Keriosity

According to this article I just read on Yahoo - Sydney Australia has become the lamest city in the world.

This year, Sydney is forbidding its Santas from saying “ho ho ho”. Apparently, some undersexed spinster has decided that Santa’s laugh is offensive to women. To back up her ridiculous claim, she threw in that “ho ho ho” scares children. Sydney is suggesting that the Santas say “ha ha ha”. Because that’s less weird.

(Sigh.)

I mean, sure, “ho” is sometimes used as a cute nickname for a whore. None of us is privy to the goings on between Santa and Mrs. Claus behind closed doors, but I think it’s safe to assume he is not using “ho” in that way. (Although a google image search of “Santa” and “Ho” says otherwise.)

And as far as Santa scaring children: yes, occasionally Santa scares children. It has nothing to do with his jolly “ho ho ho”. Some Santas smell like cigarettes and Jack, and when children are forced to sit on boozy Santa’s lap and pose for pictures, it’s not so pleasant.

Christmas is becoming way too controversial, and Santa’s laugh is not the only thing under attack.

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Ok men – now that the largest gift-giving season is over, you have a 2 week break until you have to start thinking about what to get us women for Valentine’s Day. I know you think it’s too soon and that getting us something ON Valentine’s Day always seems to work out just fine – but we know a last-minute gift when we see one. We can tell by your increasing crabbiness in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day and the very obvious signs of relief when we open the last-minute gift and smile. We can see right through the excitement and happiness you are trying hard to convey as we give you a Thank-You peck on the cheek. We know what you are really thinking: “Whew! I pulled it off again! I am a genius!”

If you identify with any of this – you are NO genius.

But I am here to help you. (And I am a genius.)

First of all, I want you to ignore all radio and TV commercials or other advertisements suggesting possible Valentine’s gifts that women will love. I am positive that the marketing execs behind these advertisements are man-hating spinsters who want to see the annihilation of the male gender. These gifts are guaranteed to backfire. Here’s how:

“Give her a gift she’ll treasure with a right-hand diamond ring.”

Seems like the perfect gift, right? Women love jewelry…a right-hand diamond ring is jewelry…therefore, she will love it! Stop. Before you all run out to get these right-hand diamond rings, you need to know some crucial things. Life-or-death things. The only scenario in which it is acceptable for a man to surprise a woman with a right-hand diamond ring is if he’s already given her a left-hand diamond ring. Otherwise, the message will be loud and clear: “Just a quick reminder: I DON’T want to marry you.”

The right-hand diamond ring trend was created by single women who want to symbolize that they don’t need men to be happy - that they are independent and can buy their own damn diamond rings. The very same women who are trying to get you killed by telling you to buy your girlfriend a right-hand diamond ring.

However, if your lady already has a left-hand diamond ring - by all means get her one for her right hand! We can never have too many diamond rings.

“Send her an adorable TeddyGram this Valentine’s Day. There is nothing you can’t say with a teddybear!”

Uh…I guess that’s technically true. I’m not sure that “Guess what? I gave you the Clap!” would be something you’d want to say with a bear…but I suppose as long as we have a soft cuddly teddy bear to wail at your head, we don’t need to find the nearest skull-crushing object.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – stuffed animals are not sexy in any way. Real grown-up women do not like getting them as gifts - regardless of how happy we pretend to be when we get one. That “Awwww!” we say when we receive a stuffed animal? It’s actually just us catching ourselves before we shout “Awwwwwful! What an awful gift! What am I, 7-years-old? What the hell were you thinking?!”

“Valentine’s Day is all about love and romance, so make sure you both get what you want this year by sending her a PajamaGram”.

Have you seen the pajamas you can send with a PajamaGram? It would be really unfair of you men to complain that we wear frumpy sweatpants and t-shirts to bed and then give us frumpy pajamas on what is supposed to be the most romantic and guaranteed-to-get-some day of the year. I mean, we WILL be happy to get cozy comfy pajamas – but you can plainly see why you will be kicking yourself afterwards.

Askmen.com has some suggestions for gifts depending on the stage of your relationship. One such category is for the “Occasional Romance.” (You clever men you! Making “booty call” seem all romantic and clandestine.) For your occasional romantic partner, they suggest giving a basket of sex toys. Riiiight. As if being your booty call isn’t degrading enough – “Here’s a slutty basket of slutty slut toys, you slut.” (Besides, if she has the sex toys, does she really need to answer your drunken booty calls anymore?)

