Gratitude Monday: Addressing chaos

Today I am grateful for space. As in, uncluttered space. Meaning, space that I have made a conscious and concerted effort to de-clutter. Space that is now clean and beautifully empty, waiting for me to do anything (or even nothing) with it.

My problem is that I have a tendency to just dump things. Well, by “have a tendency”, I mean “always”. Yet I hate clutter; it not only gets on my nerves, it makes me feel constricted and out of control at the same time. I spend way more time looking for things than is rational, which makes me feel like I can never quite get to doing whatever needs doing.

Well, a few weeks ago, a woman named Kathleen Ronald was the guest speaker at one of my meetups. Her topic was “De-clutter Your Way to a New Job!” To be honest, that sounded just the teensiest bit of a stretch to me, but she had me at “de-clutter”, so I went.

There was indeed some woo-woo involved (“Each mess is a lock on the gate that keeps abundance away.”) But this one resonated: “Open up space and something new can come in.”

Ronald spoke of getting out of the “just-in-case” mindset. You know, the “well, I might need this for some unspecified activity at some unknown time in the future so I’d better hang onto it” line of thought. Which is also the road to clutter.

She had us list all the areas in our physical environment that could use a good clear-out: closets, garage, office, bedroom, kitchen. And then she suggested some ones we hadn’t thought of—like the car; that alone would take me half a day.

She gave us some guidelines: get rid of things you don’t use or love, things that are untidy or disorganized, too many things in too small a space, anything unfinished. (Think about that last one for a minute; how much could you chuck using that criterion?) And then the usual advice: divide it, like all Gaul, into three parts: one to ditch, one to keep, one to give away.

But the true game changer for me was: “Every thing has an address. Your hairbrush has an address—probably in the bathroom, maybe on the counter or in a drawer. Give everything an address so you know where it lives.”

Well, let me tell you I found this inspiring, energizing and liberating. In my first 15-minute spurt I cleared off two dining chairs of papers, holiday detritus and miscellanea. Then it was the basket next to my armchair. I’m not going to tell you what was there. But this was just the perimeter of de-cluttering.

Because the ninth circle of clutter hell is the loft. And it’s not even just “bunch-of-stuff”, it’s all papers (and books and some stuff), but mostly papers. The magnitude of this problem—because for three years I basically just heaved stuff up there and then ran back down the stairs as fast as possible—was beyond daunting. And even though I only see it when I run up to heave some more papers there, it’s like the Sword of Damocles—I always know it’s hanging there, waiting to cleave my head wide open.

So, I developed a plan:

First round of de-cluttering: go through the loft and put everything into stacks. Don’t try sorting papers, putting away books, finding the “addresses” of things; don’t do any thinking beyond papers-books-things. Just a stack of papers, a stack of books that need to be shelved, a box of things that don’t fit into those two categories.

The next round was sorting through the papers, filing things that already have addresses and putting everything that didn’t have a known place into a “TBD” box. Then shelving the books. Then sorting through the miscellaneous things.

And you know what? First thing that happened was I discovered my clips (my writing samples), which I literally have been trying to find for more than two years. (Thinking I'd lost my clips was like thinking I'd lost photos of my children; it was a cataclysmic loss.) They weren’t in the filing cabinet (which was their rightful address), but in a stack about four feet away, where I wouldn’t have ever thought to look. 

This alone was worth the effort.

After three or four passes, I had both printers on the printer stand, a big bag of paper to go to recycling, all the stray books back on the shelves and a whole lot of crap in their proper files. Papers that I need to refer to currently, and those I know I want to take action on (story ideas, reference materials, etc.), are in a file box I can access quickly. I still have to do some major sorting of that TBD stack—what things I should let go of and the keepers I really do love or will use. And in the latter cases, they need to get addresses and put away.

Meanwhile—that god-awful sword has become considerably smaller and not quite as sharp.

Then, I got so annoyed by the pile of papers, mail, coupons and whatnot on my kitchen counter that I hauled out a carton and just swept everything off the counter into it. No sorting, no putting away, just off the counter.

All that stuff still needs to be addressed, but in the meantime it’s no more poorly “organized” than it was on the counter, I pretty much know (generally) where it all is and I’ve got that beautiful, clear expanse of space in the kitchen. I see that space first thing when I enter my flat, and I can’t tell you how lovely it is to see it empty and waiting for whatever I might like to cook or bake.

