• The hostesses on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day both served something called "standing rib roast".  I think that's the fancy name for fatty meat covered in blood and gristle.  I ate a lot of rolls instead. 
• I forgot to hold back on my brother's Christmas present.  I meant to wait to see if he'd gotten me something before I gave him his present.  I'd already given him with his gift by the time I realized I was getting stiffed.
• Uncle Tom's usually magical Christmas punch was watered-down and tasteless.  Nobody got even slightly drunk off it.
• As a result of the previous bullet point, the annual Wrapping Paper War was half-assed.  Nobody got hurt and nothing broke.
• Listening to my aunt try to read and interpret her daughter's poem from the current issue of The Cincinnati Review was one of the most awkward and embarrassing things I've ever witnessed.  "So what do you think the 'anti-knot' represents?  Motherhood?"
• Vic Chesnutt died.
• My brother got a Ray Maualuga jersey for Christmas.  I knew that wasn't a good idea because something terrible always happens to the Bengal my brother chooses for his annual football jersey.  Ray Maualuga played about 12 minutes before breaking his ankle on Sunday.
• The Bengals looked like crap and will most likely get kicked during the first round of the playoffs.
• Sherlock Holmes was a terrible movie.  Absolutely terrible.

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Here is my favorite Vic Chesnutt memory: The first time I ever saw Vic in concert, I was very surprised to notice that we were wearing identical shirts.  I'm not talking about the same old R.E.M. concert tee or something like that; I'm talking about the same dark blue long-sleeved button-up collared shirt with thin white lines criss-crossing across it.  The chances of two people wearing that shirt on the same night at the same venue...well, I don't really know what the chances were.  I'd say very small.  Later on in the same evening, he sang "Gravity of the Situation" and I cried like a stupid fucking baby.

Vic Chesnutt - Band Camp (live)

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I've got one of those stat counters hooked up to my Vox.  It allows me to see which posts are getting hits and where the viewers are located.  I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I assume that when it says someone in Spain is looking at my picture of Scott McCaughey's shoe, then there's actually someone in Spain looking at my picture of Scott McCaughey's shoe.  (For some unknown reason, his shoe is very popular throughout the world.)  I know you can get these things routed all over the place to hide your true location, but I don't get into that.  As far as I'm concerned, Spain = Spain and Oman = Oman.

As Valerae recently mentioned in a post covering similar territory, there seems to be a trend where people from Middle Eastern countries trawl Vox for titillation.  I've noticed over the last six months or so that about a fourth of my hits are coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and a mysterious place called Yemen.  From what I can tell, they're not here to read my opinions on books and music.  Instead, they seem to hit the same slightly suggestive images over and over again.  I'm not sure what the internet is like in that part of the world, but I'd assume that their access to smut is severely limited when compared to mine.  They're doing the best they can with what's available to them.

More to the point, I've decided to gather all my most popular titillating images together in one spot.  That way my friends on the other side of the world won't have to waste so much time going through the 2,800+ images in my library.  The attraction of some of the pictures is obvious.  The popularity of others only becomes apparent when you realize I've given them misleading names like "sexy results" and "big cock" (for the watermelon and the rooster sign, respectively).  But anyway, here they are all together for the first time ever.  Enjoy!

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I got a box of Christmas cookies in the mail today.  At least I think they were Christmas cookies.  The snowman is definitely Christmassy and the tiny gingerbread men probably count, but I think the pumpkin and the bunny might be leftovers from other holidays.  I'm not sure how the squirrel and the foot fit in either.  And that's to say nothing about the most disturbing cookie of all...the hand that appears to be giving me the finger.  I swear the cookie arrived with its fingers already broken.  I didn't break them as some sort of protest against rampant holiday consumerism.

Christmas cookies

Lobster of the Lord

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It is with great pleasure and relief that I am able to announce that the second volume of The Ba-Ba Box Set is complete.  The song selection and ordering process took me twelve hours.  I'm not exaggerating either; it literally took me an entire day (spread out over a week) to compile this mix.  And I'm not even counting all the time spent uploading the songs.  I'm just talking about the choosing and ordering.  Let's say I had difficulties and leave it at that.

