My apartment has never been cleaner. I thought I bought a vacuum/carpet-cleaner. It’s just a carpet-cleaner, but I tried to vacuum with it first, so when the hot water/soap mix was applied to the carpet it also left a trail of wet, gross lint. It was like chunky snail trail. It was disgustapating. But it dried and I used a dustbuster to clean it up. So now my carpet is nice and washed.

I have turned into my mom.

I’ve invented a new term. “Ret-con-llection.”

If Jason in the year 2050 goes back in time and gives 12 year old Jason $500, when does Present and 2050 Jason remember that event? It’s as if it always was, but that type of memory is a new one from our viewpoint (we saw the past where it didn’t happen and then the time-travel that changed the past.) Using the short-hand for “retro-active continuity” (now, 12 year old Jason has ALWAYS had that $500) the new term describes the set of memories of the original past AND the new past. For example, at the very end of Back to the Future III, Marty McFly is the only person who remembers his family as a bunch of losers instead of the group of yuppies he created. (Though I try not to think that in this new reality Marty would never have befriended Doc Brown, hence, no time-travel, hence no new cool family.) Marty’s memories of the original, loser family and his life before time-travel are his “ret-con-llections.”

I would like a DVD with all the sitcom episodes that have the characters in a talent show, or do a special Christmas episode either stealing A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life. I know Happy Days did all three.

The garbage bins and the dumpster behind my building (which serves all four apartments and the restaurant below) have been overflowing since Wednesday last week. Like some bizzaro Christmas urchin, I bolted awake this morning at the sound of a garbage truck. “Hooray, they’re taking the garbage away!” But it was not to be… still mounds of garbage.

I just had a stuffing and gravy sandwich. Mooohahhahah.

Now, that it’s December I can indulge in some of my favorite holiday movies and specials: Scrooge (the musical with Albert Finney), The Muppet Christmas Carol (with a wonderful somnambulant Michael Caine), John Denver & the Muppets: A Christmas Together, and lots of other dated material.

And I apologize for this: