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This page covers several holidays, from remarks I made about them in one update or another. The holidays are listed in chronological order, with updates to each holiday listed with the most recent on top.
Just looking at that update now, there's a link to this funny SFGate article about the origins of V-day, AKA Lupercalia, back before it was the cupid-infested, saccharine, Hallmark-safe holiday it's become in modern America.
Last
year's V-day blog was also interesting since I prepared it shortly after
Malaya and I started talking regularly over ICQ, and it was a fun bonding
exercise. I was doing the hearts in Photoshop when she got online that
day, and she asked what I was doing, and we went from there. Swapping
potential messages, laughing at funny ones, etc. This year we're doing
something, but we're not sure what yet. If I were a real man I'd have this
all planned out and would take her out to a romantic dinner, have candies and
flowers, etc. But I'm not, so I don't. We're going to have dinner
together, and hopefully do something together in the day, but we don't know
what. Malaya is thinking about it, and she'll let me know in the I never really want to go do anything, (I don't mind going with her, but it never occurs to me to want to do something myself. I'm happier being home with my computer and girlfriend and kitties.) so I don't really have a preference, but I usually enjoy doing stuff with her when she thinks of what she wants to do. It's strange, but literally, I don't want to do anything. I don't dislike it when we go see a movie or go shopping or whatever, but it never occurs to me to instigate it in the first place. It's all just what she wants to do, or out of necessity. And this sort of thing is why I never thought I'd be happy in a long term relationship with a woman, since I knew I didn't want to go out and do stuff, and I never thought I'd find a woman who was the same way. My stereotype was that girls always wanted to go out to eat or shop or go dancing or other such stuff that I am fine doing once in a while, but that will drive me crazy if I do it regularly. And I never saw the point in a relationship where we weren't doing things together (at home or when out) all the time, or where our interests didn't largely overlap. I blogged about this issue some in last year's V-day update, though since I was not in a relationship back then, my opinions on it were somewhat different. And back in 2002? Sadly, that was when I was blogging, but before I actually had the site online and working (I started doing semi-daily updates before I had the design all set and everything online since I knew I wanted a motivation to do some writing every day.) So there's no update on V-day, with the previous update on February 12, and the next one on the 17th, and neither of them have any mention of Valentine's Day. I can assure you that I paid it approximately zero attention, since I was not dating or looking to date at that time, and like most men, I regarded that sort of "buy your girlfriend nice things" holiday with about the same affection I felt towards a dirty diaper on a crying infant. This year I'm a bit more interested in the holiday, since I'd like an excuse to do some fun stuff with my love, but I still see the endless commercials with diamonds and lingerie and chocolates and hearts and flowers as an annoying commercial force feeding; like they're telling me I must do this and this and this, or else I'm not a good boyfriend and I don't really love my girlfriend. It's like, "Fuck you, Hallmark. And Kay's Jewelers. And my local florist." Or perhaps I'm just defensive since I feel more love for my sweetie than any of the phony actors in their overproduced commercials could ever hope to portray, and I realize that I don't do a good enough job of showing it on a regular basis, and this sort of ritualized, semi-official day just drives that point home like an birch steak through the heart. Also, I feel cramped by my lack of income/financial resources, since I'd like to buy her flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals, a diamond necklace, a new metallic blue Prius, etc, but I can't really afford to do so, and even if I did, she'd like it, but feel half guilty about me spending the money on something as sweet, silly, and short-lived as red roses. or a box of those shiny, but painfully overpriced Godiva chocolates. Basically, I want enough money that I could waste it on impulse "love you" purchases without feeling any sting from the price, and I want to have enough money so that Malaya wouldn't give a pleasure-sapping thought to what my gift cost in the first place. Perhaps next year?
Elsewhere, hard line Hindus are on the attack over the pernicious, Satanic, soul-devouring Western evil of... Valentine's Day?
Weird the things that people will choose to object to or be offended by, when stirred up by one religion or another. I'm sure adherents of this culture would say that by never being affectionate in public they heighten their love for each other at home, just as some Islamics defend their burkas and other female-covering clothing as a way to keep the private beauty of their women just for their husbands and families. And yeah, that's one way to look at it/justify it. Just not a way the rest of us are much interested in embracing.
Valentine's Day dinner in a nutshell: If V-Day falls on a weekend, and you want to go out to eat, let me give you a piece of advice: have a big lunch, and take a snack.
On Valentine's Day we didn't have any big plans. I'd thought to get her some flowers and maybe chocolate and a card, but a few days before V-day Malaya brought up the subject by saying, "We're not buying each other stuff for Valentine's Day, are we?" in the "Dear God no!" voice that I seldom hear except when she reads an email announcing yet another staff meeting at which her attendance is required. So out went my vague gift purchase plans, and in came the more sensible, easy, and enjoyable (for us anyway) prospect of just spending some time together. First up was a trip to a place we'd seen a few days before while looking for another store. Build-a-bear! It's a painfully cute (and overly well-lit) store that sells stuffed animals. However they have a very clever gimmick to it. They sell the animals without their bodies stuffed, just the heads. So they're sort of like unwieldy hand puppets. You pick one out, from the many types available, (mostly bears, but also cute pigs, frogs, cats, dogs, bunnies, etc) and proceed to a giant rectangular machine that's mostly a glass window, like a really large aquarium. Inside of the window is a spinning arm, sort of like a cotton gin, which tumbles around a huge amount of cotton stuffing. Protruding from the front of the machine is a long metal pipe, and they stick this into the open hole in the back of the stuffed animals, and fill them up with stuffing while you wait, packing it to your specifications. It's basically a reverse enema, if you want to get right down to it. So they fill out the arms and legs and belly, and let you give it a squeeze to see if you want it plumper or not, and then you get a small plastic heart from a huge bucket of them, and go through a cute little ritual. The girl filling the animal varies it depending on the age of her audience (mostly kids girls there, but boys as well and lots of adults getting animals too) but the routine is like, "Rub your tummy with the heart so he'll never be hungry! Jump up and down so he'll have lots of energy! Tap your forehead with the heart so he'll be smart!" and so on. It's cuter in person, trust me. Once you've finished this voodoo-like imbuing ritual, they insert the heart into the animal's lifeless, cotton-stuffed corpse, and then lace the back shut with the loose thread that's left on it, overlapping in a sort of lattice. Basically it's threaded through itself like shoe laces, and the expert tying skills of the girl working the machine pulls it tight and ties it off and snips the extra thread in just a few seconds, sealing the bear (or whatever) up tight and secure, but with your special heart inside of it. Are you done then? Ha. Ha. Ha. You then get to the real cash cow portion of the endeavor. Dressing your new friend. Most of the store remains ahead of you, and it's huge. They have about half a baby store worth of costumes. Costumes of every sort. Sports outfits, every sort of baby's first Halloween nurse, doctor, fireman, soldier, etc costumes, vests, sunglasses, dozens of types of boots, pants of every color, tons of hats, rollerblades (Which were popular additions to pony/unicorn models, probably because they had stiff legs and could stand upright on them and be pulled around by a leash.), and much, much more. All of the clothing items are reasonable priced, but my god do they add up. I can see why babies cost so much, even though the individual items you're putting on them are just $5 or so, you need a lot of items for a decent outfit. Our new stuffed animal, Anthropologist Bunny, got a t-shirt, shorts, hiking boots, a vest, an explorer hat, and shades, and that plus the $20 base model rabbit ran us about $65. And that's nothing. They had mini leather jackets for $50, and we didn't even go heavy on the costume, or get more than one animal. The people ahead of us in line were a young white couple, maybe 18 y/o each, dressed very casually in baggy jeans and such. They looked like they'd have trouble splitting the tab at McDonalds, and yet they dropped $209 on a whole basket full of clothing for a stuffed animal we didn't even see, and paid with two $100 bills and some change. That place was raking in the coin, and it's a brilliant concept for a store, in a well-off area. You want to get the stuffed animal, and it's overpriced but not horribly. But then once you've got it you're just getting your toes wet, since you've got to customize/personalize it, and you can't just get a t-shirt or shoes or something, since it looks naked and silly and everyone else is carrying around fully-dressed stuffed pets, and all of the display models are decked out professionally. So you pick a hat, and a shirt, and some pants, and it just goes from there. Hell, they had several styles of underwear for the animals, if you can believe it. Worried about chafing? We didn't drop an extra $4 for bunny-sized Under-roos, and I must admit to a second of guilt at the register when she was tallying up our bunny and verbally listing the items and we didn't have underwear on ours. It was like we were neglectful parents. What if he gets into an accident, and the hospital staff see?
