BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures

Subject: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 03:23 PM

You know how a lot of Christmas wrapping paper is printed with a repeating design that works sort of like a grid to help you cut the paper in a straight line? You just pick a starting point to make your cut and aim your scissors for the next repetition of the same spot. As long as you cut through, say, the picture of the bow on the blue package each time, you've got a straight line.

Well, I really like using paper printed with images of animate objects like Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, reindeer etc. When I line up my scissors to make a cut I always try to do something horrendous like cut right through the center of Santa's eye, or snip off Rudolph's nose, or bisect Frosty right down the center of his entire body. I love it. I can be overheard mumbling things like, "Hah! Let's see how Mrs. Claus likes you with that little bit of your anatomy missing, you jolly old tub of lard!!

Yes, I know it's weird, but you find the joy of the Chrismas season your way and I'll find it mine, okay?

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Cluin
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 03:28 PM

Like biting the ears first off the chocolate Easter Bunnies.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: MMario
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 03:29 PM

what's wierd about that? Doesn't everyone do it?

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Gizmo
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 03:34 PM

Not with wrapping paper, I tend to turn the paper upside down, so that I cut along the non-patterned side, then judge how straight may cutting is afterwards.

I do however get alot of pleasure in eating the limbs then the body of a jelly baby, the head HAS to be last.

Chocolate bunnies ears are the most pleasurable IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Becca72
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 03:38 PM

I always eat gingerbread men, animal crackers, etc. head first. And candy canes need to be brought to a sharp point in case it's needed as a weapon.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: RangerSteve
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 04:09 PM

Becca - No sound effects? It's more satisfying if you say things like: Oh, no, it's the monster!!! in a high pitched voice as you pop them in your mouth. Even better, if you have a glass of milk, you can dunk them head first in the milk to drown them. "Oh, no, not the milk" "HAHAHAHAHAHA, yes, the milk!"

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: SharonA
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 04:11 PM

Besides, if you soften the gingerbread man's head first by dunking it in milk, it's easier to give him a frontal lobotomy with the pointy end of the candy cane.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Cluin
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 04:15 PM

Issues?

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Gizmo
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 04:15 PM

Gingerbread mens heads come off last too with me. Maybe because I like the pleasure of torturing my edible friends. I tend to say (only for my kids benefit - honest!) haha haha haha, no anasthetic this time sucker, and eat him limb by limb. The silent screams are never heard.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Megan L
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 04:30 PM

now if you want really sadistic you cant be
at the victorians they had a lovely little partygame where nuts (Still in shell possibily) and raisins were put in a large bowl. they were then covered with a good ladlefull of warmed brandy which was set alight and you had to pick the fruit and nuts from the bowl :) my kind of people these victorians knew how to deal with the inlaws

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: wysiwyg
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 05:38 PM

Deep down, I always knew this was the crowd for me.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 05:47 PM

There's another Victorian parlour game where you were blindfolded and someone slapped you.. You had to guess who slapped you.

Nice if you had a bit of a grudge.....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Adrianel
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 10:32 PM

If our daughter wanted to upset her grandmother, she would bite the heads off jelly-babies in front of her.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Amos
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 11:35 PM

I enjoy seeing pictures of New England motorways deep in ice and snow. Sort of a Schadenfreude or something.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 01:50 AM

"Sadistic" is how you might describe the ritual my 14-year-old son is going through right this very minute. The gag gift for his father is a lot of work for everyone. He bought a small action figure, that he wrapped. And then enclosed inside a box that a computer monitor arrived in. Packed with school text books for weight, a few cans for the rattle, wads of undershirts (he borrowed them from his dad and this is how he is "returning" them) for bulk, and then the wrapping paper. The real gift (yet another gift card to Home Depot) will be revealed after a treasure hunt the kids set up. This is how they do christmas over at their Dad's house on chrismtas eve. It's a little kinder and gentler at my house the next morning.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 07:23 AM

I like biting the head off the real father xmas as he comes tumbling down my chimney.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: SINSULL
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 08:30 AM

I am warming to the glow of a crucified snowman display every evening.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: JennyO
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 09:55 AM

Amongst the Christmas lights and decorations around my house, I have an inflatable reindeer on my front lawn (as you do). He is weighted on the bottom and the air from the pump keeps him upright. Trouble is, when it is windy, he blows over sideways, and with the wind we have been getting lately, even at night, he has been spending a lot of the time on his side and I have to keep going out and standing him up again.

