Ah, another Christmas come and gone, and another bunch of ancillary, holiday-induced activities to deal with: going out and using those gift cards (or, as we're having it, staying in and ordering shit off the net); dealing with the return of redundant gifts (I forgot to warn the wife off of my incredibly outdated Amazon wishlist, which now really just functions as a sort of depressing chronicle of my past retail crimes); and performing end-of-year surgery on the rest of your crap, which now looks a little wan and sad next to all the new shiny things.

You know: you got two new sweaters, and some of your older, rattier sweaters now seem sort of puny and maybe a little ickier next to the new guys--like parasites, almost, feeding of the newness and good cheer radiating off of the new sweaters. Plus, you're out of room for sweaters. So out they go, and they scream. "You loved us once!" But you're a grim, unflinching surgeon. "Yeah, I loved Def Leppard once, too, but things change."

Then you stop talking to your sweaters, because hey, don't be a fucking weirdo all the time, Skot.

Speaking of being a weirdo, around this time of year, obsessive weirdos sometimes make new year's resolutions; strangely, being an obsessive weirdo, I've never tried this, so I thought I'd give it a shot this year, and wouldn't you know it, the first one involves talking to oneself, or, either more or less dumb--I'm not sure which--talking to inanimate objects, such as sweaters.

Walking home today, I passed a guy who, steps in front of me, stopped dead in his tracks and muttered urgently, "Slice of cheese!" Which made me a little wary, but then he lurched over to his left and entered a pizzeria: so okay, then, muttery nutjob wanted some pizza. But then I realized that I am a muttery nutjob, and I should maybe try and cut it out. For I have been known, for example, to stand in a bookstore, looking at the shelves, and upon seeing a book I hate, hiss to the author's name on the book's spine, "You're a total boner." Which has caused (real, live, in-the-room) people to shuffle rapidly away from me. (Leaving aside the myriad of sad implications that arise when I notice that at my age, I still say things like "total boner.")

So: Try not to be a muttery nutjob who talks to himself.

Pros: People won't think I'm some creepy masher with a boner.
Cons: Does not address disturbing penchant for sixth-grade smuttery.

The holiday season of course brings with it a whole boatload of new Hollywood movie offerings, and I--as I've explained many times--ruthlessly prejudge movies based solely on their advertising. My track record is, I must say, pretty good with this method, and I have been routinely punished when I have deviated from it (I'm looking at you, Mulholland Drive). So I pay a lot of attention to movie ads, and I've come to the conclusion that I shouldn't see any Sean Penn movies where he looks shatteringly sad; or, as a corollary, where he is shot from above, walking dolefully and stolidly down a beautifully empty street; or finally, where he is shown howling in agony to the heavens, and crumples to his knees. Mr. Penn is a talented actor! He can do more than that! Not that you'd know it lately: ads for Mystic River--a film more than a little tainted by the faint (but ghastly) whiff of Mystic Pizza you get from the title--21 Grams, and so on. I'm not sure where this phenomenon started--maybe Dead Man Walking--but come on!

So: No more movies with emotionally devastated Sean Penns.

Pros: More free time to see less psychologically freighted character studies, like the upcoming Torque, which as I understand it, is a touching story about motorcycles and the tiny-penised men who love them.
Cons: May backfire and result in I Am Still Sam.

But of course, TV's endless pleasures don't end with just ads for crummy movies. There's plenty of crumminess, and at least 35% of it is brand new! For example, the hit phenom Queer Eye for the Straight Guy--which always makes me, troublingly, think of gay opticians--debuted an exuberantly embarrassing new MUSIC VIDEO to open its show not too long ago. It's really quite something, even if it is also, at times, extremely puzzling: Ted, the food guy, using a champagne cutlass? I don't think so. First of all, champagne cutlasses are deeply stupid, and pretty much only a ridiculous rich person would ever use one, because two; YOU'RE SPILLING THE FUCKING CHAMPAGNE ALL OVER THE PLACE! Never mind, it gets worse later on when Jai--the adorable, useless one who never has anything to do, and so ends up standing around failing to be witty--hits the dance floor and treats us to some of his more ferocious Jazz Dance 101 moves, looking for all the world like a somehow slightly less talented, slightly less hairy Jennifer Beals. At this point, the camera cuts back to the other guys, wisely seated and drinking, who all point and laugh at Jai. I'm sure it's supposed to look very supportive and all--"Look at Jai tear it up!"--but it really just looks like they're pointing and laughing at Jai--"Somebody make him stop!"

So: Watch even more television.

Pros: I certainly can't get much dumber.
Cons: We'll see about that, as FOX continues to develop shows.

I talked a bit about gifts above, and the wife's very nice parents had some great ones for me: a couple gift certificates, some books, and of course . . . socks. In fact, everyone in the family got socks from them--"They were on sale!" they crowed, which killed me--and they themselves were also wearing these socks. Wife's dad waggled his brightly-hued feet for me as I opened my booty of socks; an apropos phrase, I think, because they are booty socks. Mine appear to have wide racing stripes, and have little nubbies on the soles to prevent linoleum slippage, and remind me of old Gremlins. The wife got a simply remarkable pair that have what are alleged to be cute penguin faces on them, but the stitching is all wrong, and so they look to me exactly like the corpse-heads of Sesame Street's Grover. So now I want to challenge the wife to a race: "My Gremlins versus your dead muppets! Vroom vroom!"

So: Make sure to wear insanity-inducing socks.

Pros: Will make the in-laws very happy.
Cons: Will possibly be haunted by terrifying nightmares involving zombie Grovers.

Finally, today when I stopped at the supermarket to get some dinner stuff, I waited in line to get to the register, and when I got there, something wonderful happened. The guy was ringing me up, and I was fumbling with my wallet for money, and when I looked down, I spotted a $20 bill. Just sitting there on the floor. I remembered the customer before me had used a card, and anyway he was long gone, and nobody else was making a scene, so I picked up the bill. I looked around to see if anyone was digging frantically in their wallets or purses, but nobody was. I thought for a second of saying, "Ah, hey, did anyone lose a twenty?" But that seemed like an invitation to catastrophe, so, well . . . I took it. What was I going to do? Give it to the cashier for Lost and Found? I hadn't found money sitting around unclaimed for a long time, and you know what? I really, really like it!

So: Continue to find money sitting around.

Pros: I will have more money.
Cons: It will probably not help to prevent me from talking to my sweaters.

What a total boner.