you will never stop me
THANKS FOR THE GIVING
I got to host this year, and my food was delicious. I made creamed spinach and also roasted just about every vegetable, and we named our free-range turkey Lionel for reasons I do not recall. I made a few special vegan things because a vegan cousin said he was coming and then did not show, so DAMN YOU FOREVER, VEGAN COUSIN. May you burn in hell, protected only by a thick layer of dairy-free cream cheese. Happy holidays.
There was not too much awkwardness, except that later Nora reported that the (step)mother-in-law cornered her upstairs to talk about Jesus. For fuck’s sake. I’m not as mad as I would have been in years past—because Nora is older now and can make up her own mind about gods or lack thereof—but was that really necessary? There is a reason (S)MIL went upstairs to deliver the Good News, and that is because I would have shut it down hardcore had it happened around me. Especially after some wine.
The calendar tells me there are more holidays soon. I have been buried in a mountain of work and not feeling very festive, and my guest room looks like UPS threw up because I refuse to ever shop for gifts in an actual store. Now I just have to get in there with a boxcutter and wrapping paper and get serious. And tape, I guess. And scissors. And a grim determination, and a steady hand, and an iron will, and a fat rail of Adderall, and all the other things you need to approach Xmas in the proper frame of mind.
ALSO
Nora’s social studies/geography class is talking about indigenous peoples, and each kid was assigned an indigenous people, for the writing of a report. Nora got the Himba, which I keep calling the Roomba, although that is a robot vacuum and not a group of about 50,000 people living in Namibia. I mostly do it to make her mad.
I love all the peoples of the world (in a general, abstract way, I am not inviting them over for dinner or anything), and I do not want any of the peoples to be willy-nilly exterminated or systematically exterminated or neglectfully exterminated. My respect for the Indigenous Peoples is real, even if this overview in 7th-grade social studies does seem a little reductionist and rude as it lumps them all together in such a fashion.
However. Maybe. Maybe there’s a reason (beyond loss of farmland and such) that there are only 50,000 of these folks. I once saw an episode of some Anthony Bourdain show where he visited a certain tribe (I don’t think it was the Himba, but something in that region) and they shared their “cuisine,” which was literally parts of a warthog thrown directly in the fire and then plucked out when the warthog parts were nice and charred. And that’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder, about the Indigenous Peoples. Like maybe some of the people, as they grow up, decide not to take their place in the tribe. Maybe some of them decide that it might be better to live differently, with some cooking utensils and underpants and non-witchcraft-based medical care, and they leave to be ethnically Himba somewhere else, always remembering their roots and visiting on holidays and etc etc.
I am certainly not suggesting we don’t try to preserve these cultures, and I am not angry about it the way I am angry about the panda. But. Sometimes ways of life…change. You know? Various types of plain old white people used to butter their hair and poke holes in their skulls when they had headaches, and that doesn’t happen anymore either.
AUK AUK AUK
I have been obsessed with the great auk ever since I read this passage. (Keep in mind that auks were called “penguins” back then.)
If you come for their Feathers, you do not give yourself the trouble of killing them, but lay hold of one and pluck the best of their Feathers. You then turn the poor Penguin adrift, with their skin naked and torn off, to perish at his leisure.
While you abide on this Island you are in the constant practize of horrid crueltys for you not only Skin them Alive, but you burn them Alive also, to cook their bodies with. You take a kettle with you into which you put a Penguin or two, you kindle a fire under it, and this fire is absolutely made of the unfortunate Penguins themselves. Their bodys being oily soon produce a Flame; there is no wood on the island.
~Journal of Aaron Thomas (1794), aboard the H.M.S. Boston
So you cook the auks with the auks, basically. You make a pile of auks and light the auks on fire and then you take the auk you’re going to eat and cook it on top of the auk pile.
LT and Nora went to the Field Museum recently to visit all of Nora’s favorite taxidermied animals, while I chose to stay home and nap. I asked them to look for the great auk and text me a picture, which they did, with the caption, “It truly is a great auk.” I wrote back, “Hello auk. You burn well.”
The poor auk.
DID YOU KNOW
When ornithologists go into the field to band birds and release them, it is colloquially known as “ring and fling.”
REACHING OUR BARBARIC DEATH POTENTIAL IN 2016
I heard ISIS described as a “barbaric death cult” and although that is rather horrifically true and not very jolly, I must admit I like the phrase. I would like to start a barbaric death cult of my very own! Except I don’t like barbarism (because reading and writing and being polite and washing one’s hands are great things) and I don’t want anyone in particular to die, and I don’t want slavish cultish devotion but rather for each person to think for him or herself. So no. But what a great phrase! Maybe I can work it into end-of-the-year employee evaluations somehow.
—mimi smartypants, peace be upon her.