Originally Posted Christmas Eve, 2003.
Remember when you used to wake-up in the middle of the night a hear your dad trip over the space-heater, and think Santa Claus and his Reindeer had finally arrived?
Remember setting those cookies and carrots out and waking up the next morning to find them half-eaten with your mothers shade of lipstick on them and a note written in her hand-writing on the table, but being too naive to notice?
Remember tearing through presents christmas morning, skipping over the softer wrapped gifts for the harder and bigger ones?
I remember when I was really young I peeped out of my room and thought Santa had brought me a spaceship (which was really a particle board puppet theater assembled by my father). I couldn't get any sleep, fancying all of the distant galaxies and nebulas I would visit in my newly acquired spaceship that night. The excitement and anticipation of waking up the next morning, feigning surprise, and learning how to operate the nodes, dials, and buttons in order to pilot my way to Cignus 5 to visit our extraterrestrial brethern while my parents opened up relatives gifts of pottery and candles, was excruciating. I turned on my hummel-like christmas house-lamp and read through every one of my magazines, even "National Geographic Kids" and "Highlights", in order to fall asleep. No such luck was had, so I tried the tired and true method of counting sheep jumping over fences in the back of my mind. Still a bust. I eventually fell asleep around 4am, with visions of ET and guitar-picked shaped space aliens flashing me the "live long and prosper sign" then heralding their outer-planetary visitor as their honorary emperor.
The dissapointment of finding out I wouldn't be cruising to the Andromeda galaxy the next day was crushing, but I learned to love my puppet theater. I created short little Shakespearean tragedies with paper-mache puppets, typically which involved bashing the King and the Friar puppet violently together, and then doing the same with the King and the Queen to indicate they were making out. My whimsical plays never quite evolved out of this childish template, however, they just seemed to involve more and more puppets as I soon figured out how to manipulated several on one hand.
What amounted to a grotesque orgy of flannel and terry-cloth, I soon gave up my puppeteering racket and retired the theater to the fabled annals of the geodesic shed, the graveyard of all flash-in-the-pan presents and failed knickknacks. Out there also lies am Olympic diving trophy which I'm pretty sure my dad never won, a Tweety Bird mask from halloween that accidental merged with surgical tubing and a caulking gun, creating the most macabre looking looney tune since Daffy Duck got shot in the face by Elmer Fudd, fireworks long past expiration, and I'm almost positive at least one dead transient.
Remember setting those cookies and carrots out and waking up the next morning to find them half-eaten with your mothers shade of lipstick on them and a note written in her hand-writing on the table, but being too naive to notice?
Remember tearing through presents christmas morning, skipping over the softer wrapped gifts for the harder and bigger ones?
I remember when I was really young I peeped out of my room and thought Santa had brought me a spaceship (which was really a particle board puppet theater assembled by my father). I couldn't get any sleep, fancying all of the distant galaxies and nebulas I would visit in my newly acquired spaceship that night. The excitement and anticipation of waking up the next morning, feigning surprise, and learning how to operate the nodes, dials, and buttons in order to pilot my way to Cignus 5 to visit our extraterrestrial brethern while my parents opened up relatives gifts of pottery and candles, was excruciating. I turned on my hummel-like christmas house-lamp and read through every one of my magazines, even "National Geographic Kids" and "Highlights", in order to fall asleep. No such luck was had, so I tried the tired and true method of counting sheep jumping over fences in the back of my mind. Still a bust. I eventually fell asleep around 4am, with visions of ET and guitar-picked shaped space aliens flashing me the "live long and prosper sign" then heralding their outer-planetary visitor as their honorary emperor.
The dissapointment of finding out I wouldn't be cruising to the Andromeda galaxy the next day was crushing, but I learned to love my puppet theater. I created short little Shakespearean tragedies with paper-mache puppets, typically which involved bashing the King and the Friar puppet violently together, and then doing the same with the King and the Queen to indicate they were making out. My whimsical plays never quite evolved out of this childish template, however, they just seemed to involve more and more puppets as I soon figured out how to manipulated several on one hand.
What amounted to a grotesque orgy of flannel and terry-cloth, I soon gave up my puppeteering racket and retired the theater to the fabled annals of the geodesic shed, the graveyard of all flash-in-the-pan presents and failed knickknacks. Out there also lies am Olympic diving trophy which I'm pretty sure my dad never won, a Tweety Bird mask from halloween that accidental merged with surgical tubing and a caulking gun, creating the most macabre looking looney tune since Daffy Duck got shot in the face by Elmer Fudd, fireworks long past expiration, and I'm almost positive at least one dead transient.
Well, on the delightful notion of me harboring a dead hobo in my shed, I bid everyone a Merry Christmas! I hope everyone gets their spaceships and ponies and dirtbikes and Redrider bee bee guns and Nintendos and Teddy Ruxpins (and if you dont know who that is, you obviously were not a child byproduct of the 80's).
Remember, if you didn't get what you wanted, there's always receipts, and if the receipts are MIA, then there's always the black market and the potential for smashing stuff.
Remember, if you didn't get what you wanted, there's always receipts, and if the receipts are MIA, then there's always the black market and the potential for smashing stuff.
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