Fatale Abstraction

OK. Holiday retail hell. Urgh. I do most of my Xmas chopping early in the year. It's just that I'm such a procrastinator that the only sensible thing for me to do is start early and avoid the mad last-minute dash. Now I'm entirely responsible for eats, drinks, music and decoration for the company Christmas party on Sunday, so I just had a rigorous reminder of why I like to avoid stores in general and at Christmas in particular. Beside the issue of an environment lousy with tubercular third-world nationals, the squalling infants in WalMart make me want to stab someone in the neck with a pencil. From afar I saw an item I actually wanted - Buck, the singing deer-head trophy - the irony of it singing "on the road again" was a nice touch - but was too tired of the whole bidness to sashay over to the display and drag it to the cart. Maybe someday I'll get my deer trophy cousin of Billy Bass. Maybe I'm too tired to make that financial choice right now anyway. Will I still love Buck tomorrow?