Here is every national anthem in the world, combined. Don’t pretend you’re doing something so super-important right now that you’re too good to listen to this.

“A little portion of literacy is set to be served up alongside the cheeseburgers and fries at McDonald’s after the fast food chain committed to giving away 15 million books with its Happy Meals over the next two years […] McDonald’s has now committed to a new, long-term campaign backed by the National Literacy Trust.”
 — The cheap plastic toys in Happy Meals have been the targets of bans in San Francisco. McDonald’s stores in Britain are getting ahead by replacing the toys with cheap books.

I didn’t see a lot of movies this year; did I miss anything good? Oh, no reason.

Mr. Donald Jay Fagen, solo artist and lead singer of one of the most bizarrely polarizing bands in pop history, turns 65 today. You hate Steely Dan, fine, I’m sure you have your reasons, based on whatever kind of ignorance and impressionability guides your decision making process, but I happen to be a fan of the man and, spoiled with choice for what to put here on his birthday, I’ve gone with this. But, really, it could have been anything.

by Lauren Cerand

A series about recipes that may seem odd or outmoded and yet we’re curious to try!

I don’t recall the moment that blancmange first appeared in my world as a concept, but it was certainly in a book (although, spoiler, not Little Women, which I’ve never read). Perhaps Jessica Kirwin’s website Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, which devotes a full entry to the medieval dessert, essentially a milk pudding, gave me my first encounter. Or, it could have been when I had a petite crush on Maxime de la Falaise, reading anything I could come across about her online, right up to the fact that she once did an entire cookbook of outdated dishes called Seven Centuries of English Cooking, although I never ordered it. I have a recipe for swan, actually, in Jane (Duchess of) Buccleuch’s slim, fascinating 1979 volume, Strawberry Leaves and Syllabubs.

I think that I was poking around Bowne & Company, the old-fashioned stationers and letterpress shop that is the jewel of the Seaport, if not the city, one day. The first time I was there, in stepped an English man in a flawless Savile Row suit, accessorized perfectly with an umbrella, to buy a card. His appearance still seems a mirage to me, to this day, although it’s easy to see how he might have strolled a block over from Wall Street, or any one of the elegant cobblestoned lanes near Hanover Square.

At Bowne, I found A Practical Guide to Light Refreshment: A Collection of Nineteenth-Century Recipes, and one of them was blancmange. I splurged, and the first thing I did when I arrived home was track down a Victorian mold online. It was promptly lost in the mail for a month, which seemed appropriate, and by then I’d moved on to roasting two ducks at home in a heatwave (like geniuses do), and other adventures. I’ve had many a dinner party in the ten months since the mold arrived, but milk pudding seemed too intimate, too un-celebratory for a crowd, too much like comfort food. But one recent night, I was leaving a storied hotel bar uptown and clumsily tripped at the curb onto the street, scraping my leg and rattling my nerves in the process. So the next, rainy, cool, was a night for solace.

The first thing I noticed in reading over the recipe was the egg whites — the recipe called for 3. While I enjoy them in a White Lady cocktail, I wasn’t enthused by the idea of eating uncooked eggs in a cold pudding.

Once I made the decision to use whole eggs (cooking the yolks briefly), and cut the amount the sugar called for by half, as I do by habit, it seemed only fair to continue my experimental mood and happily go all the way by adding a spice beyond cinnamon, too.

I added star anise (best to count them in your hand before you toss them in, six or seven, as you’ll want to scoop them out again before you pour it in the mold), and some powdered clove.

Then I remembered a vial of spiced whiskey in my liquor cabinet, that Christine Cody, a.k.a. the Whiskey Chick, had sent. I poured it in.

I stirred the bubbling mixture for five minutes and went for a taste. I let it pour into my mouth, rolling off the back of the wooden spoon: a full-figured expansive warmth, with a spiced depth that made it seem even richer, more sensuous. Verdict: like tapioca for adults, and voluptuaries.

Of course, all of this boisterous nonconformity exacted its price the next day.

Without the egg whites to stabilize the form, or gelatin, another stand-by, there was nothing to hold things together. It tasted even better than it had the night before. But it didn’t look like much.

Lesson learned: sometimes there’s a reason that a dish endures for several hundred years, and if what you desire is to replicate it in its purest form, it truly is best to follow the directions exactly.

I may try it again later this winter, when chilly days stretch out and it seems as though there could be time for everything, and a chance to get things right. Maybe I’ll read Little Women, too.

Here is my extremely adapted take. If you’d like to try the classic, either pick up a copy of the cookbook, or find one of the versions readily available; The New York Times has one (see: “1876: New Jersey Blanc Mange”).

