I spend a chunk of time at AllMusic.com, mostly because I like to clean up the ID3 tags of my MP3s and add thumbnail artwork... I can be a bit meticulous about them at times. Ocassionally I verture over Amazon.com if I can not find the full info at AllMusic. For some reason today, I remembered this review I had read a year or two ago...

Dunno why I was even on the page, as I am most definitely not a Tori Amos fan, but this was, without a doubt, the best review of a CD I have ever had the pleasure of reading. And all because of the first two lines...:

"For many pop-music cynics, excess can be neatly summed up in three things: live albums, double-CD's, and Tori Amos records. Damned if "To Venus and Back" doesn't hit the trifecta."

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While about half the country says their 2004 went well, the other half: not so much. Which side you happen to be on at any given moment is probably up for grabs.

2004 rocked for:

• Buuuush!
• Vinyards (in Oregon)
• Internet IPOs (well, Google anyway)
• The IT industry in general
• The Boston Red Sox (but, outside of the NYC area, who cares?)
• Rich people (who, in addition to getting wealthier, also just won permission to surf the net at cable speeds from their private jets - finally!)
• Toyless Tots
• The Homosexual Agenda (which has been optioned for a new film, to star Ben Affleck)
• Squirrels
• Sex (especially kinky sex)
• Dave Barry (okay, he almost always has a good year anyway...)
• Pixar
• Goofing off in space

2004 sucked for:

• Ben Affleck (two words: "Surviving Christmas")
• Democrats
• Illinois Republican Senatorial candidate Jack Ryan
• Lots of TV
• Bill "Falafel Much?" O'Reilly
• Howard Dean
• Martha, Martha, Martha
• Skinny immigrants
• Plane mechanics
• Basketball (especially in Chicago)
• Coastal Asians
• Florida
• Computer security
• Tolerance
• Liberals

Really, this could go on and on. My advice is to simply let this year coast off into history and sort out the pieces later. 2005, here we come.

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So, no jolly elf in the chimney. Instead, we have a squirrel. A fat, growling, terrified squirrel. We lowered a rope and threw in a snack and sealed the damn thing back up. The squirrel thing is contagious, Keeme.

[UPDATE: Note the huge hemp rope in the background? Because the squirrel sure hasn't.]

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I made the mistake of following some sad hours reading AP and Reuters feeds about the tsunami with a stop at the USGS site on earthquakes and other terrifying phenomena. It turns out that some family acquaintances there are missing in the aftermath. After that, I definitely needed a distraction. Fortunately, there's a lot to choose from.

Allison skillfully story-tells you through her days selling Hummers in Texas (thanks to Keeme for pointing us in her direction).

Apostropher and Froz Gobo regularly provide engaging and eclectic material. The other day they recommended Steve, Don't Eat It!; in which Steve at The Sneeze goes on a gastronomic safari, chowing down years-old novelty cereal, pork lips and more, and then tells us in painfully witty detail about the experience.

But, Steve's about more than potted meat products! I just got a head-thrown-back-in-laughter moment from his Christmas-morning recap: Honk If you Love Headaches (w/free mp3). Steve falls prey to one of the classic blunders of parenthood. The most famous is not buying identical toys when you have more than one child. Only slightly less well known: failing to properly calculate the effect of a toy with no volume knob or velocity control on your early-morning household.

I had a similar moment once myself. I remember a snowy winter's day 12 years ago when my beloved stepson came to visit with only a baseball bat and ball. The next day I thoughtfully bundled him home to his other mother with a shiny, new xylophone.

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Okay, so tomorrow is the second biggest drinking day of the year (bonus points to anyone who knows #1)... We do want everyone to have fun, get wild, get naughty, get naked, but again...


New Year's Eve is an excellent night to not drink at all if you are driving. And those who are driving, be mucho extra careful on the roads... there will be all-too-many morons that will drink and drive.

Buckle up, and don't worry about getting home quickly, just get home safely.

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[From the excellent Froz Gobo at Apostropher]
Just in case you're having trouble grasping why a tidal wave has killed tens of thousands and left millions homeless, the NOAA has created an animation showing the creation and progress of the last week's tsunami. It turns out it was kinda big...

