I know I’ve mentioned this (many times) before, but Christmas music is kind of a big deal around here.  We take it very seriously.  And I don’t think a holiday season has gone by on this here blog without me mentioning some of my favorites as well as some of the songs that I loathe with every fiber of my being.  And guess what?  I’m going to do it again.  Because, surely, there are some people reading this year who didn’t read last year and therefore might be under the mistaken assumption that I actually ENJOY Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”.  And I CANNOT LET THAT BE.  And if you have been around, you may have forgotten.  So here’s a refresher course on acceptable (and unacceptable) Christmas music.

Loooooove these songs!

• The Twelve Pains of Christmas by Bob Rivers.
  
  This brings me such joy.  Particularly the bit about “rigging up the lights”.
• Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid
  
  No song makes me feel as tingly and guilty and sad and happy all at once.  And Bono’s line has got to be best line in a Christmas song EVER.  It’s not Christmas until you’ve heard this one.
• Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson
  
  Truly the best version of this song.  It was featured in a Gap Christmas ad several years ago, which is where I first was turned onto it’s awesomeness.  And now, it lives on in our canon with it’s “whip cracks” (which is delightful for slapping my dog’s rear) (oh, don’t worry, she likes it).  Just TRY not to get in the mood with this song on.
• Christmas Is All Around by Billy Mack
  
  Yes, it’s actually Bill Nighy and it’s from the movie “Love Actually” (LOVE that movie!!).  It’s crass and wonderful.  And catchy!  Solid gold shit, maestro!
• Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas by Lou Rawls
  
  I like some of the more melancholy versions of this song too (it’s hard to find a good version of this song) (but I’m sure Paul McCartney could manage it), but this one is my most absolute favorite.  It’s jazzy, swing-y and smokey.  It’s fabulous.  Makes me wanna get my groove on.

And, of course, the flip side of the coin…

HAAAAAAATE these songs:

• Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney.  I refuse to display this song on my precious blog.  But if you simply must hear it, feel free to click the link.  This is a big reason why I don’t like to listen to the Christmas music stations here locally.  Because once they play “Wonderful Christmastime”, the station becomes dead to me.  It’s like nails on a chalkboard.
• Christmas Shoes by NewSong.  This song has NO redeeming qualities.  It’s a pile of manipulative, schmaltzy crap.  HATE HATE HATE.  And if you think I display contempt for this song, I’ve got nothing on Kile.  He positively loathes this one.

Those are the big ones, at least.  So what tops your list?  What is your favorite Christmas song/version?  Your least?  (And do you want to tear your ears off whenever you hear “The Little Drummer Boy”, like I do?)

Nope, you’re not seeing things.  My YNTR list is back this week!  And, bonus for you, it includes two weeks of linky goodness. I still maintain that I may not be doing this list every week.  But I will when I can and when it’s not going to cause me an undue amount of grief to put it together.   And, as it would happen, this week the grief has not been caused.  It’s a mellow Saturday morning around these parts, Liam is watching “Ratatouille” on cable and Kile is snoring in his recliner.  All is right with the world.

This first post is something I could relate to.  Should I go Mac and never come back? from Mandajuice is much like a similar post I wrote not that long ago.  And, just like myself, she finds herself wooed by the seductive iPhone and repelled by a crappy PC.  I’ll be interested to see what she picks, especially since I’m 99.9% sure I’m going to get a MacBook when the time comes.

And in the “Long-Awaited” category, we have Ezra from amalah . com.   I literally felt my heart swell when I saw this sweet picture and the details on the birth.  She is officially the mom of two boys!  I can’t wait to see how the weeks and months ahead are for her and her family.  Congratulations, Storchs!

I can DEFINITELY relate to The Hot Fuss™* and Me from temporarily me.  In fact, I may have thought these very words myself on more than one occasion in the last week or so.  Or the last month or so.  Or the last six months or so.  Sometimes, a bad mood just gets ahold of you and you can’t shake it.  And sometimes, your kid wants to be superglued to your side.  And when the two meet?  Well… that’s when you get a post like this.

And I know you’re probably sick of me talking about it already, but Her New Hobby from Confessions of a Pioneer Woman made me cackle a little bit because The Power of the iPhone can grip ANYBODY, even housewives who live out in the country. And the text messages from her daughter were just too darned funny. I think someone likes “Napoleon Dynamite”!

On the flip side, we have My Grandpa: October 5, 1921- October 14, 2008 from Joy Unexpected. This was a touching and sad post about her grandfather who passed away this last week. It’s been a long time since all of my grandparents passed, but I could keenly feel her loss through her words. I hope she finds peace, now that her grandfather has found his. My sympathies to her and her family.

