A Christmas Clean-Up

raincoaster reporting for Christmas Cleanup duty

raincoaster reporting for Christmas Cleanup duty

Note: Bloggers may be larger than they appear in amusing holiday-themed kitchenwear.

There’s a certain element of bloodthirstiness to many of the holiday celebrations, isn’t there?

Yes, there is. Shut up.

Think about it; who’d be celebrating Christmas now if Jesus hadn’t died young? If he’d quietly expired at the age of 70 or so, surrounded by children, grand-children, and great-grand-children? Nobody, that’s who. You can’t be a martyr without the sticky ending; just ask James Dean. And where there’s bloodshed, sooner or later, there is gonna be an underpaid member of a visible minority with a mop and a pail cleaning up that shit.

This post is about that. Where there’s Christmas Bloodshed, eventually there will be Christmas Cleaning Crews. As I am spending this pre-Christmas day cleaning up the place I’ve been house and pet sitting for the imminent return of The Owners, who clearly have higher house standards than I’m used to (a warming drawer for plates? Does even Goopy Paltrow have one of those?) I thought I would procrastinate by blogging about the process.

I guess digging under sinks to find cleaning products and figuring out what they are each supposed to do has an element of present-opening about it. Or at least it’s akin to digging through the bowl of assorted candies to find the green jellybeans and the licorice allsorts. Only if you get it wrong, you don’t just spit it into your napkin; you get to replace the hardwood floor. So, SUSPENSE! BLOODSHED! Back to the topic…

Remember that old seasonal classic The Night Santa Went Crazy, by Weird Al? Sure you do. In case you forget, here’s a claymation video to remind you.

Sure, sure, who doesn’t love a picturesque serial killer with a mysterious backstory, eh? But did you ever think about the poor clean-up elves who had to go in afterwards and sanitize the crime scene so it could be properly staged by the bored housewife the real estate agent hired to make it look saleable? Didja? Well, you’re about to.

There’s a game.

Seriously. It used to be simple: if you could imagine it, there was porn of it. Now we must be all wanked out, because if you can think of it nowadays, there’s a game of it.

Behold Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa’s Rampage edition.

Tragedy! Santa; the toy giving folk-hero, and purveyor of fine Christmas goods, has had enough. Endless requests from greedy children wanting more and more every year, tax increases, pressure from elf unions, bills, reindeer!
It is your duty, as an employee of Polar Sanitation Inc, to clean up the grizzly aftermath of Santa’s bloody rampage. Elves, reindeer and ruined masonry from Santa’s brief breakdown are all strewn across his famous workshop.
So don your cap, grab your mop, and get this place sorted out so the company can get a replacement in here ASAP, and restore Christmas for another generation!

Can’t imagine what that would look like? Thanks to YouTuber PewDiePie you don’t have to. He’s got a game run-through that would make Freddy Krueger proud.

Laura WAS decorating the Christmas tree...in a sense

Laura WAS decorating the Christmas tree…in a sense

Santa: the untold truth

He’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma nailed like jelly to the wall, and pinned down like mercury with a fork. What’s the truth about old St. Nick?

IS AMERICA READY FOR THIS?

Well, as I’m not American, I couldn’t care less.

The fact is, Santa Claus is a black man.

And the fact is, we’re closing in on his actual identity.

Snoop Claus

Snoop Claus

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein!

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein is not exactly the Brady Bunch

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein is not exactly the Brady Bunch

The only horrible thing about this show is that it eventually got cancelled.

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein was a kid’s show started back in 1971, and done out of the rust belt town of Hamilton, Ontario. The rubber-faced Billy Van was the star and pretty much the whole cast, and a damn fine cast it was, too. Apparently special guest star Vincent Price shot all his work for the entire series in four days. The show also boasted production values that would have embarrassed Doctor Who; imagine trying to bring to life an acid trip using a wardrobe you peeled off a drunken Hamiltonian Goth, some old macrame planters, a fright wig, and some coloured light gels. And doing it for kids. While dressed as a vampire who is exiled to Canada until he can somehow gather the strength of character to actually frighten someone OR reanimate a corpse-monster, and so earn his way back into Transylvania.

This show, people? This show is my Rosebud.

This is how I learned Grammar, for example.

And you wonder why I’m a little fucked up.

Two Christmas Stories

Darwin and Charlie Brown

Darwin and Charlie Brown

It’s a Christmas Tradition on the ol’ raincoaster blog to re-post this, the greatest Christmas story ever told (sorry, Jesus!): A Christmas Story, by Sarban. It is long, but if I can spend several hours typing it in, you can take an hour or less to read it. I recommend accompanying it with a bottle of Zubrowka and a box of Kleenex.

UPDATE: here is a link to the story that actually WORKS!

A Christmas Story
By Sarban (John W. Wall)

I will tell you a Christmas story. I will tell it as Alexander Andreievitch Masseyev told it me in his little house outside the walls of Jedda years ago one hot, damp Christmas Eve….

For our second selection, we have the entirely awesome Simon Callow reading one of Charles Dickins’ non-cloying stories, “The Christmas Tree,” a marvellous, metaphorical memoir. I’ve stolen this one from the Guardian.

Christmas Presence 2012

Anonymous Santa

Anonymous Santa

I’m a little late getting into the Christmas spirit this year, partly because I missed my traditional opening to the Christmas Season, Christmas at Hycroft, thanks to the month-long Death Flu of Death flu that sent me to the hospital a couple of times instead of to the mall to see Santa like normal. But today at Starbucks I did indulge myself in a new Christmas album of jazz/lounge standards, of which I have an extensive collection, and I’m taking this as the official start of the season. It’ll sit nicely between my Ren & Stimpy Christmas Album and that one by the Gospel singer with the incredibly moving voice who was convicted of beating his wife.

But there’s one Christmas tradition that never gets old for me: pimping out my Christmas List to tens of thousands of people on social media, in the vague hope that one or more of them will weaken and buy me something. So without further ado, here is what I want, and how and when I want it.

That has never worked for me on OK Cupid, so I might as well try it here.

  • a pony. I’m fat now, Santa, so make it a sturdy Welsh Cob or Connemara pony.
  • a new hat, to replace the one that got stolen, my lamented and loved Official Indiana Jones Stetson which I bought on the very last day that Woodwards was open.
  • Chanel Allure perfume
  • Viktor & Rolf Spice Bomb perfume
  • any of Biella Coleman’s books or books about WikiLeaks except Julian Assange’s Cypherpunks, which I already have
  • an MP3 player, preferably an iPod Touch (used is fine) so I can get back into running without getting bored out of my mind
  • iPhone and a Virgin plan, because of all the places I’ve tried Virgin is the ONLY company that always has great service
  • this digital pen
  • a nice roomy winter coat
  • some high heels, size eight, since all mine got stolen
  • a charm bracelet, since mine got stolen
  • any silver table doodads, since mine got stolen. Pickle forks, tea strainers, you name it: I love it. And I used to have it. And it’s cheap.
  • wine tumblers
  • silverware
  • Harry Potter books, to replace all of mine were stolen
  • DVDs, to replace mine that were stolen, particularly fitness DVDs
  • Socks, yes really.

And I would like them all to be properly wrapped, thank you very much. Watch carefully as Aunt Chippy shows you how it’s done.