1 quart whole milk, as fat and natural as you can find it
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water
3 eggs, close to room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
six or seven star anise pods
1 tsp powdered cloves
1/4 cup spiced whiskey or similar

Mix the cornstarch with water. Heat milk to boiling and stir in cornstarch mixture. Lower heat to simmer for five minutes, stirring occasionally, while you mix eggs, sugar, salt and flavoring in a separate bowl. Add to pot and stir for five minutes, allowing the mixture to bubble but not burn. Remove star anise. Pour into individual ramekins or small bowls and serve whenever you’d like.

Previously in Recipes For Disaster: How To Make 17th-Century Delights: Whipp’d Syllabub

Lauren Cerand posts her occasional notes on living at LuxLotus.com.

★★★ A bucket of concrete, hanging on a cable from a tower crane, rose through the canyon-slice of morning sky down Amsterdam Avenue, from the yellow-pink horizon up through a gradient to blue, 30-some stories to the currently topmost slab of the rising building. Finally it cleared the shadow of its own construction, and sunlight hit the safety-orange of its upper surface. It swung in, did its work, and swung out again, over and down into the shade. Two hours later, it was still going, its curving bottom lips pursed against yellow-white where the yellow-pink had been. The afternoon light downtown was yellow too. Steam blew gently eastward. Down in the shadows, in the still, grimy space between buildings, a young red-tailed hawk perched on a cold metal railing, waiting to kill rats.

Staffers and free-lancers at two West Coast alt-weeklies are nervously awaiting whatever unpleasant news comes with the sale of those papers to local conglomerates. Like all of the once-mighty urban weekly papers, the SF Weekly and Seattle Weekly are struggling to survive in a time when it’s not at all clear what these kind of publications are supposed to do when all of their one-time informational and advertising monopolies — music and movie listings, sex personals, roommate ads, alternative news, restaurant reviews, anti-Republican ranting — have moved online.

In both cities, the one-time New Times and then Village Voice Media/Voice Media Group-owned papers will go to local publishers. The San Francisco paper joins with other freebies including the Examiner and the Bay Guardian; the Seattle paper joins Sound Publishing, Washington state’s “largest community news organization.” Layoffs are inevitable, as the papers will merge much of their operations.

Just a decade ago, New Times was on a rampage, collecting alt-weeklies in major U.S. cities and beating the Village Voice chain to eventual death. Years of predatory advertising practices and Justice Department actions followed most everything the company did — including, incidentally, my own involvement as editor of a not-quite-real Los Angeles Examiner weekly that was intended to rise from the ashes of the New Times LA shutdown when the parent company acquired LA Weekly from Village Voice Media.

Moving the headquarters of “Village Voice Media” to Phoenix, Arizona, was just one of the company’s more obnoxious moves. (In August, the New York paper was even moved out of the Village Voice building.) Now, Village Voice Media is nothing but the Internet porn ads company Backpage.com; the alt-weekly newspapers themselves, including the Voice, were recently divested to a holding company that is now selling off the remaining pieces of a once-powerful alternative media empire.

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. “Sometimes when we touch, the honesty’s too much.”

Dear Polly,

This may be one of those “What’s my problem? IS this is a problem?” problems.

I’m 28 and I’ve been single for six years. Very single. As in, years going by where I didn’t have much sex and little to no romance at all. I would tell you about my last relationship but it’s not that interesting and to be honest I don’t think about it much. My parents fought a lot when I was little and drama ensued for many years, but we all love each other and are mostly nice to each other. Shit’s pretty healthy and I’ve worked hard to make it that way. I exercise and paint, I have a good job in public relations, I love my friends, and I think I’m basically pretty and nice and interesting enough. Someone described me as popular the other day (yes, apparently adults do use this word) and it made me feel really weird and kind of guilty, but I had to admit it’s true. Just not with men.

And the thing is, I love men. Being in a committed relationship, having a life partner and some babies with that partner, is important to me. Fun is also important to me, and meeting new people and being open. So in the abstract, either being in a serious relationship or dating sounds good, but I just find the whole thing so, so stressful. I never even get close. I think it’s because as a kid I felt alone, so I thought a lot about finding the person who was my love and best friend forever but now it’s like I can’t get involved with someone without it feeling like a big deal. And by involved I mean, go on more than two dates. For six years.

I don’t want to be this way. I believe that even if some man broke my heart I would be fine. Look, I just typed it! My problem is I can’t stop freaking out. I love how you so often tell people to just chill out. I totally think you’re right, we tend to make problems for ourselves and overdo it on the being-in-control thing. But how do I not do that?

I made a list of the ways I’m weird which are preventing me from finding someone who really likes and understands me, then deleted the list because I realized I sound just like everyone else (probably there are men out there who like tequila and art museums and hockey). I know this is probably the most banal asking-for-advice letter ever, but being single is this big thing making me unhappy and I blame myself. Some things are just better with a boyfriend, like adopting a puppy and traveling to Asia and having sex and becoming a famous painter.

