Our freedom means we can shop whenever we want to!

Yesterday was Independence Day, and to celebrate I pretty much sat around for half the day, spent a little time catching up on an online class I'm teaching, and then went shopping so we could have some fireworks (the type that are legal in Pennsylvania, that is) and dinner.

When I was a kid if you tried to go anywhere on the 4th of July and buy stuff, you would be, as they say in Virginia, SOL. We had respect for holidays. However, we've managed to turn most of our holidays into excuses to consume, so it makes sense that the day off (for office workers and government employees) is pretty much nothing more than an extra day to shop.

The summer is marked by the three major holidays devoted to grilling: Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. The gods of charred meat are honored on these days.

We didn't char any meat yesterday, mainly because on the 2nd I'd charred about 50 burgers (beef and turkey) and a dozen chicken legs and that I think was enough of an offering. Yesterday we grilled veggie burgers and corn.

But I digress.

Just about everything is open on the 4th these days. True, many mom and pop joints close down, but even one of the local guitar shops was open like it was any other day. There's a sad feel in these big box stores (for instance Target) on holidays, because the aisles are full of holiday related material that didn't sell and will soon be on clearance, and the workers are already setting up the next big shopping event.

In Target's case, that event is back to school. The backpacks, notebooks, pens, pencils, and glue are all positioned for maximum visibility at the end of the long wide aisle (a bit like a major Parisian boulevard) that divides the housewares from the groceries/junk food. We turned the corner from the toothpaste and laxatives and our son looked down that long gleaming aisle and let out a very audible "ugh" as he spied the huge "back to school" banner and the backpacks hung high over the aforementioned orderly rows of school supplies.

Talk about killing the holiday spirit.

An old theme.

March has caught me
sleeping, and I give a backward
sheepish glance
to a forgotten friend.

The buds peek green through brown shrouds,
morning frost still catching the less cautious.
These are days of renewal, yes,
but also moving on.

"The time has come to set aside childish things..."

At that point in the speech, G.W. Bush put down his Nintendo DS and looked sheepishly about...

The lost years of our youth and the lost causes.

When I was a kid it seemed like forever between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That span of 30 days dragged on for at least 60, culminating in the delicious rush of Christmas Eve and Christmas, which was then followed by the sweet denoument of the lazy week between Christmas and New Years.

However, once you have kids, there's no such thing as time expanding between holidays -- time compresses until you no longer have 24 hours to yourself to do the shopping, wrapping, cooking, and cleaning necessary for the end of year festivities. And for all of those years (except for a year or two we skipped), my wife and I have also been jumping ship right after Christmas to head on our annual pilgrimage to the festival known as the MLA Conference.

This year in fact is doubly complicated (maybe triply...who knows) by the fact that both my wife and I are on the job market, a most depressing fact hammered home to us by every rejection letter that flutters in. The math is not particularly pretty: let's say an average job opening attracts 200 to 400 applicants (I'm not kidding). About ten will be selected for an interview at the MLA.

So already your chances are somewhere between 5 and 2.5 percent per job.

After the MLA interviews, generally three candidates will be invited to the campus for follow-up interviews. So even if you've made the first cut, the odds are once again against you for making the second cut.

But let's leave the campus visits aside for a time, since at this point I'm just angling for an interview. Just one, perhaps, to validate my 50+ applications. I've got one rejection in so far, but my wife has received around ten. Of course, she's also received one interview, so I think I would gladly take the ten rejections for one interview ratio myself.

The bottom line is that English Departments are incredibly disfunctional places (as any graduate student could probably tell you) where no one wants to do administrative work but where everyone likes to fight over whether administrative work is being done properly. So even if the deadline for the job announcement was November 1, chances are the committee hasn't even met to discuss the stack of applications they've received. Apocryphal stories concerning applicants being notified on Christmas Eve (Dec 24) about interviews at the MLA (beginning Dec 27th) abound, which is annoying for those people who would only go to the MLA if they had an interview.

