Christmas Music for People Who Hate Christmas Music
I hate Christmas music. Well, hate is a strong word, I’ve just listened to it too much. Many years ago, I worked in the seafood department at a grocery store, and after Thanksgiving they’d play Christmas music over the speakers. This was also an extremely busy time for seafood orders, and I’d stand at the sink with a gigantic bag of shrimp, peeling and cleaning each one for customers’ holiday shrimp platters. This was monotonous work, so I’d end up focusing on the Christmas music being blasted throughout the store.
I think this is a thing that happens to a lot of retail workers. You get so bored that you start trying to figure out what the hell the guy in “Jingle Bell Rock” is talking about or notice that Deen Martin starts calling the title character in “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” “Rudy” near the end of the song.
And don’t get me started on the “Little Drummer Boy”.
My wife tells me I worked retail over 20 years ago and I should get over this. She’s most likely right, but instead of getting over it I’ve compiled a list of Christmas music for people who hate Christmas music.
Bob Dylan – Must Be Santa
Did you know Bob Dylan recorded a Christmas album? It’s true. On the album is a polka rendition of “Must be Santa”. It’s up to you to determine if Dylan is being earnest or making fun of Christmas music, but he starts naming US Presidents during the part of the song where Santa’s reindeer are mentioned. It’s a lot of manic fun like a good Christmas party with friends.
Ramones – “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)”
I don’t know if the Ramones are talking about physically fighting on Christmas, or having an argument with their girlfriends. Either way, it doesn’t matter since the song is only 2 minutes long like most Ramones’ songs.
Fear – Fuck Christmas
In college I knew a guy who wore a little button that was a Christmas tree with one of those red “no” crosses through it. I asked him what it was and he introduced me to the band Fear who wrote this very very short anti-Christmas song.
Macka B – Christmas Cancelled
In Madison, Wisconsin there is this community run radio station called WORT 89.9. It makes NPR look like Breitbart radio. They do a reggae/pan African music show on the weekends which is where I learned about this extremely anti-commercial, anti-Rome Christmas song by Macka B.
RUN DMC – Christmas In Hollis
I don’t understand why this song doesn’t get any radio play during the holiday season. It’s a great morality tale: If you find Santa’s wallet, just send it back to him.
The Kinks – Father Christmas
I was driving with my wife recently and this song came on the satellite radio, then she switched the station! “Oh wow, a Christmas song you like?” she said. Yes of course, this one is about getting beaten up by angry children while dressed up as Santa, how could you not like it?
All I Want For Christmas (is to kick your ass) – Midnight Riders
I have a theory that every year Mariah Carey’s managers drive a dump truck full of money to her house and unload the contents on her front lawn. This is the royally money from “All I Want For Christmas is You” which she then has shredded and used to mulch her rose garden.
I Won’t Be Home For Christmas – Blink-182
Oh to be a young idiot who’s biggest annoyance is having to see their family at Christmas…
BJJ Updates – 3-7-2024
Chakara Status – Feelin’ Great
Once thing I noticed when I started BJJ: some people had tape all over their fingers. “What is the reason for this?” I wondered, “swelling?” “maybe because it looks cool?”. I had no idea.
Now, after weeks of practicing both lasso and spider guard, I’ve found out why: aggressive blistering! Time to start taping up my fingers, luckily I found a video made by Ronda Rousey detailing out the process. What a great resource the internet is.
Spider Guard Passes
We worked on spider guard passes today, going through three different options from standing:
- Grab the inside of your opponents pants at the ankles, choose a side, then step on the inside of their leg to break the guard and move into side control. This one worked fairly well for me. During drilling I found it helped to fake to one side, then switch to the other.
- Grab the inside of your opponents pants at the ankles, choose a side, then perform a knee slice. I could never get this to work.
- Grab the inside of your opponents pants at the ankles, choose a side, push your opponents legs to that side while taking a knee, then place your forehead on the ground while “stapling” your opponents shin to the ground with your shin. With your forehead still on the ground, vault over your opponents legs into side control. I tried this third one several times, and could never complete it, but it did confuse the hell out of my opponents.
