Demi-tasse--that's my answer to half full or half empty

Cognitive dissonance is what they call the discomfort experienced when one tries to simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas in his head. Double-think. The most common examples of this phenomenon I go through aside from the occasional buyers' remorse comes with smoking. H and I both talk of quitting, once we're equally ready, and in the meantime, go through the motions by rote and nasty-habit. We both fancy ourselves and each other as smart, capable people (possibly add enabler to that litany) but still make the time for it, and quite often. H told me about a theory that held that out of all cigarettes smoked daily, only five or six are really enjoyed. I think that's a pretty accurate assessment, and really try to savour those rare, tasty gasps of relieve.

prospecting

Casually, H and I are hunting for a home together. There is no pressure to move, we've reached a comfortable schedule and compromise for tearing down the Autobahn to one another's place for over-nights, and the search is quite a bit of fun. There is, of course, an array of practical reasons for living together: primarily, the chance to come home to each other everyday, the chance to no longer be satisfied with our present living-arrangements, and the chance for a dishbot. I also like the fact that we might be living under the aegis of a new city coat-of-arms. Right now, there's just an uninspired bear with bad posture for my village and a shield with crossed, flaming swords for H. I want to live in a land that is represented by what I call "National Chicken." National Chicken is a bit like Famous Grouse or Rolex's Oyster Perpetual, I think. We'll have a very, very, very fine house.

Maybe the gas came from Uranus

I should suppose that any article that offers theories about extraterrestrial life bears attention. So I wonder why only the UK Sun is running with this story. Seemingly persistent plumes of methane gas could possibly only come from a biological source for replenishment, given the absense of active volcanoes on the planet. There's a lot in the news that doesn't suffer ridicule well these days: calls for ending black history month (despite the superficial annual parade of obligation it usually is handled with) since a black US president makes it redundant, the US army poised for a damage-control mission in Mexico since the state is, in American estimation, teetering on collapse, bin Laden's apparent attribution of Israeli strikes on the Palestinians to America's slipping importance as a world-player, art or anti-art. After the headlines have faded a little, spent their cause-celeb, being able to have questioned the reporting, approaching it with a skeptical-grin, is something that we ought not to take for granted.

gift horse

With some drawn-out days left yet before the inaugeration, Obama's repeated proclamation that there is to be only one seated president at a time is a little sore sounding. The present seated president seems rather ineffectual as the world is exploded, froze, folded, spindled, mutilated around him, and Obama's silence strikes me much like the brooding of Achilles--his refusal to join the fight nearly costing the Greeks their victory in Troy.

Hanseatic or A Fistful of Hamas

A very mere few of the gurus and soothsayers, jilted and can't be bothered, saw this one coming: that rather than celebrating another calendar-brand holiday, like the two decade old anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which incidentally was caused in part by unsustainably cheap petroleum prices wrought by changes in the way Arab states sell fuel despite the pretenders to its overthrow, we're instead looking at absolute financial-meltdown, carnage and dreaded reevaluation. Is this the bequest of Hope, the yes-we-can? The next president of the United States of America may have been handed a much-diminished superpower, which never was that much different than the Soviet Union (though neither party would want to hear that). Both sulking monsters and accomdations of survival--of unity. Now the whole world is going insane. There is nothing new under the sun, but now American empire tilts on the brink, surreptitious wars are raised, and those on the sidelines, like powerhouse Germany, say they had little to do in causing the problem and should therefore suffer lesser consequences. The former may be resoundingly true, but the latter has dire consequences.

übermensch

I know I said that New Year's resolutions struck me as somewhat wanting, lest I revisit the dreaded diary or smoking cessation program, but I imagine they're worth a second look. It would be something if we could resolve to be less human, less fallible--or at least not to forget the lessons that we've already learned. In other aspects of life, belief, people can turn to dogma, a simple set of axioms as guiding principles in religion, philosophy, business-style, since no one of us can keep all the rules in our heads at one time. There's not really something dogmatic for relationships--thank goodness--there are no adherents, at least none that I would like to meet or mimic, of this or that school of matrimonial success. Without dogma, every one of us is allowed to treat each other as unique, forgiving and forgetful, even though the occasional lapse.

coke social

It’s entertaining sometimes to skim over the shipwrecks of social networking sites—Web 2.0, and find abandoned or severely neglected homepages, blogs and photography collections. I’d like to think most of these things, like my inactive mySpace presence, littered with unread posts, die these quiet deaths because they’ve served their purpose or have been made obsolete. I hope people give up because they’ve found their perfect match and aren’t much interested in braving the wilds of the Internet dating-scene anymore. Those posts and comments do keep coming in periodically, unread but loyally broadcast for holidays and birthdays by a small tribe of true-believers (those hold-outs for landing the dream job or landing the right person by the merits of their profiles), which seems like sad, vindictive graffiti peppered on some forgotten monument to a forgotten cause or decorating a dozing relative with Christmas garland.

Linus & Lucy

Though I missed seeing any of the usual Christmas specials this year, my mother showed H and I a mash-up clip of the excellent Merry Christmas Charlie Brown. I love that little show--the Peanuts are like psychoanalysis in classic comic format, and whenever I hear Linus explaining the meanining of Christmas--I think that's the only incident one can still find that makes mention of Jesus--it just kills me. I think I can dredge for all those special memories on the Internet, though. Instantly, after seeing this and thinking about the original, a non-sequitur memory swept over me, which at the time I didn't deem appropriate to share. For starters, it was my secret deciding factor to attend the university that I did. I might have gone to Harvard, if I really applied myself during my senior year, or to a good school in state, through I shudder to imagine how that would have screwed with H's and my space-time continuum. When I visited as a prospective student, there was a big party in the dorms (as per usual) and as I took in the view from the head of the hallway, the guys and girls were dancing just like on Charlie Brown, breezy and doing their own things, not caring how they looked.