Freckles & Doubt

This pictorial evidence of actual Christmas manifestations in my home despite various cynical rantings is for schedule5, whose fault it is that I ever go anywhere near anything like a Christmas tree. It's one of those side-of-the-road wire and beadwork trees, decorated with about a third of the Evil Landlord's collection of handmade lampworked beads, which are pleasingly like shiny Christmas-tree baubles in miniature. There's only an angel on the top because my mini plush Cthulhu didn't fit on the star. The silly Christmas hat creature was from starmadeshadow, and used to be my sole concession to decorating.

Have a lovely Christmas, all you peoples - may it provide food, family, friends and frivolity in whichever proportions are most pleasing to you. And, of course, loot.

'Tis the season. Bother. Last year I copped out on maddened gift exchange with friends because I was broke. This year I'm going to cop out again, on the grounds of geo-political ramifications and general frenetic busyness, but this time I think it's going to be pretty much a permanent statement of principle.

As before, I love you all. If I wasn't frantically working I might have done something about buying presents before this, but I haven't. Today was reasonably representative of the last month in that it was the kind of day that is only survivable by resorting to the chocolate stash, to which I had no actual time to resort. Much though I love you all, the thought of wading through shopping malls with a list at this late stage fills me with dread, horror, despair, exhaustion and rage.

Even if I wasn't frantically working, though, I think this whole Christmas thing bears examination on the grounds of socio-cultural wossname. We are in a worldwide recession, brought about by the Godzilla of rampant and uncontrolled capitalism lurching destructively around the globe. The Christmas season has become emblematic of spending, to the point where I can no longer distinguish my impulse to give my friends presents from the conditioned impulse of the Christmas consumer. This narks me off and creates a need to reject the whole thing with hauteur and a curled lip, particularly given that we're in a worldwide recession and no-one has spare cash anyway.

I have surveyed my need, and found it righteous. Therefore, I shall give no presents to anyone except family this year, and ask friends to count me out of their lists likewise. Statement valid for further Christmases unless explicitly void. I shall express what remnants of Christmas spirit I can scrape up through the medium of the Boxing Day gathering, at which I shall endeavour to be festive.

(And don't anyone give me the "but Christmas spending helps retail to survive the recession!" argument. That's the kind of fuzzy thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.)

...or, in other words, merry festive wossnames to anyone who's reading this within an approximate radius of Christmas. (Which I actually, for some reason, typed "Chrimast", an interesting word that has to mean something).

Earlier this year, in the course of a second-year Victorian fiction seminar, I spent an instructive 10 minutes dealing with the fallout resulting from the fact that about half the class thought Scrooge's "Bah, humbug!" comment referred to a kind of sweet, and the other half had no idea what it meant. Clearly none of them had ever encountered the character in The Phantom Tollbooth called the Humbug, a sort of beetle-individual who functions as a sort of ranting sham. I find it deeply sad that these fine old Christmas traditions are unappreciated by today's yoof, who are clearly too busy with the consumer frenzy to work up any head of cynicism, anyway.

Any randomness to the above wittering may be laid at the door of my 4.30 am wake this morning, in order to shunt the dynamic jo&stv duo off to the airport at an ungodly hour mere mortal was not meant to wot of. My brain is a bit jelly-like and wibbling. I am also about to hare off up the coast to spend Christmas with various bits of family. Yours, distracted.

and happy Christmas.

Hmmm. Something's wrong. I did Christmas shopping for an hour and half this morning, and not only was the Waterfront more or less civilised, I'm pretty much under control. This can't be right: I fear the cosmic wossnames may be poised to strike randomly. Also, what's with the quietness this year? People are not in buying frenzy mode. I approve.

New web comic discovery, courtesy of Schedule5: DM of the Rings. Horribly funny, in that rife-with-D&D-in-jokes fashion. Now I want to play D&D again. Memo to self: re-import bumpycat.

Oddness. I've just received a phone call which sounded like nothing so much as a series of bad sf sound effects for a spaceship docking: clunks, scrapes, rumbling noises, spacesuit respiration and the hiss of airlocks. I think someone's cell phone may be dialing me accidentally, possibly while watching The Right Stuff. Check it isn't you :>.

