January can kiss my fanny

My post-holiday / post-vacation letdown, work stress, and PMS have combined to form a volatile emotional Molotov cocktail. I can't say this hasn't led me to tear up while taking down garland or seeing the Muppets' Christmas special listing on Hulu just days into 2009. I know shuffling around the house sighing and likely bumming out my roommate is not the healthiest way to start the new year.

According to a Google search, post-holiday depression, or post-holiday syndrome, is quite common and the experts all seem to offer similar solutions: exercise, revel in fond seasonal memories, set realistic goals for the coming year, look for fun upcoming events on your calendar (however small they may be), etc.

Here are a few treatments not likely to make the cut of helpful tips:

Drink: While throwing alcohol on your raging emotional fire may seem as unsafe as throwing booze on a kitchen blaze, some people find it to be quite soothing. Think of those fond memories of drinking egg nog at holiday parties and toasting the New Year with champagne as you slip a pint of Jack Daniels into your coffee every morning or come home to the several kegs you've taken to keeping in your tub. Really, who is more jolly than an all-out drunk, despite their stench, cirrhosis, inappropriate groping, and inability to pass a solid shit?

Christmas in July - Why not Christmas in February and March and April, etc?: Plan to celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus on the 25th of every month. Isn't that what the pastor meant in his Christmas sermon about carrying the holiday spirit all through the year? Keep a tree up year round and pass out festive cookies at work toward the end of every month, insisting that everyone can splurge and have a little treat at this special time of year. Bring your friends and family joy every month by sending a new picture postcard of your children (or dogs or ferrets) staring out dead-eyed from a mass of pom-pomed sweaters, potted poinsettias, and snowy woods backdrops. Make sure about the third week of every month to mention in an exasperated fashion to anyone who will listen how much shopping you still have left to do and run down the details of your holiday menu ("I'm just doing a rump roast and asking everyone to bring a side this time around; learned my lesson with the rack of lamb last month - so many leftovers!")

Pay a vagrant to dress as Santa and stand outside your house, greeting passersby: Lock into a rate and payment schedule of store-brand soup and Boone's Farm right after the holidays, when charity donations are at the lowest. You may be able to afford your hired Santa for the whole year, or at least until the warmth of the summer brings about the lice and cease & desist orders from the neighborhood association (it's that snooty whore Margaret Jo Petterson, she has everyone under her thumb).

Just stop celebrating the holidays: There can be no post-holiday depression without the holidays! Halt all celebrations, parties, decorations, gift-giving, well-wishing, special foods, TV viewing (most shows have a holiday episode - better safe than sorry!), shopping trips, and general frolicking from here on out. Explain to your children that this is for their benefit and that by removing the warm feelings of the season now and making them total weirdos among their peers, you may possibly have a chance at saving them from a week or two a winter blues at some point in their distant adulthood.

Fictional Characters who Appear in Multiple Mediums that I Have Thought About. Sexually.*

Wolverine
Mediums: Comics, animated series, movies
Particularly Appealing to me: Animated and Hugh Jackman.
Rationale: Recent viewing of Australia oddly resurrected fantasies of Jackman as Wolverine, not Australia character, despite inordinate amount of screen time Baz Lurhmann gave Jackman’s happy trail.

Seeley Booth
Mediums: “Bones” TV show and novels
Particularly Appealing to me: TV
Rationale: Fun belt buckles, charming off-kilter smile, solves crimes and shit.

Captain Jack Sparrow
Mediums: This is sticky. Since Pirates of the Caribbean is a Disney movie and was therefore conceived from the get-go as a franchise to be licensed out to every medium in creation, it isn’t very organic that the character appears in multiple mediums. However, it’s Johnny Depp, so big whoop. How often can you rub one out to a Disney movie? If you aren’t a pervert.
Particularly Appealing to me: Movies. Likeness on child’s toothbrush not alluring.
Rationale: Johnny Depp in eyeliner, not taking self seriously.

Batman
Mediums: Comics, TV, animated series, movies
Particularly Appealing to me: Movies, TV? (Please see below for further explanation, if you so chose. If not, I totally understand. You’ve been a really good sport so far.)
Rationale: Kilmer and Bale - check.
Clooney - pass (as Batman).
Keaton - way more intrigued by the Joker in that movie; too young at initial viewing to have truly actualized sexual fantasy.
West - Again, too young for fleshed-out sexual thoughts upon viewing, though do remember some altercation(s) between Batman and Catwoman(women) that involved sexual innuendos and made me feel kinda dirty. Pretended to be ignorant of sexual overtones as not to alarm / initiate awkward lecture from mother.

Snape / Sirius Black
Mediums: Harry Potter books and movies
Particularly Appealing to me: Movies. Do not have the time / patience for the books, despite my cousin’s endorsement that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was the first book she ever finished. She was in high school at the time.
Rationale: Like me some old Brit dudes.

* I spent a decent amount of time (decent being long enough for my foot to fall asleep under my ass) deciding whether “mediums” or “media” would be correct here. Please feel free to correct me, but a source would be appreciated for future reference.