Update: Goatwatch 2006

What the heck? The Christmas goat is still standing. I’m starting to lose faith in the vandals of Gävle.

Behind Door #16: Congratulations Are in Order

I’m thrilled to find out that two of my friends have recently received some pretty exciting recognition for their creative work:

• My friend Betsy’s book Color of Wealth was named one of The Progressive
  magazine’s top books of 2006.
• Former housemate and fiddle mentor, Andrea’s record Hambo in the Snow (recorded with another fiddling buddy, Loretta) just got nominated for a Grammy in the Traditional World Music category.

Kudos to them. What a great way to end the year!

Behind Door #15: Never Too Much Pork

I hadn’t meant to get quite so carried away with the whole pork thing on this blog, but I couldn’t resist these two links (via food writer Michael Ruhlman’s blog):

• Peace Through Pork: I’m not sure if I’m convinced by these folks’ political ambitions, but, hey, you can buy bacon wristbands.
• Chicken Fried Bacon: If anyone can think of something more delicious than batter-dipped, deep-fried bacon, I wish they’d tell me about it.

Behind Door #14: O Come, All Ye Cephalopods

I was going to wait until tomorrow to remind everyone about the upcoming Cephalopodmas holiday, but then I thought that it really made more sense to mention it eight days in advance instead of seven.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll be celebrating all things tentacular with my cephalopod-crazed siblings. We’ll be eating spaetzle and drinking hefeweizen at Ludwig’s Garten (affectionately known as Mad King Ludwig’s) in Philadelphia.

Wishing you merry molluscs!

P.S. What do you mean “Cephalopodmas” is not in the spell-checker?!

Behind Door #13: There Oughta Be a Word…

I came home from work (and class) tonight, and couldn’t think of a single thing appealing to eat, so I fell back on my favorite stand-by food: scrambled eggs. They’re quick. They’re easy. They’re not starchy. They’re great for using up leftovers: in tonight’s case, some pesto I had made, let’s just say a while ago, and some feta cheese that was trying to become Roquefort. (I know, I know. I don’t want to hear anything from those of you who know I’m a Cordon Bleu graduate.)

Anyhow, tonight’s culinary ennui seems to be part of a larger trend. I’m just not inspired by cooking these days. I only seem to enjoy meals I eat out—like last Saturday’s dinner at the Medford Szechuan joint that’s renewed my faith in Chinese food.

As I sat down to right tonight’s virtual Advent Calendar installment, I finally figured out that there’s a name for my problem: mealaise.

Behind Door #12: Word of the Year 2007?

The fine folks at Language Log recently blogged about Merriam-Webster choosing truthiness as the Word of the Year for 2006. (This on the heels of the American Dialect Society giving top honors to truthiness in 2005.)

I’ve decided to start campaigning now for my favorite neologism for next year: de-ubiquitinate.

Before I got my current job at Fancypants U., I worked at their medical school gathering CVs and other information from professors in order to apply for various government-sponsored medical research and training grants. The first proposal I worked on was for an immunology grant. Reading the various doctors’ research descriptions was like deciphering a foreign language. Most of the chemical names (5,6-deoxyalkyl-whatchamacallit) soared over my head until I got to one CV that talked about de-ubiquitination. (OK, that really went over my head too. I still don’t know what that means. I think ubiquitin is a protein, so I’m guessing it gets removed.)

It struck me that de-ubiquitination, shorn of any immunological connotations, could prove to be quite a useful concept—especially when applied to celebrities. Tired of all the hype surrounding TomKat? Brangelina? Brittany and KFed? Never fear, let’s just de-ubiqutinate them all.

Behind Door # 11: Taking the Night Off

Sorry, no blog tonight. The fellowship program I work for is throwing its annual holiday bash. Instead of blogging, I’ll be drinking champagne and eating lobster.

And yes, I am gloating. Just a little bit.

See you tomorrow.

Behind Door #10: Smooth Sailing

It’s quarter to midnight, and I’m sitting here at my desk wondering what to write for today. Nothing really extraordinary happened—just a bunch of the kind of things that go into a perfectly pleasant Sunday.

I made all the various trains and buses I had to catch with time to spare. I played fiddle tunes with friends at the Scandinavian dance in Montague. I listened to my friend Andrea sing Swedish Christmas carols by candlelight. I ate saffron-scented buns and white chocolate-peppermint bark and chatted at the holiday party afterwards and then headed off through the forests of central Massachusetts with my friend Marilyn.

On the way to the station where I’d catch the train back to Boston, we stopped at an amusingly named restaurant where I ordered the sandwich that the host said would be the quickest thing for them to prepare. This would seem to be a recipe for a disastrous meal, but somehow, the sandwich was absolutely delicious.

I still feel stressed about school. I still feel like I need to sleep for about two days straight. But I also feel that in between all my deadlines and assignments I’ll manage to find some moments of pleasure. And, most of the time, that’s really all I need to keep going.

Behind Door #9: Burn, Billy, Burn

One of my favorite Swedish Christmas traditions was picked up by the AP this year. Every year the city of Gävle has put up an enormous straw goat on the town square. (You can find smaller versions decorating Swedish homes.)

The actual display of the goat—billed as the world’s biggest—is not the interesting part, though. What makes it my favorite tradition is that in twenty-two of the forty years they’ve put up a Christmas goat, someone’s managed to destroy it.

Most years someone merely burns the goat, but it’s also been run over by a car or been smashed to bits. Some of the vandals have had a particular flair for the dramatic. For instance, according to the article:

The 2005 vandals — who witnesses said were dressed up as Santa Claus and the Gingerbread Man — remain at large. The pair fired flaming arrows at the goat, reducing it to its steel skeleton.

The  city’s Christmas Web site gives a complete, year-by-year accounting of the goat’s fate.

This year city officals claim that the goat has burned for the last time. They’ve impregnated the straw with some sort of space-age flame retardant and put up two twenty-four hour Web cams (1, 2) so the eyes of the world can keep watch.

I can’t help feeling they’ve missed the point. The world’s largest goat rates a giant “meh.” The world’s largest goat that happens to get destroyed in some amusing ways, well, that’s something I’ll even blog about. I mean, aren’t goats meant to be sacrificed?

So, I’ll go on checking the Web cams, but I’ll be waiting to see the goat in flames.

Behind Door #8: The War on Krampus

My sister Mars—source of all things Krampus-y sent me this link to a Reuters story about some Austrian scrooges trying to ban Krampus because he scares children.

Come on, now. Krampus only switches the naughty. The good boys and girls have nothing to worry about.

The headline reads “Santa’s Evil Sidekick? Who knew?” But the URL is even funnier: “odd_austria_christmas_devil1.”

If I didn’t have to clean my house in preparation for the arrival of house guests I’d be all over making “Stop the War on Krampus” buttons for people to post on their blogs.