For years us supervillains have had to endure that one time of the year when even we are weakened to the power of goodness (we're not crying, though. There's just something in our eye). It is the one day of the year that even the most hardened evil genius will visit his family (or whats left of their smoldering corpses) and feel the pull of "goodwill" and "generosity." We are of course talking about Christmas, when even Dr. Doom will rock a hilarious-looking Santa hat at the villains' annual Christmas party and laughing contest.

And although as a general rule of thumb, Christmas would be an awesome day for committing crime or perhaps taking over the world, everything seems to go on hold for that day.

One of the biggest issues with this time of year is of course, the gift giving, which frankly, we've never understood the whole big deal about. So, to better understand this ritual of non-super villainry, we will now conduct a study of one of the holiday's traditional songs: "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which is all about giving gifts. Oddly enough, they mostly seem to be birds and people.

First of all, there's the title. There's 12 days of Christmas? Really? Only one of them seems to be recognized by society at large. Might there, then, be 12 Jesuses? We might have to look a little further into this. But for now, on with the song.

Okay, so on day one, our true love, who really should have known that we really wanted a new set of huge knives, gives us some sort of inedible poultry and a tree, neither of which we can see much use for. Maybe there's some kind of sentimental meaning here? We're not sure. But there's 11 more days, so let's roll with it.

Fact: the turtle dove usually migrates to Africa during the winter time. So what purpose do these nearly frozen migratory birds serve here? Except to be pissed off that now they are not in Africa and their little bird testicles are freezing off?

Plus we have the addition of another partridge and a pear tree. So, now two partridges, and another tree. Plus two useless migratory birds. This gets weirder by the second. I don't even like pears, and as far as I know partridges and turtle doves cannot be cooked in any satisfactory way. This is why I should always ask for KFC upfront.

Well, at least we can eat the french hens. We think it's possible, anyway. The difference between a french hen and a regular hen isn't readily apparent to us at the moment. Perhaps they smoke cigarettes from those long cigarette holders and wear berets?

(Also of note: More birds, more trees, less garage space.)

More birds? What the hell is all this about? Calling birds, even. I mean, if you were trying to set up an evil plan to use telemarketers to take over the world, maybe this would be useful. Otherwise, having a bunch of critters around that run up your phone bill is just stupid.

Plus, now another partridge. Another tree. We thinks our true love might be riddled with OCD.

Finally, something of value. However, the song doesn't mention whether these are magical rings or not. Do they have powers? I mean, I know they're gold, but can they withstand having some degree of electro-magnetic pulse pushed through them to destroy our nemesis? Can they kill Green Lanterns? Can we send tiny little people on years-long journeys to destroy them?

Also, five golden rings must have cost them quite a bit. We're frankly surprised our true love here hadn't already blown their wad (or, more likely, our wad) on trees and birds. Which are still coming, by the way. How about buying us a damn storage locker to put all this crap, or better yet, an arboretum, huh, sweetheart?

And now pregnant birds. I think we may have been mistaken for an animal hospital at some point. However, if aimed properly, the laying geese might conceivably be used as a weapon. Albeit, a stupid one.

Ok. Swimming swans. And I don't have so much as a swimming pool. I mean, I suppose they could use the bathtub, if they don't mind my alligators. Actually, yes. That's the best place for them. With the alligators, which you gave me last year. Thanks, darling!

Our true love is now sending us slaves, which is, frankly, an improvement.

Trouble is, these are milk maids. And yet we've gotten nary a single cow in the parade of nature that has been our gifts so far. So, what in the hell are they milking? The pregnant geese, maybe? Or possibly the trees. Or is it me?

I don't want to be milked.

Somehow, we went from poultry to burlesque dancers. Frankly, we're starting to distrust our true love's gift giving judgment here, and think she may be schizophrenic.

No, we didn't really mean that. Thanks for the dancers, honeykins!

Fuck. Now our true love is sending us eccentric royalty? We swear, if we get busted in some kinda crazy aristocrat kidnapping scam, our true love is going down. This isn't even cool, true love. Now we have these rich-ass, semi-retarded leap-frogging lords hitting on our milk maids, our dancers (Which thinking back, wasn't that horrible a gift now, was it?) and in some cases, our poultry. Thanks a lot.

Also: Where are you getting the money for this? Where is my credit card?

And now we add a bleating din of pipers to the mix.

Well, I suppose having some musicians about would be good background music for all the milkmaid/dancer/poultry fucking now going on. But 11 of them? Shouldn't one of them maybe learn a string instrument? Maybe some percussion? Hell, maybe even a trumpet for some variety? No? All woodwinds, huh? Right. Okay then. All I wanted was a Cool Kids CD, but, you know, whatever.

Oh, here's some drummers. But we still have way more pipers.

Question: Anyone here ever hung out with a drummer? In general, they are messy, unreliable, womanizing, and semi-psychotic. And that's their good points. One week from now, all the milk maids and dancers will be pregnant, the lords will be leaping around with wedgies, and the Pipers will be pissed cause the drummers don't ever show up for rehearsal. Plus, with all the birds, trees, rings, our lair is now completely trashed.. This is bullshit. I mean, look at this final tally: 40 Milk Maids, 36 Dancers, 30 Leaping lords, 22 Pipers, 12 Partridges, 22 turtle doves, 40 golden rings, 12 pear trees, 30 French Hens, 36 pregged out geese, 35...oops...no, 32 swimming swans. I guess the alligators got a couple of those.

So, now short of starting an aviary with music and burlesque dancing...we're screwed on a massive scale here. And bird crap is everywhere. Is this what the whole "giving" thing is all about? Giving people shit they don't need, have no place for, and will possibly making them hate you? You know, we think maybe there's a place for supervillains at Christmas after all.

revrogue@rocketmail.com