We also agree that Patrick Stewart is a handsome man

Good lord, I opted out of Christmas this year. My mother's 6-day delay rather put the kibosh on family Christmas dinners of any description, and we ended up having a more or less spontaneous three-generation all-girl Christmas day lounging around the house and garden drinking tea, catching up, and opening a few presents in a desultory sort of way. (My sister gave me pink champagne for Christmas. I utterly approve). Lunch: dug around 'fridge for random smoked chicken, seed loaf, tomatoes, fruit. Nary a whisker of turkey in sight. It was bloody marvellous. I think I may randomly cook a full-on turkey and ham Christmas dinner in July, when it's cold, just for the hell of it, but the lack of it at actual Christmas was completely fine by me. I hope everyone else had a Christmas that was equally and perfectly tailored to their needs and expectations.

I have been motoring through Smallville at speed, occasionally with my long-suffering mother in tow (fortunately she also likes Superman), and am currently approaching the end of the second season. The writing is improving, although there are still moments of complete psychological irrationality in the service of narrative kludge, which is annoying. (Just tell her already! good lord!). I am, however, deriving an unwholesome pleasure from watching Lex and Lionel Luthor exchange all these platitudes about family loyalty with about fifteen layers of irony, sarcasm and manipulative snark beneath the surface cheese.

While on the subject of fangirling, if you didn't follow Neil Gaiman's link to the Year's Best Media Corrections, you darned well should. Scroll down about a third of the page to the long Apology of the Year from News.com.au: it's a deliriously wonderful and deadpan pander to Trekkiedom, done with affection and wit and considerable technical geek-out about Enterprise starship classes. It made me, as is traditional, snerkle like a loon.