Some of Which is Vaugely Holiday Related

Oh, so inspired by everyone’s end of the year music posts, I wrote all about what I’ve ended up listening to in 2007 for you. However, it was one of those days yesterday, when everything I touched, let alone wrote, sunk rapidly into a quagmire of confused disorganization. I ramble here, but this was impossible. Rewrite! I also wrote my list of Festivas Grievances some time ago, but now that the New Year’s looms ahead, it seems far too negative to post without tempering with ambitious resolutions (right) or a laundry list of good things that have happened this year. Rewrite! So for now, you get links to other people’s better crafted (or at least readable) content.

Laura Reid provides a handy retrospective of St. Louis Mall Santas at Highway 61.
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Belz writes us a love poem for the holidays. Aww.

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Tonight is the last evening to catch El Monstero at the Pageant. You should go. I’m going.

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I know many of you are often looking for interesting camera excursions, especially during holiday vacation. Check out this description of a recent trip to subterranean Tucker at 52nd City.

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I’ve been carrying around my box of thank you notes for the past few days because I need to write them. Have you done yours? Do you write thank you notes? I know all the rules- I asked my parents to buy me the Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior at around 10. And they did. And I enjoyed it. I was such an odd child. Anyway, I know all the rules, and I enjoy writing real letters, and I truly do try. But I’ve been carrying the box of note cards here and there, back and forth, all week long. Point being, there’s an amusing article in the Times regarding thank you notes. Well, amusing to girls who found Miss Manners interesting at age 10, anyway.

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Do boys ever grow up, even when they’re grappling with issues like consciousness? I believe the brand of amusement associated with academic feuds to be similar to that which results from etiquette articles. I take such topics very seriously. (Ha.) According to the Guardian, the feud between philosophers Honderich and McGill was re-ignited by McGill’s review of On Consciousness. “Most negative book review ever written”? Seriously?

Well, “this book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad,” is pretty… bad. Is there a workshop for that? Apparently, he also found it “sly, woefully uninformed, preposterous, easily refuted, unsophisticated, uncomprehending, banal, pointless, excruciating.” And Honderich’s mama dresses him funny.

Honderich’s whole radical externalism bit IS a bit tough for me, I’ll admit, but I’m thinking of siding with him merely because he’s Canadian. At least it isn’t named after a rock band. Not that there’s anything wrong about that per say, “96 Tears” is, despite that feeling I always get that someone is playing the organ with three fingers, a damn enjoyable song. Honderich maintains however, that so-called new mysterianism is “a form of intellectual wimpishness.”

I bet these two are actually best friends, staging a feud for marketing purposes, because now I kind of want to read both of them for the fun of it. And I plan to use the word ‘gamut’ and the phrase ‘intellectual wimpishness’ next time I don’t get my turn on the swing.

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And finally, a lot of people have asked my opinion of Twitter, and thus far I’ve avoided the question. I signed up for it way back when just to check it out, but never actually began using it because I felt it would be irritating, a concern that Daniel Miessler addresses here. I may consider checking it out, but don’t expect me to inform you of what I’m having for breakfast each morning. I do not, as a rule, even eat breakfast.

Have any of you found value in it? I see it on some of your pages, but it typically looks as if it’s being used as some sort of conduit for inside jokes. (Obviously ones I’m not privy to being Twitter-conflicted.) (Inside jokes are not a bad thing, but I don’t think I truly NEED another application for that.) Thoughts?