Christmas Letters – Lutfey.com

The earth and the sun have once again completed another round of their cosmic tag team, no holds barred wrestling match which means it is time for the second annual publication of my Christmas letter. My goal for this year is to have at least three people (including myself) read this letter. I am sure that there are some people who are skeptical about this letter reaching such a vast audience. To you naysayers out there I would like to proudly introduce my new ally– exponential growth. In much the same way rabbits procreate and chain letters clog your mailbox, this plan revolves around my ability to harness this largely unexplored force of nature. After you read this, pass it on to two of your friends and then give $100 to the Mission Impossible guy who is outside posing as a garbage collector. Here is how the conversation will go:

IMF agent (a.k.a. “Garbage man”): “How much for the women?”
You: “My spleen is fine, thank you”
IMF agent “What the hell are you talking about? Just give me the damn money!”
(You give him the money and then he kills you)

Believe it or not, I managed to graduate from college. I received degrees in both Computer Science and Mathematics. When I tell people that I have a CS degree the usual response is “You won’t have any problem finding a good job.” And when I tell people that I have a degree in general Mathematics they say “So you’re going to grad school.” I guess getting the math part is like being on the game show “Jeopardy” and knowing the Final Jeopardy question only to realize that the guy next to you has three times as much money as you do.

I have very mixed feelings about graduating college. On one hand I don’t miss the “cultural anthropology” class I was required to take or the “Oh, but he does a lot of research” professors that are forced to teach classes. On the other hand, I liked being able to watch television until my eyes hurt and spend most of my time on campus with 10,000 women, most of whom were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.

It wasn’t long after graduation that my parents expressed an interest in my time management skills. (“Get your ass of the couch and find a job or we will put you up for adoption”) After pounding the pavement for a while (until I got to my car) I drove to a building often referred to as “McDonalds.” I told them about my situation and they were very interested in giving me one of those legendary high paying cushy cashier jobs with my own personal secretary and limousine driver. This didn’t last very long, however, due to the fact that I have a very rare neurological disorder that I only found out about after my training. It seems that whenever I try and say “would you like fries with that?” my vocal chords take over and produce wildly inappropriate phases like “There are squirrels in my pants. Hee hee hee,” “I did it. I did it. I shot JR!”, and “Have you ever showered with Rush Limbaugh? It’s not as bad as people say.”

After the whole McDonalds episode, I ended up at a company called “Saxe Inc.” It is run by a guy named, strangely enough, Andrew Saxe. He spends half of his time in Denver and the other half in New York city. It turns out that he loves the legendary brown cloud found in Denver, but he just can’t tear himself away from the more traditional forms of pollution found in New York City. Talk about the best of both worlds.

Saxe Inc. is a very liberal company. So liberal, in fact, that all the employees are gay transvestites running around with pitchforks. No, wait a minute. I am thinking of the classic cult film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” To the best of my knowledge, nobody at Saxe Inc. is a gay transvestite, and we only run around with pitchforks when there aren’t any of our clients in the building.

Saxe Inc. is a somewhat liberal company. Everyone is allowed to run around in shorts and T-shirts. The only rule is that you can’t run with scissors. We also have a place to play ping pong when we get frustrated and feel like hitting stuff. Just to make it perfect, we also have a cappuccino machine. The front of the machine shows a picture of some great looking cappuccino with perfect looking whip cream with just the right amount of evenly distributed sprinkles. Unfortunately, when I went to get some cappuccino I realized that the machine is not equipped to dispense either whip cream or sprinkles. In an angry fit of rage I ripped the machine out of the wall, raised it up over my head, yelled “Where are the fucking sprinkles?”, and proceeded to throw the entire apparatus at a prospective client. He didn’t die or anything, but I don’t know if he is retaining our services. My lawyer advised my not to disclose the terms of the settlement.

As a software developer, I spent some time working on a project to answer the question “What is the meaning of life?” After several months, I came up with an elegant and efficient solution for producing an answer to the question that has eluded philosophers, theologians, and Douglas Adams, author of the book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” for thousands of years. I started running the program only to discover to my dismay that the answer to the question “What is the meaning of life” cannot be answered by sitting inside a sterile office building at a desk with stale fluorescent lights and a 486 computer. It turns out I need a Pentium.

