Few men would have the blunt solidity to do what Cleveland did – or rather to fail to do what he failed to do. It demanded his far from nimble mind to display all the imbecile impartiality of a philosophy that lumped together both the tariff racketeers and the poor bedeviled farmers as illegitimate petitioners of the government. It has been said to Cleveland’s credit that he was strong enough to resist popular pressures that no other man could have withstood, it can also be said that he turned his back on distress more acute than any other President would have had the sang-froid to ignore.

See, there's a kind of melancholy that bubbles up around the holidays, a melancholy that unites all of the greatest Christmas stories, from A Charlie Brown Christmas to It's a Wonderful Life to A Christmas Carol. I realize this is such a snobby thing to say, but the people who think Christmas is about unalloyed joy, about smiling until you're gritting your teeth, I don't think they GET IT, not really. Christmas is about another year coming to a close and drawing the people you love closer to you because you don't know what you'd be without them. It's about what you don't have as much as what you do have, about the realization that loneliness is the flip-side of love and happiness only comes easily after you've been through some pain. To me, Christmas and New Year's are all wrapped up in sadness and melancholy and loneliness, and that's what makes the happiness feel that much more earned, that much more essential.

My point (and I do have one) is this: The stop-motion episode is going to be fantastic, but this episode of Community should have been the Christmas episode. It's an episode entirely about how lonely these people would be if they didn't have each other. It's an episode about how having each other gives them the freedom to explore the kinds of people they wish to become. And it's an episode about how, at the end of the day, they'll be there for each other, even in the pits of their greatest disappointments. Festive joy and singing carols are fun, but there's something to be said for reflection, for an earned moment of sentiment (like that scene between Troy and Annie), for snatching happiness from a place where despair could just as easily exist or vice versa. And what's more Christmas-y than that?

So good. This episode really cemented one of the things I love about Community: how much the combination of goofiness and camaraderie reminds me of my own friends, even if I can't be around them as often as I'd like.

All right, time to tone down the sappiness and get back into that finals swing.

I think people unduly suffer if they discount the power of the peppy music video to strengthen one's spirits. Sometimes you just need a dose of brassy cheer in yer life.

Hanson's come a long way since the MmmBop days.

Channeling a peppy synthy beat reminiscent of Hall and Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True," BRODYQUEST illustrates – quite spectacularly – the best day of Adrien Brody's life. See him bobble his way through sea and space, through the Sun itself, and through the very fabric of the universe.

It's a pretty magnificent thing.

Also featured: two immeasurably jolly starfish.

Meanwhile, we can sum up the initial progress that the spirit of rebellion provokes in a mind that is originally imbued with the absurdity and apparent sterility of the world. In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. But from the moment when a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience. Therefore the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague. In our daily trials rebellion plays the same role as does the "cogito" in the realm of thought: it is the first piece of evidence. But this evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel – therefore we exist.

Agreed – though that part about contemplating humanity's place in the universe also reminds me of an optimistic counter-argument from Split Enz: The tyranny of distance didn't stop the cavalier, so why should it stop me? I'll conquer and stay free!

Here are a couple of things that express my current mood:

A) This lovely photograph of a mohawked man feeding bread to two Highland cattle:

(via Jim Richardson on Travel Photography — National Geographic)

B) This music video of The Temper Trap's "Fader":

Less words for better feelings – ain't it just. Sun's out. I see the shadows of tree branches bobbing in the wind outside my window. Still have assignments and other texts to pore over, but for now, things are fine.

Or actually, don't. During one bout of insomnia this past semester, I quickly learned that listening to T.S. Eliot read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is essentially one of the worst ways to try falling asleep. Eliot's an excellent poet, but he has some odd vocal mannerisms: he sounds too nervous as he reads, yet too bored at the same time. The result? A tense recitation full of paradoxical tone, which itself is probably some kind of minor feat all its own.

I listened to the whole poem anyway, though. You stick it out for the good stuff, even when it's mainly about the frustrations of mediocrity, aging, and impotence.

Then, to fall asleep – the sweet canned laughter of the Golden Girls audience.

"Even after all this, one hardly knows what Sam Spade looked like. But everyone knows what Humphrey Bogart looked like. A reader of unillustrated fiction completes the work in his mind; the reader of a comic book or the viewer of a movie is passive. That is why kids lose a lot when they don't read fiction, even when the movies and television that they watch are aesthetically superior."
- Gaiman v McFarlane, 360 F.3d 644 (7th Cir. 2004)

"Eloise shook Mary Jane's arm. 'I was a nice girl,' she pleaded, 'wasn't I?'"
- J.D. Salinger, "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut", Nine Stories

"From the situation where I now am, I see a scene of ambition beyond all my former suspicions or imagination… Jealousies and rivalries… never stared me in the face in such horrid forms as in the present."
- John Adams, as quoted in David McCullough's John Adams

"Rather, the point is that most people have experienced what might be referred to as compromising moments of identity performance – moments in which a person's performance of identity contradicts some political or social image that person has of herself."
- Devon Carbado & Mitu Gulati, Working Identity, 85 Cornell L. Rev. 1259

A common thread: the disconcerting confrontations of the present.

