As John Lennon would sing, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done?” And since today is the last day of the year on the Shire Calendar, I thought that, in the spirit of Lennon’s lyric, I’d take a look at the first post of each month for 2010, discounting the automatic Twitter archives because they’re not really useful for anything at all, and then comment on what the post was, and what it means. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
January<\/b>: On A Letter To Myself, Aged Sixteen<\/a>: “Dear Allyn, aged sixteen, in many ways, you and I are strangers.”<\/p>\n I think this was one of the more interesting and important posts I made in 2010. To make a long story short, an anthology of letters by famous people was published in the UK of the letters they would write, with advice and whatnot, to their sixteen year-old selves. So I wrote one to myself.<\/p>\n February<\/b>: On Non-Standard Punctuation<\/a>: “In my quest for new and ever-more-interesting ways to communicate, I have discovered non-standard punctuation.”<\/p>\n Interrobangs and snarks.<\/p>\n March<\/b>: On More Heritage Foundation Tomfoolery<\/a>: “For reasons that pass beyond my understanding, the Heritage Foundation has sent me another<\/i> survey.”<\/p>\n The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank whose one and only useful contribution to American society is the outline of the health care reform that Massachusetts passed a few years ago and that Congress passed for the nation earlier this year, sent me a survey about taxation and my thoughts on it. If you’ve read my vehement opposition to the tax plan President Obama worked out earlier this month<\/a>, you can probably guess that the Heritage Foundation and I have vastly<\/i> different opinions on taxation.<\/p>\n April<\/b>: On Puzzling Reading<\/a>: “I’m reading P.D. James’ The Children of Men<\/i>.<\/p>\n I gave up halfway through. I just didn’t care<\/i>.<\/p>\n May<\/b>: On Westwood One\u0092s The Lost Lennon Tapes Radio Documentary<\/a>: “Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I\u0092ve recently been listening to The Lost Lennon Tapes<\/i>, a 200-odd hour long documentary on the life and music of John Lennon that was broadcast on the Westwood One Radio Network in the late-1980s.”<\/p>\n No real comment about this one. I have a stack of CDs that I’m still working through.<\/p>\n June<\/b>: On Walking Through Rain<\/a>: “My last hour at the office, the skies grew ever darker.”<\/p>\n One of my ruminations on weather. I love this line — “The world smelled of dust.”<\/p>\n July<\/b>: On Writing To Soundtracks<\/a>: “To an outside observer, my last.fm profile has gone wonky this week.”<\/p>\n I’d discovered the soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings<\/i> fanfilm, The Hunt for Gollum<\/i><\/a>, and I’d found it to be worthwhile writing music. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n August<\/b>: On Sherlock<\/i>‘s “A Study In Pink”<\/a>: “‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.'”<\/p>\n Some commentary on the first episode of Steven Moffat’s modern-day Sherlock Holmes series for the BBC.<\/p>\n September<\/b>: On Speculations About Doctor Who<\/i>‘s Game-Changer<\/a>: “As I wrote about a few days ago, the upcoming episodes of Doctor Who<\/i> will be split into two seasons — season six (7 episodes) at Easter, season seven (6 episodes) in the autumn.”<\/p>\n Obviously, without Doctor Who<\/i> my life would be incomplete. \ud83d\ude09 And since I love to theorize about Doctor Who<\/i>, I theorized about what might happen Who<\/i>-wise in 2011.<\/p>\n October<\/b>: On Recording a Drabble Podfic<\/a>: “I quite enjoy writing drabbles, short stories of exactly 100 words, and a month ago I walked through my creative process in writing a Merlin<\/i> drabble.<\/p>\n I wrote a Merlin<\/i> drabble in a Fritz Leiber style, and then I recorded it as an exceedingly brief podfic.<\/p>\n November<\/b>: On a Sherlock Holmes\/Dracula Radio Play<\/a>: “Sherlock Holmes.”<\/p>\n No, really, that is<\/i> the entirety of the first sentence. The BBC had put the radio play of Loren D. Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula<\/i> online for a week. I wanted people to know about and listen to it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n December<\/b>: On a Fallow Period<\/a>: “I haven\u0092t had a lot to say recently.”<\/p>\n Yes, but posting the unbroadcast Doctor Who<\/i> dance routine from Craig Ferguson’s show made the post worthwhile. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n A joyous Yule, Shire-folk, and a prosperous New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As John Lennon would sing, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done?” And since today is the last day of the year on the Shire Calendar, I thought that, in the spirit of Lennon’s lyric, I’d take a look at the first post of each month for 2010, discounting the automatic Twitter archivesContinue reading “On 2010 In Review”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[779,4093],"class_list":["post-5526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-779","tag-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}