So This is the New Year...

... and I can't remember the rest of those Death Cab lyrics

There's Always Next Year

Erm. Interesting Xmas. Oh brother. Interesting, in the old Chinese curse sense of living in interesting times (not Barry Davies goes beserk "very interesting!") interesting. Someone probably made up that saying in the 1970s, because everything's aprocryphal; everything gets debunked and Snopes-ed. Nothing actually happened in the past because everyone died young in gruesome ways and didn't have time to be clever and witty. Just a five-second theory.

Apart from family shenanigans, battles, hugs, battle-hugs, shouting-matches, *CLASSIFIED*, peace descended, and the consumer whore spree commenced. And then I realised, though people tell me time and time again, staring in disbelief at the dozen books in my bag, the hill of books in London, the books, like Tribbles multiplying as if they were mating with each other right now, eww, and the top floor of the house groaning with piles of teetering books (exacerbated by my new-ish art guide/coffee tome addiction), novels covering the carpet like rubbish slippery tiling - that I buy so much reading material, I need to stop buying reading material/indulging in this bibliomaniacal insanity. Second epiphany: I have enough for a lifetime of serious reading. SERIOUSLY.

What must be done? ("Eh, don't that picture look dusty" *Nick Cave piano-ing*)

Yesterday, I considered limiting myself to buying one new novel per month, as a kind of fig leaf slapped on my runaway spending (189 separate orders on Amazon.co.uk in 2012, though that includes Amazon Marketplace cheapies), like trying to slap a flyer on a Formula One car speeding past me. Then I realised I was doing that anyway. Fiction-purchasing had been severely curtailed.

It's the non-fiction bug that's consuming me money-wise, space-wise, wise-wise. Damn reality and its myriad plumes of general knowledge, never-ending in their growth. And so I justify it with the four-letter word QUIZ. It's an arms race, my readers. For the non-fiction will teach me and furnish me with the facts I need for competition, for job, for life.  Um.

So let's move on to DVDs...

So I gave in: I bought every season of The West Wing. At last. It's really good *and a chorus of dear quiz-related friends aim a BIG DUH in my direction* (C'mon: the proof is in the eating of the pudding; not the constant writing of questions about the ingredients that go into it and glowing reviews, like Fay Maschler going on about some fancy dining-castle that is useless without the actual sensation of Taste - the only one that matters in that metaphorical regard.

However, this is big news - in a week notorious for having such small news that transport-annoyance minutiae is almost elevated to Hurricane Sandy levels - because until a week ago I had never ever seen an ENTIRE episode*. I'm up to series 5s-8ep; helped by illness, and beddy bye time.  (Actually, I think I was overdosing on all the articulacy, unreal resolution speeds and high-high-idealism, so I alternated disc changes with the Seinfeld Season 4 that arrived in the post a couple of days ago - ah, cynicism is here again).

TV-tastic polemic note
(**Other TV series I haven't seen a whole episode of yet: Justified, 2 Broke Girls, New Girl, That Russell Tovey and Her sitcom, Grimm, Supernatural, Veronica Mars, Revenge, Vampire Diaries,  American Horror Story, The Colbys, Lou Grant, All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show ... and .., I'll stop here because we could be here all night ... HOMELAND (Brody should have blown himself up when he had the chance. Season One finale. 'Twas a time to grasp televisual glory. But nah. THE MONEY. THE AWARDS. They knew the narrative screwjob they'd fitted themselves up with And 'Twas and 'Twis and 'Twill be hilarious to see the twists and turns the screenwriters must take to keep their absurd plotting at fever pitch. Though I must admit, I do watch the last half hour of every season finale, so that's one episode in aggregate, and read so many spoilers and reviews and obscene comments to grasp every nuance ... of the program makers utter schmuck-fukkery). Gossip Girl would have been first in there like a rather Lively bullet, haw haw oh Ryan you lucky, total Canuck, but I "accidentally" saw two episodes in Estonia in November. If a French Revolution happened right now in Manhattan they'd be the first ultra-entitled, smug-pugs, swiney-whiney, cash-tarded Wanka-Loobs** in the tumbrils headed towards the guillotine, while I take up guerrilla knitting or street marquetry or whatever a male Defarge would be doing in the here and now, and watch the heads separate, tumble and roll like bowling balls into some amusing bloodgutter of cloac-errr ... Crazy talk. Back away)

**not sure if my neologism "wankaloo" worked there; if neologisms fail, I label them "nihiljizms" ... I know, me sick in the head

Thanks to everyone for reminding me that I am in my MID-TURDIES (look at lying sidebar - talk of being a 20-something! - ye gods, I haven't changed my links since I started doing this blog, so when you ask me to add your thingy/tumblr/whatever they're called now, please excuse me while I make bad excuses about being rather crap).

To Everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday: Thank you. You're great. You have the common decency and manners to wish me xxx-dashed, exclamation marky happiness at my slide into grey-haired senility; while, as per usual, when your celebratory day comes around, there be no messages coming from me, The Selfish, Self-Sentred SOne of a beatnik. Look, a man's gotta have a code. Even if it's a mystery wrapped in an enigma swaddled in wrapping paper, set in an impenetrable kevlar sphere, with some kind of diamond-like shielding, that even I can't get through. Because, maybe, I don't want to.

Anyhoo, delirium setting in. And soon, it will be time to shove near 24/7 quiz-mode back on again. Ugh. I love Christmas because it is so quiz-less. A week of vegetating.

PS. I also just bought an iPad because because. I don't know why. I just like doing the screen swipey thing. The sound effects are cool too. And yet I don't call myself an Apple addict because I don't have an iPhone (I still have a *whisper* blackberry like OMG). I have the MacBook, the big gigbytes iPod, and now the iPad, and yes, I am wading waist deep in De Nial.

Suffice, to say, I've been ill. I still am. Hazy. Fever. Cold. Opposite of Byronic.

That's why I've been rambling.

I'm also a little bit bored.

First Brians of the Britain. Then. More West Wing. NOW!!! Need my fix. (Of TV, of course!)