Groovymarlin.com

- Do you think that Spiderman musical might be cursed? Bad things seem to keep happening to the performers in that show. It makes you wonder…is the safety crew negligent? Is someone sabotaging the whole thing? Or is the show just cursed?

- Right now, the guy who sits in the cubicle next to me is listening to something on his headphones and giggling like a crazy person. I have no idea what he’s laughing at, but he’s been at it for about 1/2 hour now. Actually, I think it’s very amusing, because the sound of his giggles really makes me smile. It’s like the funnest white noise ever.

- People: they’re judgmental as ever. Saw a “mommy blog” type post yesterday about why this blogger’s family doesn’t do Santa Claus in their house. Full of sanctimonious, condescending, “my kids are better than your kids” bloviating. I’m not providing a link because I don’t think she deserves one, but if you want to read the pedantic babblings of an upper-class, over-privileged super-WASP, then just Google “no santa in our house.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

- In other Christmas news, I’m DONE shopping, DONE wrapping, DONE decorating, and DONE sending Christmas cards! Does this make me better than you? Well, DUH!!

(Just kidding.)

And now, a video. Today’s Cute-Win-Fail from Tobuscus (Toby Turner). Because I thought the tooth-pulling via RC monster truck trick was hilarious, and I’m still giggling about it.

This is fantastic. I love that so much awesome stuff like this is available on YouTube.

Mary Worth, December 10, 2010:

For those who wonder why it’s worthwhile to read the ridiculous, old-fashioned “soap” comic strips like Mary Worth, Judge Parker, Apartment 3-G, etc. – here’s your answer. Every now and then you get a strip like this, featuring perhaps the most inappropriately and comically understated reaction to one’s supposed “friend” ruining one’s wedding rehearsal dinner ever, in the history of comics, rehearsal dinners, and understated reactions. I mean this – THIS is priceless. Thank you, Karen Moy. Though I’m not quite sure how Jill got so drunk off a bottle of ketchup.

Yesterday, I did a post about the Christmas gifts I bought for my father this year. Unfortunately, WordPress gave me a hell of a time with the formatting. It steadfastly ignored paragraph breaks. It would not let me insert extra lines. In short, it looked a mess. I thought I found the solution when I discovered the option to make the post multi-page: so the first gift appears at the bottom of the introduction, and then subsequent gifts are on subsequent pages.

Unfortunately, the page breaks don’t translate in the RSS feed. So if you read my blog in a feed reader, you think I only bought my Dad a digital coin bank. And you probably thought to yourself, “Damn. She’s cheap!”

So, in summary, if you are reading in a reader, please go back to the post about Christmas presents and click through to the actual site to read all five (FIVE!) pages of the post.

And if you don’t care about any of this, carry on and enjoy this video instead:

My Christmas shopping is done. DONE, I tell you! Of course none of the wrapping (almost) is done, but that’s another story. Wrapping all the presents requires the following precious commodities:

1. A few hours without the intervention of my favorite elf, The Bean

2. At least two glasses of red wine

3. Oh, and some wrapping paper and stuff

I’ll get to it when I get to it (probably this weekend). But yeah, got that shopping part all done, and honestly, it was done over a week ago. Yay me!

One of the hardest people to buy for is my father. He is 80 years old, but very youthful and spry (think dude in his early 60s and you get the idea), and very independent. He lives alone in South Carolina (several miles from my sister and her family) and his hobbies include lawn maintenance, home remodeling, and watching the Weather Channel.

(Seriously, he LOVES taking care of his lawn, up to and including consulting with the local extension office at the University about the current season’s pests and soil conditions. My brother-in-law reports that Dad’s lawn looks like a golf course pretty much year round, and this obviously makes the neighbors by turns jealous and highly suspicious.)

Well, I couldn’t exactly get him a new tractor, and he has just about everything else. All my good ideas were taken in previous years: GPS device? Check. HDTV? Check. Weather station? Check. Toaster oven? Check.

So this is what I got him, more or less. Maybe it will give you some ideas for the quirky 80-year-old in your life.

Digital Counting Coin Bank. I didn’t get him this exact bank, but it’s similar. Dad still operates on an almost completely cash basis, so he ends up with lots of change. This nifty bank will let him keep track of how much he has stored up, so he knows when it’s time to truck it down to his local bank and dump it into their version of Coinstar.