It is raining, so people might hold off on the fireworks tonight, so that Max – and, by extension, I – can get some sleep (unlike last night).

Berlin, in its usual half-hearted, half-brained and half-assed fashion, has banned – wait for it – the sales (not the use) of fireworks, and only from about 18 December or so. Laughable. And typical Berlin. “In order to protect the emergency and health care services”…

If they were serious about this, they would ban the PRODUCTION, SALES AND USE of the types of fireworks that are only designed to a) make one hell of a noise and scare the shit out of the many citizens with trauma from the life they have recently escaped, of many pets, especially dogs, and of all wildlife in any kind of proximity to the city, and b) take people’s eyes out and separate various limbs from the bodies of idiots too ignorant/stupid/drunk to know how to handle them. For the whole year and forever after.

And let people enjoy the fireworks that do not make much noise but are nice to look at on this one evening of the year.

By the way, I had always heard that dogs that are afraid of fireworks don’t really care whether you are there or not, they just want to be able to crawl underneath something, like a bed for example, but that is not true. All last night, Max demanded my attention all the time and refused to be in any other room than the one I was in – even in my bedroom although he has been trained to never sleep there. If I shut any doors, he would scrape at them and whine (and he has never behaved that way before) until I gave in and tried to find a way for him to settle down, which finally happened at about 3 AM.

Anyway, since for the second year running I can’t have the usual crowd over for a Silvester party, I am going to be a complete glutton and have started preparing the other duck bought through a friend of a friend, this time I am using this recipe.