The music was pretty good.

This year had some new songs that made me remember what it's like to enjoy music. Tom Waits released Orphans, Level 42 released Retroglide, and then...then there was Tah-Dah. I liked Scissor Sisters before, but after this year, they're right up there, man.

Either because I'm a bastard or I can't count, I will now subject you to my Top 26 songs of 2006. I could call myself insanely clever and add, "Get it? 2...6? 2006?" but even I didn't think of that until I typed it just now. These songs all stand on their own, so I'm not going to do more than simply list them off and say that if you haven't heard them, give them a listen. They're just that good. The links all go to videos on YouTube, my other entertainment for 2006. Some of the videos are great, too--music videos used to be an obsession of mine, so I still appreciate a good one when I see it. Knights of Cydonia, for instance, has old west kung fu and robots in its video. That's right up my alley. Were I twenty years younger, I would be writing fanfics about herding unicorns outside the town of Cydonia. Then again, that's not very far from what I actually write now.

But I digress. This was my soundtrack this year:

 1 - I Don't Feel Like Dancin' - Scissor Sisters
 2 - On An Island - David Gilmour
 3 - Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
 4 - Steady, As She Goes - The Raconteurs (Alternate video here.)
 5 - Land of a Thousand Words - Scissor Sisters
 6 - I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Death Cab For Cutie
 7 - Goodbye Innocence - L.E.O.
 8 - Empty - Ray Lamontange
 9 - Knights of Cydonia - Muse
10 - LDN - Lily Allen
11 - Nothing In My Way - Keane
12 - In The Sun - Michael Stipe with Coldplay
13 - Wild Horses - Tim Ries with Norah Jones
14 - I Must Have Lost It On The Wind - Elton John
15 - The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny - Lemon Demon
16 - Perfume - Sparks
17 - Because We Believe - Andrea Bocelli
18 - But Not Tonight - The New Cars
19 - Chinese Translation - M. Ward
20 - Beyond The Horizon - Bob Dylan
21 - Black Cadillac - Rosanne Cash
22 - The Asylum of Your Arms - Cormac McCarthy
23 - Wraith Pinned To The Mist & Other Games - Of Montreal
24 - Here For You - Neil Young
25 - Dear Mr. President - Pink feat. Indigo Girls
26 - O Mary Don't You Weep - Bruce Springsteen

The music was pretty good.

This.

This is all anyone needs to turn a holiday into a banquet.

This.

Recapturing my lost youth.

Those little ear buds have nothing on a good old pair of stereo headphones, the kind you get free with a radio or CD player.

From Christmas of 1983 until the wires cracked in the first pair of headphones I had, I knew nothing of my surroundings. I was sharing my room with Hall & Oates, Eurythmics, John Williams, Olivia Newton-John, people like that. And Taco. I can't forget Taco.

Of course, that generally is better received when one is 9 and not 29. So recently, what I've got hooked to my computer is a little monaural ear bud that only goes in one ear. It does its job, but up until a few minutes ago I had never heard Scissor Sisters in full stereo. Except for those two times they were on the radio, but that doesn't count because the first time I never realized what a great song I was listening to until it was a few seconds into it, and the second time I had static from where I was standing.

I would like to say I'll be using my full-bass headphone from now on, but you know I need to know if things like dinner or fires or phone calls are going on. It was nice, though.

Does anyone else like the smell of fresh foam headphone covers? I...uh...I would lick these, but they weren't originally mine and I'm not sure where they've been, and they're about ten years old. So the pica needs to wait until another time.

I feel like a kid again.

Recapturing my lost youth.

Christmas-land, NYC.

Nativity Scene 2
Originally uploaded by kptyson.

"A Bronx tradition. The Garabedians put on a lavish Christmas display that combines traditional Christian themes with Disney, Dali and a healthy dose of hallucinogens

The first story is the Disney/Dali level including this manequin showing some leg."

I really can't add anything to kptyson's description of the Garabedian house but...wow.

