Good boy?

I know it's been several days since Christmas, and you're wondering if I've been naughty or nice. In other words, did I get any loot? Naughty boys get nuttin' for Christmas, I'm told, 'cause they ain't been nuttin' but bad. 

Well, I guess I was pretty darn nice this year! Get a load of this haul! 

Battery-powered lights for under the cabinets! That should make cooking in the dark much easier! 

A travel size bottle of the classic Gold Bond Body Powder in Original Strength! It's a present just to not be told I need Extra Strength. 

A tortilla-warming thing for the microwave! No more messing around with damp paper towels to keep the wraps moist as I do one or two at a time (which is a lie -- I'm doing the whole package at once! Try to stop me!). Can't wait to try this for enchiladas next week!

And my favorite:

The toothpaste roller! Lovely, elegant design that squeezes the ever-lovin' snot out of your tube of toothpaste, of whatever you got that comes in a tube. Prevents waste! Less filling! Literally! 

Okay, I kid because I love -- in my family, these are considered stocking stuffers, and the definition of a stocking is pretty loose. Shaq doesn't wear socks big enough for all this. These are "in addition to" type gifts, and much appreciated. And I'm not just being nice when I say they're all getting used. The toothpaste roller is already a hit in the can! 

Run run Rudolph.

One of my very earliest memories was standing on line at preschool, desperately excited to tell the teacher something of great importance. I remember that I liked her, although I do not recall her name or face; I remember the room, but not one other student; and I remember we were all on line so she could inspect us, whether for proper dress or lice or what I have no idea. My focus on was telling this person that I had seen Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV the night before. The Rankin-Bass special had been running for a while by then, but to me it was new, and I was so excited I wanted to tell someone, anyone! 

So I did, and she gave me a "That's delightful" or something while giving me the check, then sent me on my way. I could hardly believe it was possible that someone wouldn't have been equally excited about Rudolph, but adults were always weird and inscrutable. 

The reason I write about this today is I realized this is the first year to have passed without me seeing one single Rankin-Bass Christmas special, nor anything by Rankin and Bass, nor in fact any of the childhood favorites at all (Charlie Brown, Grinch, and so on). Even when I was a single, happenin' young dude I would always make time for the classics. It just didn't happen this year.  

It's true that I've been really busy, and also true that the dog hardly ever chills out long enough for me to just sit down and watch a TV show. (If the TV was in the backyard, I could watch epic movies out there.) And certainly, having seen these specials dozens of times, I think I'm familiar enough with them that I feel no overwhelming urge to engage with them now. Nostalgia is a strong pull at Christmastime, though. So where were they? 

Since I was a wee tot, the atomization of common culture has marched along, first slowly, then at rocket speed. Whereas everyone once watched the same handful of VHF networks (and were derided as dummies by the intelligentsia for it), there soon arose decent UHF, followed by cable, followed by home video machinery, and now online streaming. It's pretty rare that anyone watches the same thing at the same time in any large numbers now. TV networks used to try to fight for space by going big -- now they go cheap. Reality shows are the order of the day. But what could be cheaper than a 60-year-old animation? 

Ah, but in the interim, all those old specials went to videotape, DVD, and now posted online and to streaming services. Sure, the old Rankin-Bass specials might pop up on Disney's "Freeform" (once the Family Channel, when Disney cared about the family), but they are treated like poor relations coming around looking for a handout. Instead, we can watch green Jim Carrey steal presents and fat Tim Allen deliver them and that creepy train movie again and again. Seems weird to me, but I guess they know their business. 

Freedom of choice is a good thing, but the culture has become so shattered that I wish we still had some things we enjoyed in common. Taylor Swift is not going to bring us all together, trust me. But once, long ago, a red-nosed reindeer did a pretty good job of it. 

Gloria, in extremis.

“This life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness.”

My mom loved Christmas dearly, and she instilled that love in me. My dad really seemed to think anything out of the normal work routine was a waste of time and money. Dad had had no religious upbringing. Mom had had plenty, but when a death in the family plunged the survivors into chaos, with the real threat of crushing poverty, it seemed to have drained all hope in God out of her. 

So here I am on Christmas morning, praying for them both. In my darkest days, bouncing from thoughtless atheism to agnosticism or to flirting with paganism, I never stopped loving Christmas. It was like the net that God used to keep me from drifting away from Him entirely. 

Folks in the neighborhood going big on Christmas spirit.

At one point in my childhood Mom decided we should start going to church -- although not Dad, who was uninterested and worked seven days a week anyhow -- but I believe that her heart was never in it. Kids can tell. If Mom is just doing it because a friend thought it would be a good idea, or because Mom thinks it will keep the kids from growing up bad, but has no desire for the thing herself, kids know. If Mom doesn't really care, why should we? The experiment didn't last more than a few months. Then it was back to the bulk of my faith formation being episodes of Davey and Goliath (because there was little else for kids on Sunday morning in those days, young'uns).

But Mom sure did pray, and mostly because of us lousy kids. Rather than the Our Father or the Glory Be she prayed the "What did I do to deserve this, Lord?" And she wasn't saying it to be funny. 

I have found that there's a real problem with praying in extremis only, having done a lot of that myself, and it's that the heart in those times cannot bear anything but instant relief from the terrible situation that brings on the prayer. But as that relief is usually not forthcoming immediately, despair rapidly follows. Whereas those in a greater habit of devotion are usually able to muster patience and hope in darkness. My mom had a million wonderful attributes, but the ability to find hope in dire situations was not one of them. 

I'm a Catholic now, and I do try maintain some discipline of faith, but it's always going to be a little like speaking a second language to me. My main language is that of fear and pessimism -- the language of my people. But Christmas I knew of as a word of hope in a long book of terror and darkness.  

I really love this banner. I don't know if it's really old or just made
to look old, but it's beautiful. 

I wish you a very happy Christmas and a blessed new year. Keep the light shining -- darkness cannot defeat it, but it sure as hell is always going to try. 

Jitters.

I'm not sure what Dunkin' (née Dunkin' Donuts) is trying to do here, but I think it's a bad idea. 

Dunkin' Spiked is the latest spinoff product from America's favorite coffee place (they endure Starbucks but they like Dunkin'), and this tower of caffeinated power was in the local supermarket. The iced tea seems like an okay idea, along the lines of Twisted Tea, with the same amount of alcohol by volume, 5% -- identical to lousy commercial beers like Budweiser. But the iced coffee concerned me. What's the caffeine in that? Can you drink a six-pack without getting the jitters? You're not supposed to get the jitters until the morning after. 

The iced coffee is 6% ABV, just a tetch higher than Bud, but each can contains about 30 mg caffeine, compared to 100 mg in a cup of coffee, per Delish (whose reviewer was not impressed with the product). Therefore, if you drank a whole six of Dunkin' Spiked Iced Coffee, you'd get 20 mg less than the caffeine in two cups of coffee. That would probably help you stay up and drink more, but it's not like taking amphetamines or snorting coke. 

For another comparison, think of the cocktails made with energy drinks like Red Bull that have become popular in the last couple of decades. A typical cocktail might have two ounces of vodka and the rest of the 12-ounce glass filled with Red Bull. That results in a single drink with:

1) 6.6% alcohol by volume; 

2) 93 mg caffeine; 

3) Lousy flavor because Red Bull tastes like a petroleum product. 

So, more potent in every way. 

To each his own, but I'd prefer to keep using coffee as God intended -- as a means of waking up and staying awake through life's more boring moments. I have no intention of counteracting that gift with alcohol, but your mileage may vary. Just make sure you get a designated driver for that mileage! 

Snowman pickup lines.

☃ "Wanna rub our sticks together, baby?"

☃ "Frosty? He's my dad. Very connected."

☃ "I'd stop the world and melt with you."

☃ "I got two eyes made outta coal and they are burning for you."

☃ "So, er, you like snow cones?"

☃ "Come on over to my Frigidaire."

☃ "Wanna make snow angels on my face?"

