and because we’ve been nibbling on cookies and candies and pies and treats all day, not to mention drinking and laughing and filling the kids heads with nonsense about Santa having no love for Yankee fans, i write to you tonight from the laundry room of Chris’s parent’s house while nibbling from a piping hot grilled cheese sandwich with a special guest star ingrediant of chicken.

chris and her dad are playing acey-duecy and chris’s mom is watching the food network and im trying to figure out how to sneak William Hung’s Hung For The Holidays into a boombox when nobodys looking for he entertained us all very well last night on our trip to eugene.

this is a wholesome family where pa knows how to fix anything and mom knows how to cook amazingly and understands the ins and outs of all the neighbors here in this rural town.

how rural is it? so rural that when the Umpqua Dairy put out a full page color spread in the local paper with pictures of all of its employees, it showed smiling faces from Roseburg, Coos Bay, Grants Pass, and Klamath Falls… thats right Umpqua is so tiny that even the Umpqua Dairy has no presence in Umpqua proper.

Drain, Oregon laughs at how wee Umpqua is.

so this wholesome family in this little town has tony pierce staying with them over the holidays so what do you think they have to put up with but stories of how great howard stern is and some of his groundbreaking accomplishments including the time when wendy the retard and gary the retard conferenced called with mr. carver the KKK dude from georgia.

poor souls. and of course i blab about all of this in the red santa hat that they just gave me and the reindeer pajama pants i had just gotten as their daughter is being harrassed for not making any Black santa claus cookies.

where the brothas at? i ask her. just cause Santas from the northside means that he’s a white man? uptown’s where the brothas stay. boycot sals famous until theres some brothas on the wall!

and then i got distracted by da bears winning another game against brett favrah something i can get very used to, i popped a half dozen brandy balls and passed out.

when i awoke we watched the simpsons and the family guy and laughed.

merry Christmas!!!

its’ 10am here in umpqua and the little nephews are speeding around dangerous foggy rainy curves to grandmas house here in the woods.

last night we went up to their house in Eugene and ate some traditional potato leek soup and ate a triple decker cheeseball shaped like frosty the snow man. and then we took a walk through the neighborhood to…

the graveyard!

we went there to sing Christmas carols of all things. ah eugene.

because its a hippie town they didnt roam the streets singing for the shut-ins and elderly, they stood right there in the cemetary and passed out singing sheets and candles and one guy yelled out #21 Silent Night! and someone started and everyone joined in.

by the end of silent night there were probably a hundred men women and children in the cemetary singing along so when someone yelled out #5 We Wish You A Merry Christmas you could hear people saying What? and people having to repeat it.

of course the women sang far better than the men, so the men just shut up after a few songs and looked at all the pretty faces lit up by candlelight.

when we got to #9 O Little Town of Bethlehem everything was going perfect until we were about to make it to the second verse when some woman yelled out THIRD VERSE so we could bypass the offensive second verse which talked about Jesus being the Lord, etc.

because my mother raised me right i held in the boomingly loud W T F that was itching to blast out.

hippies.

eventually it became a battle between those who wanted to sing the sweet religious Christmas songs and those who wanted to sing the poppy secular Frosty and Rudolph Christmas songs out there in the cemetery.

blows were about to start flying between the respective camps until some jackhole yelled out #24 The Twelve Days of Christmas… because noone wanted to sing that one he attracted the entire of the ire of both the religious and the satanic and i believe the dirty looks aced him right there and he was struck dead and fell into an awaiting open grave and was buried before we made it to the eight lords a leaping.

one of Chris’s nephews kept looking up into the night sky twinkling with stars. i think i see something red in the sky he whispered to me. its commies, i whispered back, we have too many national guards in iraq.

then he said uncle tony i think i hear sleigh bells. i said thats the pockets of the wealthy who got tax breaks this year, theyre walking to the banks to enjoy their spoils.

and right at the end What Child is This we heard the familiar HO HO HO and whattya know St. Nick appeared behind a gravestone accompanied by a set of foxy young female elves who spread out a velvet rope adorned with tinsel and said gather round kids i have some gifts for some of you!

the kids nearly fell over, but the smart ones ran forward to the rope.

turns out all the parents dropped off gifts the night before at “the north pole” and santa read off the names and handed the kids their gifts out there in the dark and i gotta say even though id like to take the Santa out of Christmas, it was pretty damn cool.

especially when Santa said, i kid you not, “thanks to the Bush administration ive wiretapped all your homes so i know who has been naughty and nice.”

one of the best parts was when the littlest nephew hadnt yet received his gift from Santa and there were only 4-5 presents left and i said, Tristan are you sure you were nice and not naughty? and he said, i i i dont know.

and just then Santa called out his name and Tristan said here i am santa here i am!

and he got his gift from the fat old man and we ran home and they ripped open their gifts and inside was just what they wanted… FLOAM!

the kids have just arrived so let me wish you all a Merry Christmas. i’m very lucky to know all of you virtually and literally and i hope that you are all having as much fun where you are as im having where i am.

and thank you to everyone who sent me emails and comments and all the well wishes. i’d reciprocate but i have very limited access.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

more pics of Christmas eve here