December 16, 2003
Some Ends
A Link
Maud Newton has a great recollection up here. The last two lines are understated enough that you don’t feel walloped by them, but also smart enough that if you go looking for a walloping you just might get one. Anyway, stop reading this and go read that.
A Statement
I will be going back to Denver for the holidays. Normally we hang around the house for Christmas, but this year my mother decided to take dead aim at holiday ennui and has set us up at family friend’s secluded ranch in Sedali Colorado where we will feed hay to the llamas. My mother also tells me that they have a VCR – which will be nice, since we have never had a VCR in the house for the holidays before. Between the llamas and the VCR I suspect that we will be able to distract ourselves from the crushing weight of all the sanctioned cheer and enforced goodwill that defines December.
An Aside
Christmas is good for children. It is good for little outfits and carols and excitement and Christmas trees. It is a huge magic gingerbread house that America sets up for her babies every year to let them know that the dream-like child’s world of Hokey-Pokey Elmos and Rescue Fire Rangers that they inhabit is the only world that matters. If you are a parent (or a relative) you are encouraged to keep this illusion alive, and you can occupy yourself with this throughout the holidays. That’s what they mean by The Spirit of Christmas. The problem is that without little kids around your thoughts turn to your own childhood, and because it is lost now forever you get depressed. The only solution? Kids. “Keep the babies coming,” Christmas is saying, like some ghastly breeding larvae pumping out jingles and babies and gumdrops. Christmas is really just a horrifying evolutionary mutation that makes people have children just to save themselves from the melancholy.
An Honor
I am pleased to announce that Brokentype.com has been nominated for a Best Asian Blog Award for Best Foreign (non-Asian) Blog. There are a number of awards for weblogs out there, and this is ... well... this is one of them.
What does that mean, you might ask: “Best Asian Blog Award for Best Foreign (Non-Asian) Blog.” Does it mean that Brokentype is an Asian Blog in every sense except for the Asian part? Or does it mean that Brokentype represents the very best in foreign blogs when read in Asia? Or does it mean that Brokentype is simultaneously foreign and native, depending on where you are reading it, so if you are here (which is in Queens, New York) you can vote for me there, (somewhere in Asia) and reverse us. The webmaster who put the contest together seems to be a non-Asian man living in Asia, so the awards could also be called the best Non-Asian Asian Blog Award for best Non-Asian Blog not Including Non-Asian Blogs written Asia, which it is an odd thing indeed -- a beautiful, floating, crystalline meaninglessness. I’m honored to be nominated.