Now, one thing I have to work on as an ongoing project is that tendency to just dump. I’m too lazy to put things away when I bring them in or when I’m done using them, so I just leave them in situ. (E.g., knives. I leave washed knives next to the kitchen sink. And for why?—the knife block is right there!) It’s amazing how quickly that “I’ll put it away later” or “I’ll figure out where it goes at some point” stuff metastasizes. I started doing it with that counter space, so I’ve developed a solution: I created a “To Be Addressed (TBA) Depot”, a basket where I put things that don’t have a current address. Everything else has to go to its rightful place. Right away.

Even when “right away” means I have to go back and deal with it in 30 minutes when I realize I just dumped it.

This part is going to be ongoing, but it’s totally necessary if I don’t want the chaos to encroach on my exquisite empty spaces.

I have plenty of work to do on this, of course. But if I take it in 15-minute chunks, it’s totally doable. And the thing about de-cluttering is that—even in little bits—you see results immediately, which motivates you to keep at it.

There’s also work to be done on non-environmental clutter, but that’s another story. And today I’m just so grateful that Kathleen Ronald was speaking right at the time I was ready to clear the clutter.

2014: The whole damned thing

In addition to the many deaths of giants in the arts, 2014 produced a plethora of events that just cried out for commentary, both serious and silly. And I did my best to oblige.

Have you forgotten already? Well, let me refresh your memory.

In February the Winter Olympic Games were held in Sochi, Russia. Because NBC-Comcast’s coverage of these events is so consistently crappy, I never really got beyond fast-forwarding through the opening ceremonies. I was a little disappointed that Putin didn’t show up topless in a little pink skating skirt, but as far as I’m concerned most of the entertainment took place before the dignitaries showed up. Because there was world-class competitive tweeting going on from all the reporters who found the facilities less than, uh, bronze medal quality.

“C’mon, guyz…”

Almost immediately after the closing ceremonies, Russia upped its international bullying game, so discovering that several European countries were unable to, uh, get it up in the air space violation defense arena was, well, eye-opening. Yes, children, apparently air force ground crews and pilots get overtime, and even Switzerland thinks twice about that time-and-a-half expenditure.

All this might have been rendered moot if the Viking Armageddon had shown up on schedule. But no, noooo—Ragnarök came and went, with no ripping of the celestial fabric or Norse gods rumbling like Jets and Sharks. I was so disappointed—I actually got my Absolut together and then had no place to go.

This has definitely put me off Armageddon—not one of the apocalyptic predictions seems able to pull it off, so you guys have lost me as a customer forever.

It wasn’t all whacky; 2014 was the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the Battle of the Bulge, seminal events in tightening the noose around Hitler’s empire from the west. The ranks of men who slogged onto the Normandy beaches in June and stood their ground in the frozen Ardennes in December have thinned to just a very few now, so it’s good that we continue to render them the respect due. This time around we saw some amazing then-and-now photos of D-Day, and revisited the announcement Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower had prepared in the event that the landings failed. It was unlike anything we’ve seen in the past 40 years of political, military and corporate “leaders” weaseling out of high crimes and misdemeanors.

We observed the 70^th anniversary of the July Conspiracy—the attempt by principled Wehrmacht officers to overthrow the Nazis and establish a rational government that could negotiate with the Allies. For some reason this event didn’t make a big splash in the news media; I can’t recall what was going on, maybe the birth of the Kardashian-West baby.

We also commemorated the 100^th anniversary of the start of that other global conflagration of the first half of the 20^th Century. Since World War I is the focus of my historical studies, I’ve had a few things to say about it, and that’ll continue for the next four years.

Europeans marked the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo, which led to a cascade of political maneuvers by the major powers of Europe, and set the stage for more than four years of industrialized slaughter. When you read about it all now, your first inclination is to wonder what the hell those leaders were all smoking; but then you look at congresses and parliaments around the world today and you just shrug.

(Case in point: in June Serbians unveiled a statue to the Bosnian Serb assassin, who is still revered as a national hero. Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey pretty much took a pass on this; and Russia was too busy reliving the Stalin years in the Crimea to bring up WWI.)

