Jolt Country

Date of Halloween: October 31st
Date big Halloween display went up at the supermarket: August 24th

I mean seriously, who the FUCK is going to stock up on Halloween candy in AUGUST. Yeah, I know, they want you to buy candy now, eat it all, and have to buy a second batch on October 30th. Yes please, three more bags of that wax-laden chocolate coated spackle, please!

Date of Thanksgiving:
Date Thanksgiving decorations go up at the store: N/A, not a "profit holiday", so no decorations go up

Date of Christmas: December 25th
Date Christmas decorations went up at the store: September 14th

I am *really* sick and tired of this crap. These damn stores suck all of the fun & meaning out of the holidays, especially Christmas. Seriously, you're supposed to look forward to Christmas and be sad when Christmas is over, not worn out from 4 months of having to look at Christmas shit everywhere you go. By the time Christmas rolls around, we're just relieved that it's over, and that's wrong. FUCK THE OVER COMMERCIALIZATION OF CHRISTMAS, AND FUCK ANY STORE THAT PUTS UP CHRISTMAS CRAP BEFORE THANKSGIVING....I don't go anywhere near a mall or plaza between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and feel like a far better person for it.

The more people in the mall the easier it is to steal shit. THE MORE THE MERRIER!

Just fuck Thanksgiving and Christmas in general, seriously. Why should everyone celebrate Christmas? I think it's a sad look at the human condition that we need a day to be nice to everyone. Which doesn't work, incidentally. It just pisses everyone off who wanted to be mean. And thanksgiving? Yes! Let's all be thankful of the hundreds of Indians we slaughtered! Let's be thankful for Crabine rifles we used to completely decimate them! And of course, let's all give a good ol' thank you to their open, trusting nature, and the Small Pox virus! Without htem they might have actually stood a snowball's chance in Hell of succeeding! And what do we do for each holiday? Gourge and give people things. Can't we think of anything better to do than get fat and give people shit? Seriously, the only two good holidays are the fouth of July and Saint Patric's day. Celibrating our indipendence from Britain by letting off huge motherfucking explosions. Yeah. I dig that. And who doesn't love Saint Patty's day? It's a day where te whole point is to get roaringly drunk. How can you overcomercialize that? But other than those two, I think we need to just give up and start over.

RAAGHGHH!! GRAAAUGHGHH!! RAAAHGHGH!! BLAAHGHGUH!! FRAAUGHGHHH!! BRAAaGUGUH!

RAUUGHGHGH!!!!

pinback wrote:RAUUGHGHGH!!!!

Yeah. What he said.

Bruce

So it's not the holiday itself, it's the merchants that take advantage of them and commercialize the shit out of them. I think the holiday is neither here nor there, it's what you make of it. If all you want is for people to spend, spend, spend then it reduces the true meaning of it.

A small anecdote; Dr. Suess wrote 'The Grinch' as a jab at the over-commercialization of christmas (and that was in the 50's) So now he croaks ( he wouldn't release the rights) and his widow OK's the movie rights. They make a movie out of it and you can go out and buy all that junk relating to the movie, further reducing the message of the movie. A vicious cycle.


THE
ANYTHING FOR
A BUCK
AARDVARK

Yeah, but the fundamental problem is that we are all assuming that the brunt of the people at one time want to stop shopping.

Not stop shopping, STOP USING THE HOLIDAYS TO MAKE A BUCK!!!!!

That's all they seem to be good for now-a-days. Remember when it used to be fun to go out on Halloween and blast people with a Co2 fire extinguisher? Or how about aiming the furnace blower down the driveway and dropping bags of baby powder in the intake when kids would approach?

Not a bit of commercialization in any of that stuff...

Now it's watch the Simpsons special on TV and hand out Hershey's minis that I bought in the black and orange decorated bin at the grocery store in AUGUST!!!!

GRRRRR.


THE
PHOOMP!!
AARDVARK

That only makes real pranks even less expected. How can one go wrong here? molesters making door to doors impractical, psychos making candy unsafe, and everybody else feeling safe and complacent? IT'S A GOLDEN AGE.

To some extent, I noticed this when I was a kid. Halloween isn't a remotely scary holiday anymore. That is, nobody dresses up as potentially frightening or cardiac arrest inducing hooligans. Moreover, the costumes are usually not even clever. This is particularly true in the college town that I live in. Last year, everyone seemed to dress up as a variant of your typical skank (male or female variety) or as a typical pop culture figure. More so the former.

Seriously I thought this was going to be a quick post about how chris should check out the articles page or something.

Christmas is overcommercialized, we basically ALL know. I'm all for venting, but really guys can we rise above a Senfield episode that's trying to be intellectual?

Ah....This is Professor Vark..ah...There is a deep seated psycological...ah, revulsion, shall we say, towards the..ah..corruption of the holidays we hold most dear. Like the Native Americans that were invited to the first...ah.. Thanksgiving feast. They soon discovered a long lasting tradition, mainly thus, the Lions will, without fail, lose on that fateful Thursday. they obviously placed a wampum wager on da Bears. It is to be said that, under normal conditions our..ah.. holiday spirit has slowly and without some small assistance from the..ah..television industry, corroded, to what we in the mental health circles call dispartation. A feeling of..ah.. distancing oneself from the merriment and joy that the holiday was originally intended to celebrate. This ...

Worm wrote:Seriously I thought this was going to be a quick post about how chris should check out the articles page or something.

Since Worm took the time to obliquely plug me, I'll agree with him here.

Some people spend the Christmas season putting up intricate decorations and going deep into debt buying expensive presents for their nephews and grandchildren. These imbiciles drive the economy, so it's hard to get to mad at them. And since they are imbicels, it's hard to blame the people trying to exploit them.

