Please, I can't take any more of this depressing Xmas shit, let alone people getting fired and laid off around the holidays. Not to mention all of the damned obligatory gifts I have to hand out from various production offices. And the cards. And not to mention the goddamn food baskets. Which always seem to come to the people who need it the least.

Does an executive person really have a wine and cheese deficiency...? I don't think so. My old bosses, both with rather extravagant lifestyles, used to shaft those off on me. I lived on that shit, but I don't think your average CEO is really going to nibble on dry salami, water crackers and cheese ball when he could be having prime rib.

My favorites are actually the "thoughtful", "handmade" gifts.

Now what in the world would my boss possibly need with a coffee cup containing some recycled Easter grass and three cookies on a stick.

I don't know, but I left it on the seat of his chair.

Pointy surprise-!

Me, I'm not going home this year. The plan was for my mom to come out here, but she has all sorts of technical difficulties with the house and she's overwhelmed; it's too late for me to buy a ticket now, and my family is...my family. So here I'll stay.

I suppose I should be grateful for the work, considering a good chunk of the company is being let go or tacitly forced to take time off, unpaid. But I am, as ever, a thankless bitch who would actually be ecstatic to receive my walking papers, at this point. It'd be an easy way out, an excuse to find something even less challenging elsewhere. I'd probably give my boss a hearty handshake while cupping his 'nads, hop up and down, clap hands, make Daffy Duck noises like "wohoo, woohoo!", and grin a shit-eating grin from ear to ear when the doorknob hit me in the ass.

But I keep eking out an existence and somehow being passed over for layoffs, although they did cancel our holiday party this year, offering no explanation; there are no Christmas bonuses, and I just saw a VP eating Top Ramen. Perhaps I should become alarmed...so, make with the holiday sporking-!

If anyone's in town and wants to spork it up & drown our sorrows in bottom-shelf peppermint schnapps while putting up a fake tree, only to have the cats knock it down repeatedly, and spend the night in one progressively drunkener attempt to re-erect the plastic Pinus (well, that's what it's called-!)...lemme know.