And yes, a year ago, before I was dating, I'd have read an account of this sort of thing and heaped so much scorn and derision and ridicule on the personalize stuffed animal concept (and pretty much everything else to do with love or dating that I now take for granted) that you'd have needed a snow shovel to read the update. I approve of it now, since Malaya wanted one and had fun making it on a special couples we're-in-love holiday, we got one that had special meaning to us based on our personal interests, we didn't go insane and buy five spare outfits, and we didn't get half a dozen of them at once. Plus, I'm convinced that we're special and the most important people on earth and that the rules and standards of conduct that I hold everyone else to don't apply to us. Which gives me exactly one personality trait in common with George Bush.
After the bunny store, we headed off to get dinner. Our first restaurant of choice seemed to have been torn down, or vanished into thin air, or else was practicing some sort of "find us if you can" decorating scheme, since we drove past it twice, checking street numbers, and never did see it. So we said hell with it, and decided to just head to Claim Jumper, where we'd been planning on heading for dessert. Neither of us had ever been there before, or ever had any interest in the restaurant, but recently on the Food Network we saw the end of a program that covered the top ten dessert cakes on earth, or top ten chocolate cakes, or something like that. I wasn't paying much attention. However one thing I did remember, and Malaya damn sure burned to her permanent disk storage, was that the Claim Jumper Motherlode chocolate cake was #1.
We arrived at Claim Jumper a bit before 5, figuring we'd eat early since we'd gotten up around noon and hadn't had anything more than a small snack before leaving the house. Not early enough, apparently, since when we got there we winced at the huge crowd sitting around outside, and the entirely full parking lot. The mini mall we went to had a Benihana and a couple of other restaurants, and they were all solid packed full as well. I suppose they'd all be full on a Saturday night, or a holiday that people eat out on (such as Valentine's Day) but when you put those two things together... 2 to 2.5 hour wait at Claim Jumper. We weren't starving though, and there were other things in the mall we could go look at, so we put our names down and wandered off. Personally, I figured it would be 1.5 hours or so tops; that 1/4 of the people on the list ahead of us would give up on the wait and go somewhere else. So we wandered around and went into Cost Plus, and CompUSA, and a giant discount bookstore that had Malaya making small noises in her throat. And by the time we walked back to check up at Claim Jumper, it was nearly 6:30 and they said... we had over an hour yet to wait, and that we should be seated around 7:45. So we headed back to the bookstore and browsed some more, and I read the first chapter of half a dozen novels (most were dreck) and bought the last book in the Wheel of Time series since I had only gotten it from the library before, and they were selling a brand new hardcover with a sliced cover over the spine (obviously from a box cutter when they opened the carton up) for $2.50. They had perfect condition ones for $7, and that was about the average price of a book there. I didn't see any brand new bestsellers, but they had literally thousands of recent titles, most hardcover and brand new, and all for about $7. Dumping excess stock left over from Xmas from numerous area bookstores, I assumed. We returned to Claim Jumper around 7:30, and finally at 7:50 they seated us.
This holiday is so totally off my radar, that I often don't remember it's coming up or know about it until afterwards, when I happen to hear some mention of it, or see all the leftover pastel M&Ms and chocolate wabbits on sale for cheap the next day. As a kid I enjoyed it, since of course there's candy. I liked the hiding of eggs bit as well, for years into my teens my dad and I would do that in his jungle backyard, just for fun. No candy in the eggs, we'd just take turns sticking them here and there and then give the other person a few minutes to hunt them up. His backyard is large and tropical, with huge plants and ferns and bushes and small ornamental trees. There's even a big pond with koi fish and a waterfall. Tons of good hiding places for eggs, at least. The problem was how easy it was to hide 12 eggs, the other person would find 10, and you couldn't remember where the other 2 were. We had 2 dozen eggs one year and ended up with about 17 after a couple of turns. He was finding eggs in potted plants and behind cinderblocks three years later. One interesting aspect of Easter, in the US at least, is the religious/Christian elements tacked onto it. Whether this date has anything at all to do with the death of Jesus (and resurrection, if you believe in that sort of thing) is debatable. It's possible he died somewhere around this time of year, which would be a change from the totally arbitrary and demonstrably false late December birth. (A hint, shepherds aren't out in fields with their flocks engaging in Wiseman-spotting in late December in the Middle East; it's freezing. They are out at night when the ewes are giving birth and might need assistance, which is the spring. Not that there's any real reason to believe the various elaborations on the Jesus birth myth, since most of them are directly lifted from much older religions, such as Zoroastrianism, but anyway.) Meanwhile you have the much older and more prevalent symbols of Easter, which are eggs and bunnies. Two more obvious fertility symbols are hard to imagine, and of course that's what the holiday is, traditionally. Spring fertility rites, when people celebrate the earth's renewal with symbols of renewal and birth. And as part of the existing culture-assimilating process that all religions go through, there was a big holiday this time of year long pre-Christianity. It's almost impossible to get people to give up their traditional holidays, so when the new religion comes along it just incorporates them, or sticks important events in the religion's mythology onto dates that correspond with the existing holidays. I assume this is more or less common-knowledge at this point, but I recall being really amazed to first hear of the concept when I was a kid, so maybe someone reading will have their mind opened up. Take some college classes on World Mythology or read some books on cultures or the growth of religion, there are hundreds of examples of this sort of thing through world history. Christmas and Easter are just 2 of the easiest to point out in Western Culture.
I haven't had any chocolate or sweets in months, but all Easter Sunday evening I was dying for some. I don't know why, just wanted it. Chocolate, that is. Being as there's a 7/11 about half a stone's throw from my bedroom window, I was wrestling with temptation the entire time, but I resisted, settling for a pint of sliced strawberries, with some sugar on top. And I didn't leave the apartment at all, though I must admit that the thought of heading over to Ralph's and picking up my body weight in unsold, discounted, Easter-colored peanut M&Ms kept recurring. Hell is for other people.
I don't especially care if some young republicans wore costumes with racial overtones, but would it be a surprise to anyone if they had? Wouldn't it be more of a surprise if they hadn't? I have no idea who this guy with the Roy costume is and I know nothing of his political beliefs. I'm just giving him props for a damn clever costume, though the actual execution is a bit lacking. True, he tried with the duct tape codpiece, but the white dress shirt is pretty weak, and while props are a problem when you're going for the Siegfried & Roy look, they don't do card tricks, so this looks more like he was interrupted in the middle of shuffling a two deck shoe of Blackjack than anything else. And would it hurt to sew the tiger's belly to the inside of your shoulder, rather than using left over medical tape to attach it? Still, we've got to give him an A for idea. It certainly beat my non-existent Halloween costume.
So tomorrow is Halloween, and... oh wait, wrong month. Tomorrow is T-day, AKA Turkey Day, AKA the day you wish Detroit and Dallas weren't somehow permanently-entrenched as the NFL game hosts, since they both suck. Oh, it's also Thanksgiving. I'm not good at holidays. Neither am I good at retrospection and introspection, at least in real life. I write up a storm here, but when it comes to getting my shit in gear in real life. New Years is supposed to be a time of at least mild introspection, in the form of resolutions. I never make any, seldom think to make them, and when I do it's about as heartfelt as a wish on a penny into a fountain. They have no weight on my conscience or behavior. Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be that, literally. A day to give thanks, to think about what you are grateful for. Anyone reading this has much to be thankful for. No, I'm not being insanely-immodest, I just mean that you have access to a computer and the Internet, so some standard of living, electricity, probably a warm bed at night and food on your table. Hopefully more than that; friends, family, sufficient income to keep yourself stocked in Anime DVDs and goatporn and smack, and all of the other finer things in life. Compare what you have, even if it's much less than you'd like to have (as is the case for me) with how people in other countries live. Or even homeless people in your own country or city. You could be standing under an overpass in second hand clothing, stomping your feet for warmth, ready to kill a kitten for a warm bowl of soup (not that that's usually an option). Or squatting in some mud-floored hut, trying to get your tiny baby to suckle from the weak trickle of milk that's all your malnourished body can produce while your husband lies in a stupor against the far wall, the knee-length stump that's all that remains of his right leg after stepping on an unexploded cluster bomb twitching as he tries to run, tries to escape in his fevered nightmare. Well, that was cheerful. Funny the things that come out of your mind at times. My point is that you can always find someone, probably millions of people, who have things far worse than you do. That's never much of a comfort though; if you're miserable it's no help to know that other people are even more miserable. You want to be happy more than you love company. I seldom do anything at all for Thanksgiving. My mom is usually out of town, she's up in LA with some friends this year, and my dad goes to eat with various friends. I'm invited wherever they go, but I never go. I don't like doing family things, or large gatherings. I get claustrophobic when there are a bunch of people in the house. In past years my grandparents have been here, and just the two of them with my mom and step dad are enough to get me jumpy in a house. Growing up an only child, with my parents divorced since I was seven, has apparently conditioned me. I don't mind crowds, I mean look at my part time work at the stadium; surrounded by 60,000 screaming strangers. But on a smaller scale, being one of 6 or 8 or 12 people in a normal house is uncomfortable to me. Or perhaps that's just the excuse I use to keep anyone from getting close. Where they might see the real me. The cold, small, frightened Flux I keep tucked away, deep inside. Oh wait, that's what Donkey said in/to Shrek. Seriously, I'm happier being alone on T-day. I'm happier being alone 99% of the rest of the time, so no real surprise. My latest adventure in forgetting/neglecting to pay the bills has had my phone turned off for the past four days. I only found out when my dad emailed me to ask why my number said it was disconnected, and it was news to me at the time. I suppose I'll have to call (the dial tone works, but apparently I can only call 911 or the phone company) or write and get it turned back on, but I must admit that I really like not having to spare an iota of thought to the goddamned phone ringing. I never use the thing if I can help it, and I get 8 or 10 calls a day, usually all or all but one being some asshole telemarketer. I never answer, preferring to let the machine pick it up, and if on the off chance it's someone I want to talk to, I'll pick up once they start talking to the answering machine. Usually there's silence for about 3 seconds, and then a computer recorded voice comes on and sftarts telling me about having won a Las Vegas vacation, or offering me a discount on siding for my house, or a new home loan, or something about my power being turned off immediately if I don't pay the bill in person later that day. All bullshit voice spam, basically. So zero calls the last 2 days, and it's lovely. I'd be quite happy with no working phone, at least not for incoming calls. No one I talk to couldn't make due with email, honestly. But as my dad has pointed out in several emails, I really need to have a working phone. In case of emergency, or um, well I guess in case of emergency. I can't think of any other reasons I "need" one. And since I can call 911, that covers emergencies, really. I suppose that's selfish of me, and potentially my dad or mom might have an emergency and would need to get hold of me immediately. My dad: "Gaah, bleeding to death from garbage disposal accident... Must contact son for help... Fucking AOL, log on faster..." I always told dad to get a cable modem, so it would be his own fault, really.
So, it's Thanksgiving. At least for another fifteen minutes or so (as of 11:45pm, when I'm writing this. Well, it's Thanksgiving in the US, anyway; I'm not so sure about other countries and their versions of this sort of holiday. In the US the whole thing is just a modified harvest festival, dressed up with an almost entirely fictional "Peaceful Indians dine with Pilgrims" legend. (Or you might prefer this sort of fairy tale of the T-day origins. It's a lot funnier, anyway, assuming you consider incredibly blatant lies humorous.) They also have a Thanksgiving in Canada, but it's weeks earlier, probably since winter snows (and wolves) come earlier that much further north. And bears. Always the bears. Anyway, Malaya went over and spent some time with various relatives, where they ate nothing even faintly-resembling the classic turkey/stuffing/cranberry sauce/etc. I stayed home and at almost nothing at all, subsisting upon Quaker natural cereal and a couple of fried eggs over toast. However once she got home in the evening we did have turkey burgers with French Fries. I've never really celebrated T-day, for no particular reason. Perhaps since I'm such a selfish and evil person that I don't think anyone but me deserves thanks? I'm sure that's part of it, but there's also the fact that I'm very uneasy, sort of claustrophobic, in medium-sized gatherings of people in small spaces. I'm fine with 4 or 5 or 8 in a house, or 50,000 in a stadium, if it's just for a few hours, but when I get up around 10 or 12 or more crammed into a small house, I get hella-itchy and need to go outside and walk around alone just to get some personal space. Which is why I've always categorically turned down any invitations to go anywhere for a T-day meal, knowing the sort of crowding and human interaction such events inevitably require. This year T-day was also the day before Malaya's B-day, and oddly enough, she never does much to celebrate that day either. I'm not big on B-day celebrations myself, but I do like presents and perhaps going out to dinner with my parents. It's mostly an excuse to spend time with people I care about and score some new loot, but now that I'm in love and all brainwashed and such, a B-day suddenly seems like a really great thing, since it's like a chance to celebrate the existence of the person I care more about than anyone else on earth. God damn but love is corrupting of my formerly pure values. I hadn't planned anything all that clever for her B-day, mostly since that sort of thing never occurs to me in advance. I'll do better next year. I had been planning on taking her out and spending some time with her, but I hadn't checked the calendar to notice that her B-day was the day after Thanksgiving. And as you probably know, the Friday after T-day is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the entire year in the US. Sort of puts a bullet in the head of my "we'll take a quiet stroll around the mall and I'll buy her something she desires" idea, eh?
Wrote a few Xmas cards today. Ones I didn't have to mail, that is. I almost never write anything by hand. That's what keyboards are for, after all. The only things I ever write are short shopping lists, and checks. Therefore when I'm writing Xmas cards they are generally the longest thing I've handwritten in about 12 months, and I always get frustrated. I can usually type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts, and if I'm thinking too far in advance I'll hit enter a few times and quickly tap down whatever idea for later on that page or article or whatever I just had, then go back to where I was. With Xmas cards the WPM rate is atrocious, but since I don't really have anything to say in them it's not like I'm losing great concepts due to the sluggardly delivery. There are a few problems though.
I was just talking (well, ICQ'ing) with a friend who lives far away. She just got my package this morning, and when I said it was wrapped in pretty paper inside the brown mailing package she opened it up. And then promptly read the card, which partially gives away the present, in that I said something like, "May it keep you warm and snuggly." My reply to her upon hearing that she'd opened the card up, "You can't read the card early, you twat!" Tis the season!
