I hope Christmas brings you all that you desire in the way of carousing, troll-nog and drunken Christmas carols.

Image, as usual, by Ursula Vernon. If you don't read Digger, you should. Sarcastic wombats ftw.

We had a sort of family Christmas tea thingy on Sunday, to swap presents as my sister's away up the coast on Christmas Day itself. I gave Da Niece my latest discovery, which involves two rather entertaining kiddie books by one John Himmelman, Chickens to the Rescue and Katie Loves the Kittens. The Katie one is amusingly rude about dogs, but the chickens one is pleasingly demented, featuring chickens in snorkelling gear, crash helmets and heavens alone knows what else, all with the requisite degree of fuss and feathers. Thusly:



The conversation went something like this:

SISTER: Kids' books these days are really lovely. Also, you always seem to find the subversive ones.
ME (thoughtfully, placing tips of fingers together in approved Patrician pose): Why, yes. Yes, I do.

It is remotely possible that she was also eyeing my Christmas tree, which this year is graced at its apex, inside the giant Christmas star, by a tiny green plush Cthulhu doll I won in a raffle at a CLAW tournament lo these many moons ago. He's very festive.

I feel that my Aunt Dahlia quotient is proceeding apace. Those sproggle-owing individuals among you who don't mind a spot of subversion, now with extra verse, I do heartily recommend John Himmelman.

In other, equally weird and lateral Christmas news, today I appear to have emerged from the stationers bearing something the tillslip insists is an "XMAS GAL SIN". I wish I could say that this gal plans to sin extra-subversively at Christmas, but I fear it'll be the usual: idolatry (still immersed in Supernatural), sloth, gluttony and taking the Lord's name in vain while I try to beat the (*#$^*^$ Fire Temple in Zelda.

So, totally buggered at the moment, but in fact surprisingly upbeat despite all the orientation panic, student angst and what have you. An anti-rant-list is apparently called for. Today, the following things are making me happy:

1. Holidays. Yesterday was a public holiday, for which I thank the saints fasting. I'm in that stage of mental shut-down which says that energy-wise I'm pretty much at the end of my tether - I did sweet bugger-all all day yesterday, it was luvverly. I have two weeks off from Friday, which is a half day owing to the staff party. I figure I'll just about survive, having carefully paced myself to this point.
   
2. Chocolate brownies. For my birthday this year sven&tanya gave me this incredible book called Chocolate Chocolate, full of recipes which require untold and unlikely quantities of the eponymous ingredient, and which are uniformly and unashamedly decadent and bad for you. (Eighteen different chocolate brownie recipes! good grief!) As a result of this I've actually learned to make decent brownies, which has mostly been a matter of subtracting 50^o from the temperature, fifteen minutes from the cooking time, and flinging into the recipe whatever the hell happens to occur to me in the way of extra chocolate, extra Lindt dark chocolate, extra cocoa, extra chocolate chips, extra vanilla, or extra random nuts or flavourings. The last batch was exceptionally edible, and I have three of them in a tin on my desk. The morning will be somewhat sugar-powered in addition to its usual Earl Grey fuel.
   
3. Recession. Yes, really. No-one has any money, everyone is doing the "ooh let's not do big presents this year!" thing, the shops are comparatively empty, and consequently Christmas is not bringing out my inner homicidal misanthrope quite as much as it usually does.
   
4. Supernatural. Season three is both darker and goofier (rabbit's-foot physical humour ftw), angsty!boys are angstier, but mostly I'm happy because last night's episode about fairy tale got the fairy tale bit absolutely right. Bonus accurate "Grimms' fairy tales were dark, twisty, violent and sexy" references from Sam, my current favourite geek in the whole wide world. Also, pleasingly perverse Christmas episode featuring caricatured 50s-style cheery suburban couples with a charnel house in the cellar.
   
5. My mother. She's in town. Life is better.
   
6. Cthulhoid wossnames. My Tor.com mailing list signup just gave me a totally unexpected early gift of the new Charlie Stross Laundry story, also with additional Cthulhoid Christmas perversion (the Filler of Stockings!). It'll go up on Tor.com next week, but if anyone really wants to read it earlier, mail me!
   
7. First trailer for Iron Man 2. 'Nuff said.

Now I go to herd academics, hand-hold devastated students and wrangle orientation photocopying. I wave a chocolate brownie mystically at them all.

Summer is here! Lhud sing cuckoo; also, bah, humbug and the usual grumbling. It's early days yet, however, and in fact the sunny days with not too much actual heat are mostly tolerable, what with the recent rain, green growth everywhere and the little birdies going twit. Or, in the case of the mad pair of peregrines who nest on the hospital opposite our house, screaming their avian pea-brain heads off, presumably in some sort of mating frenzy. There's no accounting for taste; I, for one, am profoundly turned off by yelling. (Punk, so not an aphrodisiac). The warmer days also seem to bring the milk of human kindness bubbling to the surface, and there's been a positive orgy of courtesy and goodwill as we all let each other into the rush-hour traffic, beaming like loons. (This is necessary, the traffic has been unusually dire in the last few days). In keeping with this lightened mood (albeit temporarily, watch me growl once the heat-waves start), summer makes me break out the P.G. Wodehouse. Strange but true.

