Christmas Eve

It’s not Christmas until you dress up the animals:



Here is the dear, departed and still greatly missed by moi Rutger dutifully donning the reindeer antlers.

Rutger always seemed to get that being dressed up in stupid costumes was part of the pet job description.

Sybyl, not so much.

###

I dreamed that the lives we are all living in this little time and space continuum were a type of therapy. From time to time… blockages occur in our existence as cosmic fractal beings. And being incarnated is how we work them out.

I can’t really describe it any better than that.

Toward the end of the dream, my friend R______ made an appearance. She had this plaster cast around her neck and shoulder but otherwise was cheerful.

How did that happen? I asked. And isn’t it going to make it difficult for you to ride a bike?

In real life, R______ is a demon bike rider. Also one of the most industrious people I know but never in an obnoxious way that seems designed to showcase other people’s lack of industry.

I’ll tell you later, R______ laughed. Really, it’s okay.




Spent a pleasant, inconsequential day knocking about, vacuuming, organizing, and eventually wandering up to Rhinebeck to spend $$$$ at the four shops I desperately don’t want to go out of business: The World’s Best Art Supply Store, the World’s Best Chocolatier, Al Stickle’s 5 & Dime, and Oblong Books.

It was bitterly cold!

But once I reminded myself I was wearing my fabulous blue Sheep-and-Wool-Festival coat, my fabulous Edinburgh scarf, my gloves, and my beanie, perfectly navigable.

In the evening, I chatted with Chris, who was watching Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man.

“On Christmas, you either have to watch Christmas movies or incredibly stupid movies,” Chris explained.

“Those are the rules!” I agreed.



Back in the Patrizia-torium, I watched A Christmas Story, which I had never seen before.

Considered a holiday classic.

I liked it.

You absolutely could not make that movie today!

Bullying, horrific injuries (tongues frozen to lampposts), guns.

And yet it remains near the top of all polls of “beloved” Christmas movies.

Signifying (to me, at least) a certain nostalgia for the bad old politically incorrect days.

Earlier in the day, I had been struggling to explain to someone what it was I dislike about Millennials.

I mean, let’s be honest: The real reason I dislike Millennials is because I’m gonna be dead, but they get to be alive, which is just fuckin’ unfair! Right?

But while I was watching A Christmas Story—ostensibly set in 1940 but really an homage to the comfort zones of the 1950s—something snapped to grid:

Namely, that Millennials are all such fuckin’ conformists. Even when—especially when—they're conforming en masse to some implanted Platonic ideal of marginalization.

It’s like social media has prolonged that really ghastly high school peer group pressure phase.

Boomers were really into nonconformity as an ethos.



In 1960, there were just over 3.5 billion people on the planet.

But in 2022, there are nearly 8 billion.

Nonconformity is not a viable strategy when nearly 8 billion people need to be managed.

The emergence of wholescale technologies designed to ensure the population grazes and migrates in lockstep is a useful strategy, in other words. Assuming it is a strategy.

I get it!

I also get that not a single thought or opinion in my head is really my own. It’s all operant conditioning.

Still.

I just don’t like herds.