I realize you probably thought these were all great ideas until I viciously squashed all your hopes and dreams for a suitable (and easy) Valentine’s Day gift – but I do not intend to leave you without a means of getting through this holiday unscathed. In fact, I’ll do one better – I will solve your gift-giving problems for all holidays to come!

There are three fail-safe gifts you can get any woman for any occasion. A trinity of perfect gifts, so to speak.

The first one is so obvious to women, it’s unbelievable that men have not picked up on it: Spa Day. Women could have a spa day every day and never get tired of it. This is the perfect gift for Valentine’s Day and you can make it an annual thing without appearing lazy. In fact, you can make it your yearly recognition of the fact that we deserve to be pampered. We will love it!

Three little words about the second perfect gift: Ju le ree. Beware of the right-hand diamond ring issue – but any other kind of jewelry is really always appreciated.

And the third perfect gift in the trinity – a romantic dinner alone with you. (“psht” all you want – it’s easy and it will make us happy.)

If you stick to these three gifts and combinations of them, you will never have to stress about what to give us…ever again.

Keep a secret list of gift-giving occasions and what you give us every year on that day. For example:

Valentine’s Day – Spa Day and romantic dinner.
Anniversary – Jewelry and romantic dinner.
Christmas – Jewelry and Spa Day
Birthday – Spa Day scheduled for the day of our birthday (leaves you free to…watch sports…or whatever else you like to do that we nag about), followed by dinner with several friends (that way we get even more gifts.)

Every 7-10 years, throw in a curve-ball by taking us on vacation as the gift. (Although vacations will still involve spa days and romantic dinners – just so you know.)

You may think that this will become predictable and that we will be upset that you don’t think of something creative for every occasion. What you don’t realize is that when we hear another woman say “Oh, every year on our anniversary, Steve gives me a gorgeous piece of jewelry and takes me out for a quiet romantic dinner” - what we hear is “It’s a tradition that he never forgets” and we all silently berate our own men for not being as thoughtful.

If you follow my simple advice - from now on, when she opens your gift and smiles and plants a full-on Thank-You KISS, you can think “Whew – that actually worked! Keri is a genius!”

It’s that time of year again. Holiday-Card-Sending Time.

I have always slaved away, sending out Boxed-Set Cards in which I have handwritten the recipients’ names, the names of their children and/or pets, included some sort of personalized sentence like “It was so nice to see you over the summer!” or “Let’s get together after the holidays!” or “Hope everyone is well.” And then I sign them from me and Emil and our pets. (I gave up asking Emil to sign them years ago.) Lastly, I write out all of the envelopes. By hand. 50-75 cards. It’s excruciating.

I try to do them all in one sitting, but after many hours and several glasses of wine, my handwriting is noticeably sloppier, I’m sure I start mixing up children’s names with pets’ names, and the T-Z people probably think I’m dyslexic.

Last year I realized that enough was enough and for the sake of my reputation, I must stop sending handwritten cards.

Christmas Cards are nothing more than a political game we play with our family, friends, and acquaintances. Each year is a new poll that reflects where you rate in their lives and likewise where they rate in yours.

It begins with the editing of last year’s Holiday Card List.

People like me who send Boxed-Set Cards and write them all by hand will delete a few people who have not sent us cards in at least 2 years. After 2 years, we can finally accept that we do not rate high enough in their lives to receive a card from them and so it’s ok not to send them one. Usually, we add at least twice as many as we’ve deleted because we are the martyrs of the card-sending season and really what’s a few more hours and glasses of wine? Boxed-Set people tend to be single, married without kids, or empty-nesters and receiving a card from them means that they really do like you.

The Photo Card people have a little more editing to do because Photo Cards are more expensive. But they can’t be too brutal because those cards come in sets of 25, 50, and 100. Photo Card people are generally newlyweds or people who have young children and no time to write out cards by hand. It is also the least painful way to let the relatives see how big the kids are getting. Getting a Photo Card means that chances are you rate medium-high on their friendship scale. Or that you are a relative they don’t want to visit.

The Newsletter Greeting people simply add more and more recipients to their lists because they truly feel like everyone they have ever met needs to know that their 3-year-old has started wearing big-girl underwear, that they got a pool over the summer, and that so-and-so is singing a solo in their church’s Christmas Eve Service. (Personally, the only “news” I choose to share via my holiday cards is that sometimes my return address is different than the previous year’s.) Newsletter people always have 3 or more kids, all of whom are involved in sports, 4H, and the church youth group. Also, Newsletter People are adept at inserting clipart into Word documents. Getting a Newsletter Greeting doesn’t tell you anything about how you rate with the sender since their mailman probably got one too.