And last week we commemorated that strange and unique occurrence on the Western Front of 100 years ago: the Christmas Truce. As ephemeral as a flash mob without mobile phones, the events of the 24^th and 25^th of December 1914 flicker down to us, like the light of a single candle in a room engulfed in darkness.

Some of the remembrances have been powerfully evocative. Two in particular came out of the United Kingdom: the Lights Out campaign on 4 August, and the “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” installation at the Tower of London.

Britain and France declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, and the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey commented, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” So on 4 August this year, private homes, corporations and public buildings went dark throughout the United Kingdom, with only a few candles or lanterns providing light. It was an extraordinary depiction of the darkness that engulfed civilization one hundred years ago. (Sadly, it’s not clear to me at all that we’ve ever quite emerged from that black place.)

The art installation, “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” was an equally powerful image—nearly 900,000 ceramic poppies planted on and around the Tower of London, each unique crimson flower representing the life of a British or Commonwealth soldier lost in the First World War, swelling in their masses to an ocean of blood. Individual sorrow, national catastrophe.

And British losses were on the smallish side, when compared with those of France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. If you planted a poppy for every one of the lives in all those armies that were torn away between 1914 and 1918, you’d take over all of London and probably half the Home Counties.

(As a side note, I posted a photo of the installation and one of the people I know on Facebook—a mathematics professor, who apparently isn’t much interested in anything not involving a digit—archly inquired if it was all about Rapunzel. No.)

This was the 50^th anniversary of the release of Zulu, the picture that gave us an impossibly young and posh Michael Caine, as well as possibly the best battle sequence ever filmed. The occasion was marked by releasing a digitally remastered, wide-screen version, attended by (among others), Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Buthelezi was a long-time colleague of Nelson Mandela in the fight against Apartheid, as well as the great-grandson of the Zulu leader Cetshwayo, whom he portrayed in the movie.

And if you have still not seen it, I once again urge you to do so immediately.

The UK did have its, oh, alternative moments, though. It seems that the House of Windsor is getting close to overdraft and economies need to be made. Or else the British taxpayer needs to pony up to bail HM out. I did propose a solution to this fine mess, but no one’s had the courtesy to reply. So far.

Then there was that whole tempest in a tartan—Scotland’s attempt to bugger off from the rest of the component parts of the United Kingdom. There were substantial amounts of bloviation on both sides, but in the end the Scots (down to age 16—special voting privileges for this election, because we all know what rational decisions teenagers make) voted to remain in the dysfunctional but still nominally United Kingdom of greater or lesser Britain and the six northern counties of Ireland.

After spending many months examining the remains of Richard III, which were found a couple of years ago under a parking lot in Leicester, British scientists this year finally announced that the last Yorkist king indeed “died brutally during battle.” Apparently it was the 11 wounds by knife, sword and battle axe that provided the clues.

However, HM still won’t let Richard be buried in Westminster Abbey (dunno if it’s anything to do with those budget woes or just bloody-mindedness), so he’s going on display in Leicester, to the great delight of the local pols and Chamber of Commerce.

Britain does not have a lock on folly, of course. Although they certainly are playing in the major leagues. Why, right here in the USA, we had an unelected Senator outed as being a plagiarist (having cribbed most of his 14-page thesis/paper that won him a Master of Strategic Studies degree from the Army War College), and trying to spin the story every which way but up. Apparently John Walsh and his spinpersons didn’t have any secondary resources to plagiarize in aid of this effort; the degree has since been revoked and Walsh did not run for actual election in Montana last month.

This episode certainly makes me wonder what other military and political leaders got their degrees in international or strategic studies via the academic equivalent of a Cracker Jack box, but perhaps I’m trying to overthink this.

Then there was the whole “some of my best friends are female” thing, epitomized by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attempting verbal suicide at a women-in-tech gathering, and the UN planning a conference on gender equality…without any women being invited. Nadella was a keynote speaker at the Grace Hopper Conference—pretty much the premiere event for women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)—when he confidently assured the hundreds of women in the audience that they didn’t need to bother asking for raises or promotions because “that’s good karma.”

It’s like the guy didn’t know that Twitter exists.

At that same conference, several tech company CEOs were engaging in a panel discussion about being “male allies” to women in tech. At which they decreed there should be no Q&A session.

