You know, for when you just want to get her something from the heart…
…something special…
http://www.hulu.com/watch/1596/saturday-night-live-snl-digital-short-dk-in-a-box-uncensored
What can I say?! Justin and Andy really knocked it out of the park with this one!
A couple of other holiday classics from the likes of Saturday Night Live over the years:
Sometimes it’s nice to just spend a few evenings curled up in the living room, munching on Chex Mix while watching your favorite holiday classics.
Unfortunately, I’m way too crazy busy right now to do anything of the sort myself, but if I had the time, these would be among my own top selections…
A Claymation Christmas Special
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
Home Alone
Die Hard
A Garfield Christmas
Ernest Saves ChristmasSo what are your holiday favorites??? 😉
This holiday season has ended up being a lot more stressful than I was kind of hoping for!
For better and for worse, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint where I went wrong – months and months ago, my original plan for the holidays was to have all of my big ticket writing projects done by the end of November, thus leaving December free for just my regularly scheduled columns & posts on top of also celebrating the season. Instead, however, just about every single one of those projects has taken considerably longer to complete … a couple of which I honestly haven’t even started yet … so sadly I’ve been spending far more of my time this last couple of weeks scrambling to try and preserve these impossible deadlines instead of just kicking back and really enjoying the season…
That said, for what it’s worth I think I’m finally starting to come to terms with the fact that no matter how hard I push myself, there’s just no possible way to get it all done at this point, so I’m almost better pulling back and finding a way to get some stuff done while also not completely letting the entire holiday season pass me by. And it’s going to mean some major changes to my new plans for January as well – originally my plan was to be able to start fresh in 2012 and really focus more on writing after wrapping up a bunch of design and other non-writing projects in 2011, so admittedly there will still be a bit more work for me to do on that front in the new year before I can really shift gears and focus on the words for a change, but it’s kind of a cart before the horse-scenario if I tried to just jump straight to that other stuff, and of course, it’s not like the 2011 projects aren’t important, either.
It’ll be ok – I just need to find a happy balance between personal time and work time, putting side the thought that I may not have gotten quite as far as I would’ve liked in 2011.
I swear, though – next year, ALL OF MY SPECIAL PROJECTS WILL BE DONE BEFORE CHRISTMASTIME!!! 😛
I spent a good portion of the holidays at my grandparents’ house locked away in the back bedroom, and I absolutely loved every single minute of it!
For Christmastime meant pretty much the one and only time I’d get to see my cousins who lived out of state each year, and for those precious few days when everyone would gather for our family Christmas on my Dad’s side, we strived to make the most of it by playing as many video games as humanly possible. In earlier years, my Dad would pack up my Nintendo to bring and keep us occupied, and later my cousins brought their Super NES, and so while occasional comments about “the kids being anti-social, staying in the bedroom the whole time,” quite the contrary we were having a blast together, squashing Koopas and slashing Foot Soldiers and probably bonding more over those video games than the last generation would ever really understand…
This year for the first time in 11 years, I’m finally traveling home to revisit that family Christmas that I haven’t been able to attend since I moved to Florida, and I’ve got to admit that it makes me a little sad to think that our all-day gaming sessions are one thing among the many that probably won’t be recreated just like I remember. People grow older and family dynamics change, plus my cousins that shared these holiday gaming conventions won’t be able to make it due to other obligations. Sure, it’ll still be nice to chat and catch up with all of my other Aunts and Uncles, and even eat the family bread pudding like the adults do, but I’m not gonna lie that a quick game of Super Mario World would be fun, too! 😉
Granted I don’t entirely understand it, but this seemed like an interesting article:
Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html
Sure, hundreds of millions of tons of methane gas released into our atmosphere would be bad for the environment, but on the other side of the coin, what would it take for us to harness this unexpected find and turn it into an energy source, just like any other type of natural gas? I mean, it’s got to be coming out of the ground somewhere, even if that’s deep in the sea, now doesn’t it???
