A merry Christmas in spite of all

[Making-of video]
Pinecone is CC by Menchi

Every year, come December, I do the same thing: I greet or say goodbye to people with a cheerful "Merry Christmas." And every year I find the same sad reality: less and less people correspond. (Two people total gave any sort of answer this year.)

The thing is, they don't say anything at all! They either completely ignore what I said, or are so taken aback by the the unexpected greeting, they can't even utter a grunt in response. Clearly, no one else has wished them any form of happy holidays before me, seeming to support what Bill Watterson wrote 20 or so years ago:

"This season gets less and less merry each year."

Filmed in front of a live audience

…not exactly because it's the season to be jolly.

You probably noticed my new avatar, which I made yesterday. If you saw it used in one of my comments on someone else's old post, you'll be wondering how I managed to use it before creating it. But the interesting thing about this avatar is not that I've been wanting to make it since July, it's that I created it while Livestreaming.

Resorting to image macros

I've always thought image macros were a rather cheap way to convey an idea. After all, you're taking something someone else has made, and merely changing the caption to fit your own devices. Wouldn't it be so much better if people could make their own things from scratch?

However, as a Computer Scientist, I've been taught that things need to be as efficient as possible, and anything unnecessary that gets in the way of that has to go. As a researcher, I've learned that strong emotions are, to put it bluntly, something that literally gets in your blood and has to be used up before you can continue whatever it was you were doing before you felt that way. As someone who writes on the internet, I know that people need to hear from you, and that these are the things they want to hear about. And finally, as an artist, I'm supposed to know that the best way to channel these emotions, is by creating something out of them them.

So yesterday, when I became so-furious-with-myself-I-just-could-have-killed-something at discovering what was wrong with the program I was writing, I made this:

Annoyed kitty image macro copyrighted by thekraidster567 ^{[it is?]}
Text by me