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My own December rituals have about as much to do with J. Christ as they do with a couple magic candles so I consider there to be nothing rude about me suddenly talking about the Christ-mass on the first night of Hanukkah.

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I have at two recent occasions temporarily left my home for the purpose of Krissmiss “shopping,” in which I stand around in stores and do not buy anything.

That is generally not my goal from the start, I simply do not know what anybody wants and I hate receiving gifts I don’t want, and I hate pretending they’re sort of good because then I risk getting them again. Surely other people hate this as well and I don’t want to put them through it. I hate spending money anyway. The real reason I go out is because I remember I used to greatly enjoy just going to malls in December and am looking to revisit that even though I hate snow, stress, every Christmas song and unquestioned, arbitrary bad traditions exploited in horrid marketing. Worse, these days I am so meticulous and have so many thoughts piled up that I can’t possibly express my individual annoyances here in a way I find satisfactory.

What this came from is surely one of the worst ads ever made and yet I’m too busy to say anything about it and too horrified to look at it long enough to think of anything to say beyond that it’s obscene and creepy. Maybe, sometimes, that’s enough.

But I was talking about buying things (things other than what is being advertised there, whatever it is)! It is a process one must devote considerable resources to.

It is never easy to find the perfect gift for the limbless gay spiderman in your life. This shopping, I am not good at it. I get the impression that nobody particularly enjoys it, but they know how to do it. My mother, for example, went to three different stores yearning to purchase the right martini glasses for an acquaintance american. I, however, lack the internal programming to detect when a person requires new martini glasses. My mother also took an opportunity to explain the difference between martini and margarita glasses. And that is all fine and decent, but I wonder how the glasses know what’s in them. And then I wonder if they get offended when stores stuff them with shiny balls instead of their liquid soulmates.

Me (hello!), I place all my imbibable substances in the same cylinder of glass, and they’re usually water. If I need something else just about any other tube I deem to be of adequate capacity will suffice. I am not opposed to having two different liquids occupy the same space within close chronosensible proximity to each other. I consider myself rather an anti-residue activist, but that generally regards the residue of other things in other places; partially removed tags with clothing, unconvincing mayonnaise, butter, whipped cream removal* substituted for mayonnaise, butter, whipped cream prevention, anything which has touched milk, the normal stuff. If it’s something I put in my mouth in a place where no mouths have gone I am surprisingly tolerable. Have fun with that sentence.

*these things cannot be removed convincingly

When I venture externally from my ramshackle ransack shack, there is a glass bottle which previously contained a different, snapply substance that I place my water in and I refill it when things start to get empty. It is replaced easily enough if anybody asks me if I wash it.

I don’t know why I even talk to you sometimes.