How do people meet each other and balance a reluctance to get involved with an inflated conception of love? How can I get myself to date someone who doesn’t immediately seem perfect? How can I practice relaxing so that my life is more interesting and I can get closer to having love like I always wanted? Do you think I am crazier than I’m admitting?

Very truly yours,

Locked Up Abroad

Dear LUA,

Although I agree that having sex is better with a partner, adopting a puppy is way better on your own. Do it now! Don’t wait until you’ve got some dumb boyfriend who loves Jack Russells or Weimaraners or some other high-strung, inbred dog. He’ll make you write the $1200 check to the country cousin at the demonic puppy mill, of course. Then he’ll be a total control freak about everything the dog does, thereby making it even more high-strung and reactive than it already was. Soon, your days will be filled with shouting and barking and yanking and bitching about cleaning shit off the floor, and you’ll slowly grow to loathe your dumb boyfriend and vaguely resent your jumpy, fear-biting dog (who has digestive issues and hip problems, to boot). And when your stupid boyfriend dumps you for his Bad News Jane coworker, Madeleine, he’ll insist that you keep the dog he ruined, because Madeleine already has two very possessive Shih Tzus.

You know what else is better on your own? Becoming a famous painter. Do it right now! Don’t wait until you’ve got some dumb older boyfriend who’ll always want to tell you which of your paintings are worthwhile and which aren’t working. He’ll stand around at your crowded art openings, shoving free brie and crackers into his gullet while holding forth on what a bunch of fake fucks are in attendance, and whenever your melodramatic (but meaty!) artist fanboys draw near, he’ll say something aggressive and repellent to scare them off. Plus, he’ll try to coach you on creating mystery around your “brand” by saying portentous but vague shit all the time, just because he took a class in how to obfuscate provocatively to the media when he trying (and failing) to get his MFA in Fine Arts way back when. “Don’t say ‘I’d been working so hard to find a core concept for my show,’” he’ll tell you, helping himself to your last cold Peroni. “No. Say ‘Death subsumes the mundane.’ Or ‘Never confuse emotional molting with integrity.’” Hours after that opening, you could be throwing back tequila shots with a sculptor who looks like this but instead you’re listening to your control freak boyfriend babble incoherently about intricacies of his fragile soul while puking into a trash can.

Finding that special anyone can seem so romantic when you’re younger. When you’re older, you look back on the most “romantic” times in your life — falling in love with this or that dipshit — and they don’t seem that romantic at all. But the times when you were single? Those were the truly romantic times! Not when you flirted with this or that stranger or put something in your mouth that didn’t belong there. No. When you painted the dining room in your rented apartment that excellent turquoise shade, or when you spent all weekend reading Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose just because you felt like it, or when you threw a dinner party and invited 10 people who didn’t know each other and made lasagna that was delicious and everyone got drunk and played the version of Celebrity where you use less and less words, and your friend Steve pantomiming Dodi Fayed has been emblazoned on your brain ever since.

You ask, “How can I practice relaxing so that my life is more interesting?” Are you so unskilled at relaxing that you have to practice before you can manage it? And who should find your life more interesting? Some imaginary male spectator? Fuck. I hate that guy already.

Look, I’m not trying to imply that you’re crazier than you admit. I don’t think you’re crazy at all. But it sounds like you’re a little high-strung, like a Dalmatian that really wants to please her harsh, overbearing master, but she can’t figure out how. His nasty tone seems to imply that everything she does is wrong. And as long as you expect your own prospects to “immediately seem perfect,” you’re going to apply the same impossible standards to yourself, thereby coming across to any man who meets you as a high-strung animal who’s trying very hard to behave.

Your project right now is to scrape that imaginary harsh possible-boyfriend voice out of your head forever. Focus on pleasing yourself. Tequila, art museums, hockey… You sound eminently appealing so far, like the adorable heroine of an insipid romantic comedy. There must be something legitimately unappealing about you. Chances are your flaws are closely related to what makes you the most interesting (to the right person). If you keep editing out the “maybe he’ll think this is dull” parts, and sidestepping the “maybe he’ll think I’m crazy” parts, your romantic comedy will be insipid. Think Jennifer Aniston, doing that terrible “Golly gosh!” thing she does, even though she’s far more convincing when she’s pissed.

There’s no question that some worthwhile man will love you eventually, whether you try hard to make that happen or not. What concerns me is your current inability to enjoy one of the most romantic times in your life. You must immediately start doing all the things that will be much less fun with a boyfriend. Trust me, you really are about to find someone great. The key is to really savor the time between now and then. SAVOR IT. List all of the stuff that’s best while you’re single: throwing interesting parties, staying up all night to read, watching as much hockey as you like, dying your hair purple, whatever.

