Christmas with Morticia - (reprinted with permission from the demented people who pay me)

Dear Morticia,

Do you get into the Spirit of Christmas?

Signed, Curious

Dear Cur,

I’m not interest in the Spirit of Christmas and I’ve told him that a hundred times!  (Honestly…it’s these office Christmas parties.  Everyone gets embalmed.)

Dear Morticia,

Can I interest you in custom-designed fruit baskets for your dearest friends.

Signed, The Custom Grocer

Dear Cus,

No thanks.  I gave a Christmas food basket to Thing last year and it bombed horribly.  He just didn’t have the stomach for it.

Dear Morticia,

I’m quitting smoking starting Jan. 1.  Are you making any New Years resolutions this year?

Signed Sincere

Dear Sin,

Yup.  As soon as the vulture dinner is over, I’m becoming a vegetarian.  (At least when you carve a pumpkin, it doesn’t try to eat you back.)

Dear Morticia,

I was a good girl all year, and all Santa brought me was a large frog.  Frankly, I feel cheated. 

Signed, Princess

Dear Princess

Honey, I don’t blame you, so be sure to follow my advice: Be very bad next year and Santa may bring you a Prince. (And if you don’t get the Prince, at least you will have had a smashing good time all year!)

 Melodie in disguise as a fairly normal person in a blue coat.  Merry Christmas.

The Christmas Spirit aka "Get your own damned shopper" (Christmas post #2)

(Reprinted with permission from the places that pay me.)

Skip the fancy jewelry, fur coats, and dishwashers that do everything.  Let’s be realistic and talk about what we all REALLY want for Christmas…which is a parking spot at the mall.

Let’s face it.  Each year we spend hundreds of miserable hours driving round and round suburban parking lots, in sub-zero weather, during blinding snow storms, looking for a place to park the family car.  This is so we can fight our way into the crowded, outrageously noisy department stores, to buy obscenely overpriced gifts for people who don’t need them.

Who started this practice??

But you have to do it in order to get into the ‘Christmas Spirit,’ which is an essential part of the holiday tradition.  Christmas Spirit is evident in parking lots all over the world.  It begins something like this:

Having arrived at the mall, you spend the first twenty minutes driving up and down the parking lot, taking advice from every occupant in your car about where they ‘think they saw an opening.’  Then your spouse – whom you are beginning to hate – gets the bright idea of hovering like a vulture at the mall exit, and following someone back to their car.  At which point you find that there are four other clever drivers attempting to do the same thing.

You then engage in the time honoured game of ‘parking lot chicken’ to see who gets to the vacant spot first.  The spot, of course, isn’t available anyway, as the shopper exiting the mall only did so to dump a load of shopping off at the car before going back into the trenches.  I’m convinced that some despicable people sneak into suburban parking lots in the middle of the night, leave their cars in prime spots, and bum a ride back the next day.  It’s the suburban equivalent of lining up for rock concerts.

Meanwhile, back at the parking lineup, three of the four cars formerly involved in playing chicken are now racing back to the mall entrance to annex another exiting individual. By now, the windows are down, the drivers are yelling obscenities along the lines of ‘Get your own damned shopper!” and threatening to beat each other to the consistency of plum pudding.

By now, if you are not in the true spirit of Christmas, I suggest the following:  Go home, take an extremely large glass and fill it with equal parts eggnog and rum.  Drink quickly.  Refill Liberally.  Repeat.  This is the alternative practice of ‘getting into the Christmas Spirits.’

SHE'S BACK! Morticia's Massage Parlour and Advice Academy CHRISTMAS SPECIAL (reprinted with permission)

Flash News!  Was just given this news:
First prize in the Your McMurray Magazine national Short Story Competition!
The $3000 will send me to Bouchercon next year.
I am over the moon. Many thanks to everyone involved.
Now I need to calm down...
http://www.yourmcmurraymagazine.com/short-story-competition

And now back to our regularly scheduled nonsense... 

by BAD Girl

Dear Morticia,

Do you get into the Spirit of Christmas?

Signed, Curious

Dear Cur,

I’m not interested in the Spirit of Christmas and I’ve told him that a hundred times!  (Honestly…it’s these office Christmas parties.  Everyone gets embalmed.)

Dear Morticia,

For Christmas, may I interest you in private flying lessons?  Free of charge, my dear…

Signed, Ace Pilot

Dear Ace,

No thanks.  I’m not much on school.  A ghost tried to teach me how to walk through walls once…he had to go through it again and again…

Dear Morticia,

Can I interest you in custom-designed fruit baskets for your dearest friends.

Signed, The Custom Grocer

Dear Cus,

No thanks.  I gave a Christmas food basket to Thing last year and it bombed horribly.  He just didn’t have the stomach for it.

Dear Morticia,

I’m quitting smoking starting Jan. 1.  Are you making any New Years resolutions this year?

Signed Sincere

Dear Sin,

Yup.  As soon as the vulture dinner is over, I’m becoming a vegetarian.  (At least when you carve a pumpkin, it doesn’t try to eat you back.)

Dear Morticia,

I was a good girl all year, and all Santa brought me was a large frog.  Frankly, I feel cheated. 

Signed, Princess

Dear Princess

Honey, I don’t blame you, so be sure to follow my advice: Be very bad next year and Santa may bring you a Prince. (And if you don’t the Prince, at least you will have had a smashing good time all year!)

Bad Girl is the pen name of Melodie Campbell.  Melodie writes funny books.  They make great Christmas presents.  If you're cheap, you can even buy the ebook versions (Amazon, nook, kobo, itunes...etc)

The REAL Christmas Newsletter! (reprinted with permission and a flagrant disregard for convention)

One thing I hate even more than the current gang of thieves in Ottawa is the annual Christmas Newsletter brag sheet.  You know the type…when people who can’t be bothered to pick up a phone all year long suddenly feel you can’t possibly survive another day without knowing their intimate business.

Have you ever noticed that nothing BAD ever happens to these people?  Where is the heartbreaking stuff?  The flunked tests?  WHERE ARE ALL THE STUPID FINANCIAL DECISIONS? 

Luckily, I’m learning to read between the lines.  Here is my version of what really happened:

Hello to all our dear friends!  Here it is, Christmas time once more, and I still haven’t gotten around to spring cleaning again.  Oh well – good thing nobody ever comes here.  They wouldn’t be able to get around the empty cases of brew in the front hall. 

I’m happy to report that things are back to normal after Ted broke his leg trying to resist arrest.  It was all a silly mistake; he never would have smashed into the cruiser if they’d had their lights on.  Luckily they have terrific medical facilities in the Don Jail, and Ted is on the mend.

And just when you thought it couldn’t happen, young Wally flunked grade 10 for the third time.  The Principal seems to think this is a record, which just goes to show that Wally can be outstanding when he puts his mind to it.

You may have heard that we’ve added a son-in-law to the family.  We also have a new grandchild, who arrived about the same time.  The birth was easier than the wedding, and luckily the father of the bride missed both, as he was otherwise detained <see above>.

Dear Grandpa is just as spry as ever.  He totters around town waving to all the girls and showing them his new trench coat.  He’s really proud of the plaid lining, too.

Aren’t families wonderful.  And as for me…well you may have heard about Ted’s last foray into the stock market before he lost his job.  They took the house, but I still have the dog, and frankly, except for a little touch of pneumonia, we do fine on Queen Street.

Well, that’s it for now.  How was your year?

A Few Words about Turkey...comedy reprinted with permission

Today, we are going to talk about Christmas.  Basically, about the inequities between men and women, when approaching the subject of preparing for Christmas.

Women, for example, approach Christmas from the point of view of shopping for presents, selecting and decorating the tree, cleaning the house for company, cooking the holiday dinner for 10, and flopping from exhaustion just in time to hear Dasher and Dancer on the roof.

Men, on the other hand, tend to regard Christmas as something that precedes the Superbowl.

In order to properly conduct this extremely scientific study, it’s necessary for us to delve deeper into the proverbial muckbin of sexual politics.  Let us look at the different attitudes between the sexes when considering the subject of turkey

Her job:  buy the turkey, defrost the turkey, stuff the turkey, cook the turkey, make the turkey gravy, serve the turkey.

His job: eat the turkey.  (Also, be the turkey.)

Let’s further examine the role of men and women when purchasing gifts for the average North American family.