It’s like these guys didn’t know that Twitter exists.

(They did circle the wagons and set up an impromptu Q&A session later on. But still.)

The animal kingdom also had its share of notable events this year. On the dark side, administrators at the Copenhagen Zoo shot a bolt through the head of a healthy four-year-old giraffe named Marius, and then dismembered his corpse and fed it to the lions in front of an audience of children as a teaching moment. Marius’ genetic structure was of no interest to the zoo, so it was off with his head.

Only, just five weeks later, the same zoo put down four of the aforementioned lions because it was determined that they, too, were surplus to requirements. No word on whether the four big cats were used as chow for some other creatures. Someone please remind me who’s the superior being in this equation?

Then there was possibly my favorite story of the entire year—about Fedya the performing crocodile and the Russian circus accountant. This was a world-class story if for no other reason than the original report ran, “a dangerous reptile sustained injuries after being squashed by a portly circus accountant.” This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, folks.

Plus—I got to Ask the Questions. I love to Ask the Questions.

This year we also found out about a category of working cats that doesn’t involve badly spelled Internet memes. Yes, give it up for Distillery Cats, who give their all so that the rest of us can drink the water of life.

Although evidently some of us are falling down on the job and letting our respective nation(s) down. Because France and Uruguay are out-drinking the US in several categories of spirits. And the UK, which seems just wrong.

C’mon, guyz…

Well, as I mentioned way up about 2,000 words ago, it’s been quite the blog-year this time around. There was the big organic manure hoo-ha, while back in the UK they swung between Dull Men and shopping chaos on Black Friday. I still don’t know what the hell they were thinking when they imported that.

But the posts closest to my heart this year were about my friend Dick—his Excellent European Adventure, his safe return to Virginia without need of an extraction operation, his uncovering of a true saint for our times, and his solo turn at the Washington Christmas Revels (the production was about the Irish and Irish Americans, but he sang “Deck the Halls” in Welsh, so I’m a little confused).

And my fond hope is that 2015 will be the year I receive a draft of his memoirs, because this was just one single year in a fascinating life, and I do not want to wait around while some publisher squirrels around.

If I do, I’ll certainly let you know.

The passing year

Oh, what a year 2014 was—quite the blogging rollercoaster, really. so many comentworthy events, so little time…

Well, first of all, 2014 saw so many deaths in the arts, leaving massive gaps in the talent pool for those of us to whom they brought such enjoyment.

(Oh—there was one different death of note this year, nowhere near the arts. Or even the humanities. Inveterate sectarian-hate monger Ian Paisley finally is face-to-face with his maker, and I hope she gives him what-for. Paisley sadly lived much too long and has left a legacy of inhumanity that will doubtless carry on for years. But I’ve got him out of the way.)

Among those lost: the extraordinarily gifted Robin Williams, comedic pioneer Joan Rivers, caustically brilliant Elaine Stritch and all-round genius Sid Caesar.

Shirley Temple Black, the child star who made hundreds of thousands of Americans forget how dreary life was during the Great Depression, and whose box office bankability saved 20^th Century-Fox Studios from bankruptcy—she’s gone, too. As is poet, writer, activist Maya Angelou and P.D. James, acclaimed writer of psychologically dense detective novels.

Lauren Bacall, one of the sultriest women to ever saunter across a screen, died aged 89. But no one who ever saw her on the silver screen—when it was truly silver—or heard her husky voice is ever going to get her out of his/her cortex.

Pete Seeger was pretty much an institution—so much more than a performer. If you go anywhere near the Hudson River without protective gear, you can thank Seeger. And if you listen to any pop music from the last half of the 20^th Century, chances are it was influenced somehow by Seeger.

If you’re not a fan of NPR, you may not know Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the Tappet Brothers. Their call-in car repair advice show ran for decades, and was beloved by hundreds of thousands; maybe millions. Every one of us felt like we’d lost a family member when it was announced that Tom (who was either Click or Clack; I never quite figured that out) died last month. Thankfully, a lot of stations are rerunning their shows, because they were never really about the cars.