There has been Much Work this weekend: 8 hours on Saturday and a good 5 yesterday, and I am beginning to throw around terms like formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism with a certain degree of authority, although it's probably a bit of a front. I rewarded myself with a spot of random browsing this morning, productive of the following interesting tidbits:

• For my surprisingly large number of Polish friends (i.e. >1): Henry Jenkins talks about Polish fantasy and post-socialist angst. In particular, The Witcher is apparently Polish trans-media fantasy that sounds really interesting.
• I am becoming increasingly enamoured of The Language Log, not only because it offers a head-on assault on linguistic myths, bad writing and evil misrepresentations of science, but because its writers are incisive, witty and often hysterically funny. This morning I got a bit lost in the byways of "X language has no word for Y" mythologies, starting with a lovely rebuttal of the old chestnut about the Eskimos' millions of word for snow. (They don't. They have about the same number of root words for snow-related concepts, but a really nifty and complex language structure which allows them to accumulate almost infinite modifiers onto the root word. They thus have pretty much infinite words for snow).
• Courtesy of Bowleserised, an obligatory Bah! Humbug! moment: Scared of Santa. Tiny tots terrified of weird old men in beards! Down with Christmas! The therapy bills aren't worth it!

Must go and search the house briefly for more bits of dead thing, my mother greeted the new day this morning by picking up a random bit of mess from the floor only to discover that it was an unidentified bit of bird innard, courtesy of an as yet unidentified cat dismembering some small, unfortunate bird all over the house. There's a wing in the Evil Landlord's study, and no doubt other little lovesome packages elsewhere. Fortunately my mother is a trained medical technician and is completely unphased by sudden tactile liver contact before her first cup of tea.

Then I shall work. Work worky work work work.

The Three Things I Am Most Likely To Say At Regular Intervals During A Party:

• "Where did I put my drink?"
• "Bollocks!" (although, in fact, I'm likely to say that at almost any time, including while teaching)
• "Oh, god, I'm using pretentious language, somebody shoot me!"

The Boxing Day Braai, traditional, for the use of, is supposed to be a chilled, low-key sort of event, at which we all gently recover from the exigencies of Christmas. (Bah, Humbug!) In a slight miscalculation, it ended up as a fairly rollicking evening, entailing approximately twice as many people as I vaguely thought might turn up, all of whom were apparently in a vibrant and energised social space, and joyously packed the house with bodies, chatter and booze. I chased the last of them out after midnight, the heated debate on the phallocentricity of the camera gaze having become hopelessly bogged down. (What is the opposite of "phallic", anyway?) The clean-up operations took a large proportion of today, clearly an indication of a successful party. It bodes well for the projected New Year's Eve semi-formal cocktail bash. Also cool to see rumint in person, although, as he pointed out, it's a bit odd seeing someone you haven't for a while when you read their blog regularly. The "How have you been doing?" question becomes somewhat redundant.

The Great Family Christmas was rather pleasant: lovely drive out to Arniston, car behaved beautifully, very relaxed weekend, no massive family rows. Score. Christmas presents were extended over several days, since lots of us exchange gifts at the Boxing Day get-together; my personal haul includes mucho kitchen and garden stuff (count my domestic virtues), a new music stand, the Naga ear-rings I have been coveting for months (courtesy of the Evil Landlord, cunning type that he is), and a plethora of owls. I am a Happy Puppy, TM.

Spent a lot of Christmas Day reading my third Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten, which is predictably Hamletesque. While adhering steadfastly to my belief that Jasper Fforde is a smartarse, in fact I was pleasantly surprised by this one, which is beguilingly cynical about political spin-doctoring, and also includes a pleasingly psychotic dodo.

The subject line in fact applies to my current state of health, viz. I feel faintly queasy, but I am otherwise able to eat small, carefully-selected amounts of food like a reasonably normal human being. Thank heavens, she says devoutly. The only problem is that I still can't drink more than about half a cup of tea without feeling sick, which is a serious problem to one of my known proclivities.

