A Glimpse Into The Archives

Dear Friends,

I hope this interregnum between holidays minor and major (Hannukah, Christmas, New Year) has you taking a deep breath, gritting your teeth, and saying, “It’s a season for joy, dammit. I am JOYFUL.” Like you, I have a lot cooking right now, including soup (not literally; I’ll start making soup tomorrow), so I thought I would go back to my old blog to see what was on my mind in Decembers of yesteryear. For your reading pleasure:

On December 7, 2011, I shared a previously forgotten pet peeve.

Threat marketing. What is this, you say? This is when a company markets to you by threatening you. Here's an example. I canceled a Capital One credit card about six months ago. We'd paid off the balance and the rate was not favorable, blah blah blah. Anyway, since then, every few weeks, Capital One emails me with an enticing offer, like 0% interest and a really high credit line, and then they give me a date by which I must accept the offer. Before that date, they send me escalatingly shrill emails threatening me that this is my last chance, I am making a huge mistake, I will never see a rate like this ever again, etc etc. It feels like an abusive relationship writ very small. Honeymoon, threat, bigger threat, deadline, cooling off. Honeymoon, threat, bigger threat, and so forth.

Another example: we get San Francisco magazine, a very glossy affair which purports to showcase SF's upper echelon. We never ordered this magazine, and yet every month, it comes with a paper wrapper declaring that our subscription has ended and we must contact them to renew. The whole thing is in a plastic bag. If I had an ounce of energy for this, I would beg them to stop sending me the whole thing, since SF's "upper echelon" is among the lamest "upper echelons" that have existed since the beginning of time.

I do not understand a marketing strategy that berates people for not buying something that they do not want. The only plausible evidence that this works is in Dr. Suess's Green Eggs and Ham, and I don't even find the ending believable in that book.

On December 19, 2006, I blogged about a very magnanimous Donald Trump pardoning a beauty queen who was hitting the sauce too hard. I can almost see the woman taking a long drag from a Marlboro light and saying, Ohmigod, my head hurts.

Sometimes, in the darkest night, there is nothing to blog about. For example, Monday, December 18, 2006. That was a dark dark night. Take your toaster to Hawaii? What's wrong with you??(The wedding toaster is not going on vacation with us because it caught on fire two years ago, and Brook was never happy with its toasting capabilities anyway. It's been replaced.)

And then sometimes, you wake up and there is a story that offers so many angles that you don't know where to begin. For example, Miss USA Agrees to Rehab to Preserve Reign. Miss USA, aka Tara Reid, oops, I mean Tara Conner, has agreed to go to rehab so that her crown will not be passed along to Miss Photogenic, or whoever. She is going to rehab, despite the fact that, "'I would not say that I am an alcoholic,' she said, though at times, she said, she was unable to resist drinks offered free to her."

Frankly, the headline was more enticing than the Girls-Gone-Wild-but-only-on-Peach-Schnapps-and-Appletinis sense you get from the article. I was hoping she was meth freak or something. The New York Times, in dabbling with trash journalism, are being a bit demure, I think. If you're going to do celebrity gossip, attribute "occasional cocaine use" to a "social friend" of the subject. Make it worth the compromise in your standards, please.

Another thing: If you were going to have an intervention, and you could call one celebrity in to help, would it be Donald Trump? Why is he involved here? And what kind of democracy is the Miss Universe contest if he can fire and hire Miss Universes at his leisure because they're doing a bad job? Maybe if all the prior Miss Universes got together and said, "Oh no, sister, do not tarnish our crown!" I could see that, but what does The Donald have to do with this.

And then there's this sad ass shit:

Ms. Conner thanked Mr. Trump, her family and others, and noted that she had made a recent promotional appearance at a Target store. “I have wanted this
since I was 13 years old,” she said.

No wonder she's hitting the bottle. If her dreams do not even permit her to transcend Target openings, why stay sober? It's better to black out, and not dream at all.

And now for some wholesome content about my kids. On December 5, 2007, I wrote about my little nerdlings.

I really thought my first kid would be the nerdy (nerdier?) one. With his encyclopedic knowledge of military aircraft and paleo-historical creatures, his better-than-strong vocabulary has fully bloomed. But Thing 2 is sure giving Thing 1 a run for his money in the nerd department. At 16 months, the Q-ball is a complete bookworm.

Every day, one by one, he pulls all the books off the shelf and leafs through them, sometimes humming or "talking" to himself. He chases us around the house, thrusting books at us, saying "mmm....mmm....mmmm....mmmm" until we finally stoop to read him something.

Finally, on December 6, 2013, I blogged about the passing of acclaimed mime Marcel Marceau.

Joining the ranks of Tammy Faye and Leona, Marcel Marceau passed away this weekend. My reaction?

Liam also was saddened by the news:

Awright, my friends, I will be back next week with more wholesome self-help content about making resolutions. In the meantime, enjoy each other and your rituals and be kind to yourself and others. Love, Andrea

P.S. If you haven’t already, please remember to: