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November 8th, 2006
06:27 am - Interlude: Holiday Cheer
According to the email, our managers had finally picked the date and venue for the office Christmas ... err ... I mean "Holiday" party. Now, usually, Charlie is not a party kind of guy. He'll go with me to things that are really important to me, like my high school reunion, but otherwise -- well, let's just say he'd usually rather not go, and I'd just as soon have him not go because he doesn't enjoy himself. If I go on my own, then I get to stay as long as I want without worrying about him, and he gets to sit at home and watch things like "Hostel" and "SAW" that he couldn't ordinarily watch with me there.
In other words, we've worked out a win-win for the whole office party thing.
Now, on rare occasions, Charlie decides he is, in fact, in a mood to deal with people from my office at one of these get togethers. It doesn't happen often, but I still ask him, just in case. So after receiving the email from the managers, I emailed Charlie and asked if he thought he might want to go.
His response about killed me.
"I think I'll have a total cheer allotment this year of maybe 5 hours total...I'm using 1.5 hours of cheer at work which only leaves a little left. I'm afraid I'll have to decline to make sure I have enough to last through the holidays."
I emailed him back, "That's totally going in the blog, you realize that, don't you?"
"I thought that might be the case," he replied.
Maybe Mom would like to go with me this year...
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Doesn't eggnog contain "holiday cheer"? Maybe you should fill him up. But then he may have an absorption problem because his enzymes are all wonky. Nothing worse than holiday cheer gone bad and swimming around the gut, bumping into things in dark corners and mugging the cookies of their sprinkles. Perhaps you could recharge him by smiling real big and shouting "Happy Holidays!" up close to his face, to make sure he gets maximum exposure. Make sure you wave something holiday-ish in your hands. Duuuuuuuude. I think the in-your-face thing would deduct like 4 hours per second.
And we really can't afford that.
Trust me. That's good to be aware of one's cheer allottment. I mean, imagine if he went into negative cheer: the active hostility toward the idea of giving, the burning of santa in effigy, the taunting of fresh-faced children, the kicking of reindeer. The gifting of a talking South Park Towelly doll that does not, amongst its other articulations, say "You guys wanna get high?" ... The Karl Marx doll that warns against commodity fetishism ... The urge to see what the Christmas tree would look like on fire... Course that just comes with the "being a guy" territory. BTDT... once sorta by accident and once delibratly! It's defintly a guy thing.
"hey dude, figure if we double the voltage on the tree lights from 12 to 24 volts, they'll maybe glow twice as bright?"
"Dunno, go for it and lets see!"
KA-POW!!BANG! *burn*crackle*
"Ummm...guess not! Hey, where'd I put those marshmellows? S'mors anyone?" The key is to convince him to get christmas gifts before the expendature of cheer. Personally, I think the sooner the holiday cheer is allocated, the happier we will all be. Still, if you need to temporarily increase cheer production, you can have him watch Friday After NextHey, being a Grinch at Christmas makes me really happy!
I mean, you have any idea how infrequntly I get a really good excuse to break out the boiling oil and the flame throwers? And yet, at Christmas, one has Carol Singers!
Dude! Targets that come to you! And they stand there, asking to be immolated...
And then you can roast chestnuts on the embers!
Makes my cheer levels go soaring I tell ya!
Hmm, I see that cheer involves some complicated maths.
Cheer appears to be both positively and negatively correlated with annoyance, depending on whether annoyance leads to violence (resulting in emotional release and an increase in cheer) or if it leads to total breakdown and shutdown of mental faculties (resulting in negative cheer). This assumes that conspicuous displays of holiday spirit result in annoyance, but I think that is a fair assumption.
I think this really needs to be graphed. Preferably, using the quadratic formula. I am SO stealing Charlie's formula. I will have to admit that I smiled (and yes it hurt...) reading the responses so I guess I'll have to make a token deposit in the Cheer account. While I don't think it would be a good idea to burn carolers to death, I will most likely kick them in the junk, smileandlaugh, and ask them: "Where's your'e f'n Christmas sprit now!" This and making the old lady at WalMart load a bunch of heavy shite into my vehicle until I hear something snap (on the old woman, not my vehicle) will go a long way towards making me happy.
Christmas sucks and should only occur once every 5 years.
Charlie |
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