The holidays have descended without mercy.  Nightfall comes early these days, sapping the energy of every living creature with relentless bleakness and piercing chill.  All the zest with which you normally approach your days is just out of reach, shrouded in a dense fog of shopping in bland malls for gifts to render a weak, fleeting joy from someone you grow further apart from year after year.  You wake every morning in the cold and dark, feeling like a fat waif wandering Depression-era alleys searching for a crust of bread to sustain your body one more miserable day.  If only there were something to take your mind off the seemingly neverending onslaught of lethargic apathy punctuated by moments of despair- something to make you laugh for a while, share a timely endorphin-releasing memory with friends, maybe even meet a girl or three.  Something like...shutting the fuck up and going to a comedy show.  Yeah.  That's nice.