This would be a good thing to skip a lunch for, if you can. These people are pretty screwed.

[UPDATE: Apple's got a bunch more resources for contributions and info on their home page.]

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Have you ever gotten a gift you didn't quite care for? Something that would have been great if only it had fit? Add-ons for a toy you don't own? Everyone's needed to take something back to the store from time to time. While retailers are generally tolerant of returns, the truth is this is mostly because state and local laws require them to allow consumers to "un-do" any transaction within a reasonable period. Otherwise, once they've closed your sale they've fulfilled their entire reason for being; giving the money back is, well, bad.

2004 holiday sales, in a word, sucked. The mushy Q4 has started driving retailers into self-defense mode. Like any cornered animal, they're fighting back. While required to issue refunds, there's nothing that says they can't make the return process a nightmare slog through hell.

Debra Hollenshade thought she had a simple answer when her goddaughter Jenna declared the corduroy miniskirt Hollenshade had gotten her as a birthday present from Abercrombie & Fitch Co. too short to wear to school.

Just return it, Hollenshade told the 13-year-old.

But because Jenna didn't have a receipt, she said, the store would not allow her even to make an exchange. Instead, she had to call Abercrombie's headquarters in New Albany, Ohio, which sent her a label for mailing the skirt back. Seven weeks after her birthday, Jenna got a check in the mail for the price of the skirt.

"What they're basically saying is everybody steals," Hollenshade said. "We're the ones shoveling out all this money into their stores, and they're calling our kids criminals."

Naturally, the retailers are whining about all manner of ills: people who wear and return clothes; shoplift & return scams; "serial returners." While I'm sure that these are genuine concerns, it seems funny that the weaker retail sales get, the more barriers to returns go up.

A number of larger retailers have joined a tracking system offered by Irvine, CA company The Return Exchange. As part of the new return process, customers attempting a return must produce a driver's license or state ID. This will be scanned into Return Exchange's database to help them monitor your behavior patterns. They're saying this will help prevent "return fraud."

"I'd say 99.5 percent of consumers won't notice," said Ellen Tolley, spokeswoman at the National Retail Federation. "They really only impact the people who abuse the system."

Tell that to Arline Gottsefeld, a 75-year-old retiree in the Melbourne area. She bought a $59 vacuum at SuperTarget earlier this fall. Tried it for a day, and decided she didn't like it. Employees at the store told her there was nothing they could do, even though she had her receipt.

Eventually a sympathetic manager at another Target store relented and let Gottsefeld return the vacuum. Satisfied, but discouraged, she wrote the company a letter. It responded, reiterating its policy against accepting returns for opened items.

"I thought I did everything right, whatever happened to customer service?" she said. "It just means I can't shop there anymore."

I'm guessing the retailers have found a way around their obligation to handle returns, and they're milking it. Return Exchange's web site says:

Through the use of Verify-1®, merchants are given the ability to access a basic rule set to enforce their return policy. The authenticity of returns is automatically verified while ensuring compliance with all your return policies. If the return is authorized, a return authorization code is immediately sent back to the terminal for continued processing. If a pattern of unusual return activity is detected, a decline code is sent back to the terminal, and the consumer is offered a courtesy notice directing them to contact customer service at The Return Exchange.

Verify-1®, by The Return Exchange, is VeriFone® certified to run on all VeriFone® models using the Verix operating system. Don't let returns take away from your business. Use Verify-1® to authorize all of your returns.

Less verbiage about fraud prevention and a lot more about making sure returns are in "compliance" and don't "take away from your business." When the NY Times asked them to clarify their position, they were directed to the company's web site with no further comment.

Consumer activists, privacy advocates and state and federal officials are becoming concerned. There are a few cautionary statements and at least one inquiry already in progress.

Owen Davis, a spokesman for Staples, which is based in Framingham, Mass., said the company started introducing it "maybe a year and half ago to counter return fraud."

"It only applies to those returns without a receipt and it's only in select stores," he said.

But consumer advocates voiced a range of concerns, from failure of merchants to notify consumers their return activity was being monitored to the possibility that shoppers would be unfairly singled out.

"Consumers don't have any sense of rules for this new return or exchange reporting mechanism," said Jordana Beebe, communications director for Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a public advocacy group in San Diego. "Oftentimes people won't know they've transgressed this invisible boundary until they're making a return and it is declined."

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Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the practice and has proposed legislation to require stores that limit returns to clearly warn shoppers before they make a purchase.

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"I'm concerned about the 99 percent of consumers who are not abusing the system," said Edgar Dworsky, a former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts and founder of ConsumerWorld.org, an Internet public service site. "It's the wrong size, the wrong color, the mother bought clothing for kids who didn't want it."

He said consumers returning gifts this holiday season "may be in for a nasty surprise," adding that "the stores are really cracking down on returns from this extreme of using a blacklist to the slicing and dicing of return dates for different product categories."

Bottom line: hold back on that purchase until you're dead certain you have exactly what you want. Once you buy, you might not have the option to change your mind. Arm yourself with a working knowledge of return policies and customer service practices before you walk into any of the major retail chains. It just got a little harder to deal with them.

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So you like corporations? Guess what: they're not so crazy about you anymore.

“John here,” the other John said, “pioneered the concept of marketing by refusing to sell any products. It drives the market insane.”

“And now it’s time to cash in. On Friday we’re gonna dump four hundred thousand pairs on the market at two and a half grand each.”

“Which, since they cost us—what was it?”

“Eighty-five.”

“Since they cost us eighty-five cents to manufacture, gives us a gross margin of around one billion dollars.” He looked at Vice-President John. “It’s a brilliant campaign.”

“It’s really just common sense,” John said. “But here’s the thing, Hack: if people realize every mall in the country’s got Mercurys, we’ll lose all that demand we’ve worked so hard to build up. Am I right?”

“Yeah.” Hack hoped he sounded confident. He didn’t really understand marketing.

“So you know what we’re going to do?”

He shook his head.

“We’re going to shoot them,” Vice-President John said. “We’re going to kill anyone who buys a pair.”

Max Barry's written a novel about life in the near future, where your job means everything and the products you buy drive your reality, albeit in some slightly counterintuitive ways. Sure, it's fiction. Now. (Maybe.) [Bonus coolhunting points to Edison for steering me this way.]

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I almost felt like I was saying "Free Willy!"... Aaaanyway...

Citibank is offering a free iPod Mini with minimal strings (IMO):

"Get your money rockin’ n rollin’ with Citibank® EZ Checking account today. Just follow these 3 easy steps, it will only take a few minutes.

1. Simply apply for a Regular Checking account with the Citibank® EZ Checking pricing package – it’s FREE with Direct Deposit.***
2. Fund your account with $2,500.
3. Pay 2 bills online each month for 12 consecutive calendar months at citibankonline.com. You will receive your iPod® Mini.* after you pay your first 2 bills online at citibankonline.com. Remember Online Bill Payment is FREE at Citibank.

There are some important disclosures, so make sure you read the whole thing. And ya have to do it before the end of the year...

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Remember to tell your significant other that you love them.
Spend some time playing, and talking with a small child that is not yours.

And most importantly, do not drink and drive...
Anything more than 2 drinks every hour, be smart and hand your keys to someone else.

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Yeah, it's Christmas again. Join us as Chaos Digest takes a quick sprint through some of the traditions and history of that flammable, carpet-encrusting, cat-tempting holiday centerpiece, the Christmas tree.

• The custom of the Christmas tree can be traced back to Germany in 700 AD. According to legend, the British monk St. Boniface used an undecorated fir tree in his missionary efforts to convert tribe of Germans. Replacing the oak tree which was sacred to the Druids, St Boniface preached, "Let this be called the tree of the Christ Child". From then on, Germans began celebrating Christmas with the planting of a fir sapling.
  
  The Christmas tree became popular in England in 1841 when Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, brought a Christmas tree over from Germany and put it in Windsor Castle. The Royal couple were illustrated in a newspaper standing around the Christmas tree with their children, and the tradition of decorating a tree became fashionable.
  
  During the Victorian times, Christmas trees were decorated with candles to remind children of the stars in the sky at the time of the birth of Jesus. Using candles was, of course, a great fire hazard.
• The Rockefeller Center tree in New York is probably the single most famous Christmas tree in America. It turns up in dozens of films, news bumpers and NBC sitcoms year after year. Still, if you're just not getting enough, here's WNBC's live video stream of the tree and the skating rink along with a complete timeline of the season's tree-related news items.
• The White House Christmas tree is a 40-foot monster Colorado spruce this year, lit by Chantilly, Va., Girl Scout Brownies Clara Pitts and Nichole Mastracchio. The White House maintains a detailed record of all the holiday activities, which are entirely powered by volunteers and donations from florists, decorators and artists across the country and the world. In what I assume must be the spirit of religious tolerance and ethnic equality, George Bush today commented, "Laura joins me in sending our best wishes for a joyous Kwanzaa." Thanks, George.
• The City of Chicago plops a three-story-tall Christmas tree in Daley Plaza each year. This is cool in and of itself, and the lighting ceremony is usually a standard news item here in the city, but there's also a bizarre holiday tradition that's grown up around the tree. There's a nativity at the base, and for several years running there have been attempts (successful and not) to swipe the baby Jesus statue from the display.

  Maybe someone worried that the baby Jesus was cold, so they took the statue inside. Maybe they thought it was too important, so they moved it someplace else.
  
  Adults confronted with an empty cradle at the Nativity scene in Daley Plaza on Sunday improvised a number of stories for curious children after police said a Chicago man ran off with the statue that morning.
  
  After using the baby-Jesus-might-be-cold story on her young grandchildren, Jayne Wadden of Chicago said, "That's a better way to put it."

  The cold air does things to people...
• The now defunct Russian space station Mir carried a small, portable Christmas tree that was erected each year in a small ceremony in low Earth orbit. Mission Commander William Shepherd noted in a recent interview that the new International Space Station isn't carrying a tree ("Yet," he says), but that the crew did recieve a shipment of gifts from home aboard a progress re-supply ship earlier this month, and they plan to spend the holiday enjoying the view, eating turkey and opening presents.
• In the late 1800's, Chicago heralded the beginning of the Christmas season with the arrival of her famous "Christmas Tree Ship." A badly damaged schooner was salvaged, rebuilt and pressed into service as a lumber transport by the Beaver Island Lumber Company. This ship, the Rouse Simmons, returned each year to Chicago just after Thanksgiving, piled high with wreaths and fresh-cut pines. It docked near the Clark Street bridge every year and sold the entire cargo tree-by-tree to Chicago's citizens. This tradition went on until 1912 when the ship and her crew sank off the coast of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, in 165 feet of water. She still had most of the 10,000 spruces she was carrying at the time left in her hold when the ship was rediscovered in 1971.
• In Los Angeles, Christmas trees are typically sold by auction:

  Originally, the Union Pacific Railroad moved Christmas trees in boxcars to Los Angeles where they were unloaded and immediately sold wholesale to designers or commercial lots. Word about the practice spread, and soon shoppers began showing up to compete for the freshest, frostiest firs in the city. Vendors responded by organizing official auctions, and the tradition stuck. In recent years, the trees have been transported via truck trailers and containers, but were still sold off the trucks.
  
  "It all started when they'd open up the boxcars and start pulling out trees and people would say 'I want that one,'" Zaferis said. "Then we realized that most people were intrigued with the notion of an auction, yet had little opportunity to experience it. We find a lot children like the fancy hand signals of the auctioneers and bidders."
  
  The Pearsons joined about 100 other bidders jockeying for position against a wooden railing set up around the auction block. A semi-truck packed to the top with tightly bundled trees was backed up against the stage. Workers in yellow raincoats unloaded and unfurled the firs one by one. The first prize of the evening, a bushy 7-foot Douglas, sold for $40 in about 10 seconds.

