Farewell to whisky

I am keenly aware tht my household is tight on money. Each month it's how to pay the bills. each morning daughter (now a college senior), who is overweight, buys the equivalent of a scholarly book for breakfast from McDonald's: a foolish waste. But I have no say. What a nice library and nice "figure" she is not enhancing each new day.

A year ago I bought a small – literally – 6.1 by 8.5 inches Taschen book of Brueghel's works. I've got interested in this because his painting show people living an dying not being prudes/prunes. I imagine peasants must have as their hormones moved them copulated occasionally spontaneously in the fields during their work days (contrast: office death in life): Up yours, Ms. Prema-virgin Lillian Lorenz, secretary to Mr. S. Atherton Middleton Headmaster adolt of St. Paul's day carcel for pubescent male virgins except-for-omerta-sanitary-services-for-jocks. Get the picture?

Some art does not do too badly in small size reproductions. Duchamp and Atget and maybe Kandinsky. But Brueghel is jus too "busy", engorged on detail-size figures, etc. The book does not do the job. But ther is a second strand to this tale: Over the summer I was remembering the whisky I used to drink pretty regularly: Glcnkinchie 10 year. Not cheap but not high end. I liked it a lot and drank it in my Kakumi Seiho sake cup (here).

Again, short on cash but decided to buy one bottle. Well, the 10 year apparently is no longer available bu 12 year is so een though it's more expensive, I decide to try a bottle. Disappointing.But winter is coming and I still like green Chartreuse, which before the imposition of the Zelensky surtax on everything. So the present story begins with me thinking about spending whatever for a bottle of green Chartreuse.

But then Taschen announces a new edition of their big Brueghel book and for whatever reason at a big markdown price (above). Should I or shouldn't I? I really want Brueghel in a bigger format. Maybe this book will not be large enough? try to convince myself I shouldn't buy it. I keep trying to convince my self to not get the book and accept the unsatisfactory little book I do have which is not nothing and beggars can't be choosers....

So I make myself a deal: I will forego the alcohol for the book which will provide longer lasting pleasure. And I order the book, summa cum trepidation. But then what do I find? That my wife has ordered an equally expensive book for my daughter for Xmas/Hannukah/EndOfYearGiftingHoliday.And one perhaps equal or only a bit lesser for one of her nieces but I decide to not even look up the price on that one. Daughter's connoisseurship level is not exactly Connaissance des Arts. And I was tormenting myself over a book of that price?

I thought the story ended ther but no, one more episode of the unending real lis soap opera I imagine I live in: "As the stomach churns". I think that daughter probably does not know how properly to open a book to protect its spine so I propose to wife she should t learn how properly to open an expensive book. BUT I SAY THIS WHERE JUST POSSIBLY DAUGHTER MIGHT OVERHEAR AND SPOIL THE SURPRISE! A felony! I dare no send wife a copy of the article from The New York Times I have saved about surprises: here; that might br capital offense. I think surprises are bad; everybody else seems to need them to keep from despairing of their lot in life. Rrose Sélavy: NIMBY.

So, Xmas 2022, farewell to whisky but looking forward to a book full of the living and the dead not prudes/prunes who have done much harm to me. 2022 was the year of the Zelensky war and 2023 promises more of the same unless it exscales to nuclear armageddon. And I hope to be able to continue to live in the new year, by which I mean being able to spend my days engaged with the humanities not less than living as a wage-slave as I had to do so long or maybe I didn't but I wa like K at the entrance to the Law? That's another idea, not a shard of of alienated/alienating labor, yes? If I had more money I would study Brueghel's paintings with a glass of green Chartreuse but not Glankinche, at least not their 12 year, irrespective of finances.

Aside: In the department of relatively inexpensive things, good cheese is also expensive. But I like commercial PollyO mozarella better than more expensive mozarellas and that it is really enjoyable with pecans on it which latter add significantly to the cost but I think it still comes out less than for gourmet cheese (wthout pecans). Curiously, neither alone has very much flavor nor even together, but thee texture and the combination of the two fairly bland flavors works very well. There are not many things I like in worldsurround I'm stuck in.

Aside: And in this 2022 'tis-the-season-to-be-stupid, I am not going to yet again as I have been doing for 70 years make the mistake of attending a group family Xmas celebration where I will be bored and fruatrated and just hoping it will get over with. I finally learned my lesson this Thanksgiving. All festivities celebrations, rituals, sacraments, all canned deviations from the everyday to try to distract from its affective even often proactively impoverishing poverty is ornament. [Only the act of creating new meaning has meaning and everything else has meaning only secondarily deriving from that act.]

As Adolf Loos said, in the 20th now 21t century, anybody who practices ornament is either a criminal or a degenerate who has no yet committed his crime (or, I would add, a person too deprived by his (her, other's) surround to have a choice). For once, I heartily agree with Melania Trump: here