Khaotica 2008

It's that time of year again, isn't it?

All the running and shopping and baking and decorating and singing and crafting and wrapping and I don't know about you, but I am fucking exhausted already and it's only the first week of December. The real, true, DefCon-5 spirit of conspicious consumption hasn't even started yet. I halfway expect that by the 20th, the convergence of easy credit, bad decisions, and the failure of the banking sector will collapse into a singularity of debt so great that come the new year everyone's credit rating will suffer an etch-a-sketch reboot as the entire industry shits itself to death.

I sound bitter, but I'm not. The only way my credit score could get any lower would be if I handed it a shovel and told it to start digging its own grave, so really I have nothing left to lose from a complete economic collapse.

But I imagine the rest of you are stressed out about this, and it's no wonder, since we've only just finished an election that started two goddamned years ago. I think it's safe to speak for most people when I say that we are now officially tired of looking at The Big Picture and really want nothing more than to sink into the couch and watch mind-rotting Reality TV shows until the Superbowl, whose crass media orgy will force us out of our blinkered solipsism as we realize "What the hell is this garbage, and why am I letting it play with my brain?"

But we can't do that, because it's Christmas. That time of year when we have to be cheerful and merry and generous and AAAAIIIIIEEEE CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!

If I have to "Smile! Show that Christmas Spirit!" one more time, I swear I'm going to start strangling people with their own appliqued sweaters. And I know I'm not the only one.

And so today -- because today is a Friday, and therefore Sacred to Eris, as well as the 5th, which is the holy Erisian number -- I shall give to you this season's Khaotica assignment. I have learned well my lesson from last year, which was "Thou Shall Not Needlessly Complicate an Erisian Holiday", and so for this year I'm just giving one assignment for the entire Khaotic season, then standing back and seeing what folks do with it.

Just to be safe, I will repost last year's Khaotica Klauses because I don't expect everyone to follow a back-link:

After you perform your assignment, I want you to report back and tell me the following:

1. What you did.
   
2. How people reacted.
   
3. How that made you feel.
   

Simple, no? Now here's what you DON'T DO:

1. DON'T do anything illegal, or encourage anyone to do so.
   
2. DON'T mock people's beliefs.
   
3. DON'T be a jackass. Making a fool of yourself is fine; making fools of other people is not.

Are we clear? Fabulous.

Khaotica 2008: Slack Subversively

We're all tired, but everyone is rush, rush, rushing because that's what we do at Christmas. Forced exertion which benefits no one? False emotions? Eating, driving, buying irresponsibly? There could be no surer Sign of Greyface than to take something which is supposed to be joyful and beloved and turning into a mirthless chore to be endured.

Your assignment -- which I shall be calling a Khaotica Karol because it amuses me -- will be to find some way to slack off, yet in a manner that both encourages others to do the same and also manages to stay within the spirit of the season.

Obviously, this will be easy if you're a bachelor, and much harder if you have a full family, but remember: Eris fucks with us all equally. Those who have busy families will find their Subversive Slacking all the sweeter for its rareness.

Some examples to get you started:

• If you live with a young girl, give her a new infant doll and tell her it's Baby Jesus, and that he's just been born and needs to sleep. So does Mary, in fact, so it's her job to keep everything quiet so that Mother Of and Son Of God can get some rest. Shhhhh. (Normally, I'd say that giving a dolly like to a Jewish girl would only up the Discordian factor, but the fights that would ensue from this will definitely harsh thy slackness.)
• Make up a story about Nelson, the Narcoleptic Reindeer. Act it out. Kids can be amazingly quiet if they think they're fooling adults by pretending to sleep. Bonus points if they actually manage to fall asleep, but even quiet giggling is a win.
  
• Buy Christmas-themed (or flavored) alcohol. Get drunk in the spirit of the holidays. Or, to steal from Lewis Black: NyQuil comes in two colors, red and green. It's the only thing on the planet that tastes like... red and green! And red and green are what? Christmas colors! That's right, NyQuil makes a dandy eggnog. Oh yeah, my friends bitched through the whole party, "This tastes like shit!" But at the end of it, we had a fun sleepover.

I look forward to seeing what people do with this. Or even if they do it. For all I know, I may be the only person entertained by all this.