A Christmas Carol, by Tom Lehrer

UPDATE: Fixed. Click and play.

Stole this from the Padgett blog, because after wasting a good $6 trying to get the “Upload to Odeo” and “Podcast” thingies working on this goddam rented public computer, I finally figured I’d just go ahead and steal it from someone who’d already ripped it.

Have I mentioned that I’m somewhat peeved at Messieurs Gates and Jobs? Somewhat.

I assume anyone reading this is familiar with Tom Lehrer, but that’s mostly because I assume everyone worth knowing is familiar with Tom Lehrer, being as he’s arguably the greatest musical satirist ever. If, for some reason, you’re not, I would highly recommend you drop everything and pick up a copy of the multi-disc retrospective Rhino put out a few years back. Of course, now that you’ve got that album, you’ve got this song as well (two versions of it!), but I suppose that’s all right.

Lehrer, FYI, is the man who says he got out of political satire because it became redundant when they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger.

[ odeo=http://odeo.com/channel/207473/view ]

fuckit, click here for the mp3.

happy Christmuhkwanzamadan

Another in our ongoing series of multiculti seasonal anthems. And with all the struggles I’m having trying to do a simple podcast, take what you can get; I nearly posted Kiki and Herb’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” instead, just because it fits my mood somewhat better at the moment.

But then, Kiki and Herb are the universal language, are they not? (PS if you see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, tell them to duck if they’re coming through Vancouver. I could strangle those two bytches with my bare hands at this point)

Merry Christmas. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

saw this and thought of you: dried squid postcards

Dried squid...what does it look like, eh?Say so much, without saying a word.

Living, as I do, in Chinatown, I have gotten used to cultural dissonance as my default mode of being. I’ve lived here for six years now and I still say to myself “Holy crapola, look at that dried squid! Craaaaazy shit! And those dried minnows…shiny!!!” Well to be fair, I don’t have cable; I’m starved for entertainment.

But for years I’ve walked past these piles, bins, and impromptu Cthalderesque mobiles of dried squid and thought I wonder if the post office would deliver one if I put a stamp and an address on it.

Now Pink Tentacle reports (via Japanprobe) a Japanese company has taken the guesswork out of the process; they are producing edible postcards made of dried squid.

 Residents of the coastal town of Susami in Wakayama prefecture love the sea and the post office so much that the town once installed a mailbox on the ocean floor for scuba divers. Now, further evidence of this powerful sea/mail love comes in the form of “Surumail” — edible postcards made from squid.

Produced by the Susami fishing cooperative, Surumail postcards consist of dried surume squid (Todarodes pacificus), the local seafood specialty. The squid jerky is flattened and vacuum-packed into the shape of a postcard, and an adhesive label is included for the postage, delivery address and a short message.

So, should you get an unspeakably oceanically-scented and fully-digestable Cthristmas Cthard from me this year, don’t be too surprised.

Surimail, y'all

feline fine…a revolting cat-centric Christmas story

Masochistic reindeerStop me if you’ve heard this one.

No, you haven’t. You’d have killed yourself long before now; some knowledge simply cannot inhabit the mind of a human being of normal and wholesome inclinations without causing it to warp into pathalogical and destructive antipathies.

Let me tell you the story of a man and his cat. A man, his cat-sitter, his cat, and his cat’s dildo.

My ex told me this story, and he was friends with the cat-sitter. At least, I pray to God he was and this wasn’t just another “uh, it happened to my friend, yeah, my friend” thing. I already know he has low standards…

I suggest you fortify yourself with at least a quart of Fin du Monde, for surely you do not want to read this sober. It is a sign of the coming apocalypse, non? as surely as Britney‘s twatflashes are, although I don’t recall them being specifically mentioned in the Book of Revelations, now that I come to think of it, although I’m sure that’s only because the author was too polite and delicate to mention them. You know how those Old Testamentators are.

So this fellow, he lived in Montreal, and he was going back home for Christmas. He had the ticket, he had the time, he had the happy and welcoming family awaiting his return.

He also had … a cat.

So, as is the way of things, he required a cat-sitter. Not to sit upon the cat, although in retrospect if he’d gotten a really fat one this would have solved so many, many problems right there, but no; rather, to wait upon the cat. To feed it and brush it and pet it and let it in when it wanted and also, it must be said, out when it wanted, too. It was a very spoiled cat.

So this fellow finds a friend of his who is living, much like myself, in somewhat hovellish circumstances, one where the telling of the ancient Christmas story brings not so much joy and good will as raw envy that the straw in the stable was at least dry and it was spacious enough to fit a family of three plus all those wise men, not to mention the donkey.

No word on whether it was a Longdonkey.

He offers to his enhovelled friend the chance to move to his somewhat more luxurious digs for the duration of the holiday season, and his friend predictably jumps at the chance. On the day, he arrives bright eyed, bushy-tailed, and willing to make a big fuss over the feline in residence, although he cannot be said to be all that thrilled about this particular kind of pussy. Still, he knows what side his bread is foie gras-ed on, and resolves to play nice with Fluffy or Tiger or Snowball, as the case may be.

He gets the grand tour: here’s the bathroom, here’s the fridge, here’s the remote, here’s the catfood. So far, so good. The homeowner picks up his suitcase, preparatory to frappé-ing la rue. “Wait,” says he, “There’s one more thing I have to show you.” And he walks over to a kitchen drawer, opens it, and pulls out a popsicle stick.

Foo-Foo isn’t spayed, and she’s in heat, so if you wouldn’t mind, she likes it if you just do this…”

and he bends down with the popsicle stick in his hand and does the predictable thing to Foo-Foo who does, it must be admitted, appear to like it very much indeed.

Well, thinks the cat-sitter, I have a choice here. I can retain my personal dignity and tell my friend that I refuse to sexually service his cat. And then I can then give him back the keys and take the #40 back to my coldwater studio by the train tracks.

He quite enjoyed his two weeks at the penthouse, and by all accounts Foo-Foo did as well.

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the Ayn Rand Christmas Special

Christmas Shrugged, and you would too!Wow, looks like it’s Tory Day here on the ol’ raincoaster blog. Take a snapshot; these don’t come around too often. Mostly we’re all about the nude hot-tubbing with Rage Against the Machine, making blood sacrifices to Cthulhu, and sharing pot brownies with the United Slackers of Anarchy.

We certainly are being far more inclusive than it was ever our intention to be this Yuletide season. Sure, we’ve posted Christmas on Acid, but hey, I live in Vancouver; like this pandering to the druggies is anything unusual. The Charlie Brown Kwanzaa was a bit of a stretch, it’s admitted, but if you’re gonna be un-PC, I say be un-PC all the way and damn the torpedos of all races, creeds, and colourways. Boymongoose’s Bollywood 12 Days of Christmas has a rockin’ beat that I couldn’t pass up, and the same can be said (in its own delicate Coward-ly way) for Hanukkah in Santa Monica. As for the 12 isms of Christmas, who doesn’t have a spare Nihilist or Surrealist in their circle who feels all too marginalized at this time of year?

So here I am, holding my nose and posting the synopsis for the Ayn Rand Selfish Christmas Special, from the 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time, which I found via Master Cowfish.

Ayn Rand’s A Selfish Christmas (1951)

In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts — and therefore Christmas — possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as “anti-life.”

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