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Seasonal affective disorder
by Ashley 'Danger' Meeks
Comedian Bill Hicks once said that one of the best things about winter was watching smokers outside pass out on the sidewalk because they didn't know when to stop exhaling.
Perhaps Hicks didn't like winter. Maybe he had seasonal affective disorder. Perhaps he had never felt the thrill of building a sauna from spare loafs of pannettone. Maybe he had never curled up to a toasty blaze made from novelty-album kindling (as I write this 51 people on Amazon are currently trying to sell their copies of Rugrats Holiday Classics).
There's a reason we've all got "walkin' in a winter wonderland" stuck in our head this time of year. It's that immaculate frozen hush that sweeps over the starlit morning when you gaze lovingly at the dashboard of your car and realize Encino Man had more chance of coming to life.
But there are so many ways to not only survive but enjoy Christmas.
If you've suffered through one too many viewings of Santa Claus Vs the Martians in the past, this year get the whole family to move in with a bear - you'll learn how to hibernate and survive on nuts, berries and seagulls!
Kids too old for teddy bears? For the moody, angsty tween and teen set, just take a jaunt downtown and place bets on which five-foot long icicle first splits open a hapless pedestrian's head like a coconut. Imagine the fond memories!
Found yourself trembling in winter because of Seasonal Affective Disorder? If you suffer the unimaginable symptom of peevishness when it's 10 degrees out and sleeting sideways, eschew the ho-hum practice of filling your house with blue 'SAD' bulbs this winter. Rip down that million-lumen light box more suitable for third world x-rays and sell it on Craigslist. Simply buy four Plasma TVs, throw on the 1987 Lyndall Hobbs classic Back to the Beach and enjoy it from your most festive lawn chair. Bonus points if you 'borrow' several hundred pounds of playground sand from a local elementary school for full groundcover effect. Extra super-special bonus points if you whip up a couple of barrels of NyQuil Mai Tais. Throw a couple of miniature tiki torches in your tumbler for the full Tropicalia effect.
Stay inside too long, though and you'll find yourself wishing your family 'happy holidays' in a tone of voice that conjures up visions of an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson murmuring "Little pigs little pigs, let me come in, not by the hair of your chinny chin chin!"
It's at times like those when it's good to step outside with your trusty Kama Sutra, flip to a random illustration and build the snow version of the Three-legged Aardvark of Happiness in the front yard.
If that doesn't bring a holiday smile to your face, you can always ask Santa for a plane ticket to Haiti and get a zombie make-over at the Marie Laveau School of Voodoo Beauty. Then it won't matter how cold it gets, so long as you have a pantry stocked with shrunken heads (in jars, never in cans - the aluminum leaves a tinny taste) and plenty of fresh rooster blood.
Just don't forget the paper umbrellas and miniature tiki torches.
<About the author
Ptiza Odelay was created in a factory by Nazi scientists during World
War II. She was to be the ultimate weapon against the Allies, but
before she grew into maturity in her birthing tank, the war ended and
the project was scrapped. Years later, she was found still in her tank
in a hidden sub-basement of a warehouse in Berlin and inadvertently
shipped to the United States. During transit the casing of the tank
was ruptured and she was born seemingly in her early twenties with all
of the knowledge of mankind programmed into her brain. She speaks
eighty languages and has been known to crush diamonds with her bare
hands. She is wanted in twenty countries and was last seen diving into
an active volcano somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. In her spare time,
she writes popular children's fiction, erotica and groundbreaking
journalism under the name Ashley "Danger" Meeks.Read her 'Confessions of a Recovering Teenager' column
