The World Needs A Stronger Blog...

Well, I'm back from the ambitious lunch break I prefaced earlier in the portable think piece entitled “Blog Author Plans Very Ambitious Lunch Break”. I accomplished my mission with startling accuracy and lightning speed. Even I, your humble narrator, was shocked to look down at my Swiss Made and see only half of an hour had passed since I'd left port.

So first it was off to my personal financial institution to withdraw some rent and with my face to the howling wind and bitter winter frost I dashed. The teller nearly talked me into opening a savings account before blowing the whole deal with a bunch of last minute mumbled details that I, a) couldn't really understand and, b) couldn't hear very well. So I left the bank with a brochure, vowing I'd sign up later. And with a pocket full o' rent off I went.

Down Lexington and past the newly ubiquitous “$5 Silk Pashmina” vendors. As I passed by a cluster of fast food chains I was confronted by an awful odor. Immediately my sommelier mind began weeding out the subtle tannins of this angular aroma; it was a complex and ghastly bouquet of wet German Shepherd mixed with wet dry-clean-only worsted wool, a flutter of moth balls and the chewy and crisp tang of a homeless man gumming a hockey puck covered in cheap ketchup.

I found my way to the secret barber shop and sat down in the first chair to have my skull shorn. My barber was one of two identical brother barbers in this virtual barber brothel high above Lexington up a secret staircase. This guy really got in there. It felt as if he were shaving my frontal lobe with a vibrating Zamboni. And it was while my skull was vibrating like a kazoo that I came up with the concept of “Holiday Purgatory”.

“Holiday Purgatory” is a lot like “Weekend Purgatory”. For instance, a popular salutation 'round the office is the never ending “How Was Your Weekend?”. Months ago, on this here blog, I believe I declared Wednesday to be the cut off day for this tired query. Don't ask me how my weekend was on Thursday because you will surely confuse me for my mind is focused on the weekend ahead and not the weekend behind. This, my friends, is “Weekend Purgatory”. Please refer to my post from 18 June 2007: “Short Rope Mondays; The line betwixt polite and annoying gets finer and finer”.

Anyhoo, the rules of “Holiday Purgatory” follow suit. For instance, right now we are in a tug of war holiday situation; a veritable three-way holiday limbo caught betwixt Thanksgiving and Christmas and in the middle of Hanukkah. We're joining Hanukkah in progress here. So when you tell me to “Have A Good Holiday” on the fifth of December, I immediately go into panic mode; I run and hide inside the newly installed panic room in my mind. We are fourteen days since Thanksgiving and twenty-one days until Christmas. Isn't that a bit soon to be wishing me a happy holiday? Don't you realise you're confusing me? I've just asked you to shave my head as if I were about to undergo a crude lobotomy. Do you not see I am not of sound mind?

People just get hooked on these fucking overused crutch salutations; especially around the holidays. It's like open season out there. Whether it's “How Was Your Weekend?” or “Have A Good Holiday” some people just can't let it go. It's gotta be one or the other. Bottom line is people just don't know how to shut the fuck up.

I must insert that I stopped by Bath & Body Works and it was not unlike the smell I mentioned outside Wendy's and McDonald's. Just awful and cheap. Last year they were selling this Elton John home oil situation and it smelled amazing; like church. But all they've got now is peppermint this and goody goody gumdrop Christmas tree that and cherry pie him and jasmine bloom her. I guess back when Yankee Candle Co. was the only game in town, Bath & Body Works made sense but now, with all the other wonderful stuff out there so much more complex and subtle and sublime, Bath & Body Works is like bad, high school poetry for your olfactory system. Pass.

Oh, and for lunch I had a piping hot paper bowl of “Autumn pumpkin” soup. Autumn was a coupla months ago but we'll let that slide. I've got enough things to worry about. Although, I'm sure it's always Autumn somewhere in the world, right? Right. Well, the soup was obviously mislabeled because upon returning to my cubicle I realised the man had actually given me several ladles of hot viscous molten lava from the Aleutian Islands. I submerged several bagel chips in this steaming cauldron of despair but the evil porridge simply cackled at me and devoured the stale bagels parts like ants in hydrochloric acid.

I guess that's all for now.