Everybody has pet peeves. Mine are many and insignificant, but something about the plastic saccharine smarminess and frozen rictus smiles that saturate our American media Christmas drives me to make lists of this garbage. Without further adieu:

I hate diamond commercials. Don't you? They reflect and play upon the lack of communication and goodwill between married couples, in essence saying that it takes very expensive rocks to demonstrate your love to your materialistic, sex-withholding, status-conscious wife. I remember one that had the tagline "the one time she'll listen to you." Which suggests, inversely, "this'll shut her up." Some commercials even show children at the stairwell who know that a kiss comes after the earrings. Way to train the kids, guys.

Next comes Old Navy and their pastellization of culture. I hate their jingles, to start. I hate their rosy cheeks, I hate their fancy fucking scarves, and I hate their vapid blank-faced go-go dancer boys. I hate their sick idea of Christmas carolling in which this singing horde of demons berates a scarecrow-thin, far-too-young-to-be-a-mother-of-college-students "mother," warning her not be caught off-guard by giving shitty presents to her son-home from school with his girlfriend, etc. College kids want money, not pullover fleece. Am I right, or am I that out of touch? They want money and alcohol and condoms and pizza. End of story. Okay, I know, people must wear clothes and parents must buy gifts. Supposedly. Still, Old Navy makes a great arson candidate.

One thing that I appreciate is decoration psychosis. Suburban superdads have an obsessive compulsive streak and will go to insanely laborious lengths to inflate two-story snowmen in the yard and to mount Santa sleds on their roofs. They'll bind their homes in enough flashing, glittering, twinkling, and garish multicolored lights to scare the shit out of Jerry Garcia. Let's not forget the tinsel on the mailbox. I think it's crazy, but it's quite a tasteless spectacle and I love tasteless spectacles. These fathers could be spending their energy shopping for diamonds at Old Navy, so I won't complain if they want to risk violating multiple electrical codes and burning their adorned houses to the ground.

One last shot: Kevin fucking Kringle and the Best Buy giftcards: Go away. I can see that you couldn't afford Chris Elliot for the ads and had to hire a cheap knockoff. That's bad enough. But just because everybody can't impersonate Santa from a Norman Rockwell painting is not reason enough to hand out giftcards like parking tickets for Christmas. That's almost as bad as the Illinois Lottery commercial about getting scratchoff tickets from a gay secret santa.

Moby once played drums in a sendup punk band called the Pork Guys, and they did a rotten piece of juvenile garbage called "Fuck Xmas! Fuck You!" I liked it. I have the 7" somewhere.

I actually like Christmas. It's television I hate.

P.S. Didn't you hear? Raging bitter hatred is the new black.
8:37 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm