This brilliant shot from Simon at eyematter
I really, really love Christmas. It's the last great Western festival. I have a passing shred of pity for everyone, including the Christians, who are trying to carve out their own bit of religious and/or cultural identity from behind the massive inflatable Santa in their town square, but frankly? Whatever. I love the fact that the "meaning" of Christmas is being lost. It's turning back into its real self -- a great big mother of a celebration involving traditions borrowed, stolen and appropriated from everywhere where it's winter in December -- an excuse to decorate everything, drink hot, intoxicating substances, and eat foodstuffs made of things preserved from the Spring. I love that everywhere is bedecked -- the shiny wooden bar at the local pub, the streets glimmering with tiny lights and large, the windows, everyone's houses. That every store is stuffed with gifts and special, luxury foods that you eat just because they're special, luxury foods and that's what you do on a festival day. The sense of everyone preparing for something, a shared something.
There's even some minimalist berry-orientated ersatz-decoration going on in the window of my chrome-and-black-leather hair salon.
Of course, as time has gone by and I have left this blog woefully alone, gathering cobwebs and electronic dust-bunnies, the pressure grows to make a big re-entrance with something Fantastically Witty, or Perspicaciously Literary, or Amusingly Misanthropic, to justify one's catastrophic negligence. But naturally, I haven't had a thought with half a gleam on it, much less the blinding shine that impresses the blogging glitterati, for literally months. Among other things, I've been distracted by the adorable baby-blue backlit keyboard of my new love interest.
But I couldn't stand it any longer. I couldn't let my blog miss out. I had to get in here and put up some tinsel.
7 comments:
Oh. My. Dog. A post!!
BTW, if you really want a distraction with your new toy, forget about the backlit keyboard (admittedly cool) and start scanning Universal Product Codes of your personal library using the built-in iSight using Delicious Library. (The downside, so far, is that the databases of UPCs is easily stumpable with out-of-print '80s Britpop, but you can't have everything, eh?)
Oh. My. Good. Lord.
Tom, I can't believe you told me about that. No, I really can't. Don't you realise that my thesis is still not finished?
(I think I have some sort of disorder).
Now it will never happen.
Hey! A post! Hi! Good to see you!
See, all of that insecurity I had about The Big Re-Entrance Post was obviously totally misplaced. All you have to do is not post for an unforgiveably long time, and then you score comments just for posting at all.
Genius. I shall write a book called The Management of Low Expectations.
Hi, Scriv. Good to see you too!
Oh dear, Xtin, I had no idea you hadn't finished -- since you hadn't blogged about not finishing...
I overcame Sid Meier's Civilization II and holding down a more-than-full-time job to finish mine, so it can happen.
BTW, if you're doing any significant amount of blog reading and aren't using it (or Bloglines, etc.) already, d/l NetNewsWire ("the program that turns infrequently updated blogs from annoyances into little 'net presents" -me), which I figure saves me at least an hour a day for other pursuits.
There is something about "oh, dear" which is just so ... crushing.
Sigh. Met with my advisor today. I think he set a new record for making up euphemisms for Stop Obsessing, You Freak. I feel oddly comforted.
I apologize for being crushing.
In my case, it was a colleague who took responsibility for the "Stop Obsessing, You Freak" part. He did not put it all that euphemistically, either, but it was a Baby Step out the metaphorical door.
So, take a sip of the Great Latte of Truth, wave around the Light Saber of Mind-Independent Reality in an appropriately menacing way, and go out there and kick bottom! (Just not so firmly as to damage the MBP keyboard.)
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