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The End of 2022 vs. The End of Me
As usual the period between Thanksgiving and the New Year saw a lot of calories enter the house. As we roll, both literally and figuratively, into 2023 the person who is responsible for this will then revert to her natural state of reminding me that I have to lose weight. As the kids scatter to the wind to tackle their own problems I will be left staring at the leftover temptations such as the half dozen Coffee Crisp bars my youngest gave me.
This outrageous confection is a Canadian thing from Nestlé. It’s basically a giant Kit Kat that spent the morning lounging around a Starbucks and is generally unavailable in the US except for some specialty import shops and in Florida where Publix serves the Canadian expat market. That’s not a complaint, mind you, as its unavailability is a good thing for my overall health.
Whether or not the end of me will eventually be the end of me, December 31 marks the end of 2022. It’s an arbitrary number that’s supposed to reflect the years past the birth of Christ but even most Christian scholars agree that’s about 30-odd years off. The Chinese say it’s 4721 and the Jews say it is 5783. All I know is that most days I wake up I don’t even know if it’s a Tuesday or something else. And with all the conflicting counters one cannot even find comfort in numerology.
When I was a young man I wondered about what a new year would hold. But “Will this be the year I find love?” has been replaced with “Is this the year on the tombstone?” Dark thoughts? Sure, but a month of Dickens and It’s a Wonderful Life will do that to you.
I would count my blessings that 2023 is not considered a political year but we all know that the 2024 campaign is already two months old and things aren’t going to get better in Washington or around the world anytime soon. For those of you that listen to London Calling, I entered the year #TeamToby and find myself pushed towards #TeamJames.
Seeing news reports that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is busy preparing for Davos and the World Economic Forum will do that to you, too. No one yet has convinced me that this war is in America’s best interests and everything that we throw down that rabbit hole is something we won’t be able to throw the way of the Taiwanese. If there’s a threat to America’s interests it’s located in Beijing, not Moscow. But our Secretary of State said that we wouldn’t even be able to do what we’re doing for the Ukranians if we were still in Afghanistan. Hell, he might as well send Xi an engraved invitation to cross the Taiwan Straight tomorrow. But the Washington establishment has been building up Putin as the new Hitler since 2016. They can’t back down and admit it was all a farce now. Nope, they laid miles of track and don’t care a whit that it all leads off a cliff. Throw some more coal into the boiler. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
When you consider all of that, plus Dementia Joe in the White House, the current state of the culture towards depravity and the rise of both censorship and the biosecurity state, there is only one real answer. More chocolate. Which takes me back to the end of me.
Published in General
I tend to think the threat to America’s interests is located in Washington.
But happy new year anyway!
My daughter gave me a scale. I wonder if she’s trying to tell me something.
When you’re retired, every day is Saturday.
Happy to take those off your hands, EJ. Love those things. Daughter went to Hamilton at the beginning of the month and returned with 2 bags of mini Coffee Crisps. Been trying to make those last as long as I can.
(She also brought all-dressed chips, but those didn’t last a week.)
Ah, but what a way to go! (The chocolate, that is.)
Depends. From what kind of fish? Or was it from a dragon? If it is a dragon’s scale, yeah, there is a message there.
Except Saturday which is all booked up with stuff other people only have time for on that day.
We were in a rush to spend some HCA $$ and I bought a brand new digital scale. Which connects to WIFI. In what world do you want your scale connected to WIFI?
I was at a brother’s on Christmas Day and his new fridge also has WIFI; my brother and I are separated by 9 years and a LOT of different attitudes, as he has connected his fridge … there ain’t no way my scale is going online.
I assume he’ll eventually have a scale and a fridge that are talking to each other.
Who wants to hear that conversation?
I keep mostly wine and mixers in my fridge so I don’t want some judgy robot offering an opinion either
The government, eventually. In the United States of Klaus Schwab your scale will report your weight to the refrigerator, which will in turn report to the app on your phone that controls your Central Bank Digital Currency. Then, because health care will be fully nationalized, the app will tell you what foods you may or may not buy.
The original was Rowntree’s Wafer Crisp from the UK. IIRC, “Kit-Kat” (also an English original) evolved from that as “Chocolate Crisp,” and the Canadians added the coffee variant.
One can buy 12-packs of Coffee Crisps online from Amazon, and they can be sourced otherwhere as well.
If you like Coffee Crisps, I’d also recommend Cadbury’s Crunchie Bars. Those are (properly) imported from the UK.
And whether you’re too fat! Watch them try to mandate diets . . .
Thanks for this info, @She! Now, do you have a source for all-dressed chips?
I’ve been doing it a lot longer than that, as have some (former) Russians that I know. I will not put details in conversations online, as I don’t know how much of it they’d want to have made public. It was kind of weird to see the Washington establishment join in on it in 2016, though their motives were suspect. At least Trump gave us four years of grace by keeping Putin in check by selling weapons to Ukraine, putting more troops in Poland (a cousin’s son, now retired from the military, was deployed there for a time) and pressuring Germany on Nordstream 2.
@She Yes, Rowntree licensed Kit Kat to Hershey and then sold itself to Nestlé. America is the only country that gets Kit Kats with the good chocolate.
They would conspire to kill you if you let them connect.
A dragon scale would be pretty neat. As I assume they are not easy to obtain, the gift would be a testament to her love for her Dear Old Dad.
Let’s Go Brandon!!!
It could be worse, or better, depends on your perspective, I guess. I caught Covid over memorial day weekend. Really didn’t know I had it, thought it was just a bad cold. But the outcome of that was it I’ve largely lost my sense of smell and taste. We had steaks just before Christmas. Nice steaks. Richly marbled. Cooked by my youngest son who has accomplished a technique for reverse, searing ribeyes that’s at the professional gourmet level. Everyone enjoyed their steaks. For me it was just a tasteless chew. I’ve lost over 20 pounds so I guess there is a silver lining to all of this. But I do miss tasting some of my favorite meals.
Took me a good six months to feel like my sense of smell and taste were back. And I don’t think they came back “normal” at all. Coffee has a terrible smell to me now, and that’s sad. Likewise, onions. If someone is cooking something with onions, it has a real stank to it.
Not sure what you mean. Go for the explanation, if you please.
My wife and I went to a Bed Bath and Beyond to buy some scented candles for Christmas. She offered 8 or 9 candles with different scents to me to smell. Nothing. No smell at all.
Not all milk chocolate is equal. I happen to think Hershey’s formula is superior to Nestlé.
I discovered Coffee Crisp bars during a Toronto business trip in 1997, and I agree that it’s probably good that they’re not ubiquitous. But they’re not quite as unavailable as you suggest; I grab one every time we shop at the nearby Wegmans store here in central North Carolina, where they’re in the British section. In fact, I have one in the freezer right now.
I’ve never quite understood why they’re not marketed in the U.S. A decade or so ago, Nestle actually gave it a try, and there was a brief period when they became much easier to find. But for whatever reason, they didn’t take off, and they once again vanished from shelves (other than in import sections). Seems to me they’re perfectly compatible with the American sweeth tooth, but maybe the name puts people off.
Oh, Drew, that’s horrible! I feel for you. The aroma of coffee brewing is one of life’s treasures. My late husband used to say that in heaven, the coffee will actually taste as good as it smells.
I wonder if that’s supposed to be true for pipe tobacco as well?
I recall Nestle handing them out on the streets of Manhattan to try and build interest. Think this was around 1999-2000. Like you, I have no idea why they weren’t popular here.
Canadian chocolate? It’s Rogers, from Victoria BC for us. Victoria Creams, big, thick patties in dozens of flavors.