  Apparently, this tradition is starting to die out as more of the Christmas tree lots are being developed, leaving few places where vendors can set up. Large retailers like Home Depot will step in and take up the slack, but this will mean the end of a 40-year history of tree auctions.

Gives you a whole new respect for what is essentially just raw material for cheap Ikea shelving units, doesn't it? Have a merry Christmas, and remember: don't sweat it too much when you discover that you've accidentally tossed out an ornament or two with the denuded, twiggy remains this January.

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So I took the The 500 Question Purity Test and got a 56.4%... Does that mean I'm middle-of-the-road?

Actually, I'm sure it would have been significantly worse (read: less pure) if I wasn't such a militant anti-druggie. Makes ya wonder what else I have done in life, don't it? [insert innocently sinister grin here].

The rains move in eastwards, in waves of succession
Drawing lines of grey across the sky
With history just as close as a hand on the shoulder
In hunger and impatience we cry
The battle against corruption rages in each corner
There must be something better, something pure
And the call it is answered from the caves to the cities
Come the dealers of Salvation on Earth
We've seen the restless children at the head of the columns
Come to purify the future with the arrogance of youth
Nothing is as cruel as the righteousness of innocents
With automatic weapons and a gospel of the truth

Chorus:
Revolution for ever, succession of the seasons
Within the blood of Nature, all raised to rot and die
This purity is a lie

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From the NY Times (free registration required):

Industry lawyers said the different outcomes showed the commission's arbitrariness. "The agency's decisions now tend to be so ad hoc by their very nature," Mr. Sanford said. "It's hard to find a common thread or say, 'This is the line.' "

These are some of the decisions that have stirred debate:

On Oct. 12, the commission proposed to fine 169 stations for broadcasting the April 7 episode of Fox's "Married by America," which it said involved partygoers licking "whipped cream from strippers' bodies in a sexually suggestive manner" (Fox noted that none of this occurred on camera) and showed a man in his underwear being "playfully spanked" by two female strippers.

In August, the commission denied a complaint against NBC's "Will & Grace" for an episode that the agency said showed two women kissing and then rubbing against each other to simulate intercourse. The agency also denied a complaint against an episode of UPN's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" after the Parents Television Council complained of a scene in which Buffy kissed and straddled a man after the two fought.

On Nov. 23, the commission declined to penalize Fox for the June 10, 2003, episode of "Keen Eddie," in which three men hired a prostitute to "extract" semen from a horse for the artificial insemination of another horse. Part of the rationale for denying the complaint was that the prostitute was "never seen actually touching" the horse. It also declined to penalize affiliates of NBC for broadcasting episodes of the show "Coupling" that contained a series of scenes with suggestive dialogue. And it declined to penalize the WB network for an episode of "Off Center" that featured a graphic discussion about male genitals.

(Bolding was by me...)

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Beer that is actually designed, even better.

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Every year, I take a minute to cherry-pick a few gifts and send them along. This year is no exception, and it's been quite a job finding something for everyone. Here we go:

• For haydesigner, another (better) design degree and the entire cutout bin at Virgin Megastore.
• For the Spleen, one of those new Darwin-fish-humping-a-holy-fish bumper stickers.
• For Keeme, an elite team of construction ninjas, another elite team of where-the-heck-is-my-limb-and-what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it? doctors, and a prison chef.
• For thehim, a used Mencken's Chrestomathy, an underused copy of Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America, and a microphone.
• For dcb, a martini, six pounds of expensive spiced meat hand-carried by bored twenty-somethings, and a "Get Out of This Conversation FREE" card.
• For the Scarlet Pimpernel, 200,000 zip ties, skywriting lessons, and the only prototype of our infamous "shrub removal" ray.
• For Roy, two hundred Ho-Ho's and a sketch pad.
• For President George W. Bush, a non-addictive personality, more man-dates and a job running a deli somewhere.
• For The Culture Ghost, a high tower, a smoking gun and more time to blog.
• For Salvage, the book deal he so richly deserves, and two hours' use of Wonkette's agent.
• For Atrios, an updated blogroll (ahem).
• For Edison, a generation-loss repair kit (beta), a 27-hour day, one of those wooden-bead seat covers that cabbies use (office chair model), a "Brothers Against Drunk Driving" practice test and Girl-ed Peace.
• For Howie, a thesaurus and a bag of hyphens.
• For Brett, six new graphics cards all bolted together into one and an hour of retouching on his Buddy Icon.
• For Elemental, a copy of "So You Want An Uppity Bride: How To Jump From 1950 To Today In One Wrenching Jerk," a new job, a new car, a new degree and a lovely new restaurant no one's heard of yet.
• For Heretic, a spot right here at the bar.
• For Scotty McClellan, enough Silly Putty to make a malleable, pliant, reversed copy of the entire Oxford English Dictionary.
• For Iraq, two million dustpans and a better border patrol.
• For The Carlysle Group, a Jell-O wrestling match with The Halliburton Group for the 9% of the world they don't already own.
• For Allison, a bottle of Hummer-branded feminine hygiene product, a candy bar and a copy of "Footloose."
• For Lisa, a copy of "How To Comment On Other People's Blogs for Fun and Profit" and her own personal outbound call center.
• For Ru, a huge box of Quaker oats, a mole hut, chess with no actual winner, and fifteen more years of this nonsense.
• For Sinclair Media Group, an acquisition offer and a nice visit from Mike Moore.
• For Don Rumsfeld, a heavily armor-plated desk donated by a kindly, well-meaning contractor motivated solely by idealism, and a casket to use as a new soapbox.
• For Democrats, a frigging straight line to march in.
• For America, a return to reason, better stand-up comics, fewer SUVs, a moral center that doesn't need stupidity to work, patient friends and a good, stiff gin and tonic.

If I forgot to mention you by name, well, you probably forgot me, too. In any case, you get one of the standby extra gifts we normally keep on hand for unplanned holiday guests: free parking and a tin of mints from before Frango 1.0 closed up shop. Happy holidays!

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"If you've got the marshmallows, then what's in my cocoa?" - Moose A. Moose

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A friend of mine pointed this out to me. It seems like something to keep in mind if you are doing a lot of winter solstice gift shopping. There were a few suprises for me.

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Perhaps you forgot someone, or just need a quick gift for nephew/niece, or maybe even for a grab-bag gift. Well, CD has got your back, baby! Here are two easy gift options that virtually anyone will love.

Whether the recipient is a nature/culture buff, or a rabid sports affectionado, both National Geographic and Sports Illustrated consistently have the flat-out best photography today. Oh, and the articles tend to be pretty good too...

If you are worried about giving a pre-teen SI because of the annual Swimsuit Edition (hubba hubba!), then you can either give them SI for Kids. Or there is ESPN the magazine, which has a larger page size which enhances their great (but not quite as great) photography, but tends to be a bit more entertainment orientated sometimes in their writing (well, in my opinion anyway).

And National Geographic also has an option for kids too, called National Geographic Kids Magazine, and a range of other mags... National Geographic Traveler Magazine and National Geographic Adventure Magazine.

So if any of these strike your fancy, just click one of 'dem links and shoot an order through. Then just bop down to your local bookstore or newsrack, buy a copy of whichever magazine you are giving as a gift, wrap it up along with a card saying they got a full year coming in the mail, and voilà! You have a very easy (yet still thoughtful) gift.

Of course, if you want a real cheap present that anyone could use (but won't get to you before X-mas), get a DVD player from Fry's. At $10, how can you argue?

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Sometimes everything in my little world just blurs together...

(jacked from Majikthise.)

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The web's awash in goofy quizzes this week. My latest discovery: after thorough testing, I have proven to be George Orwell's 1984. Distrubing and intriguing.

George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four. You are the
classic warning against the threat of
totalitarianism. To you, politics and
philosophy are inseparable, authorities suck
and the reality might not exist outside our
imaginations.

At least I didn't turn out to be a phone book, or a trashy romance novel or something. Back to work, proles.

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...when you can explain in detail what's bothering you? Road Rage cards, when you care enough to send the very best (via Sekimori.org, whom I haven't made up my mind about yet).

