The Spirits of Christmas Spirits

Does anyone object to hearing more about Christmas? Too bad. I mean, if you're in retail then the season actually starts in September, I guess. So why should it end before May? All right, for anyone who's still in the Christmas spirit, perhaps I can ruin it for you right now. I got this post from my subscriber, Martha, and I liked it so much I had to share it.

Make sure you read and follow the directions.

Jose Cuervo Christmas Cookies

1 cup of water

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup of sugar

1 tsp salt

1 cup of brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 cup nuts

2 cups of dried fruit

1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again; to be sure it's of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one peastoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the Cuervo is still okay, try another cup just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy.

Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.

Pick the frigging fruit off the floor.

Mix on the turner.

If the dried fruit gets stuck in the beaters just pry it loose with a drewscriver.

Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Who geeves a sheet. Check the Jose Cuervo. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.

Add one table.

Add a spoon of sugar, why not? Whatever you can find.

Greash the oven.

Turn the cake to 360 degrees, and try not to fall over.

Don't forget to beat off the turner.

Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the wishwasher.

Cherry Mistmas!

No, you're not done in the kitchen. You still have some cutting and pasting to do if you'd like to follow this link to some strange Christmas decorations:

http://mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/42711.

The Fluffy Prince of Darkness: Go, Go, Go or Run, Run, Run?

My son isn't sure whether the Japanese characters in this picture should be translated as go, go, go or run, run, run. C'mon. Look at the picture. Is there any doubt in your mind? If you're still debating, let me tell you a story about my demonic cat. Demonic, you say? Aren't you exaggerating? Although this sounds extreme I have years of research behind me. He's always been trouble and I'm pretty sure that he hates humans. But it's also become clear to me that he's opposed to Christmas. This reality more than any other has led me to the conclusion that he is in fact the spawn of satan.

1. A mysterious death. First there is the death of his sister, a sweet and beautiful cat who loved our family. He was inseparable from her -- despite her best efforts. He used to entertain himself by jumping on her and biting her. The two of them were together when she was run over by a car in broad daylight in front of our house. When I found him afterward he seemed distracted, panicked. I pitied him. In retrospect, I'm certain he pushed her.

2. A taste for human flesh. Until his sister's death he ignored humans. He existed only for her. After her accident he turned his attentions on us. Yes, he started jumping on us and biting us, too. He's drawn more blood from us than a physician's assistant. Once he wrapped his entire body around my arm and sent me to the emergency room for antibiotics to stop the swelling. Periodically we hear rumors about a mountain lion scaring the neighbors. I think I know where it lives.

3. His crazy eyes. There are times when he seems almost normal. At these times his eyes seem hardly stranger than those of any other cat. He almost seems to know who we are. Then there are times when the pupils swell to consume the entire eyeball, and he looks at you like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. You know he's sizing you up, checking for the vulnerable places, the tasty bits. Master wouldn't hurt the Precious. But what will the the Precious do to Master?

4. A biohazard. My cat emits a foul stench and pieces fall off him. I mean masses of hair that leave him with bald spots. All of this may be related to a strange illness he contracted a couple years after coming to live with us. He lay under a bush wheezing for hours. The vet believed he'd been poisoned and ought to have died. Looking back, I believe he probably did die or was already dead at that time.

5. He hates Christmas. Whereas his angelic sister would climb into the Christmas tree and go to sleep, her brother is always knocking the ornaments down. We've tried moving them higher, but now he's started knocking the whole tree down. My cat is clearly the tool of evil spirits. Our minister says if he does an exorcism then every cat owner will want one. And since Fluffy's a good mouser, I guess I'm stuck with him for now. My little demon cat. Who -- or what -- has possessed whom?

I'm Getting Nothing for Christmas

Seasons Greetings! I bet you didn't know that Santa lets me screen his mail. In cleaning off my desk I found a few letters that failed this year's naughty/nice cut. So here they are:

Letter #1.

Dear Santa,

I know it's been a while. I was kind of mad about last year. You can imagine my disappointment after hiking 90 minutes to Thackery Point, only to discover that another Christmas had passed and you'd let me down again. I specifically asked for a summer cottage. Not a summer sausage.

The bear cubs fighting over the lunch meat were cute. The mother was less cute. She seemed to prefer my leg to the lunch meat. Anyway, I won't be doing any more hiking, so I guess you can skip the cottage this year. How about a prosthesis?

Sherman

You can see why Santa's pissed at this guy. He doesn't know anything about sharing.

Letter #2

Dear Comrade Santa,

We have Rudolph. Honorable Vice Chairman Guo has informed me that Chinese commandos, in the name of the most Glorious People's Republic, siezed the target at 0:200 hours this morning. You have violated our airspace for the last time! Capitalism is doomed. Festive holiday.

Hu Jintao

P.S. Could you please send along any Chinese-speaking elves and the owner's manual for the sleigh?

I don't think I need to explain why Santa is not amused by this.

Letter #3

Dear Mr. Claus,

Thank you for the letter addressing your overdrawn line of credit as well as the other outstanding issues with our institution. We're well aware of the current economic situation and we hope you'll appreciate the fact that elves and reindeer are not the only ones who've been affected by it.

Visions of sugar plums notwithstanding, we want to impress on you the dire situation in which your ongoing failure to meet these obligations has placed us, and the absolute necessity of proceeding with foreclosure on the workshop and attached properties at the North Pole.

We're especially disheartened by your continuing refusal to deal with certain troubling aspects of your operation, including the recurring disappearance, every December 25, of massive amounts of your inventory, without any good explanation.

Yours most sincerely etc. etc.,

Fairytale Savings & Loan

Ouch. Poor Santa. This explains my empty stocking.

I hope.

An X-rated Cookie Bake is a Crazy-Ass Place to Start Anything

I had no intention of beginning my blog like this. But isn't that just like life? So here goes. I have to share this story. We had a little holiday cookie bake last night at Grandma's house. The x-rated variety. You want to see pictures, don't you, you naughty person? I don't have any yet, although I will share a link to my favorite showcase of baking disasters later on.

I did none of the actual work involved with baking cookies. I was there to shovel Grandma's driveway, take Grandma to the store, put lights on Grandma's potted plant, listen to Grandma's Christmas Carols from the 1920s, hold Grandma's hand as she snored in her rocker -- that sort of thing. But I learned a heck of a lot about what's involved in baking cookies. More than I perhaps wanted to know.

It was my wife and daughter who did most of the work in the kitchen. My daughter, who's back from her first semester at college, decided she'd use the angel cookie cutter to make gingerbread men. It's not hard. You stamp the dough with the angel cutter, make two slices in the angel's skirt, remove a triangle of dough, and instead of an angel in a dress you have a man wearing a sporty pair of gingerbread slacks. It's the magic of Christmas!

The only problem with this little operation is that if the two slices you've made in the angel's skirt don't meet exactly as they're supposed to in the angel's little crotch, you have created a very naked gingerbread man with a perfect, anotomically correct penis. Oh, crap. And you've created this festive little holiday treat in Grandma's kitchen, under Grandma's very nose! It's a good thing Grandma don't see too well anymore.

And if you really want a good laugh, then you need to take a look at some of these holiday disasters: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/