★★★★ Down in the street, beneath the still-glowing apartment windows in the still-dark morning, there were umbrellas and a shine on the pavement. By dropoff time, though, the rain was just blowing lightly around the water-sheeted but usable schoolyard. A glimmer of brightness came over the late morning, an invitation to use the day, and then blue and sun appeared for a moment before blotchy cloud returned. It was worth going out into, still. On the way up out of the subway at 4, there were swaths of gold up in the buildings and the clouds were breaking and silvering.

Hybrids be quiet, a species is talking.

My family moved around a lot, but one constant at Christmastime at my parents’ house is Satsuma mandarins—in a fruit bowl in the kitchen, or in the toe of my stocking. They come into season in November, hit the grocery shelves just after Thanksgiving and they are the best citrus by about a mile and a half.

Satsumas are mandarins, but they are not to be confused with clementines, oranges, or even tangerines (more on that later). They’re sweet like honey, with just the tiniest bit of acid, and the flesh of the fruit itself—those pulp things are called JUICE VESICLES—is incredibly tender. Their skins are loose and almost leathery looking and they are insanely easy to peel, almost like they come pre-peeled from the inside. They don’t have much of that white pith stuff, also known known as mesocarp or albedo. They’re a perfect winter treat at any time of day and they’re so small and fun-size you can eat two or three of them.

YO DID I MENTION THEY WERE SEEDLESS?

Get out of my face with your Sweeties® and your Cuties®.

The Big War Over a Small Fruit

Cuties® are the mass-market paperbacks of citrus fruits, and by the way they are actually clementines. Clementines are technically a hybrid of the Mandarin orange species (Citrus reticulata) and the sweet orange, which is actually a hybrid between the pomelo and the Mandarin orange. Are you confused yet?

Citrus is the genus, but very few of the fruits we know are actual species—most of them are hybrids. Citrus taxonomy is wild (Google the Swingle system), but basically everything is part pomelo or part Mandarin or part Citron, mixed with some other shit. That’s how you get those Buddha’s hands things and finger limes. Yeah, finger limes. Alllll of these things are total fucking mutants.

Here is a helpful primer on Mandarins:

The master category that these fruits fall into is Mandarin oranges or “Mandarins.” Compared to oranges in general, Mandarins tend to be smaller in size, have a looser peel, and are less tart. They originated in the Far East and were originally exported through North Africa, where they were all tagged with the name “tangerine,” from the city of Tangiers. However, the name “tangerine” has become less generic and is now usually applied to only one kind of Mandarin orange as stores have come to market the different cultivars — so while all tangerines are Mandarins, not all Mandarins are tangerines.

Clementines are hybrids of Mandarin oranges and sweet oranges. But they’re often called “seedless tangerines,” which is admittedly confusing. Anyway, not to be racist or anything but Satsuma mandarins are a pure genetic treasure, and badass for many reasons.

The Satsuma’s Latin name is straight-up Sino-Japanese: Citrus unshiu. The Chinese name, Wenzhou migan, means “honey citrus of Wenzhou,” a city in the Zheijang Province. The English name for the fruit is the province in Japan it comes from, and it was brought to America by the clever Jesuits. They also brought the fruit to the U.S. by way of Louisiana.

They’re extremely cold hardy and can withstand major frosts. They don’t pack or travel too well because of that whole “loose skin” situation, so the quality control on these babes is A+, you basically get what you see (nobody likes a bad-citrus surprise). The Wikipedia entry for unshius reads, “the satsuma also has particularly delicate flesh, which cannot withstand the effects of careless handling.” Same.

Their skin and juice has a beautiful, deep red-orange color that is not unlike that of the yolk of a fresh and omegaful farm egg. Somehow this makes a ton of sense on the nature-ripeness scale of green to red, where green is a bitter, tough, tight, unripe fruit, and red is a tender and sweet fruit at the absolute peak of its deliciousness, before it turns and its sugars ferment into some sort of booze.

Cuties® and Sweeties® are first of all, branded, and second of all not very delicious or consistent. Sometimes those fuckers have seeds in them. Sometimes they’re all dry and tight and shriveled and neither juicy nor sweet. Sometimes they taste like nothing at all. Their skin is all taut and shiny and yes they seem convenient and they come in a cute box with a picture of a fruit getting UNZIPPED and they’re miniature fun-size, but they also have a website and a fucking Snapchat channel. Like I said, get out.

