First

Welcome to December everybody, welcome to the dark advent calendar of the soul. We’re busy here counting down the days in cold, bitter and dangerous chocolates. What makes the chocolate dangerous? We won’t tell you, and that’s what makes it dangerous.

Could be spikes in it, stolen from old school punk bracelets. Could be eating a piece signals some sleeper agent nearby to throw something at you; something hard and flaming. Could be it just tastes like broiled broccoli.

Okay, and I shouldn’t be sharing this with you, but the dangerous chocolate is only a ruse to keep you from eating all of it in one sitting and then slyly taping the cardboard doors shut afterwards. Just like when your younger sibling gets to open the next day's piece and finds there’s no treat and starts crying like a wounded marsupial and you’ve got that stupid look on your face like, “they must have forgotten to put the chocolate in that one”.

Like there’s no advent calendar quality control. There is, my good people, and they’re burly and poorly educated.

I shouldn’t be sharing this with you either, but the fifteenth has a Life Saver, no chocolate. While the Wint-O-Green really sort of represents December to me, I had to go with the Butter Rum. Butter Rum will one day literally save my life.