 |
|
The Colors of Christmas
Santa's most recent image change was in a really nifty commercial for WestJet Airlines in which a group of unsuspecting travelers are given Christmas presents they innocently asked for prior to their takeoff. One of the things that struck me about the charming ad was that Santa was attired not in his traditional red and white sleighing outfit, but a blue and white kit to coordinate with the colors of the WestJet Airlines logo. I loved the palette alteration because it made Santa seem just a little more inclusive of all people as opposed to just those who celebrate the birth of a child in a manger and, even if he was still an elderly white man, the costume change seemed like a step in the right direction of allowing everyone to feel they like they had a little bit of ownership in the Christmas spirit. A great man once said "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." A nice move towards that sentiment is to make everybody feel equally welcome at the party whether they're white, black, yellow, red, or even blue. I don't know if Santa can make that happen in five days but it would certainly be a Merry Christmas if he could.
Stephanie Fredricks, who used the Bitstrips Facebook application (in which you make homemade cartoons containing caricatures of you and your friends) to make a comic of herself shooting a gun at a computer bearing the caption "Stephanie is tired of receiving porn from Jon Mullich."I have, in fact, never sent Ms. Fredricks any porn (jealously keeping everything I download for myself) but I replied in kind with a cartoon of my own in which Ms. Fredricks is viewing said porn while preparing to rub one out with a cucumber as she fantasizes about being in bed with me. The comic got a predictable number of responses from civic leaders and the clergy, most of whom wanted to know how I got the cucumbers in a Bitstrips cartoon. To them I say that a magician never reveals the secret of his tricks but if Ms. Fredricks and her cronies are anxious for any phallic-shaped vegetables to add some comic relief to their own online libel, they're welcome to reach up my ass and pick some. It might add a little bit of flavor to those idiotic Bitstrips cartoons |
 |
Santa Claus. An acquaintance of mine posted on his Facebook wall "Only 5 days!!! What are you hoping Santa brings you for Christmas??" To be honest, I already have enough crap weighing me down and I figure Saint Nick has problems of his own without worrying about what kind of inflatable sex toy to stick under my tree. His most recent controversy sprang from Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly who smugly announced that Santa is a white man, along with Jesus and presumably God. What Ms. Kelly and her white supremacist followers fail to realize is that Kris Kringle has been a continually evolving character since he first sprang on the scene, when he was able to fit down chimneys because he was actually a tiny elf (in the timeless poem "A Visit from Saint Nicolas" aka "The Night Before Christmas," it's often glossed over that Santa rides around in "a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer") and he wasn't depicted as a full-sized white man until he appeared in ads for Coca Cola in the 1930s.
My nemesis Misty LaRue. It was my birthday on Sunday, which meant the inevitable landslide of tributes (mostly in the form of gifts of alcohol, which I hasten to remind you are still being accepted with enthusiasm) including the one of the left from Ms. LaRue. It is a card LaRue that she bought off the shelf at Target bearing the sentiment "Men like you - strong black men- who live their lives with integrity, who walk the walk, seek their dreams and share their talents." I knew at a glance that the yammering yenta meant the card sarcastically because there's no chance in hell that she would ever refer to me as living my life with integrity or any of that other complimentary stuff. As far as being a "strong black man,"since I am one of the whitest individuals who ever walked the planet, I can only assume that she intended the card as a joke. Either that, or she has an African American friend who celebrates his birthday the same day as I do and the cards got mixed up. If that's the case, I would have given anything to see the look on his face when he opened his card from her and read a message addressed to a pathetic white man who she can't stand and once liked but now has no respect for. You might think Target wouldn't keep many of those in stock but they're actually found in the "Recently Divorced" section.
Rob Vestal. It is the storied tradition of celebrating my birthday for my admirers to provide me with gifts of alcohol. Mr. Vestal, best known to my readers for his characterization of the comic book villain The Dick, thumbed his nose at this hallowed ritual by giving me a six-pack of non-alcoholic beer. What Mr. Vestal fails to realize is that I drink so that I can try to forget people like Rob Vestal, so when I see a bunch of near beer on my kitchen counter cruelly mocking me because I've consumed all the liquor in the house and I can either drink it or suck on the frost collecting on the interior of my 1967 model Maytag refrigerator, I am apt to curse his name while I'm choking down the buzzless liquefied hops and barley he left me with. It might do something for extending the life of my liver but it does nothing to helping me forget that I know Rob Vestal. And isn't that what birthdays are all about? 
Bro Joe, who attended a costume part in which the rules were that you had to be attired in something of a Christmas theme and in which no "normal"clothes could be showing. He took the opportunity to dress as Santa's "naughty and nice"list and painstakingly found out the names of everyone who would be in attendance and listed them in one of the two columns. The plan backfired on Joe when everyone who was named on the "nice"list expressed outrage that they would be categorized in such a Pollyannaish fashion, apparently not realizing that one received the "nice"ranking for things like being polite to one's elders and getting good grades in school, and not for abstaining from sodomistic three-ways. Joe took the abuse from the miscategorized partygoers with good grace, no doubt earning him a place on the real Santa "nice" list. It will hopefully be just what he needs to get the present he's hoping for this Christmas: a sodomistic three-way. That's the kind of naughty that I call nice.