Being a Reno citizen as well, I can appreciate Fall Where? from EmilyPie. I love her summation of the season here in our town, and how schizophrenic they often tend to be. However, I do disagree with her assessment of summer and the need for air conditioning (I am sure I would perish without it). I love winter, always have, always will. But yes. Fall is like a week long around here. I could do with some more fall, to be honest.

This post gets filed under the “ZOMG” category. ZOMG! Twilight Soundtrack Playlist Just Released! from MamaPop shares with us the fantabulous news of the new “Twilight” movie soundtrack. Can you believe I already have some of these songs on my iTunes? BEFORE this list was released? Oh, I’m a hardcore fan, ya’ll. And you can bet I’ll have the rest of these songs when the soundtrack is released. I cannot WAIT to hear the one recorded by Robert Pattinson.

Enough is Enough from Queen of Spain Blog is a post about the turn in tone the political race has taken lately. And I wish I could say in the intervening days since she first posted this that the voices of hate have toned down but I really don’t think they have. I think they may have gotten worse. But I definitely share her feelings and hope that people settle the heck down. And lets find some decency in all of this, please? Aren’t we better than this? Please tell me that we are.

Lastly, we have My Husband is Not My Keeper, also from temporarily me. This spoke to me because I have often had these very same feelings. Being a stay at home mom, and not having any of my own income, I often feel like my voice is dimmed somewhat. I think that’s pretty common. And it’s as much my fault as any one else’s. But all the time, this is an impassioned, important post. You should all read it.

So there we go.  Another week’s list in the hopper.  This should be enough to keep you out of trouble this weekend.  As for me, we have a baby costume to find and a pumpkin to pick out (nope, we don’t have that yet either).  Should be fun!  Happy Weekend, ya’ll.

I had this big post planned, where I would touch on a variety of political topics including some thoughts on independent voters, how I feel about our economic downturn, how Obama’s tax plan is incorrectly viewed by most conservatives and how Sarah Palin has just gotten worse since I first heard about her.  And I also wanted to talk about how all the relentless politicking has just worn me down to a cynical nub.  Again.

But.

Then the whole race issue started rearing it’s ugly head in the last week.  I’ve long been concerned about this becoming a major part of the race.  It could be one of the reasons I initially supported Hillary Clinton, because I was afraid of racial backlash.  I wish I could believe that some of my fellow Americans are beyond the backward thinking our country experienced as recently as the 1960’s.  But, apparently, we’re not.

We’ve all seen the soundbites on television where supporters at McCain rallys have shouted out racial slurs and disturbing calls to violence.  That’s frightening enough.  Because, as we all know, it only takes ONE person to pick up a gun.  It only takes one person to set the world on it’s ear.  And, whether you support him or not, you have to admit that if anything were to happen to Obama at this stage in the game it would be catastophic for this nation.  People. Would. Flip. OUT.  I don’t want that for my country.  I want to see us start to heal our wounds and move forward with a plan for the future.  But I am starting to wonder if that will even be possible.  Because the hate that some people hold in their hearts frightens me.

Take Gayle Quinnell, the McCain supporter who at a recent rally in Minnesota told McCain that she was afraid of Obama because he was an “Arab”.  To McCain’s credit, he quickly and simply told her that she was wrong and that Obama was a decent family man, etc and so forth.  But is it too little, too late?  Because Ms. Quinnell proved to us in an interview after the rally that she still believes Obama is dangerous simply because his father was a Muslim.  Even when the interviewers tried to correct her, to tell her that Obama was indeed a Christian and was never a Muslim, she responded, “Yeah, but he’s still got Muslim in him. So that’s still part of him.”

This makes my heart hurt, people.  It’s “the sins of the father” all over again.  And this is even assuming that simply being a Muslim is a crime (which is definitely is not).  It’s “in him”??  Hiding latent underneath the layers, only to rear it’s ugly head once he steps foot in the Oval Office, causing him to rain destruction and mayhem on our fair country?  DOES SHE REALLY BELIEVE THIS?  And if she believes it, how many others do as well?  I’m afraid to ask.

The thing is, I’m sure you could sit down with someone like Gayle Quinnell and explain to her the facts about Obama and it won’t make one bit of different.  Because calling him an “Arab” is an excuse.  For whatever reason, she doesn’t want to come right out and say that she is afraid of him and won’t support him because he’s black.  So she clings to this other excuse, flimsy as it is.  And there are SO MANY other people who are doing the exact same thing.

In Gayle’s case, she’s 75 years old and it was just how she was raised.  My mother is nearly the same age and grew up in a similar part of the country.  Though she is voting for Obama in this election, she understands why so many of her generation cannot get past the color of his skin.  They were raised to view African Americans as wholly different from themselves.  And not different in a good way.  At “best”, they see them as mentally insufficient.  At worst, they see them as dangerous.

It makes my heart sick to think of it.  It causes me pain to realize that we still have such blind bigotry alive and well in our country.  I guess it doesn’t surprise me much, seeing all the things that have happened in the last eight years, but it does disappoint me.

You know, vote for McCain because you agree with his policies and his ideals.  Don’t vote for him because you have ignorant, racist assumptions about people.  I can respect someone voting for McCain because of his stance on the issues.  I cannot respect someone who comes up with some bullshit notion about Obama being an “Arab” or trying to link him to terrorists simply because they cannot stomach him being a black man.

These next few weeks are going to be brutal.  And I can only hope that once November 4th rolls around, that we use our heads in the voting booths across the country and make a choice that ISN’T based on hate.

Mondays sure do suck, don’t they?  I hate to use the word “hate” a lot, because it’s such a strong feeling and to use it too often is to a) dilute it’s potence and b) foster a lot of unwanted negativity in your life.  But… it’s Monday.  And if you can’t hate Mondays then what can you do?  So I decided that for one day a week I would just embrace the hate and make a list of things that are ticking me off.  Some Mondays I might not run this feature.  After all, not every Monday sucks and there’s only a finite list of things to hate each week, right?  But gosh, I’ll bet getting some negativity off my chest (and ever-so-helpfully spewed into the Internet!) will help get me through the day.

• I hate freecreditreport.com commercials.  I hate the message that the most of them send (which is that someone else is often to blame for the dude’s poor fortune… the one where he rants about his wife’s poor credit and wishes he’d known about it so he wouldn’t have married her is the worst).  I also hate the stupid songs the guy makes up.  This is more true for the more recent commercials.  The only one that is halfway decent is where he’s working at the restaurant and is dressed up like a pirate.  The rest SUCK.  Especially the “rap” one.  Makes my ears bleed.  So not only do I like the image they’re trying to put forward, but I hate the songs.  HATE HATE HATE.  Plus, (as if I needed more reason to hate them) it’s all a lie anyhow.  NICE.
• I want to kick McCain and Palin and their stupid campaign in the ass.  I don’t want to vent too much, and disturb whatever Republican readers I might have, but DAMN.  The more I hear, the more I want to not only tear my hair out but theirs as well.  I’m so tired of the lies, half-truths and the manipulation of the public.  Why can’t we stick to issues instead of hinting at some nebulous (and pretty much untrue) associations with racial overtones?  SERIOUSLY?  Honestly, it’s obvious to me that McCain is just lashing out because he knows Obama has the upper hand right now and it’s just sickening.  This month can’t pass quick enough, as far as I’m concerned.
• Charter cable is really pissing me off.   For the last week we’ve had really spotty service.  Anything over channel 100 is hit and miss these days.  Which really sucks on a MONDAY when I really wouldn’t mind some NOGGIN to keep Liam happy.  I don’t want to watch Nickelodeon because of all the obnoxious commericals.  And since the service is spotty, I can’t even call up Blue’s Clues on On Demand.  AAARGH.  At least the box isn’t overheating every 30 minutes anymore but COME ON.  We pay for this service and we should be able to watch HBO whenever we damn well feel like it (thank god it was working last night so I didn’t have to miss “True Blood”!).  I’d have them send a service technician out but I’m scared to death that they’ll deem the problem is on “our end” and bill us up the wazoo for it.  NO THANKS.  Right now, I’m just counting the days until our contract is up and we can switch back to satellite.
• I hate pretty much anyone who shops at Walmart (myself excluded, of course).  I swear, that store has the RUDEST shoppers of any store on the planet.  I’m talking about the clumps of people who are always in your way when you want to get something off the shelf, but then if you are in THEIR way then you get the Glare of Death.  I swear, I think there’s a new syndrome out called Walmart Rage.  Everyone in there is just so MAD all the time.  And yes, that includes me.  I swear, my blood pressure was through the roof when we were in there on Saturday.  WTF?  God, I wish we had more Targets.  And at least ONE Super Target.

So what are you hating this (not-so) fine Monday?  Feel free to share the venom in the comments.  Let Monday have it!