Rants, Random Thoughts, and General Skullduggery
The Worst Christmas Ever
Guest Webmaster
Tim Smith
This year for Christmas, Santa brought me not only a piece of coal, but also a swift kick to the genitals. First of all, I had arranged to go home and have Christmas with my family a couple weeks early and work the days on either side of Christmas. That was not to be however, as God took his biggest, snowiest shit in more than a decade all over my plans. So instead of eating dinner with my family and opening presents and listening to Burl Ives songs and frolicking in the snow, I spent four days drinking Philips vodka with my jackass roommate. It’s not that I have a problem drinking Philips Vodka with a jackass it’s just that in my 26 years of life, I had never been away from my parents and sisters for Christmas. So that was nice.
Then came Christmas Eve. In the retail industry, Christmas Eve is supposed to be a piece of cake day on which customers do their last minute shopping or pick up any items they forgot. However, the term “planning ahead” has apparently been erased from the vocabularies of many of the shoppers in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Rather than coming in to pick up the last minute stuff, many shoppers came in to buy entire carts full of groceries. Many were even buying hams and turkeys and prime ribs. This may sound crazy, but I think that main course items should probably be picked up at least a day in advance to ensure their availability.
Here are some guidelines: if you bought a full cart of anything on Christmas Eve after noon, you’re a jerk; if you bought a full cart of anything on Christmas Eve after noon but told an employee you don’t think they should have to be open that late, you’re a hypocritical jerk; if you asked, or even thought to ask an employee if they were open on Christmas Day, you’re a jerk. Excellent Christmas Eve sales will probably eventually lead some cock-sucking executives to think, “Hey, if we make all these waged employees work Christmas Day, we could collect a little bit more of a bonus while we sit at home and cannibalize homeless people with our families.” So, if you saved all your shopping until Christmas Eve, and retail stores are open Christmas Day next year, it’s your fault, you miserable fuck.
Christmas Eve was redeemed for me though, because I had the privilege of eating lasagna and pie and drinking high end beer with some friends. I started to think, “Maybe Christmas will be okay after all.” Boy was I wrong!
On Christmas Day, I cooked a delicious beef roast and relaxed (watched pornography). At about 3:00 pm, I started to feel a little queasy. At 5:00, I hurled up a half-pound of delicious beef roast. Over the next few hours, several subsequent “cleansings” occurred, each containing less delicious beef roast, and more of my will to live. I daresay I will not be able to eat any delicious beef roast for quite some time because I now associate it with misery. As if vomiting wasn’t enough, I also had the pleasure of a diarrhea accompaniment that could only be described as “ass-piss”. I will do you the service of sparing any further details.
I mentioned that I was puking up more and more of my will to live, and this came to a head at one point when I was bent over the toilet, trying desperately not to shit my pants. At that glorious moment, all I really wanted for Christmas was death. So that was nice.
At midnight or so, I felt that I could leave the bathroom for an extended period of time. I figured I should try to sleep since that was as close as I could get to actually being dead. By this time I had been unable to keep anything down, including liquids, for almost ten hours. The percentage of my body that was water dropped from a comfortable 60% to around, I’m guessing 4%. Severe dehydration was complemented by the temperature in my apartment being warmer than usual which of course resulted in leg cramps. By morning, I felt like I had been in a kick boxing match with Abe Lincoln. Not an Abe Lincoln that rapes a menstruating monkey though, an Abe Lincoln made entirely of metal spikes. The rest of my night was uneventful if you ignore the fact that I nearly shit the bed twice.
I should probably clarify that I nearly shit the bed on two separate occasions. I did not shit the bed once, and then almost a second time. I just want to make sure we understand each other.
Tim Smith recently graduated with a degree in music from North Dakota State University. He was once the only white member of a household that included an Asian, a Native American, and a Mexican. You can reach Tim at timothy.smith@ ndsu.edu.
