Ho, ho, ho-ly crap, is it cold in here

[gominokouhai]

And the Angel of the LORD came amongst them, saying unto them: Do not fear, for thou dost not really need hot water at this the coldest time of the year....

That's right, the boiler at Apocalypse Laboratories has packed up again. If I were nice I would wait until after the holiday season to get call the landlord. Of course, if the landlord had fixed it properly a couple of months ago then I wouldn't have to drag him away from his turkey just now. He may consider this a Christmas Lesson. Just call me Jacob Marley.

On second thought: nobody's answering at the office, and I don't have the landlord's mobile any more, so maybe I'll just put a jumper on.

~

Had to pick up some cold medicine for Jehane today. During my travails it amused me to see just what Society determines we might need on Christmas Eve. The grocers was open, and the camera shop, and the sci-fi shop on Lothian Road... and all of the off-licences of course. Naturally, all the chemists were shut.

Let's put this into perspective. We're allowed to buy booze and David Tennant action figures today, but nobody is allowed to be ill.

When I did finally find a chemist that was open, they were playing bloody Christmas music in it. Specifically, they were playing I wish it could be Christmas every day.

It would have been unwise to go violently mental in the one place in town where they could just chloroform me and wait for the cops.

It would SUCK if it were Christmas every day. None of the shops would be open, nobody would ever go to work, and society would grind to a halt and everyone would STARVE TO DEATH. You'd all run out of presents after the first three or four days of Perpetual Christmas and you'd be reduced to sitting around the ashes of the last remaining Christmas tree, saying look... I got you this navel lint, but I couldn't afford to wrap it. Turkeys would be extinct after a week and you'd all start wondering, hungrily, how to get sage and onion stuffing into each other's cavities. If civilization is two meals away from barbarism, then the world is merely one-and-a-half massive four-course blowouts away from skipping the first two Mad Max films and going straight to the crappy third one.

As a general rule I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic scenarios, but: everyone just decides one day to consume everything and never contribute to society ever again?... that's just DULL.

~

Walked Jehane to the station today and, for reasons amounting to little more than masochism, came back through the Christmas market on Princes Street. All the chemists were shut, but apparently we still need smelly candles and carved wooden things that sound a bit like a frog if you hit them with a stick. That woman with all the piercings was there (you know, the one who crops up in newspaper photos every fucking August, as if to say look at all the craaazy freaks who congregate on Edinburgh during the Festival!... she lives here. She is here all the time.), and so was the guy painted silver who does robot movements to techno music. Also, there were a group of about five men gathered round a sign reading JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD. They were all elderly, with tweed coats and beards and walking canes: one of them was standing slightly apart and talking about God in a voice only incrementally above the conversational, being completely ignored by every single one of the thousands of passersby.

(Apart from one woman, walking past, who said something to her friend about Well, he's never interested during my hour of need, so fuck `im. I said Well said, but she wasn't listening to me either.)

I was strongly tempted to get up on a bollard a few yards away and utilize the Voice to provide a rebuttal to these Geriatrics 4 Jesus.

Ladies and Gentlemen! I do not intend to beguile you with mystical rantings about imaginary beings, I seek only to present you with cold, hard facts! A study reported in yesterday's Guardian—copies are available at your local library, ladies and gentlemen—a study has shown that eighty-three per cent of you believe that religion is harmful, that it serves only to create divisions in society.

Eighty-three per cent, ladies and gentlemen, that's a little over four in every five of you. Statistics indicate that it's probable that even one of these old gimmers has the right idea, he's just not about to speak out in front of his pals.

Ladies and gentlemen, an ancestor of mine once said Nephew, keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine. Celebrate Christmas if you wish, but remember to do it for the important reasons. Spend some time with your family, and with the friends you're too busy to see the rest of the year. Bring some warmth into this cold, dark season.

Ladies and gentlemen, you do not need a magical gaseous being to tell you what to do. You do not need a collection of imaginary stories to tell you how to enjoy Christmas! Don't celebrate Christmas the way this bunch of fogies tell you to do, and don't do it the way I tell you to either. Do it for yourselves!

There was quite enough thronging crowd for me to disappear into, like Marley's Ghost again. I shall regret forever not having done that, but I shall take solace in the fact that, according to Everettian Many-worlds theory, it did happen somewhere.

~

I don't generally do Christmas (as some of you may have noticed) and I'm not a big fan of religion (as some of you might have noticed). That said, I'm feeling quite Christmassy right now, as if I want to do something nice for some orphans.

The problem is that I don't know any orphans. So I shall have to make some first.

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Statistics indicate that it's probable that even one of these old gimmers has the right idea, he's just not about to speak out in front of his pals.

LMAO!

I love you.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Have a happy and hopefully pneumonia-free christmas!

[stormsearch.livejournal.com]

He's going to get taken down here (to my parents - North Berwick, where though it's freezing there is at least also heating and ENORMOUS coal and peat fire!). We're going to stuff him with sausagemeat-with-no-onions stuffing, but we're not going to eat him. There's turkey and bombe instead!

I hope you and Suzi are having a lovely time over there. It sounds lots of fun from Suzi's LJ. Enjoy foods tomorrow!

[stormsearch.livejournal.com]

You are vastly entertaining.
I shall say (have said) more on the phone.