howie’s halfpipe

Fellow Humans
We are gathered here today to celebrate Christmas, a day of coming together with loved ones, not so loved ones and other ring-ins that seem to latch on during festive seasons.
If you are reading my Christmas message, it is probably a good sign that you are either extremely lonely or you are sick of sitting at the table with old uncle frank being rude to you while he downs another bottle of beer. You may be reading this thinking that I too am suffering from lonlieness or an obnoxious uncle but that’s not true. With the wonders of technology I was able to write this Christmas message yesterday and have it automatically appear on your screen today.
If Christmas isn’t your thing then I suggest you don’t get married. Remember when you where young and Christmas normally consisted of 2 events, one being with your mums family and one with your dads family, both ensured you received a good stash of presents, sometimes they where long and a little dull but there was only 2 eventys to get in the way of you playing with your new toys.
Well when you get married the number of Christmas do’s you attend doubles, but for some reason if you are married everyone seems to have received a memo that marriage = no presents. So you get double the amount of uncle frank incidents and zero gifts! And on top of that you have to start hosting these Christmas events, in the past when you just attended them you could nick off for a nap or a walk or something if it was dull or a fight was flaring up, but when you’re the host, you have to sit through it all.
Christmas + Marriage = Dull
One of the plusses of being married though is that it reduces the number of presents you need to purchase, because you can just say “hey wife can you put my name on that card too”.
I need to clarify that the above paragraphs are purely created for blogging effect, in reality I actually enjoyed the family Christmas yesterday with a bunch of the inlaws and we have another one tomorrow which should be a good afternoon too, and Christmas isn’t just about presents It is really about the Birth of Jesus, the man who was born lived and died so that we could be free and have eternal life.
That being said presents are still nice.
If you are reading this and thinking “oh I should have got howie a Christmas present”, Let me tell you its not too late, My present receiving dock is open 365 days a year, just don’t expect a present in return, my outgoing present department is on annual leave until 14th September 2018.
I hope you enjoy your Christmas day this year, hope you get good presents, if for some reason you find yourself in possession of some really crap presents there are two options.

A) throw them over the balcony, then go down cover them in petrol, set fire to them, spread the ashes over the rose garden, come back inside and sit down with the rest of the family, then when aunty marg says “do you like your present” tell her you thought it was really hot!

B) Throw a tantrum, complain about the utter crapness of your present ensuring that the person who gave it to you is in the room, they will feel really guilty and open their wallet and give you $50, except the money then go out side with the present and use option A)

And that my friends is how to play Christmas.

Have a good one.

Howie