Housecleaning

A veritable potpourri of topics:

1. One class done, one to go.

2. New Year's Eve is near at hand.  Of all the major holidays, this is easily my least favorite.  Janet, whom I love dearly, hates New Year's Eve--always has; always will.  She sees absolutely no point in  staying up late for no apparent reason, and New Year's Eve is all about staying up late.  I started dating her in high school--she hated New Year's Eve then.  Now, I have no particular fascination with New Year's Eve, so it wouldn't bother me in the least to simply skip worrying about it.  But, then social expectations intrude--one is expected to do something exciting on New Year's Eve. Turning down invitations for New Year's Eve is acceptable when one can say, "Sorry, but we already agreed to do something else."  But, try turning down a New Year's Eve invitation with, "Sorry, we are just staying home and ignoring the whole holiday."  We do celebrate New Year's Day, though--does that make everything OK?

3. I do have fond memories of camping out on Colorado Blvd in Pasadena on New Year's Eve--I did this a few times in high school.  Great night--and it's fun to watch the Rose Parade in person.

4. Christmas was great, as always.  I got Madden '11 from my mom--that is a tradition which dates back to the early years of Madden.  It's still the best video game.

5. Emma was accepted to Mount Holyoke a couple days before Christmas.  No shock there.  I bought her a Mount Holyoke sweatshirt for Christmas.  So, now it's official.

6. Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita was the last book we read in my tutorial in the Fall semester.  I am still trying to figure out how to write a commentary on it.  An utterly odd book.  It's the second time I read it--but the first time I read a horrid translation, so this time was much, much better.  It is wryly funny and has some great mocking of the Soviet state.  Satan is one of the main characters, but he is nothing like any Satan in any other book.  Satan's coterie is a bunch of amoral mischievous types.  In other words, Satan brings little evil, but a great deal of wrongness.  There is a subplot about Pontius Pilate which is cleverly done and quite interesting.  But, what does the book mean?  It clearly draws analogies to Goethe's Faust, but maybe it is a satire on Goethe too.  Again, it's hard to tell.  In the end, it strikes me as a very clever book.  I think it is nihilistic in the end, but I could easily be persuaded otherwise.

7.  Oddly, while typing that last paragraph, "Anarchy in the U.K." was playing on my iPod.  Mikhail Bulgakov and Johnny Rotten--what a combo.

8.  I thought about providing a YouTube link for the song, but I have a hard time imagining that there is a YouTube video which is suitable for a general audience.