Example of guard pass #1
For sweeping from Spider Guard, I had really good luck waiting until my opponent was close enough, then grabbing their ankles and pushing with my feet. Simple but effective.
Goals for next class:
- Attempt some triangles
- Don’t get arm barred
BJJ Updates – 3-5-2024
Chakra Status – Feelin’ Fine
Around seven months ago I started doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu at a studio in Baraboo, WI. My tennis team had just disbanded, so I decided now was the time to give it a shot. I’ve always had an interest in martial arts, having done karate as a kid, and boxing and kung-fu as an adult. It was time to give grappling a shot.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu was developed in the 1920s after Judo practitioner Mitsuyo Maeda brought the sport to Brazil. Slightly different from modern Olympic Judo which focuses on throws, Brazilian jiu-jitsu instead concentrates on the ground game of Judo. This includes sweeps, guards, pins, and, most interesting of all, submissions. This system was eventually made famous by Royce Gracie during the first “Ultimate Fighting Championship” tournament. Royce managed to use BJJ techniques to take down much larger and more aggressive opponents. As a result, BJJ is a staple of modern mix martial arts training.
During the first few months of BJJ, I mainly focused on stretching out my hip flexors and tried to avoid getting my head ripped off. This was a time of survival, it was difficult to focus on actual techniques (except for the San Paulo guard break, which rules). Now that I have a better understanding of the sport, I’m using this blog to write down the daily techniques so I can remember them better. This is mostly a personal activity, but if you get any kind of benefit or entertainment out of reading what I wrote, then that is an added plus.
Spider and Half Lasso Guard
Today we went over a spider guard and half lasso technique. Essentially you get your opponent in spider guard, but loop one foot around and rest your foot on your opponent’s bicep or elbow to achieve a half lasso.
From this you can use the half lasso foot as a “step” to bridge (much like a yoga bridge) up and hook your spider guard leg around your opponent’s head, setting up a nice triangle submission.
You can also hook your spider or lasso foot around for an easy omoplata submission.
Right now I mainly just stick in closed guard, try for a sweep to side control, then go for an easy kimura hold. My goal in the next few months is to utilize more lasso and spider guards to see what I can do with them.
That and keeping my body limber with regular yoga and jogging.
Wish me luck, thanks for reading!
Springfield’s Gate – Enhanced Edition
Bart, I don’t want to alarm you, but there may be a child of Bhaal or children of Bhaal in the house.
The Social Media Life-Cycle
Before Social Media, if you wanted to post something on the internet you would have to figure out how to log into “Usenet” or learn how DNS worked. Posters were cloistered nerds mostly concerned with University research, Star Trek, and discussing what episode of “The Simpsons” was the worst ever (It’s “Kill the Alligator and Run”).
Times have changed though. Geocities begat MySpace, which begat Facebook, and so on. Now everyone can post nonsense online, but these platforms don’t pop up out of anywhere. They have a life-cycle. It’s not a life-cycle like a butterfly’s or frog’s. It’s more like a lake, where a big basin gradually fills up with weeds, trash, and duck droppings until it catches fire and the government has to intervene. There are five stages to a Social Media Platform’s life: Birth, Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood, and Undeath.
Birth
Social Media Websites are born out of the minds of idealistic nerds. Mark Zuckerberg dreamed of a way to rate how hot the women were at his College and accidentally invented Facebook. Jack Dorsey wanted to give users an easy way to complain about public transportation in New York and San Francisco and created Twitter. Tom Anderson wanted to show the world that one picture he really liked of himself and developed MySpace.
Social Media in the birth stage is very limited. Users are friends and friends of friends of the creators. Posts are limited to what a user had for lunch. Sending messages on a Social Media platform in the birth stage can be met with confused replies of “just call or text me you idiot”. Users stumble for meaning on the platform much like a baby investigates a newfound object by putting it in their mouth. No one knows why they’re on the platform, or what to use it for, meaning hasn’t yet been discovered.
