I SO don't care about your lumbago.

Here's a thought: if you are going to send me a Christmas newsletter, why not fill it with happy, meaningful things, rather than a laundry list of your illnesses, gripes, complaints and whining from the past freaking year. I especially don't want to hear how your kid's dog tortured and killed a weasel, neither do I need to know how it has become too much of a chore for you to put up your Christmas decorations because of the physical limitations of your decrepit body, which prevent you from bringing a box of decorations up from your condo locker every December. I understand that the freight elevator buttons are just too hard to push, but the thing is, I JUST DON'T CARE.

I don't find it very Christmas-y to read how you are essentially counting down the days until you expire. If I hear from you but ONCE A YEAR, I expect you to do a whole hell of a lot better than this, people! If my only contact with you is through your annual newsletter of dreariness, I reallyreallyreally REALLY don't want to know, nor do I care, about your vertigo, your arthritis, your carbuncles, your prostate, your exploding boils, your hammer toe, the dreary weather that prevented you from enjoying the cottage, the arthritis that prevented you from enjoying the cottage, the Viagra shortage the prevented you from enjoying the cottage, or your inability to mow a lawn. I ESPECIALLY don't that you've hired a cleaning lady. That just makes me jealous.

I am this close to starting a blog called "Worst Christmas Newsletters EVER" and putting yours on it! (Don't worry, none of my friends/relatives who read this blog ever send me newsletters of the ilk I am discussing! In fact, I have one friend who sends me the funniest, most imaginative Christmas newsletters you can imagine, except they always arrive in January and are SO worth the wait.)

Hey, I have a thought. Instead of being a miserable old bastard/bag, why don't you try writing a Christmas letter about all the things you are grateful for and happy about? Or if you absolutely MUST write about your bodily functions, at LEAST MAKE IT FUNNY! It is completely possible to make a carbuncle funny. Y ES YOU CAN!

If I ever start to send out depressing Christmas newsletters to people I only speak to at weddings and funerals, someone needs to shoot me immediately. And I have decided that from now on, anyone who sends me a holiday newsletter that makes me want to slit my wrists vertically is being taken off my Christmas card list!!!

I am off to burn the latest epistle of misery that befouled my mailbox today. Then I need some Tactical Nuclear Penguin.