Everyone knows someone who deserves a lump of coal in their stocking this year, right? Well, here’s the place you can help that person realize exactly what they deserve:

Letters from Bad Santa

I can think of at least a few people who truly need one of the 15 different options. I don’t know that I want to spend $4.95 on it, but when you think about it, it’s pretty close to the price of a Hallmark card. And obviously these aren’t people about whom you care enough to send the very best. *smirk*

(Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone sent me this one.)

Everyone celebrates a winter holiday, right? Well, maybe not everyone. But damned near. And there are a lot of holiday songs. We all have our favorites…but that’s next week’s question. So here is this week’s:

What holiday song could you happily never hear again?

I’m going with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Sheesh, Santa’s reindeers are a bunch of fakes – only female reindeer keep their antlers in winter.

It’s Silicon Valley’s newest game show!

Here’s your contestant questionnaire…

1) What quality do you value most in your partner?

a) A sense of humor.
b) Emotional maturity.
c) High bandwidth.

2) When you get home at the end of the day, you like to:

a) Turn on the Silicon Valley Business report, and eat dinner.
b) Hook up to your ISP, and check out the hit count on your web page.
c) Recharge your cell phone, laptop, and wireless modem, change the batteries on your pager, and resynchronize your Palm Pilot and home computer.

3) Your ideal partner is:

a) Interesting and attractive.
b) Emotionally mature and understanding.
c) Extensible and polymorphic.

4) In spiritually difficult times, you often turn to:

a) Dilbert
b) Kernighan and Ritchie
c) comp.lang.c++

5) What kind of car would you like to buy next, and why?

a) A BMW, because people will see that I am rich and successful.
b) A Jeep, because it’s youthful, rugged, and won’t break down.
c) A Honda because the engine control computer can be hacked for more horsepower.

6) If your partner comes home from work complaining bitterly about his boss, you will:

a) Give him a hug, pour him a drink, and tell him you love him.
b) Commiserate about how unfair managers can be.
c) Forge the boss’s e-mail address, and subscribe him to 17 pornography mailing lists.

7) Name the 4 essential food groups:

a) Fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy.
b) Coffee, chocolate, takeout, ice cream.
c) rec.food.cooking, rec.food.veg, ba.food, alt.food.chocolate

You like to travel with your partner because:

a) You share new experiences together.
b) You learn about each other in different situations.
c) You get more use out of your wireless modem.

9) How would you describe your attitude towards religion?

a) “I’m not particularly religious.”
b) “I believe in emacs, but can use vi.”
c) “I think emacs can be configured as a full IDE.”

10) You think a relationship is ready for a permanent commitment because:

a) You’ve successfully struggled through several years of good and bad times.
b) You’re already living together, so you might as well tie the knot.
c) You finally got your local network configured just right.

11) If you and your partner got married, you would want to:

a) Keep your last name.
b) Change your last name.
c) Combine your names with a hyphen.
d) Combine your names with an underscore.

12) You and your partner think it’s time to have children when:

a) Your stock options are vested.
b) You’ve agreed on the requirements and design.
c) You’ve come up with a good naming convention.
d) You really understand the use of multiple inheritance.

10> Once — just once — Lazarus Long says “No thanks, Mom. I’ve got a headache.”

9> All the hot babes I’m going to meet while standing in line for the next Star Wars movie.

8> “Computer: Earl Grey, hot. Doritos, large. And oh, yeah…one Orion slave girl.”

7> Seven of Nine on one arm, Dax on the other: Grok around the clock, baby!

6> Hot wookiee-on-wookiee action, baby!

5> Jar Jar’s horrible, grisly, painful death. In slow motion. With popcorn.

4> “Honey, it’s a Mister Lucas on the phone for you. He said he needs your help again.”

3> You’re in your temporal mechanics class and you realize you’re in an alternate universe where you forgot to wear your clothes.

2> “The attacking BEM falls to the ground as I holster my blaster and turn to the alien princess. We have no common language, yet the telepathic boosters in my Space Ranger helmet communicate her desire, though the sultry glance she sends my way speaks louder than a psi-link. Her firm yet yielding bosom jiggles as I pull her toward me. She is clearly excited by the touch of my callused hands on her green skin. Her lips part and— and— Mom!! I told you not to come into the basement when I’m writing code!”

1> Spending the night in the girls’ dorm at the Vulcan Science Academy during Pon Farr Week.

It was a really soft beaver, too. I had no idea the underside of one could be so silky.

(I know what you’re thinking, and GAWD, you people have dirty minds!)