Here’s some more about methane, if you’re the researchin’ type – http://www.epa.gov/methane/
Be sure to watch it full screen in 1080p – the working airport looks really cool…
I guess you can just go ahead and consider this to be a bonus day for that advent calendar … or something?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RxEmyjlbqI
Only in San Francisco… 😯
I haven’t always really been a fan of photo cards … and yet here you see our new one for 2011 fresh off the 1-hour presses from Walmart! 🙂
I think I got spoiled early on because the first couple of years of my “adult life” where I was living on my own, far far away in sunny Florida with a distinct desire to rub it in, I was still actively doing the comic with Lori, so for those years I actually designed custom artwork that she drew for me – I believe one year was a snowman wearing a Hawaiian shirt and the other was just me waving next to a palm tree – and so after we stopped, I guess maybe it seemed a little boring to just use somebody else’s artwork that didn’t have any personal meaning specifically for me.
Plus, who wants to send out a Christmas card with a picture of a single person on it as a not-so-subtle reminder to everyone that you’ve made it another year without finding a girlfriend?!
Of course, fast forward a couple of years and not only did I manage to remedy that little concern, but we also managed to get a puppy this year who was ridiculously difficult to pose for this picture! But that’s really the fun of it – a lot of people you might only see once or twice a year, or even less if you live far away from family like we do, so it’s fun to share a little slice of life where you currently stand to remind everyone that you’re still out there thinking of them. And if you think that’s bad, just wait until we have our first kid because I can guarantee you that I’ll probably become one of those parents who sends out The Family Newsletter to share stories and photos of all the amazing things that my kid has managed to pull out of her own nose over the last year!
Hey, gotta keep making use of that snail mail while we’ve still got it… 😉
This was a horrible idea back when it was first proposed, and now it’s just going to end up costing the wrong people a hell of a lot of money…
Colleges, Businesses Snap Up .xxx Domains
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57340834-93/colleges-businesses-snap-up-.xxx-domains/
For those unfamiliar with the story, the concept was innocent enough – somebody had the idea to create a new top-level domain (like .com, .net, .edu) with the intent of corralling pornographic websites off into a specific corner of the Internet to better allow parents and companies to filter them out for underage or inappropriate audiences. So kinkysex.com might instead become kinkysex.xxx, with the .xxx extension helping to designate that the site was pornographic in nature.
One little problem, though … there’s no actual way to force such companies to only buy .xxx domain names, as opposed to their coveted .com names that have been actively in place for more than a decade!
So instead of doing any actual good, in essence ICANN (the governing body that oversees the domain registry) basically gave ICM – the company who solicited the rights to operate the new TLD, a license to print money and exploit normal, everyday companies because while porn companies have really no drive or desire to purchase these names, other non-pornographic companies and colleges and whatnot have considerable reason to purchase them simply so that someone else doesn’t register disney.xxx or target.xxx and put up something that might tarnish their company’s reputation.
ICM will get rich, pornographers won’t bat an eye, and it’s pretty much all ICANN’s fault. Way to regulate, guys… 👿
Yesterday my wife, her sister, and I spent some time over at Epcot mostly getting absolutely drenched, but also partaking in another holiday activity that I’ve come to enjoy called the Candlelight Processional. It’s a live performance that they run 3x a night throughout the month of December, featuring celebrity narrators that, along with a choir of professional singers, cast members, and high school students as well as a professional orchestra and conductor, tells the story of the birth of Christ in a stellar presentation that even a not-so-religious guy like myself still enjoys quite a bit!
To date this was the 3rd time that we had gone – the other narrators being Kirk Cameron (of Growing Pains fame) and another whom I can’t for the life of me remember, but this year’s was extra special because we got to see none other than Neil Patrick Harris, who has been doing the show for years and is apparently also a big Disney fan! We both love him on How I Met Your Mother, so getting to see him narrate was an extra added twist that made the wet and soggy night all the more fun…