I deeply felt the loss of two Brits—Bob Hoskins and Richard Attenborough. Both were spectacularly good actors, delivering an amazing range of characters, from sociopaths to Santa Claus and storybook pirate. Attenborough was also a brilliant director—think Gandhi, Shadowlands and A Chorus Line. But Hoskins famously held his own against a cast of ‘toons, which has to be the ultimate test of an actor.

I did not post here about the death of James Garner, primarily because I said what I had to say in a Facebook post: “Yeah, yeah, yeah—Maverick, Rockford, blah, blah, blah. For me Garner will always be Hendley the Scrounger in The Great Escape” (which also starred Attenborough). And the seminal Yank sequence for me was the Fourth of July celebration:

(It occurs to me that David McCallum and John Leyton might the last featured players in that scene still alive. Bronson, McQueen, Pleasence, Coburn, Garner, Attenborough, James Donald, Gordon Jackson, Jud Taylor and Angus Lennie are all gone now.)

Two more I’ll miss are Warren Clarke and Eli Wallach. Clarke will forever be associated in my mind with the TV series based on Reginald Hill’s detective novels; there is but one Andy Dalziel, and Clarke is he. And Wallach—again, what a range of characters he gave us.

The good thing about such giants crossing the bar is that they were almost all quite advanced in years. Williams definitely died too soon, but he and the rest had extraordinary careers lasting decades, and they gave us all laughter, tears and food for thought. It’s a good legacy.

Gratitude Monday--virtual friends

Well, blow me—last Gratitude Monday of the year. Already.

And I don’t even know what to talk about, because 2014 has been so full of things for which I’m thankful.

Well, okay—I’m going to go with being deeply grateful for the several friends I’ve made this year via the interwebs. A couple through social media, another few from being on mutual friends’ email lists.

They’ve expanded both my horizons and my comfort zone, which is a distinctly Good Thing. They’ve made me laugh, occasionally pissed me off and in general been sounding boards and equalizers.

I’m really glad I’ve come to know them—I hope the feeling is mutual. And I hope to meet a few more in the New Year.

Meanwhile, Bach at the Mall...

Here’s a different kind of flash mob for the holidays—an interesting mixture of the formal and informal, with the US Air Force Band at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Well, they say it’s the band, but there are strings. And singers. Which don’t ordinarily present as band components.

(And I can’t help flashing on Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run, playing his cello in a marching band, so I had to overcome that image as I was watching this flash mob unfold.)

But perhaps they do things differently in the Air Force.

(I will also confess to wondering whether the USAF and/or the Smithsonian have received complaints at using tax-supported personnel and facilities to perform a religious piece—a long one. You know—wanting equal time for something Kwanzaa or Islamic or a Festivus dance. But that would be for another post.)

For now, just crank up the volume and enjoy.

Merry Christmas.

Calendar girls. And boys

If you’re still looking for a present for that challenging recipient on your list, consider this unique possibility. Yes, it’s a calendar; but what a calendar.

Residents in a retirement home in Essen, Germany, made a calendar featuring photos of them recreating iconic film scenes.

Think about it: your gran and gramps as Rose and Jack in Titanic.

 

Or Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers.

Or Tony and Stephanie in Saturday Night Fever.

Really, this thing is such a hoot.

But wait—there’s more.

Retirees from communities in several US states also decided to let it all hang out and created a calendar of their own, again based on iconic films and pop culture moments.

So here we have:

Charlie’s Angels:

(Do not mess with them. Just don’t.)

Cleopatra:

(I'd peel her a grape.)

Grease:

(They might have pulled some of those clothes from the back of their closets.)

From all appearances it looks like these folks were having a blast. And extra super points to the gran who channeled Ursula Andress in Dr. No.

You go, girl!

Light matters

On this Gratitude Monday before Christmas, I’m really grateful for the people who go a little cuckoo in the holiday lights/yard decoration department.

No, I’m not talking about the ones who spend tens of thousands of dollars to have professional light-decorators come in or any of that nonsense. I mean the folks who put up their grazing deer and inflated snowmen in their yards and run strings of lights along the eaves of their houses.

Well, okay—some of them are a little OTT, but I think those represent year-on-year accumulation of the Grinch, Mickey, Yoda and Muppets. And Christmas is definitely the season where you get a free pass from the aesthetics police.

Here are some of my favorites from this year from here in the Valley They Call Silicon.

