Christmas!

8:23 p.m.

I've snuck away from the family for a bit. Not that I feel a strong desire to separate myself from my family, but as I've said before, there's no shortage of bigotry and racism that runs around among some of these people, and after a while I have to take a breather before I go nuts.

Seriously, I can only take so many blindly negative comments about "those blacks" or "those jews" or "those fags" before I want to stick my head in a hole in the ground.

I swear, it's not like this in all of Texas.

I have to explain how I feel about family here real quick, because I know a lot of people are probably saying, "Well, it's tough that they say such hateful things, but you have to love them anyway because they're family." Bullshit, I don't have to love anyone.

Look, there are a great many members of my family that I truly love despite how much they piss me off. For instance, my grandma is a hardcore Southern Baptist and as far as I can tell she's pretty certain that I'm going to rot in hell for all eternity, but outside of this, she loves me and does everything she can for me. A lot of what she does is in the interest of "saving me" or whatever, but I'm not going to fault her for having what she believes is my best interest. Frankly, I'm flattered that she gives that much of a shit about the status of my soul, and I love her for it.

But there are other members of my family that I don't really even know that well. How am I supposed to say that I love those people? That would be a filthy lie. I have a lot of family that I see only around this time of year. Thus, I maintain a casual indifference towards the majority of my relations.

And then there are a few members of my family that I can't bring myself to love no matter how hard I think I probably should. My Uncle, for instance, I think is a grandiose asshole. I can't stand the bastard. I may have mentioned him at some point before. He's cheated on his wife, who I adore, way too many times for me to be able to understand why she hasn't divorced his ass. Hell, once should have been more than enough. On top of this, he drops out of everything. He flunked out of college, he goes half-ass on his job most of the time, his only daughter is the result of a high school accident, and he's constantly verbally abusing his mentally retarded sister. In short, he's a dick. I don't care if he's family - I'm not going to love him just because I'm his nephew.

And believe me, I'm family conscious. When I was about three or so, my parents remarked that I sat down with them and worked for hours trying to distinguish who was who in my family and how they were related to me, specifically. That's just who I am - I've always been conscious of the hierarchy of my personal connections to people.

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Okay, enough of that. It's Christmas! This is the best time of year, ever for me, despite the fact that Jesus and I don't talk to each other all that much. Oh, he's nice and all, and he supposedly died for our sins, which I think is super generous and super brave, but he never comes to my birthday parties or anything so it's not like we're best friends.

The holiday season is great because everybody gets all cheery. People get down on it for its obvious commercialization and the stress it can bring with the whole gift giving and all, but this time of year is fun. I like all the decorations and the food and seeing family (even the scummy family that smells like cheese all the time), and wrapping gifts and then giving them to people and seeing their faces when they open them up and -

Side Note: That song - that "My Milkshake is Better Than Yours" song just came on the radio. I've heard about it constantly, and I knew the meaning of the words just by looking at the lyrics, but this is teh first time I've actually heard the song. Yeah. It sucks, man. I mean, this is just a bad song. Why is this popular? Just because the song is "secretly" about sex? Oh, well. Toss this on the pile of music that I don't understand the popularity of.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. I love this time of year!

It's probably annoying to have me around during Christmas. I imagine it must be like having to deal with Charlie Brown every single day for about two weeks. I really am the kind of guy who goes to the Aluminum Christmas Tree yard and picks out a sad little tree on the verge of death that keeps dropping needles and branches, simply because it's the only real tree on the lot.

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Time to talk seriously for a moment. As many of you are aware, my next semester at Texas A&M will be my last - I'm graduating, you see. I will leave the University with a cumulative GPA of roughly 3.0 (hopefully more, but this semester is going to severely hurt me whenever the grades are finally processed, I already know), and my B.B.A. in Accounting.

I'm going to need a job after that. Like, real soon. I'm going to have to support myself pretty much the moment I pick up my diploma. In a discussion with my parents about my lack of knowing what I want to do with my life, we both ended up reaching the conclusion that I need to just do something until I can figure it out, as any further investments in college education on their part could potentially be wastes of money if they turn out like this one.

So, right after I graduate, all my strings are being cut. This will be a mammoth change for me because I've never been genuinely on my own before. I can already tell I'm going to have to drop a lot of stuff - cell phone, high speed internet, I'll probably sink my car insurance down to liability only - things like that.

If any of you hear of any employment opportunities for me in the Texas area, do kindly keep me informed. I'm not saying you have to put in any good words for me (it would probably sound weird for you to say, "Yeah, I know this guy on the internet, he's great"), but the more I know about job possibilities out there, the better.

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