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God help me, I've found myself missing Des Moines. It's starting to look like they're developing an actual culture down there. A performance space that's not a dinner theater just opened up. There's a burgeoning arts district. And now that Donald Kaul has come out of retirement, the local alternaweekly is getting better and better. Not bad for a place that bans dancing after 2 AM. It isn't enough to make me want to move back, but it's not bad.
While I was down there, my grandmother said something that's stuck with me. She implied that I don't like Christmas. I like the whole Christmanukah season fine. I'm as far as you can get from religious, but something about the long nights and the turning of the calendar puts me in a mood that's as close as I get to festive (without booze, at any rate). What I don't like, at Christmas time or any other, is wretched excess (this is also what keeps me from being a truly effective sybarite). I'm not going to go as far as these people, but I am well over the idea of buying people crap for the sake of buying presents. Last year, I bought everybody gift cards and the hell with'em, because I Just Plain Couldn't Cope. I'm a little more stable this year, so I'm able to put a little more thought into gift-buying. But that's the key, isn't it--giving something that's halfway thoughtful, rather than pure unadulterated crap for its own sake. O malaise of pre-Apocalyptic consumerist capitalism.
So, fine. I'm going to get out my two favorite Christmas albums and enjoy the season. And I'll enjoy it the way I enjoy everything: In a manner that's completely indistinguishable from utter indifference.
While I was down there, my grandmother said something that's stuck with me. She implied that I don't like Christmas. I like the whole Christmanukah season fine. I'm as far as you can get from religious, but something about the long nights and the turning of the calendar puts me in a mood that's as close as I get to festive (without booze, at any rate). What I don't like, at Christmas time or any other, is wretched excess (this is also what keeps me from being a truly effective sybarite). I'm not going to go as far as these people, but I am well over the idea of buying people crap for the sake of buying presents. Last year, I bought everybody gift cards and the hell with'em, because I Just Plain Couldn't Cope. I'm a little more stable this year, so I'm able to put a little more thought into gift-buying. But that's the key, isn't it--giving something that's halfway thoughtful, rather than pure unadulterated crap for its own sake. O malaise of pre-Apocalyptic consumerist capitalism.
So, fine. I'm going to get out my two favorite Christmas albums and enjoy the season. And I'll enjoy it the way I enjoy everything: In a manner that's completely indistinguishable from utter indifference.
