Oh! It’s you! My dearest, most refined holiday compatriot! My apologies, I didn’t see you were at the door. [Puts down snifter] [Gets up from satin armchair] Come in, come in! I was just sitting by the fire, partaking of my nightly dram of Harveys Bristol Cream and reading fine George Eliot novels. What can I say? It’s my guilty pleasure. A ha! A ha a ha a ha a ha a HA! My friend, you look pale. Are you all right? I hope the sight of my houseservant, Mrs. Barker, staring hauntingly at you from the upstairs window as you came up the driveway didn’t frighten you. She’s really quite lovely. We like to think of her as part of the family. Perhaps you’re worn down by your travels. Or, perhaps you’re frazzled by the fact that you now live in a surrealist dystopia where a cabal of sinister oligarchs have conspired to exploit racial, sexual, and socioeconomic angst in order to accelerate the fundamental inequality of the American economy and consolidate all wealth not merely among the 1 percent, but soon the 0.1 percent, and then the 0.01 percent, and then the 0.001 percent, until there are only, like, three people with money left in the world. I’m sure that’s an unpleasant prospect for you. Would you care for a Valrhona fudge round? I ordered them personally. I want you to do something for me. Do you think you can? I want you to come with me and tour my abode. Note the fresh cut boughs in the foyer I repurposed from our leftover 12-foot Douglas fir trimmings. Ogle the miniature Dickensian villages that I have tastefully arranged upon the mantelpiece, in order to evoke an age that seems more genteel but was in fact ridden with parasitic filth and bad English teeth. SAVOR THIS FINE CRANBERRY LOAF. For you, dear reader, need not be troubled by the outside world. You’re here! In my stately home, which I have appointed for maximum holiday festivity thanks to the WILLIAMS-SONOMA CATALOG. Reader, it is the holiday tome perhaps dearest to my heart. More than any reindeer parable or silly children’s rhyme, it is THIS catalog and its splendidly useless items wherein you and I can discover the TRUE meaning of Christmas, which is that it delays the pain and horrors of this shit world at least until after New Year’s. Don’t you see? While this catalog may look like a talisman of yuppie waste, designed to lure in aspirational marks who have already ceded to living the bulk of their lives in monstrous, crippling debt … I’m here to tell you this catalog is THERAPY. It is an escape. It is the way we cope with things here. And really, isn’t that better than actually fixing anything wrong with the world? I say yes. So come. Sit with me now, on my Pottery Barn loveseat. Do you like it? Don’t tell anyone it’s not suede but rather MICROFIBER. Let’s thumb through these delightful pages together, shall we? It’ll make the decline of Western Civilization go down so much easier for you. OH THE TIME WE’LL HAVE!