The other night I went out to an Avalanche game with some people I know, including a nose pierced, ex-stripper, bisexual Satan worshiper. No kidding. If I ever have kids I hope they never find out about this and use it to their advantage by saying stuff like “Come on Dad, I just want to go out and get drunk with this 24 year old guy I met at the bowling alley, it’s not like I’m going out with a nose pierced, ex-stripper, bisexual Satan worshiper or anything.” To be honest, we all had a reasonably good time and I can add her to the extensive list of women that I am too chicken to ever ask out.

Another highlight of this year was the condominium that I purchased in October. It came with two bedrooms, one bath, a huge loft, and a years supply of Spam. The biggest problem that I have right now is that I bought a couch that is too large to fit up the stairway. OOPS. All of my appliances are twenty years old and I say a prayer each night hoping that they don’t all die at once. It is a strange feeling to have a thirty year mortgage to think about. Saying that it will take thirty years to pay it off makes it seem like a huge deal. I just think of it as 358 more payments. Assuming that the postage rate for first class mail doesn’t go up in the next thirty years (hahahaha) I will be spending $114.56 on stamps alone. Sorry, I guess that the math-geek part of me is coming out.

While cleaning out all of my old college stuff, I came across a paper that I had written during my first year at CSU for a mathematics course. It started like this:

I can honestly say that I feel more complete as a human being now that I have written this paper. All my life I knew that there was some calling in my life that had remained, up until now, unanswered. Who knew that my calling would be to write a recursive algorithm for generating a lexicographical set of permutations from the set {1,2,3,…,N}? The Lord works in mysterious ways. Who am I to disagree with powers that I can hardly fathom?

Who says that science and religion can’t just get along? The best part of this paper, in my opinion, is the following passage:

After I finished the algorithm, I went home and showed it to my mother. I could go on about how my mother is an algorithm analysis expert and pulls in the big bucks at Hewlett Packard, but I will refrain from doing so because of the fact that it would be an outright lie. She is actually a registered nurse who really has absolutely no understanding of the world of computers, but she thought that it was wonderful and found space to display it on the refrigerator.

I am sure you will be happy to know that I received an “A” for my efforts.

I think that I have said enough for this year, so (insert cliché end of the year saying here) and remember folks– you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

I started thinking about this year’s Christmas letter earlier today while driving around Fort Collins. A small nativity scene caught my eye as I maneuvered my truck through the various industrial complexes which had become the all consuming focus of my life since the beginning of the year. By any type of measurement—metric, standard, or nonstandard— this representation of the birth of Christ was quite modest. No live animals or people were harmed in the making of the scene. It lacked a well planned dramatic lighting setup. And despite my best investigative measures, it appeared to be completely devoid of any animatronic functionality. The simplicity of these three foot tall molded plastic characters witnessing the defining moment of Christianity (Jesus, Mary, Moses, Adam, Eve, a couple of wise guys, representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and a curious time-traveling scientist from the future, who, by most accounts, completely spoiled the moment by repeatedly tripping over various livestock) made quite a statement.

I stopped for a moment to get a better look. While I’m not a compete stranger to this type of religious display, I did note a few unusual points about the situation. First off, I’m writing this down in the middle of July—not exactly prime nativity scene season. Secondly, the display was set up behind a barb-wire fence in the far corner of an industrial lot used to store compressed gas and compressed gas accessories. And finally, after some unspecified amount of time, the mouth on the baby Jesus started moving and I heard a voice say, “Omar… Omar… this is your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Listen to me; I have something very important to tell you that will change your life: You are hallucinating! I suspect this is due to moderate dehydration and overall poor eating habits. You need to drink more water during the day. And lay off the glazed doughnuts in the mornings. That is all. Now get back to work, you slacker!”

Well, it’s a lot closer to being Christmas now, so I’m hoping enough interesting stuff has happened to me to allow me to write a respectable length letter. And if that’s not the case I’m sure I can add marginally relevant material about obscure mathematical theorems and/or recent programming on the History Channel.

If the whole nativity scene part was confusing, maybe I should rewind and attempt to start at the beginning of the year and proceed, in more or less a linear manner, until I get to the end. I’m not a neurologist, but I suspect that, in terms of higher brain functions, my brain works in whatever the opposite of linear is. While I’ve never actually seen my brain, I suspect that it is grey, squishy, and topographically similar to a hopelessly tangled ball of Christmas lights. So, I “started” the year off by becoming a full time driver at UPS. Up until that point I worked the way-too-early shift loading packages into delivery trucks. So instead of setting my alarm for three in the morning, I start work at eight-thirty, which is much better. With this promotion, I am forced to be clean shaven each day, which is much worse. Finally, I have to wear the official brown UPS uniform, which, well, I don’t have any strong feelings about one way or another.