Summer also means I'm into the cotton skirts, along with their associated doom: t-shirts bare to the onlooker's gaze without intervening warmer covering, and, therefore, the dire necessity for a bra, the which I joyously do not wear all the way through autumn, winter and spring. This is one of the things I actually hate about summer, mostly because there's a sort of Seekrit Girl Club to which I do not belong, viz. the one which shares the arcane knowledge about how to stop your bra straps from perpetually slipping off your shoulders. I lack this skill. I am clearly, for the purposes of bra strap wrangling, not a girl at all. I spend most of summer mournfully raising and lowering the length of the straps, in a sad, futile sort of way, like a short-sighted peeping tom at a parlour blind. What's the secret here? string? superglue? complicated contraptions with magnets? nine-inch nails through the shoulders? I swear, I'm seriously considering the latter. I cannot but feel that it redounds negatively to my professionalism to have my eyes glaze over at intervals, usually in the middle of impassioned curriculum advice, while I grope down my sleeve via the neck.

Happy Summer Sights of the last few days, though: turning in for home past the Common, an elderly man trying to persuade his bull terrier that walkies were, in fact, Over. Man's body angled at 45^o away from dog. Dog's legs all at equal and opposite angle as he digs his feet into the ground, mule-like, and refuses to move. Upshot: by considerable straining on man's part, dog dragged along ground, leaving ruts. I laughed all the way home.

Finally, more graphical info-porn for smoczek: Best Science Visualisations. My disaster-movie-loving soul is obscurely soothed by California falling into the sea as the San Andreas cocks up its toes.

I have to report quite the nicest new year wish I've had so far. The context is the arrangements for our New Year's Day plans, which entail going over to jo&stv's to watch all three of the original Star Wars movies (I gave them to the EL for Christmas - the original theatrical versions, with the gannet unexpurgated), while consuming the crepes suzette none of us could face last night and cold roast beef leftovers on sandwiches. (Why is it that our plans always revolve around food?) The phone call goes as follows:

JO: So, when are you and the EL coming round?
ME: (still half-asleep and mazed from a 5.30am airport run after lots of champagne last night)... um, round about then... I still need to do the thing, the wossname...
JO: (after brief, confused pause): Good morning, Jessica. May 2009 bring you nouns.

May it indeed. And to the rest of you I hope it brings interesting adjectives, pleasing conjunctions and verbs which are active without being exhausting.

The subject line quote, btw, in honour of the conversation I had yesterday with wolverine_nun.

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.

Oooh, this is fun. Visual word links - enter a random word and it springs enthusiastically forth into links to related words, literal and figurative. I've been playing with entering colours. Linguistic interest, yes, but my current level of stress and concomitant lack of brain is such that mostly I like the way the links wibble and bounce when you pull them around. Roget also ran.

Today is my last day at work before two weeks of leave, not a moment too soon, as I am exhausted and stressed beyond belief. It only remains to write fifteen more curriculum reports before I can depart, which means I'm going to have to miss Da Niece's Christmas party this evening. In respect of my recent anti-gift rant, I am also sad to report that two separate co-workers have given me Christmas presents, something I completely didn't expect and which I am thus unable to reciprocate before I go off on holiday. It's very sweet of them, but phooey.

I seem to be heading back into active, memorable, surreal dream territory, which is a relief - the last few months have been, I suspect, characterised by total exhaustion to the point where I don't actually remember my dreams, something which impoverishes my existence more than somewhat. Last night jo&stv argued about whether or not the house they bought was going to be the refurbished barn or the giant structure containing the converted Boeing 747 (which made, I have to say, interesting living space). There was a large gathering for breakfast at the house of the scary goth lady in the lion costume, who was annoyed at being woken up early after the memorable party featured in the newspapers. Later I was an adopted child in the strange, alien world trying desperately to hide from the bad things (either zombies or aliens) in the abandoned playground. (This last one I think is the direct result of too much Roswell).

'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.)

Gawsh, time for the seasonal, ritual expostulation. Right, then. Hey! Who let that December in here? Darned bouncers, no good, admitting any old seasonal riffraff. I can feel my inner Scrooge beating his chest and growling, in a gentlemanly, Victorian fashion. And the mall this morning? not pretty, and there are still weeks to go.

So, on the subject of things ending in "olly". My credit card is a mess¹, and my future uncertain. So no change there. But, unusually, putting these circumstances together with my Exploding Bookshelf Crisis and concomitant tendency to shy and flinch at clutter, I'm going to do the Frank, Manly Thing this Christmas. I know the immediate circle of Cape Town Friends tends to madly exchange gifts at Christmas. Please, this year, for the love of my sanity and the seams of my credit card, allow me to opt out. I will not expect presents from y'all this year. I repeat: put the presents DOWN, and back away slowly. I do not want presents. I will not distribute any myself other than to family and the Evil Landlord, although I may randomly shower people with home-made biscuits at unpredictable intervals. I love you all, but I'm broke, and trying to be sensible.

To make up for this more than usually Scrooge-like manifestation (and to cause schedule5 to swoon with obsessive Christmas glee), I will instead achieve something not entirely unlike a Christmas tree, for purposes of putting pressies under when I host my family for Christmas lunch. It will have precisely three decorations on it: two snowman earrings and a sort of festive china shapeless creature thingy in a red hat, all given to me over the years by evil friends in a spirit of Christmas malice. You can all point and laugh at my pitiful stabs at festive cheer when you come round for the Boxing Day Braai, which is definitely happening and to which you are all invited.

Now, in protest at the fact that the Evil Landlord is out tonight and I'm not allowed to watch Farscape without him, I'm proposing to pig out on leftover biryani and veg out in front of X-Men III, a copy of which I'd entirely forgotten I'd bought. Yay superheroes!

---

¹ Particularly after the nasty random incident with the David Bowie this morning. On the other hand, hooked on "The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell"², which fits right in with my habitual Christmas spirit.

² Yes, not early Bowie, I'm broadening my horizons, although I also copped Ziggy Stardust. Why, yes, the new obsession is progressing quite nicely, thank you!

...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.