Behold, winter’s perfect, loose-skinned, thornless beauties. They grow from seed, and they take about eight years to produce fruit. Chōzaburō Tanaka, a Japanese botanist and biologist concluded the place of origin of Satsuma is in the Kagoshima prefecture of Japan, where it was a “chance seedling” of one of three possible citruses from Huangyan district of Zhejiang, in China, and appeared in the early Edo period, around the early seventeenth century.

Pick some up at the grocery store; I promise you won’t be disappointed. They’re perfect little berries of liquid gold, and for a brief second or three, eating one will make you feel happy. There’s also a little afterglow with the peel, which gives off a lovely, round perfume. Then you throw it all away and get on with your miserable life. Happy Holidays!

Some suggestions for your next protest event.

In New York on Monday, I attended a rally for women and allies outside of Donald Trump’s Columbus Circle hotel. The idea was to gather female-identified people and their supporters in one place to protest the president-elect on his own turf, and to that end it was a success. But when you get as broad as “women” and “allies” with your attendees, there are going to be differences in approach. At one point, while a circle of communists nearby banged on a drum and chanted “America was NEVER great!” a clutch of women behind me (not dissimilar-sounding from Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s “Portlandia” bookstore characters), aired their grievances.

Women March On Trump Tower As Part Of Nationwide ‘Women & Allies’ Protest

“We need to talk about specific issues. What’s a chant we can do about Russian intelligence?” one asked.

“What rhymes with cyber hacks?” her friend replied.

They eventually workshopped a chant they were happy with and tried to shout it over the communists’ singing, but it never caught on. The result was a bunch of people shouting different messages over one another loudly. In other words: an un-unified look.

I’m by no means a seasoned protester, but I’ve marched in a few Black Lives Matter demonstrations over the years and didn’t appreciate how organized and singularly voiced they were until observing yesterday’s event. Where previously I’d felt like I was folding myself into a well-oiled machine and picking up on more experienced people’s cues, the women’s march felt scattered and directionless.

The sounds from the organizers’ bullhorn speakers didn’t reach the majority of the crowd, so people were making up chants as they went, testing the waters to see how many people nearby agreed strongly enough to join in. Sometimes something would resonate and the whole group would pick it up, other times the creator would feebly shout alone for a few repetitions until getting lost in the noise. The vibe was “polite writers’ room”—everyone ready for an idea but unwilling to throw one out there.

So in the interest of clarity, here are the chants I heard at my rally, rated by how much I’d recommend them for your own:

Racist, sexist, anti-gay
Donald Trump go away

8/10. This one is easy enough to pick up after you’ve heard it a time or two, and it’s a good one to use when you’re marching past people with cell phones who seem skeptical.

Women’s rights are under attack
What do we do? Stand up, fight back

6/10. It’s a mouthful, but people really got on board once they figured out what was being said.

No hate, no fear
Immigrants are welcome here

8/10. It’s a little clunky, but it’s also inclusive and goal-oriented.

Show me what democracy looks like
This is what democracy looks like

10/10. This is a standard call-and-response that you can repeat over and over without getting tired, and it’s also a great reminder that protesting is a necessary part of our governmental process. Eventually the back-to-back Ls for “looks like” starts to wear on you, but that’s a really delayed eventually.

We [beat] are [beat] the popular vote

10/10. Cuts to the chase and people pick it up no problem.

This is the season
To say no to treason

3/10. A little weak all around imo.

We hate Donald Trump!

0/10. Don’t do this at an event where you’re protesting someone else for being hateful, it’s bad.

Pay your taxes!

10/10. Easy to understand, easy to repeat, and something a president should for sure do.

You’re fired

3/10. This didn’t get much attention at my rally, but in the right environment I think people could get a kick out of it.

My body, my choice

10/10. Another one that’s easy to understand and repeat.

The people united will never be defeated

10/10.

Not my president!

4/10. Kind of redundant given the nature of the event, no? People enjoy it, but you could def be saying more.

Hey-hey, ho-ho
Donald Trump has got to go

6/10. You feel like you’re at a high school football game, and after yelling it four times you’ll want to stop, but it’s catchy and fun enough while it lasts.