Prevalent User Type: Nerds. Friends of nerds.
Most common advertiser: None
Childhood
Every Social Media platform has an “ah ha!” moment. Facebook came into it’s own when College students realized they could use it to post about how drunk they were the night before. Tumblr caught on after a large group of adults realized they could use the platform to overanalyze children’s cartoons and video games. MySpace grew because burnouts realized they could use it to promote their shitty band. There is a spark, and a Social Media platform finds it’s purpose. It’s the beginning of a culture.
Prevalent User Type: Friends of friends of nerds. College students. Dorks. Geeks. Various dinguses.
Most common advertiser: Play-Asia. Newegg.
Adolescence
So you’ve created a successful Social Media platform, thousands or maybe even millions of strangers are making posts on YOUR server infrastructure that YOU bought with YOUR parents’ money. It’s time for these deadbeats to pay the piper, we need to start seriously growing and ADVERTISING on this thing.
In this stage the floodgates are open. Any kind of account creation restrictions are removed, you no longer need a college email or an invite to join. Just sign up and start posting. Users are encouraged to post anything and everything at all hours of the day. It’s in this stage that a user is most likely to make a post that will be dug up 5 to 10 years later and get them fired from their corporate finance job.
You also notice that if you glance to the right of your Social Media window, you can see ads. These ads are limited to sketchy fly-by-night companies, but there are ads. This will make some users extremely upset, but not upset enough to leave. In fact they will most likely start posting more about how the platform sucks now. This is called the “Social Media Paradox”.
Prevalent User Type: Parents of nerds. Morons. Ordinary fucking people.
Most common advertiser: Discount Razor Blade Warehouse. Coffee Bean Startup. Legging Wholesaler. GED classes.
Adulthood
There is one way to know when a Social Media platform has hit adulthood: When actual honest to God celebrities start posting, and the admins start banning the users who pretend to be celebrities. Users also start talking about “The Algorithm” and how to make it happy as if it were a benevolent god. Gone are the days where you would see actual posts from people you knew, instead they’ve been exchanged for posts from Super Users, celebrities, and well known brands. It’s at this stage where a platform becomes more about content delivery rather than social interaction. Celebrities not on the platform may as well not even exist (at least according to their agents).
More interestingly at this state, users can expect to see advertisements from companies they’ve actually heard of.
Prevalent User Types: Actors. Billionaires. Athletes. Content Creators. The News. Politicians. The Pope.
Most common advertiser: McDonald’s. Ford. Disney. Coca-Cola. Lockheed Martin.
(Un)Death
After some time, social media naturally starts to stagnate. Interesting posters grow bored and move onto the next thing, young people call your platform “cringe”, ordinary people forget their passwords, bots and political trolls gradually move in. Failed politicians also start trying to use your platform to overthrow the US or Brazilian governments. These are things that just happen.
As a result, advertisers start getting upset since their ads aren’t getting the reach that they used to, and what posters are left start getting upset since their insane political ramblings aren’t getting the likes that they used to (See: Kevin Sorbo, Donald Trump Jr, Brooklyn Dad, and former hosts of the “Wheel of Fortune”).
At this point the owners have three options: spend money on new content moderation technology and staff (HA!), sell the platform to some idiot with too much money (for example, Yahoo! or Elon Musk), or ignore everything and watch your stock price crash as your platform turns into another 4chan variant.
Prevalent User Types: Bot Farms. People you knew in high school who have gotten into MLM schemes. Demagogues. Incels. Neo-Nazis.
Most common advertiser: Conservative Discount Razor Blade Warehouse. Second Amendment Coffee Bean Startup. Progressive Legging Wholesaler. Prager U.
Can a social media platform survive the UnDeath stage of the lifecycle? Maybe. But overall I don’t think it matters. You people should go outside and look at some trees instead.