Christmas-land, NYC.

LilyBeth the Reindeer.

LilyBeth the Reindeer was a reindeer.  She was always impressed by Santa's select areosquadron who soared through the air every Christmas.  One day, while watching a test run, LilyBeth stepped into a hole and injured her foot.

Poor LilyBeth, she limped home as quickly as she could to avoid being shot at by the orange creatures who lived in the forest.  "Mama, Mama, Mama, I bust my foot!" LilyBeth said as she burst through the door.

"Put your foot up here and have something to eat," LilyBeth's mama said, head-butting a footstool towards her as she put the soup on.

After a few days of ice and elevation, LilyBeth's foot was feeling better, and so she took it outside to check out the new fallen snow.

Her eyes spotted something in the snow, and she scampered over to it.  "It smells like hope," she thought, admiring the steamy pile of what she thought were berries. After tasting just one, LilyBeth began to levitate into the air!

"Whee," thought LilyBeth as she ran over the tree tops, passing many confused Kung Fu masters on the way.

"Mama, Mama, Mama, I'm floating in the air!" LilyBeth called down to her mother, who was drying the laundry on her antlers.

LilyBeth's mama looked up and exclaimed, "Sweet Blitzen's butthair!"

"Have you been eating the areosquadron's droppings?" she asked her flying daughter.

LilyBeth was doing loops around the satellite dish.  "I found a patch of delicious berries growin' in the wild, mama! I don't need my foots up here!"

LilyBeth's mama walked back into the house and head-butted her huge bed out the front door.  She followed the bed with some blankies and threw those around.

"Now, LilyBeth, you just circle around your mama until that wears off," she said sternly.

LilyBeth was a dot in the sky.  "I can fly, Mama! I can fly!"

Her mama just stood there and shook her head.

Santa, meanwhile, was just returning from a run to the ice cream parlor and had Vixen and Comet with him. He spied LilyBeth overhead and told his pilots to pull up alongside.  "Ho Ho Ho," he said to LilyBeth.

"Oh, I'm not for sale," LilyBeth told him, soaring past.

"No, no, no, you silly girl," Santa said with a jolly laugh.  "Santa can get plenty of that at home, I'm wondering what you're doing so high on a night like this," he explained.

LilyBeth told Santa about the magical berries, and he laughed.  "Would you like to guide my sleigh home?" he asked LilyBeth.  Vixen and Comet looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

LilyBeth was thrilled.  "Ooh! I'd love to do that! C'mon, follow me," she said, and hung in the air for a moment before plummeting straight down.

Comet shrugged and he and Vixen shot after her.  Santa grappled with his ice cream all the way down, saying, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!"

When they broke through the trees, Santa and his pilots could see LilyBeth hovering over her house with a huge grin on her face.  "Mama, Mama, Mama!" she shouted to the distraught deer on the porch, "Santa's come with ice cream!"

Santa laughed heartily, and jumped out of his sleigh.  "Can't deny that!" he said, whipping out an ice cream scoop and fixing up cones for LilyBeth, her mama, Comet, Vixen, and some cats that came out of the house when they heard the vacuum seal open on the tub of ice cream.

"You been eating the poop with the magic dust again?" Chester the cat asked when he noticed LilyBeth three feet above the ground.  His brother Jimmy, meanwhile, was pawing at the empty air under LilyBeth, trying to get her out of his personal space.

"Uh-huh!" LilyBeth declared, licking her ice cream cone happily.

"I'll be back with some waffles," LilyBeth's mama said, disappearing into the house momentarily.

"LilyBeth," Santa said, putting an arm around his little friend.  "Any time you feel like some magic dust, you come see me.  Don't eat second-hand magic."

"Okay!" she replied, nuzzling Santa's ear.

Everybody laughed and ate waffles.  It was a good day.



Hope your day's as good, everybody!

LilyBeth the Reindeer.

You can tell a lot about someone by their living room.

