Well, Crappy Christmas is once again upon us. Yes, I admit it, I'm one of those scrooges/grinches that can't stand the holidays. I don't particularly care about getting gifts, and to be honest, as a student, who has no sense of aforethought, I'm way to broke come December to think about buying people gifts. In other words, I don't like getting them when I can't afford to give them. Call it pride. Whatever. I wouldn't know what to get anyone anyway. I'm shite at buying people things. They always open my presents with this confused, slightly shocked, almost disgusted, distainful look on their faces that says "You cheap bitch. You don't know me at all, do you???" The holidays always make me feel like that creepy black sheep of the family who always shows up empty handed at gatherings to mooch off of everyone elses fortunes and spend the week side-stepping prying questions about my personal life and self-absorbed lifestyle that has lead me to this pathetically perpetual state of economic failure that renders me useless during this, the "giving" season *shudder*. I don't like going to church because that would make me one of those annoying, hypocritical 'C&E'-ers, as my dad used to call them, who crowd out the regulars and take up all the good parking spaces. I don't like the eating because I can't cook any of it, and can't stand the cleaning process. Honest, I'm the kind of person who'll go days without eating just so that I can stubbornly resist the inevitable pile up of dishes. It's sad really, the way life can turn on some people like this. When I was a kid, I loved the holidays. I loved seeing my relatives, I loved getting pressies, I loved making macaroni Christmas cards at school, I loved making ginger bread houses with Mom. Now it all just feels like an inconvenience that disrupts my flow of trying to survive and make some frickin money. I guess the saddest part of all this, the heart of the problem, so to speak, is that to me, Christmas has become just one more painful reminder of all the ways that I am lacking as human being. My talents lay elsewhere, in the days that fill the spaces between these celebrations of gluttony and gloating, and with the people most others choose to ignore, the wierdos and the underbellies. Oh great. Now I'm starting sound self-righteous. Well you know, one has to find some way of coping with this hideous time of year, which is suitable only for those at the very top of Darwin's food chain, if you know what I mean.