parents live in a completely different town, but we haven't escaped the tacky Christmas lights. In fact, one of our neighbors has the best house I've seen in years. It starts with four (count 'em FOUR) life-sized Santa dolls in the windows, dancing twinkly lights on the front fence, twinkly multicolored balls hanging from the trees, a light-up snowman by the front door, two light-up candy canes by the snowman, and my favorite, a light-up scene of Santa shooting the words "Merry Christmas" out of a cannon on the side fence. Cause you know, it's all about firearms and fourth amendment rights at Christmastime. And if all that doesn't put you over the top, I shit you not, The guy was blasting Christmas carols from some speakers he set up in his front yard last night. My folks and I walked by in time to hear "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." I would seriously kill this man if I was his neighbor.

I'll take pictures and put them up soon.

Funky! Like Penicillin

Okay, you know what puts me in a great mood (besides when my dog begs me to put her in her tutu....yes, I've become one of those people)? This morning, on the way to a math test I was particularly not looking forward to, I popped Paul's Boutique in the cd player. I hadn't heard it in at least four years! Kickass!! I forgot how much I love that cd! Not only is it butt-shakin' good, but it has badass rhymes like putting "poetry in motion" together with "coconut lotion." That's just genius right there.

...and now from our sponsors

What is it about this area that drives me nuts? I had to go back to Arlington today, and drove right through my ex-boyfriend's neighborhood. It's always like a horrible flashback when I do that. Remembering the stop sign that had "STOP 'N FUCK" spray-painted on it for most of my third grade year, which was also the stop sign that we used to drive through with no lights on the wrong side of the road at night in high school. (It was at the top of a very steep hill-- what were we?? stupid??) Well, with all my driving, I got lost and ended up driving by a ton of high schools (mostly in a town we used to refer to as "Useless") and I saw something that could be one of many reasons why I get so down driving around here. It was the sign for a high school, with the name on it, and the flashing lightboard announcing junior varsity volleyball and all that, but next to the school name was a corporate logo: a Pepsi logo. So what's that all about? Here's your diploma, sponsored by the refreshing taste of the #2 soft drink in the world! And probably one of those school cafeterias you see on the news where water isn't available, only drinks from the Pepsi company and foods from its subsidiaries. Why do I even give a rat's ass about corporate-sponsored education? I don't know. I've just about given up on the American education system after deciding that I don't want to be a part of it. But something about a multi-national corporation dipping its fingers into how people learn just seems so wrong!

Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

A friend just sent me an email describing himself as a stressed-out robot. And I'm feeling it too. Even when I was living in Japan, the land of robot-lovers, I didn't feel half as robotic as I do lately. I think it has a lot to do with being back home and getting caught up in cultural and success-related expectations. Living in other places, I didn't seem to give half a fuck about what I should be doing. I just cared about what I was doing! But now I have this weight on me, this idealized person that I feel I should live up to. (I think it's what's telling me to run and hide when I see people I went to high school with. Like a fight or flight thing only with people from Arlington.)

Run over by the Smackwagon

Okay, so I've been talking a bit of musical smack about Yes lately. And more than talking about it, I've been feeling it. Really feeling it. That's mainly because it's become a bi-weekly thing that I'm assaulted with Rick Wakeman at work. But now I feel that an apology is in order, because what did I do? I bought the latest Sufjan Stevens CD after seeing them on Austin City Limits and realized that they would probably be nothing without the likes of the very freaking progressive art rock dorks that I've been badmouthing for the last few weeks. And not only that, I checked out the website for another band I kinda like, the New Pornographers, and they credit Genesis with Peter Gabriel by fucking name. Holy inverse mohawk! This is getting ridiculous!

X's and O's

Thanks are in order for another night on the town with DQ and Mere. We saw the Borat movie (so so so much body hair) and went out to a local sportsbar afterwards. Good fucking god, is this what I have to look forward to being a single person here in America again?!? I spotted mom pants and gold digging going by a pair of Paris Hilton wannabes all on the same dance floor. A friend at work told me she had been kicked out for going in there with a guy who didn't have a collared shirt on. Apparently collars are mandatory, but panties are optional.