My Seasonal Felicitations

It's Christmas, here you go:

"The stores along Hollywood Boulevard were already beginning to fill up with overpriced Christmas junk, and the daily papers were beginning to scream about how terrible it would be if you didn't get your Christmas shopping done early. It would be terrible anyway; it always was."

The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

(Read in a world-weary new york hard-boiled detective accent, stir, add salt, twist to taste, repeat.)