THE GREAT GADFLY:

If I Can't Buy My Mom A DVD Caddy, Then The Terrorists Have Already Won

I know I'm living in a depressed economy and I've been stuck in an underpaying, demeaning temp job for the past six months and it got so bad that this Halloween someone complimented me on my costume and said "hey, you're the kid from the cover of the Les Mis soundtrack! Awesome costume idea!" and I would have told the person that it wasn't a costume, but I couldn't make my gums quit bleeding....BUT:

I'm going to get into the Christmas spirit this year if it kills me, YOU GOT THAT?! DO YOU HEAR ME?!

I'm not fucking around this year.

This weekend is going to be about picking out the Christmas cards - I want fancy ones. I want everyone to know I went into bankruptcy because I did not scrimp with the season's goddamn greetings this year. Fuck it. I want ColorForms and little light up things and I want music to play when you open the damn thing - "Paranoid Android" - the WHOLE SONG...to hell with it, I want the cards to play all of "OK Computer", from beginning to end, and I will pay good money to have Thom Yorke himself co-sign my Christmas cards. I WANT TO STUFF A LIVE MEMBER OF RADIOHEAD INTO EACH OF THE CARDS I SEND THIS YEAR, and when I run out of Radiohead members to send....uh....I'll start sending guys from the Beta Band or something, I dunno.

I am going to remember everyone who has done something nice for me this year, and I'm finally going to do something nice back. And all the people who have done something nice just by BEING nice, well, I got all y'all in the crosshairs too. I have some serious CD burning to do, at the very least. I have to make my annual "Best Of" compilation of most-loved tuneage released in 2002. I started this with a religious determination last year, though I have a graveyard of old Maxell tapes documenting musical obsession playlists of years past. I also want to make a Christmas compilation for giftie-treats, and decorate the actual CDs like Christmas cookies. God, how heartwarming.

I think I will mail my enemies a little miniature dollhouse pine tree and a box of matches. Maybe a bonus log of yuletide poo.

O holy crap, I shall make lists. I shall buy little festive tags and bows. I shall smother everything in green and red glitter. You thought I might have had Christmas spirit in the past? (I haven't.) Oh, you better step outta the way this year, BECAUSE I'M FESTIVE AS HELL NOW.

I want to bake tins of holiday cookies for my co-workers, but unfortunately my oven doesn't exactly work. It's one of those things I just haven't explored with my landlord out of the dread implicit in his dispatching the scary toothless bandanda-headband man to come chain-smoke in my apartment and fix my oven by wedging a nickel in there somewhere or just replacing it altogether with something ugly and butterscotch colored and dented from the '70s that my landlord bought for cheep in some skeevy auction. My current stove is old and cute and the stovetop works and I have a microwave. I live alone. I can make do without an oven.

BUT GOD DAMN IT ALL, I WILL MAKE CHRISTMAS COOKIES.

There have to be a wide variety of no-bake cookie recipes available for me to explore. Are there any cookies that you can fry? Fried cookies? I can sure as shit fry me up some cookies, no problem there. But then I guess they wouldn't be cookies. They'd be, like, fritters or something. What about taffy? Can't I make me some taffy? I have some marshmallows and some curry - I can make some spicey curried taffy. Oh, I'll be the talk of my temp job. They will love me. And unlike me, they have medical benefits, so there's no excuse for the fuckers not to eat up.

I'm pathetic. One day soon, I'll be ranting about living in a van down by the river. Ugh.

I only want to do something involving those edible silver sprinkle balls. Oh I love those things. They chip teeth, but they're precious. Maybe I'll top some fried tofu strips with some of those pretty silver sugar balls. That sounds pretty festive.

I want to kick it old skool this year - none of that hippie bullshit "oh Christmas is about love and sharing" hoo-ha. NO! This year, I celebrate the holidays in MATERIAL POSSESSIONS. I am weighing my love for those nearest and dearest in MERCHANDISE. If I can't afford to get you a numbered, limited edition, hand-crafted Janis Joplin action figure carved out of soapstone and featuring a bonus pendant made from shards of an actual Southern Comfort bottle toted about by ol' Pearl herself, then dammit, I have no business being your friend. NONE.

Oh, and the electronics I will buy you all for Christmas - the digital cameras and high-quality scanners and CARS. Yes, oh God yes, CARS!!! Fleets of 'em! With those big shiny red car ribbons on top like they have in the commercials!

I just have to wait for the check to roll in. You know. The one from the publisher. Unless, you know, the advance for my debut album, "Exile in Gayville", comes through soon. But then, I should be getting paid for that column I'm gonna start doing for Rolling Stone magazine pretty soon - the one they haven't gotten around to okaying. You know. That one.

You see, this thirteen dollar an hour temp job I've been at for the past seven months has simply been a ruse for the many monumental pop-cultural guru Things Of Greatness I have secretly been negotiating. I just do editorial assistant work to keep me humble, kinda like when a post-fame Andy Kaufman worked in a diner or when Laurie Anderson worked part-time at a McDonald's a couple of years ago. I just have an unquenchable need to keep it real, see.

So get ready to receive some hardcore Christmas BLING-BLING in your stocking and under your tree this year - that is, if you can allow curried taffy, fried tofu santas and psychobilly Christmas compilations to be considered "bling bling".

Sigh. Kiki said it best: Sometimes I feel just like Mary's donkey.