Who ordered the scrambled brains?

Like any aimless writer, I have a list of things I’d like to explore through writing. Actually, I have four lists: one on my desktop, one on my laptop, one stored in Yahoo! Notepad, and one on a real life notepad on my real life desktop. But I preempt those fascinating seeds of knowledge, each one a tome, a treasure, a universe in itself, to write about an illness of the mind to which I have today succumbed.

I got a fever, and the only prescription… is Christmas. (Loosely adapted from that one SNL sketch about golden diapers or something.) It’s September, and I have Christmas Fever. I keep imagining overcast weather, walking around my apartment freezing, sitting on a cold toilet seat and needing to turn on the heater and then smelling the dust burning on it’s coils. I keep thinking about early nights and seeing the shiny cheap tinsel bought with taxpayer dollars on all the street lamps. The excitement and stress of buying presents on my credit card; thank god(s) my credit score is out of the double-digits. “Now is this the doodad that has elements of both my quirky interests and so-and-so’s less quirky interests? …Yes, it is! I’ll be adored and admired forever!”

Going to family gatherings, the only time of year I’ll see stuffed, roasted turkey, mashed potatos and gravy, baked ham, cranberry gelatenous stuff, and apple pie alongside lumpia, pancit, some dish featuring sayote, casava, adobo, sinigang, kare kare, lichon and my personal favorite, dinuguan. It’s the only time I’ll ever smell all of that at the same time too; the smells combine to form some sort of super-smell. Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, orange wreaths, sugar cookies, ginger cookies, and those ones with the Hershey’s Kiss smashed into the middle. Old Christmas tapes my dad made… And Christmas music, popular and classical! My family gave me great memories associated with Christmas.

This year I think it’d be nice to host some sort of Christmas gathering at my apartment. An artificial Christmas tree littered with the 200 pack of blue bulbs for $1.99 from Target. Balcony adorned with the 2000 pack of blue bulbs for (everyone together now) $1.99 from Target. Heat some Trader Joe’s turkey pot pies, maybe some Trader Jose’s black bean and soy chorizo taquitos for appetizers–no, I mean, for “hors d’eurves.” And play my Starbuck’s Christmas CD, entitled A Merry Affair. Merry, indeed, I’d say! Cap the night by caravaning to the local Coldstone for dessert.

Seeing my breath condense in the crisp atmosphere in front of me, like when I used to blow fake smoke from a fake cigarette I was smoking. Brrr! I cannot wait.

Dedicated to Tom McGranahan. Happy Birthday, dad! Thank you for so much.

Audio of this entry. (MP3) New version as of 4:56pm PDT. In the original, I sounded way too much like Ira Glass!

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