And the next time you happen to meet someone interesting, don’t try hard to keep the so-called “weird” or “dull” or “crazy” parts of yourself hidden. Instead of worrying about whether or not he can tell how high the stakes are for you, just be extremely straightforward about who you are, and pay close attention to his reactions. If you say something that’s a little odd — odd in the way that you’re odd — don’t try to cover it up. Instead, watch and listen. Does he flinch? Is he turned off? If so, that doesn’t mean that you’re bad and will be alone forever. It means that he’s not worth your time.

I remember going to party soon after I’d finally figured this out. I was holding forth about something stupid and swearing a lot. “Ooo, potty mouth,” this cute guy said to me. I looked at him blankly, thinking, “Didn’t he swear half a second ago?” He got nervous. “Is this some kind of an act?” he asked. “Are you just showing off or are you really crazy? Are you crazy in bed, too?” In the past, I would’ve tried to cater to this guy’s imagination, or to correct his impression of me as a show-off. Instead, I told him, “I’m just your average bossy woman. I’m sure we’re not compatible.” This only made him more interested. But he kept making it clear that nothing I said made sense to him, and eventually he started to irritate and bore me. In other words, it was exactly like every bad two-year relationship I’d ever had, condensed into two hours. So efficient! After the party, I went home alone and ate a giant bowl of beet soup with some blue cheese on toast. Isn’t it romantic?

Of course I understand why you want to fall in love. Most of us want the same thing, and most of us aren’t all that great at pretending that we don’t care way too much about how every little encounter or date turns out. A lot of friends will advise you to pretend more, lie more, act like nothing matters. I don’t think that’s smart or good for you, and clearly those games of make believe are making you anxious. You have to own the truth — that you’d like to fall in love — and you have to make peace with the vulnerability inherent to that desire. You have to stand up for who you are. But you also have to embrace what you have, enjoy it, and revel in it. Your life is already very romantic.

So: Go get a puppy! But definitely get a mutt. Mutts know their place in the world, and they’re comfortable with their flaws. Mutts never try to be anything but what they are.

Polly

Hi Polly,

Since this is an existential advice column, I figured I might as well be the one to ask: Why keep doing this at all? If we are insignificant, if we are going to die, why keep living?

More importantly, why keep writing?

Thanks,

A Person

Dear Person,

You don’t have to be an important immortal to enjoy a salted caramel. Is the question really “Why keep living?” or is it “Why not keep living?” Are you suffering? Because I’m not. I like breathing air. I like the sound of the crows cawing in the trees outside my house. I want to finish this book I’m reading.

Sometimes everything seems pointless, sure. You can’t be a writer and not stare down the barrel of that gun regularly. When Philip Roth recently said in an interview that he sat down and read all of his work, from earliest to latest, to see if it was worthwhile, that gave me a shiver down my spine. I imagined myself as a very old woman, re-reading my extensive coverage of “Paradise Hotel,” and then pulling out a shotgun and blowing my brains out.

But fuck that. Why should our lives be deemed “significant” at all? What if we’re just doing what we do reasonably well, and working to get a little better each day? What about focusing on enjoying your fucking craft, and leaving it at that? Our culture has been so fixated on psychology and happiness for the past few decades that we all have bloated expectations. Our days are marked by the neurotic dissatisfaction that comes from a constant examination and reevaluation of what really, truly matters in the big scheme of things. We must upgrade every dimension of our lives and ourselves constantly or reveal ourselves as mediocre. Even the common exhortation, repeated from parent to parent, to make every moment count with your child, has the unique ability to suck the joy right out of every moment. Does this moment count enough? How about this one? Each moment cannot be so important without inducing a coronary.

When I accept that it’s all pointless and it will all end far too soon, I can’t see any reason not to enjoy it. I kiss my kids a lot. I stick my neck out more. I don’t mind that my ass is showing. I try things that I might never be any good at. I appreciate breathing the air, listening to the crows. And that salted caramel tastes so good.

Polly

Did the holidays leave you sluggish and bloated? Are you chronically dissatisfied, or do you smoke too much chronic? Write to Polly and find out!

Previously: Ask Polly: My Boyfriend’s Ex Is Making My Life Hell

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Ramón Peco.

Okay, there is obviously a lot more to this story than what the report indicates, so without making a comment on the rest of the circumstances I would just like to point out that — and pay attention; you might not think this is going to come in handy but when it does (and, trust me, as confident as you are now that this situation will never apply to you, in this life you will discover that things that you cannot even conceive of happen with such unpredictable ease that by the time you even register surprise you are already past the point of addressing the issue on your own) you will be glad that I brought it up today — if you ever find yourself handcuffed while wearing a leather mask with a gag, this is exactly the kind of enunciation you should use when calling 911. Dude comes through crystal clear.

“Police forced their way into an apartment in Germany after hearing what they described as a “child-like voice” calling for its mother and father. Instead of an abandoned toddler, they found a cheerful and very talkative parrot.”