You may recall my surprise at finding Target selling a Christmas Pig, wondering who might find them worthy of purchase. Well, I found out: someone in Palo Alto:

But if you look closely, you’ll discover that this pig has already been partying pretty hard; he’s lost one of his ears. Oh, dear.

Then there’s the ever popular Christmas pink flamingo:

Not far from me, there are several houses on a street that have their lights flashing in synch with a local FM radio station. I don’t know that I find all that flash all that attractive, but one yard had a tree that cycled through several color iterations, and I quite liked that:

Well, you get the drift.

On another of my walking routes, I got a kick out of this snowman listing a bit. Maybe he was at the same party as the Palo Alto pig.

Snowflakes are apparently trending this year. I found strings of them in both LED and regular lights

Well, you can see that there’s a lot to keep someone like me amused, and I’m grateful for that.

I’m also grateful that—so far—no one’s called the cops on me as I prowl their neighborhoods, taking photos like I’m casing the joint.

All things bright & beautiful

Not sure whether Wired does these roundups of the week’s weirdest animal encounters on a, you know, weekly basis. If they do, I’m not sure why I’ve not come across them before this, but I’m totally glad I’ve found this one. Because…I just know that you cannot make this stuff up.

I mean—a “free-ranging monkey” (is that like free-range chickens?) “terrorizing” the suburbs of Marseille? Because it fell in with a bad lot of human monkeys who (wait for it) fed it the simian equivalent of junk food, chocolates. Le petit singe had to be Tased and is presumably currently in detox, with rehab to follow. Then: the appearances on the talk-show circuit.

New Jersey looms large in this weird in the wild. Well, as you’d expect, I suppose, because…New Jersey. Pink geese, rampaging rams; you gotta love it. Plus, the woman who will not believe the obvious explanation for her unicorn sighting goes a long way to explain the outcome of last month’s elections.

Kudos to the Amherst students who look upon their visiting moose as an opportunity to rethink their school mascot. I hope they give the new representative the obvious name of Bullwinkle. They could then take on a new persona in keeping with that celebrity’s own academic institution.

As for the orangutans at the Paignton Zoo in England: if I opened a Christmas package only to find Brussels sprouts, I’d wrap myself in burlap, too.

Done for love

Further to my posts about my friend Dick, the Washington Post (on page A-1) has featured him in a piece on holiday productions that are truly amateur. As in “done for love”.

I take issue with the notion of Dick being characterized as a bureaucrat, but I suppose the headline writers were going for alliteration.

Anyway, listen to his beautiful voice and consider how lucky I am that he’s a friend.

On gossamer wings

Here’s something I just love: IKEA sells fairy wings.

And for only $4.99.

I wonder a bit about the “encourages role playing” part. But I’m not going to go there.

I also take a dim view of their notion of “assorted colors”, by which they mean “white” and “pink”. Why no blue fairy wings? Or green or yellow ones? Or mauve? Mauve fairy wings would be totally def.

I wish I’d known about this before I went to all the trouble to make eight types of candy for Christmas gifts. Because fairy wings really would have surprised people.

Well, but there still may be time for you to avail yourselves of these great fashion items. For whatever role you want to play.

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Let me start this out by promising you that I’m hard-put to find a Christmas song better geared to make me start banging my head against the wall than “Little Drummer Boy.”

I mean—that “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” jobber is pretty sick-making. But for shear wild-eyed get-me-outta-here, shoot-me-now mania, “Drummer Boy” is my primordial nightmare.

However, I’m almost rethinking my stance on this one, because:

If you can watch this video without projectile snorting whatever you might be in the process of drinking, you are one Scroogy dude.

This is so much better than the David Bowie/Bing Crosby version, which still takes high honors for WTF-iness and does make a great icebreaker if the punch at your Christmas party has gone a little flat.

But now, I’m never going to be able to hear any version of this lugubrious piece without picturing those patient dogs at the keyboards, bongos and cello, playing their, er, parts like they know there will be bowlfuls of treats once they get those silly outfits off.

Also—having the actual drummer boy wearing a Chanukah tee shirt and playing like Animal in the Muppets’ band just changes the whole sensibility of the thing.

Somebody needs to write a dissertation on this. 