Highlights of solstice:




I might have also listened to the Paul Winter Consort's yearly concert from St. John the Divine, but no radio stations in the area carried it on solstice this year. It will be on WNYC on the 30th, but that's sort of past the date a little bit. Not to say I won't be listening, I'm just bitter about the cashier who threw out my mother's reading glasses and radio is always an easy target for my annoyance.

Today's lesson, other than the whole, "Yay, the days will be getting longer again!" thing, is that if someone drops a pair of glasses that look as though the frames have been eaten by a puppy and then reconstructed several times, that person probably needs those glasses and you shouldn't be a dick about it. Don't be a dick about anything, actually. That is my holiday wish. Unless we're talking about special presents for your significant other.

You can tell a lot about someone by their living room.

How Internet has failed me.

I had a fun guessing game planned for today, based on something I saw on television last night as I stood on the stairs reasoning with my puppy that my leg was not nutritious. I saw someone singing a Christmas song on The Tonight Show, and while I thought I knew the singer, I couldn't quite place the voice. Or the face. Or the tuxedo-clad body.

I also couldn't reach the remote to hit Info and end my confusion, because The Puppy wasn't close enough to the table.

Now, here is where I had planned to stick a video from YouTube or something, and have you all guess who the singer was and play along. However, there is no evidence of this performance available. So I will have to tell you who it was.

When the song ended, Jay Leno comes over and says, "Scott Weiland!" and everything else he said was lost to the sound of my brain breaking. This man didn't have brightly-colored hair, he wasn't belting out a rock song, he was behaving, as the American Idol lingo goes, like a crooner.

The past 13 years of my alt-rock listening life are now very confused. I need to find out if Scott Weiland has a Christmas album. I could have looked that up, but I was typing, "weiland leno" and "weiland christmas" into YouTube most of the day.

I know this is as stunning as the time I heard Slash's flamenco song Obsession Confession. I mean, I can't believe these rock guys can do other types of music. Will wonders never cease?

How Internet has failed me.

I'm easily entertained.

Our usual hopping, happening routine on the weekends is find out what movie is on, get together, and watch it. This weekend, Syriana premiered, so I taped it for us to watch.

We haven't gotten to see Syriana yet, but last Saturday we decided that was what we were going to watch. Mum took The Puppy out for walkies just before I put the tape in, and Nan asked me how long the movie was. It's over two hours, and it's serious and involved and all, and because of the long, bizarre list of things that take up our time in a day, we were running late this Saturday.

I keep a list of the movies we've taped but haven't seen yet, because I forget what I've taped before the VCR cools, and some of the movies were taped months ago. Such is the case with Ishtar. Yes, Ishtar, which I taped back in the early '90s, but we never watched because, you know...it's Ishtar. But Nan had caught a little of it a few weeks ago, and said we should give it a chance. I was game, because you know I count In The Year 2889 as one of the greatest uses of film ever, and this way I could say, "Yes, I have seen Ishtar."

Ishtar is a half-hour shorter than Syriana. Sold!

My mom comes in, sits down, and I start the movie.

Now, right there is just a set-up for wackiness. Sadly, Ishtar has the credits at the beginning, so my mother caught on and said, "I thought we were seeing Syriana?" before the first song had ended.

What I'm about to say might lose me some credibility, but then I am the person who loves The Phantom Menace so much that I go off into insult-laden tirades against the movies' haters when I get too tired or have too much sugar. I liked Ishtar. It wasn't Transylvania 6-5000, and it certainly wasn't Road to Morocco, but it's not as horrid as legend has made it.

I rather hope Syriana is as good.

I'm easily entertained.

Take it to the fridge!

There is nothing I enjoy more than totally utter weirdness, and Weebl & Bob bringing pastry back just makes having senses worthwhile.

Take it to the fridge!

I shall be watching this story with great interest.

Xanadu, the 1980 musical with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John, is being made into an Off-Broadway production.

About bloody time, I say.

