On The Christmas Spirit

I generally try to resist getting into the groove of the Christmas spirit for as long as I possibly can. When I went to the mall a week after Halloween and saw Santa entertaining a long line of children, I nearly had a meltdown.

I heard White Christmas on the radio in July. I know that it was a joke, but it still caused my blood to boil momentarily.However, the lights are now up on my house, the cards have begun to arrive and presents have now officially been purchased.

I found myself crooning along to Elvis as he sang about a Blue Christmas on my way home from the gym today.

I looked in wonderment at some of the decorations on the homes around mine.

I had a thought today that seeing the tree in Rockefeller Center would be the highlight of my month.

So despite all of my resistance, it's official:

It's going to be a Haastile Christmas indeed.

On Drinking

Let's face it kids, alcohol is a part of a our culture, it's a part of our souls.

Whether you love them, hate them, or are completely indifferent to them, alcoholic beverages shape a person's daily life in way that sometimes aren't even noticeable.

Say for instance that you go out on a weeknight, get totally hammered and then arrive late for work the next day and you lose your job. Exhibit A.

Or maybe you go to your local watering hole, and end up seeing the girl that you always had a crush on in high school. Her looks have faded slightly over the years, but hey, she's still a fox. After several mind-erasing cocktails, you end up having a wonderful and consensual tryst that evening. You wake up refreshed and full of life. Step 2.

Or it could be that your father was a raging alcoholic, nasty, abusive, and vicious. And that is the reason why you refuse to ever consume even a drop of the poisonous liquid. What do we have behind door number three?

In my case, it's kind of a mix of all three.

My dad's a drinker, not a nasty one or anything, but he can put them away. There was once a time when I considered him an alcoholic, and he probably was. But it didn't faze me at the time.

But then my formative years passed and I grew stupid. I partied nightly, drank heavily, cavorted with the ladies I now call "biddies." Frankly, I made horrible decisions.

I've had some hellacious hangovers. Ones that kept me in bed for days. On the verge of alcohol poisoning at least once.

Then I consider my role models.

My dad. A drinker.

Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemingway, my favorite writers. Heavy drinkers.

Hell even Humphrey Bogart (my favorite all-time actor) was a drinker in a bunch of his movies.

So that brings us to me. A surefire alcohol enthusiast?

Not anymore.

I'll enjoy a drink now and again these days. But my days of hard partying and stupidity are far behind me. And all it took was waking up one morning looking at myself in the mirror and not liking the person looking back at me. It was at that moment that I vowed to never be that person again.

Oh sure, I've had fun since then, but it's been a long time since that day.

And I've never once looked back or regretted it.

On Reading

I was just reminiscing, and I remembered that one of my fondest memories of my childhood was trekking to the public library one a week with my mom.

I loved the excitement of picking out different books, and increasing my skill level of reading as I went along. I was reading long chapter books by the time I was six.

Hell, later in life I even worked at that same public library for two years in high school all the way into my first year if college.

So it was with a bit of surprise last week that I realized that not only did I no longer have a library card, I had not actually been to the library in roughly six years.

I went last week, picked up a new card, and am now making a solemn vow to myself to read more.

I actually do like reading, as befits an English major. I like reading novels, plays, poems.

Not textbooks though, that's just a waste of time.

But I was a little bit let down when, in the course of last Sunday's trips to two local libraries, I saw absolutely not one child at the library picking out a book.

Sure, there were tons of kinds picking out DVD's or videos, but not books. It didn't hit me until just now, but that's really a travesty.

It's funny that at my age I'm starting to tell 'When I was a little boy" stories, but I find myself doing it more and more. In addition, I think that girls today dress way too slutty (I know, may the man-law Gods strike me down for saying that), and I will now affectionately refer to them as "biddies." I also think that Americans eat way too much fast food.

And the more people that are younger than me that I come to know, the fewer people there are that actually enjoy reading. Ridiculous.

When I finally find a girl that loves to read, she'll be the one that I marry.

I mean, she has to be a super hottie to boot, but the reading will go a long way too.