Welcome to a procrastinated procrastinator’s log edition on account of year end, travels, reading miscellaneous year end lists, writing miscellaneous year end lists and just plain old unadulterated&unjustified procrastination. If you’re sick and tired yourself of making new year new me promises (I always do) and then failing (same applies), here’s a handy guide on breaking habits. In case you’re happy with who you are and need no improvement, knowing all too well that most problems are anyways made up by our brains, here, look at this wonderful cat (he is wonderful partly because he is catered to by my family, partly because he was born with it).

Having mentioned those pesky year end lists already, let me dump some on you: Tom Jenkins’s best sports photos of 2018, with yummy technical details, the best pictures of the year as selected by the Boston Globe, parts one and two, and as selected by the New York times in one installment only, plus their effort with regards to the best books of the year,  the Atlantic trying to distill the essence of 2018 in images,  NME works its way through the best albums of the year (and I still do not get what’s the damn fuss about The 1975), though I can only approve of The Line of Best Fit’s number one, meanwhile Pitchfork give their verdict on the best songs, and finally no less then 75 great books covers (a personal favourite as far as these lists go). 

Speaking of books, here’s a piece about Sally Rooney, whose Conversations with Friends was my last read of 2018, one about David Szalay, whose All That Man Is may just be one of my first for 2019, one about the strange but quite natural relationship between cafés and liberalism and an interview with French writer Édouard Louis about the gilets jaunes protests. 

Next up, some aviation related goodies, such as the most useless airport in the world, which induced a very severe bout of online procrastination as I got sucked into a Wikipedia black hole of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha related trivia, and this stupendously majestic and relaxing footage of an Air France Dreamliner (they are almost forgiven for the insultingly dry croissants they served on the Budapest- Paris connection).

Moving on to the animal world, please revel in some wonderful Turkish poultry, unavoidably, take a peek at some more online cats, read this month’s input on why the octopus is so brilliant and to crown all this, why wouldn’t you listen to a soothing podcast about stinkbugs (they have been ridiculously active in Budapest in 2018, some last Mohicans were spotted holed up in office corners as late as November). 

The compulsory football section contains the compulsory swoon about Lionel Messi (I took Luka Modrić’s Golden Ball pretty personally but will refrain from a senseless rant), a well documented and intriguing documentary about the Superclasico (I took River Plate’s victory pretty personally as well but will yet again refrain from a senseless rant). Nevertheless, I will recommend some cumbia inspired fabulousness from Argentina.

The bits and bob section contains the Pantone colour of 2019 (spoiler, it’s living coral), an easy looking way to wrap gifts that actually turned out to be deathly complicated as soon as I tried  it, a long-ish read in Italian on the topic of the ex-Yugoslavia, an article about the healing powers of Nick Cave’s music  and the uplifting story of Wisdom, the world’s oldest known albatross ready to have her 37th chick at the commendable age of 68. Respect, Wisdom. 

At a certain point in December, we decided to take an unhurried train from point A(rad) to point B(raşov). The trip lasts an almost surreal 9 hours (surreal for the distance crossed, a TGV, if aimed from Paris in a southwesterly generic direction would probably be ploughing the oceanic soil at the Azores by then), and can therefore be fairly testing of one’s patience, so why not read some advice on how to come a more patient person or watch a video about better things happening on Romanian trains.