Thoughts from a warmer place.

Palm Beach Florida is like the rest of Florida, except older...a lot older. There's a reason that some people (i.e. me) refer to this place as death's waiting room. As I left this morning for the airport (at 7 am!!!) , I almost slipped and fell on the rainy, icy stairs, so it's nice to be running around now with a t-shirt on. Still, my family is enough to drive anyone nuts, and I have several more days of this ahead. I've already taken numerous aspirin because my family is hard to take one at a time, but in a group, they are positively migraine inducing.

I don't know why no one ever bothered to tell any of my thousands of neices and nephews the difference between your inside voice and your outside voice, but there you go. I managed to line up a couple of private lessons at a local jiu jitsu school, because it will be time away from my family, and getting choked and having my arm twisted by a complete stranger is more fun than listening to my nephews fight to the death over control of the XBox.

Not So Black Friday and A Modest Proposal

I don't really like people. Well, I like them individually, or in small groups, but in a crowd I can't stand them. The lack of crowds is probably the biggest selling point for being a good Catholic. Since 99.9% of the population is going to hell (yes, this includes you polytheistic animists, buddhists, and protestants), the lines for the bathroom there must be outrageous. I'd much rather go to the nice place (although the people there are probably the condensending religious nuts that I can't stand, so I'll probably have to spend most of my time on the Holy Xbox 360).

Anyway, when I was younger* I used to work in retail selling electronics, and Black Friday was the worst day of the year. It wasn't then that I started hating crowds (I've always hated them) but it definitely took a pre-existing condition and made it worse. Like when someone is afraid of heights, and you take them to a high place and throw live snakes at them, so that they are now afraid of heights and snakes...and you. The rude people, the jostling, the people grabbing you ("I WAS HERE FIRST"), the screaming kids, the screaming parents, the screaming salespeople. Ugh!.

Part of the reason that I'm grateful that most of my family is in Florida (and the rest are in NYC) is that I can do most of my Christmas shopping online. That's right, people, those computer things you are staring at are used for things other than reading my blog and looking at p0rn. I probably miss out on a lot of those doorbuster sales where they sell you a 52" flat screen TV for $99 if you are one of the first 10 people to show up at 4am and are willing to kneecap an old lady in front of you to get it, but then again I don't have to deal with people.

If you are a person, don't take that personally. As I've said, if you're reading this and I met you individually, I would probably like you. But if were in a crowd (especially one with torches and pitchforks chanting "kill Home Improvement Ninja") then I would probably think you sucked. No offense.

Which brings me to my point. (yes, I have a point...sometimes). If I was in charge of the world, I would fix the holidays. I would fix everything in fact. I could solve the crime problem because I can take one look at someone and tell if they are a criminal (I grew up in NYC, so it's not that difficult since most people in NYC are crooks) and just order them executed.

But back to the holidays. Holidays suck because of the crowds. And the crowds are there because everyone celebrates Christmas on the same day. Well, I have a solution. If I was in charge, I would justgive everyone a different day for Christmas. That way, the crowds would be spread out over 365 days a year. In case you're wondering when Christmas would be for you (because it's always about YOU isn't it?), well your day to GIVE gifts would be on your birthday.

Besides the crowds, doing it my way would also make people remember your birthday, because if they didn't come over and give you a birthday gift, then they wouldn't get a Christmas gift in return. It's genius in it's simplicity. Now all I need is to be appointed dictator (hahaha Dick- Tater) and I will fix all your problems.


*wow, that makes me sound old. Lemme tell you about when I was a kid before we had computers and the internets. We walked to school (5 miles each way) and looked things up in these heavy things called books, that had sharp things called pages that would cut your fingers. Ronald Reagan was president back then...