Jack wrote this Dec. 24, 2005. I posted it again in 2020, and I’m aware that I’m repeating it here.
Hi again blogsters:
Went back down there for some more blackjack and didn’t get in more than a few hands before a pit boss announced they were shutting down the tables, the casino, and sending everyone home to spend time with their families.
Surprised me, but a worthy cause I wouldn’t have expected of them.
Fact is, all those gamblers who aren’t aware that blackjack’s a spiritual experience needed to be off somewhere else, anyway. Which is to say, pretty much all of them except me.
So, I smiled to meself with a warm red glow that a casino would let the employees go home to be with their kinfolks instead of staying there making a lot of money for the mafia. Swung over by Taco Bell on the way back out of Bernallilo and picked up three bean burritos and three crispy tacos to celebrate a victory for those employees over casino management.
Brung those tacos and burritos back up to the village and capped the hill looking down into Placitas…. looked as though something awful had happened here….. flashing emergency lights copcar style all down on the main road. Sheriff with a flashlight was waving me to take a back road. I rolled down my window, “Accident?”
“No. Most of the roads are shut down. People in groups in the middle of the roads singing Carols. You’ll have to take this road. Be careful.”
Happened ‘this road’ was the very selfsame road I needed to take to trip my young arse home as fast as safety allowed to lock the front gates and turn off the outside lights before any carol singers could catch me unawares and make me listen to Christmas carols.
I don’t so much mind people singing carols. I think it’s kind of cool, actually, especially if they were to go a step further and listen to the words they’re singing.
On the other hand, I honestly don’t want to listen to the words, the music, nuthun do do with Christmas carols.
I figure if I can go through an entire presidential term without knowing who’s president, and go through Thanksgiving to New Year without hearing a single Christmas carol (most especially ones involving Santy and reindeers), it will be okay to die. I’ll know I’ve lived right, at least one period of my life.
Anyway blogsters, if you’re reading this blog you need to get your young arse off the computer and go spend some time with the family.
But if you don’t have somewhere else to be, don’t have someone else, why heck, amigos, rejoice. Luxuriate in the beauty of being alone with yourself and any cats you might have.
If you don’t have any cats, nor any particular self you can bring yourself to rejoice about, heck. As Sonny and Cher used to say back when everything was supposed to be pretty well straightened out by now,
You got me, babe.
Jack