Christmas Food Puns

Dear son,

Merry Christmas!

PS: do your homework.

PPS: do your chores.

PPPS: go outside and play and stop playing video games

PPPPS: you're a fatboy, fattie. You eat too much crap food.

PPPPPS: we're shipping you off to military school next year!

When my brother and I were little, we put out milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeers on Christmas eve, and woke up on Christmas morning to find them mostly eaten. We were delighted at proof of our nighttime visitors.

The next year our dad told us he had gotten an inside tip from the north pole: that Santa actually liked ramen and beer, not milk and cookies (as other, less well informed, dads and kids had always thought).

For years, we dutifully cooked ramen, put it on a table by the fireplace with a cold beer on the side, and woke up to the ramen and beer having been consumed in the night.

I knew my dad wasn't fond of milk or cookies, but it wasn't until later that we connected the dots and found out the deal about Santa. My dad was the one who ate the Santa food once we went to bed, and he had secretly convinced us to prepare his ideal midnight snack for as long as we believed in Santa.

Hey guys. As I'm sure most of you know, it's currently Thanksgiving in Canada. This time of year for me has, in the past, caused a lot of issues in my life.

To give a little bit of background on me, I'm usually an extremely healthy and fit guy, as I play high-level sports and have a physically demanding job. However, for much of my life, my willpower began to crumble around this time of year.

I first started taking my diet seriously when I was about 12 years old. I had some kind of realization where like, I dunno, I started looking at how jacked these movie stars were and was all, "wow, I want to be that cool too." Judging by the bowl cut I had when I was 12, my perception of cool may have been a little skewed, but I digress.

Anyhow, it was my first Thanksgiving where everything started falling apart. One of my relative's families ended up no-showing for dinner, so we were left with a load of Thanksgiving leftovers. For the next week, every single meal or snack I had was Thanksgiving themed. Sandwich? Turkey sandwich. Breakfast? Let's dollop some cranberry sauce on that bad boy. By the next week, my BGC (blood gravy content) was probably at like 1.0%.

You'd think I'd be sick of holiday food after that. But no. I loved it.

The tradition of refrigerated Thanksgiving snacks continued throughout the rest of my teen years. Like clockwork, the numbers on the scale would significantly jump upwards in October, with Halloween candy adding an extra layer of calories on top. By the time I reached 17, my waist had begun noticeably ballooning, and I realized it was all due to Thanksgiving turkey. Sure, I had some at Christmas and sometimes at Easter, but never like that. My mother would encourage this habit, making more food each year to be stuffed into our packed refrigerator.

The movie star bod I wanted for so much at the age of 12 was slipping a way. I needed to put an end to this.

Flash forward to October 2015, age 18. I had made a vow: I never again would place such putrid poultry onto my tastebuds. And ever since that fateful week of 2014, my vow had held true.

Each Thanksgiving, I can feel that craving for chilled turkey knocking on the refrigerator door of my fragile ego. For three years, I've held strong. But when will the garrison fall? When will that soft, biting flesh of the big bird smash it's way back into my life.

But so far, I've quit cold turkey.

So my whole family went out for the traditional Jewish Christmas Eve dinner of Chinese food, and I marveled at how good the place was, since we'd never tried it out before. Dad says it was a recommendation from a friend of his who I didn't know; I asked what she did and he said she was a 2-year old nursery school teacher.

I replied, "Wow, she must be pretty advanced for a 2-year old if they let her teach nursery school!" My step-mom laughed, then looked at me, then back at my dad, and went "well, he's definitely got your sense of humor."

I have a scrawny, little, younger sister and we always have a seafood buffet for Christmas dinner.

Sister: "Hey, dad can you pass me the shrimp and I want some mussels too please?"

Dad: "Here's the shrimp, for mussels you're gonna have to go to a gym and do some exercising" [continues eating his food without ever passing the mussels]

Sister: "Hey, dad....."

Pops: "Hay is for horses, this is seafood."

This was especially funny due to the fact that he kept a poker face the entire time and never made eye contact with my sister, being completely serious and never cracking a smile. These exchanges happen at least 7X a day.

Years ago I used to use a LexisNexis database of companies that would give corporate information like name, address, and general business description. While most of them were pretty bland, there were a bunch of them with some really cheesy puns, and over a few years I built quite a collection.

Today I share with you "NEXIS IS RIDICULOUS.txt":

• Bucyrus International caters to those who mine their own business.
• It would be logical for Mr. Spock to boldly go to Vulcan International for rubber products. He might even live long and prosper -- in comfortable shoes.
• What do manufacturer Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) and 1970s band Grand Funk Railroad have in common? They both want you to do the locomotion!
• Peter Piper can pick more than a peck of peppers or pickles from B&G Foods.
• Toray Plastics America could sing "foam, foam on the range, where the polyester and polypropylene materials are made" all day.
• Break out the Tums, because things are awfully gassy over at Air Liquide America.
• If a tree falls in a Weyerhaeuser forest, someone is there to hear it -- and he has a chainsaw.
• Although not a pushover, you can walk all over Wilsonart International.
• Here's a HEICO haiku: HEICO companies/ Providing for jet engines/ In flight or on land.
• American Italian Pasta Company (AIPC) uses its noodle in many different ways.
• The golf industry doesn't mind when Aldila gives it the shaft.
• Rat-a-tat-tat and a ringa-ding-ding. What's that? Answer: The sounds emanating from Pearl, one of the world's foremost makers of drums and other percussion and musical instruments.
• Saint-Gobain Ceramics & Plastics deals powders and crystal, but there's no need to call the cops.
• Pamida Stores Operating Company offers more small-town values than a bandwagon of Republicans on the campaign trail.
• Like a tight end, offshore drilling contractor Transocean dreams of going deep but doesn't mind eating a little mud.
• Rittal me this, Batman!
• Utility Trailer Manufacturing is spreading its own brand of reefer madness.
• Who is the Fresh Prince of Sullair?
• If GrafTech International were a bard, it could wax poetic in an ode to the electrode.
• When it comes to adhesives and vibration control products, LORD knows.
• You might say that Deere & Company enjoys its customers going to seed.
• Pfizer pfabricates pfarmaceuticals pfor quite a pfew inpfirmities.
• Stripping is OK at Spraylat.
• Don't think Seton is