I’m off soon to pick up some lights to string up in my condo. I may be an atheist, but I’m not above participating in some mainstream holiday festivities. Nothing wrong with bringing in a little color and sparkle into our lives to stave off the dreariness of the long winter ahead.
I’m a big fan of end-of-the-year lists relating to all things pop culture, so I’ll be tracking the Fimoculous website over the next month to get my fix. These lists usually point me to a couple interesting things that I might have otherwise missed over the course of the year.

I woke up this morning and saw snow steadily falling outside my window. I feel sorry for all the sheeple (yes, sheeple) swarming through the stores today. Not only do they have to be prepared to engage in physical violence for that last discounted flat-screen television, but they also have to contend with hideous traffic. The wild-eyed consumerism that infects people after Thanksgiving is a little creepy. I like shopping for people close to me, but I don’t feel the need to run the gauntlet of pushy, grabby lemmings just to save fifteen bucks on a sweater.

Over the last week or two, various people have been asking me about my Thanksgiving plans. When I explain to them that, like most years, I’m doing Thanksgiving solo, most people give me that “you poor thing” look that is usually reserved for news of dead pets or a bad breakup. Thanksgiving is apparently one of those days when you’re supposed to be with other people, and to spend it alone is considered both sad and a little weird. It’s a kind of well-intentioned peer pressure that seems to accompany this holiday, as well as Christmas. And I usually don’t feel like explaining the logistics of trying to go back to Wisconsin or the fact that any invitation from a friend here in the Cities would probably be complicated by an inaccessible home.
I’m quite happy to be doing my own thing, actually. I have some writing and several episodes of Lost to catch up on. I’ve spent a few holidays in the hospital and I think that makes these holidays alone seem like less of a big deal. It was in the hospital that I felt the most alone, the most cut off from the rest of the world. To spend Thanksgiving in my own home, with the knowledge I’ll see friends later in the weekend, seems more than acceptable to me.

It appears that The 19th Floor is being featured in some kind of on-line curriculum. Here are the instructions for the exercise:
Blogging—creating personal online journals—is increasingly popular as a method of self-expression and communication. But often entries are more personal than the bloggers’ friends and family might like. Check out a few blogs and think about The Golden Rule.
And then it lists my blog as one of the putative examples of a blog that does or does not adhere to the Golden Rule; I’m not sure which. I’ve never thought of this blog as intensely personal. In fact, I try to avoid the confessional style of narrative that I see on some other blogs. I may share personal details of my life, but not to the point where there is no distinction between this blog and my own interior life. I also didn’t like disclosing many details about friends and family, unless it’s something I don’t think they would mind me sharing in a public forum. In short, I think I’m a relatively responsible blogger. I’d be curious to know why the authors of this exercise decided to include my blog.
Not that I don’t appreciate the additional traffic, mind you.

Sometimes I think about switching careers and going into intellectual property/copyright law. With book publishers pissed about the ongoing expansion of Google Print and consumers pissed about the inclusion of destructive digital rights management software on music CDs, it seems like there’s plenty of work for IP attorneys. I didn’t have much appreciation for the subject in law school, but copyright law has such interesting implications for the stuff we create and how our creations are appropriated. Our culture is being increasingly driven by information and entertainment; the question of who controls this content and its means for distribution are going to become increasingly important in the coming years.
But I think I need to stay in health policy for a while longer, at least until we finally get a universal health care system.