Old and busted:

New hotness:

What if the thing we call comedy is, "stories about the attempt to make love work?" 

Not always true, there's a lot of cruelty and anger in comedy. But even if you try to place Lenny Bruce on the spectrum of love vs hate, I think he might come out closer to the love end than the hate end, if only because "I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS RIGHT NOW" is not unlike Cassandra's attempt to save the kingdom. 

But cruelty-anger comedy is generally less successful, feels less truthful or valid than make-love-work comedy. 

I'm still thinking about Silver Linings Playbook, about the non-romantic relationships. That's what spurred this thought process. So, okay, let's grab an example of something generally considered a good comedy, Monty Python & The Holy Grail. 

How is this about the attempt to make love work? 

King Arthur wants to get the Grail in order to sanctify his kingdom, but keeps running into his kingdom's idiocy (filth/disease/pestilence/The French/sexual repression/confusing thought processes about government, inheritance and marriage/etc.), and ends up arrested by contemporary police. 

Which really makes MP&THG a huge tragedy, because it basically says, "if such an idealistic crusade were to happen in England today, the perpetrators would be vilified and arrested." Maybe they should: we see the police covering one of the bodies Arthur dispatched, and questioning a contemporary witness. Maybe they shouldn't: we saw what happened when the person was killed.  

So, one could argue that Arthur's constant modus operandi of "I am doing this for your own good (trying to get the Grail to sanctify the nation and save it from itself)" is repressive and indicative of British imperialism, and not love, or we can let the text be a text unto itself, and say that Arthur wants to share the sanctifying experience he had when the Lady of the Lake gave him the sword and made him King, with the entire nation. he's coming from a place of pure, spiritual love. 

This blasted into my head between my first and second cup of coffee.  I wish I could control the blast stream so that I could use it more productively, but it is what it is. 

EDITED TO ADD: 

Mental overload. Too much Christmas, too much concrete jungle. I need someplace to chill for a few hours tomorrow. 

Likely candidates: Pendle Hill, Bartram's Gardens, The Michener Museum, Chanticleer. 

I Also just took something to make my brain shut down, preceded by chocolate. So maybe I can sleep this off tonight, go to the gym tomorrow and feel better. But holy cats, if anyone needed to "go on a sojourn," it's me. ​

But I managed to get one more submission in before the deadline. 

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Last night I dreamt that I was working  in the production office of The Muppet Show, planning out their Holiday Special.

Kermit and Fozzie and I were going over set designs and planning out blocking and stage management, relative to how we had The Millennium Falcon on stage.

Because, you know, it takes up a lot of room. And Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewbacca were going to be on The Muppet Holiday Special, as some way to make up for or distract from the Star Wars Holiday Special, lo those many years ago. 

Of course, being my brain, it was Luke with his pre-accident Star Wars nose & jaw, and Han Solo with his Empire swagger. 

So, I had to help the two of them carry the wooden components built to stand in for the Millennium Falcon in rehearsal. Just then, Ted started helping himself to the piles of cheddar cheese and ham slices meant to accompany the pizza Craft Services had provided for the cast and crew. I hissed at him to stop touching the cheese and ham, he said he was hungry, and the head Stage Manager from the PA RenFaire started giving him a lecture. I said I'd handle this, and while trying to carry the Millennium Falcon in order to impress Han Solo, I used my most patient tone to tell Ted it wasn't time to touch the cheese and ham, he needed to wash his hands, go around the corner, get a paper plate, and when it was lunch time he should wait his turn in line with the Muppets, because I needed to move the Millennium Falcon. 

I woke up to find Vince holding his phone over my face, trying to record the lecture I was giving in my sleep. 

Thank you. 

Today included: a Christmas Carol party with hordes of cheerful people, mulled cider, mulled wine, a surprising number of children who somehow all fit into in the room with two small kittens, two hours or so of singing, and a "bonus reel" of songs including Tom Leher's Christmas Carol:

Also I walked to market, did a strategic run of 5? 6? errands by car, and took Rover to see the Christmas lights (and Christmas smells?) in Victoria Park.

