Well hey there, friends, foes, and otherwise. I swear, it's like I wind up having moments where I'm suddenly reminded that I have a goddamned blog - like tripping over a pair of shoes that have been left in my path by a careless housemate or something.
We're ramping up into the holiday season which, for a goodly many people, isn't the most wonderful time of the year. It's a season fraught with peril, whether it's having less-than-ideal relationships with family or having expectations ratcheted up so high there's no possible way you'll escape without disappointment. There's a lot of control involved, control you CAN exert but we're all so trained to believe we have to put on our happy faces and endure all sorts of fuckery in the name of the SEASON. The easiest and quickest thing I think you can do is to lower those expectations immediately, because nothing kicks your ass faster than having an expectation of Person A, who nine times out of ten can't meet that expectation because that is how Person A simply is. And you know deep down that's how Person A is but you get hornswaggled and hypnotized by the SEASON and this year, maybe THIS IS THE YEAR Person A isn't going to be a disappointment. Don't bank on it. That magical moment is most likely never going to come and the sooner you drop those expectations to "well, Person A didn't get lit and try to carve the turkey with a corncob holder", the better you will feel and better equipped to handle the holiday hoo-hah.
MEMO
TO: Those people inclined to tell others "blood is thicker than water/but they're FAMILY/you'll regret it one day"
FROM: Jane C. Nolan
RE: Holiday events
Hello, well-meaning but terminally busybodied people! If you feel yourself inching towards opening up your own personal Lecture Loft to instruct others how they should do whatever it takes to patch up frayed relations with assorted family members or friends, my suggestion would be to CRAM IT. Chances are you don't know the full details as to why your target isn't on speaking terms with whomever, so it's best to take hold of the nearest spoonful of mashed potato and place it right in your yapper when you feel the urge to elucidate on the SEASON.
This would also include you opining about how people should lose weight, gain weight, wear different clothing, have children, or live their lives in a fashion you approve of.
Yours sincerely,
Jane C. Nolan
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In other fairly exciting news, I actually had something I wroted appear on a website that isn't Blogger or my own violently neglected, outdated website intellectualbabe.com! Since I yammered about it on pretty much every social network site I'm on (the facebook, the twitters, and a couple of message boardses), it probably won't come as a surprise to you, all two of you who read this blog on any given day, but link to it I shall!
It happened to me! I made an effort!
So that was neat.
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Finally, I have to spend a paragraph or so just delighting in he who is Paul F. Tompkins - comedian, podcast host (The Pod F. Tompkast), all-around cute-as-a-button motherfucker. He's funny, he's insightful, and I must admit one of the things I enjoy about him best is how he is always so publicly goony for his wife, actress Janie Haddad Tompkins. More often than not, it's the married man's role to bitch about how his wife is a harpy, how she tells him what to do, how being married is a nightmare, loss of freedom blah blah blah. (Christ knows publicly expressing affection for one's partner is SUCH a loser move.) But I've yet to hear such cliched claptrap come out of Tompkins, and it's so refreshing to hear a guy who thinks his wife/partner is awesome instead of bitching about how she's somehow made him "less of a man" or some such shit. He's available on Twitter under @PFTompkins, and you should follow him and delight in his delightedness. Plus, he's on, like, every podcast under the sun on an almost weekly basis. Which is awesome. And you should listen.
Well, other than that, not much is going on in this neck of the woods. There very well may be an end in sight for the immigration festival I've been on for the last eight months or so with my partnerperson, so I may very well blog about it...in 2012? Stay tuned and find out!