The only thing I know is how happy I am.

After Donald Trump won the presidency more than a year ago, I, like many of my friends, vowed to cease paying attention to news for a while, fearing that the steady stream of depressing stories would be too much to bear. I figured my informational hiatus would last a week, maybe two. But I soon found that life without The New York Times, Twitter, or (perish the thought) cable news was undeniably brighter than it had been before. So I made a drastic but necessary decision: I’d stick with my news-blackout regimen indefinitely. After setting some ground rules with friends — no discussing creeping authoritarianism at dinner!! Let’s just talk about what shows we’re catching up on! — it became surprisingly easy to navigate life without the dismal drumbeat of current events in the background. Soon enough, following the news at all seemed just as emotionally wasteful as those hours I’d spent marveling at Nate Silver’s smugness last fall. And my newfound focus on laughing, loving, and utter ignorance has made 2017 one of the best years of my life.

Every day since the election, I’ve begun my mornings with a little light meditation (trite but effective mantra: “ignorance is bliss”) before opening my internet browser to Google.com — their doodles tend to make me laugh and think. Then I head over to ESPN, eBay, the John Wick message boards — all the sites I used to frequent, minus the ones that might stab me in the brain with reality. To guard against anything penetrating the cracks of my tightly sealed delusion fort, I installed a filter that removes phrases like ”Nazis,” “norms,” “democracy,” “nuclear,” “press crackdown,” “it happened here,” “Chris Hayes beaten to death on live television” and several others, just to be on the safe side. When I get home from work, I usually watch a few “Law and Orders” from the mid-’90s followed by Jimmy Fallon, whose unshakeable aversion to substance is perfect for the new me. The other night, he did a delightful hip-hop version of “Sweet Home Alabama” with Ted Nugent and a totally game Mike Pence, and… Well, you should just YouTube it.

One of the highlights of the year was my trip to Berlin, where many of my more politically active friends have relocated in the last few months. (It’s so much more affordable than New York, and so centrally located!) Some people, like my friend Rebecca, took off in such a hurry that I didn’t even know they were gone until I received encrypted texts from them, invariably with messages like “I made it. I’m safe.” When I arrived for my visit, she and my other friends seemed a bit morose at first, but after we all ingested some pure MDMA, they were happy to avoid talking politics and reminisce about what they called the “before-times.” There was one awkward moment when I walked in on Rebecca watching a livestream of something on her laptop, weeping and repeating the words “I can’t believe this is happening in my country” over and over. I wiggled out of that one by responding, “And I can’t believe how cheap these doner kebabs are! I love this town!” I stayed in a hostel for the rest of my trip, but they’re more like regular hotels in Berlin, so it worked out pretty well.

I started seeing a great girl named Alice in the spring, and conveniently enough, she has a fetish for people who don’t read the news. She says my complete lack of knowledge of what’s happening in the world turns her on, and who am I to deprive her of such pleasures? I admit it took a while to get used to her chanting “You know nothing! You know nothing!” at me in bed, but the initial discomfort was a small price to pay for a zesty sex life. When she introduces me to her friends, she often says, “He has no idea how bad things have gotten,” and I can’t tell if it’s a joke or not, but I play along.

Work has been pretty much the same. As far as I can tell, outside events have barely made a ripple in the world of high-risk mortgage trading.

Let’s see, what else? I’m so glad I got to see Hamilton before it abruptly closed as a result of what a smiling cop outside the theater informed me were “massive fire code violations.” Adored the show, but how could they overlook something as basic as customer safety? Oh well. The show that’s replacing it, “Trump Has A Huge Cock: An American Musical” looks pretty bland, but maybe it’ll surprise me.

There were some downsides to 2017. I don’t have health insurance anymore, though it’s hard to really call that a “loss” when I haven’t gotten sick once. (Not counting the persistent numbness on the left side of my body, which I will get checked out as soon as I hit my GoFundMe target.)

Since the last paragraph, Alice and I have relocated to the 7th Ave. subway station, for what she mischievously says is a “temporary re-location event.” Perhaps it’s connected to the assault rifle-bearing soldiers I’ve begun to spot frequently around the neighborhood, whom Alice has assured me are merely enthusiastic LARPers. Or maybe it has something to do with the blood-red pamphlets that keep floating down from the sky, warning all residents to “LEAVE NOW” in an unholy jumble of English and Mandarin. (Alice’s explanation: viral marketing for the new James Bond movie.) In any case, I’m getting a lot of adult coloring done down here, and a hiatus from all those damn screens isn’t the worst thing.

Subway-station living would be even better if it weren’t for all the people, many of whom insist on yakking on about world events, in direct violation of my policy. This has made for some uncomfortable encounters. Just today, I was in high spirits after a particularly gratifying round of coloring when a gaunt, toothless man tried to engage Alice and me in conversation. “You know, ever since Trump launched…” he began. I cut him off right there, as I have so many times before. “No news,” I said firmly. “I’m just not interested.” He grimaced and looked away, but I kept on grinning. Not knowing is the best.

Follow Benjamin Hart on Twitter, please.

The planet doesn’t care if you say Happy Holidays.

Are you familiar with the War on Christmas? It’s the idea that, in these fraught times, mainstream culture is trying to erase Christianity from the Christmas season. The word “holiday” is a big point of contention in this war. Holiday cards and holiday parties instead of Christmas cards and Christmas parties are an affront. Starbucks cups, for some reason, are another popular battleground for many pontificators. But there’s one source of anti-Christmas activity getting a lot less coverage—take a peek at this recent animal news:

• Squirrels in Boston keep chewing through the Christmas lights on the city’s big tree. Every year, the city of Boston lights a big tree in the Common for people to visit and generate content beside. This year, though, the lights on their 47-foot white spruce keep going out. Apparently local squirrels are biting into the wires because they love the taste of copper—but couldn’t it also be that they’re trying to destroy everyone’s Christmas cheer?
• Global warming is causing reindeer to shrink. Warmer climates mean more rain than snow during the Arctic winter, which means the primary sources of deer food are either freezing and thawing over and over again, or covered in mud from the runoff. Less food means smaller reindeer, and smaller reindeer means fewer successful pregnancies. So the worldwide reindeer population is effectively shrinking while it’s shrinking. If all of that sounds too hypothetical, the BBC just reported that Earth’s largest reindeer herd has lost 400,000 of its 1 million members in the last 16 years. Is climate change… anti-Christmas? In order to save Santa’s business model, do we need to… save the environment?

I’m not saying all Boston squirrels and the entire planetary ecosystem might be anti-Christmas, but it’s certainly worth looking into.

Don’t let them make you feel bad about not being passive enough

We have a problem, America:

“Consumers face a dizzying array of entertainment choices that include streaming video such as Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Netflix; cable channels and apps from outlets like HBO and Showtime; YouTube; and as many as 28,000 podcasts. With them all offering uncountable hours of addictive programming, how is a listener or viewer supposed to keep up? For some, the answer is speed watching or speed listening — taking in the content at accelerated speeds, sometimes two times as fast as normal.”

Relax: You don’t have to watch or listen to everything.

You don’t have to read everything.

You don’t even need to be aware of everything.

The secret of everything is that very little of it is very good. The problem is more things look better than they used to, so anyone with an interest in selling you a product (which in some cases includes themselves, as “influencers”) can make a compelling case that everything’s amazing, because seeming slightly better than the crap that we got when there was less of it available and more time to notice its flaws is, in our age of lowered standards and heightened demand, somehow the equivalent of actual artistic achievement.

We are so terrified of being bored for even a second that we elevate the most pedestrian of pursuits into unprecedented accomplishments so we won’t feel guilty about the time we spend with them. We tell ourselves that discussions we would wander away from if they happened at a party are, by virtue of being broadcast into our ether, worth cancelling plans to listen to so that we can be aware of the conversation. We force ourselves to have opinions about things that nobody needs to have opinions about and then, finding ourselves with opinions at the ready, we share them at everyone else.

It is okay to be bored. It is okay to not know about podcasts and television shows. You don’t have to read the new Jonathan because everyone else is reading the new Jonathan. You’re not going to enjoy that movie as much as you are being told you will or as much as you will guilt yourself into thinking you should.

