Brian Lecuyer

I get along quite well with my roommates. They put up with all my faults, shortcomings, and flaws; in short, they are swell people. They are even so swell they do not make fun of me for my hideous music (can you say Andy Williams?). I write this not because you need all of this information, but because in a roundabout way, it is my way of apologizing for what I am about to say.

My roommates have put up too many Christmas decorations in our apartment. Way too many. It started innocently enough: just a fake, plastic Christmas tree with some colored lights and a star on top. However it did not stop there: soon lights were strung in the window, then garland on the walls. More lights were hung in the hallway outside my bedroom, and the closer to Christmas it gets, the more decorations find a place somewhere within the apartment. Large, hollow, plastic candy-canes, fake snowmen that light-up, a nativity scene that blocks three-quarters of the TV, all of this sits in our apartment. Even a pillow shaped like a Christmas tree sits on our couch, but at least that pillow is comfortable.

I cannot say the same for the rest of the decorations. Most just get in the way, except the lights. The lights are dangerous. The amount of colorful blinking lights in our apartment is enough to cause sporadic seizures. People walk into our apartment and (if they do not go blind) simply fall to the floor in a spasm of convulsions and jerks.

And I worry that there isn’t enough power to keep our apartment’s seizure inducing lights on: I do not think it is a coincidence that the power on campus went out for 10 hours after these flashing bulbs were plugged in. It would be unfortunate if the city of Brookings goes three weeks without power because of a Christmas display, but that seems possible.

It’s not an exaggeration to say the apartment is like a mall’s Christmas display from hell. All we need is a drunken Santa Claus and a hoard of shoppers with screaming children and the scene would be complete. OK, it’d need midget elves as well, but those are hard to come by.

E-mail comments to Brian at [email protected].