The whole concept of wishing things for the New Year and resolving yourself to live differently once the clock strikes 12 is rather mystical, if not religious.
A lot of people, of course, have given up on New Year’s resolutions.
Year End Resolutions. Last year I only made 3 resolutions: 1) Visit Malta 2) Start learning Hindi/Sanscrit 3) Do not step once into New Jersey I failed on all 3. I did a lot a lot of things but failed on the resolution. So no resolutions for 2018.
For many Russians, it is a much much bigger deal that Christmas, for obvious reasons.
Initially, the Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a more appropriate komsomol (youth communist league) related holiday, but, shockingly, this did not take. And by 1928 they had banned Christmas entirely, and Dec. 25 was a normal working day.
Then, in 1935, Josef Stalin decided, between the great famine and the Great Terror, to return a celebratory tree to Soviet children. But Soviet leaders linked the tree not to religious Christmas celebrations, but to a secular new year, which, future-oriented as it was, matched up nicely with Soviet ideology.
…The blue, seven-pointed star that sat atop the imperial trees was replaced with a red, five-pointed star, like the one on Soviet insignia. It became a civic, celebratory holiday, one that was ritually emphasized by the ticking of the clock, champagne, the hymn of the Soviet Union, the exchange of gifts, and big parties. Source
For the New Years celebrations, most Russians will clean their house like their hosting judgment day. They will cook up so much food as if it’s their last meal on this earth. They will call their frenemies as if they are making peace before they die…
I still think that there is no such thing as a truly non-religious mindset. A religion will creep in, whether you call it a religion or not. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing, at all.
Santa’s train in Connolly stationPeculiar-looking Christmas decorations on Henry StreetDIY, the festive edition
Trinity looking well at ChristmasHouse parties look different when the older generation is involvedA wrongly attributed statement sold as a Christmas card in a posh garden shopHarry Potter-y car with a matching child
Sometimes I get tired and retreat into a safe echo-chamber where everything will agree with me. On that note, I downloaded The Black Swan and bought a paper copy of The Bed of Procrustes.
Perhaps my expectations were too high, but The Black Swan seems dated and overly reliant on Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
I will share some gems from The Bed of Procrustes when I am done, but for the most part it doesn’t have the insight porn quality that I was looking for.
On another note, I noticed some autumnal waistline creep and decided that I should take measures.
During a moment of intense boredom with a hint of sadness, I complained that had I not been watching what I eat, I could have had a chocolaty pick-me-up, alas I am on a diet, so I will just sit here and be sad.
I was and am fully aware of how pathetic that is, but I figured sharing my feelings is better than comfort eating.
The reason I am sharing with you now is the response I got, which was:
How will food make it better?
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
I guess normally I would have said, it would make me feel better. However, I was just after writing an essay on appearance vs reality in Macbeth and the idea that the reality won’t be better crystallised for me.
The world weighs a little heavier since that realisation, but maybe I won’t.
Ireland and Russia are countries where people drink a lot.
These two things have a multiplicative effect. So just for my own information I decided I would track how much alcohol I drink in December. Then I gathered it would be nice to share my method.
You can go though life thinking that you only have the odd drink, but then you look at this calendar and realise that drinking a glass of wine on a Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and a cocktail at a Sunday brunch means you drink most of the time!
I made 2 versions. Download, print, colour in. Or indeed write in the number of units…
Presuming one’s innocence means presuming that the plaintiff’s lying. In certain cases.
The presumption of innocence works well when we don’t know who committed the crime. The paradigm breaks down when fighting over whether a crime was committed.
Whoever solves this philosophical puzzle will do a lot for justice. The current rules fail both the victims and the accused. And the bystanders – all the people who worked on “Ordeal by Innocence” whose work will never be recognised.
The BBC said Friday that it will not air upcoming Agatha Christie special “Ordeal by Innocence” while an investigation into actor Ed Westwick on allegations of sexual assault proceeds. Filming has been disrupted as well on another BBC series starring Westwick, “White Gold,” which is available on Netflix outside of the U.K. “Ordeal by Innocence” […]
I loved how the sun lit up the windows of the ostentatiously classy restaurant come wine bar on St. Andrew’s Street in Dublin called Stanley’s. The bleached turquoise exterior with golden letters spelled understated chic.
A few doors down from the expensive Trocadero, the location seemed perfect for such a place.
It opened about 2 years ago. Today I found that it’s been replaced with a place called Kathmandu, a gerrish, bright orange Nepalese eatery. Full of people.
Stanley’s was never full of people.
Why? Where did they go wrong? Where didn’t they go right, more like? The broadly positive Irish Timesreview and then another even more positive one? The perfect location? The classy interior in modern blues and grays? What more could people want?
Or is it maybe that classy is old-fashioned. Maybe these things don’t sell anymore.
