I am deep into the waves of Christmas cheer, by which I mean spending far too fucking much money. Mostly for shipping.

The suck part about moving 3,000 miles away from “home” is that occassionally you might want to be in touch with the folks back there. I think UPS anally rapes you with its special holiday packing and shipping. Sure they will guarantee delivery–for a fee.

Happily, only one of my gifts cost less than the shipping.

(By the way, I will say hats off to UPS for being cool with illegal trafficking. I sought to send one of the local products for which Cali is known. The ATF and various other federal and state agencies aren’t real down with bootlegging by mail. The chick at the UPS Store said she would wrap it thoroughly and not write the contents on the package. Rock on, UPS, and your intemperate spirit.)

For M., I’m channeling my mother. In terms of romance, this possession may not be a good thing. But, I’ve been bargain shopping and getting him the most mundane of goodies.

(By the way, if you have a cute, fashionable beau, with a personal sense of style, don’t suggest you were looking to get him Dockers for X-mas. This “jest” will only engender anger and a sense of classic alienation a la adolescence, “You don’t know me at all!”)

Completely unrelated to Christmas (or whatever winter holiday you groove), I have one word for Peter Jackson.

Fucking edit. OK, that’s two words.

Seriously, I enjoyed King Kong (maybe because it was a special date night with a special guy and a couple of glasses of wine and a fine dinner). However, every key scene could have had some time shaved. Stampeding dinosaurs cool, the ape getting all Tae Kwon Do with some raptors, various and sundry scenes of mayhem, chaos and prehistoric rage, all cool. But, dude, as soon as the visual message is sent and received you can move the fuck on to something else.

And, what is the deal with giant scary bugs. It seems like all special effects laden flicks now must have gratuitous, giant, scary, crawly things.

Back to the holidays, in this special time I want to bow my head and give thanks to President G.W. Bush. I’m hoping that his little speech the other night, the one where he basically said, because I’m the president that’s why, will help in his undoing. For fuck’s sake, the guy doesn’t even know Civics 101 and the basic three branches of government, checks and balances thang. We have a Congress, use them.

Finally, a welcome to the Brit guy who posted a few comments. Consider this paragraph my fawning and pandering to the readership of one. (At least til I piss him off or bore him to tears, both of which are well in the realm of the probable.)

I sent this out as our Christmas card this year. I wonder why I haven’t heard from my family.

If I had your address (and even though I don’t) here’s what I wish for each of you. Merry X-mas!

I’m trying hard to fight neuroses at the moment. We just bought a couple of tix to travel east, very far east, like what Pat might have called the Orient. Not to be confused with Orient Heights, which Pat may have had “carfare” to visit.

Yeah, so not my New England home for the holidays, and not my holidays, since the trip will coincide with Chinese New Year and the visit will be to M.’s own kin. You’d think that would be why the knots are mounting and mounding in my gut.

Nope, that would be normal people angst, not the crazy, inexplicable, neurotic irrational shit I seem to favor. I’m all aflutter over the idea of taking a normal vacation. What the fuck, man? I am so pre-conditioned by my last gig, where they constantly acted like it would be impossible for me to leave for days on end (of course, that changed when they asked me to leave for days on end and were shocked when I just left). Anyway, I felt a bit of a throat clear lump of stress whilst emailing the new boss, even though she’s told me it’s cool and is herself never there.

For fuck’s sake, I work in Silicon Valley. Everyone is wired. There are CrackBerry addicts everywhere unable to step away from email or mobile phoning for sure. But, they are work hard/play hard folks who fucking leave town. A lot.

If that atmosphere weren’t enough, I fucking am very much a glorified secretary. ‘Course with charm oozing from my orifices and the kind of stellar intellect that has gotten me into successively less responsible gigs over a 15+ year career trajectory (OK, I admit for a bit the trajectory arced the usual up), they got me doing a wee bit more. But, still and all, they will survive and survive well and surely without my service.

Fuck, I can’t even take a week’s vacation and relax thinking about it.

I need to learn how to breathe.

So, here in Cali some of the news is full of Stanley Tookie Williams and how he’s fixing to die.

Straight out I am anti-death penalty. I think that eye for an eye logic that it’s got going for it is antedeluvian, you know, before the flood, seriously old school. Evolving (yeah, fucking evolution again), evolving as a society means you got to beat weapons to plowshares and find new civilized behaviors.

Chief, then, is not killing in the fucking sacred name of no one. No killing.

Still and all, there’s some tiny reptile part of my brain that’s kind of comfy with Ahnold basically telling his old Venice Beach lifting buddy, “Tough shit, man, you going to die.”

All of the Nobel-prize-nominated reform shit was starting to get on my nerves. You can’t gangland style mow down a few guys and a whole fucking Asian family and be totally a saint. Maybe if you were doing a Joan of Arc soldier for the lord thang, and you, like, had to kill. Maybe, then you are a philosopher, king, statesman, saint and bound for glory.

Co-founder of a huge syndicate of thugs and criminals, though, not a demi-god, not a saviour. Maybe it’s sad and all, the human story, the beginning of a youth looking for a cause and a family, a neighborhood organization to improve his world. Maybe people do change. Maybe his redemption was to have lived to write about his mistakes.

I want everyone on death row granted clemency with life imprisonment but no death penalty. I want prison reform and flawless justice and healthcare and counseling and outreach and addiction assistance and all kinds of just societal shite that would lessen crime and give everyone a chance. I want peace in our time.

Nonetheless, I don’t feel good about deifying stone killers.

Every fucking week I drag my world-weary suspicious self into the old office gig, I am rewarded with another episode of “is this place fucking real or what?”

It is the opposite of all other toil in which I have heretofore participated. Not entirely, ’cause it’s still work and I spend my days in slogging minutia as is typical of an office job. No ones paying me to think great thoughts in my pajamas, which to me would be the definitive “good job.”

Still and all, it mostly doesn’t suck. The other day there was a fire drill. It was a real drill, because they truly needed to test the alarms. And, it turned out the volume didn’t quite make it. But, as the drill happened (and mind you they handed out shit about why it was necessary all community-like and treated folks like grown ups and, as they might say, “stakeholders”) any way as the ring a ding ling a ding warning was subsiding, someone wheeled out a cart of hot coffee and hot cocoa. And, piece de resistance, two fucking different sized marshmallows, man. Mini bitty ones and the classic marshmallow cylinder.

Ain’t that the fucking height of drill luxury. Hot fucking cocoa.

Today, though, my reward was high amusement. For someone who has gotten into shit her whole life for a somewhat bawdy sense of humor, imagine my shock and giddiness over watching a chick hang a poster of the widest variety of condoms I’ve seen. Unfurled in their glory with instructions for use. Quite risque.

Naturally, I walked up to her to announce my disgusted offense at her pro-recreational sex propaganda. She gave me ten condoms each a differen color, flavor or configuration for my troubles.

Fucked up, man. This is my office job.

Last weekend we checked out downtown San Jose’s “Community Giving Tree” and the Christmas in the Park display. It’s actually rather festive. A park full of Christmas trees adopted and decorated by local stores and civic shit and all. Somehow some cash goes to charity.

You know, like the giving, in the giving tree. Shel Silverstein, or anyone tunneling through the time space continuum and arriving here from the 70s, would be so goddamn proud.

Also downtown were not one but two Ferris wheels and displays and treats for the kiddies. My favorites were the thermometer showing a balmy 59 degrees and the multi-culti representation of the Old Lady in a Shoe, apparently, she was a whore who liked men of multiple hues and cultural traditions. The thing that shot “snow” in the form of blown out soap bubbles was fun. M. looked like a five-year-old seeing his first flake.

Anywho, it was so beauteous we had to get our own. M. says it’s his first.