Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the drawves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho.
Ho.
Ho.

--Neil Gaiman





...Merry Christmas, folks.

Testing

Tomorrow I will finally be purchasing my long-awaited digital camera from my cousin, so I thought it might be a good idea to actually set up my umich webspace so that I can post pictures to LJ, something I've been putting off for ages because, hey, what's the point of being able to post pics when i don't have a digital camera, right? But since I figure I will be taking copious amounts of photos in the near future (hey, I'll be home alone with 30 pages to write and a shiny new toy to play with, what choice will I have?), it seems that the time has finally come. Accordingly, I just DLed a SFTP client, figured out how to use SSH through Terminal, set up my umich webspace, and uploaded my very first image... all by myself. I feel like a proud wannabe computer geek right now. Anyway, here's a gratuitous photo to make sure I did everything right:

A very minimalist Christmas to you...

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but Christmas really doesn't matter in my family anymore. I mean, it's still one of the three times a year (the other two being Thanksgiving and Easter) that my "extended family," such as it is, gathers together... but for the past few years--since I left for college, certainly, but really even since high school--the gift-giving part has just sort of faded into the background. Usually I ask my mom for something specific in the $40-$50 range, and she gets that for me plus one or two little extras. This year it was the West Wing season one DVD set and some really fancy girlie bath and body works body wash stuff. The only gift I bought this year was for my mom-- gift cards to Borders and Bath and Body Works (she's obsessed with that place for some reason). I'm not even sure whether we're exchanging gifts with my aunts and uncles this year-- last I heard, my mom had talked them into getting gifts for the kids at least, but I don't even know whether I technically qualify as a kid anymore, being 22 and all. We'll see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a gift card to Best Buy to go towards either a tripod for the digital camera (which I'm finally getting from my cousin today! *bounce*) or the long-awaited, much-belated webcam... but it won't be the end of the world if I get a different gift card, or nothing at all. As I discovered with my iPod, if I want something badly enough, I'm more than capable of saving up the money and buying it myself.

There's something about Christmas that has bothered me for a long time. Just... the hypocrisy, the consumerism, the completely secular celebration of what is supposed to be a religious holiday, all the usual reasons that Scrooges like me usually give. In the end, it probably just goes back to that Christmas in 11th grade when I went to a ridiculous amount of trouble and expense buying really thoughtful gifts for all my friends, and no one got me anything. In any case, my family's Christmas minimalism really doesn't bother me. I'm glad that I'm self-sufficient enough to buy myself gifts if I really want them, glad that my family understands that you can love someone without having to spend money on them.

That being said, it'd be nice to have some help paying for the $300 digital camera I'm about to buy. Oh well.

Happy Generic Winter Holiday, everyone!