Tales Of Brave Ulysses.....

This has been the worst year on record for Holidays in the life of Harry Perales. I havent done anything really fun on any holiday since the year began; Easter, i shared a few bags of candy with my siblings, I didnt see any fireworks on the 4th of July, I didnt leave the house on Halloween, and I didn't get to eat Thanksgiving dinner because I arrived too late. I even only ended up seeing a movie for my birthday. And what do we have lined up....for Christmas we don't have a Christmas tree, we lost our Kwanzaa Kinara, and New Year's I'll be in Mexico. Mexico-ing it up with my parents....yeah, fun.

Even though the magic of Christmas is gone, I still look forward to it every year. Mostly for the stuff. I believe my first bit of doubt in Santa Claus came around 3rd grade, when some kid named Craig told me "You know what? There is no Santa Claus... you know why? Because on my presents, Santa has the same handwriting as my parents." I shrugged it off. Why? Because Santa didn't fuck around with wrapping my presents. Santa knew that I've been waiting all year, the last thing I want is to rip up some shit to get to it. It never even occured to me that my parents were just lazy. And sometimes, when we had to go to Mexico we got our presents a week early. The notion that we had to put out sugar-free candy for Santa and my father happened to be a Diabetic didn't even register to me. But after a few years my parents got kind of sloppy and figured i had figured out by now. The nail in the Santa coffin came , quite embarassingly, in the 7th grade. I had kind of realized that Santa wasn't real for a few years, but that Christmas morning i woke up and there were no presents. I cried. Not because I realized that there really was no Santa Claus, but because I was pissed off that my parents were so lazy and the only way to get them out of bed was a good "bawling" (have you ever seen a fat pre-pubescent teenager cry?). So my mom got up and said "Well lemme go check outside." She came back in with my presents. "Ah, it seems, ummm, Santa accidentally left them in the toolshed this year. Silly Santa." Part of me probably cried because the great show was over, and there wasn't any excitement of the old fat man breaking and entering my house to leave me illegally obtained goods that his "elves" had made. More likely, I thought, they "fell off a truck". But I got some good stuff that year. Damn, whatta time. So, I now see Christmas as LOOT DAY. And since I still live at home, I reap its benefits. This year should be a doosy.

A lady just called for my dad from some auto place, and I told her that I'd "go see if he was here." I just sat the phone down for about a minute, but then I decided to go look for my dad and see if he wanted to talk to her. Oddly enough, he really wasn't. I wanted to tell the lady "Wow, I was really just going to lie to you, but, damn, he's really not here." But she hung up before I got the chance.

Well, the Alfredo Vittone novels have been called off.... "why?" you ask.... "should I care?". Well, TNT made a film called "