It's not even Thanksgiving and I'm already sick of the Christmas marketing and advertising. I can't believe stores are actually opening on Thanksgiving day. What about the poor employees? When I was a kid my family never really went all out for Christmas. We had a tree with lights and when I was under five it was even a real tree. Now I think artificial trees are environmental friendly but Dad got our artificial tree back then because it was practical. They hadn't exactly perfected artificial tree technology yet. Not that I'm complaining - my best girlfriend had one of those foil stick trees with a light shining on it. I can't even find a picture of it on the web - it was a seventies thing. Our tree was cutting edge for the day - it was a wire cone with plastic pine needles that actually tried to look like a real tree. I am the youngest child and came along many years after my next oldest sibling. I don't know if Mom and Dad had more energy and Christmas spirit when they were younger, but after I came along it was a wreath on the door and that was it. We had a fake tree but a live wreath. Don't ask me about the logic.

How many trees are sacrificed to stuff my mailbox full of catalogs? At least old Christmas trees can be chipped into mulch after the holidays. Who really enjoys fighting for parking spaces and elbowing through the crowds for a sweater? I'd really like to give gifts from Heifer Project International but I'm sure that would go over poorly with the nieces and nephews. I may just be jaded by years of working in retail. I used to do merchandise and window displays - we started the Christmas decorations in August and had to have it ready to go by the end of the back to school rush. Then there was the year I worked security and apprehended a shoplifter about a week before Christmas. She maced me right in front of all the kids waiting to see Santa and proceeded to attempt to assault me. What I did after she maced me wasn't considered an assault, THAT was self defense. She only made me mad and I won.

[ I remember getting a call that Sunday: "Can I speak to Fred? Uhm, yeah, Sarah's been hurt, and I think she'd like you to come down." After breaking many traffic laws, seeing an ambulance and several police cars outside the store with lights flashing, rushing in knocking old ladies and little children out of my way as i made it to the break room, I found Sarah laying across several chairs with paramedics holding one of those IV bags over her. Talk about a freak out moment. Thankfully, it wasn't an IV, it was saline solution, and they were washing the mace off of her face. From personal experience I will tell you that nothing upsets you more than someone you love getting attacked. I refused to let her work Security after that ^_^ - piro]

What's really sad is that the assault charges were only a misdemeanor. She only did jail time because she stole over $250 worth of merchandise which was a felony. Merry Merry Christmas.

I don't 'bah humbug' Christmas, I just think it has all become too commercial. Rudolf the Reindeer was created by Montgomery Wards as a Christmas advertising campaign! (Wards went bankrupt. Ha ha ha. I worked for them and predicted that.) There just isn't even time to enjoy Christmas anymore.

I found a very 'l33t' site. Dirk. The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things. At least one Megatokyo fan has visited and added Piro. I could get seriously addicted to making connections.

I recently found out that in a six degrees of separation kind of way that Piro and I are only 4 and 5 degrees of separation from Tolkien. My supervisor at work had a professor who was a student of Tolkien's at Oxford. That must put us only 5 and 6 degrees of separation away from the Queen of England. I wonder how many degrees of separation I am from Legolas? Soulful sigh. I am trying to get Piro to grow his hair long like either his or Gandalf's. Either one, I don't care which. Then I could sew him a tunic and some leggings. It can't be any harder than the tri-color appliqued Neko costume with hat and shoes I had to design myself.

Anyone seen the new T-Mobile commercial with the librarian looking up the lyrics to Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me? If I'd been on the reference desk I could have answered that off the top of my head but yet again the librarian is an older lady with glasses and a rather severe hair style. And while a huge percentage of librarians are due to retire in the next 5-7 years (hopefully!) most of these ladies could take the young computer and software guys apart and eat them for breakfast. Librarians are extremely l33t and they are out there protecting everyone's privacy and rights to free, unrestricted access to information. For more reasons to worship librarians, see the Librarian Avengers [we pulled the actual hyperlink because we were worried about slashdotting her poor website. we'll put the link back when its off the front page, or you can check the source for the url - sorry erica! - piro] webpage, which is the creation of one of my classmates. You may even find a mention of Megatokyo and Seraphim in her blog…