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In This Issue

• The Sex Strike: Year Three
• Your Neighbors’ Christmas Lights & Personalities
• Excerpts from “A Jigsaw Christmas Carol”
• Festivalia 2006-2007 (Part Two of a Two-Part Series)
• Things to do with THE FED (besides reading it)
• An Erotic Channukah For The Hot Maccabee In You
• In A Land Of “Wonderful Christmastime,” The Seeds Of Discontent Form In A Chinese Drug
• Columbionics
• Inability to work v. Lateness
• Santa Outsources to China
• They Watch
• The Staff of 23.4

Ramsey Scott

Multicolored Lights:

The typical suburban family - two kids, three bedrooms, and a garage that’s uncomfortably chilly at night. Drives a Toyota Camry. The lights were purchased fifteen years ago when they were on sale at the local Caldor. Of course, half the lights don’t work, and the blues are more periwinkle. Lights are usually taken down by New Year’s.

White Lights:

A family who thinks they’re classy, but they’re actually bland. Speeding through a yellow light is their idea of excitement. The father has dresser drawers full of knit woolen sweaters and khaki pants. And their CD collection is populated with such classics as “Creed’s Greatest Hits” and “An NBC Celebrity Christmas”. Somehow they think the aluminum tree is the pinnacle of great design. Their lights stay up well into January.

Blue and White Lights:

Tries to be one with the goyim, but there’s an underlying desperation not seen since the introduction of Hanukkah Harry. The mother tries to appease their Santa-worshipping children by emphasizing the whole eight gifts thing. The Christmas tree topped off by a Star of David that sells for $20 on eBay.

Roof Icicle Lights:

I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know,” which is impossible because recapturing childhood memories leads to the fabrication of an elaborate fantasy world that eventually loses its thin hold on reality. Dinnertimes are like a Norman Rockwell painting, if Norman Rockwell painted with credit card debt. When they’re not spending the week drowning in their own haughtiness, they go skiing in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Owns an equally stupid dog who barks at shadows in the night.

Wreath, Lit by Exterior Light:

A cat-loving grandmother who’s phoning it in for the holidays. Spends her evenings falling asleep on a recliner while watching the evening news. With the exception of a month’s supply of Celebrex, she owns nothing valuable. (Unless you consider family photos and macaroni art “valuable”.)

Lights on Topiary:

They take pride showing off the paint job of their home’s colonial-style exterior with their blindingly white floodlights, but would it kill them to trim the bushes? They’re not afraid to buy happiness – eating off fine china, golfing at the country club, driving a Mercedes Benz with an ineffective car alarm – but they really need to buy some artistic talent. Walking to the front door, you’re greeted with leftover tree lights plopped on the bastard stepchild of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, or some pre-manufactured reindeer and snowflake shapes sticking out of the front lawn.

Candles in the Window:

The holidays are all about love and togetherness. The rest of the year, violence and intensive family therapy. Has a liquor cabinet full of delicious, delicious Jack Daniels.

Nativity Scene:

Spiritual hippies peeved at the consumerist world. They see a plastic manger scene as an expression of faith, as a way to scold the ignorant masses that Christmas not about sales or diamond rings, but the birth of Our Savior, and togetherness, and the wonder of humanity. When faith is all that you need, nothing else matters – especially the entire contents of your living room.

Nativity Scene with a Giant Lit Plastic Snowman Holding an Outsized Candy Cane in the Front-Yard:

Spiritual hippies with kids who go to church solely for the cookies and grape juice.

Anything that Flashes like the Las Vegas Strip:

The people there are the true salt of the earth – you know how they say “cluttered room, cluttered mind”? In this case, it’s flashy exterior, flashy interior. They had a thin widescreen television, a PS3, and a nice collection of jewelry. The husband has to be the luckiest bastard in the world, if the wife’s fishnet and lace Brazilian-cut panties are any indication. The only negative thing I can think about them is that their 17 years, 50 weeks, and 2 days old daughter of theirs set “Toxic” as her cell phone ringtone. Scares the shit out of you when all you want is peaceful silence.