Christmas Time Is Here

anyone who knows me knows that i love christmas. i LOVE christmas. i fucking love it.

so you better believe i'm gonna blog about it. below you'll find everything you need to make this christmas better than last christmas (or at the very least, better than "last christmas")

alright, let's get down to business. the first thing anyone needs to make the yuletide gay (yeah, i said it) is a collection of sweet tunes. one option for the christmas 2.0 generation is an internet radio station, and for this i'm gonna recommend b101 from philadelphia (thanks for the tip, libby). if u play for keeps, you can pick up a halfway decent christmas collection anywhere or virtually anywhere (internet!) this time of year. there is, however, one disc that rises above the others, if mostly in concept and album art:

home alone christmas. i guess this is a soundtrack of sorts to home alone, my favorite movie ever by far, but it's more of a materialization of everything the culkin christmas stands for. my only qualms (which, i should add are rendered completely irrelevant by the sweet hand painted album art) are the lack of "jingle bell rock," and the inclusion of tlc's unbelievably horrible version of "sleigh ride."

so now your home sounds like christmas but does it smell like christmas? if it smells closer to a combination of 32oz miller high life bottles and open ramen noodle flavor packets, this next one's for you.

santa scents. with six fragrances to choose from, you'll smell more like christmas than a nordstrom's floor manager. the website says that all the fragrances come from "highly concentrated extracts from the aromatic parts of herbs, flowers, trees, grains, spices and powders," which makes me a little curious where the "santa baby" scent comes from... scents also come in 3/4 oz. roll-on form, in case you want to make your private parts smell like mrs. c's cookies for the holidays. enjoy responsibly.

next on the list is santa claus. you cannot have christmas without santa. but how do you know you're getting the right santa? well, let me put your worries at ease, because such a santa has found me- or rather, my coworker sally. she was on a catalog press check in chicago and happened to be staying at a hotel next door to a santa convention. a SANTA CONVENTION. needless to say she received many a business card from an out-of-town santa that weekend, but one especially poorly designed card caught her attention enough to share with me...

...well we can't find the card itself anymore but here's the poorly designed website that recreates the experience as best it can.

as you can see, a real santa knows the real reason for the season: PRAYING. if praying ain't up your alley (and i'm jewish so i feel you there), just check out his credentials and you'll be convinced that it's a compromise you're wiling to bear:

Charter Member: Just Be Claus.Net
Member: Amalgamated Order Of Real Bearded Santas
Member: Santa America
President: Santa Claus & Company
Honors Graduate: Santa Claus University

he is an HONORS GRADUATE of SANTA CLAUS UNIVERSITY. you simply cannot get better than that. so book him for your fishing club's annual holiday gala and never look back. instead, look here: further santa investigation opens up an american subculture trumped only by furries and juggalos in absurdity/creepyness. there's website for the amalgamated order of real bearded santas, which does a decent job of reminding you that, "real bearded gentlemen always make the best santas. especially when they are wearing the appropriate vests."
delving further still, i hit the motherload- the aorbs FORUM. here you can talk about anything related to beards, santas, or bearded santas (it's creepy- there is a section solely dedicated ventriloquism, ok?) word of warning- once you start exploring the forum, you may find it very difficult to return to the normal world.

now, as i leave for the holidays, some of you may be thinking... christmas? but wasn't it just hanukkah? and isn't asher jewish? and why didn't he do a cartoon instead of this post? and what about kwanzaa? for those of you asking these questions, i'm not even going to bother answering them. MERRY CHRISTMAS.