So "Merry Christmas". A few years ago I was one of the people who were anti-Christian/politically correct, or whatever, and didn't want to say that, and didn't want anyone else to say that. "Happy Holidays", or "Seasons Greetings" were preferred. It seemed important at the time, and if I had to write "Christmas" I would spell it, "Xmas" every time. I was even saying it like that. "Ex-mass". I still do that a lot, and it goes over as a joke, which is how I mean it. But it was also a not-so-subtle "there's no 'christ' in my 'christmas'", or something like that. I no longer care. True, the alleged birth of Jesus Christ (which, if it happened at all, didn't happen anywhere near December 25th) doesn't have any real meaning for me, and I find it sort of silly that it does to other people. Last night leaving my dad's house I drove past a church that had tons of cars stacked up in the parking lot as they exited onto the side streets, and for a minute I was wondering why in the hell people were at church at 11pm. Until I remembered that it was Xmas Eve. I think it must be sort of nice to have faith. To believe in magic or magical things or just the potential for them, and for some eternal reward if you aren't too big of a bastard (though the big bastards never seem to think those tiresome rules about sinning apply to them). It must be comforting, if you really believe in it. However I'd think that if you are like most people and just want to believe in it, but don't really feel any evidence of Jesus in your heart, then it's a recipe for a lot of doubt and worry and consternation, as you feel you are living a lie all the time. Living a lie when you aren't being religious, since maybe you're sinning, and living a lie when you are in church, since you don't really believe in all of it. Then again, introspection is a pretty foreign concept to most people, so the doubt and worry about their faith hypocrisy is probably just water off a duck's back. Anyway, as for saying "Christmas", it's just a word now. I'm fully confident and secure in my beliefs about what is and isn't reality. Jesus isn't important to me, nor are the various cults/faiths/religions that have sprung up to worship various interpretations of the mythical deeds of his life, but that's not true for most people. If they want to believe in it and it makes them feel special, then fine, they can call it whatever they want. The word "Christmas" is a proper noun at this point, December 25th has been called that for well over a thousand years, and if you're so uptight about Jesus that you can't stand to say it or for someone else to say it, you need to check your head and your beliefs, which are probably even weaker than those of the Christians you so despise. That being said, my tolerance for the term is (no doubt) a direct reaction to my being so seldom assailed by anyone who is religious. Christians who are especially smug (in their delusions) about the whole thing are very annoying, and if they're going on about it being "Christ-mass", as if no one else had ever noticed what that word might possibly mean, then I could easily be swayed back to "Ex-massing" my way through this time of year. I'm just very seldom exposed to that sort of thing, so I'm pretty agnostic about the use of the term. One thing that is annoying, along those lines are the billboards. There are a bunch of local self-professed Christian businesses that sponsor big ugly holiday billboards which read, "Jesus is the reason for the season." In addition to that catchy little rhyme, they have a couple of those iconic Jesusfish, and a list of the merchants who paid for the signs. It's a clever sort of advertising, since you appear to be doing a public service, and not pushing your name that forcefully, but at the same thing, any reader can see "McCellann Buick" and "Off Road Warehouse" in the smaller print at the bottom of the sign. Those businesses probably get some good will from Christian types, and maybe do better with that than they would with a normal "buy our crappy product" sign. Plus people (like me) who forever etch that business onto our "never buy anything there for any reason" are no doubt in the tiny minority. The signs are laughable to people with any historical knowledge, and this year they've upped the "we don't know shit" ante by adding what looks like a handwritten "only" to the sign, with a karat between the "is" and "the". So you have "Jesus is the only reason for the season" with all of it in green type, and "only" in red hand lettering. Of course that's on a fifty-foot billboard beside the freeway, so it's not as if someone wrote it in by hand (unless perhaps it was the hand of God!!??!), but it looks cute and draws more attention to their eager/in your face professions of faith/shrewd marketing. Someday when I'm rich and stuff, Nicole and I will buy billboards like that, but with slightly different words in the red handwritten part. Jesus and the cult that sprang up after his death and became known as Christianity is one of the reason for the continued celebration of the ancient and pre-Christian year end/winter solstice celebration for the season. It just rolls right off the tongue, huh? Coming soon, to a freeway near you.
My Xmas prezzie haul isn't real extensive this year. But given that I'm thir... twenty-eight, that's to be expected. It's not like I'm seven and sobbing for a Red Ranger Rocket Cycle with real flashing battery-draining backpack action. Or was I eight that year? Anyway, I didn't have any sort of Xmas list this year other than the leather jacket, which my dad got me a couple of weeks early. Plus it cost $250, so not a real cheap gift, at least not by my standards. That's not much less than I spent on all of my gifts in total, and I got about a dozen items, for 5 different people. It's not about being cheap, it's about buying things that people will actually want and use, and getting a good price on them. Okay, it's a little bit about being cheap. Besides the jacket I got a couple of pairs of jeans from my dad (neither of which fit), a new electric razor that's nice, and a bottle of champagne from my step-brother, a cool light up pen from my step-sister, a calendar and organic produce (red, yellow, orange bell peppers) and something else I'm forgetting from my mom/step-dad. Oh, and of course Xmas cards, filled with unforgettable messages that I'll cherish for a life time. I took a bunch of pictures yesterday, and if I hadn't forgotten my digicam over at my dad's house, I'd put up a couple. Tomorrow, perhaps. I need to put them up so the other people at the gathering can see them, in any event, though that'll probably not be on a page I link to for just anyone. Depends on how stupid we all look in the pictures, of course.
Xmas Photos. Only because I said I would. I was waiting to have some with me in them, but since all the pics I have are ones I took before my batteries died, I'm not in any of them. My stepdad was snapping away as well, but hasn't gotten any of the shots online yet, or sent them to me to pick through at any rate. Not that having a shot of the back of my head at a dinner table would exactly improve this relatively miserable crop of pictures. There are actually a few others that are better, but since they're of other people and I don't know if they really want their faces online in this forum, I'm not posting them. I guess I could pixel out their eyes, like the topless wife shots that are always popping up on voyeur sites. Be useful practice for my future photographic needs, anyway.
I've pretty well mastered the art of making quesadillas in a frying pan by now, going on initial advice from Gaile, ironically. So just as I've gotten that down, she sends me higher technology! I generally use tortillas that are huge, like the size of a medium pizza, and that looks to be far larger than the quesadilla maker could deal with, unless I leave two inches of tortilla sticking out all around the outside of the device like a woman in a poorly-fitting slip. Hence my buying ones with a smaller diameter. I don't know anything about any of the books, but I love stuff about serial killers, so the Jack the Ripper one can't be all bad. I've read a lot about that case (and just about all other serial killer cases) online, so I doubt there will be any huge surprises, but it looks like the author has her own angle on things, and is claiming to have uncovered the unknown killer's identity. The bottom line says, "Jack the Ripper... Case Closed", if you can't read it there. I have no idea about the second book, other than it has a great title. The third one looks like some black helicopter paranoia thing, but I'll give it a look at some point.
The light is actually quite bright, and is powered by a watch battery that you can see if you unscrew the end, so I assume it would work for quite a while. It's basically a blue laser pointer with a pen instead of a case that focuses the light into a stream. Now it would be quite cool if you could remove the pen point and have it do that, but alas, it's not an option.
