Alien Sex: More Like Easter FUNday

I don't know how other people feel about holidays, but I fucking hate them with a passion. Every holiday. I hate Flag Day. I hate Arbor Day. I hate Administrative Assistants Appreciation Day. Christmas, Halloween, Easter, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, my own birthday. You name it, I hate it.

The only holiday I don't hate is Thanksgiving, mostly because of the day BEFORE Thanksgiving, where you get to see all of your old "friends" who you haven't seen in a while. It's the one day every year that I'm willing to be part of the masses and drink shitty beer and pretend to give a fuck about what other people are doing with their lives. Thanksgiving Day itself sucks harder than (insert celebrity cock-sucking joke here), but the night before is always interesting. Not necessarily fun, but always interesting.

I like the day before Thanksgiving because it proves to me how right I’ve always been about the dangers of forced fun and expectations.

Holidays suck because of the sense of entitlement they inspire in us. There are always expectations, and rarely does ANYTHING live up to the expectations you had for it. This is true of every day in a sense. People show up to work thinking "today might not suck," but then it sucks, and they feel even worse than they would have if they just said "today will probably suck." What I'm emphasizing here is the importance of preparation over expectation, and the understanding that “fun,” however you define it, cannot and should not be planned.

Don't ever expect something, good or bad. “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” It’s a simple enough expression to remember. But, if that doesn’t do it for you, try this one out instead.

One of the great thinkers of our time, Mr. Mike Tyson, once said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."

Holidays tend to punch people in the face.

The plans you had for your holiday never pan out, and you've got no contingency, because you had these wild expectations that could NEVER possibly come to fruition, and now you're left sulking and hating your life, job, spouse and children. Why? Because you had a day off, you had unreasonably high expectations for it, and you had no contingency plan for when it punched you in the face.

The expression "roll with the punches" really means to roll out of the way of life's attempted punches to the face. Roll in the same direction that the punch is being thrown, that way it swings and misses just over top of you. When holiday boredom sets in, which it will, just remember that I warned you of the consequences of expectation, and the pitfalls of being unprepared.

If you MUST participate in whatever holiday is coming up, in this case Easter, just remember that bars and holidays are essentially the same thing: sad attempts at forced fun, with an underlying expectation that your life will in some way be changed for the better.

Normally, my interest in including poetry in this blog extends only to Lewis Carroll Jabberwocky style nonsense, but I'd like to leave you with this gem from My Morning Jacket songwriter Jim James, from the song "Golden":

People always told me
That bars are dark and lonely
And talk is often cheap and filled with air

Sure, sometimes they thrill me
But nothing could ever chill me
Like the way they make the time just disappear


Whether it's a dark, lonely, shitty bar or a forced-fun-family-reunion, it's all the same: high expectations, lack of preparation, and the unshakable feeling that you'll never get this time back, no matter how hard you try.

Easter is the one Sunday every year that makes me look forward to Monday morning, just so I can get back to some semblance of normalcy. If given the choice, I'll take the disappointment of the start of another work week over the disappointment of shattered expectations. Maybe that makes me a pessimist, but I like to think I’m just happy with my life the way it is, without needing a fucking parade to march by every time something slightly beneficial occurs.

If you like bars and holidays and parades and trophies, good for you. You’ve found something that makes you feel better about yourself. But if that ever starts to get old, which it most certainly will, try getting closer to your own happiness EVERY day, instead of waiting for these verbal masturbation festivals to come around and make you feel “alive.”

Waiting for holidays is the equivalent of building your house on the side of a volcano and only stepping outside when it erupts. If you don’t know what I mean by that, I’m afraid nothing I ever say will make any sense to you, and for that I’m sorry.


- Sugar