Merry Christmas!

Thank You, Mr. Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Link Dump: I’m Already Checked Out For the Rest of the Year Edition

• Surprise! People really love bacon.
• Forget about Black Lung, Popcorn Lung is the new “it” disease of the 21st Century.
• Some questions simply cannot be answered. Man I love Slate.
• Hehe. Up meets Gran Torino.
• This blog is pretty hit and miss. Heavy on the miss. It is funny though in its blind hatred of Guy Fieri. I agree that he needs to go away.
• WARNING: If you go to this site, it will eat up your entire day.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

As the clock struck 3 Saturday morning, I was not at home tucked snugly into my bed. No, I was out braving the elements striving to bring a Christmas miracle to our very own Grinch.

My boss went on a 10-minute tirade last Thursday during staff meeting complaining about his neighbor’s inflatable Christmas yard decorations. It was inevitable that someone would begin taking up a collection to bring some inflatable cheer to his yard over the weekend, and sure enough we collected $160. We went to Lowe’s and bought four display models (a $400 value) for $160. It was a Christmas miracle!

The four inflatables were:

Eat Mor Chikin

I know we’ve all seen awesome Hitler subtitles before, but so help me I just love Chick-Fil-A! It’s a tragedy there isn’t one in Columbia. (Be sure to turn on the captions.)

And What the heck is an OGIO Backpack?

Get it? Because they're bowls?

What are you asking Santa to put under your tree this year? If you said giant belt buckle, I hope you’re a member of the Mizzou football team. Here’s an excerpted list of bowl swag given to players at various bowl games. Grumpy Old Man NCAA puts a $500 limit on the freebies, which was evidently still too high  because  the Sun Bowl is giving OU and Stanford players hair dryers and a souvenir coins. Evidently they got confused and thought this was a white elephant gift exchange. Regardless of the score, we can all agree that Tennessee and Virginia are both winners in the swag department.

Link Dump: Barcode Art Edition

• Barcode art. It’s pretty cool. Even cooler, he’ll send you a free postcard.
• MST3K is now on Hulu. Amen, glory and hallelujah!
• I know we’re all supposed to hate the BCS, but does Congress seriously have nothing better to do?
• Three words: Convenience Store Dog.
• Slate has a great article on the art of writing letters.
• Are any of these the web’s next big thing?
• I shouldn’t laugh, but you’ve got to admit that “elephant herpes” is a pretty comical phrase.
• I thought that I did a pretty good wedding prank, but this guy has taken it to a whole ‘nother level. I stand in awe.

I Enjoy Food, That’s How

Yesterday I interviewed a preacher named Cellis Crum, which I think we can all agree is an awesome name. They just don’t make names like that any more. He is 83 years old, but looked 183. I’ll be honest, he smelled 183 too.  He has been preaching for 66 years.

“Wow,” I said, in an attempt to be folksy and personable. “That’s longer than most preachers have been alive. Certainly longer than I’ve been alive.”

Cellis: “Yeah. I’ve been around a while.” (You have to imagine it slow and creaky. Normally when I listen to my voice recorder at 2x speed people sound like chipmunks. Bro. Cellis sounded like a normal human.) “How old are you? 52?”

Me: “No. I’m 27.”

Cellis: “Oh. Well how is it you go to be so fat in just 27 years?”

Link Dump: Scooter Luggage FTW Edition

• I need this.
• The Tower had a killer scavenger hunt/wild goose chase this weekend. I wrote the clues and had a ball doing it. Honk honk!
• OU is going to play Stanford on New Year’s Eve.
• In an ironic mashup of environmentalism and political correctness, trees are banned at the Copenhagen climate summit.
• I don’t need an Arrested Development movie. Let it rest in peace.
• One of my favorite websites is Politifact.com. It’s your basic fact checking endeavor, but they’re more even-handed than most. Fair warning: Most of Glenn Beck’s assertions are rated “Liar Liar Pants on Fire.”
• I don’t understand how we’ve already moved on to Tiger being a simpathetic everyman who goofed up (and keeps his endorsements), and yet we’re still up in arms about what Michael Vick did. If I had to commit one of the two sins, I’d go with Vick’s.
• Just one more reason it’s great to be a Baptist.

Bravo!

Last night I went to a performance of Handel’s Messiah at Jesse Hall in Columbia. In short, it was incredible. Who would have thought that an 80-minute oratorio would go by in the blink of an eye? My seats was dead-center, the first row of the balcony. Best seat in the house. Then as I left Jesse it started snowing. It was a Christmas one-two punch!

The only down side was the woman seated next to me who kept gasping “Oh! It’s so gorgeous!” That, and she had terrible, terrible gas. Oh well, two out of three ain’t bad.