Merry Christmas Eve! Or ‘Happy Festive Season’ – the kind of thing we debated saying in my day job as a copywriter, in order to avoid misplaced internet fury. (I lol every time I see a marketing email that skirts around the word Christmas, that same anxiety lurking behind the letters.)
Another bit of copy I’ve seen around that made me lol / pause: ‘Luxury, But Liberated’. I just can’t get my head around this contradiction. You can’t have luxury without oppression, therefore you can’t have luxury without guilt, or at the very least, an awareness of ‘the haves’ versus ‘the have-nots’ (icky terms, when you think about it – morphing possessions / lack of possessions with identity). That’s why so many of us justify buying £35 olive oil or £176 lotion as self-care or a reward for hard work, ‘deserving’ it. I have nothing against treating oneself (me! of all people!), but liberation is quite the stretch.
Without further ado:
Massive Pot of Chilli, the Most Martian Food Ever
Since the summer, I’ve been vegetarian on Tuesdays. I’m not sure why I do it, honestly – a combination of honouring my parents who do the same, a connection to India / this thing so many older Indian people do, a sacrifice to the planet Mars (who rules Tuesdays) in the hope it will reduce aggression but increase self-confidence. I don’t know! But it feels right.
I thought this would be super easy, but it’s weirdly not. That’s part of the magic though – life is full of inconveniences we have no control over, so it’s great to be able to steer just one of them. (This must be why people do CrossFit.)
All of this led me to making the Most Martian Food Ever, AKA a vegetarian chilli that uses like 5 different spice powders because I didn’t have the one the recipe called for. I made enough to feed an army (Mars rules war), but I will be the only person who eats all this.
I’m a lot less enthusiastic about this chilli now that I’ve been eating it for five days straight, but it’s a great recipe and you should make it (here). (Sidenote: As sure as the sun rises in the East, an Alexandra Cooks recipe will be foolproof.) If you have a bag of quinoa in your pantry that you’ve been avoiding like the plague, this is the way to purge it.
One last thing: A co-worker mentioned that chilli without garnishes was basically an odd halfway point between soup and salsa, and I can’t unlearn this.
The True Mariah Carey Christmas Song (& Wiki Rabbit Hole)
I know first time you hear ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ is the unofficial start of Christmas and all that, but I think there’s a better Mariah Christmas song: her cover of Without You. It will always sound Christmassy to me because of this iconic scene from Bridget Jones’ Diary:
This song was the perfect choice for this scene, because it is so vulnerable. Co-dependant vibes up the wazoo. But Mariah Carey’s voice is so powerful, and even though there’s no way in hell it’s effortless, that’s how she makes it sound – it’s a total ruse. Which gives her cover this amazing mix of agony and mirth.
Just Something Kind of Cool I Saw on My Walk Home One Night
When I first moved to London, I was SHOCKED when I was told I had to dry my clothes outside, on the clothes drying line in the backyard, instead of the dryer. Thrilled by the old school novelty and too shy to admit I had no idea how to do this very basic thing, I attached the laundry clips to the tops of my t-shirts and dresses. So when I finished drying and I removed them, there were little inclines on my shoulders. (The correct way to do this is to put your clothes folded halfway over the line, I was told thereafter.) But I remembered staring out at them through the window of my then-living room, fascinated by how it felt like I had been disembodied.
I was reminded of this earlier this month, when I walked by this building in my neighbourhood and saw a dress hanging by the window.
I found this dress so evocative. It could be a sexy red dress for a date, or a suitable dress for a work Christmas party, depending on the person wearing it. I imagine it’s hanging like that so it can be steam ironed or so any wrinkles stretch out – so there’s some sort of expectation put onto it.
I’m going to think of this image as a writing prompt for new fiction, and if you want, you should too.
Strays
This essay on Jack Antonoff’s hold over contemporary pop music is interesting. I like a lot of the songs he produces so I can’t say I dislike his contributions, but more variety in pop music would be nice (ahem, Rainy Dayz). That’s the thing, isn’t it – a particular song/book/movie/TV show becomes popular, so everyone tries to imitate it because some business analytics graph or other predicts it will make the copycat more profitable, so then that vaguely similar product is everywhere and people get bored of or irritated by it, and then the originator of that popular product becomes the face of the problem, but the body of the problem is a risk-averse creative industry. It’s a circle jerk, which I was recently informed is a porn thing, so I should probably stop using it in work settings as I’ve been doing for months.
Until next year,
Nikkitha