Some people spend Christmas naked and drunk on Safeway Brand Safeway Eggnog with flashing lights wrapped around their genitals. Some people commit suicide.

Too each their own, sez I. If it bothers you that much, just get together with your loved ones and pick some day in May to exchange knit socks on.

AArdvark wrote:Ah....This is Professor Vark..ah...There is a deep seated psycological...ah, revulsion, shall we say, towards the..ah..corruption of the holidays we hold most dear. Like the Native Americans that were invited to the first...ah.. Thanksgiving feast. They soon discovered a long lasting tradition, mainly thus, the Lions will, without fail, lose on that fateful Thursday. they obviously placed a wampum wager on da Bears. It is to be said that, under normal conditions our..ah.. holiday spirit has slowly and without some small assistance from the..ah..television industry, corroded, to what we in the mental health circles call dispartation. A feeling of..ah.. distancing oneself from the merriment and joy that the holiday was originally intended to celebrate. This ...

I think that's the first time I ever saw a post from you ANYwhere (and I'm talking about way back in teh dialup daze too) that didn't end in "THE ____ AARDVARK."

I feel... Empty.

THE
FLUMMOXED
BUGS

Worm wrote:Christmas is overcommercialized, we basically ALL know. I'm all for venting, but really guys can we rise above a Senfield episode that's trying to be intellectual?

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Every post from you is 'this is you trying to be funny' or 'this is someone trying to be witty and insightful' or 'this is someone trying to be intellectual and put down someone else effectively' when all these posts from you are doing the EXACT same thing, although I get the impression that we all had a better time writing ours than you did. If you're not having fun, why are you here? If we're all just a bunch of morons trying to be the smart one on a bulletin board, why read it, let alone try and one-up us on the snob quotient? If you're so deadset on raising yourself above a bunch of people who just post some stuff they happened to think of, I mean, is this really a victory for you?

Vitriola wrote:

Worm wrote:Christmas is overcommercialized, we basically ALL know. I'm all for venting, but really guys can we rise above a Senfield episode that's trying to be intellectual?

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Every post from you is 'this is you trying to be funny' or 'this is someone trying to be witty and insightful' or 'this is someone trying to be intellectual and put down someone else effectively' when all these posts from you are doing the EXACT same thing, although I get the impression that we all had a better time writing ours than you did. If you're not having fun, why are you here? If we're all just a bunch of morons trying to be the smart one on a bulletin board, why read it, let alone try and one-up us on the snob quotient? If you're so deadset on raising yourself above a bunch of people who just post some stuff they happened to think of, I mean, is this really a victory for you?

I can only really enjoy my time on a forum once someone tries to "lay some truth on me" when only knowing me on a message board, and even then not very well compared to the other members. Thanks V.

It just went a little too far, holidays are commercialized, it's America, everyone knows. I don't mind hearing what people just thought of, I though do mind having the collective thoughts of every fucking teenager from 78-2004 spit up with the major point/complaint being, they put up decorations SOOOOOOOOOOO
EAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLYYYYY
MAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN.
Especially so when it's like the person's 27th (I guess) Christmas/Halloween/Thanksgiving in America.

Worm wrote:

Vitriola wrote:Every post from you is 'this is you trying to be funny' or 'this is someone trying to be witty and insightful' or 'this is someone trying to be intellectual and put down someone else effectively' when all these posts from you are doing the EXACT same thing

I can only really enjoy my time on a forum once someone tries to "lay some truth on me" when only knowing me on a message board, and even then not very well compared to the other members. Thanks V.

Yeah, like that.

As for Christmas, I actually enjoy the decorations going up in November, but I probably don't go to stores often enough for it to annoy me. Winter was never my favorite season, always thought it was depressing, which, in upstate NY, it often was, so the holiday festivities couldn't start early enough for me. I also only have about 1-4 people any given year to buy for, so there's that. That Elvis Christmas Carol album, though? That's probably the worst thing ever recorded.

Sorry about that. It was late and I was falling asleep at the keybosrd, besides, the post was rapidly becoming unfunny and a chore. I just hit enter and went to eat a midol and wash it down with a beer.

I will try to become a better poster in the future. That will involve lots of sleep because I am funnier when Iv'e had my 9 hours. As for the signoff, I will do two of them next post. Think of it as me running a stop sign and stopping twice at the next one to make up for it.


THE
SCREECH, GO. SCREECH, GO
AARDVARK



THE
DEJA VU
AARDVARK

How many times can they repackage Elvis and sell the same stuff over and over and over?

I totally ignore anything to do with Christmas until Dec. first. Don't get cards for people. Dont get wrapping paper. Nothing.

BTW: I don't remember Bugs on JC or The Truck Stop or Free File Farm. Those were the only dial ups I ever called. were you known by a different handle then? It's been so long....


I have this friend in florida I haven't talked to since, oh.. '96 or so. He had a unique outlook on Christmas.

As an example, he spent Thanksgiving opne year with a friend of his, totally wasted the entire four day weekend. He had no family to 'come home to' and she didn't have the means to travel to her home state. I guess it was a pretty good time for the both of them. That sounds like a way to celebrate. I guess.


THE
HO HO EFFING HO
AARDVARK

mhuiraich wrote: Moreover, the costumes are usually not even clever. This is particularly true in the college town that I live in. Last year, everyone seemed to dress up as a variant of your typical skank (male or female variety) or as a typical pop culture figure. More so the former.

I should just reuse my cardboard box from "Unabomber package", cover myself in flour and call it an anthrax-laden package.

Same idea really, but when's the last time you seen someone try to navigate a halloween party in a cardboard box? Great fun, and you can even play Metal Gear Solid and freak people out when they think they saw a box move on the floor. ROCK.