If you find yourself watching and listening to things at twice the speed it is time to admit you have a problem. The problem is of course with society, but the first step to changing things comes from you. Stop watching things you don’t need to watch. Stop listening to things you don’t need to listen to. Stop paying attention to things that do not need attention. Be aware that almost everything being pushed at you falls into those categories. Most importantly, stop going on about all these things to make other people feel the same pressures. Stop liking and sharing. Right after you like and share this.

That was a whole lot of Monday, huh?

I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad tidings but it is only Tuesday, and while normally you would say something in response to that notification such as, “No shit, this modern world is full of calendars and other digital reminders of precisely what part of the week we find ourselves in to the extent that it is almost impossible to be ignorant of the day,” I feel fairly confident that even if you were aware of what moment we were at you still confronted it with a degree of incredulity, because the sheer slowness of the days seems almost without precedent. I would make a joke about time moving backwards but at this point nothing that could happen in 2016 would surprise me and I don’t want to give anyone ideas. Anyway, it is only Tuesday, Christmas remains close to two weeks away and the very possibility of you making it to lunchtime seems remote at this juncture. Let me assure you of this: You will get there. It will not be pleasant, but it will happen. That is all I can do for you right now.

Oh, I can also do this: Here’s music. It’s by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Remember Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? You must be old and have an amazing recollection for what even back then was a shockingly brief moment in time. Anyway, this sounds exactly what you would expect a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah song to sound like, and there is something comforting in that. Enjoy.

Shhhh, shut down your brain

I promise that soon enough I will get it together and start assembling my “good music from this shitty year” collection, but seeing as the extent of my abilities at this point seem to be stuck on “stare slackjawed at Twitter while wondering when the bright-light-and-goodbye blessings of a tactical nuclear exchange will bring an end to it all” I will instead direct you to the lovely playlist below, which you can see in full here. There is a lot of ambient brain-smoothing sound here and if I know you at all I know that your brain needs a whole lot of smoothing right now, so just sit back and let the smoothing happen. Enjoy.

★★★★ The flat pale blue of the sky and the river became a flat pale gray, gently and inexorably. The wind was light enough to permit errands with no suffering, even as the gray became heavier. Airplanes flew along under the ceiling. The promise of the chance of snow kept being pushed back, but after dark the older boy came back from his piano lesson with the news that the snow had come. The younger one put on his shoes and went down to investigate. Little flakes, the size of glitter, were blowing through the lights. A man with a child reported that the snow was sticking to the cars, if anyone wanted to scoop some off. It was sticking to the plantings, too, and the five-year-old found it on the railings as well, swiping it off them, one by one, till his bare hands were so cold he needed to go back upstairs.

A close reading of Trader Joe’s latest “Fearless Flyer”

Sure as the sun rises and sets, Trader Joe’s sends out a new flyer every so often. It’s actually not clear what the print schedule is and it’s definitely not what I would call “regular.” Also there are numbering issues. Only two of the last four FFs we reviewed had Volume and Issue numbers, and both of them were identical (Volume 10 or “X”; Issue 1 or I). So that part seems completely made up, disappointingly enough. (Here I was, picturing a library full of bound volumes at HQ in Monrovia, CA). We had an August/September, an October, a Thanksgiving Edition, and now a Holiday Guide. My best guess is TJ’s fell prey to the same budget cuts as all the other glossy monthlies and is now at 10x/year?

This month’s edition is a 24-pager, full color. The trim size is about 8 1/4 by 10 1/2. There are lots of little illustrations by at least three different artists with no cohesive or discernable overall style, though one little martini glass is doing its best impression of a spot illustration in The New Yorker.

There’s an inexplicable cat cartoon that strikes me as a little hostile? The girl cat clearly does not want the boy cat’s attention and he’s like “yeah, but the holidays!” Typical male behavior.

