Jackie Danicki

I couldn’t resist quoting more than one from a whole raft of good quotes that my friend Ben Casnocha typed up from Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone essays.

This is the conundrum of the individual confronting masses about which he can’t help knowing more than he’d like to know: I want to be alone, but not too alone. I want to be the same but different.

On depression:

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression’s actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it.

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I, for one, could not be happier about that. There’s SO MUCH to do. (Oh, and this is the last night you can vote for Qik in the Crunchies. Please do, if you want! Thank you!)

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This is what January 1 looked like in my backyard (click the thumbnail for a larger picture):

It reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend Rish recently.

RISH: How the heck did you ever live in Ohio, where it gets really cold in winter?
ME: I didn’t know any better!

Warm climates are for keeps.

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I try not to ask too much of readers of my personal blog, but this is something pretty important to me.

Qik has been nominated as the Best Mobile Startup of 2008 in the Crunchies. I would love for us to win this. If you are as big a fan of Qik as I am, please vote for us! You can vote once per day until midnight PST on Monday, January 5. Thank you!

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This morning, over the breakfast table:

ME: Another Oprah book scandal?
HILLARY [visibly pissed off]: Yeah, get this. It’s the ultimate meet-cute story. When he was supposedly in Buchenwald -
ME: BUCHENWALD?!
HILLARY: Wait, it gets better.

She blogs it here, and Nancy here. I have nothing else to add to their nail-hammering posts, except this: I was going through the archives of the Guardian’s “This much I know” feature two nights ago, and came across James Frey’s answers. I suspect this quotation might rankle a bit with the likes of Nancy and Hillary, two of my favorite memoir writers.

If I’m the guy who destroyed the memoir genre, I’m not unhappy about that.

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Mine was excellent, how about yours?

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To remember Pinter’s “contributions to the arts” is a bit like hearing Hitler has died and responding “Ah, the man was very good to animals and loved his dog”. I think it is a breathtaking measure of modern Britain’s social decadence as it implies being an apologist for well documented mass murderous evil can be counter balanced by a talent for deft word construction.

Most of the obituaries say Pinter was a “tireless and outspoken political advocate” and leave it at that… well so was Joseph Goebbels and he too had a way with words.

…To think a man’s art somehow outweighs his support for a mass murdering ethno-fascist monster… To think something as trivial as a few plays gives such a person a free pass… that is moral decadence.

When Leni Riefenstahl died, many obits praised her ground breaking cinematography, but very few (as in none I ever read) glossed over her Nazi past and ‘unfortunate’ beliefs. Yet Pinter supported the people who gave us the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ but is described as “an impassioned political advocate”. Well as I said before, so was Joseph Goebbels, yet one rarely reads a description without a negative judgement attached.

…I am just doing my little bit to help make sure [Pinter] is not just remembered for “literary merits” but for the fact he wanted to free Slobodan Milosevic whilst people were still being found in the mass graves in the former Yugoslavia that his buddy was responsible for filling.

-Perry de Havilland, in the comments to this post

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If you’ve ever lived in England, I think you’ll appreciate what my friend Jacq has to say about Great Yarmouth and the surrounding towns. It really made me laugh out loud. Sadly, I actually miss that wholly English dreariness!

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The candy is made, the first presents have arrived, and I get to spend the day with some of the best people I know (and their super cute kids). It’s hard to be a Scrooge with circumstances like this!

That said, I do think this is the roughest time of the year. I do not, in general, enjoy it all that much. So whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Festivus, Kwanzaa, some other holiday, or nothing at all, I hope you’re not in too much pain. If you are, just wait till tomorrow.

And on that cheerful note: Happy holidays!

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…and the minds of others. From Lifehack, which lists Qik in its Top 10 Web Apps of 2008:

Cue another of my “Wow look how far the Internet has come!” moments here — a few years ago it was a pain in the backside getting a video to load in the browser, and now we can fling ‘em at each other like it’s a food fight.

I still use our product, or see how others are using it, after all these months and think: “Wait - we can really do this?” It’s easily the coolest thing I’ve ever been involved with, and I love that my friends keep telling me that they can tell how much I love what I do and the people I work with. It’s impossibly cheesy but true.

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I’m not Jewish, but many people close to me are. I’ve always been fascinated with Judaism and am daunted by how much I have to learn. (That said, I am sure even the most learned Torah scholars feel the same way.) I quited liked this Chanukah message from Naomi Ragen, passed on by the friend who has taught me the most about his religion:

Chanukah begins on the longest and darkest night of the year. We commemorate one of the darkest periods in our history, when the Greeks destroyed our Temple, raped Jewish brides on their wedding night, and forbid the practice of the Jewish religion or the learning of Torah. We mark our victory over this enemy by lighting up the dark night with a candle, which not only gives light, but is capable of spreading light by lighting a thousand other candles without itself being diminished.

The second miracle of Chanukah, after our amazing victory, came about because one bottle of undesecrated oil was found in the Temple, enough to last for one day and instead lasted for eight. But we don’t celebrate this holiday by pouring oil into a container and watching it burn for eight days. Instead, we light one candle. And when that burns out, we come back the next night and light two candles. And when they burn out, we come back again and light three candles..and four.and five.and six… and so on. I want to wish every one of you who is suffering, who has experienced loss or pain or heartache or illness, that this year Chanukah will bring light back into your life. I bless you that when life knocks you down, you will get up the next morning twice as strong. When it knocks you down again, get up the next morning three times as strong! I wish this for you as individuals, and for the Jewish nation as a whole, wherever our people may be.

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The idea that making smart investments which prove lucrative is tantamount to getting paid for “doing nothing” is pretty poisonous. It’s typical gutter press, but also strikes me as a sentiment that is widely accepted as true by many people. What a shame.

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Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Qik’s alpha launch. Tonight, we party.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I’d love to see you at our celebration. It’s going to be super chilled out and fun, with some of my favorite people on the planet at The Little Fox. (There will also be food and some sponsored drinks, plus we’ll be giving away an XBox 360 and super cute Qik swag.)

Hope to see some of you there!

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Does your heart break at the thought of deprived kids who will get no presents this holiday season? Mine, too. (Proof, I suppose, that I have one.) Thanks to the ease of buying from an Amazon wishlist, you can do something awesome about this without getting up from the computer.

Each year The Family Center provides thousands of toys to their families during the holiday season…Because of the generosity of our partners, we are able to give every single child at least three gifts ranging from clothing to art supplies to action figures.

Those receiving Family Center services represent New York’s most vulnerable populations and approximately 95% live below the poverty line. Many have trouble putting food on the table, let alone buying holiday presents for their children. These holiday gifts give joy to children who normally live in the midst of chaos and grief.

Just go to the Family Center’s Amazon wishlist, buy a gift (or several), and you’re done. You can even get free shipping on many of the gifts. Thanks to Stephen for the heads-up. (And thanks again to all of you who already did something wonderful by helping me exceed my goal in filling my online kettle for the Salvation Army.)

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