Merry Christmas

Christmas is a confusing and somewhat confounding time of year for the professed agnostic. What exactly are we celebrating and what are we anticipating? It's best just to let it all drop away and enjoy the fact that it's a holiday. Meaning is only meaning if it's relevant to us. Otherwise it's just a trapping. Woo woo. New Year, on the other hand, is an even odder occasion. It's such an arbitrary date to cycle the calendar but we celebrate it nonetheless, and in far more varied ways. While we are stuck with the dull traditional roast lunch on Christmas Day we are liberated for New Year and it is wonderful. We can eat anything!

<Thinks for six hours>

Oh, I forgot and it's a little late, but here we go: Merry Christmas! We had some fun here over Christmas, with water coming through the roof and busted heating but all is well now. It must be well as I'm watching 'Quincy, M.E.' and remembering just how good that show was. Jeepers, between it and 'Columbo' there's no need to ever watch another detective show. The 70's were a good decade after all for television. There were those two shows, and 'The Bionic Woman', 'The Incredible Hulk', 'M*A*S*H', 'The Muppet Show', 'Taxi' and more.

As you may have noticed I know a lot about American television. It was a haven for me and remains so, a space where we can learn about human nature on some level. As a fully functional Trek Head I watched all of the first three 'Star Trek' series, as well as the shows I've already named, 'Cheers', 'Frasier', 'Alias', 'Community' and a host of other bizarre concoctions and even domestic British television. Yikes. And then were all the books... Oh, why ramble on about all this?

Looking back on Christmas Day I should mention the 'Doctor Who' Christmas special, entitled 'The Snowmen'. It was far better than I expected, and the new companion Clara was rather fetching and intriguing especially as she has now appeared and expired twice. Interesting! The previous companions really lingered on for too long, as in retrospect they had a perfect write-out at the end of series six and their leaving was foreshadowed relentlessly. Also, it seems that the foreshadowing of the eleventh Doctor's end have been dropped for now, which is welcome. Why foreshadow departures every single time? It spoils the surprise and wrecks the mood way ahead of time.

Back to sleep now. Snore.

O.