I really had no idea who I would have liked to see in the lead parts, but reading that Jane Krakowski (from Ally McBeal and the stage show of Guys & Dolls with Ewan McGregor) had played Kira, and Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) played Sonny almost makes me think it could work. I'd go so far to say Tudyk probably is a better Sonny than Michael Beck, but I know Beck's got fans and I don't think I could sustain a skate to the skull this weekend.

...I did just write the name Ewan McGregor. What's wrong with me? I should aim high in my fantasies. He sings. Hells bells, I could hear him singing Don't Walk Away. Like, OMG.

I AM SUCH A FAN GIRL. It's embarrasing, isn't it?

Love me, love my ridiculous obsession with Xanadu.

I shall be watching this story with great interest.

Puppy Birthday Explosion!

Ah, Puppy...I remember when we brought you home.
They told us your birthday was December 14th, and that you had reflux.
Then you peed on my lap and hid under my leg.
You were such a cute little puppy.

 
 
 
 
 

You were so small, only 16 pounds.
You only had tiny little teeth, and tiny little toes.

 
 
 
 
 

I remember thinking that one day, you would be big enough to eat my head.

 
 
 
 
 

You got along so well with your brothers...until your reflux drugs wore off.

 
 
 
 
 

Luckily, your brothers were very forgiving. They must think you're cute, too.

 
 
 
 
 

I don't remember those early months very clearly. You stood still a lot, when you weren't running after me. Your teeth grew in lovely and strong, and you began to listen to your fluffy brother.

 
 
 
 
 

You dug holes a lot when you were little. Next year, you'll dig more.

 
 
 
 
 

I had never met a dog who was afraid of everything but thorny hedges.

 
 
 
 
 

You had good manners from the start; you housebroke yourself in one day, and never put your elbows on the table...

 
 
 
 
 

without making sure that your rump was also on the table.

 
 
 
 
 

But no matter what you eat--tables, CDs, books, poops, humans--you always manage to be insanely cute at the end of the night.

 
 
 
 
 

You have the taste for good food.

 
 
 
 
 

And you're learning to welcome visitors.

 
 
 
 
 

You even have great a sense of humor.

 
 
 
 
 

When you're older, you'll probably get into the coffee and stay up all night.

 
 
 
 
 

With any luck, you'll get all of your injuries out of the way at a young age. It isn't your fault your knees don't work like they should. I'm glad it's not my fault, either. Your parents made you too cute to let crap knees keep you from living, though.

 
 
 
 
 

You trained yourself to go to bed each night; even when you don't want to.

 
 
 
 
 

I'm glad you got used to me waking you up with the camera, like I did last night when you turned 1.

 
 
 
 
 

And I'm glad you're part of my life.

Happy Birthday, Puppy.

Don't eat your brothers' poops. Or your brothers.

UPDATE!

We started you out with healthy habits. That lasted about a month, and so you couldn't wait to stop the musical candle and have come cake. You and I were the only ones who appreciated the minty madness of the frosting, and the sugar buzz that followed.

Puppy Birthday Explosion!

NASA criticized for trying to mutate astronauts.

High-ranking members of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are coming under fire for scheduling the most recent trip to the International Space Station (ISS) during a flurry of solar activity.

"They knew that solar flare was coming, and they sent them up there anyway," one blogger on Bad Astronomy complained.

NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin was quoted as saying, "The Fantastic Four was on Cinemax last night, and it totally rocked. How cool would that be, man? Like, super astronauts? Wow, man...just, wow."

Unconfirmed reports say Griffin was last seen dancing to Iron Butterfly after downing a bag of Doritos and turning off the lights in mission control to reveal glow-in-the-dark stars and smile faces painted all over the computers.

ISS Flight Engineer Thomas Reiter, meanwhile, is optimistic for his newly gained super powers, whatever they may be. "I'm pumped," he said during an interview with Spaceweather.com Wednesday evening. "I'd like to be the first astronaut to reach planet Mars, using only my enhanced jumping ability."

In related news, HBO has begun production on Solar Tsunami: Sunspot from Hell, a three-part miniseries scheduled for May release.