So I had this idea to keep him from blowing over. I attached some twine to two different points on the house behind him and brought them together and fastened them around his neck. the twine is hidden by his scarf. So now he stays up all night - maybe I should introduce him to Stiffy the Snowman in SINSULL's street ;-)

Later at night when I turn all the Christmas lights off, my reindeer flops down on the ground with the twine still around his neck, till the next night. Sometimes I have to help him get back up the next night, because he looks like the twine is strangling him. It did strike me at the time (before this thread was started) that putting twine around his neck was vaguely sadistic. Still, he doesn't seem to mind. At least, I haven't heard him complain.

Well if you had a woman who helped you stay up all night, would you complain?

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: leeneia
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 10:12 AM

Americans indulge their sadistic impulses by giving other people fruitcake.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 11:04 AM

Sitting here in DC, I eagerly await the annual 1/4" of snow. The City shuts down, people abandon their cars, and having spent 28 years in the Snow Belts of the Great Lakes and now living in the Rockies, I laugh.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 11:05 PM

I just heard NPR's annual broadcast of David Sedaris reading his story about working as Santa's Elf at a department store. It is a great pleasure to listen to Sedaris decimate the commercial tackiness that surrounds Christmas retail, and the ridiculously bad behavior of Christmas shoppers that crowded shopping malls seems to inspire.

Elmer

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 10:55 AM

I have been totally frustrated in my attempt to gift my brother with the PERFECT Christmas gift. Any of you who have seen the movie "A Christmas Story" will know what I am talking about. The local Rite-Aid advertised a lamp made of a lady's leg clothed in fishnet and bearing a perfectly hideous shade.
They sold them out on day 1. All the stores are sold out.
SIGH!
He would have put it in his front window and loved it.
SINS

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Becca72
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 11:21 AM

RangerSteve...EXCELLENT ideas!!! I shall have to try that next time I have animal crackers. Heehee!

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Becca72
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 11:27 AM

Sins, not quite as good, but my youngest nephew gave me the nightlight version of said lamp for xmas a couple of years ago...I think they got it at the Hallmark store.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 11:47 AM

Maybe one of our most amusing gifts was one we put together for my fisherman brother-in-law. We printed up a set of double-sided fish which we taped together around a dollar coin and a paperclip, forming a nice loop in front of his snout. We then sank them into a gallon jar of water, wrapped the whole thing up and presented it to said brother-in-law, along with a minature fishing pole, line, and hook. He got quite good at catching the fish and accumulated a tidy sum for fishing supplies.

Then there was the ice-auger certificate appropriately frozen in a block of ice.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Dead Horse
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 12:01 PM

I love giving chocolates to folk I know are on a diet, and cans of lager to Real Ale fanatics!
I was thinking of getting the wife a new dish washer. Only the box, mind, but inside the dish washer box I would put a nice new dish mop.
But where would I get a dish washer box?

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Becca72
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 12:03 PM

From behind an appliance store...probably in or near their dumpster. The real question is, where will she get your coffin?

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Bert
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 01:44 PM

cans of lager to Real Ale fanatics!

Aw! Dead Horse that's bloody wicked.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Adrianel
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 09:51 PM

SINSULL: you would enjoy our Jesus lamp, found (as are so many good things) at the Town Dump. He is plaster, with a crown of thorns, blood trickling down his temples, a bulb-and-shade carrier sprouting from the top of his head, and a soulful expression on his face. As a bit had been chipped off the end of his nose, we added an elastoplast.
He gives a good light for reading, and gets some startled glances from those visitors seeing him for the first time.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 10:15 PM

Under no circumstances is anyone to give Adrianel my address.

I am having the best time this year terrifying all with potential gifts. Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way!

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: JennyO
Date: 23 Dec 06 - 11:49 PM

So Mary, if you are ever my Santa, I should be very afraid, by the sound of it. The question is, what did your SS get you?

