Merry Christmas, etc.!

December 25, 2009


The Vilhauers

Merry Christmas and all of that stuff!
From all of us at Black Marks on Wood Pulp and Much More Sure.

(Special thanks to Craig for the picture, yo.)

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The Christmas season

December 24, 2009


At one point in my life, Christmas was a one-day thing. It was December 25, and not counting a rare outlying appearance at church on Christmas Eve night, all festivities were confined to that day.

The sleeplessness of Christmas Eve night was heightened by the uncertainty of the next day, of what Santa would bring and, even after I had stopped believing, what my parents had cooked up for me. It was a celebration, like a birthday or the 4th of July.

Christmas was an event.

Since then, Christmas has shifted from one day to many, from a single holiday to an entire season.

It didn’t take much. Where there was once a flurry of activity, there is now a gently stretched period of merriment, from the weekend before to the weekend after. For me, it began when my parents got divorced, creating two distinctive Christmases, and expanded as I got married.

This year, Christmas began on the 20th, with my mother. It continues tomorrow morning with my father, and that evening with Kerrie’s family. Christmas morning is for us, just Kerrie and the kids and me and Kerrie’s parents. The gifts we spent so long planning and buying and creating and baking slowly leak out like an unused bike tire until, eventually, we look around and realize they’re all gone.

And, ironically, Christmas day – the day when all of the magic used to happen, the day I used to count down toward for weeks – has become a complete day of rest, shaking off the hustle and hunkering down for the rest of the holiday.

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Radio Shack sucks. But sometimes, so do the commenters.

December 18, 2009


Listen. I get it. There are a lot of people who work for Radio Shack that don’t enjoy working for Radio Shack.

But why me?

It’s not like I set out to be a sounding board for the teeming, unsatisfied masses that Radio Shack seems to hire. It’s not like I opened up Wordpress and began piling on in hopes I’d become the center of disgruntled employees, my site the sun to their swirling planets of retail woe.

But, that’s what happened. All because I said, “Radio Shack Sucks.”

I’m not sure many commenters have even read the posts. My situation was solved. It was remedied. I figured everything out and, despite my anger at the time and my fist shaking and yelling and threats of boycott, I still buy my cheap wire and television antennas at Radio Shack. I never called for an army of employees to rise up and slay the monster.

Which makes a bigger point. This was never about the employees. This was customer versus a system. Individual versus corporation. David, Goliath, etc.

Not anymore. Now, it’s a symposium of part-time commissioned hell.

Let’s be honest. It brings a lot of traffic. It’s my most popular post (which goes a long way in proving a search engine’s ability to separate good from bad). But that doesn’t mean I’m thrilled every time Keith from Store 543 in Pasadena or Jules from some suburb of Boston stops by to drop another paragraph of poorly worded angst, like Black Marks on Wood Pulp was the Domesday Book of shitty jobs.

In fact, when Keith or Jules stop by and leave yet another un-punctuated mess in the comments of a post, I realize that to a small subset of people, that post defines what my site is - and, therefore, what my writing style and personality are. All I can do is shake my head. Saddened that this is what I’ve brought upon the Web. After so long, I’m simply too tired to respond.

What’s more, I’m unwilling to delete the comments, because sometimes it’s one of the few real things that people leave behind.

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Addicted

December 13, 2009


Blogging has become a habit. Not writing, or thinking, or creating - but blogging. The actual act of putting something on the Internet to be judged, to create the black marks on someone’s computer screen.

It’s become so much of a habit that I know when I’ve gone a few days without. Like a junkie. Like an addict, suffering DTs and shaking while the rest of the world goes on living, never knowing the difference between a post on Monday and a post on Tuesday.

Of course, it’s common in a million other things. We’re tied to updating Twitter, or buying cookbooks, or catching a few minutes of the Sunday night football game, despite how much we hate both teams. We keep coming back to MTV reality shows and tabloid magazines and over-critical partisan politics even though we know we’ll safely exist without them.

We do the things we like because we like them, sure. But we also do them because our minds are so used to doing them. We create our own habits based on the things we enjoy. Some of them are harmful. Others are completely harmless.

I blog because I’m addicted. But also because I like to write for people. Which, in turn, forced me into addiction.

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The similarity of last names

December 9, 2009


No.

No, I’m not related to any Vilhauers in Aberdeen.

I’m not related to any Vilhauers in Mobridge or Winner. I don’t know any Vilhauers in Madison. Or Mitchell. Or Milbank.

Yes, I understand that Vilhauer is an original last name. It’s easy to remember (even if it’s apparently difficult for marketers to spell) and it’s seemingly one of a kind, especially in South Dakota. But that doesn’t mean I’m related to anyone in Woonsocket or Volga or any small town scattered across the great plains.

All of the Vilhauers I know live here in Sioux Falls.

Which means I should probably stop wondering if the woman who works at the nearby Kum and Go is related to the very famous (and very deceased) Deadwood rebel she shares a last name with.

Because no. She’s probably not.

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Girbaud

December 2, 2009


When I was in middle school, I went through a short period of longing for a pair of Girbaud jeans. I lusted after the jeans. Despite having no sense of fashion or design, despite having nothing that would suggest I could afford Girbauds, or that my acquisition would be anything but a despirate attempt at fitting in, I wanted those jeans more than anything I’d ever wanted before in my entire life.

It didn’t matter what color. Hell, I’d even go for a size too big. I wanted them. I needed them.

I was under the assumption that I could earn some points in those jeans. That my tormentors would lay off for a few hours, knowing, “Well, he’s a total dork with fear in his eyes who looks like Screech, but hey - he’s wearing Girbauds!” As if simply wearing a green pair of overpriced jeans would propel me into being invited to parties and sleepovers and lunch conversations.

And then, one day, my friend showed up with a pair.

I knew he couldn’t have afforded them, so I asked where they’d come from. “TJMaxx,” he replied. TJMaxx. “An oasis,” he might as well have said. “Heaven and salvation” is all I heard.

It wasn’t to be, though. My dad dutifully took me out there (after some gentle convincing that getting $85 jeans for only $40 was an absolute bargain) but the racks were empty. It was a shot in the dark, and I had missed terribly, my aim off center, my arrow landing in a pile of Jockey boxers and white t-shirts.

I never got those jeans. A few years later, I broke free from my dorkitude through punk music - a scene that wouldn’t have just laughed at the notion of buying $85 jeans, but threatened to tear them to shreds and make Anti-Flag patches out of the remains.

But you couldn’t have told me that at the time. I was absolutely convinced my ticket to freedom was located somewhere in the over-dyed denim of French fashion.

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Traditions

November 27, 2009


Every year we take a dead tree and place it in our living room.

It doesn’t stop there, though. We drag five large Tupperware crates upstairs, despite the fact that we’ll only use the contents of two. We rearrange furniture. We lose extension cords. We make a list for the hardware store.

We trim our house in lights, alternating red and white bulbs. Kerrie and our friend Mel make a late night Black Friday Target run. We hang the stockings (with care, obviously). We plan our group Christmas party.

We shop for gifts. We make a list. We check it twice, then again, and again about a million times. We watch Christmas episodes of The Office, and we comment on how we’re excited about watching A Christmas Story.

We prepare for guests. We fight over what day to open presents.

The month from Thanksgiving to Christmas serves to remind us of the power of tradition. And, more so, the power of repetition, habit and commonality. Because each repeated act is more than a nod to past celebrations. It’s an aid to help us remember, to speed up nostalgia. To remind us we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.

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