a very a.e. christmas

what the fuck happened to the price of eggs?

$2.29?? Wasn't it just 79¢? Maybe I didn't realize what a sweet deal I was getting all these years at the cheap Chinese grocery store (where Yumee swears everything is a black market knockoff, although I know I never bought counterfeit eggs.) But they triple their price? Where are they making these eggs? Iraq?

xmas in the bronx

I gave my sister a plate for Christmas. She got me a set of four plates. Weird sibling symmetry.

in my father's house

From this perspective, it's hard to believe that I am genetically hardwired to winter in Florida someday.

looks like hanukkah harry paid someone a visit!

Why Koreans are superior to Jews: no gifting of socks at holiday time.

Accomplishments of the Jews:

Old Testament

New Testament

Monotheism

The Pyramids

Theory of Relativity

Cure for syphilis

Cure for cholera

Polio vaccine

Psychoanalysis

178 Nobel Prizes

Socialism

Levi’s

Accomplishments of the Koreans:

Glow in the dark cats

The nectarine

SKoreans clone cats that glow in the dark: officials

my landlords can have my lease alright, when they pry it from my cold, dead hands...

Went down to help Johanna pick out her new eyeglass frames (and really had the chance to play the hero, as she was fixing on a pair that would have very much underscored her Jersey Girl roots). On the way back we stopped outside my apartment and Johanna said “I don’t want this to be an opportunity for you to go into total-stubbornness mode, but”—a guarantee, of course, of total stubbornness—before continuing in her “intervention” voice to suggest that I need to move out of my apartment. We argued back and forth, me pointing out that as the leaseholder of a rent-stabilized unit, it will be near impossible to find half as much space as I have now at twice the price, and that would be in Crown Heights. Eventually we realized we were having the same argument, in just about the same geographic spot, that we’d been having for seven years. And now, just to spite her, I’m not going to move out of here for another two decades. Hah!

it's starting to feel a lot like christmas

The noise from the street was pretty unreal Saturday night. Chanting, singing, it sounded like the night before the big bowl game on fraternity row. There were games of “Red Rover” echoing down the block. Finally I went downstairs to look, expecting some massive bachelor party, clusters of guys in curved-bill baseball caps milling about Ludlow. Instead it was Santas. Hundreds and hundreds of Santas.

Thus my first introduction to Santacon.

photo by lugo lounge

i suppose christianity will always be somewhat enigmatic for me

why do the little coincidences make me so happy?

Every year up at the farm, people switch up Evan’s and my name. It’s not that we’re really that similar, outside of both being dark-haired quasi-Jews with gray in our stubble. But everybody does it, calling Evan “Ethan” and me “Evan.” Probably it’s just the mind’s lazy conflation of a two-syllable name that starts with “E.”

Last night I went with Evan to Better Burger, where he goes after the meetings. The cashier knew him and they bantered back and forth. At the end of the order, Evan asked the guy if he remembered his name. The cashier faltered and Evan gave him his name. The guy said, “Oh yeah, that’s right, Evan. But I always think your name is Ethan.”

first snow!