You might be thinking "sophomore slump", but I say "screw that".  The sophomore slump is for losers.  Volume 2 might go down in history as one of my Top 5 compilations of all-time.  When it comes to finding a great number of great songs that all feature a particular vocal idiosyncrasy and then compiling them into a series of mixes that nobody will ever hear, I totally kick ass.  I'm the best in the world.  Of course, I couldn't have done it without the help of my Vox neighbors.  Homebody, Silverchimes, and Hotrod each recommended two songs that made the cut for Volume 2.  Genuine thanks go out to them...and to everyone who has sent song titles my way.

The first volume in the series was called This Is What It Sounds Like.  I've decided to call the second volume Hey, Let's Try This Again...But With More Songs About Car Crashes.  It had a nice ring to it. 

Here's the track listing for Hey, Let's Try This Again:

1. Chrysanthemums - Care of Cell 44
2. Jessica Fletchers - I Got News (buy)
   
3. Flatmates - I Could Be in Heaven (buy)
   
4. Beards - All About You (buy)
   
5. Crabs - 1863
   
6. Heavenly - Escort Crash on Marston Street
7. Beulah - A Good Man is Easy to Kill (buy)
   
8. New Pornographers - The Electric Version (buy)
   
9. Julian Cope - The Greatness & Perfection of Love
10. Teenage Fanclub - I Need Direction (buy)
    
11. Orange Juice - Wan Light (buy)
    
12. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Jennifer She Said (buy)
    
13. Jenny Toomey - Breezewood, PA (buy)
    
14. Go-Betweens - Heart and Home
15. Kingsbury Manx - Grape to Grain (buy)
    
16. Velvet Underground - Who Loves the Sun (buy)
    
17. Dream Syndicate - Until Lately (buy)
    
18. Yo La Tengo - Wizard's Sleeve (buy)
    

cover art (option 1)

cover art (option 2)

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I got these guys as a surprise early Christmas present.  Homebody bought them for me from a place called Aaron's Tin Toy Arcade.  They've got a bunch of fun stuff over there for the weirdo on your shopping list.  Just know that you shouldn't bother paying the extra $5 for the gift wrapping.  They'll charge you the $5 and then forget to wrap your present.  Your Christmas will be completely ruined.  And the "Made in China" stickers lead me to believe their "Japanese" Tin Toy Robots aren't actually Japanese.  Very suspicious.  Still, the robots are awesome and they don't look particularly Christmassy, so I'll be able to leave them up all year round.

the distant future

shiny shiny broken strings

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Laurel

Fennel

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I heard about this guy who decorated his Christmas tree with nothing but Uglydoll keychains.  Then he took a bunch of pictures of the Uglytree and posted them on the internet for everyone to see.

Uglytree

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I am a bad compiler.  When I first started creating the world's largest collection of ba-ba songs*, I'd write down the performer and title on my list and then rip or buy an mp3 of the song in question.  I got away from the second step and realized last night that there were about a hundred songs on my list that I didn't have in my mp3 folder.  So, I spent a lot of time ripping those songs I hadn't bothered with before.  Ripping songs is very boring.

I'm still missing audio files of about 50 songs.  Some of those are songs I only have on vinyl.  Most of them are songs Voxers told me about that I haven't tracked down yet.  I hope I get an iTunes giftcard for Christmas.  Actually, I hope I get an Amazon giftcard as I'm not a fan of the iTunes store at all.  Their MPEG-4 files can suck it.

But anyway, I gathered all the ba-ba songs I own and stuck them in a playlist.  I have 399 songs in there and it would take me just under a day to listen to them all.  I think I would go insane after about six hours.  Ba-ba songs are great, but too much of a good thing will make me bang my head against the wall over and over and over again.

