Ken's Take: It's Beginning to Look Kind of, Sort of Like Christmas...

As you can see here, there is a key time during the Christmas rush when you should do your Christmas shopping. Exactly 5 days prior to Christmas, i.e. the 20th of December,there is a temporary lull in the stupidity of pedestrians where the level of driver stupidity surpasses that of the pedestrian. It is during this time that you are less likely to be at fault if a car ends up hitting you and thus have your presents scattered about the parking lot. Take note that this does not decrease the chances of being actually being hit by a car during this time. That statistic is much too severe to even be mentioned.

It's Wednesday, and in three more days, four if you count today, a large number of the population will be taking part in a tradition wherein members of the family gather together in order to exchange gifts. It is currently speculated that the exchange of gifts has the dual purpose of an acknowledgement of peace between parties, often between members of different families, and as some method of conditioning for the offspring by correlating the number of presents with obedience of the child. It would also appear that parents use this time to teach their children the power of Big Brother through a being named Santa Clause who can, and will, break into your home and knows full well throughout the course of the year what kind of person you've been through extensive surveillance. However, in order to reinforce a positive image, parents dictate that Santa is a good thing because he brings you presents. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I will not be doing the whole Santa thing with my children.

Alright, I'm done being silly. Fun as it may be. So... this is another one of those late posts, but hey, that's how you know it's fresh, right? Side note, how many commas did I just use there? I'm fairly certain that sentence is not grammatically correct... So it's almost Christmas. Are you excited? I'm excited. Despite the introduction to this post I'm actually not against Christmas. Granted, people have a tendency to lose sight of what's important during their Christmas fervor. Something I've come to find this year is that one of the most precious gifts I, and in general most people, can give is their time. Time has become and incredibly precious commodity for me. I just finished a few round of HALO little while ago. It was the first time I'd played in weeks. For those of you who are unaware, I am a HUGE HALO fan. Needless to say, I've been busy. However, being busy requires time from somewhere and more often than not it comes from those you care most about, e.g., your friends, family, and/or significant others. A tough price to pay. It's something I've played around with over the past year, although I'm kind of glad that I did. I had a chance to discover the value of spending time with those you care about first hand. Well worth it for a life long lesson imo.

Well, I'm going to wrap this up by wishing you all a Merry Christmas (or whatever other holiday you celebrate sans any that involve the sacrifice of orphans or something akin to that) and an excellent bout of time off.

-Ken