How To: Celebrate Holidays in the Office

As we all know, we live in a Christian-dominated society. Christianity is the leviathan corporation that refuses to acknowledge there are other games in town. Sort of like Comcast and cable.

Look around during Easter and Christmas. You’ll see everything decked out in red and white, bunnies and Cadbury eggs. It’s all around, suffocating you in the forced glee of the holiday season, all with the subtle reminder in the background that this is Jesus Land and, as a non-Christian, you’re going to burn in Hell. But hey, enjoy the candy canes and creme eggs while you’re here!

But never fear, dear reader, I know your pain. I’ve lived in The South for a good proportion of my life, and I know the existential, gut-wrenching chaos and yearning for the abyss that it inspires. On the flip side, I know that there are good places in the world, filled with good people who have the ability to read, and don’t fry every ounce of food that goes into their drooling, gaping maws. And thus, I know there is goodness in the world, and how to combat the bad.

And, while I’d like nothing more than to write a guide about how to celebrate Ramadan, the Hajj, Diwali, the Vernal Equinox, or the Bacchnalia in your office, but short of sacrifices and traveling to the desert, I know nothing about any of them. What I do know, though, is Judaism. And thus, in honor of the rapidly-approaching onset of Pesach, I present you with a handy how-to guide on how to celebrate holidays in an office environment.

For your added enjoyment, please read this in the voice of Troy McClure:

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An Open Letter Regarding Conversations in the Restroom

Pic kind of related

Dear Fellow Men Who Try to Talk to Me in The Restroom,

Frankly, I’m surprised this even needs to be written. I’m well aware that we grew up in different time periods and, in all actuality, had different housing environments altogether, but I was under the impression that this was one of those universal constants that all humanity agreed upon. Like gravity. Or not trying to eat fire unless properly trained.

I wish I could say that this has happened to me everywhere I’ve been, that it’s not limited to this office. Because if that were true, I could spare you the shame of having to think about the times you’ve walked into the restroom and felt the need to strike up a conversation about how you’re glad it’s Friday. But it’s not true, and you desperately need to think about it.

See, this is one of the few times that we, in our navel-gazing society ridden with tabloid journalism and social networks, should be guaranteed of privacy. This is a time when we’re at our most vulnerable. Our penises are out, and we’re staring straight forward at that spot on the wall, and we’re doing that in silence.

Did you know that, in some countries, talking to other men in the restroom is a capital offense? No lie. You’ll be decapitated.

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On Risk, Part 4: Rage Quitting

Last time, I talked about the group with whom I played Risk. By the way, if you’re reading this, then it’s evidence that I haven’t edited the blog before publishing it. As it stands, my brain is still wondering why it’s not asleep, and why someone with a Southern accent just asked me for cheese. Life is confusing, and I don’t understand it half of the time.

Anyway, I hit you with such an onslaught of exposition that I’m sure your heads collectively exploded. I apologize for that, and I sincerely hope that your medical insurance covers it. What would that go under? Emergency Room? Do ERs have the capacity to put an exploded head back together again? UK people, what’s the NHS like for exploding heads?

What? Oh, Risk, yeah.

So I mentioned Gilles before, and what I hadn’t mentioned – I don’t think – once again, rusty mind right now – is that he was in one of my courses at the University. The course was Post-Colonial Literature, and I took it because Rudyard Kipling was listed as one of the course’s main authors; I’d been reading an anthology of his horror stories, and I was desperately hoping one of them would pop up in discussion so I could seem smart and well-read.

None of them did, so I just spat out random thoughts that went through my head. Oh, Risk, yeah.

So I knew Gilles as a really smart guy. He knew three languages, and despite the fact that English was not his first language, he was much, much better than I was at literary discussion. (To wit: One of my ideas was to write a paper on how Rudyard Kipling kicked ass. I viewed this as a legitimate topic for anything other than Cracked.com.) But what I didn’t know is that we were equals on one very important level:

We’d both read a disgusting amount of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. For the uninitiated, the EU novels are a series of noncanonical (or canonical, depending on what sort of mood Lucas was in at the time of publication) plotlines about characters from the original trilogy and their offspring. The only thing you really need to know about the EU is that the Skywalkers continue to be The Most Important Family Ever and it takes

SPOILER An entire moon to kill Chewbacca

END SPOILER

This was a recurring conversation between the two of us, and when I first found out that the guy occasionally ran Star Wars Risk sessions, I had to get in on them.

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