Me, I'm already back in Chicago, which is why I have time to post to alt.discordia. It's so liberating... There were periods where for weeks at a time the only newsgroup I had time to read was comp.infosystems.www.*, and that only when it was work-related. Sometimes it seems to me like I'm losing track of my priorities if I can't keep up with alt.discordia. Lo, but I digress.

A lot of Discordians who've never had the benefit of doing so might wonder what it's like to spend Christmas in the city that Wilson and Shea describe as an experiment in brutal mind control. And then I suppose a lot of Discordians might not want to know anyway, but they've already skipped to the next thread.

Christmas in Chicago is kind of a mondo, a mental hamster wheel that can lead to Eristic enlightenment. Admittedly, it's not as extreme a holiday as some holidays Chicago goes through. We don't waste 10,000 cans of Barbusol like on Halloween, nor do we block off streets and eat a lot like we do for Taste of Chicago (yeah, I know it's not a holiday, fuck you). We don't even dump three thousand gallons of kelly-green dye into the river like we do for St. Patrick's day. Yet there are certain things about Christmas in Chicago that need to be understood...

1) Him What Gets the Most Toys, Wins.
The City has to be decorated, right? You've gotta hire somebody to decorate it, right? Okay, so for the season of giving and light and shit, you've got several hundred contractors clamoring for right to trim the tree, light the streets, throw the light switch, whatever. You've got minority quotas to fill, legs to break, shit, shit, shit. Somehow, the downtown actually gets decorated for Christmas. How? No one knows. The best guess is that sometime around the day Marshall fields starts putting little talking puppets in its store windows, something kicks in. Anyway, it clearly demonstrates that chaos works.

2) The Snow Comes.
Thanksgiving happens. Right after Thanksgiving, there's snow. Like fucking clockwork. I would wonder why it is that weather in a city that normally has such bizarre weather could be so regular. Then I figured it out. It's to piss us off. Eris thinks it's funny to souse us with snow every year and watch the ensuing chaos. When my car's not stuck in a mound of snow, I can sit back with Eris and think it's funny, too.

3) Frango Mints.
Lots of people haven't heard of Frango Mints. And yet many Chicagoans will kill for them. I don't mean they like them; I mean they will literally commit first-degree murder for a box of Frango Mints. They're these yummy little square chocolate mints that Field's makes, and they've been know to rip apart families, to create generation-long feuds... or to save a failing relationship at the last moment. Chicagoans in other parts of the world will often order home for Frango Mints at Christmas time and then kill the postman if the things don't arrive on the right day. These little suckers have "Kallisti" written all over them. Taste good, too.

So Christmas in Chicago is really a Discordian holiday, in a warped kind of way. Sure, we're ostensibly celebrating for the Chirstbabypodthing that gets nailed to the Roman Wickystick. But really I think it's just chaos fucking with a whole city. Here's to you "infamous Chi-town Discordians"... Happy (eristic)Holidays!

-- Brother Snorri

Grasp my Gripping Beast!

         
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             Snorri Abrahamsen, Mensch-in-Charge of
  the Net.Vikings and Keeper of the Gripping Beast, occasionally 
called Jack Graham, Episkopos, Spanky Milton Cabal, KSC, LDD, BYOB
"Grasp my Gripping Beast!"           http://crow.acns.nwu.edu:8082/