daily news makes a post

1. I sent out holiday letters yesterday. B. didn't have time or energy to write one, so I did. This also means no cards included, because I don't quite get the card business. But I did hand-address all the envelopes and hand-sign all the letters, while re-watching "The Nine Tailors" on DVD. Although the season is supposed to be jolly, we did not have a great year and the letter is consequently mostly downbeat. But, as I said at the end of it, we wish everyone a happy holiday season anyway.

1a. Nevertheless I am tickled by Jon Carroll's suggestion for a seasonal income-generating sign by store cash registers: "We will stop playing this music for any purchase of $25 or more."

2. Tired of the trickling noise coming from one toilet, I managed after some poking around to determine that the cause was a fill valve that never entirely shuts off. The trickling sound was water spilling into the overflow pipe, at a rate I'd guess at about 2 gallons/hour. Not good. After further peering around both in the tank and in the hardware store, I was persuaded that replacing the mechanism was possibly within my limited handyman capacities. It was a bit dicey - cue the moment I'm lying on the floor, head wedged under the bowl, trying to see the stuck nut I'm attempting to fit the wrench around - but successful until the moment I turned the valve back on and water began spurting from the flex-metal supply line in all directions. Apparently it was too old to survive decoupling and recoupling intact. Now it was time to call the plumber: who not only came promptly and replaced the line efficiently, but who on seeing me in my stocking feet when I opened the door, took his boots off on the front mat! So no need to clean the carpet, as I've had to do after previous repair visits upstairs.

3. As reported by others, Roy Disney, son of Roy Senior and nephew of Himself, has died. He achieved the remarkable feat of looking simultaneously like both his father and his uncle, two very dissimilar-looking men, and the no less remarkable feat of masterminding Fantasia 2000, a movie I much enjoyed. The story of his asking James Levine if he'd be willing to conduct Beethoven's Fifth cut down to three minutes, and Levine's reply, "If it's the right three minutes, yes," reflects well on both of them.

I had a near-encounter with Roy Disney once. Years ago, someone left a message on my phone asking for a call back to his office. They didn't say who they were looking for, and I had some time explaining to them that whoever it was, they must have had the wrong number. If that was my chance for a brush with Hollywood fame, consulting on Fantasia or something, I've long since lost it.

4. gerisullivan linked to a video of four-hand guitar-playing. Well, that's amusing, because I also tagged a video of four-hand guitar a while ago and had been looking for an opportunity to share it.

5. athenais reports that she likes to say "Dude!" though I don't recall that she says it much around me. I've long wondered about that word; it flatly did not exist as a general term of reference or address in the school of my youth, and seems to have experienced its sudden rise to ubiquity among the age cohort about five years younger. My generation was post-hippie, and the word we had in its place was "man." Usage: "Hey, man; how's it going, man?" "Man" could be used of either sex. The plural of "man" was "guys." Usage: "Come on, you guys!" "Guys" was more frequently used by and of females than by or of males. Both these usages seem to have flatly disappeared among that younger cohort, and I believe the division is primarily generational rather than date-based. athenais nonwithstanding.