'Sprinkle This ... Because'

What do you really use paprika for?

Maybe a lot. I don't know. But I do know it's what goes on top of a traditional macaroni & cheese casserole.

Paprika is one of those things I like about the holidays.

I pull out a tiny, old shaker of this stuff and spread it across a macaroni & cheese casserole for each of the family meals I make on three holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.

I use it three days of the year within a span of a month -- and there it sits for another 11 months. Waiting through the changing seasons for its moment to be used again.

There's a tinge of romanticism in knowing that as I'm now running out of paprika and I reach the bottom of the small container, I'm sprinkling the last remains of what I bought when I was, say, 24.

Tell me that stuff has been there 10 years, and I'll have no evidence to refute it, and in fact I'll be inclined to believe you.

There are things I don't like about Christmas. To sum that up, let's just say that the other night I was watching a peculiar 1964 movie called "Santa Clause Conquers the Martians," and I wish the Martians had won.

But there is so much more I like.

I do like an experience of spirituality, if you can see around Santa.

I do like lights and music and shows we know and more people being home.

Here we are. Near the end of it. And I've got a little bit of this curious spice left, but not enough to make it past the new year.

There is so much I see each year this time of year, and so much that is the same, yet different because it's years and years apart. Something about that is comforting and frightening at the same time.

Buying that new small container next week will be a seminal moment, because it could be until I reach middle age before I have to buy another one.

And, I guess, that's something I like.

'... And Then We Explode'

I like learning about the universe via my television screen, but I always seem to find myself turning the channel because of the invariable introduction of "How This Means The Ultimate Destruction Of Earth."

You know, the grave movie-trailer voice invoking the cliche of all space docushockeries: "It's not if it happens ... but when."

Asteroids on a collision course. The sun exploding. Random mega gamma bursts that are bound to cross our path and mutate us within minutes.

And the strangely glib, Revenge of the Nerds astronomers chuckling about armageddon with analysis like "A supernova's cool, but you would want to wear your sunglasses ... that is, right before you would be incinerated."

However, last night I was watching an episode of "The Universe" on The History Channel regarding the search for planets in alien solar systems. It showed all these magnificent renderings of possible planets ravaged by gaseous solar storms in stilted orbits.

It showed all these possibilities, trillions of miles away, with the periodic reference to how the planets might or might not resemble Earth.

But for every mention of Earth, it focused on how our perception of what a world is had kept scientists from affirmatively discovering planets for years.

I awaited the cataclysmic connection to how our world is doomed.

And it never came.

The clever side of me says that I in some way wanted to know that whatever was going on out there would affect my world, even if it meant certain annihilation.

But leaving behind cleverness to make light of things I don't understand, I think I'm comforted knowing that there's things going on out there that have nothing to do with us -- which maybe means we'll actually understand better.