Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your friends. Okay, here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!! Just copy this entire page and paste into a new note. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Tag anyone you want to answer and the person you copied it from. Tis the Season to be NICE!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Whichever Amazon.com or the 7-Eleven uses; that day's newspaper if I have to wrap them myself.
2. Real tree or Artificial? I just hang lights and ornaments on my shower curtain mildew
3. When do you put up the tree? When the poor tree has no place else to stay.
4. When do you take the tree down? When the ungrateful tree tries to abscond with my valuables.
5. Do you like eggnog? The only good thing about eggnog is the Bourbon my grandmother and Aunt Frances used to spike theirs with.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Existence
7. Hardest person to buy for? Anyone other than my parents, who have four decades worth of handprint ashtrays and macaroni art.
8. Easiest person to buy for? Myself.
9. Do you have a nativity scene? No. However I've made a scene during a nativity play.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? I used to send them by Passenger Pigeon.  Now that they're extinct, I just don't send any.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Fournier's gangrene
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny och Alexander."
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Usually about 1:30 PM Christmas Eve.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Many times, but always after I drank the contents.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Valium
16. Lights on the tree? Sure.
17. Favorite Christmas song? "Fairytale in New York," by the Pogues.
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home if at all possible
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? Yes. (Dashiell, Danskin, Prancing Vixen; Corncob, Q*Bert, Donald Nixon, and the one with the obvious coke habit)  Don't be too impressed: I can also name the starting lineup for the 1927 Yankees (Combs, Koenig, Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, Lazzeri, Dugan, Collins, Hoyt) .
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? My brother and I used to put a really ugly fake bird up there.  My mom couldn't reach it, which made it all the better.
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas Eve, so I can sleep late Christmas Day
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? People being nice one day, then being rat-bastards the other 364.  23. Favorite ornament theme? Despair.
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Elvis's Country Fried Turkey with Demerol Stuffing.
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? A reprieve.

Tag whomever you want, or tag yourself.  Knock yourself out.  Ho, ho, freakin' ho.

This is the first Christmas in 23 years that I won't be sick to death of Christmas music and Christmas ads from my radio gig, so I'm actually thinking about gift ideas.  Last Christmas, if you recall, I was in ICU.  This sucked, on one hand, because I was half-dead and in pain.  However, the bonus was I didn't have to buy any presents.  YAY! That said, I don't advise emergency surgery as a prudent way to escape ones presential obligations, so I've prepared a short list of crap people will actually appreciate, crap that's not a hassle to buy.

First off, alcohol.  Alcohol has a dual purpose.  Not only is it easy to buy, it's also the rare gift that the recipient will likely share with you.  Thus, they become easier to endure, and any holiday movie (especially The Christmas Story) is actually funnier.  Yes, it's kind of awkward laughing hysterically at A Christmas Carol, which is just not a comedy, but hey, it's the holidays. 

Also in this category is prescription tranquilizers or painkillers.  If you have a prescription (or extra refills), you can get them filled and give them to those hard-to-please folks on your list.  This, too, will make the recipient more tolerable (4 mg of Ativan, and even Scrooge couldn't muster the energy to complain), and you'll have found a great way to have your health insurance help fund your gift giving.  It's worth noting that this gift idea should not be combined with the previous one (ie, don't mix pills and alcohol, unless you're experienced).  Also, strictly speaking, it's not really legal.  I would never condone such an activity, nor do I think anyone should really give meds as a gift, unless it's to me. 

Another great idea is the gift card.  Try to make it for someplace interesting, like a favorite restaurant, store, or internet porn site.  If the recipient doesn't find something he or she likes, well, hell, you tried.  Also, you don't have to wrap these things.  I always like getting gift cards to establishments that have gasoline: that always fits.  Also, many gas stations also have beer and wine and lottery tickets, not to mention overpriced snack foods and candy.

You could also try a trip to Fiji.

Fiji is unquestionably beautiful (even moreso with the first two items).  However, Fiji is a bit on the expensive side, and damn hard to wrap.

For true heaven on earth, though, there's bacon.  Canadians, as well as right-thinking Americans, love some nice bacon.  For that special pork product fan on your list, try a bacon of the month club.  They'll love you every month when UPS delivers a pound or two of wood-smoked heaven to their door.  Not good enough for your bacophile on your list?

Try one of these ideas, as collected in News of the Weird.com:

More Ways to Consume That Heavenly Food: The fourth annual Big Tex Choice award for best taste this year (at a precursor event to September's Texas State Fair) went to Glen Kusak's chicken fried bacon. [Dallas Morning News, 9-2-08]

Earlier this summer, fourth-generation candymaker Joseph Marini III introduced chocolate-covered bacon bon-bons at his stand on California's Santa Cruz Boardwalk. [MSNBC-AP, 8-8-08]

For the more sophisticated, restaurateur Don Yovicsin of Waltham, Mass., serves bacon-infused Absolut vodka (allowed to sit for four weeks' time and then filtered of the bits) (and for a Bacon Bloody Mary, add mix, a lime wedge, "barbecue rub" and a Slim Jim). [Boston Herald, 9-3-08]

 

Your result for Christmas carol quiz ...

The Caroling Genius