I love old books, films, chandeliers, even houses. Often these things sell at a perplexing yet welcome discount. Has it always been this way – that old things are cheap?
Writing up my list of the Christmas gifts I want to give, I realised that I strongly prefer older things. I think it’s from reading too many XIX century novels…
Which would you rather get for Christmas, a new iPhone or an antique chandelier?
It turns out that the iPhone is about five times the price. This raises another point: did old things always go at a discount?
And finally, maybe that’s why Stanley’s closed down. Perhaps their bet was on people’s vanity, a desire for a classy place to shorten the protracted winters nights. But it never caught on.
Trying to be old without actually being old may be a hard sell.
Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Seeing as how it is Christmas, I am spending some time in front of the piece of furniture I otherwise avoid – the auld telly. One of my favourite films of all time, Gone with the Wind, was on just yesterday.
I must have seen it a hundred times as a child. Those were the days of the Spice Girls and girl power, the economy was only growing and I was full of curiosity as to what it would be like to be an adult. I am not much of a vocal feminist, but Scarlett represented a kind of strong independent woman to me at the time. Naturally, I noticed that she has an unreasonable obsession with Ashley. I thought that that’s what they called love. Yes, Ashley was always a bit of a disappointment, but in my 10 year old mind, it made sense that love is love – and that’s it. Scarlett was obviously far from perfect: s a bit self-centred, a bit impulsive… But, boy, she kicked ass like no one else I’d ever seen before. I felt that the centre-stage relationship was between Ashley and Scarlett – and everyone else was a third-wheel of ill fate, the same kind that brought war and poverty to Scarlett.
Watching it now, it looks so different. Scarlett was an ambitious woman with more than a touch of insecurity and narcissism. There was no relationship. Her supposed love was in reality a crush that managed to solidify through Ashley’s response. Scarlett made the first move. There was a purpose to it, like with everything Scarlett did: she wanted to marry Ashley. Ashley told her he loved her, or rather, denied that he didn’t love her. She continued her infatuation for the rest of the film. It was fuelled by continued scenes where Ashley’s reluctantly reaffirms that he has a soft spot for Scarlett. I guess he didn’t want to hurt her – and he wasn’t lying either. It is obvious that Ashley is not the sort of man that Scarlett would naturally be interested in. There was always something odd about the extent to which she was drawn to him.
Scarlett was interested not in Ashley, but in how it made her feel to know that he loves her. The bitter sweet thought of a man trapped in a marriage to an almost perfect woman nevertheless constantly thinking of her, of Scarlett – that was what was playing on her mind constantly, yielding endless validation.
I only spotted this now, in my late twenties. The reason I believe it is true is that in the scene where Melanie dies – and lo and behold, Scarlett falls into Ashley’s arms, the following crucial dialogue unfolds:
Ashley: I can’t live without her, I can’t. Everything I ever had is… is going with her. Scarlett: Oh, Ashley. You really love her, don’t you? Ashley: She’s the only dream I ever had that didn’t die in the face of reality. Scarlett: Dreams! Always dreams with you, never common sense. […] Scarlett: lf you knew what I’ve gone through! Ashley, you should have told me years ago that you loved her and not me and not left me dangling with your talk of honor. But you had to wait till now, now when Melly’s dying to show me that I could never mean any more to you than than this Watling woman does to Rhett. And I’ve loved something that…that doesn’t really exist.
It’s bad enough to be infatuated – like Gatsby was with Daisy. However, it is much worse to be infatuated because of the belief that the subject of one’s infatuation loves them. Of course, there was an element of reciprocity adding fuel to Gatsby’s infatuation, but it wasn’t nearly as strong.
Gatsby was infatuated with Daisy from first principles; Scarlett was infatuated with Ashley as a reaction to what she perceived as his infatuation with her.
Leo never looked as intense as Robert
It makes more sense from an evolutionary point of view for a person to be obsessed with someone who already has a crush them , but it is also kind of… pathetic. It’s like the decision wasn’t even theirs. It is especially pathetic if they don’t have a crush on the infatuated person- and it’s only in their mind.
The dialogue above is so ironic. Ashley, the supposed dreamer, off with the fairies while Scarlett was saving Tara, saving Melanie’s life and just generally solving the most complex of problems, talked about Melanie as the one thing that was real. It finally hit her then that she was the one who was living in a dream. Ashley told her that they would never be happy together because they are so different. He saw reality much more clearly than she did – in this sense. On the other hand, Gatsby never even made it as far as Scarlett. What about Rhett – was he infatuated? I think he was hopeful, but still kept an eye on reality.
It’s tough denouncing Scarlett from her “super-woman who was unlucky with men” status to “needy super-woman who ruined things because she was too silly to see the truth” status. At least now, it makes more sense.
A millennial's musings 