I'm already going, so I don't care if they come grab me out of a panel to interview me. Just interview me.

Advertisement.

So you haven't bought yourself a Christmas tree yet, have you? You really need one, though. And you want to feel good about it, you want to turn it into a symbol of your giving nature and bring happiness to others through your participation in the commodification of the holiday season. After all, it hasn't happened if you haven't bought something to commemorate it, right?

December 8th and 9th and again December 15th and 16th, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. (or maybe later), you should come down to 17th and R Streets NW to the most excellent Dupont Italian Kitchen, have yourself some brunch, and buy a tree. My son's elementary school is selling trees at that location to raise funds and 50% is tax deductible. We even offer free delivery to those of you who reside within realistic range (we will not cross the Potomac or the Anacostia, nor are we interested in driving up through Palisades or beyond North Capitol for that matter, but Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Howard University, Georgetown, Mount Pleasant, etc., and of course Dupont Circle are all in play...maybe more, who knows...).

If you don't want a tree, buy a wreath. If you don't want a wreath, just leave some money. It all goes to the school.

Halloween is here...after which it's nonstop to Christmas displays.

It's Halloween, a time when all the button-down men can dress like the fairy-princesses they always wanted to be and business-suit women can wear their naughty nurse and maid costumes, safe in the illusion that really it's just for pretend.

Ever since having children, I've been costume challenged, in large part because having kids means you either no longer get invited to your friends' knock down, drag out, drunk to the gills parties or you get invited but can no longer let it all hang out at your friends' knock down, drag out, drunk to the gills parties. Either way, it seriously inhibits the costume-creativity ambitions.

Back in the day, I went to a party as Andy Warhol (easy: black jeans, a black turtleneck, and a silver wig...oh yeah, and I was about twenty pounds lighter) and also to one as Sickboy from Trainspotting. I really enjoyed that one. I even picked up a heroin habit so it would be more realistic.

This year I plan to dress up as "dad home from work" and hand out candy to the delightful passers-by, many of whom in my neighborhood believe it's acceptable to wear jeans and t-shirt as your costume, use a plastic Safeway shopping bag as your candy bag, and trick-or-treat well into your thirties. I have in fact entertained one group that consisted of about eight children and one mother (or accompanying adult) in which the mother not only asked for candy for herself but also reeked of alcohol. The ones who get out of that one will either look back upon their childhoods with humor or hatred; the ones who don't will repeat it.

Here's a chance to support a great DCPS school.

If you have nothing else to do today, you might want to wander over to Ross Elementary School, on R Street between 17th and New Hampshire NW, for their Spring Festival Fundraiser (held between 12 and 5 p.m. today). The school is trying to raise money to support things that DCPS doesn't find important enough to require, like PE and the arts (Ross students take part in the Fillmore Arts Center, and this year the PTA provided funding for that program). There will be a silent auction with some incredible items and various activities for young and old alike. Additionally, the Fillmore jazz ensemble will be playing.

I believe tickets are $10, and all money goes to the PTA and school funding.

Ladies and Germs, my 500th Post.

To my millions of readers, I say thank you. Thank you for making it all worthwhile. I've hit 500 posts in just under two years (twenty days under two years, thank you very much) and what's more I've reached this milestone on my birthday. So obviously the stars are aligned etcetera etcetera.

Blogging has changed my life in so many ways, whether it's the all-night cocaine-fueled orgies thrown at a blogger's posh Georgetown rowhouse or the more mundane "picking up an 8-ball and a hooker because it'd make a good blog entry," I truly have to thank the blogger for making it possible.

I promise that the next 500 posts will take this medium to the next level, with naked photos of myself and various lawmakers and priests, my favorite recipes, and of course regular guest blog entries written by Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and Odin (Mohammed is a little worried about his entries because, as he says, "my followers take everything so damn seriously," but Jesus told him you can't "let the haterz get to you: people have been killing other people in my name for several centuries, too, but you gotta remember you write for you, not for them.").