Breakfast Burrito Reviews: McDonald’s
The main thing I love about McDonald’s is that you can drive up to any location, tell them a number and a beverage you like, and get some hot food. The meal is going to cost around $6 so there is no need to get specific. The fast food antithesis of McDonald’s would be Subway. At Subway you answer a long series of questions and an official Sandwich Artists will deliver to you something that may or may not legally resemble food. Yes, who cares if the tuna isn’t really tuna and the chicken salad is 80% sawdust? It’s a sandwich that costs $5 and they generously allowed you to have extra iceberg lettuce at no extra charge!
Overall, fuck Subway! This review is about McDonald’s, specifically their breakfast burrito.
McDonald’s is an example of cold heartless American efficiency. Items only stay on the menu if they’re big sellers. The McDLT, Arch Deluxe, and Chicken Fajita were all systematically introduced and unceremoniously executed for not adding to the bottom line. Even the McRib is only allowed on the menu when pork prices are low enough to make the McDonald’s bean counters happy. The breakfast menu is the same way, practically every item is some variation of their biggest breakfast seller: the Egg McMuffin. There are two things that stand out though. First, the pancakes (which are surprisingly good) and, of course, the breakfast burrito.
I always get the breakfast burritos at McDonald’s. For one, you get two of them for some reason, they’re easy to eat while driving, and lastly they come with hot sauce which you can use right away or throw in a kitchen drawer somewhere and forget about.
Tortilla
Hot, steamy, and mysterious. Who makes these? Sysco? I have no idea but they’ve probably been designed to stay edible after being stored in a warming tray for up to 5 hours.
Fillings
Scrambled eggs (most likely powdered), peppers, onions (most likely dried), sausage (most likely pork I hope), and AMERICAN cheese of course. Everything about these fillings has been designed to congeal together nicely. It’s impossible to replicate at home without at least a masters in food chemistry.
Overall
Obviously designed by chemists in a lab somewhere in Illinois, the McDonald’s breakfast burrito is a true triumph of fast food science. You merely tell a speaker box “number seven with a black coffee”. Two minutes later you have something resembling food. Enjoy this miracle and go on with your day.
Rating: Four burritos out of five 🌯🌯🌯🌯
Breakfast Burrito Reviews: Symantec Cafeteria
Earlier in my career I worked in Eugene, Oregon for the Symantec Corporation (they’ve now recently rebranded as “NortonLifeLock Inc”). It was a west coast company with west coast sensibilities, so the building was set up with a wide open office plan. This means instead of standard cubicles, the walls were half size (or non-existent) to encourage “collaboration”. Nice in theory, but if you’ve ever worked in an open office setup you’ll know that most collaboration has little to do with your actual job. Collaboration topics usually included cars, movies, and “weird stuff that happened to me back when I was in the army/navy/air force/high school”.
Though Eugene is a ways north of Silicon Valley, the office building had many of the amenities you hear about the actual Silicon Valley having. In addition to the odd open office setup, there was also a yoga studio, gym, spin class (with staff instructors), nap rooms, and a recreation center complete with a basketball court and ping pong. Now, no one would really take naps or practice their yoga poses during work hours. I believe the idea was you would get done with work, go down to the gym or studio for some exercise, take a shower, get dinner at the brewery next door (which we referred to as “building 3”), then pass out in the nap room until the next day. Everything you need is at work so there is no need to go home! Work is home, home is work. A pocket utopian Arcology right there in Eugene! At least until the CEO took a look at the bottom line, fired everyone, then sold the building to Wayfair Inc.
By far the best part of working for Symantec was the cafeteria. They did breakfast and lunch to order and it was all surprisingly good. Since we were on the west cost, coffee was taken extremely seriously. The company hired a barista and the beans were always good quality by office standards. A big change from midwestern office coffee which is made from recycled grounds filtered through old socks.