NASA criticized for trying to mutate astronauts.

My mission in life.

I have decided--today, at least--to track down a soccer mom. I've never met one that I know of, and I think I may be playing the negative stereotype in ignorance. Find me a soccer mom, readers. Find a soccer mom, and play them this song.

Land of a Thousand Words is the new Scissor Sisters single, and Top 40 radio thinks soccer moms won't like Scissor Sisters. I plan to change that--one soccer mom at a time. They are huge in the UK. They are huge in my head--which is generally an extension of the UK--but everyone has to admit...the ladies love the slow jams all over the world...don't they?

My mission in life.

I am so out of the loop.

I just found out Barbie and Ken broke up.

My mom told me that for the past three years, Barbie's been with Blaine. Now, I knew about Blaine, but I didn't realize he was Barbie's new guy. I thought maybe he was brought in for Ken, actually.

It turns out this photo drama from a 1980 Barbie Fan Club newsletter was sadly prophetic. Poor, heartbroken Ken.

Yes, I belonged to the Barbie Fan Club. I enjoyed the photo dramas. I even read the articles sometimes. The 1984 feature with Vanessa Williams sticks in my mind as ironically glorious. My Barbies did not lead lives Kenner or Mattel would approve of; Ken had a bizarre habit of spitting at other dolls who wore boots. There were hit-and-runs with the Barbie 'Vette. I enjoyed calling Magic Moves Barbie "Hostage Barbie," because she had motorized arms that if positioned the right way, would raise as if she were being held at gun point. Those are the kind of Barbie games I played. Ballerina Barbie was a Russian spy, and she consorted with Terrorist Barbie, a re-dressed Pretty Changes Barbie who wore an inside-out headphone pad as a beret and toted about forty Star Wars blasters in her aerobics bag. Those were my 1980s, kids. Between Barbie, Nancy Drew, and Atari, I never had to leave my house, except to buy more Barbies, Nancy Drew books, and Atari games.

It does not surprise me at all, then, that Barbie now has a dog that eats poop -- just like my real dog! That's what the blurb says, I would never publicly admit that my dog eats poop...really.



If I had the money to throw away on Barbies, you know I'd have this. I wonder if there are going to be tie-ins like rock-throwing Stacey, Barbie's misguided little sister who thinks the neighbor lady is mean for not letting Tanner poop in her driveway, or scat-fetish Ken, who has really let himself go after the breakup with Barbie.

Ah, Barbie...thanks for the laughs, babe. It was good catching up with you.

I am so out of the loop.

"The archives have been broken." "Into?" "No, just broken."

A big shout out to the person who noticed that in Internet Explorer, my blog cut off at the end of the sidebar's content, leaving most of my past posts lost to the browser ethers. Toast. Of my web designing skills, I cannot boast.

Thanks, me! It means a lot that you pointed out the problem, I'll let you win Scrabble later, even if you do try to slip some weird words from Scotland in there. Playing board games by oneself is surprisingly more fun than trying to code for multiple browsers. What would have made me laugh--had it not been so tragically terrible to look at--was the floating ad for my button-making skills that, when viewed in IE, only said, "TONS!"

I don't, in fact, make tons--just buttons. I also make little trails of dead skin and hair that do not sell as well as Gattaca claimed. I make wicked good sugar cookies, too, but lack the time and materials needed for the level of wicked good I'm talking about. Don't think about my dead skin and hair while thinking about my cookies, either, it'll drive you mad.

Thanks also to RH for pointing out the .comment link problem. Not only was there a missing 0, there were extra style tags from things I've added and combined into the main CSS. My design skills are much like my skin-shedding tendencies, but RH wins at blog blugs!

"The archives have been broken."  "Into?"  "No, just broken."

In a few years, we'll look back at this and laugh.

Internet sounds like a great thing. I wonder if for $200 a year, I will be able to join a community that offers anonymity and information on all things Thai, while not having a lot of "Go to hell," thrown at me.

Thanks to Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics for making my decade. I AM SERIOUS.

In a few years, we'll look back at this and laugh.

Who gets sick watching HGTV?

I would raise both hands, but then I couldn't type this. I don't generally like to write about my health, because there is only so much bandwidth on the Internet, and there aren't many people who see the humor in my stories about falling over. This is of course a flaw in my writing, because damn, that time the cats and dog got their leashes all tied up around my legs while I was on the floor was some funny shit.

I single out HGTV because that's what we watch, along with the Food Network and Game Show network and X-Play...okay, only I watch X-Play, but that's because I only eat oatmeal and peanut butter and have seen just about every episode of Match Game ten times. HGTV has the decorating shows, and House Hunters, and is light entertainment so we leave it on when we're having coffee.

I get migraines. I think I've mentioned that, but one trigger for migraines is flashing lights. If you've watched any show on HGTV recently, you know where this is going. The camerawork they use is almost subliminal, closets spin into focus and before you can say walk-in, the show is onto a choppy montage of sinks and knobs and yellow tiles and whatever the hell else is in the room. I dare anyone to tell me exactly what they've just seen after one of those shows.

Last night, after Gift Show 2006 made my entire family ill, I decided to hit the HGTV contact form. I pretty much said, "Hey, you're making me sick, cut that out."

The HGTV forum is filled with complaints about the camerawork, so I don't feel like so much of a whiny freak. I told HGTV I wanted to like their shows--and I do, at least no one dies on Design on a Dime, although there was that broken arm Lee Snijders had that time--but I can't enjoy things that make me homicidal. I don't think I said homicidal, I know better than to threaten a website with television killin'.

Truth is I don't remember what I said, but it was very eloquent yet concise and I felt pumped up enough after hitting submit that I came here to post the link to the contact form so anyone else who feels like they just got off a boat after watching can complain too.

Who gets sick watching HGTV?

Hey Britney? When you're done designing baby clothes, design a good stick-on lady-part cover.

My family has taken to leaving Jeopardy! on rather than hear me add headlines to the "entertainment" news. You know the shows, they all look and sound alike, some even hype each other by saying things like, "The details you didn't hear on Extra!"

At least, I think it might be my fault they changed the station. Then again, I've been embellishing for as many years as those shows have been on, so it could be that there's some ghastly story going on that they don't want me to know about. Has Donny Osmond eaten kittens to retain his youthful looks? He better not, I saw him walking around once, so he's in my cool book, even if I did accidentally break the leg off my Ken as Donny Osmond doll. I didn't mean to, and I sincerely hope that no Osmonds were injured around 1980. Otherwise my powers were totally out of control that day and I apologize.

I also apologize to anyone who clicks on the following link, because I don't recommend clicking it.

The flashy entertainment shows have fixated on Britney Spears lately, or rather her lack of underwear in a paparazzi photo. Never mind that the guy with the camera is actually the reason for the picture, never mind that those damn slinky dresses show off every panty line if you do wear any, the sight of celebrity naughty bits is big news, and who am I to stop it?

Except that it reminds me of the statue, and I need to forget the statue. (Quite possibly not safe for work, unless you work in obstetrics, and then this is nothing compared to work, I'm sure.)

Today I got a spam poll, asking me where I thought Britney Spears' panties were. It brought the image of the statue back to mind, and I really have no other way to deal with my feelings than to show it to all of you, and if you look, you too can say, "This is not news," when Pat O'Brien or Mary Hart go wondering what kind of sluttery is at hand in the land of the famous.

Hey Britney? When you're done designing baby clothes, design a good stick-on lady-part cover.

Speed Racer movie update.

I haven't heard anything new about the Speed Racer movie the Wachowskis are working on, so I'm going to just make things up and see what sticks.

I watched King Kong last night, and to get over that, I thought about how many movies Jack Black has been in; he seems to be the darling of the box office right now. So much so, that if the Wachowskis are planning to draw the crowds, they will probably have to cast him in the lead role.

Go Speed Racer...rock on.

Everyone knows that the Wachowskis would be nothing without Hugo Weaving.

 

Nevermind that he has a completely different accent from his younger brother, Racer X will end up being the coolest thing in the movie simply because Hugo Weaving is in the mask. And the car. And the sunglasses.

To make the movie less...how shall I say...white, the Wachowskis are going to need to change things up a bit. Drawing once more from their pool of talent, the Matrix architects will most likely use Jada Pinkett-Smith as the most ass-kicking Trixie ever.

With any luck, she will have a more up-to-date hairstyle. As long as she keeps the yellow bow.



With the demise of Peter Jackson's career for the time being, Andy Serkis will probably be free to bring his talents to the project as not only the youngest Racer brother, Spritle, but also as his disturbing little friend Chim-Chim.

I would actually pay to see this:

Speed Racer movie update.

Eggs, beans, sausage and spam.

It is with great sadness that I have enabled the word verification on my comments. I can't make the letters out half the time myself, but that is because I am more machine than man.

I'm just really sick of seeing a notice that I have a comment, then coming here with the excitement of a five-year-old, and when I get here I get to read an ad about how other bastards made $800. If any of my posts were about, "I wonder how bastards make $800 in an hour...," then I would understand the interest. But no, I'm sometimes squeezing the last drops of my mind into this blog, if only to remember how to string a few words together and maybe entertain some people in the process.

The spam hasn't even been that funny, and I'd rather not have unfunny for a while.

Eggs, beans, sausage and spam.

Passing judgment.

Eric Clapton says "top" lists are evil. I feel really guilty about totally forgetting Clapton when I made my list, but the way I picked my songs was by picking only artists who I'd listen to every song from. By. Eh. Listening to rock music rots your grammar, kids. There is one Eric Clapton song I don't listen to, so, that's why he's not on the list. Really. I also left off The B-52's if that makes things okay with Eric Clapton.

What am I talking about? That is the ageless question, I know; but today, I'm posting the Top 100 that I made up for Muuurgh's Top 100 group on MySpace.

I put them in order of how they sounded best together, which you can't hear here, but I am willing to mail a CD if we can revive this Top 100 Group. I also made sure I left those last five towards the end so people didn't come to kill me. I stand by Xanadu, dammit.

Had I done this list after August, I probably would have swapped Comfortably Numb by Scissor Sisters with their new song I Don't Feel Like Dancin', because that song has the power to turn any day into a party. But I didn't, so I'm leaving the list as it was when I made it.

Have a happy weekend, and know that I will give personal histories of why every single song is on this list by request. I'm just that crazy.

1 - My Ever Changing Moods - Style Council
2 - Prelude/Angry Young Man - Billy Joel
3 - Wouldn't It Be Good - Nik Kershaw
4 - Watching The Wheels - John Lennon
5 - Birdhouse In Your Soul - They Might Be Giants
6 - You May Be Right - Billy Joel
7 - Overkill - Men At Work
8 - Something About You - Level 42
9 - We Close Our Eyes - Go West
10 - Mr. Blue Sky - ELO
11 - I'll Take New York - Tom Waits
12 - Someday, Someway - Marshall Crenshaw
13 - Something To Fall Back On - Todd Rundgren
14 - There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) - Eurythmics
15 - Wrapped - Gloria Estefan
16 - Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
17 - Things Have Changed - Bob Dylan
18 - I'll Never Let Go Of Your Hand - Tom Waits
19 - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
20 - Learn to Fly - Foo Fighters
21 - Fly Me To The Moon - Frank Sinatra
22 - Stay - Oingo Boingo
23 - Together In Electric Dreams - Phil Oakey
24 - I Only Know - Dinah Washington
25 - The Longest Time - Billy Joel
26 - Everyday I Write the Book - Elvis Costello
27 - As - Stevie Wonder
28 - The Show Must Go On - Queen
29 - Blasphemous Rumours - Depeche Mode
30 - Sunrise - Simply Red
31 - I Love You, Goodbye - Thomas Dolby
32 - It's My Life - Talk Talk
33 - Head Over Heels - Tears For Fears
34 - Modern Love - David Bowie
35 - Bungle In The Jungle - Jethro Tull
36 - Summer, Highland Falls - Billy Joel
37 - Nights On Broadway - Bee Gees
38 - In A Big Country - Big Country
39 - New Year's Day - U2
40 - Learning To Fly - Pink Floyd
41 - I Can't Go For That (No Can Do) - Hall & Oates
42 - Closer - Nine Inch Nails
43 - Automatic - The Pointer Sisters
44 - White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
45 - Dust In The Wind - Kansas
46 - Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
47 - Shape of My Heart - Sting
48 - Every Little Thing - Raul Malo
49 - I'll Be Around - What Is This?
50 - Chiquitita - Abba
51 - Heart Of Glass - Blondie
52 - Heading For The Light - Traveling Wilburys
53 - Don't Dream It's Over - Crowded House
54 - Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor
55 - Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
56 - Keep Me In Your Heart - Warren Zevon
57 - You and I Both - Jason Mraz
58 - Galileo - Indigo Girls
59 - Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles
60 - The Chain - Fleetwood Mac
61 - True Faith - New Order
62 - Why Can't I Be You? - The Cure
63 - Pressure - Billy Joel
64 - Don't Change - INXS
65 - Back In Black - AC/DC
66 - Go! - Tones on Tail
67 - Peek-A-Boo - Siouxie and the Banshees
68 - Puttin' On The Ritz - Taco
69 - Word Up - Cameo
70 - Seven Nation Army - White Stripes
71 - Where's Your Head At - Basement Jaxx
72 - That Old Black Magic - Louis Prima
73 - II BS - Charles Mingus
74 - Ojos Asi - Shakira
75 - Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters
76 - Hourglass - Squeeze
77 - Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin
78 - Let's Go Crazy - Prince
79 - Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash
80 - Jesus Built My Hotrod - Ministry
81 - Jump Around - House Of Pain
82 - Topsy Part 2 - Cozy Cole
83 - It's A Sin To Tell A Lie - Fats Waller
84 - Beyond The Sea - Bobby Darin
85 - Guilty - Barbra Striesand & Barry Gibb
86 - Oblivious - Aztec Camera
87 - Fall On Me - R.E.M.
88 - Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
89 - If You Leave - O.M.D.
90 - Always Something There To Remind Me - Naked Eyes
91 - Now We Are Free - Lisa Gerrard
92 - Caribbean Blue - Enya
93 - Deep As The Midnight Sea - David Blamires Group
94 - Kurski Funk - Paul Winter
95 - Adiemus - Adiemus
96 - Xanadu - Olivia Newton-John
97 - Lucky Star - Madonna
98 - Star Wars - Meco
99 - Mr. Roboto - Styx
100 - Dragostea Din Tei - O-Zone

Passing judgment.

A Fine Fail To Suck Day To You.

It is Fail To Suck day, and while I need no special day to be the spectacular that is me, I thought I would pass along some wisdom so at the very least, your day won't suck all that much.

Do not stand on your roof during a rainy windstorm. The umbrella may protect you from the rain, but is ineffective against pavement or sharp objects.

When insulting someone who is not present, make sure that no one with access to the food has similar habits. Not finding glass in your cookies makes this worthwhile.

Do not use household tools for dentistry. Your neighbors may think it's great to save $300, but whatever that is on the floor will never grow back.

Prepare for bad weather by raising squirrels in your spare bedroom. When the pets can't go out, they can have an adventure indoors.

Do not apply Krazy Glue to a Breathe Right strip. It works, but the pain is not worth the spared strip.

In the event of a power outage, stand where you are as the sun will come up eventually. Those in Northern Latitudes may have to wait longer.

Happy Fail To Suck day, everyone!

A Fine Fail To Suck Day To You.