Basically all of the leather jackets other than the tight fitting, waist-length, motorcycle type are made for fat guys. Or at least so a fat guy could wear them and button them up easily. While wearing a sweater and two shirts. And smuggling a tray of nachos. And since I can't afford to get an actual tailored one made to specifications, and haven't seen any that are less than about 50 inch waists in the stores I've looked in, I'm stuck with this style. I got an XL since it was the smallest size that fit my shoulders; so when I lifted my arms the coat didn't bunch up around my neck. The arms are the right length, and the shoulders are nice, but it's just sort of baggy around the waist. I think it's mostly the design of the garment, and don't think a L will be much different, but since I have the tags still and the receipt and such, and I've been denying myself the pleasure of wearing it for the past week, I might as well take the goddamned thing back. The reason I have the whole bag and such is that I took it back to the Wilson's near me, in Parkway Plaza, the day I went to see LotR:TTT. They didn't have any more of that model in a smaller size though, and in fact mine was the smallest they had, since every other one there was "XLL", which is for large/tall men. Anyone so "large" that they couldn't fit into the one I got would be painfully fat. I'm talking "in need of hospitalization" fat. So the guy there put the tags back in the sleeve and put it in this bag and on a hanger, and I left it like that for easier return. He said they were getting a ton of more jackets in in just a few days, and I should call back and check. Unfortunately when I called them a few days later they didn't have any more of that one in, and the guy on the phone didn't seem to have any idea if they were getting more soon or what. I couldn't go Xmas. I didn't want to deal with the sales mobs on the day after. I had to work the 27th. I don't want to go to the mall today with the huge sales crowds. I have to work tomorrow and I'm going out to dinner afterwards. So I guess it'll be Monday, then. Assuming I can't think up some other excuse to put it off further, that is. One last picture, this is a cute one of Suzie, my stepsister. She was reclining on the couch, not hiding from the photo. Amusing though that might be to imagine.
Xmas photos again, just because it's easier to write what's basically an extended caption than it is to think up something actually interesting. My initial Xmas dinner/present opening was held on the 24th. Two old friends of my mom were in town yesterday, with their 13 y/o daughter, and since I've known then since I was about 8 and they're fun to hang around with, I went over for dinner and some more present stuff. They all called me and said they were going to see LotR:TTT (again for my mom and Jenna, the 13 y/o, first time for the rest) at 3pm, and asked if I wanted to come. Unfortunately they called around 1:30pm, when I was still asleep, so by the time I got up at 2:30, planning on dashing over for dinner and such, which was set to begin at 3pm, it was too late for me to join them. However since I went to bed with a mild headache, and woke up with a pounding one, plus felt really exhausted despite getting six hours of sleep, I was more than happy to take a couple of Advil and go back to bed to doze for another hour.
It was less cozy half an hour later when I belatedly realized that the flue was not open, and that the upstairs of their house had about the smoke/air ratio of a wood-fired pizza oven. Well, it was still pretty cozy then, aside from the whole "asphyxiate in your sleep" element. It became non-cozy when I opened the front door, back door, side door, bedroom windows, and turned on the attic exhaust fan for twenty minutes to air everything out. Unfortunately for my grumbling stomach, but fortunately for the house coziness ratio, they had found the 3 and 3:15 movies sold out, as were all the showings at 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 and 9. They were able to get tickets for the 4:00, and got good seats by leaving the two men to stand in line for an hour while the girls all went off prancing about the shopping center. But that meant they didn't get home until around 7:30. By which time I was starving, but at least the fire was going successfully and the house was snug as a bug in a rug, once again. Fortunately there's no way any of them will ever find out about this, since I didn't mention it. And yes, that's the actual fireplace pictured above. I took a few shots of it w/o the flash just to see if they'd turn out at all useful/in focus. Two didn't, one did. Which is about the usual digicam ratio, I'm finding.
As for the presents, there's nothing too amazing. I'm not putting any pictures of the actual people on here, since I feel weird about that, even if they wouldn't mind being pictured here. I feel weird about posting pictures of myself, even though no one has ever given a damn one way or the other, as far as I know. But that's me, I have the right of veto. I wouldn't really want someone posting pics of me on their website w/o asking first. Or even after asking.
The bottle of bubble bath is one of too many I gave my mom, which she in turn gave to Jenna, as a joint present from us. Girls are clever with present giving stuff, you'll note. The silver thing is a cool popcorn popper with a turning dealie inside. My dad got one a few years ago and he uses it and the popcorn is by far the best homemade I've had. Popcorn seems pretty low-tech, but it's quite hard to get the right temperature so it all pops at once and none scalds, and you don't have a ton of left over kernels, and it doesn't come out chewy, etc. Steam makes it chewy, not stirring the kernels makes some get hot much too quickly and pop early, not enough oil leads to scorching, etc. This type of popper can overcome those problems, once you get used to it and know the right temp, etc. Not that I do, but my dad's improved at it with practice. I don't think I've ever made popcorn in my life; not even microwave, it's just not something I have for a snack very often, and when I do I buy a big bag of cheese or some other flavor at the store for like $.89.
Mother and Glenn do hit tennis balls on a pretty regular basis, so this is an excellent present, and they were happy to get it. One last picture below is from my dad's house yesterday evening, before I went to my mom's for dinner. It's not of anything in particular; it's just one I snapped at random of his TV and living room after I put the batteries into the camera. I only include it to illustrate (literally) my point that any random quick shot, of something you don't want a picture of, in poor lighting, at a bad angle, will invariably turn out to be the best flash action, focus, and depth of field of any shot you take that day.
I took about 20 pics of various people at the dinner and presents thing later, and maybe 5 were really crisply in focus, with 5 more close enough to be useful with some cropping and shrinking of image size. The other 10 were fuzzy garbage. I think that when I get another digicam, I'll get one that's more of a hybrid of a real camera, like with an actual lens thing you can focus. The auto-focus is handy, and works fine outdoors in daylight, but it's very hit or miss inside after dark, when like 80% of my pictures are taken. It tends to focus on whatever the closest thing is so if there's a table at the bottom of the image, and then people 5 feet beyond it that you are actually aiming at, you can guess what's in clear focus. And there's no way tell at the time, at least not on the size of the viewscreen on the back of my camera. And there's no way to make it focus 10 feet or 15 feet away, it just does it how it wants to, so you could in theory take 20 shots and every single one of them would be the table focused. It doesn't actually work that way in practice, which is what's weirder. I'll take 5 pics of rats on the desk, and 4 will be blurry and crap, and one will be fine. And I was in the same place every time, with the same lighting, etc. Usually one will be out of synch with the flash, so only things across the room will be bright, or else just the front edge of the picture will be.
As for the Xmas party at Malaya's work, it was pretty cool. Semi-formal and very crowded. They had a large meeting room with a stage, band, dance floor, and lots of large round tables that seated 8 or 9 each, off to one side. There was also another large meeting room that was about half the size of that one, and an entrance hallway where people went to cool down since it got hot in the main room. I'd say there were at least 200 people there, possibly more, all constantly milling around and talking and touring the buffet tables, which were set up all over the place. The food was very good. They had cocktail style shrimp, served cold with the tails on, but they were huge; I'm talking 4" long. Those go for about $14 a pound fresh, and I personally saw at least a dozen platters of them that had to weigh 10 pounds each, and they were bringing more out all the time as people cleaned out the spread in record time. Mixed in on the shrimp table were huge platters of salmon, cooked right on the fish, which made for some pretty gory picked over fish skeletons once people got finished hacking at it with the entirely inadequate forks that were provided. They had two hot tables with huge roast beef hunks, swine, fresh-cooked cheese ravioli, and many more things. Hundreds of little portabello mushroom pot pie things, chicken bites in a flaky crust, veal chops, and at least a dozen other finger food style entrees that I'm forgetting to mention. All of these things were in huge steam trays, and were constantly being refilled. In addition to the actual food they had a huge table of sweets; all types of chocolate covered cookies and brownies and cherryies, coffee cake, xmas tree cookies, and on and on. There was another appetizer table in the smaller room with vats of Swedish meatballs, fried coconut shrimp, huge platters of cheese and crackers, and more. We didn't gorge ourselves as we'd planned, and I'm not sure why. Malaya hadn't eaten all day, saving up for the party food (and the party was at 8!) and she enjoyed several plates, as did I. I think because everything was basically fingerfood and hors d'oeuvres, there was nowhere to sit by the time we got there, and the only plates were tiny, that all conspired to keep us from chowing down like we would have if there'd been free seats and larger plates. Psychological effect of the small plates, as well as having to go get more food every time, and having to eat it standing up. We also didn't get drunk, though it would have been very easy to do so. There were two open bars in different rooms, and you could get all you wanted; champagne, all types of beer and wine, mixed drinks, soda, water, etc. I had a champagne early on, and then mostly Canada Dry, water, or Pepsi. Neither Malaya or I see the point in champagne; it's just bad white wine that's been carbonated. I don't dislike it, but I can't see drinking more than a cup of it. Sparkling Martinelli's apple cider is a hell of a lot tastier, IMHO. Besides the generous piles of food on them, the tables were all well-decorated. Small ice sculptures, lights, full size Xmas trees, etc, and the platters of food were all set on various platforms and rises that were covered in green linen tablecloths. Quite festive and nicely designed, and that's being said by one who seldom notices that sort of thing.
