all i want for christmas

chez Roswitha and Flatmates, December 21.


1. my two front teeth
1. you
1. A version of 'o Holy Night' not processed and power-popped out of existence.
2. A bigger bookshelf.
3. A smaller dress size.
4. Auto-moisturising skin. Sub-gift: bandages for my feet, or, failing that, a pair of comfortable shoes not sewn together by tiny fingers in Pakistan.
5. A poker-playing MI6 agent with thinning blond hair. Shopworn preferred.
6. A new laptop battery. A new laptop.
7. About six more match points for Milan.
8. World peace.
9. Useless and expensive gifts for everyone.
10. Since it's useless to hope for a white Christmas for most of the country: a Miles Davis Christmas. A night of blue in green and white smoke should make the spirit of Christmas feel as welcome as snow, don't you think?

current musix: miles davis - blue in green.

hollywood is strange

Last weekend I watched Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List.

This weekend I watched Liam Neeson in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and Ralph Fiennes in Maid in Manhattan.*

Apart from which, everyone please take note of the amazing adventures of Vivek, whose production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame swept up awards, glory and a wild and delighted audience at Thespo last night. That's all the awards, incidentally, including one for Best Actor Warren. As people other than Ali G would say, respect.

* Yes, totally seen it before, watched it in bits yet again just to see how much I could endure. Besides, I and Flatmate #2, both passionate worshippers of teh_cheez, are going to watch Baabul tonight.

NB: I write this as India is on the brink of a test victory in South Africa. For posterity, like, I inscribe this, although as I and all of India knows the story we are telling each other tomorrow morning may have no bearing on the events of yesterday. I submit, for the record: wha-hey!

NB2: Possibly absolutely senseless to everyone reading this blog, but Gilaaaaaaaaa!


Oh, thank frick for the boy.

bounce

Thanks, Unratiosenatic. The Age of Enlightenment did get some things right: reason makes everything look better. :)

Sometime this week, my friends, I wrote the following, published it, and took it down a couple of hours later, all in the same fit of pique - a pique continuum, one might say. It went as follows:

When you have had a terrible year, refuse to close it with a mindless party, are unable to book tickets to go home because you have possibly maxed out your credit card, have put on more weight over the last twelve months than you have in the last five years combined, and gone from flirting with misanthropy to full-blow practicing sociopath. At least you still have a blog.

The point of this, underneath the paranoia and (at least slightly) genuine despair, was above all crankiness. I haven't been having a blog for a couple of weeks, now, for no reason less mundane than piles and piles of work. All ye olde pastimes have fallen away as garments made of ... something flimsy.

But I'll be back. It takes more than gainful employment to keep a wastrel down.