Dalai Lama, Dalai Schlama...look at these beauties!!

Sitting comfortably in the den of my parents' house, sipping coffee, listening to Nina and Jack Jones (find me another christmas album that is a tenth as groovy and swings a sixteenth of how Jack baby's does and I'll buy you a house...), and laughing at the follies my siblings and I underwent through the years...ahhhhh.

I got to thinking about how Christmas is the ultimate going out for coffee...relaxed and warm, unbothered by petty matters such as time or reservations and if you so desire you can spend the night and wake up to more coffee and waffles. Let's see Second Cup/Tim's/Starbuck's/etc. pull that one off...

jesus, what a creepy thought...a Starbuck's Hotel...yeeeshh.

Anyhow, enough with the nice and fuzzy thoughts about kindness and compassion and family...it's time to get serious. There is an impending conflict upon us...a battle where sheer determination and wits will not see us through to victory and glory. A war that is so vile and heinous and utterly gruesome that the simple fact that a war such as this (or any war for that matter) makes me somewhat reluctant to call myself proud of being human. And the battle that we must recognize as being necessary...?

the Boxing Day sale...

For one day a year, people that only hours before were immersed in tranquil environments, bestowing upon those they hold dearest to their hearts much love and affection, will suit up and converge at that Golgotha of capitalism, that Vimy Ridge of consumerism, the shopping mall, and proceed to reduce themselves to feral and entirely unhuman-like monsters living solely on instinct. An instinct that serves no greater purpose than the ability to sniff out and fight for...a bargain.

Now being raised Tibetan Buddhist and opting to live out my life as one provides a rather unique dilemna for myself. How can I stay true to my beliefs and consider, even for the most fleeting of moments, to want to participate in such a horrible, horrible event?? Is my need and/or desire for shoes, clothes, music or whatever really going to overcome my soul?? Am I truly helping to ease the suffering of people by engaging alongside the very people I am destined to help?? I'll put it to you the only way I see fitting...

any motherfucker that thinks they are getting between me and that pair of Fluevogs I saw along with those Hugo Boss pants will be meeting their maker in a rather untimely and horribly violent manner.

you've been warned...