Last month's issue made me revisit one of my favorite and timeless holiday classics, which I’ll get to once we start this listicle in earnest. Still, it got me thinking of some of my favorite modern Yuletide melodies. By the time you’re reading this tit rag, I’m sure you’re dreading the upcoming family obligations, gift guilt, and overall malaise brought on by a capitalist-driven psyops campaign to get you to support a crumbling economy. It is an awful time of the year for literally most people, and not because they haven't found Jesus or don't want to be asked when they're gonna have kids for the umpteenth time. Literally, most people just can't afford Christmas anymore in its current form. That anxiety and depression you're feeling isn't because you're a lousy son, throwin’ dollars at the dancers just hours after Thanksgiving Dinner (or a bad daughter for getting dollars thrown at you after said dinner). You're spending three-quarters of your paycheck on rent, and every time you go to the grocery store, it costs a hundred dollars. You can be forgiven for not spending an arm and a leg to fly to your shitty hometown on a flight that will most likely be delayed or canceled. It's okay not to buy meaningless presents that will eventually get thrown away. Still, if you’re guilted into one of these get-togethers and are tired of having to explain why you haven't brought a nice romantic partner for them to badger about breeding...here's a handy-dandy list of modern holiday hits to play when it's your turn with the aux cable. Let these diddies do the talking...

It's December, which for many people means being forced into uncomfortable situations brought on by generations of family just following the status quo because "grandma would have wanted it that way." When no one knows what grandma would have really wanted...she's now dead, so how do you really know what that woman would have wanted 30 years later?

My guess is, she'd probably like to avoid having to cook everyone dinner...sometimes for your granddaughter's new boyfriend that she just nabbed three months ago, who she decided to have tag along to a very intimate family get-together. Maybe "grandma" would have liked to have gone off to Greece or somewhere warm, away from it all. Who knows. But families all have this habit of assuming they're all supposed to get together and pretend to like each other "for the family" or some bullshit. I call this a forced kidnapping of sorts since I'm always threatened in some way if I don't show up to these things...

Well, it seems impossible that we're here already, but it's—once again—that time of year. Santa is busy gearing up to deliver presents to all the good boys and girls around the world. Just kidding, Santa isn’t real, you naive idiot! But for those of you trying to come up with great holiday gift ideas for that bouncer in your life, never fear! I’ve assembled a few recommendations for you, field-tested by yours truly...

Of holiday traditions, the White Elephant gift exchange has always baffled me a bit. Why are we foisting all this crap on people we know, and why is it called that? Until recently, I didn't give enough of a shit to look it up and simply wondered occasionally. However, now that I'm writing about this cultural phenomenon, I had to do the research. First, I started with the good ol' dictionary. Webster defines a white elephant (you know you have a winner when you have two words as one entry in the dictionary) as "a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of." So, when you give a random co-worker that unopened olive pitter you got as a free gift with an Amazon purchase, after asking yourself, "The hell am I gonna do with this?" you're actually abiding by the core principles of the white elephant concept...