To cap the evening off, I replaced the clogged freezer-drain tube in our fridge which was causing pools of ice and leaking water. For which I owe a debt of gratitude to Matt of ApplianceVideo.com for their youtube video which exactly described the fix; much more completely than the 1 page of instructions from Whirlpool. The video saved us over $100 on a repair bill- Whirlpool sent the part for free, so yay for that. But they were going to bill quite a bit to install it, and one of us would have to take time away from work at a busy time of the year.

So, yeah, I will happily install a fridge part at 8pm on a Saturday to avoid that hassle. And it didn't even harsh my holiday spirits. As Tom Leher put it so well: "Angels we have heard on high/Tell us to go out and buy..."

And Monday I hope to perform a similar operation on my Macbook Pro: the video describing a memory and hard-drive upgrade make it clear I have all the experience I need to do that myself, after hours using work tools, versus a considerably more expensive trip to the Apple Store. (The most important caution here is using anti-static mats and clips, so I don't fry the memory). Thank you macsales.com for your videos, even though I didn't buy anything from you either.

Tomorrow? Quaker Meeting, more singing, potluck, and hopefully working on a Christmas present. Hopefully not buying anything at all.

Open houses at my place next Saturday and Sunday, 20-21 December to sell Arden House Book Two. I can accept credit / debit cards.Let me know if you need address.All are welcome.

The Pope says we will see our pets in heaven, and that heaven is open to "all of God's creatures." No word on what happens if the chicken you just ate gets to heaven first.

By the time you get there the chicken has 1,000,000 Heavenbook friends and they all make pious yet passive-aggressive comments on your profile all day. You start wishing you were on TheOtherPlacebook.

A choir of pigs, cows, chickens and turkeys follows you everywhere. Their singing is impeccable and the lyrics are devout, but there's no mistaking the message.

Heavenly fowl are particularly disturbing, with a halo and a second set of wings. It's impolite to complain.

Good thing: wearing jeans fresh out of the dryer that feel a little bit loose. 

Something else: realizing that you've been walking around Target for the last half hour with your fly down. 

In other news: I saw this clip today, and it really makes me want to write a new play. (It feels a little like Traveling Light.) But, right now, I got NOTHIN'. 

In 1996 or so, I tried to install a *nix operating system for the first time. Up to that point, I had been using pico for editing on *nix systems. But then I learned that (at the time), when you first install a system, you need to be able to use an editor that is installed by default. And (again, at the time) as far as I could tell that meant I needed to learn ed, vi, or get really good at cat >>. I chose vi, and I've been using that as my preferred text editor, regardless of operating system, ever since.

At some point, probably around 2002 or so, it became easier to find vim than vi, so I started using that, but it seemed prudent to never actually learn anything about how vim "improved" on vi, since I didn't want to rely on that when I had to use vi. And now it's nearly impossible to actually find vi, so I clearly made the wrong choice there.*

Which is how it came to pass that I've been using vim for over a decade without knowing that "visual" mode exists.

* - yes, I know, I made the wrong decision back in 1996. It works for me, OK?

Over the course of the past few years, I've learned that if the only thing I ever drink is water, I don't get headaches. If I drink things with caffeine in them, then I get withdrawal headaches when I stop drinking things with caffeine in them, and if I never stop then I just go ahead and get headaches anyway after a few weeks. If I drink things with sugar in them, then I get headaches. If I drunk things with artificial sweetener in them, then sooner or later things with sugar in them seem like a good idea.
I had managed to get down to drinking nothing but one or two cans of diet soda a day (plus as much water as I want). And just as I managed to kick the diet soda habit, I realized that my three favorite beverages: honeycrisp apple juice, tangerine juice, and egg nog - are all in season. So it looks like I'm just going to be living with headaches for the rest of the year.

Arden House, Book Two is done.
It is BEAUTIFUL, and just in time for holiday gift-giving.

We're going to have two Open Houses: 
Saturday, 20 December and
Sunday, 21 December
Both days 2 to 4 PM at our house.
(IM me if you need directions)

We'll have crates of books, $15 each, and
I'll be able to accept credit cards.