Christmas. Again.

It’s time to talk about The Christmas Problem again, which I did last year and will repeat a bit this year, but most of it’s fresh. Or at least not dead-horse-beaten quite yet. Or maybe it is. I can never tell.

Last year, I was in the dumps mainly due to a lack of both funds and sons, with the former having been stretched like a sheet of elastic putty over the newspaper comics so thin that the fat kid from Family Circus went anorexic and the latter was at his Daddy’s Dad’s place in Colorado for the holiday – which, except for the fact that Hunter Thompson lived there, is a pretty miserable state made up of equal parts snow and John Denver divided by South Park and Columbine. It was a depressing time, with very little money to spend and minus the one person I wanted to spend it on. This year is slightly better, though. Which might explain why I’m just so darn chipper.

It’s an odd-numbered year, which means Trey (my stepson, for those keeping score at home) is here with us for Christmas, and that makes me happy. Of course, money was tight last holiday season, and that was with a full year of employment under my belt. This year, we’re going into Christmas with barely two months of paychecks between me and the bread line.

I joke, though. Thankfully, it never got as bad as that during my unemployment, mostly because I’m not even sure they have bread lines anymore. I think they went out of style sometime between the beginning of the Great Depression and the end of the Soviet Socialist Republic, right around the time Pepsi was making Democracy the choice of a new generation of Russians. Or something. It was the ’80s. I was a kid. Mostly I remember Ronald Reagan telling Gorbachev to tear down his wall…and then Michael Jackson danced all over everything, doing the moonwalk through Red Square and flashing his rhinestone glove at the Romanovs until Rasputin got sick and puked his Glasnost all over everybody’s Communism. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was like that.

Anyway, things are better this year, except that they aren’t. With six months of unemployment at my back, I’m feeling pretty stingy about sharing the holiday cheer with anyone other than my immediate family. And I feel especially stingy about throwing even a few pennies into the depressingly cheerful red buckets of the approximately 500 charities ringing bells at every freaking entrance of every freaking store I’ve freaking been into in the last few freaking weeks. It’s annoying, but that’s the holidays.

I suppose I could spare a few pennies here and there, and I do. At least, whenever I think I can get away with it. The looks of feigned gratitude stretched across sneered lips are a little too much to bear when I’m caught tossing some coppers into the tin rather than the shinier coins preferred by your discerning bell ringer. But times is hard, people. And you should be grateful for those pennies anyway, regardless of what you think your bell ringing skills are worth. Sure, pennies are the nusiance coin, but just ask anyone whose ever been too broke to buy a drive-thru taco how quickly they add up when you get a few of them together. One determined excavation of the couch cushions can lead to a happy visit to the CoinStar machine, followed by a voucher for unfathomable riches. Sure, the store clerk cashing in that voucher for a buck fifty might scoff at you for wasting her time, but $1.50 when you’re broke and hungry is as close to heaven as any of us are ever likely to get in this horrific little world. So take my charity and be glad for it, you little yuletide cockroaches.

I do have some things to be thankful for this year, I suppose. Take, for instance, the documented fact that festive joy can find no foothold in the soured belly of a proper newsroom. This means I’m spared the usual holiday routine of Secret Santas and white elephant gifts the rest of you poor cubicle monkeys are subjected to. I worked a job where, for years, I endured such miseries and I’m glad to be rid of them. When dollars are few and toys are expensive, every nickel spent buying co-workers comically masturbatory exercise equipment are nickels I can’t spend buying my son one of the very few things he’s asked for. Sorry to break it to you, overzealous office party planners, but nobody likes what you make them do every year. Nobody. And anyone who says different is either lying or just too scared of disrupting the natural flow of office indignities to shed their forced grins and phony maniacal laugh tracks to tell you what horrid little trolls you all are. So I’m doing it for them. You’re welcome, cubicleites. Rejoice and be glad in it.

So here we are, another year richer and another year poorer, set to knock ourselves silly trying to conjure up enough financial magic to prevent the holidays from becoming a mocking display of abject disappointment along the lines of unwrapping a sweater vest or listening to a non-Dolly version of Hard Candy Christmas. With a little luck, we’ll make it through.

Pray for us, though.

But send cash.

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
Available now from the following retailers

The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
Available now from the following retailers

What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.