For your holiday pleasure

It’s certainly not for me, but clearly there’s a market for this, uh, well…

I know what it references; I’m not culturally illiterate. But the color, texture and industrially-extruded petrochemical derivative composition just makes me think of shag carpeting from the 70s. Not an era that evokes warm and, er, fuzzy feelings in me.

On the other hand, I’m also not sure what relationship a pig or a dachshund bear to Christmas, but I see they’re being invoked as yard decorations. Lighted ones.

Maybe I need to get out more?

Viral holiday

This struck me as kind of an odd juxtaposition of signage at the Cupertino Target:

Perhaps it’s just me, though…

A little buggy

Uh, oh—the low-rent apartment building 15 yards away from my condo complex is suiting up for fumigation.

Again. As in: for the second time in two years.

Um.

The apartment building owner had the place fumigated back when he was painting it to look like not quite the tenement it is, and charging more for all the one-bedroom flats with just one parking space (and no street parking).

Story I heard from my neighbor on the condo board is that the building owner had been trying to sell it for several years, but there were no buyers. Not surprising, because even if you scraped it (tore it down), there’s nothing you could put up that would be viable because of the lack of parking. Look—this is the Valley They Call Silicon; you need wheels. So he slapped on a few coats of paint, ripped out the minimal landscaping to add three parking places and doubled the rents.

Not sure whether the homeowner association of this place is aware of that, or what significance it might have for this building. But as far as I know, there’s been no extermination activity over here in the three years I’ve been in residence.

Well—perhaps it’ll take the infestation a while to get up to the third floor.

Somebody’s going to emergency, somebody’s going to gaol

Well, if you’re looking for further signs that civilization is going to hell in a handbasket, I have a doozy for you.

Black Friday, it seems, is spreading beyond the borders of these United States.

And by Black Friday I’m referring not only to retailers advertising “deals” on their merchandise, but consumers acting like complete pillocks in the pursuit of these alleged bargains.

Viz.: Stories out of the UK are documenting the kinds of chaos and mayhem that we’ve experienced since the Cabbage Patch days. Yes, I’m talking grown humanoids engaging in knock-down-drag-outs over limited numbers of goods that are marked up only 135% instead of the normal 150% during “special” operating hours.

There was the whole build-up, with people mobbing outside various establishments in hopes of being the first through the door to get…whatever it is that’s worth waiting for half the night outside a store in late November. (In my mind, this would be…nothing; but I recognize that if the economy depended on my purchasing habits, we’d be in even deeper trouble than we are now.)

And local police and EMTs have been in overdrive, dealing with the mayhem and maiming. So I’m thinking that I’d add Black Friday to Remembrance Sunday on my list of Best Times to Knock Over a Liquor Store in Britain, since every cop in the country is engaged elsewhere and I’d be pretty well assured of a clean getaway.

But speaking of criminal stupidity, I got rather a kick out of this guy in The Guardian’s report from a North London Sainsbury’s: Andy Blackett, 30, had two carts full of merchandise. “I got two coffee makers, two tablets, two TVs and a stereo,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you the prices, but I know they’re bargains.”

Our financial master of the universe is—wait for it—a real estate agent.

His apparently small pal had the TV he’d bagged taken from him by someone bigger. Law of the retail jungle, baby.

(Well, it just occurred to me that Blackett may have plans of selling his swag on Craig’s List, or eBay. So maybe not as idiotic as I’d originally thought. His pal is still stuffed, though.)

At least he wasn’t arrested and didn’t require medical treatment, which was how the day started and ended for a number of people around the country.

And—okay—he also didn’t end up with an overpriced vacuum cleaner, like another shopper interviewed. She’d been unable to get the high-end electronics she’d come after, so she was standing there with a Dyson. There’s some kind of poetic something surrounding that, but I’ll be blowed if I know what it is.

Poor old Mother England—so eager to show moral and cultural superiority over our crass, money-grubbing American hegemony. And they end up importing something that only makes (limited) sense in the context of the day-after-Thanksgiving signaling the start of the Christmas shopping season. It seems bizarre that as we’re losing that context here, the Brits latch onto it and make it every bit as grubbily theirs as it used to be ours.

And, oh—you don’t believe me about the fights? Take a look, sunshine. Not so merry-old, eh?

Oh—but this is probably a windup: