Thank you, Susan for giving us the opportunity of seeing these great firework shows.

As to how they rate in awesomeness, in my expert opinion:

I regret to have to write this, but the Brits with the London display on the Thames came No. 1! Of course, they have been doing this sort of thing [so long], so it figures.

Second, (oh the sorrow!) was the Sydney Harbour Bridge display. I’ve been fearing this would happen, eventually, because I have always thought that on the day this display is not the number one in the world, Australia shall fall.

Third, the French put a pretty good display too, at and around the Eiffel tower.

Honorary Mention: New Zealand was, I believe, the first independent country (i.e., not a colony, protectorate or a province of some other country) to welcome 2021, and they did a pretty decent job.

Now we’ll just have to wait and see if 2021 is worth all this effort.

In case it is and with 45 minutes of 2020 still to go here: Happy New Year to you all!  (Or at the very least, Better New Year to all of you!)

At our home, we decided to completely ignore the passing of this accursed year. Not worth marking, in our opinion. It was simply one more night of lockdown ennui. Just glad to have 2020 finally, at long last, behind us.

BTW my better half alerted me to tonight’s Google Doodle, which featured a cuckoo bird sliding out of its clock to announce the new year and, wearing a party hat, toot that thingie that rolls out as you blow into it. I then realized that I didn’t know the name of that thingie, so I asked her… and she didn’t know, either!

So she did a Web search and found a Reddit thread titled something like, “that party favor that you blow into at New Year’s and that nobody knows the name of.”

In Spanish we call it “la serpentina,” a name suggested by its shape. But I’m amazed that she (who has lived her whole life in the U.S.) and I could have gone through all these decades without ever actually hearing a name in English for the thing.

Anybody out there who knows for sure? A national/international name would be preferable to a regionalism.

Thanks, Susan! Good riddance to that clown show in a washing machine in a dumpster fire, 2020!

A party horn, party blower, party pipe, party elephant, party blowout, party noisemaker, or blow tickler is a horn formed from a paper tube, often one that is flattened and rolled into a coil, and which unrolls when blown into, producing a horn-like noise. The item is not known consistently by any term in English, also being known by a number of local variations, neologisms, and individual terms, often containing variants and synonyms of blowing (puffing, blow-out etc.) and noise (whistle, squeak etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_horn

In Scotland we were treated to three short stunning videos from Edinburgh’s Hogmanay. A drone swarm lights up the skies with Scottish icons and messages of hope. ‘Fare Well’, is a three-part series which was filmed in the Scottish Highlands and over Edinburgh.

Parts 1, 2 & 3 are available here:

Fare Well – Part 1 – What’s On – Edinburgh’s Hogmanay 2020

Fare Well – Part 2 – What’s On – Edinburgh’s Hogmanay 2020

https://www.edinburghshogmanay.com/whats-on/fare-well-part-3

Best viewed on a larger desktop screen or smart TV.

“I hope that 2021 will be the year when politics finally catches up with science, and when humanity learns how to use our immense power wisely”. Yuval Noah Harari

Wait for me! Wait for me! I’m still trying to catch up!

What we need now is more Festive Apathy…!

SolarWinds hackers accessed Microsoft source code
Microsoft says customer data wasn’t compromised.

LMAO
https://www.engadget.com/solarwinds-hackers-microsoft-source-code-201443864.html

Here in the UK we can look forward to 12th Feb 2021, as we use ddmmyyyy formats, so..
..it will be 12022021
..a palindromic date.

zeddy

Happy New Year 2021