☃ "Yeah, you've probably seen these guns on Tinder."

☃ "There may be snow all over, but there's fire in the furnace."

☃ "You ain't seen snowballs until you've seen my snowballs."

What's up with Whos?

Something has been bothering me for many years, and it's about time I said something about it. Here we go:

What's the deal with the Whos? 

I was a pretty small kid the first time I saw the Chuck Jones adaptation of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Even then I was concerned about the ending. Because the fact is, if I woke up on Christmas morning to find that I'd not only gotten nothing from Santa Claus, but that all our decorations and stuff were missing, I would not drift out to the middle of town with my eyes closed in delight to start singing. I'd have given the Grinch exactly what he hoped to hear -- hysterics.

Santy Claus thinks I've been naughty!!!!! 😭

That seemed to me to be the flaw in the story: It only works if you believe that we, like the Whos, would react with holiness and brotherhood to the Grinch's massive heist. From early childhood, I had my doubts.

Imagine -- the whole town has had everything removed. The presents, all the decorations, the whole shebang. The Grinch didn't just take the food for the big feast, he took all the food, every morsel, every can of Who Hash. These people were in an isolated, snowbound community. They were going to be pretty damned hungry. 

What conclusions could the Whos draw? That not only had everyone in town been really naughty, they had in fact been so incredibly naughty that Santa took things that belonged to them already? What could cause THAT kind of Santa smackdown? I knew we shouldn't have collaborated with the Nazis!  

And that's assuming that Santa Claus is real in the Seussverse. If Mom and Pop had bought all the gifts, the police would be called. When the cops saw how widespread the emergency was, they'd probably figure it was the Grinch. Hmm, who do we know that hates everyone and hates Christmas? Everyone else lives in town and lost all their stuff. It's got to be the old green freak on the mountain! A raid would be ordered on Mount Crumpit, and the Grinch might die in a hail of bullets, defiant to the end. 

We hope Max would get a good home. 

What I'm saying is, I wish I could think of me and the other people I knew of as being like the Whos, who in the face of loss and maybe hunger, still go out to Dahoo Dores in the town square. 

I think in reality the Grinch would have been right on the money -- people would be upset. It doesn't mean that the Grinch is not a big fat jerk, because he is. It just means that home invasion, felony theft, property damage, and the removal of all food, in addition to ruining everyone's Christmas, is no laughing matter. 

It would be a real challenge for any population to resume its duty of faith and gather to praise God (or whatever the Whos were doing with that song) in the face of this situation. I do think normal human Christians would still want to follow their plans and go to church, but they would still be upset, and anyway they'd probably have to spend the day filling out police reports. They certainly would be hard pressed to act like nothing had happened, however devoted to the celebration of the Birth of the Savior. 

The Whos seem to be made of better stuff than we are, which is good for them, but as I say, undermines the story. Because if we were Whos and were just as confounded and hysterical as the Grinch had hoped, then the green a-hole would have felt justified in his Grand Theft Christmas. Which makes it seem like Seuss got it wrong, and we don't really know the true meaning of Christmas. 

Maybe we should view the story as aspirational. Maybe like the Grinch, we should bump up our own hearts a size or two and be more like the Whos. 

But with better presents. I never wanted any great big electro whocarnio flooks. Too loud, too complicated. 

UPDATE! Couldn't resist:

Mariah's no pariah.

In November, as the Christmas season nears, the memes begin of Mariah Carey being unfrozen/reanimated/set loose among the populace to let the world know that "All [She Wants] for Christmas Is Yooooou." They poke fun at her like she never had any other hit songs.

But it is true that her pop music Christmas song is popular and played frequently in public places and at gatherings. One reason for this is that most modern Christmas songs are lousy, so with a few exceptions like this one we play the old favorites. It's really the only time we hear songs older than the Baby Boomers anywhere in public. When else are you going to have Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, or Andy Williams on the store PA system?

Plenty of people complain about Carey's song. I would hazard a guess that most of them work in retail. For the rest of us, we ought to remember that it really is a pretty good number, and for that I have no less an expert on the American Songbook than Mark Steyn to back me up. 

I miss Steyn's Song of the Week feature from when he could devote more time to his site. About "All I Want for Christmas Is You," he is as always intelligent in his praise. In 2014 he called it "the biggest addition to the seasonal songbook in decades," and that hasn't changed. 

The song, by Carey and Walter Afanasieff, expresses a Christmas wish more directly than other seasonal love songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside" or "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" or the Carpenters' "Merry Christmas, Darling." It goes right to the heart of the matter: It's Christmas, I want one thing for a present, and that thing is you. Not a lot of beating about the bush. The melody is fun to listen to because it moves all up and down the scale. It starts with a slow, dramatic setup, then bursts into a galloping 150 beats per minute, the heartbeat of someone in the heat of passion. The words bang out on quarter notes in 4/4 as it goes, so you never lose the rhythm from the rhyme. It's no wonder that, as Steyn says, almost everyone who's covered the song has done it the same up-tempo way Carey did. It works.  

So I will defend this song against the doubters, especially snobs who dismiss all pop music as being dumb and artless simply because it's popular. 

My only problem with Carey is that she tried to parlay her fame into trademarking herself as the Queen of Christmas. It seems to have been kind of a jerk move against a relative unknown, but frankly, we all know who the real Christmas Queen is. 

No, Lucy -- Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, the one who actually went to the trouble of giving birth on Christmas. 

Anyway, while I'm not a fan of Ms. Carey, I can certainly say I respect her, and I enjoy her Christmas song. As I noted, most modern Christmas songs are pretty bad, and that's including County and Western ones -- maybe especially including those. The cheese factor is usually through the roof. 

🎅🤶🎅🤶🎅🤶

Also, there is the topic of Whamageddon. 

Wham!'s "Last Christmas," as I believe Steyn pointed out elsewhere, is a meh song, and barely has anything to do with Christmas; the lyrics could just as easily have been "Last Tuesday, I gave you my heart..." 

I'm a passive player in Whamaggedon, in which one tries to go the 24 days leading up to Christmas without hearing that 1984 song. A guy I know crashes and burns out of Whamageddon early every year, but he goes to the gym a lot, and he's always out with his young kids. That's just asking for it. This year I made it all the way until December 18, when I walked into the post office. I wanted to tell the clerk "You ruined my Whamageddon!" But I'm sure he's had to listen to "Last Christmas" a thousand times since last Halloween, so why bother him about it? 

Kids today.

I've got another little story to tell, involving dogs and a couple of teenagers, and I'll try to keep it brief. (One name has been changed to protect the identity of the dog I do not own.)

I was out walking Izzy when I saw the FedEx truck. The driver had just dropped off a package at the house of a family I know. Behind was an SUV, engine running. I wondered if this could be a setup for porch piracy. As the FedEx truck pulled away, the SUV did not move, and I was glad to see that the lady of the house came out for the package. I figured that if these had been wannabe pirates, their chance was lost. Izzy and I proceeded. 

As we got closer, I noted that the SUV was driven by a male teenager, which did not alleviate my suspicions. He rolled down his window. Then he asked, "Do you know anyone else around here who has a dog like yours?" 

Curious, I said, "Yes, there's a family with a very white colored one around the corner."

"No, more like a brown one. Because we just found one running loose." He started to roll down his rear window. And I already knew what dog I would find. 

"Gonzo, is that you?" I said, and sure enough, there was Gonzo's smilin' face, happy as can be, held from jumping out the window by a very worried teenage girl. 

Oh, I knew Gonzo. His owner doesn't live nearby, but when he travels he leaves the dog with his parents, and they do. Gonzo has a knack for running into the woods behind their house and getting lost, which is how I met him a couple of years ago. The family lives just around the corner and three doors down from where we were, so since I didn't have an extra leash, I had the kids follow Izzy and me in the SUV. 

Sure enough, when we got there Grandma was hollering in the backyard, looking for Gonzo. I said hi and told her these nice people had found her boy. She was grateful and told me her husband was in trouble—he’d been watching the dog while doing yard work, and I guess got distracted. And Gonzo had gotten lost again.

So I just want to give a shout-out to the kids, kids whom I mistakenly thought were up to no good, kids who had corralled a loose dog with no ID and astutely asked someone with a similar dog if he knew the pooch, realizing that all the dog owners in a neighborhood eventually run into one another. That was nice work and quick thinking, and I tip my hat to them. Not all teens are awful, and some are smart and decent. 

Thanks, teens! You give me some hope for the next generation! 

The trouble with men.

A friend of mine under his nom de nette posted a comment that he believes may be the most popular thing he ever wrote:

Wife: Open up about your emotions

Husband: [Does so]

Wife: [Disgusted and nervous about the needy weakling she married]

He's been getting a steady stream of Likes for it, and it isn't even the post, just a comment he made on a gag post about marital relations. It seems like he hit a nerve.

Men of my dad's generation were of the old "never complain, never explain" school, a.k.a. "one mood, all the time." It's not to say this was true for all men; comedy characters through history have shown men acting crazed, hysterical, weird, silly, terrified, bombastic, and in a word, overcommunicative. But those aren't usually the men we want to be when we grow up -- at least, not in front of wives and children. We want them to know they can rely on us, that we won't go to pieces in the face of danger or lesser trouble. Part of assuring them is putting on a brave face -- maybe just in the hope of convincing ourselves we are brave -- and part of the brave face means not opening up about our emotions. 

But there's a big downside to that of course, the most ghastly being that while women may attempt suicide more often than men, men succeed more often. It's not even close. It's not even in the same league. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says that "In 2021, men died by suicide 3.90x more than women". News reports about suicide statistics make it sound like the perpetrators are all trans kids or heartsick Mesdames Bovarys, but most are middle-aged white men. Even in a wealthy and relatively peaceful nation like the United States, men can feel desperate from failure, betrayal, loss, or just medically diagnosable depression, and there's a good chance no one will know until it's too late. That's partly because no one wants to know. 

Women are not blind to the fact that the men in their lives may not be sharing all their feelings. But they don't always want us to. I have a friend who's a terrific lady, very funny, checks all the boxes for proper modern liberal attitudes, and she once shocked me by saying she would lose respect for her husband if she ever saw him crying. I know she's not alone in that. 

There is that protection thing. It's a legitimate concern: Women who want to marry men want to know the man will be there for protection. Maybe the biggest threat to women is other men -- sorry to admit that's probably true -- so it's crucial to have one of her own to beat the snot out of some guy who makes trouble. So this husband had better not be some crying chickenhearted loser. 

What this means, though, is if she's asking for you to open up about your emotions, what she really wants is to know that you have an emotional connection (i.e., you feel the same way about something that she does), or maybe she just wants to know what the hell you're so doggone sore about. If you say you're haunted about something from childhood or frightened about a problem you can't solve, she'll lose interest -- or worse. 

So there we have it -- wives want husbands to be tough, and husbands want their wives to think of them as tough, and so we shut our mouths about any emotions except maybe anger or regret. This is foundational stuff, a deep part of the human condition, and seventy-odd years of pop psychology hasn't changed the problem. 

It does highlight the importance of men having male friends, and I mean real friends, not just golf pals or Dorito-sucking bodies in front of the football game or stooges to get stoopid with on Saturday night. If you're a man, your close male friends ought to be the ones you can go to without fearing loss of face. But of course, we have historically let one another down in that way, too. Looking like a coward to other men is almost as bad as looking like a coward to the women who rely on us. So we just eat it, until maybe we eat a bullet. 

Women don't have a monopoly on all the trouble in the world. Sometimes it seems that the best we men can hope for is to be able to take whatever comes like a man. 

Fat can.

I repent for my wayward youth, throwing beer cans everywhere, emptying ashtrays at the traffic light, chucking wrappers wherever. The world was my garbage can, and I try to make some small amends now by picking up garbage on my little walks with the dog. Remember the inflatable pool alligator I spotted a few weeks ago? No one ever claimed it, (the house whose front yard it was in has no pool), and it had blown out farther to the curb, so one trash day I picked it up on my way home with the pup and put it in my own can. See ya later, Alligator. 

Tuesday morning, around five a.m., I noticed that my neighbor's trash can had fallen over. It hadn't made a big mess, but it was on its side. Izzy dog wanted no part of it, but I thought it would help the garbage men if I set it upright. I was surprised at how heavy it was -- and was far more surprised when an enormous fat raccoon stirred himself from the depths and jumped out of the can. I let go, and let out a yelp; the raccoon gave himself a shake and went on his way as fast as he could -- which, being big and having just been awakened, was not all that fast. Fortunately Izzy chose not to get involved.

The raccoons I have known have been pure scavengers, peace-loving bandits who only wish to take what they desire and slip away without confrontation, the high-class jewel thieves of the garbage-dining community. Only when rabid do they seek to plant those claws and teeth into others, and then, look out -- you may both be going down. 

About the same time I enjoyed my shocking encounter, this meme swam into my attention:

I know several people who claim that this reflects them. As for me, I am a morning person, and I am not small, and my cuteness is debatable but not probably obvious. However, I do claim some kinship with these little rovers, and I find them much more agreeable than other yard jerks like squirrels, deer, and mice, or even chipmunks. And come on, look at that face. 

All things said, I am a bit partial to raccoons and will try not to surprise any anymore. I will not pick up a downed trash can without giving it a gentle wakeup kick -- rude, but not as rude as the garbage man heaving the can into the back of the truck. And I will always keep a firm lid on my own garbage cans. 

America’s sweetheart.

Baby dog Izzy was a total menace to society as a puppy. 

It was something most parents and probably most dog owners go through -- the kid is acting like a lunatic and seems bent on growing up to be a psychopath. He won't listen, or he just doesn't care. You wonder what it's going to take to get through to the little crazy person. Sometimes they never grow out of it -- you can only hope that they become sane enough to focus their insanity toward useful goals, like professional demolition, MMA fighting, or terrorist elimination. 

But most of the time, a change will come over the little beast, and you have something more normal, something less feral, something that responds to kindly instruction and doesn't go berserk at the slightest thing. 

We had our doubts about Izzy. Very strong doubts. 

The Menace at rest

We kept wondering if he was ever going to stop doing exactly the wrong and most destructive thing at every turn. We kept wondering if he was going to remember anything he'd learned for longer than it took to swallow the treat. We kept wondering if he was going to stop biting us. Was going to stop trying to grab food off the table, off the counters, or even off the stove. (He managed to light a stovetop burner once, which requires pushing in and twisting the knob -- childproof knob covers appeared shortly thereafter.) 

Maybe when his baby teeth are out. Maybe after he gets fixed. Maybe after his first birthday. Maybe when he's past pup puberty. Maybe never. My wife loved and loves him so much, yet she got madder at the little jerk on at least two occasions than she had ever gotten mad at previous puppies Nipper and Fazzy. She got madder at this puppy than she'd ever gotten at me, and I'm not joking. 

And then? Suddenly Izzy seemed to connect. It was like a Man's Best Friend switch got thrown, and he was no longer a wild animal that was tolerating confinement. Suddenly he was a sweet and playful dog, and has remained so ever since. He's not only sweeter than our earlier beloved boys; he's the sweetest, most friendly dog either of us has ever known. 

Don't just take my word for it. The lady who sometimes does the mail route pulled over one day, yelling about what a cutie he is, and as he sat politely, she gave him a Milk-Bone. The UPS man pulled over to say hi. The Amazon driver went out of his way to make friends with him. If delivery people are so in love with our dog, that says a lot. 

He's even polite with other dogs. Sure, if it's one he already knows, he'll strain the leash to go say hi. But he doesn't bark. If it's a dog he doesn't know, he'll wait quietly to get a chance to greet. Kids will come running, asking if they can pet him. He loves to meet people.

All this is why I started calling him America's Sweetheart.

We taught him some important commands, of course, but mostly we did our best with patience and love, and now I see that reflected in his behavior. And I guess that's my thought for the day. Patience and love can accomplish things you don't expect, if you're consistent -- even when you give up hope. I sure am glad now that we have this swell little dude. I certainly did not expect to say that thirty months ago. 

One man's trash...

 

Keeping tabs, Christmas style.

People around here move a lot. What would you expect? It's New York, a state that actively hates its elderly. People retire, they flee. The kids move out, they flee. Or they just flee. This state is run by criminals, stupid heads, and criminal stupid heads. 

It's still a hot market here in the lower Hudson Valley, because as lousy as it is here it's worse the closer you get to the city. So it can be hard to tell from one month to the next if the occupants are the same as they were a month earlier. Sometimes there are indicators of a change. 

Way back in 2016, while walking the dog, I noticed the Christmas tree in one family's picture window. It was there through December, of course, and into January 2017. Way into January. ALL the way into January. Way into February. It became a topic of some conjecture on this blog. Was there a family member who has volunteered to take the tree down and was just lazy? Did someone die and the house just fell into chaos? Or was it a bone of contention between warring factions of children? ("I'll take the decorations down but BILLY has to help me." "No way! That's YOUR job!") I never knew. But one day as spring was peeping over winter's transom, we saw the tree was gone. 

Whatever caused the tree to stay up so long, the incident was not repeated in subsequent years.

But this year, the moment I saw the house decked out in lights, I knew it had new owners. 

Not that the previous owners did no outdoors decor -- they were just more reserved. Once your house lights require ladders, your reservations are out the window. The new people went game.

And indeed, I was right. I checked in Zillow, and the house had been sold over the summer. Fast, too -- I don't go that way every day, but I never saw a For Sale sign out front. 

So welcome to the new folks, and thanks for bringing some light into a darkened world. Especially in New York, where our governing class has dark hearts and occluded brains. We need all the hope we can get. 

🎄🎄🎄

Lingo-Fact! The phrase "keeping tabs" goes back to tabs as in bar and restaurant tabs, and is believed to have come from the tablets upon which one would write the debt. But that's not certain; in fact, the origin of tab as a noun is simply unknown, according to Merriam-Webster.

Opening up a can.

What's the best way to open a can?

Seems like a simple question, but canned food has been around since 1811, and there have been many means to open those cans in the last 212 years. 

Do you prefer the standard handheld opener with the wheel perpendicular to the top of the can? One of the newer variety with the wheel horizontal to the lid, so you can slice the whole lid off? Do you insist that Spam and other ham products had the right idea, including a key with each can for easy opening? Or do you refuse to get anything comestible in cans but liquids? And if so, do you demand pop-tops or do you use an old-fashioned "church key" type opener?

Some will say nothing beats an electric can opener. But even then you have choices. There are the kind my mom used to have that held and rotated the can as the blade bit into the metal. Then there are the mini ones that actually go around the top on their own. 

If you are a purist, you might like the levered handheld item that had a crescent-shaped blade on top to work around the can. This was considered a safety improvement over the real old-fashioned methods. 

A search for "can opener" on Google Patents yields "About 16,520 results". Goodness gracious me, there seems to be a lot of effort and thought put into a simple question of getting the contents of the can from the inside to the outside. 

Why do I bring this up? Because you know and I know that if we had a bunch of people together in a room and had this discussion, there'd be no agreement on the answer as to which can opener is "best" -- we'd be lucky to get a 50% majority for any one type. And that's on a subject that really isn't a big deal. How can we ever expect to agree on anything serious? Between conflicting visions of what is best and conflicting ideas of how to get there, it's amazing we ever get anything decided at all. 

And this is why I firmly believe humanity is incapable of achieving any kind of utopic society: We're just too ornery. 

Other animals can agree on everything. Every wolf would agree that a piece of meat is good. Every chipmunk might be happy in an identical hole. But it’s not the way we are. To paraphrase from Adam Rex, every cow you meet is the world's greatest expert on being a cow. Every bumblebee knows 100% of everything about being a bumblebee. But people? We have no idea what we're doing a lot of the time. In groups, even less of the time. 