On the "Bah, Humbug!" front, this time of year is notable for its tendency towards mad family foregathering, as is evinced by the number of temporarily-returning exiles swelling Cape Town's noxious horde of December invaders. This week has been particularly insane. My mother arrived from the UK yesterday, and is esconced with my sister making grandmotherly noises at the new spawn. Tres heart-warming. Our Shire's first ever Seneschal, having retired to the wilds of the USA about seven years ago and, for all we knew, been eaten by the natives, popped up madly in Cape Town on a family vacation, and gave me and the Evil Landlord supper on Wednesday night. Much reminiscing of the Early Days of the Shire, Cape Town roleplaying, the inferior nature of current whippersnappers in either field, etc. And last night the dread Scroobious, plus attendant Beloved, were the focus of a convivial pizza, wine and bullshit evening at Diva's in Obs. I do like hanging out with ex-students of mine. They not only ask intelligent questions about the work I'm doing, they then proceed to pull it ruthlessly to pieces, revealing hitherto unexpected flaws, and eventually strengthening the whole in a pleasing and challenging fashion. Teaching is absolutely the only way I really want to spend the rest of my life.

Still to be mingled with on the Returning Exiles front: starmadeshadow, briefly touching down in CT before heading off to Antarctica for Christmas (go figure), and rumint plus kadekraan, also visiting family. It's all go from here, I can see. *totters exhaustedly to fainting couch at mere thought of all this socialising*

One of the wild conversations roaming the plains last night included a spirited debate on the importance and/or dangers of computers for babies - whether or not it assists or stunts their development to interact with a screen instead of reality. Coincidentally, the New York times has an article on this, noting that too many of the computer and videos aimed at babies are, in fact, absolutely unresearched, and that research suggests that virtual experience is much slower to assist development than real experience. Heh, I knew it. TV rots the brain.

NYT are also making approving noises about King Kong, incidentally. *drools quietly*. And Mother's arrival, as usual, included vast Amazon spoils, among them the DVD of Ringers, the documentary about Tolkien fandom. Both of these join the week's lineup of the first season of Battlestar Galactica, which I am finally watching. (Loved the miniseries). Despite being pale, weak, faintly nauseous and tending to dissolve into hysteria when confronted by crowds, noise, opposition, difficulties or stress, I plan to have a good week.

God, it's December. LJ has a happy Christmas doodle on its standard header, and the radio and bloody supermarkets are playing schmaltzy Christmas carols and lame Band Aid warm fuzzies. Granny Weatherwax nothing, at this time of year I channel my inner Scrooge. Am I the only person who has an overwhelming desire to spend Christmas either curled up under my bed muttering "Bah, Humbug!" at intervals, or taking me a large axe and slaying six in a tinsel-bedecked mall?

Also, is it just me, or is KFM suddenly playing ridiculous amounts of ads with American accents? I was playing the radio while engaged in the recent round of boring administrative scut-work, and I swear one ad in five is eschewing Souf Effrican accents in favour of the standard, recognisable accent of the good ol' US of A. This suggests that globalisation and cultural hegemony is reaching a new and horrifying phrase. I don't really like the SA accent when recorded, its flattened vowels become horribly unattractive, but I can't say I'm into having Americanisation touted as the logical response. The logical response should be South African actors learning to speak properly. (And I swear, the subject line was from the first page of Omar Khayyam I opened. Too weird).

I slept until 10.30am this morning, a rare occurrence, and a de facto celebration of Saturday's happy lack of an Army of Reconstruction right outside my window. Last night was also late, given as we were playing my Falkenstein game at wolverine_nun's place until 11ish at least. The session was enlivened by a sudden geyser disaster halfway through, but fortunately turned out not to be too serious. The thundering cascade of hot water in the courtyard outside was somewhat disturbing, though. In-game, Khoi-boi's character is trying desperately to dig himself out of the several deep pits into which he has fallen, since shooting an English Count, even non-fatally, is somewhat problematical not only socially, but legally, and is in addition getting him into deep shit with his sorcerous order. Money for jam for a DM: as long as characters are choosing to burgle the bedchambers of aristocratic ladies and attempting to off the outraged husband when discovered, I don't have to do much...

Really interesting article on a case of plagiarism, nicked from Neil Gaiman's blog (but attributed, therefore not plagiarised), here. Honestly, it's bad enough when the students do it.