The Form Card people also only add to their list every year because it’s really no more effort one way or the other since their nannies or assistants print out the addresses on labels and stuff the envelopes. And Form Cards come in sets of 100, so they might as well be sent to as many friends and clients as possible. Form Card people can’t possibly waste time even signing the cards themselves because Form Card Husband owns his own business or is the C-something-O of a company and Form Card Wife is busy with charity events and pilates. Receiving an unsigned Form Card tells you nothing about how you rate with the sender. If you receive a Form Card that is actually SIGNED or even better - has a little handwritten sentiment - you know you rate VERY high as the Form Card sender’s friend - somewhere in the 95-98 percentile.

The politics of Holiday Cards are not easy to navigate. You hope and pray that no one ups the ante by sending you a gift instead of a simple card. First of all - that’s just rude because they are forcibly upgrading themselves onto your “gift list” from the “card list” and it takes at least 5 years to subtly downgrade them again. As mentioned above, it takes 2 years of card-silence to remove a person from your card list. So theoretically, once a person is on your “gift list” you are committing to at least 7 years of sending them something unless they do something drastic - like go from sending a gift to card to nothing in 3 years. That would be grounds for deletion from all lists, I guess.

You must always have more cards than recipients. If you receive a card from someone that you didn’t send one to, it’s very important that your turn-around time for sending them a card is less than 2 hours - that way, it will appear as if the cards crossed in the mail - NOT that their card was an obligatory card.

This year, I will be sending Form Cards because I am terribly unphotogenic and no one needs to know that our landscaping has been put off until after the holidays. Besides, I’d rather be labeled as an “insensitive snob” than a “dyslexic drunk.”

Today is Halloween - my most favorite and sacred day of the year. We threw our mostly-annual Halloween bash over the weekend, and luckily, I have tons of Halloween candy left over because people in LA don’t eat.

So I am all prepared for trick-or-treaters.

The problem is - there have been no trick-or-treaters. Not a one. And no signs of any trick-or-treat activity in the neighborhood. This is the one day all year that I welcome children onto my property and all of the children have disappeared. The weatherman had a special “trick-or-treat forecast” this evening, so I know there must be trick-or-treating going on somewhere.

At least last year, when we were living in Newport Beach, we had 1 trick-or-treater. But that little girl’s mother showed up minutes later to interview my husband to make sure he wasn’t a creep because he gave out candy while “Everyone else always just gives money. No one gives out candy” !?! That was the day I decided to move away from Newport because a person like me cannot live among people like that.

Halloween = candy and trick-or-treating for the candy.

Meanwhile - I love how giving out candy makes someone a possible creepy pervert, but it’s totally FINE to send your child out ALONE to ring the doorbells of strangers who might be creepy perverts, as long as they give her money. That’s okay - but a trick-or-treat Hershey bar has to be investigated immediately! I think Emil should have rung her doorbell a few minutes later to interview her about the fact that she lets her child trick-or-treat alone to shake-down perverts for money. I’m pretty sure that’s a “gateway” activity and prostitution is in this kid’s future.

I am very dismayed that Halloween in California may be as watered-down and dietetic as everything else. I won’t stand for it. It’s just not how I was raised.

I can understand that today’ parents have good reason to be concerned. They’ve raised their kids to be ill equipped for the perils that face them. When I was a kid, we went door-to-door, without adult supervision, to sell crap to raise money for our schools, to sell girl-scout cookies, to collect money for delivering newspapers, and to trick-or-treat. We knew to always go with another kid, to never to go inside, and to avoid shabby houses and the neighborhood weirdos. And if we really wanted to be prepared, we’d carry a tube sock with 2 apples in it, as my friend taught me to do one Halloween in her neighborhood, just in case we “ran into any trouble.”

I think what happened over the years is that as more and more dangers presented themselves, kids needed adults to escort them while trick-or-treating. As I’ve said before, parenting around here seems to be analogous to the British monarchy - they have the title but someone else does the work. So I’m sure after a few years, parents decided it was just easier to GIVE their kids the candy instead of taking the time to walk the neighborhood or pay their nannies overtime. Yet another great lesson for kids - you can get all the loot without working for it.

Without the simple joy of activities like trick-or-treating, what are kids doing for fun these days? They certainly aren’t playing Tag!