During the early November warm spell I actually thought: This would be a good time to put up the Christmas lights, so I won't be standing outside when it's 6 above threading stiff plastic wires around dead branches uttering anti-Claus blasphemies. The moment, like a brief pang of indigestion after eating a burrito, passed. I think I even said "Excuse me" out loud.

You might be putting up lights today. We all know how this works, right? First you get out the stuff left over from last year, all fine products of the Shanghai Lead & Gaiety Factory #23. Last January you wound them nearly around a spindle. Now they're in a spiny wad that makes a ton of interwoven spaghetti look like pencils in a box. You plug them in, and discover that the phrase "if one goes out the others stay lit" is a lie on par with "Streak-free" for window cleaner. Either the entire bolus is inert, or one-third have checked out because one bulb lost its will to live. Good thing they include spares -- which you set aside last December, and threw out when cleaning a drawer in June. So you go buy new ones.

You consider the fancy sets -- you know, the ones with 16 settings: Chasing Lights, Constant Burning (something for which you would otherwise consult a physician), Steady Twinkle (who I dated in high school, I think), Random Twinkle (her sister,) Hectic Spasm, and so forth. One of the settings makes the lights turn on and off, very slowly. If you buy four strands of red and use this setting, your house resembles an enormous angry throbbing corpuscle. Not very festive, but from the air it looks like your house is a stubbed toe.

But no. Too expensive. You stand in the lights aisle, realizing what you really want: a cannon that shoots a light-studded net over all the bushes. Give it a manly name, like the Black & Hall-Decker 9000. No guy would ever be late putting up the lights if a cannon were involved. By the way, when they do invent the Christmas-lights Cannon, remember to put some sand down. Otherwise the recoil will put that thing through the garage across the street.

Good luck, and remember, you can always return defective lights, so save those plastic skeletons the lights are packed around. Put them back exactly as they were when you bought them, and I'm sure they will cheerfully refund your money. Number of people who have ever done this: zero.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/blogs/lileks.