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Leadfingers
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 06:10 AM

What about this for a saditic gift ? My friend Moira loves Cats and Chocolate almost equally , so someone gave her a box of Chocolate kittens ! She had a HELL of a job deciding wether to keep 'em or eat 'em !

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 12:07 PM

My favorite lamp (even though I don't even have a lightbulb screwed into its fixture) is a moose skull I embarrassed Tom into buying me for Christmas one year from a local antique shop.

I don't have one of those leg lamps (no, Sinsull, just don't do it!), but I DO have half of a pair of mannequin legs (that's a pelvis and one leg) with the foot sticking up through a pile of various sized and aged globes of the world.

That tablescape replaced the bass drum which I gave away a few years ago.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 12:35 PM

When I lived in Fredericksburg VA some yonks ago, there was a big hoohaa in the papers about a sadistic christmas decoration. Seems some guy put a fully kitted out hunter on his front lawn with the gun sited on the deer decoration across the road.

As the mother of young children at the time I was a bit miffed. Now! Hilarious!

Also in Fluvanna County Va when my kids were teens, someone set up a Santa Rest break on their front porch complete with real toilet, big red ribbon on top and loo roll along side.

Heh heh heh!

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: wysiwyg
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 02:48 PM

We do it it home so no one will witness it, but we do some hilarious mocking of Xmas shoppers and think, sometimes, that we'd like to go do it (AT WalMart) to keep the bellringers company.

That Santa in the post above mine is on our screensaver.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 07:14 PM

I exercised my sadistic streak this year in planning the menu for Christmas dinner. I decided that instead of planning around guests' food requirements or preferences, I would intentionally make sure each guest found at least one item in the spread he or she cannot or will not eat.

Daughter and her boyfriend are vegetarians - we had three types of meat.

Grandaughter is allergic to tree nuts - we had walnut brownies and German chocolate cake with pecans in the frosting.

Step-daughter is allergic to anything in the nightshade family - we had bell peppers in one dish, tomatoes in another, and potatoes in a third.

Step-daughter's husband hates onions - guess what was in the pot roast.

Step-son will only eat chicken if it's fried - I made sure we had some nice baked chicken.

Step-son's wife won't touch pork - we had ham.

Step-son's wife's mother is lactose intolerant - we had real whipped cream for the pumpkin pie.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 07:26 PM

Plunging my fingger into a chocolate marshmellow Santa's stomach gave me great pleasure as a young boy.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 07:36 PM

Each year we used to have animal candy for Christmas. One year I noticed the head was off a seal. I recall suspecting that a fisherman must have infultrated the candy production line.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Dec 08 - 07:40 PM

Belsnickle Christmas practices always seemed vaguely sadistic to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: open mike
Date: 27 Dec 08 - 03:37 AM

Belsnickle??

http://appalachianhistory.blogspot.com/2006/12/belsnickle-definitely-not-santa-claus.html

In 19th century Germany Santa Claus was known as Pelz Nichol (Santa in Fur / St. Nicholas). Throughout the German settlements of Pennsylvania, Santa became known by a variant of this name, Belsnickle

here is a piece from the local paper here
http://www.chicoer.com/ci_11306830?source=most_emailed

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Dec 08 - 12:16 PM

Belsnickling

http://www.folkplay.info/Gallery/Wolfville2004.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 27 Dec 08 - 12:49 PM

Then there's always the old "Give a kid a present his parents will hate" trick. I gave our three-year-old grandson a toy construction site set with over 100 parts. It was actually meant to be left at our house for him to play with while visiting, but he fell in love with it and refused to leave it here. So, his mom and dad get the pleasure of having all those small pieces strewn all over their house.

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Micca
Date: 27 Dec 08 - 01:30 PM

Bee-dubya-ell, its the age-old
question " What is the FIRST thing a child learns when he/she is given a Drum for Christmas?"


A. "That they will NEVER get another one"

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Dec 08 - 03:14 PM

I once gave the kid of a least favourite neighbour a really noisy toy for Christmas. Oh, the joy:)

Subject: RE: BS: Vaguely Sadistic Christmas Pleasures
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Dec 08 - 03:18 PM

A close friend, from a large family of boys, once confessed to me that later in life he wondered why the milkman only gave him a gift at Christmas.