What’s sad to see after Christmas is people going on FB to get rid of the pets they received as gifts but don’t really want. I’m happy, of course, that nobody is throwing them out in the street. But it’s still sad for these discarded animals.

As Zygmunt Bauman used to say, a consumer’s greatest joy is not buying but discarding. And the biggest fear is not being able to toss away anything at all at will. 

The green part is the dish I’m really proud of. It’s a healthy version of Southern collard greens with broccoli and green beans. It has not a gram of fat of oil of any kind, yet it still tastes quite Southern (especially to Northerners). The pink is my signature salmon baked with oranges. And the red is the vinegret. 

(The teaspoon is there because it’s Klara’s plate).

Of course, we are planning to go ultra unhealthy on New Year’s, so this is a virtuous dinner in preparation for that mega-bash. 

And look, by all means, buy “experiences” at Nordstrom’s or toys on Amazon or whatever. Just don’t tell yourself that there’s anything rebellious or political about the act of buying. This empties the word “political” of any meaning and poisons the political space for all of us.

People are so ridiculous. Buying “experiences” is more, not less, consumerist than buying toys and candy. 

If you want to avoid consumerism, a good place to start is not to buy. Going to Nordstrom’s to escape from consumerism, though, is painfully dumb. Go to the library, to the park, to the playground. Stay at home and play Scrabble. But paying for manicures at a mall is not any less consumerist than paying for ice-cream at that same mall.

Cool capitalism, folks. Pay more to feel vaguely rebellious and fashionably quirky. 

People on the local parenting message board are posting irate tirades about a grandma who asked for help around Christmas, was given gifts by charitable folks, and is now selling the gifts on FB for $10 and $15. To me it’s clear that the woman must be in real need if she’s bothering with FB sales to get such a small amount. But everybody is piling on her, calling her horrible names, and acting deeply wounded. 

I’ve seen such mean-spiritedness come out around Christmas that I’m stunned. A man with 12 kids asked for help. “Moocher! Scammer! The best gift for him is a vasectomy! The kids must all have different mommies, and they are probably all loose women!” go charitable neighbors. Why can’t folks just scroll down and move on if they don’t want to help is a mystery. 

Teary stories abound of how people donated gifts only to discover that the recipients returned them for cash. Because, apparently, it’s beyond the pale for the indigent to need cash. “They will spend it on drugs and alcohol!” Because on this FB page we all compensate by reading Proust while listening to Shostakovich and can’t imagine why anybody wouldn’t just do that instead of doing unhealthy things. 

If even on Christmas people can’t keep the inner jerkwad in check and remember that a charitable donation is not a ticket to police the lives of those who asks for help, then that’s not good at all. 

For those who are also celebrating alone, here’s a couple of good links. 

This is a valuable article on teaching literature in college. Just skip the vapid blabber about capitalism, managers and the rest of the fashionable topics the author knows nothing about and read about teaching literature, which she understands very well. 

A great article illustrating one of the aspects of the nation-state’s collapse. It explains extremely well why the US politics has been the way it’s been. For now, the divide is geographical but very soon it won’t be. Think of where that will lead. 

N is sick (not because of my cooking but because it’s suddenly become really cold) and went to bed early. So I will celebrate the arrival of Christmas alone, watching Gone Girl for only the third time, eating orange cake, and planning my new article. It’s going to be on a completely new subject – no nation-state, no liquid capital, no gender, no class struggle! Which means it will totally bomb because that’s how it always goes when I switch theoretical frameworks. My first article on crisis literature was never accepted by anybody. 

I like Christmas.

Another strange thing Klara likes to eat is vinegret. I posted a recipe a while ago. It’s a salad made with beets, potatoes, cucumbers, green onions, green peas, carrots, and pickled cabbage. I pickled the cabbage myself, by the way. I made some of this vinegret (which  contains no vinegar, by the way) for the guests who are coming today, and when Klara asked to try some, I was sure she’d hate it. But I was completely wrong. She refused the Mac and cheese lunch I’d made her and ate the vinegret instead.

I’m also making another beet salad with walnuts, garlic and dried figs for the guests. If she likes this one, too, I’ll be completely weirded out.

I was going to make turkey, and taught Klara to say the word “turkey” but one of our guests doesn’t eat meat, so I’m doing my signature salmon baked with oranges, spinach and tomatoes dish. 

So our Christmas menu is very untraditional with salmon and two beet salads. The New Year’s, on the other hand, will be so traditional, it will be like it’s 1983. 

One thing to celebrate is that none of the dire predictons of a year ago came true in 2017. There’s no nuclear Holocaust, no authoritarian regime, no invasion of countries. So far, Trump turned out to be a run-of-the-mill Republican president minus the invasions. He isn’t doing anything that hasn’t been part of the Republican agenda for decades. 

My hope is that in 2018 people will realize how they’ve been exploited by the very rich owners of online platforms who rile them up with lies and exaggerations to make money off them. I also hope that people begin to realize that politics isn’t about outraged tweets but about getting together with people in RL and organizing something. This year, I and some real people I really know in real life got together and did some real stuff, and it felt really good. I hope more people get off Twitter and Tumblr and join us in the real world. 

I also hope that more people realize that real resistance consists of resisting the lure of the screens that #Occupy their brains and steal their souls. We have a political space that’s turned into a total circus where entertainment politics had turned into entertainment, period. We deserve better, and it’s up to us to make sure things get turned around.

I always thought the lists of things to be grateful for in agendas and productivity journals were dumb. But now I realize that people need these lists because they rev themselves up with stupid shit they read on the so-called news media to the point they actually believe the world is ending. And then they don’t know how to climb out of that hole. I hope people remember that there’s no peace without peace of mind.

The walls in the OB-GYN’s office are covered with quotes letting visitors know that life is meaningless if you don’t have kids and nothing is better than motherhood. 

I can’t stop thinking how cruel it is to patients who might be infertile to have them stare at these quotes for 40 minutes while they sit naked on the table waiting for the doctor to show up. 

And who’s the intended audience anyway? Mothers already know all this. Women who don’t want children will be annoyed and will possibly feel judged. And then there’s people like me who feel bad for the women who’ll be wounded by all this. 

It’s just unthinking, unnecessary cruelty. But at least this doctor doesn’t try to coax me into Botox treatments, doesn’t try to get me to take a weight loss potion, and doesn’t run a Bible study group for victims of abortion propaganda, like the previous 3 doctors.