And we enjoyed the evening on the whole, even if we did have to get dressed up and fight to get my tie into something resembling a half-Windsor. I hate ties, especially tying them. Here's a shot of me, with Malaya cruelly cropped off and blacked out, since she must remain anonymous, for now. Pity you can't see her dress; it was a lovely black with shimmery silver and blue beads, though I was most partial to the matching thong. My leather jacket worked pretty well for things, mostly since we were young enough to pull off our look. Set me apart from the tons of other late 20's-early 30's guys walking around in Oxford shirts and ties, at least. Most of the older men had on boring business suits that probably fit them ten years ago. Though I imagine they could actually tie their own ties properly, and thus didn't have ridiculous dents in them resulting from various pre-party mangling attempts at a full-Windsor. *cough*
Christmas is coming, and while you might imagine that this being my first Xmas season with Malaya, we'd have some nifty things planned. You'd be wrong. I'm planning on going back to San Diego to visit the parents for a few days (the blog will be on hiatus for half a week or so) and Malaya will be driving over to spend some time with her parents. As for what she and I are doing together... we've got no plans. For months we were planning on what to get each other, and trying to think of something expensive we could each pay half of and sort of split a luxury item. An ipod was the leading contender, though I didn't really see the point. We never play the tape deck or radio in the car now, since there aren't any radio stations I can stand and we get bad reception in the hills we're usually driving in anyway, plus she doesn't have any tapes and doesn't want to hear the music I have on my tapes. At least not very often. So if we had an ipod she'd just have to listen to more of the music I now have on tape, but she says it would be okay then since she'd have a song she liked coming up every other one and could tolerate mine in short doses. I'm not sure I could extend her the same courtesy, but I suppose it depends on just how badly I dislike whatever her song of the moment is. The problem is that ipods are amazingly-expensive for what's basically a small hard drive with a sound card, and if you want them to play in your car you need additional wiring; something to plug into the cigarette lighter for power, and some way to get the music to go through the car speakers also. So combining the high price with us not even being sure we have any use for one in the first place, I think we're not going to get that, at least not this year. As for what we will get, that's not clear yet either. It's looking like we'll just hit some after Xmas sale and each buy the other something snazzy that we wouldn't normally get for ourselves, for around $75 or $100 or whatever. I'm thinking some really good running shoes for me, assuming it ever stops raining every other day and I've got the urge to go jogging some again. I have no idea what Malaya might want, but I guess I'll find out in a couple of weeks.
Talking to dad on the phone yesterday about my probable trip back to SD this Xmas, he was all excited about it, and mentioned that we could look into renting me a car if I wanted to go out somewhere sometime when he wasn't home or had to be out himself and I therefore couldn't borrow his car. It's a nice thought, but I'm only planning on being there for a few days, and anyway, where would I go? I never went anywhere but work and shopping when I lived there. I'm going to sit around his house or mother's house for the whole time, do Xmas shit, talk, catch up on my reading, watch football games, etc. I have no plans and no need to go anywhere, when you get right down to it. And I found it odd that dad was worrying about that. May your parents turn out to not really know you all that well after all. Now if I were going back with Malaya we'd probably rent a car so I could show her some of the things I liked in town (not that I ever went to them), and we'd need wheels for that. But solo? What am I going to do, visit my shitty old apartment? Drive by the stadium to see where my shitty old job was? Drive to La Mesa and shop in the Henry's market I used to hit a couple of times a week?
As for Xmas in general, I really don't care. I've not done much to celebrate it in my adult life, and I don't see that changing this year. I can imagine if Malaya and I had a big place and money to decorate and motivation to do so (largely to provide Jinx with new things to leap up and swat at) we might be more into it. But this year we're not really worrying about it. We did decorate and think about Halloween, but that's because we both love the concept of that holiday, and regularly celebrate our dark sides. When it comes to Xmas, we're both pretty indifferent to it. I'm sort of surprised that I didn't get more into it this year, after my semi-epiphany around the time of Malaya's B-day in late November. I realized, for the first time in my life, that a B-day can be a really special day. It's the time you celebrate a person's life, and think how happy you are that they are alive and on earth for you to enjoy their company. Of course you don't have to do this, not for yourself or for anyone else, but when you're really in love with someone, and you think about it, it's hard not to want to give them special things on such a day. And with that in mind I can see why someone who was in love with me would want to return the favor. It's like for one day, you have an excuse to make the world revolve around that one special person, and it becomes important to you to make them happy and make them feel loved. I'm going to try and do something more special for both of my parents on their B-day's next year, if I can keep this new-found concept clear in my mind until August and September 2004. Unfortunately, no one important was born on Christmas, so there's no excuse to... oh wait. Actually that's a joke, there's no evidence that the historical Jesus was actually born in December. I've heard estimates all over the year, but the most common sense one to me, if we're going to give any credence to the whole "shepherds tending their flocks" element of the mythology, is spring, which is when shepherds are out in their fields at night, helping ewes who are pregnant and about to foal. That's somewhat irrelevant, since after all, if you're a Christian and worship the divinity of Jesus Christ, there's no need to know or care which day of the year he was born on; you should be fine going with the officially-designated one. It's like national holidays; we celebrate Washington's and Lincoln's and MLK days on whatever day of the week is most convenient for a three day weekend. However, since I'm not a Christian, if Jesus did or did not exist and if he was or wasn't born on December 25th doesn't mean anything to me. I'm also not a pagan or druid or the worshiper of any other religion or creed, so I don't celebrate sun-return or the winter solstice or any other such agrarian society-based year end holidays. I never have. Oh, I'm not a Grinch going around scowling or refusing to look at an Xmas tree; I can appreciate that it's a special time of the year for other people, regardless of their beliefs, and I enjoy giving and getting presents and spending time with loved ones. But I have never done it for any reason other than that it's the time of year everyone does it. I've just been playing along. I've never felt especially lonely or unhappy at this time of year, and often I've done Xmas stuff with my mom and dad on the 24th or 26th since they were going to visit with friends on Xmas day, and sat home alone all day on Xmas and never given it a thought; other than being annoyed that nothing was open when I wanted to celebrate with a pizza or spicy chicken sandwich or Chinese food, or just wanted to go to the supermarket. The thing I most associate with Xmas is the fact that there is very, very little freeway traffic in the day and the few cops on duty are all busy with domestic disturbances, which means I can can drive hella fast and make great time anywhere I want to go. That doesn't hold so true for Xmas driving after dark, since by then tons of people who had far too much brandy in their egg nog are trying to navigate back home and the cops are out on the freeways like vultures. True, most of them are busy with DWIs, but you never know if one will happen by when you're flying along at 105MPH in the fast lane, even if you aren't weaving any. I suppose I wish Xmas were more special to me, and I based on my new-found B-day views I can see why an anniversary would be a big deal to some couples (though by the stereotype it's only the woman who remembers). The problem with letting a holiday mean something to you is that you're then open to being hurt if it sucks or bad things happen. That's why so many people are suicidal during the December holidays, I suppose. They attached great meaning to that time of the year when they were kids, or they think they should be happy and jolly like everyone else appears to be, and yet that time of year comes and they aren't happy or jolly, and it really hits them hard; both their unhappiness and the obvious contrast between how they feel and how they think they should feel, given the day of the year. Malaya was not into celebrating her B-day since on some past B-days she had really bad days or got into a fight with a former BF. So she had zero expectations for anything special or fun on that day, and was mostly in "keep my head down" mode. Fortunately we had a really good day and spent a lot of time together and she enjoyed it a lot, and I really enjoyed doing it and making her happy. In fact I'm looking forward to next year already, since I like making her happy every day, and her B-day is extra special. It's corny, but I'm really glad she was born. As an extension of that, I can see a Christian being really happy that Jesus was born that day, if they really believed the whole Biblical version of events. I don't and I think there's overwhelming evidence against it, which is why I don't believe in it, but I'm aware that the vast majority of the world doesn't know that Malaya exists, much less thinking she's all that special. So I suppose it's okay that we all disagree. I think once you've got a family and especially kids, Xmas becomes a lot more important, since it's a day you can give special attention to people you really care about. Regardless of the Jesus or Santa or other implications of the day to you, Xmas is a day that's traditionally set up for giving gifts, especially to children. And if you've got children you care about, yours or your grandkids or godkids or whatever, I can see how it would be a really special day for you, sort of like all their birthdays rolled into one.
I'm not going anywhere with this; it's just that since I finally have come to understand why some people find B-days so special, I can apply that to add to my appreciation of Xmas, and wonder if one day if/when I have kids of my own, I'll think of this time of year as a really special thing. As well as wondering how I'll feel about teaching them about Santa Clause. I'll tear out my hair if my kids grow up to be ignorant and superstitious and believe in alien abductions and bigfoot and Jesus and all the other popular cultural myths. So how do I want to handle Santa? Do I Scrooge things and tell them he's not real and it's other kids' parents giving them the presents? Do I want to invent my own mythos to tide them over until they're 6 or 7 with something more interesting than Santa? Or do I just go with the flow and let them figure out the truth for themselves once they're old enough to apply some critical thinking; ideally at a younger age than most kids since I'll be trying to educate them to think for themselves as soon as they can grip the concept? The problem with the last one is that while it's the best solution in a perfect world, what if they never do figure it out on their own, but just because some older kid tells them? And what if they never do get any good at critical thinking and grow up to be superstitious? I've never really thought about it, but I think I'd have to regard my greatest failing as a parent as my kids growing up to be ignorant sheep who believe what they're told and follow some comforting fairy tale rather than seeking out the cold hard truth of reality. I suppose that's because I see all other good things flowing from that, the ability to think and be objective and honest with themselves, and though I don't always do it myself, I mostly do and I think it's served me pretty well. Of course holy rolling Baptists who handle snakes every Sunday in church feel the same way about their personal philosophy about life... Maybe we'll just not have kids, on second thought.
As for other aspects of Xmas, I'm woefully unprepared, as always. I have had a stack of Xmas cards sitting on my desk for the past week, and while I've not written a word in any of them, each day's thought had brought to mind another person I really should send one to. It's a pity there aren't belated Xmas cards, since I could really use them on an annual basis. It's a bit had to pretend you forgot Xmas, but every year it sneaks up on me. I'll notice the Xmas items going on sale in late November and smirk, and then come early December I'll think "I should do some shopping early, for once." But I don't do it, other than maybe picking up a couple of calendars for presents for my parents. The next time I notice the calendar it's about the 17th and I think, "I really need to get going on stuff. Anything I mail will be late soon." but then I get distracted, and the next thing I know it's... *checks calendar* the 22nd, and I haven't gotten shit done. And really, my Xmas tasks are far far less than those of most everyone else. I don't have any siblings or an extended family; just my mom, stepdad, and dad, and I had grandparents on my mother's side, until Granny died this summer. I'll still send a card that way, even though Gramps has pretty much lost his mind to the bottle and to bitterness since Granny started to fail a couple of years ago, and I've not gotten a B-day or Xmas card from him for 3 years. I also have a couple of co-workers on the D2 site who I've exchanged Xmas cards and sometimes gifts with for the past few years. We hardly talk or bond via the site anymore, since two of us have pretty much quit working on it, but tradition compels. I also have a friend in Chicago whom I regret hardly ever talking to online anymore, and am friendly with my stepbrother and especially my stepsister, despite not meeting them until just a few years ago, and seeing them for about one dinner a year, at most, and won't see them at all this Xmas. Plus I need cards and gifts to the mom/stepdad, dad, Malaya, and a card to her parents. You wouldn't think it would be such a chore to get off cards to half a dozen people, and cards + gifts to another 3 or 4 people, would you? And yet here it is, December 22nd, and I've done nothing other than buy and wrap most of the presents I'm planning on giving my parents. I did buy good cards for everyone, but have I written any? I put that off as long as possible, every year, mostly since I hate writing by hand. I type, that's what keyboards are for. Handwriting is slow, cramping, illegible, ink staining, and entirely unsatisfactory. I do is so seldom that my hand gets tired writing three checks in a row, which is all the more reason that I should just get started on the cards about the 10th, and do one a day so it wouldn't be so odious a task all stacked up at once, right? Well, that would be logical, anyway. Also, every year I think, "This year I'll get some nice paper and type out personal notes and print them in a nice font and stick those into the cards. But despite the fact that that would take me about 1/10th as long, I never get around to doing it. I eagerly-anticipate the day when I'm too important to write my own Xmas cards, and have a personal assistant to do them for me. Ironically, I have lots of cool ideas for Xmas stuff, and have long thought that once I'm a bigtime famous writer I'll do some sort of ongoing Xmas story and print up special cards just for that with cool, weird illustrations. Though it would probably be better if I did that for Halloween, knowing the type of stories I write. Of course if that were for Xmas, I'd still need to write up some sort of personal notes/cards for special people I actually know and love, while they'd get the Xmas card story, along with all of my business associates and casual friends. So really, that would put me right back where I started, with me even more annoyed by having to write cards after already doing a whole special story card series. Failing that, I could see doing a special Xmas story or page on my official website. Which would just make me all the more annoyed at having to do that plus the personal cards. Basically, holidays suck when you're disorganized and procrastinating in real life, largely because they make it harder than usual to ignore your own failings, while simultaneously letting everyone else see them as well.
