Home of the Autographed Cat

Gwnewch y pethau bychain

Happy Christmas everyone!

Yes that’s right, today is Christmas. So even if you don’t celebrate it, have a merry one, ok?

Speaking of Christmas, one of the lovely things about the season is the music. No, really. And yesterday, I came across this lovely dissection of various Christmas music and carols by Tris McCall. Wonderful, biting commentary, some surprisingly deep thoughts on religion and spirituality (of which more in my next post), and a good time for everyone. oreouk especially needs to see this one!

If you ever wondered how some of those Christmas classics were written, check out this cool webpage

Ah, Christmas

Because if the season is about anything, it’s about being traumatized by a large bearded man in a red suit

Seen on Usenet

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best
wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible,
low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the
winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable
traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or
secular practices of your choice, with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or
their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions
at all… and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and
medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally
accepted calendar year of 2004, but not without due respect for
the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions
to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that
America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the
only “America” in the western hemisphere), and without regard to
the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith,
choices of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This
greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely
transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It
implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of
the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited
by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual
application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until
the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes
first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or
issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

QOTD

“I remember the first time I read The Lord of the Rings, in high school sometime. I read the last few pages, in which the hobbit Frodo sails in his old age for the lands of the West, where heroes go, the awful price of carrying the ring and breaking the back of darkness paid at last. I went out onto the patio of my parent’s house, and I stood for a long time, looking at the sunset. No story, no history, no instructive biography or sermon had ever made me feel the way I felt then: that humanity had an infinite capacity for nobility, for goodness, for strength used with wisdom and informed by mercy, and that I was part of that.”
–Emma Bull, “Why I Write Fantasy” (1990)

The Healing Power of Music

Music is a constant in my life. It’s a rare day that I go through without listening to or making music in one form or another.

And it occured to me on the way back from lunch with kitanzi this afternoon, as I cranked up a particular song, that there are some tunes that just never fail to make me happy.

Here are five of those songs, in no particular order:

Love Shack, B-52s
Sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel
Every Day I Write The Book, Elvis Costello
Got To Get You Into My Life, The Beatles
Linus and Lucy, Vince Guaraldi Trio

What are some songs that always leave you more cheerful than before? That make you dance in your seat? When you’re down, what music do you turn to to pick yourself up? What songs make you instinctively reach for the volume control to crank it up?

Share in comments. 🙂

Yes, Virginia…

“Besides, to believe in Santa Claus is to believe in magic. The belief in magic in many respects is a pernicious thing. Because of it you’ve got countless multitudes thinking that aliens abduct people, that Elvis is alive, that you can earn big money stuffing envelopes in your home, and that the TV preacher can cure you if you send him 50 bucks. A certain class of persons, of whom your columnist is one, will go through their lives attempting to extinguish these foolish hopes. No doubt in the main it is good that we do so. But even the sternest among us remembers the wonder we felt as children to think there was a force having a kindly interest in us that wasn’t bound by the rules of this drab world. Wherefore if there’s someone who’s going to say flat out that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, it’s not going to be me.”
–Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope

Sauron alive and well, working as a television executive

http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/gmlog/00000683.html


In other news, Bakersfield prostitute strips attacker and takes him to police

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) – A skinny rapist met his match in an angry, 275-pound prostitute, police said.

Adrian Castillo Ramirez, 140 pounds, allegedly tried to sexually assault a 24-year-old Bakersfield prostitute who was nearly twice his weight.

But she took his knife, stripped him naked and paraded him in front of other prostitutes, after asking how many of them had ever been forced into sex at knifepoint. Then she tried to take him – still naked – to the police station, reports said.

Castillo was charged with failing to register as a sex offender, and with committing forcible sex acts on the 24-year-old and on a 37-year-old woman in a previous incident. He also was convicted of four counts of rape in 1988.

Castillo pleaded innocent Wednesday, and is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail, police said.

Paid users can now cash in their unused invite codes

Now that invite codes have been obsoleted, you can now redeem your unused codes for $0.50 (US) each, good towards LJ services for yourself or others. See http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_biz/205605.html for details.

Arial Maps

If you’ve ever wanted to see where kitanzi and I live

In an interview with Diane Sawyer, the most amazing thing came out of President Bush’s mouth:

DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still ?

PRESIDENT BUSH: So what’s the difference?

DIANE SAWYER: Well ?

PRESIDENT BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger

is it just me, or did he not just say, more or less, the equivalent of “Well, it depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.”?

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