Time for a little reality check, and a little togetherness:
Christmas is one week from RIGHT NOW.
For my Jewish friends, Chanukah begins in less than forty-eight
hours. Kwanzaa begins on the 26th, and
I've got it on good authority that Festivus begins, well, sometime in the next
week or so. That's the reality of the
situation; as for the togetherness, let us now bow our heads in unison,
regardless of our celebrational differences, and begin to swear at the gift
wrap, scissors, and tape. Can I get an oh, hell yeah from the congregation?
The photograph above is of the world's largest ball of tape,
photographed in 2001 at the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston,
Ontario. (This is a Turned on Its Ear first, loyal readers: the attribution of a photo
blatantly swiped via a Google Images search.
It's a holiday miracle, I know).
Until a decade ago, it also might as well have been a photo of any
random gift I gave somebody. A decade or
so working for Borders cured me of this malady, to an extent. I can now wrap things that come in standard,
square or rectangular shaped packages like a semi-pro. Listening to the Real Housewives of Scarsdale
nitpick your every sexy bit of cutting, taping and tucking will school you in
the art of wrapping well - or at least in the equally-important art of hiding
your mistakes efficiently - in a hurry.
I'm certain that some of you caught the qualifier in that
last paragraph: standard, square or
rectangular shaped packages. What
follows is a desperate plea to the manufacturers and shippers of America (and,
more likely than not, China): please, for the love of Santa, can you maybe not
package things in a tin the shape of someone's head? Might you possibly entertain the notion of
declaring a moratorium on packages that are round? Perhaps you could add a few cents to the
packaging budget and not use a plastic blister pack with all sorts of things
jutting out from it at odd, sharp angles?
I know, it's radical thinking, but stay with me here. If I did not have to wrap these sorts of
things, I would not have to emit an annual string of obscenities that makes the
old man in A Christmas Story's battle
with the boiler sound like Pat Boone reading from the Bible by comparison. I would have more time to be with my family,
to bake cookies and pet puppies and build snowmen...
...whoops, I meant shop
more. Last-minute shopping,
even. It would be good for the
economy. It would be good for America
and for freedom and for not letting the terrorists win. Most of all, it would be good for my thumb to
go through at least one Christmas season without being stabbed by the
scissors. Speaking of the scissors, did
I lose them again? Damn it! I just
had the fucking things one minute ago!
Son of a bitch where the hell...oh god, really, am I sitting on
them? I am! Shit!
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