Cheesy as they are, I annually find myself unable to resist the stupid "See you next year." type of comments. I think I got off four of them inside of ten minutes as I was leaving my dad's house last night around 11:30pm. "We'll go eat dinner next year." "I can't do that until next year." etc. The other side of that dubious joke is good for about the first week or two of January, where you take something ignominious and proudly proclaim, "This was the best ______ I've had all year!" Which sounds good, but people generally realize it's sarcasm before too long. Now time for news. I can assure you it'll be the best news commentary you've read from me this year. I'll try to stop now. Audible signs of New Years are always much easier to hear in poor areas. When I used to live in Linda Vista, a semi-poor and mostly Asian area, there was a lot of noise every December 31st at 11:59. Firecrackers, honking of horns, shouting, random gunfire, etc. I never actually hit the floor, but I did make sure I wasn't sitting too near any windows. Last year I was over at my dad's house on New Years and in his quiet, residential neighborhood I heard nothing more than a few distant honks and yells, probably from some party a cul-de-sac or two over. No gun fire, no fireworks, no festive car alarms, etc. Where I live now, in La Mesa, it's a better area than Linda Vista was, or at least there are a lot fewer unsupervised 17 y/o's with hand guns. However I am right across the street from a perpetually-crowded Denny's, and like 24 hour restaurants everywhere, it functions as a sort of drunk-catching dust bin. So when I drove up here at about 12:10am, there were at least 15 people out on the street by Denny's roaring "Happy New Year" in their drink-slurred voices. There was also much ceremonial horn honking, both from the Denny's parking lot, and also from people driving down the street. I tend to feel almost invincible driving anywhere on New Year's Eve, since you know that every cop is so busy pulling over DWIs that they aren't even going to blink at a normal driver, almost no matter how fast they are going. And as anyone can tell you, the best way to avoid drunk drivers is to spend as little time as possible on the road. Which means 100MPH+ at all times, when not actually parked. As usual my New Year's celebration consisted of wondering why anyone really gives a shit about New Year's, since it's such an arbitrary date on our arbitrary calendar. I'm not a real big fan of the metric system, mostly since I refuse to measure anything in a "deciliter". I do use it for measurement at times, since centimeters are a nice estimatable size, and are easily converted to inches, if need be. My estimation of size breaks down past the hand-length range though, and it's too far from centimeter up to meter. Being able to say "a foot long" or "two feet long" is so much better than "3/10ths of a meter", or "60 centimeters". This would be easily solved if there were a term in common usage for say 33 or 50 centimeters. Also, it's easy enough to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, but it's unsatisfying. It's logical to have 0 = freezing point of water, and 100 = boiling point, but having grown up with temperatures that were literally "sub zero" meaning they are damn cold, I always feel cheated when some Canadian or European says, "It was four below!", and I realize that's like 26 degrees. Pffft. Plus in Fahrenheit over 100 is damn hot. In Celsius it's like 35 degrees+ is really hot. Does "35" sound hot? No, it's too small a number. With Fahrenheit hot/fast dovetail nicely, so 100 MPH is damn fast, and 100 degrees or damn hot. There is no such accidental overlap with the metric system; 100 KMH is not very fast, yet 100 degrees is boiling. So yes, Celsius is to blame for me not growing up using it, and therefore not immediately appreciating the scale of it.
Back to New Years. This year, unlike most years, I am making some (God damned) resolutions. • First off, I will spend at least 30 minutes a day on housekeeping on this website. I will spend that time keeping the daily archives up to date, or adding from updates to the articles/reviews, or working on new navigation. I want a proper section and navigation for all of the random digicam shots, news images, and other such things I've been posting regularly, but without any real organization. I should also have a QotD archive that's easier to read than one at a time clicking back through the daily update archives. I may also use this time for adding to the Band Names section or other existing content sections that could use the touch up, and to add more of my older short/long stories, that I've been meaning to do for months. • I will also spend at least one hour a day writing fiction. This hour may be rolled over for up to three days, due to lacking free time/motivation, but no longer than that. Time spent editing older work counts, but time spent archiving or updating the fiction section does not. • In real life, I will not allow bills and letters to pile up longer than a week anymore. Ignoring them for so long that I had my power and phone disconnected this year should have been the final straw for my procrastination in that area, but here it is December and I've got unopened bills from October on piling up again. • I will also stop procrastinating so much. I'll start on all of these tomorrow. Or possibly the next day.
Exercise and New Year's Resolutions. Those two things frequently overlap, but while I'm talking about both of them today, they aren't really related, at least not for me, at least not this year. I'm trying to exercise more, but I'm not making it a New Year's Resolution. In fact I'm not making any resolutions at all, to cut right to the chase. Last year I did, sort of. I did mostly to fill some space while tapping away on the January 1st blog. I said I'd spend at least 30 minutes a day on the blog in some sort of housekeeping or updating (archives, quote of the day, band names, article updates, etc), I'd spend an hour a day writing fiction, and I'd stop letting bills and papers and other such things pile up so much that they grew to a critical mass. Looking back; I have accomplished the third thing on the list, though that's mostly since I live with Malaya now and she's very organized and enjoys paying bills and sorting that stuff away the minute she can. So I have far few bills to deal with now (since she pays the cable, electricity, etc and I just give her half of the amount in a lump sum at the end of the month), and the ones that I still have to do myself, credit cards and such, I do in a few days since she'll notice if I have unopened letters piling up for weeks and months at a time, and since I just feel better getting them out of the way ASAP. Having a good example in this case helps me get done what I need to get done. As for the other two things; I didn't do either of them. For the past couple of months I've spent a good amount of time writing fiction, though never as much as I want to. But from January to October or so I did not do more than a few hours every couple of weeks, if that much. Thinking about what I should be writing all the time is better than nothing, but not by much. As for the 30 minutes a day on site maintenance, I'm not sure why I even felt a need for that. It would be nice if I did that, but I don't really see that much to do. The daily archives take me an hour or two to do a month's worth, and I do that every 4 or 6 weeks. And the quote of the day page is easy and pretty quick to archive. I'm not really planning on ever updating the Band Names section again, other than in the form of feedback, since I've not listened to the radio or Mtv in about 8 months and have no opinion of anything musically at this point. I am working on updating the articles section now, but it doesn't seem like that huge a priority; I'm just in the mood to do it some now and while I'm in the mood for that and not for writing, I might as well get something done. One thing if not the other. It's interesting to see what I did change a great deal in 2003, that I didn't even consider in my resolutions. As I now realize, I was very unhappy and lonely back in January of last year. I hadn't been dating or looking for any sort of dating action for quite a while, and felt content with that. I'd never been in love and didn't have any close friends, and I wasn't socializing with anyone other then my parents and the few semi-friends I saw at work. And I didn't feel any need to change that. Then in January the infamous, self-described "hot chick" K tripped over my blog and emailed me, showing so much interest in me that it took an incredible obliviousness to it not realize she wasn't just being friendly. Fortunately for me, I really was that oblivious, and we were just friends. The main benefit of her was that this close encounter with an actual female re-awoke my libido, and then when Malaya first emailed me a month later, her intelligent and interesting email, coupled with the fact that she was also a female, got my full attention. Malaya is a far better match for me than any other woman I've ever known, and perhaps I would have been immediately interested in her and our relationship would have progressed as it did even if K hadn't come along a month earlier. But there's no way to know for sure, short of a time machine and an alternate universe. Anyway, the point of this isn't to say how Malaya and I met, it's to point out that by far the biggest development in my life over the past year was not something I even considered in my New Year's Resolutions. Which begs the question; what might happen this year that I would never dream of resolving about at this point? It also begs the question why I think the one interesting year in the past decade should be repeated just a year later, but that's just how humans are. We like to think that a one time event signals a trend, and we like to think that we're special. And if we can combine both traits into one event, well all the better. As for this year and Resolutions, I don't have any. I want to spend more time writing and less time watching TV and surfing pointlessly, I want to get back to exercising regularly and have a lot of fun on my snowboard, and I want to keep living and loving Malaya, though I'd be happy to do that in a larger dwelling. Of course we'll need more money for that, and since I'm currently earning zero while having the potential to earn quite a bit... well, there's my other motivation for spending more time writing. |
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ost
of our current holidays have their roots in ancient traditions, often ones from
pre-history. The old festivals and celebrations have been modified over
the years, usually with some Christian veneer tacked onto them, but you can
still see the roots of the holiday if you do more than scratch the surface.
Last
year I posted a bunch of amusing candy hearts with dirty messages on them, sort
of inspired by the 