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Christmas, solstice, festivus, whatever; late Q4 is a time of spiritual reflection for many of us. If you're planning to use this year's ruminations to finally settle down on a new faith, you may find the Belief System Selector a helpful guide. Answer twenty questions and the Selector matches you up with the religion that is least likely to shun and abhor you. There are also links to training materials, web resources and congregations for your One True Way (assuming the One you get encourages these things). Anyway, here's to a peaceful new year.

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The Shiman does it again. Now you can even get holiday Bunny stuff! Be sure to click the little bunny icons for outtakes.

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Each morning we find him sleeping it off on the neighbor's lawn. "Oh Mommy, is Santa tired?"

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Yes, 'tis that festive time of year, where we all must mercilessly mock the big Kahuna and feckless fearless leader of Chaos Digest. Unfortunately, I have nothing more incriminating than this photo...

I fully expect all persons related to or married to Mr. Rob to post embarrasing stories about him...

Oh yeah, happy b-day old man [grin].

[Editor's Note: The linked photo domain expired, d'oh!]

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The annual year end 'best of' lists have started to show, and will get worse over the next couple of weeks.
99% of them are useful only as promotion devices to those compiling them, and the only genuinely good ones are invariably the photos.
Yahoo offers Rueters' 212 Pictures of the Year for 2004.

"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art."
- Ambrose Bierce

"A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into."
- Ansel Adams

"I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything."
- John Steinbeck

"While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see."
- Dorothea Lange

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Well, that's because it is a picture. I guess that some of the geekier electronic music artists have started hiding pictures in the spectrographs of their songs. Aphex Twin is shown, but here's more, including a recipe for making your own embedded images. Rock on.

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Hey, I tried it and not only do I feel less depressed, but I'm three inches taller sitting down (no malarkey!).

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Try not to be too weepy because this much beloved icon is no more...

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If you don't already have a short, balding, scrawny, hissing plush toy hanging around your house, well then lookie here!

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My first thought when I read this story was that the Brits are finally mimicing our alarmist government and their corporate protectionist policies (ala "Don't buy those Canadian drugs even though they are completely identical to ours! They have not been tested by the FDA, and therefore could be very dangerous!").

The Tobacco Manufacturers Association welcomed the initiative from the government but pointed to high duty in the UK as being one of the reasons for increased counterfeiting.

I mean, it just smacked of legit UK cigarette companies whining to the government like our coroporations do here all the time (drug makers, music, movies, insurance... you name it), especially when they use unquantified words like "often contained" (note the lack of any actual numbers or percentages when using such scare tactics).

More than half the cigarettes seized in raids were counterfeit and often contained extremely dangerous levels of toxin, said John Healey, economic secretary to the Treasury.

Then, the sheer ludacrisy just struck me...

I mean, we're talking about smokers here, right? The ones who knowingly and purposefully inhale known toxins and carcinogens everysinglepuff? And the warm and fuzzy British government is trying to shelter them from additional danger?

Geez.
I guess my first thought was right after all.

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Having decided that invisible frames just aren't invisible enough, artist James Sooy went one step beyond: no damn frames at all. Instead, he's hung his lenses directly from a custom piercing.

I’ve only had them for about a week now, but I’ve been sleeping and showering in them. I hadn’t taken them off in four days when one of the brackets cut me while I was asleep; I’d forgotten to sand the edges and they were still razor sharp. They’re back on now and seem reliable enough to take on a two week trip over the holidays; I doubt I’ll need to take them off during that time. Taking them on and off is a bit of a hassle, as it involves taking a tiny screwdriver and unscrewing them while they’re on my face — about a 5 to 10 minute process — which I suppose is about what you’d spend with contacts.

Inherent dangers in piercing, really mess up your nose, blah blah, don't try this at home, okay?

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We're going to need more elves...

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Digby runs down a PBS timeline reviewing how the Republicans managed to kill Bill Clinton's healthcare proposal and leverage the fallout into Gingrich's "Republican Revolution." Could be repurposed into a nice piece of political judo, if the Democrats manage to self-organize in the next few weeks.

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