Bye, 2008!

2008

For the coming new year...

Zenhabits.net tells us how to move past Someday Syndrome.

Good news!

Good news for all you boyfriends and husbands who have been forced to watch the recently released DVD of the awesome Chick Flick to End All Chick Flicks, Mamma Mia!: I have been informed by my brothers that since Pierce Brosnan is practically the definition of Bond/Thomas Crown manliness, his very presence in this movie makes it manly. So, Y-Chromosomes, you can watch and enjoy without self-conciousness or embarrassment! Huzzah!

Who knew?

Really?

Maybe I should have been a costumer...

Could there BE a more fascinating site than this? Yeah, I didn't think so.

It's smart to be thrifty!

Emmy, here, reporting to you all on the most depressing day of the whole year: The Day After Christmas. I feel like I JUST GOT the decorations just the way I wanted them. I only JUST GOT into the Christmas spirit. I only JUST MANAGED to get the house clean. The only mitigating factor is, of course, The After Christmas Sale. Everyone knows it's smart to be thrifty-- even people at Macy's in the 1950s, as illustrated in our visual aid. Plus, retail therapy definitely goes a long way toward easing post-holidays depression. So, go shopping, people! Make it happen at shockingly low prices.

Merry Christmas!

A Disney Christmas Gift Television Special (1986)

The Best Christmas Cartoon Ever.

The Night Before Christmas (1933).

The Juice Box #16

Behold--The Twilight Before Christmas...



"Jenn's Twilight Book Report"--LOLOLOLOL!

Even MORE classic Disney Christmas...

LOL.

Walking in a tacky wonderland....

Have some Christmas fun on the Tacky Christmas Light Tour. Seriously, people, you can even search locally! I can't believe I didn't invent this database.

More classic Disney Christmas...

The best part of Donald Duck's Christmas is clearly the overcoat, people.

"The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear." --Buddy the Elf

Well, it's just not CHRISTMAS around my house unless my Mom has on some Christmas music and is trying to sing along with all the harmony parts. It's not that she can't SING or anything. It's just that, as we all know, unless you are some kind of musical savant like in Shine or something, you can't possibly know all the harmony parts without even practicing. Ever the trailblazer, though, Mom doesn't let this stop her, and sings right along anyway. It certainly makes for a lot of Christmas cheer while she searches for the notes. ...She's doing it right now--AS I type this. The song is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, she's been disharmonic for about 2 verses now, and yet, she's still soldiering on. It's the gift that keeps on giving!

(P.S. How creepy is that album name in our visual aid? Maidens in Melody? Really? Really? How about The Vibrato Virgins? Blooms in B Flat? Hymens in Harmony? Seriously, people...)

Christmas in the Jungle

The downstairs lobby of my office building is decorated for Christmas, which is lovely and cute and festive. Believe me, I'm not complaining--they only started doing it a couple of years ago and I'm a big fan. The decorations generally consist of poinsettias and wreaths and trees--lots of red and green, etc.

And while that is, again, festive, it's also sort of like having to walk through a green house to get to the elevators. It's something that always perplexed me in college--every time we got a speaker in, the way the events committee dressed up the venues for the occasion was by sticking plants everywhere. On some of the smaller auditorium stages it was especially ridiculous--there'd be so many trees and shrubs and plants squeezed into every spare bit of space that the speakers would have to hack through the foliage to get to the podium.

I always waited in hopeful anticipation for the speaker to acknowledge the jungle behind them and open with, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Never happened--a major disappointment of my college experience.

What a lovely arrangement...

Over at the Holiday Spirit Livejournal, user ultraviolent shows us some pictures of his/her mom's obsession with snowmen as holiday decor. My mom has a similar obsession, only it's with Santas. I wouldn't say it's quite as bad as the snowmen pictured, but it's still like an international Santa conference at our house during Christmas...

Once Upon A Wintertime.

Now, SEE? This is how awesome The Disney Channel used to be before it got overrun by tween starlets.

64 years ago today...

The Battle of the Bulge began.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (in 9 minutes).

How may I help you? I mean, if I MUST.

Here, my friends, is a livejournal after my own heart: Retail Is Hell.

LOLOLOLOLOL. Seriously.

A book of poetry stained with the butter drips from crumpets...

Dear readers, are you, like me, kind of obsessed with used and antiquarian books? Do you find yourself displaying rather compulsive purchasing behaviors in their presence? If so, perhaps you might have fun with this click-through black hole: behold the Notes in the Margins Livejournal. Also, E, I wish you or SOMEONE could explain to me why previous owner markings and marginalia make books less valuable. I mean, I prefer my old books to look like they might have been IN THE MIDDLE OF THINGS, you know? So, E, get back to me on that.

Man delights not me.

You sit on a throne of LIES.

I knew you weren't suited for literature.

Christmas + The Muppets= Amazing.

Get in the car, or I'm telling M on you.

I went to see Quantum of Solace last night, and I was not impressed. I mean, I know James Bond movies are not exactly reality-based, and YET, sometimes, it just gets a little too ridiculous. For instance, I'm SURE that if M were REALLY WORRIED about Bond having gone off the rails, killing at random in the streets of Port au Prince--I'm SURE she's would send someone who looks like this to collect him:

Don't get me wrong, here--the actress, Gemma Arterton, is lovely, but what's with the styling here? Why doesn't M just see if Molly Ringwald is available to collect 007? Especially in that outfit. I mean, nothing says 'I am authoritative' like being naked under a trench coat. Here is Agent Fields looking WAY authoritative:

That's RIGHT, James Bond. Agent Fields is going to, like, TAKE YOUR NAME for when the teacher comes back, so you'd BETTER listen to her. Agent Fields has PERFECT ATTENDANCE, so all the teachers love her.

Also, is it too much to ask for a little BANTER in a seduction scene now? I mean, Bond says one funny little line to Agent Fields and the next thing we see is this:

Uh, take that, James Bond! Agent Fields is FOR REAL serious. You'd better get in the car, or she's telling M on you. ...I mean, right after you do that kisses-along-the-spine thing one more time. THEN, boy, you'd better watch yourself...

Click-Throughs and You.

Need a click-through black hole to distract yourself from the stress of the season? Try the Art Nouveau Livejournal. Oooh, pretty!

Pearl Harbor Day

Remember.

Everything old is new again.

One time, my little brother was supposed to come up with a story and illustrate it for a class at school, and it would get made into a little book, complete with a dedication page and a title page and all that, using this mini printing press that the school had just purchased for the upper elementary grades. So, Little Brother just unleashes his creative powers and "writes" 3 Ninjas, which, amazingly, was strikingly similar in plot to a movie of the same name that had just recently been released. Oh, ALSO, it was Little Brother's favorite movie. I know, right? What a COINCIDENCE! Little Brother even had the SAME NAME as one of his characters in his version of original work, 3 Ninjas! What are the odds??


It's sort of like fanfiction.net user notsomuch2say with her Twilight/The Notebook crossover, creatively entitled The Notebook. Let's just take a quick look at her synopsis:

twilight/notebook crossover. Bella is the daughter of a rich business man and falls in love with a country boy, Edward. Will their summer love ensure [sic]? BASED ON THE MOVIE. CANON PAIRINGS.

Gee, I wonder what's going to happen. I hope their love ensures. Also, I am SO GLAD there are canon pairings. I wouldn't want notsomuch2say (clearly) to be too OUT THERE with her creativity, or anything.

"I know what you are! ...OR DO I? I have some vague idea of a meadow and sparkly skin like diamonds. Say, how come you never wrote to me during the war? "

I couldn't resist.

More from one of the greatest movies of 1987, The Chipmunk Adventure--The Best of Miss Miller:

We've gone on holiday by mistake.

Lost and Found.

Ever wonder what happened to that disposable camera you left at the zoo on a field trip in the 4th grade? Check out the Found Pictures Livejournal to see if it's been recovered after all these years.

Possibly the Greatest Movie of 1987.

A lot of great movies were released in 1987: Ernest Goes to Camp, The Brave Little Toaster, Benji the Hunted, TEEN WOLF TOO (Hello, people!). That's quite a list, but I think there's a film that is usually completely overlooked that is actually the greatest film of that year. Yes, that's right--the greatest movie of 1987 was obviously The Chipmunk Adventure. Don't believe me? Just watch this clip and tell me I'm wrong:



I loved this song so much that when this movie played on tv in the 90s, I held my tape recorder's mic up to the tv speaker to record it onto a tape and have it to KEEP FOREVER (and also to play it over and over and memorize the words so I could act out this scene accurately). You can experience this amazing movie in 6 parts on YouTube. You know you want to.

P.S. Okay, okay--FINE. We can go ahead and three-way tie The Chipmunk Adventure with The Princess Bride and Adventures in Babysitting for The Greatest Movie of 1987. That seems pretty reasonable...

More Livejournal Hilarity.

Want to feel better about your hair? Just go and have a look-see over at the Bad Hair Livejournal.

It's that time again...

It's December 1st! As such, I should inform you that in my world that means it's all Christmas all the time until January 6th. I can't help it--I come from a family that has been known to leave inside Christmas decorations up until February. I suppose that could just mean that we're LAZY and have problems with letting go, but I prefer to think of it as us being fun-loving and do-as-we-please...