The playlist shown below doesn't include the 18 songs I selected for The Ba-Ba Box Set, Vol. 1.  Now that I've got the rest of them all together, I think I'm going to put together the second volume in the series.

screen capture

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I started off the month with two books that got their own posts, The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens and My Abandonment by Peter Rock.  Then I settled in and read four additional books before the month ended.  Here are my quick thoughts on those:

Pride and Prejudice--Jane Austen
After reading the silly zombie mayhem version and watching the BBC miniseries featuring the dreamy Jennifer Ehle, reading the original "classic" version of Jane Austen's novel came as a huge disappointment.  It was just about the dullest thing I've ever plodded through. 

Dressed For Death--Donna Leon
This was the third book in Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery series.  I take one of these with me whenever I travel.  Dressed For Death is my favorite in the series so far.  Three down, fifteen to go.

The Purple Cloud--M.P. Shiel
This book was written in 1901.  I don't remember where I heard about it, but it's one of those post-apocalyptic stories I usually enjoy so much.  In this one, the first successful expedition to the North Pole results in a purple cloud of toxic gases that floats around the world and kills everybody on the planet...except for the explorer who unleashed the cloud in the first place.  He doesn't realize what's happened until he makes it back to civilization and finds bodies all over the place.

What would you do if you were the last person on Earth?  I'm not exactly sure what I'd do, but it would probably involve finding a food and water supply, a library, and a comfortable couch.  The explorer from The Purple Cloud is a bit different than me.  He builds himself a castle made of gold and surrounds it with a moat full of wine.  Then he goes around to all the major cities and burns them down.  Finally, he ends up in Constantinople (not Istanbul) where he makes a shocking discovery.

Well, at least it was shocking to him.  I saw it coming a mile away.  It was pretty obvious to me where things were going.  It'll probably be obvious to you, too.  That doesn't mean The Purple Cloud isn't worth reading, though.  In fact, I'd say it was on par with most of the H.G. Wells I've read.  Put it on your list if you're into early science fiction.  Maybe if you're lucky you'll find a copy like mine; it cost $2, had bite marks on the cover, and featured a full color ad for Kent Menthol cigarettes between pages 64 and 65.  Classy.

Under the Dome--Stephen King
I read Stephen King's The Stand earlier in the year.  I loved it...until it started to get stupid about two thirds of the way through.  The Hand of God coming down to set off a nuke was the single worst ending of any book I've ever read.  Oh, that previous sentence was a spoiler.  I'd say I was sorry, but I just saved you 1,000+ pages.

Under the Dome is another one of Stephen King's epic 1,000+ pagers.  It starts off great, with a mysterious, invisible dome suddenly appearing over a small Maine town.  Planes and trucks wreck into the dome.  Entire flocks of birds break their necks on its surface.  One unlucky woodchuck gets chopped in two.  In the middle of all this confusion, King's greatest villain appears on the scene.  He's not a clown who eviscerates children.  He's not a murderous vampire.  The thing that's truly scary about Jim Rennie is that he's just a regular man.  He's real.  He doesn't have any supernatural powers at all, and yet he makes Randall Flagg from The Stand look like an amateur.  Jim Rennie is the town's Second Selectman.  He's an elected official who waddles around spewing Bible verses to back up his evil deeds.  He says his new policies are for the good of the town, but he uses the dome and the fear that results for his own benefit.  Take George W. Bush, mix him up with Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard, and then add a sharp intellect.  That's Jim Rennie.

The rest of the book is about Jim Rennie's power-grab and its disastrous consequences.  It only takes a few hours before the situation in the dome turns into a complete "clustermug" (his term).  Most of the townspeople go along with Jim Rennie, but as the book progresses, a few stand up against him and his regime...a few people who know that human rights and due process don't disappear just because they're living in a snow globe.  The final battle between good and evil is, in a way, reminiscent of The Stand.  There's a big difference, though.  Under the Dome stays strong all the way through.  It doesn't fall apart at the end.  Stephen King pulls it off.

As a book snob, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but Under the Dome might just be my favorite book of the year.  

CURRENTLY READING:
Love in the Ruins--Walker Percy

Austen Leon

King Shiel

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