Christmas 2007

Some highlights from this Christmas:

Genghis Khan brand lamb flavored caramels, supplied by a family member who is visiting from Japan. I didn't sample them. It's enough to know that they exist. Actually tasting them would be carrying broadmindedness too far.

A transsexual sibling explaining that "I was born an asshole, but I transitioned to a bitch." I was intrigued by the ideas expressed in this sentence. First, that being an asshole is a seperate phenomenon from being a bitch. Second, that both are inherent, rather than acquired. And third, that altering gender causes one to become the other.

Another sibling accompanying herself on the piano and singing some rather beautiful Christmas songs by Joaquim Rodrigo.

The young, nubile, female members of the family modeling some clothes from the 1960s that someone found in an attic. Skimpy halter tops, hot pants with one inch inseams, flamboyant exagerated bellbottoms, etc. Some one promptly labeled the garments "skank clothes". On my nieces, the clothes didn't seem so much skanky as adorable, but that could just be me. Nieces have that effect on me. Clothing worn by nieces is never, ever skanky.

Yorkshire pudding.

In my capacity as an ex-mechanic, and accompanied by a current mechanic, leaning over the engine of a 78 Triumph Spitfire and explaining to the teenage girl with the bright pink hair that if the car sits too long without running, the gas oxidizes and gums up the float valves, causing the engine to flood. I commented later that she should have gotten an MGB instead of a Spitfire. That way, she could solve any fuel delivery problems by crawling under the back of the car and banging on the electric fuel pump with a rock. (A rock is the standard tool for this job.)

Someone explaining how her heterosexual son had joined a college fraternity that was one third gay and suddenly started buying clothes that matched.