Cards

What is the point of Christmas cards? I never bothered sending them before I met my wife, and hardly anybody ever sent them to me. I was happy with that arrangement. But ever since I got into a proper grown-up relationship, suddenly everybody I've ever met in my life feels the need to send me a small piece of platitudinous cardboard bearing their good wishes towards my family. Cunts.

Until now I've enjoyed a tacit understanding with the majority of my friends on the subject of greetings cards: let's just not fucking bother and save each other the effort. But that seems to have been abandoned now, so every year we get more cards, and every year we have to waste a whole night reciprocating.

It's like we've entered into a really tedious arms race with all of the people we know. We don't want to send them cards, they probably don't want to send us cards, but as soon as one person starts the whole thing rapidly spirals out of control and before you know it you've got paper cuts and scriveners palsy.

Sending cards is a pain in the arse, you have to dick around trying to find everybody's addresses, then you have to actually write the fucking things - I hate writing stuff by hand, why don't cards have keyboards? What the cock am I supposed to write anyway? "Dear person who I haven't seen since our wedding three years ago, I know you're an atheist and not particularly impressed by trite niceties, but in the interests of continuing this ridiculous charade; Merry Christmas!"

And then you you have to get postage stamps. Fucking stamps. Jesus. Where the hell are you supposed to buy fifty stamps from? Whenever I try to buy a lot of stamps from anywhere they only ever have a couple of those little six-packs ("We've got a load of second class ones, if you like?" go fuck yourself - what kind of stingy bastard sends their friends and family a greeting card by second class post?) Big Issue sellers should sell stamps instead of the Big Issue - they'd make more money that way because instead of selling a shitty rag that people only buy out of guilt, they would be providing an actual service of value to the community. "Shit, I need a bunch of stamps - what the fuck am I going to do? I know, I'll go and see that guy who stands outside M&S on the high street. I can pick up an eighth of sticky black off him while I'm there."

Also, stamps are confusing and scary now. You can't just whack a first class stamp on a letter and put it in the post confident that there's a 70 percent chance of it reaching the right address within a week or two, like you could in the old days. No, you need to work out how big the envelope is and how much it weighs, and then go to spend twenty minutes staring at a bunch of charts to try and guess how much you need to pay. How the fuck are you supposed to weigh a letter anyway? Who has time for this bullshit? Stamps are ridiculous.

Anyway, what I like about you, my imaginary internet friends, is that none of you ever sends me a Christmas card or expects one in return. So merry whatever to the lot of you.