I am somewhere between a snake and a mongoose…and a panther.

For Crimbo, I received from the residents of Parental Manor the first two seasons of The (American) Office on DVD, which I've spent inordinate amounts of time watching the past few days. I have a massive crush on Jim and Pam, whose love-charged friendship, forged in raging flames of shared silly, feels wonderfully familiar to me. And I am hopelessly mad for Steve Carell, who's the whole reason I tuned in in the first place. Everyone else on the show is fantastic, too—there's not a single character I don't adore—but I have a particular fondness for Dwight K. Schrute, a brilliantly realized archetype whom Rainn Wilson (the actor who plays him) describes so aptly as "a fascist nerd."

Everyone has known a Dwight K. Schrute, whose natural habitats are mid-level corporate administration, paint-ball courses, and condo associations. His bizarre combination of excruciating bombast and naïve ignorance makes him at once a first-class annoyance and a uniquely harassable target if you're up for that sort of thing. If you're not, you avoid him. Either way, you immediately feel sorry for his future children at any hint of his potential to reproduce. And while other coworkers, neighbors, association members, etc. will come and go leaving no lasting imprint upon your memory, you'll never forget your Dwight K. Schrute and will tell stories about him for years—and the only people who will believe he existed in precise measure as you describe are the people who have already met their own.

Or know him from a distance.

Anyhow, in honor of Dwight K. Schrute having brought me much laughter over the past few days, I shall borrow this tribute to his superior magnetism to honor him. Slainte Mhath, Dwight!