Being a driver, well, it’s interesting. Every day is a learning experience. For example, I quickly discovered how many people think they are funny/witty/insightful when I deliver a package and they ask me, “Hey, what can brown do for me? HA HA HA!” I’m not sure why, but it just grates on my nerves– kind of like the commentators at the New York City Thanksgiving parade spend a total of thirty-seven minutes explaining how much helium is in each of the floats.

Moving hundreds of packages a day at work really helped prepare me when I moved into my new townhouse in June. To be honest, I actually hired movers for a few hours to get all of my personal belongings across town. It’s not so much that I’m lazy (well, that may have factored into the equation somewhere), but I just didn’t feel like having to go through the joy of renting a truck and then cornering a handful of friends and associates to get the job done. To my surprise, the movers were on time, friendly, and reasonably priced. And if they stole anything of mine, it must not have been very important since I haven’t noticed six months later.

Once all of my worldly possessions found their way into my new dwelling, I began to realize that a major life-changing decision was fast approaching. One refreshingly crisp morning, while casually reading through the original text of The Iliad after having flawlessly completed the latest New York Times Saturday crossword puzzle, one of Homer’s insights gave me pause– “The glorious gifts of the Gods are not to be cast aside.” Later on that very same day, while rummaging through the irregularly damaged merchandise in the electronics department of the neighborhood Kmart department store, Homer spoke to me once again. “I am not crazy. It’s the TV that’s crazy. Aren’t you, TV?” I looked up to thirty various makes and models of television sets playing, in perfect synchronicity, episode 7F03 of “The Simpsons.” I put down the slightly cracked battery-powered clock-radio that just a moment earlier I was contemplating purchasing, walked over to the television display aisle, and yelled out with unwavering resolve, “No man should have to live without premium quality digital television broadcast for three consecutive weeks as I have done. Homer has spoken to me– not once, but twice! I have cast aside the glorious gift of syndicated situation comedies and late night infomercials for far too long. I was crazy to think I could live without its warm glowing warming glow. I NEED CABLE TELEVISION! Or possibly a satellite dish—whichever is better suited to my needs.”

I got some very helpful advice from Jerry (the security guard at Kmart) as he made sure I left the premises in the least disruptive manner as possible, given my current state of excitement. He recommended that I get the Dish Network and a digital video recorder so I wouldn’t miss any of my favorite shows that have been rather inconveniently scheduled during my regular working hours. I took his advice, and in a few days I was connected to some state-of-the-art electronic gadget hovering in the sky hundreds of miles above my head.

After everything was hooked up and functioning correctly, I went out on my patio where the actual satellite dish was mounted and tried, without any luck, to locate the satellite up in the sky. I know it’s there because I was just watching Chen Kenichi prepare trout ice cream on Iron Chef. I suppose as a mere mortal I can only sit back and appreciate the glorious world it has created around me and have faith in the master plan that is sometimes beyond my limited understanding. Oh, sure, I get angry at the satellite at times. Why did it take from me the six-thirty episode of Seinfeld? I loved it so. But then I soon see a bigger picture—yes, I will miss Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine, but “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” has been added on channel 107. Before I know it, I have been made aware of an entirely new comedy genre. I guess it’s sort of like God in a way. And, of course, when either of them come crashing down to Earth the world as I know it will be over.

After I finished contemplating the religious implications of the Dish Network, I needed to test out the digital recorder. Having just seen a commercial for the ABC Family’s made-for-television movie, “Pop Rocks,” I decided this would be the first broadcast to be stored on my DVR. Despite not having any relation to the candy it is named after, I found the movie moderately entertaining. Gary Cole (better known from “Office Space” as Bill Lumberg. “Ahh, I’m going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday, too…”) plays a seemingly responsible father and husband who neglected to tell his family that he was the lead singer in a high-profile 80’s metal rock band. Who hasn’t forgotten to mention some small aspect of their past to a significant other? Having said that, I cannot comment on any of my personal secret rock bands, past or present, due to legally binding legal documents I may or may not have signed.

Well, that about wraps things up for another year. I’ve managed to keep myself busy with a new job, new house, and new electronic gadgetry. So, for no particular reason other than it makes me laugh whenever I watch it, I’m going to end this year’s letter with the epitaph from the movie “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

Royal O’Reilly Tenenbaum (1932-2001) Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship.

Category: Christmas Letters