In which I have another lonely Christmas in Mynd
2001-12-24 - 1:53 a.m.

Not long after my last posting, there was an angel ornament that 'broke the trees back', and sent the whole contraption into a suicide run across the floor of the living room. We'll be cleaning needles out of the carpet for a month, but only because everyone will argue about whose turn it is to vacuum. The best part is though...Step-sister managed to get the whole thing captured on digital video.

The cellophane-wrapped huggs were on sale today, so I thought I'd get you one...and went back to buy them in bulk.

I'm told that Alzheimer's can be entertaining during the Easter holiday, but no one ever mentions the pain in the rear that it is at Christmastime. I must have bought two presents for nearly everyone this year, because I kept thinking that I hadn't gotten them anything yet, or had forgotten buying them anything. To compensate for this, I wrote 'from: Sarah(older sister)' on half of the packages, because she won't be joining us for Christmas this year. And it's the oddest thing too, because we're actually celebrating it on Christmas day...we usually plan this holiday for the 26th or even later. When I grow up, Christmas is always gonna be on Christmas, just because.

Step-brother came down from heaven today, to spend Christmas in Hell (TM) with us. Heaven, where everything smells good, and people smile without trying to hide ulterior motives, and the dust never has a chance to settle. Heaven, where people tend to go when they've 'figured things out'. This is comforting, at least for a while, because he is a funny/quirky/stylish sort of person, and the world could always use another of that type.

Church, part duex. Step-mother got the Sunday off because she commissioned the Sundayschool kids to make up their own Christmas service. They chose to do a pageant of sorts, with lots of singing and general childerness. When the Joseph got up to sing the first song (a solo about staying with Mary even though she was with a bastard child), he was so nervous that when he reached for the microphone, it came loose in his hand, and bumped on the ground several times. The whole congregation got a bellyful of jelly out of his humiliation. While they were getting ready to go onstage, the angels and the shepherds all hung out in the back pews, where I was sitting. For some reason, I felt very at-home with the little plastic wings...maybe because I had worn them before, in this very church, of maybe because that's just the effect that kids seem to have, at such a short range. The shepherd's staves stuck up above everyone's heads, looking like swans diving and jabbing at one another, and it was obvious that half the kids didn't even remember what song they were singing...just as a Christmas pageant should be. Somewhere in the middle of the pageant, a real baby was brought up to represent the baby Jesu'. And when it started to make odd gurgling noises in front of everyone, a pacifier was quickly brought in to shut out the teachings of the baby Jesus. Another bowlful of jelly. It was about this time that I noticed Glen, our gardener, practicing the esteemed art of drawing up notes. I was amazed by this new discovery of another fellow thought-note-taker, but kept quiet, choosing instead to ponder what exactly he was thinking at that moment, and what he will be thinking in the near future. This would be classified as earth-shaking, if it didn't involve quite so much wonder. After the service, I helped deliver Christmastime charity boxes to the less-fortunates of the surrounding area, to brighten up their Christmas with a little gift that the attendants of the church could certainly go without. This, of course, is odd, because my mother is of the type of people who used to receive this type of charity. I literally know what it's like to be on the other side of the basket of food, feeling guilty of receiving something that you're not sure you're entitled to, wondering if there's anyone else lower on the ladder of poverty that might benefit more from the same gifts. And Mum, shooing the kids off upstairs because they might see all of the presents that will be under the tree that year, before they're carefully wrapped in last month's Sunday comic strips. Sometimes I think that very few people really know what Christmas is really all about.

Do you find it odd, dear Archibald, that we are living in times at which the word 'modern' is used in the everyday to refer to the past?

I need to get out of here. Leaving the day after christmas, if at all possible. I'm not doing anything, one day out and the next day in. Haven't been working on artwork, or writing, or really even thinking at all. or maybe I'm just irratable because I haven't been drinking enough coke...for somereason, I get the distinct feeling that this place is a rehab center...this town, the people, this parsonage, these parents...they're all just part of the cancer that is the cure for jason-ness.

Related Sidenote: In my psychology class my first semester, I suggested several times that all humans (and the space between them) were part of a greater organism known as mann. One must re-think their definition of organism, which is made up of individuals called cells, to notice that this is fairly obvious...there simply is no seperate definition between the collective of a group of humans and the collective of a group of cells (with the exception of names). Evolutionarily speaking, our race is barely a paremecium. But even at it's young age, this organism is plagued by cancer. These are the weirdos, the cells that have gone berzerk and act in relatively unpredictable ways...and they shall be the destruction of our race. But without these cells and their mysterious weirdness, the life of the while organism, the adaption and processes of the organism would be useless.

This has been a bad week for mail. In my e-mail account, I got junk mail for other people at diaryland, asking if they wanted to add an 'extra hit' service to their diaries. And then, I got a letter from my grandmother, with a sticker to my current mailing address. The odd thing is that the address that she originally put on the envolope was incorect, but close to the address of my college. How it could have made it to an odd adress, been mailed to my college, and then re-mailed to my current address all in a mere three days is still a mystery. Mayhaps 'they' is still keeping tabs on my mailings (or at least my location, because I'm rarely at this adress on vacations).

Went to PI and rann into Gab, one of Becca's old friends. I introduced her to Step-sister, forgetting about the first two times I had already done this. She gave me the distinct feeling of not knowing my name, so I proptly left...and that was the end of it, really.

it's a different game every time you play!