Month: December 2020

This Wretched Year

Everything about the holidays this year is wrong.

The holiday season begins with my birthday—mid-September—runs through Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and ends abruptly at midnight when New Year’s Day becomes January 2nd. Each day is celebrated according to its traditions and has all the appropriate and unique emotions associated with it. It begins with the joy of pleasures known or unknown and familiar faces and the thrill of new adventures. The holiday ride takes me through thrilling taboos and profound gratitude and the quiet-but-impossibly-pure ecstasy of loving embraces through winter’s sublime chill. How else could it all come to an end but an all-night burst of relief ushering in a fresh start?

“Relief’s a funny word for it,” you say with some confusion. I of course must agree. Relief is the kind of release that comes from escaping the slowly-tightening stranglehold of tension and mounting anxiety. Why, then, does it seem perfectly intuitive to use it in such a positive context? Well, there’s no getting around it: along with the joys and crackling moments of peace by the fireplace and reminders of sincere love and the warming glow of mirth come the stresses of making sure every little thing is in place, of doing the best we can to take everyone into consideration, of pleading silently to no one in particular that those members of the family won’t try to tear each other apart this year. We are tense because we want as many things as possible to go well and we’re afraid they won’t. New Year’s Eve brings along that sweet relief because it almost invariably does go so well. Those few hiccups here and there don’t even matter because the food was just savory enough—maybe just a little bit too sweet, too, but no one was going to complain about food being more to their liking—and the gifts thoughtful enough and the clothes enticing enough for it all to be worth the effort.

Just for a moment, forget all that. Forget the stresses, forget the joys, forget all of it. What I like most about the holidays is the warmth in my chest. I’m a sentimental man and the temptation to focus this warmth on my heart is great, but to do so would be saccharine and dishonest. The gifts and the joviality and the familial intimacy are all so wonderful they make my heart ache and they may well be the cause of that warmth, but the warmth itself is what imbues my holidays with a soft and glorious glow. Enamored though I am of the cold weather, I can withstand winter’s sublime chill only because that warmth is there, allowing the frigid winds to bite at my face but guarding forever against the cold’s callous intrusion into my core

I say again: everything about the holidays this year is wrong. I walk around and feel winter’s cold sting everywhere. Furnaces and fires may make valiant attempts at thawing me, but it is only on the outside I am so affected. My chest is filled with icicles and melancholia and I have not yet discovered any remedy. This wretched year has put my life on hold in ways that not even those favorite films of mine that are overflowing with the Christmas spirit (I’ll let you guess so long as you don’t guess It’s a Wonderful Life) are only coaxing tears from my eyes. While I do have other grievances, they seem petty and almost insignificant in comparison to this. For example, the food has been perfectly tasty even if it is broken up because it was stuck to the pan. That wouldn’t matter if my chest weren’t frozen on the inside, but here the minor frustration is made to feel like an outright disaster.

Is there anything from this wretched year worth salvaging? I dare not speak it, lest it be taken away from me somehow in the week leading up to the new year. I’ll just contemplate and hide away whatever I can find—protect it from this year’s surely-toxic death rattle. In the meantime, I’ll do—no, overdo—what little I can in the hopes that it will burn away some of this frost. Excuse me now while I indulge myself with a tricorne hat and a fur coat and indulge others in the name of Santa Claus.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Lunch with George Carlin. What would you have and how would you begin the conversation?”

There is a restaurant near where I live called The Prado. It’s a bit fancy, but in a nice and unpretentious way that doesn’t make me feel on edge or out of place when I order food. Shortly after the dozen-or-so-year vegetarian chapter of my life came to an end, I found myself dining there and ordered the pork chop. I was confident in my choice of cuisine before I ordered it, but there was no special that day and the waiter recommended that same dish and so my confidence was bolstered considerably. I remember that first bite as if it were yesterday: full of flavor without being overwhelming, the meat cooked to just the right tenderness and texture, basically everything I could possibly want in a dish literally called a pork chop. It went into my top 5 meals so readily I had to make sure that I centered my next birthday’s activities around having that meal again, and it was just as good the second time. Were I to have lunch with George Carlin, I’d take him to The Prado and order the pork chop.

How would I begin a conversation with George Carlin? Better yet, how do I begin a conversation? I keep to myself so much of the time I don’t always remember how etiquette dictates such matters should go. In fact, I usually let others who wish to converse come to me. I have enough insecurities about boring people or leaving them with some horrid impression of me that I don’t initiate contact unless I know I have something to say, and even that doesn’t always totally negate the risk involved. If I’m the one starting a conversation, it says a great deal about my level of comfort with the other party and small talk is just about guaranteed not to be happening.

What you just read is how I skillfully avoid answering the question.

When I imagine I’m eating at The Prado with George Carlin, I see myself well-rested and being sharper than I’ve been in years. That helps me feel less intimidated by the presence of a man I referred to as a comic genius just a few entries ago. He was sharp as a razor ‘til he died, so I ask him for his favorite kinds of music, film, and literature and he rattles off his answers to me like he’s been thinking about how to answer for 20 years. We bond over generic favorites and bits and stories about his comic career make their way organically into the conversation. I try rather stupidly to impress him by injecting bits and pieces of my philosophy studies into my side of the same conversation, and of course I must ask him about Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure at some point. Wherever we go from there, I’ll be wondering about the impression I left on him by the time we leave and my stomach will be full of pork and butterflies.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Do you know where your phalanges are at?”

My phalanges are right here, helping me type out these words.

In answering this question, I third-guessed myself. Second-guessing is bad enough a phenomenon, but I suspect it takes some deep and serious insecurities to go further—especially when you discover you were right the first time! Second-guessing myself took me to everyone’s favorite search engine and misinterpreting skeletal diagrams because I didn’t allow my imagination to remind me where the fleshy center of my hand would be. Third-guessing meant writing out an entire answer that detailed my journey from my original answer to the “correct” answer, then re-studying those same diagrams because something didn’t seem right and feeling more than a little bit ridiculous when my imagination at last turned on.

Yes, as it turns out, what I’d learned during my course on physical anthropology was correct: phalanges is the scientific word for fingers.

With care,

~ Grigori

“What’s the longest you’ve gone without a shower?”

For a time so long I’m too embarrassed to disclose it fully, I thought baths and baths alone were for washing my entire body and showers were for washing (mostly) my hair. Once it was supposed that I had outgrown baths as the default method of washing, trouble ensued; I did not take to showers the way other children evidently did. There were times I was literally bent over backward to wash my hair when there was no other option but to shower. It was perhaps because of discomforts like these that I grew to hate showers and basically stopped using shampoo for many years. My hair was short then, so it didn’t matter. As I grew it out, shampoo reappeared—though not every time. I would often take a shower from outside the shower, keeping the curtain mostly closed but sticking my head into the stream of water to get it nice and soaking wet for the sake of appearances.

The way I “showered” would contribute to my belief that I was allergic to water. Aside from my wretched lack of comfort, another reason I hated showers was the itching that (almost) always came afterward. It would plague me about 10 minutes after I got dressed, last anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, and fade away so slowly as not to be noticed. The itching was confined to my chest, my arms, and my legs—the same areas of my body I couldn’t avoid getting wet when I showered more properly. I let this fester and continue for a length of time I can’t possibly recall, and I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t, I might not have rediscovered soap.

What prompted me to start using soap in the shower, I cannot say. I know that the itching stopped once I used soap to shed the invisible layers of caked dirt on my body. I know that the itching stopped once there was no more moisture trapped between my body and dead skin. I know that the itching stopped when I dried myself off properly and didn’t give my skin the chance to be irritated. I know that I have felt relief from the itching only for a few months as of this writing.

So, the longest I’ve gone without a shower? Depending on your perspective, the answer ranges anywhere from a few days to a week to 33 long and miserable years.

With care,

~ Grigori

“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen flamingo?”

“What do you mean? An American or African flamingo?”

The three stages of answering this question were:

I: Laughing

Monty Python and the Holy Grail has long been one of my favorite films, so of course a reference to it is going to elicit delight from me. I’ve come close to dying from laughter every time I’ve seen it.

II: Examination

Taking the time to answer this question finally afforded me the opportunity to understand what it was the Bridgekeeper was asking. For the longest time it had been my assumption that Arthur, King of the Britons had sidestepped quite the complicated question by asking whether the swallow was supposed to be African or European. I laughed all those times I’d watched it because the question itself had sounded funny and because the phrasing tricked me into thinking the information the Bridgekeeper had requested required equations relegated to advanced trigonometrical black magic if Arthur, King of the Britons had actually been in need of the answer. Not so! All Arthur, King of the Britons had been asked was how fast a swallow goes when it’s flying freely.

So:

How fast does a flamingo go when flying freely?

III: Research/Discovery

“Do flamingos fly?”

I had no idea.

A few moments spent on everyone’s favorite search engine told me not only that flamingos fly, but that their average speed when they do is ~35mph and that they can fly up to 375 miles in just one night.

Amazing.

With care,

~ Grigori

“How many humorous do you have?”

ANSWER TO INTERPRETATION I, in which “humorous” is a humorous spelling for the plurality of the humerus:

I have two exactly. I have thus far been fortunate enough to avoid losing one in some horrific accident and I have not as of yet been exposed to enough nuclear radiation to encourage, prompt, or otherwise promote the growth of a third.