What made the cafeteria really stand out was it’s breakfast burrito. It was made fresh and contained the usual ingredients, eggs, bacon/sausage, shredded cheese, sour cream, and hash browns. It was rolled up in a gigantic fresh tortilla so the resulting meal was roughly the size of your head. There was nothing better than taking a break from fielding calls from angry IT managers to go down to the cafeteria and order a humongous burrito topped with Cholula hot sauce. I’ve since moved back to the Midwest and I’ve tried to replicate the Symantec breakfast burrito at home, but it’s never quite the same. Maybe I should try and get a job at Wayfair and see if they’re still making them.
Rating: Five out of Five 🌯🌯🌯🌯🌯
Twitter Bot Upgrades
Important news! I have upgraded my Raspberry Pi. No longer will my pihole and twitter bot run on an ancient Pi 2, no, we have seen the future, and the future is the Pi 4!
The Pi 4 includes new amazing features such as:
- Two 4k outputs, so you can view your black and green terminal screen on two monitors instead of just one kind of like in that movie “The Matrix”
- Throw out all of your old power cables since this baby works with USB-C!
- More RAM? There is probably more RAM.
That being said, the main reason I upgraded is that I couldn’t believe my old Pi 2 lasted this long. I had left it powered on since 2017 without a single hardware issue. I’m honestly surprised the thing didn’t melt.
To celebrate this monumental occasion I’ve added another type of Python script twitter bot post to the Team Venom account. Using the “vcgencmd measure_temp”, “date”, and classic linux “fortune” commands (/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp, date ‘+%A, %B %d, %Y’, and /usr/games/fortune) I can pull the CPU temp, current date, and random “fortune” and post it to twitter as seen below:
This is sure to delight a handful of nerds on the internet, which is always my goal with posting online.
I also updated the PiHole, a DNS based ad blocking service, to v5.6. Wow, who the hell is my Roku talking to all the time?
If you’re interested in doing any of this nerd stuff on your own, check out the following links:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/
Breakfast Burrito Reviews: Don Miguel’s
We all have favorite foods. Breakfast burritos happen to be one of mine. Here is a review of one of the many I’ve had.
One of the few nice things about the PANDEMIC is that I been eating out of less vending machines. Yes, I have been working from home for the past two years, so I have direct access to a “stove” which I can use to prepare “food” for “consumption”. Before this I have a few options for lunch at work:
- Bring something from home and microwave in the office kitchen (note: if you do this with fish your coworkers will ritualistically execute you)
- Order a gigantic meatloaf sandwich at a nearby restaurant and pass out at 2PM
- Pray to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of office workers, that someone ordered pizza for a meeting and had leftovers
- Get something horrible out of the vending machine
Usually I would forget 1, be too busy for 2, and my prayers would go unanswered for 3, so 4 would be my last option. That’s where my good friend DON MIGUEL would come in.
As you can see this breakfast burrito has friendly packaging that displays quite a bit useful information. “Whole Eggs”! “Three Cheeses”! “Hand Made”! As far as office vending machine meals go, this one is halfway appetizing. But how does it rate up?
Tortilla
This burrito comes out of a vending machine. Sometimes it’s completely frozen, other times it’s only halfway frozen. As a result the tortilla doesn’t really hold up. It kind of flakes apart as a result, perhaps the worst part of the Don Miguel Breakfast Burrito
Fillings
The burrito comes in two flavors: “Bacon” and “Sausage”, but there really isn’t much of a difference between the two. Overall I’d say sausage is the better of the two. The eggs remind me of the powered eggs I’d eat while camping as a kid, you know the kind you’d mix with water and they’d turn kind of green.
Overall
So the tortilla is bad, and the filling is also bad, but overall the burrito is quite good. Why is this? Well, it’s better than every other option in your work vending machine. Much better than the frozen cheeseburger, much better than eating two granola bars, and a whole lot better than the white bread ham sandwiches which I assume the vending machine company shop lift in mass from nearby Super America gas stations
Rating: Two out of Five 🌯🌯
The Team Venom Website 