What got me down this road was thinking about Advent, about the Bible, about what we have been given to learn and live by the faith, and I thought maybe it would be nice if we'd had more. But then I figured some people would demand still more, some way less; some would want something different; something more concrete or alternately more artistic; some would want it in blue or black or stripes. In other words, no one thing would seem to be a perfect fit on its face to all of us, even if it really is a perfect fit as we dig deeper into it. 

But man, we sure are malcontents. It keeps us striving for more and better, but it also can get in the way of enjoying what we have.

By the way -- skip the electronics; just more wasted counter space. Handheld classic with the perpendicular wheel. You wanna fight over it?  

Oopsie! Church edition.

Advent is under way, and I was glad to be in church yesterday for it. It took a little intestinal fortitude to do so, mainly because the week before I had sorta put the congregation in danger of seeing something attached to my intestines. That is to say, my fly was open and I didn't realize it until I got home. 

When I was a kid, an incident like that would have made me want to crawl under the bed and stay there until, well, my current age. A sure sign of maturity is that it isn't like that now. Not that I don't kick myself for old mistakes -- I most certainly do, usually when I awaken in the middle of the night -- but silly things like forgetting to XYZ before leaving the house? Not so much. 

It's unclear whether my exposure was even visible. I had been wearing a drapey shirt (a shent, I guess), and I was wearing black undies rather than white (which I might have been, as I do own a couple of pairs of classic tighties). That is to say, the black shorts may have been hard to notice even if they were not covered by my shirttails. 

No one said anything. I think the deacon gave me a look, but he's a retired cop so he probably gives everyone that look anyway. 

Besides, it'd be far from the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen in church. I've seen a lector who accidently started reading the Gospel (the priest or deacon has to do that); I've seen people drop the Host (big no-no); I've seen a nun and a priest trying to get the symbolic robe on a newly baptized adult and working at cross-purposes until it looked like they were taking a hostage; and of course -- an all-time classic -- I heard a lector introduce a reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippines. Wherever there are people, there can be embarrassing stuff. A little flagging fly ain't much of anything. 

Really, I've seen far more embarrassing things per capita everywhere else. Schools, clubs, bars, offices, public transportation, supermarkets, press conferences -- pound for pound, these have far more embarrassing incidents than church. It's just the reverence in church that makes them stand out more.

Anyway, Advent is here, and that's nice. I feel like I'm well behind my neighbors. They all seem to have completed all their decorations by last Thursday. But I'm not going to rush myself in getting the job done. That's how you wind up hanging off the roof by a string of lights. Talk about embarrassing!

December: The Catalog Reckoning.

Back on December 1, I posted about the catalogs I had already received that were Christmas-themed. By that date I had received 14 catalogs. I thought you'd like to see what the pile looks like now. 

There we have it, friends! Thirty-nine catalogs as of December 1. Weighs close to eight pounds -- about as much as a dozen Charlie Brown trees. 

The pile could have been higher, but I excluded some catalogs. For example, Lands' End sent us a Christmas gift catalog, but also a winter-wear catalog; since the latter was not holiday-themed, it did not count. To make the stack, the catalog had to be Christmassy, intended to sell gifts or decorations. 

Some, like Grandin Road and Shutterfly, sent only one; others sent more. Herrschners, Ross-Simons, Hammacher Schlemmer, and the Vermont Country Store sent multiples. No surprise on that, since we've made purchases from these merchants in the past. Maybe not in fifteen years, but it is the season of hope. 

To date, the number of purchases inspired by this stack of catalogs has been approximately 0. However, their arrival always serves to remind us that they are there and that they have nice stuff, so if that motivates one of us to check out the company site, it's a win for them.

Maybe I should scour these catalogs, since I do not know what to get for my wife. Any ideas? And don't say Fredcoin. She could wallpaper the living room with Fredcoin for all she cares.