She buys for:  the kids, the dog, the husband, his mother, her mother, his father, her father, Aunt Gertrude, Uncle Larry, his best friend, her best friend, the kids’ teachers, the crossing guard…

He buys for:  her.

Lest this seem a tad inequitable, let’s remember that there is a good reason the world is aligned this way.  There is no possible way a gal WANTS her guy to buy for everyone on the above list.  This is because most guys’ idea of a really neat and original thing to buy is a gift certificate from Canadian Tire or Fred’s Rods and Live Bait.

Which is why – although it is often the only present they have to get – many men revert to the time-honoured guy tradition, which is try to ignore it and maybe it will go away, aka “leave it to the last minute.”

This is why, on Christmas eve, you are apt to see hundreds of crazed men running through local shopping malls buying anything that doesn’t move, yell or bite.

Him (in department store, 9 PM Christmas Eve, clutching something that resembles a blouse):  “It’s perfect!  How much?”

Clerk (world-weary):  “This blouse is a size 62.  Are you sure your wife is a 62?”

Him:  “Blouse?  I thought it was a tent.  Oh well, maybe it will shrink.”

Ca-Ching.

So darling, if you’re reading this, the tree is up, and I have a few things on hold at Tiffany’s.  You choose.

She’s BACK! Morticia’s Massage Parlor and Advice Academy gets ready for Christmas!

Dear Morticia,

Call me a stick in the mud, but I don’t like Christmas.  Every year our house gets filled with all those strange sounds and smells.

Signed Hum Bug

Dear Bug,

They’re called relatives.

Dear Morticia,

Help!  All these Christmas chores need to be done and I’m exhausted.  What can I do?  The baby was sick again and kept me up all night.

Signed Tired

Dear Tired,

Sorry honey, but you married him.

Dear Morticia,

I’m a rather well-heeled gent dating a younger lady.  Is it crude to give money for Christmas?

Signed Loaded

Dear Loaded,

Of course not!  I like my men the cruder the better.

Dear Morticia,

I love the old Christmas traditions.  Do you still hang stockings by the fireplace?

Signed Sweet Sue

Dear Sue,

Frankly, I hadn’t thought of it.  But really, it wouldn’t be a whole lot of fun.  They’re already dead, aren’t they?

Morticia will return before Christmas unless Santa promises to be really crude.

Guy Alert: What NOT to Buy Your Gal for Christmas!

Pet Frogs and Other Gifts (reprinted with permission)

My first gift from a male was a pet frog.  Jimmy was five, and the frog was his most prized possession.  Unfortunately, when the hopping box was thrust in my face, I screamed, and threw it back.  Jimmy was not impressed.

Men have given me pet frogs all my life.  Gifts they would like to receive and thus gleefully assume I would want.  And I am not alone.  Last year, one female friend of mine reported receiving a set of mag racing wheels for the family car.  Another opened a big pink box containing – I kid you not – a filing cabinet.

This year, men, it’s time to shape up!  No more socket wrenches for your lady (unless she asks for them).  So what do you buy?  Here’s what you don’t:

No kitchen appliances.  By this I mean, washers, dryers, dishwashers, toasters, can-openers, or meat-slicers.  These are gifts for a house, not a sweetheart.  The same is not true of men and tools.  Men play with tools, so that makes it okay.  But I defy anyone to play with an electric can opener.

Don’t believe me?  Ever heard a couple of men discussing the merits of a brand new motorized saw?

Ed (proudly): “Radial arm.  Craftsman Cabinetmaker’s.”

George (whistling): “Power?”

Ed (caressing):  “1.5 hp high-torque 3450 rpm direct drive induction-run.”

George (scrutinizing):  “Blade?”

Ed (triumphant):  “20-tooth carbide-tipped.”

George (drooling):  “Wow.”

Women don’t behave in this manner.  You don’t see women standing around a vacuum cleaner, remarking:

Betty:  “Just look at these stats!  120 volts, draws 8 amps with powerhead, 6.6 amps without, triple prong plug, replacement hose, and seventeen thousand attachments.”

Marge:  “Gee, I wish my George would buy me a vacuum cleaner like that for Christmas.  Mind only sucks dirt.”

No, women are much more likely to say:

Betty:  “Ed bought me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas.”

Marge:  “Ed has the soul and finesse of a long-dead lake trout.”

Which is to say, he stinks.