My awareness of the book's flaws came after the initial amazement of thinking, "Hey! He speaks the truth." It's just so frank about so much. When something helps influence you at a young age, it's hard to look back with a critical eye. I've read and reread Catcher so many times that I have certain lines memorized and they'll run through my head once in a while, like a fragment of a song I can't forget. All these little melodies reappearing out of the blue.

In the 11th grade, near the end of our unit on The Catcher in the Rye, I made a "serious" mix with a tracklisting and description of how each track related to something in the book. My friend H made one as well. Both our mixes had "Rollerskate Skinny" by The Old 97's on it because that was one of the phrases Holden uses to describe his sister. The last track on mine was "Lowdown" by My Morning Jacket because the gentle tune and leisurely drums reminded me of the carousel spinning around and around near the end of the book. A soundtrack for the final scene in the film adaptation in my head. Just one of those earnest things you do as a kid.

There's a line in Catcher about how Holden thinks the best authors are the ones you'd like to hear more from: "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." Based on what I've read about Salinger in his later years, I probably wouldn't have wanted to know him as he was, but based on what I've read from the man, I'd have liked to call him up. Not Holden, but the guy who wrote Catcher and all those other words that comfort people for some reason or another. Sometimes you'll read something and it's so damn nice that you just want to check out everything else the author's done, because if they've already come up with something that resonates with you, who knows what else they have up their sleeve?

Aware of emptiness, always up for a little mo' enlightenment.

I'd still like to believe that this is all an elaborate hoax by a cantankerous old coot who just wants everyone off his back, but it's drawing far too much attention for someone who made a point of becoming a recluse for the rest of his life.

Anyway. R.I.P., Salinger, and thanks.

• Nov 8th: a clip about friendship from "The Inbetweeners." (NSFW if your workplace cares about f-bombs, but you probably shouldn't be watching Youtube at work anyway.) Hilarious stuff, though a bit sad. "Ooh, a friend? Since when do you have other friends?" Teens have enough concerns without worrying about whether their friends approve of their other friends. It's almost tragic, really. Jay, the kid who's mocked for making a friend outside of his usual group, ends up shredding his new friendship with the kind of adolescent rage that evokes The Lord of the Flies in its suddenness and absurdity. I was never a big fan of Golding.
• Nov 9th: Make a gift bow from a magazine page. Sure to come in handy for future wrapping needs. It's a simple tutorial, which means I'll probably actually use it, as opposed to just admiring the results of how other people use it. I like drawing and I like putting things together by hand, but I've never really been a craftsy etsy kind of person.
• Nov 10th: No Brain – 해변으로 가요 (Keyboys cover). A music video for a cover of the classic Korean karaoke staple, "Let's Go to the Beach," sung in a raspy growl.
• Nov 11th: One Book, Many Readings – a pretty visualization of data from the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, which Wikipedia tells me is a "gamebook" series due to the participatory nature of the stories. How's that for interacting with the text? Don't forget to check out the animations and the gallery. You can even experience a CYOA book on the site as well.
• Nov 12th: suggestions from Ask Metafilter about vegetables to dip in hummus. My tub of cilantro and jalapeno hummus from Trader Joe's was about to expire and I didn't have any chips left. Dilemma. This AskMe question pointed me to some interesting directions for roasted vegetables (kale chips sound great), but, more importantly, it reminded me that raw mushrooms were good for dipping purposes. I happened to have some mushrooms in the fridge, so I washed them, dipped them, and enjoyed them. They were pleasantly crunchy.
• Nov 13th: Excellent Metafilter comment regarding various ways to respond to a command of "Smile!" from a stranger. My favorite is this:
  

  When I really want to rant (if the tone and body language of the man is particularly condescending), I'll say "Ask a man. (again, I get 'what?') Ask a man to smile. Go on. I'll wait." He never knows what to do with that. "Why do you think you have the right to tell me, a complete stranger, how I should look and feel, when you would never, *ever* ask a complete stranger to smile if that stranger were a man."

  I don't have much to add to that. It's just a great counterpoint to an absolutely ridiculous and arrogant notion that some people have regarding other people's faces. Absurd is the word. The only person who should be able to command you to smile is the photographer at your family gathering. (Friends usually don't have to command smiles, they can obtain them easily.)