One of my favorite linguistic indulgences as a reader and a writer is what I think of as “found Beckett”—Beckettismes trouvés, even better—those little commonplaces that, under the very slightest hermeneutical pressure, collapse into whirlpools of comically, despairingly elusive meaning. Take that old favorite, “thanks but no thanks.” I mean, even at face value, it’s like some sort of ill-formed Boolean algebra:

(thanks)∧¬(thanks)

—an unsettled judgement, yanking the rug out from under any possibility of an objectivist conception of language. Or maybe it’s a reminder that, suitably intensified, gratitude can tip over into micro-aggression:

thanks, but no, THANKS

Push it further, and it becomes pure self-negation, a matter-antimatter collision leaving only meaninglessness in its wake:

—and suddenly the abyss is staring back at you, and returning your submitted materials under separate cover.

At any rate, in celebration of the bumper crop of thanks-but-no-thanks that has been the last eighteen months of my professional life, here’s a deceptively dangerous little tiki-drink riff. It’s rather good (WARNING: Beckettisme trouvé approaching) if I do say so myself.

F’ing the Merciless

1.75 oz amber rum
1 oz lime juice
0.5 oz peach liqueur
0.5 oz orgeat
0.25 oz dry gin

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled glass. (Or, alternately, strain into a tall glass filled with ice and top off with seltzer.)

Today is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States, and I hope it’s a fine one for anyone reading. Here’s what we’ll be offering guests at the door—a bright, fruity counterbalance to a ton of stuffing.

Fall In

BASE:

• 2 parts rosemary-infused rye (just rye and rosemary stalks left for a day or two to get to know each other, like there at the right—plain rye is just as good)
• 2 parts pineapple juice
• 1 part cranberry juice
• 1 part lemon juice
• plum bitters to taste

Shake the base ingredients with ice and strain, then combine equal parts base and chilled sparkling wine. Garnish with a cranberry, maybe? Or an orange twist, your call.

Thanksgiving being the calendar’s main food-based holiday, I normally take the opportunity to throw a few bucks at my local food bank, and encourage everyone I know to do the same. Given that things aren’t exactly normal right now, here’s a few more worthy causes that probably would appreciate a financial vote of confidence:

• GLSEN
• Southern Poverty Law Center
• The Young Center
• National Women’s Law Center
• Standing Rock Medic + Healer Council

Happy holidays! Traveling mercies if you’re traveling. And remember the words of Ian MacLaren: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

It is time for the quarterly ritual of keeping this space on life support by at least linking to everything I’ve been doing elsewhere. That’s three months of old-new articles to peruse (including a new batch of columns)—along with (as per usual) a compensatory drink:

Slow Watch

Equal parts:

  lemon juice
Cynar
peach liqueur
rye

plus a healthy dash of orange bitters

Shake it up with small ice, strain into a rocks glass with big ice.
Sip while reading good stuff elsewhere:

Robin James on the privilege of post-genre and Attali and neo-liberalism.

Ethan Iverson on James P. and also killer robots. (The conscious-to-subconscious progress of Doctor Who fandom described is my experience, too, although the differences between my personality and Ethan’s can be pretty efficiently summed up by mentioning that my DW touchstone was not Genesis of the Daleks, but rather The Deadly Assassin.)

Peter Pesic and Axel Volmar on the musical rhetoric of string theory.

Charles Ames on the history of automated composition (including a lead sheet for “Push-Button Bertha”).

Felix Arndt, “An Operatic Nightmare (Desecration no. 2)” (1916).

As you might have noticed, this space has been quiet for some time now. That is because we have been preparing Soho the Dog HQ for the arrival of our newest critic-at-large. We are pleased to welcome Helena Beatrice Kim Guerrieri, 8 pounds, 1 ounce. Her in-depth opinions on all things musical will be posted here as she sees fit to make them known. I can tell you that, in the womb, she was particularly fond of drums and bel canto tenor squillo. The future seems loud.

One of the more surreal and absurd things about expecting a child in 21st-century America—believe me, the competition is fierce—is that seemingly every pregnancy guide in the known universe insists on tracking weekly gestational development in terms of fruits and vegetables. Your fetus is the size of a blueberry! Your fetus is the size of a pear! Your fetus is the size of a casaba melon! Apart from making one’s impending progeny sound like the product of some dystopian science-fiction hydroponics experiment, that isn’t even accurate from a materials-science standpoint: I began to long for a pregnancy guide with at least enough integrity to say that our fetus was the size of, say, a haggis. At any rate, as we were running this gauntlet of comparative produce, I marked off the weeks by making a commemorative drink engineered around each week’s fruit. This one was by far the best. It is surely only a coincidence that it is also by far the strongest. It is rather like parenthood itself: cool and sweet at first, but within minutes, you will be wondering just what it is you have gotten yourself into.

Helena B

2 oz high-proof rye whiskey
2 oz lemon juice
1½ oz peach liqueur (I like Mathilde)
1 oz black rum
1 oz pineapple juice

Shake all ingredients with a good handful of crushed ice, then turn, ice and all, into a big tall glass. Fill the rest of the way with seltzer.