ANSWER TO INTERPRETATION II, in which I am being asked about my sense of humor and how many comedic styles I find funny:

A quick perusal of Wikipedia’s page on comedic genres tells me I have an affinity for approximately 21 of the 26 styles listed. They are, in order of appearance:

Anecdotal comedy
Anti-humor
Black/dark comedy
Blue comedy
Character comedy
Cringe comedy
Deadpan comedy
Improvisational comedy
Insult comedy
Mockumentary
Comedy music
Observational comedy
One-line joke
Physical comedy
Shock humor
Sitcom
Sketch
Spoof/Parody
Surreal comedy
Topical comedy/Satire
Wit/Word play

I included only those styles the examples of which were more known and liked by me than known and disliked. Jerry Seinfeld’s observational humor falls flat for me, but George Carlin and Louis C.K. are comedic geniuses. Rodney Dangerfield’s jokes seem loud and obnoxious, but Mitch Hedberg and Groucho Marx have brought me the best medicine during some of my darkest hours. Music’s role in my life has been so consistently to inspire awe that I seldom appreciate comedy’s value within it, but “Weird Al” Yankovic is a national treasure and Ninja Sex Party will forever have a special place in my heart because I’ve invested so much time in enjoying the Game Grumps. Topical comedy can be uproariously funny because we need to have some levity about such matters lest we die of embarrassment, but it also all too often falls short. I chose to single out these styles because they’re just a few of the many that are often hit-or-miss for me, as opposed to black/dark comedy, which almost always works.

Good comedy is always a good-faith engagement with the topic at hand. Even insult comedy assumes in its audience an understanding that the comic is offering good-natured ribbing more than he is condescension. Good comedy comes from a place of respect. Murder is most often a reprehensible act, but a perspective that understands and respects the devastation inherent in the act can find something morbidly absurd in dread chaos to use as fuel for humor so it doesn’t lose itself to insanity. Good comedy frames even the most familiar and comforting of topics in unexpected ways. Predictability is the death of comedy.

That’s how many humorous I have.

With care,

~ Grigori

“If you could add a new color to the rainbow, what would it be?”

I know next to nothing about color theory. I might have said I know nothing were it not for my baseline understanding that red, yellow, and blue are primary colors, and this video has called even that into question for me recently. I understand there are secondary colors and complementary colors and more, but all my decisions about color are based on instinct. I trust my sense of aesthetics to know when colors don’t make sense together/make sense only in a certain context/make sense only if some other color gets involved. I admit this because I think the best and most thorough answer possible would come from someone well acquainted with color theory. My stated ignorance notwithstanding, the following is my attempt to intellectualize my instincts.

If I were to add a new color to the rainbow, I think onyx would be my top choice. The depth and richness of the darker colors are always diluted in the rainbows I’ve seen, but to see even a shining and smoky version of onyx after a torrential downpour or a heavy misting—it really doesn’t matter—would be an absolute delight. Where would I place it? I have ideas about that, too. The only one that does not involve having to alter the way the human perception of light* works is for it to be placed between indigo and violet. If tinkering with physics** were an option and I figured out how to do it just right, I might have violet come before indigo and put onyx at the bottom instead.

If onyx is my top choice, silver would be my second. Its secondary ranking results solely from a failure on my part to envision it working naturally*** with any sense of aesthetic coherency in the rainbow. Because of this one superior quality, onyx gets top ranking. For silver to work without my feeling it’s somewhere it shouldn’t be, the yellow-green-blue sequence would need rearranging. With silver included, it would become: green-silver-yellow-blue. I would prefer a smoother transition into the blue-indigo-violet sequence, but here I must reiterate my preference for onyx. Both colors are equally enchanting, but onyx has greater utility here and greater natural value, which is to say only that it can be envisioned as an addition to the rainbow with less brute force.

*Just in case it isn’t obvious I: The question necessitates some toying with the perception of light, but this is the only option that doesn’t necessarily involve rearranging the entire spectrum of light (assuming that’s possible) to suit my needs.

**Just in case it isn’t obvious II: The question necessitates some tinkering with physics is already underway.

***Just in case it isn’t obvious III: I’m having to take some liberties with the meaning of “naturally,” since the question itself is founded on what I assume to be an unnatural premise.

****Just in case it isn’t obvious IV: There is no grouping of four asterisks in the above text. Why are you reading this?

With care,

~ Grigori

“What word has all five vowels?”

Oneirocriticaustic: an adjectival portmanteau of “oneirocritica” and “caustic,” its first usage was in forums online featuring correspondence between prominent psychoanalysts such as Dalton Frumbo and Samuel Pochram.

Eunoia: a noun referring to a well mind or beautiful thinking.

Fleurosia: a floral state of Being (à la German philosopher Martin Heidegger), Germanic in meaning* but somehow both French and Greek in origin.

There are many words that fit the single criterion of having all five vowels; this list of three contains just one that can be found in a dictionary.

*German provides us with numerous words describing specific and peculiar phenomena. Instances include Schadenfreude—pleasure at another’s suffering—and Treppenwitz—the pick-up joke remembered only after the moment to use it has passed. German borrowed from other languages to create Fleurosia, but it can be properly understood only through the filter of an ontology like Heidegger’s.

With care,

~ Grigori