A major theme when it comes to Trader Joe’s is, ahhh, how shall I put this? Well, you know how most of the items (about eighty percent) are sold under its own generic label, the Trader Joe’s brand? They’re much cheaper, yes, and that’s because they’ve cut out the middleman or whatever, but they also required the brands they DO work with to keep their relationship hush-hush. The company is notoriously secretive and vague. It refers to its employees as “crew members” with shippy titles like “Merchants” and “Mates” (store managers are “Captains”). You, Resident, are the recipient of this publication. The same goes for when they refer publicly to their suppliers. In a writeup for their Peppermint Chocolate Bar (no cutesy name, hmm), they refer to “a boutique chocolate maker in the Mid-Atlantic region.” Jingle Jangle Ice Cream (sweet cream ice cream packed with chocolate pretzels, popcorn, and peanut butter cups) was reportedly suggested by “a Crew Member in one of our stores, in an email whose subject line read, ‘Possible big idea for next holiday.’” It’s not clear whether this story is true, but which is worse: anonymizing a fake employee, or never getting named credit for a seasonal Trader Joe’s product that probably sells decently well? I would be surprised if said Crew Member saw a fair share of the proceeds, or got free ice cream for life.

Let’s move on to the real heart of the Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer, its dorky-ass voice. This first example I actually saw in person in my local Trader Joe’s store, because contrary to tonal indications I do actually patronize TJs and enjoy its blandly named products. Right now one of the only things in my refridge is a tube of ready-to-bake jumbo cinnamon rolls with vanilla icing—have you ever had them? They’re outrageously good. I tease because I know and love Trader Joe’s, and for some reason I always expect a little better from its merch copy. So when I see a sign that says It’s Sedimentary, My Dear Cookie advertising a jar full of cookie mix, I want to die. First of all, my number one association with “sediment” is “sand” and number two is dirt. Mmm, love to taste the grit of light brown sugar between my teeth! No thanks. Second of all that’s the actual name of the product.

In an entry for Salty Honey Toffee Milk Chocolate Covered Crackers after a brief and self-referential discussion about an ellipsis in a headline (not gonna go into it), the copywriter considers the “very simple, blank canvas type of cracker.” The very next sentence, I swear to God, reads as follows:

Because of its tabula rasa nature, the cracker base makes perfect sense — you get crunch, but not much additional flavor to interfere with the delightful sweetness of the toppings.

Ex-fucking-scuse me? The cracker is a blank slate? And a flavorless one to boot? This is rude to both ancient Romans as well as crackers. The entry continues:

In an inspired finishing touch, a dusting of ground coffee manages to complement and complete the flavor profile.

Manages! So glad the coffee decided to show up.

Many if not most of the items highlighted in this month’s issue of FF are indulgences of one kind or another. I would say the bulk of it, maybe seventy-five percent, is items containing either chocolate or cheese. Like the Chocolate Cherry Danish, which is—unlike most Trader Joe’s products—extremely huge and pretty expensive? It’s $4.99, which seems low until you realize that’s the price for one single Danish. And also that Danish weighs 18 ounces!!!!! Good luck not feeling horrible after eating one.

There’s a cheese spread (haha, get it, oh no, I’m lapsing into TJ’s style) with what we could generously call an…illustration? Or perhaps it’s an infographic. No, there is no precedent. This thing is a big two-dimensional wedge of pale yellow cheese (possibly domestic Swiss, though the holes are also filled in with color, which is problematic), slapped with a caption of sorts in title case font? I won’t read it all for you but I will say that it involves the concept of “slitting” cheese, which is not something I was raised to do.

Repeating a theme we saw at Thanksgiving, TJ’s encourages you to Take A Dip Into Trader Joe’s Fondue. Once again I must insist that I was not raised to do such monstrous things with food.

Also in the realm of the terrifying and possibly repulsive is their Raspberry Chipotle Sauce. I say “their” because technically the product name is prefaced by Trader Joe’s but the text refers to “our supplier, located in Maine.” Said supplier is “expert” at combining flavors “to winning effect” so I assume that is some sly reference to the fact that the supplier may or may not have also won a local chili competition and may or may not in fact be your retired Uncle Vernon who lives in a cabin in Maine and mixes sauces together in his spare time.

Anyway, that’s all we’ve got time for this week, but we’ll leave you with a final parting logic test. Why would you create a handy dandy holiday shopping list for your readers, completely with check boxes, and include the page on which the reader can find said item? To keep them in a perpetual loop of reading your terrible copy? To keep them engaged with your content? Honestly the way this is formatted, it looks like you want me to buy 20 Poinsettias, 11 Bacon Wrapped Porchetta Roasts, and 18 Gingerbread Dog Treats. It’s all just part of the Trader Joe’s mystique!