The Advent Calendar has been updated for December 15th, and holy shit, I cannot believe it's already December 15th. 2006 has been the quickest year in history. Tonight, we're supposed to go find the tree. In recent years, I've become pretty fond of "miniature trees," and I don't mean tabletop bullshit trees or anything like that, but rather SPECIALLY BRED trees that are about 4' high, but really full and boisterous.

They tend to cost more than the regularly sized giant trees for reasons I cannot comprehend, but since there's less green to work with overall, we can totally saturate the bitch and create THE most decorated tree on all of God's green Earth. Plus, at only 4', we're free to put the entire tree on some kind of platform, which decreases the chances of cat-related tree injuries that will make me angry and manifest into tree-related cat injuries. I'll let you know how it goes. Now, let's talk about whipped cream.

In the spirit of the holiday season, Land O' Lakes has taken whipped cream (or for most of us dolt, "whip cream") to the extreme and unveiled new peppermint whipped cream -- a sweetened, ultra pasteurized bastion of Yuletide cheer that arrives in a special, reflective can trimmed with snowflake graphics and other icons that'll help you associate peppermint whipped cream with Christmas. Notwithstanding the missed opportunity of failing to give their Native American Butterwoman mascot a Santa cap, this is still a pretty decent little idea.

It's also a chance for me to tell the world how much I hate taking photos of tall, cylindrical items. To fit the whole product, I either have to make the image really small, or really large, or if I really want it to be somewhere in the middle, I've gotta pad the left and right quadrants with empty space. It's the kind of thing that can suck the holiday spirit right out of a person, so let's see if the stuff tastes good enough to put that spirit right back inside me.

Yeah, I was kinda wishing for some white/red swirly action, but despite its plain coloredness, this is some mighty fine peppermint whipped cream. Actually, it takes just like mint chip ice cream to me, which is a totally welcome comparison since that's my favorite ice cream flavor. Whipped cream is so not a part of my everyday life that I'm hard-pressed to think up a really great use for a special peppermint version, but if you're gonna boink on Christmas morning and your target is game for kinkiness, this would certainly be appropriate.

PS, this is the last day for free shipping on Amazon, so if you were considering buying me a $3000 Pac-Man game, now's the time soul sister.

Posted by Matt on 12/15/2006. E-mail me!