Tonight, my youngest demonspawn’s school held “The River Festival, a Winter Celebration” (I shit you not). I have no idea what connection there is between rivers and winter, but apparently the school decided it would make a great theme night. Not to mention it gives the kids a chance to showcase their “river projects” that they’ve been working on for twelve interminable weeks. (Each kid picked a different river to design their project around. No, I don’t know how they settled things if 2 kids wanted the same river…maybe they roshambo’d for it, who knows? But lemme tell ya, considering I’ve never even been to Arizona, I now know every damned thing there is to know about the Salt River – which was, obviously, Anxiety’s river…*sigh*)

And since beavers live in & near rivers – at least in the great Pacific Northwest – Anxiety’s class got to borrow a couple of genuine, real (dead) stuffed beavers for their class exhibit. And once I discovered just how soft & touchable they were, I put my hands all over them. *grin*

(Sheesh, again with the naughty thoughts! I swear…)

Of course, it wasn’t all fun…let’s see, if you put a few hundred people (most of whom – regardless of whether they were the parental or the ‘tween set – seem not to have an inner monologue or much spatial awareness of themselves in relation to others) inside a smallish school that is – quite frankly – a hippie haven, what do you get?

Chaos. OHMIGOD, it was an anarchist’s delight. The freaking amateur drummers alone drove me nuts, pounding out that classic theme, “I / on-ly / know / one / rhy-thm / and / THIS / IS / IT” (c’mon, you can play along, here’s the notation: Doum Tek-a Tek-a Tek-a Doum Tek-a Tek! And repeat, ad nauseum.) Whoever decided that it was a good idea to encourage a bunch of white geeks trying to be hippies to try their hand (literally) at playing the 8 or 10 large-ish doumbek drums in the school hallway should be freaking SHOT.

I only submit to such things because my kid totally rocks. The teachers all had terrific things to say about her, the librarian gushed about how helpful & fun she was at Outdoor School, and it seemed that everywhere we turned, there were kids wanting to talk with her. I had no idea she was such a social butterfly, amongst all ages.

The outdoor labyrinth made of those flexible light tubes on the ground was my favorite part. I could quite happily meander around a labyrinth in the dark on a slightly-rainy night for quite a while, just walking in circular patterns and not thinking at all…a calm mind is a happy mind.

Anyone who’s a fanboy/girl knows about filk – a song adapted from an existing song (sometimes a parody) based on a theme unrelated to the original song, often a fictional work.

What’s your favorite filk song?

There are many genres I have to choose from – Pagan, SCA, BDSM, science fiction, fantasy – but definitely my favorite filk has to be an oldie but goodie. I heard that Leslie Fish refuses to perform this one anymore, since it’s been so over-requested at cons that she’s sick of it:

Banned From Argo

Good girls loosen a few buttons when its hot.
Bad girls make it hot by loosening a few buttons.

Good girls wax their floors.
Bad girls wax their bikini line.

Good girls blush during sex scenes in movies.
Bad girls know they could do it better.

Good girls wear white cotton panties.
Bad girls don’t wear any.

Good girls think they’re not fully dressed without a strand of pearls.
Bad girls think they’re fully dressed with just a strand of pearls.

Good girls pack their toothbrush.
Bad girls pack their diaphragms.

Good girls own only one credit card and rarely use it.
Bad girls own only one bra and rarely use it.

Good girls wear high heels to work.
Bad girls wear high heels to bed.

Good girls think the office is the wrong place to have a romance.
Bad girls think no place is the wrong place.

Good girls prefer the missionary position.
Bad girls do, too – but only for starters.

Good girls say, “No.”
Bad girls say, “When?”

Good girls go to the party, go home, then go to bed.
Bad girls go to the party, go to bed and then go home.

(It’s fun dating a Gemini…you never know if you’re getting a good girl or a bad girl!)

If you’re feeling less than a stunningly fabulous boy/girl magnet, go look at this scrumptious bit of music video. I love weird Aussies. I’ve just heard the one song, but I’m tempted to buy the albun. (No, that’s not a typo.) You have to love a band that promotes themselves as “annoying smartarses.”

Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me

The lyrics can be found here, and the band’s site is here.

(Karel keeps sending links my way…I never would have found something this cool on my own.)

I love my snarky 12-year-old. She sent out an email to me, Geoffrey, my mother, my sister, and assorted other people that said:

Good friends bail you out of jail.

Best friends are the people sitting next to you in the jail cell saying, “That was awesome!”

(I hope my mother liked it, because I certainly liked imagining her reaction to it.)

(Whoopsie, the MMM is late. I knew I should have written an advance entry. *sigh*)

It seems that lately artists covering other artists’ songs has become quite the fad. A few musical acts are even putting out entire albums of cover songs.

What’s your favorite cover song or remake?

While I do like Johnny Cash’s remake of “Hurt” by NIN an awful damned lot, my sentimental favorite would have to be “Hazy Shade of Winter” by the Bangles. And are you old enough to know – without checking a search engine! – who originally did that song?