And so marks the last thread of 2007.  Use it wisely.  Personally, I was not a fan of 2007.  I liked 2006 better, and I hope I'll like 2008 better.  2008 is a cool-sounding year.  Sounds…futuristic.

Got a resolution?  Share it.  Got a POV on the year that was?  Share it.  Rather just comment on how the dead tree outside your house kind of looks like a giant monster paw?  I don't mind.  It's just a thread.  But it's the last one with "2007" next to your comments.  Is it hard to say goodbye to a number?  Probably not.  Maybe next year, though.  Like I said, "2008" sounds cool.  I will grow to love it.

Whew.  Well, I have a newfound respect for all of the people in my family who've hosted Christmas (and other) holiday dinners through the years, because we just could not believe how much work that was.  Even considering the fact that the woman's family is less than half the size of my own, that was one brutal, hellacious exercise in holidayosity.

Among other things, I've learned that ovens are not miracle devices, and no matter how much I tried to treat them as such, they just couldn't seem to warm everything the way we needed them to.  Everyone brought a dish that needed to be heated up, and it was an impossible balancing act to get Dish #455 served before Dishes #1 - #454 became ice cold again.  I think I kept my cool for the most part, save for one regrettable incident where I yelled "who gives a fuck about these kids' fucking chicken tenders we got a fucking thirty-dollar turkey here" loud enough for everyone in the dining room to hear — including the poor guy who brought said chicken tenders.

Overall, Christmas went well, but I think my stint as a domestic must be considered as a shoe that doesn't fit.  Next year, I'll be happy to let someone else take the responsibility, and relish in the fact that I won't have to spend the week before Christmas using masking tape to lift cat hair off of every piece of furniture in our apartment.

We had my family's Christmas Eve party the night before, at my sister's house.  Early in the evening, I was charged with making eggnog for five or six people.  As I was pouring the rum in, I had a sneaking suspicion that I had added at least eight times the appropriate amount to each cup.  They confirmed this, but in an effort to prove them wrong, I forced myself to gulp my cup down despite the fact that its contents smelled more like witch hazel than milky vanilla.  That was my downfall.  I didn't wake up until after midnight, when I realized that I'd been decorated in Christmas lights (which were lit) and had various phrases written on my face and arms in lipstick.

The season really just flew by this year, and we've been too exhausted for the past two days to do more than crawl by the tree every couple of hours and paw at our presents before passing out again.  That's one good thing about hosting a party.  Usually, by now, I'm steeped in that post-holiday faux-depression, where Christmas decorations make me feel icky and holiday-themed commercials make me curse and kick things.  This year, it's all been such a whirlwind that I'm looking forward to reintroducing myself to the couch and relaxing under tree light until the dying branches go on fire.

I've still got one Advent Calendar entry left to do, which I'll get to in a bit.  I think I want to go a little longer on it than originally planned, since it's the last time we'll be hearing from some of those characters for a whole year.  Meanwhile, it's time to continue that very special X-E tradition: The Christmas Fallout thread.

If you've been reading the site for a while, you know how this works.  It's time to brag about your loot!  In the comments, share lists and stories chronicling all of the presents you've received, and take solace in the fact that there's a very good chance that your comments will still be here a decade from now.  I love going back to the old Fallout threads to see how past Christmases stacked up, and to see how my own personal tastes have changed through the years.  After all, this is our fifth Christmas Fallout thingy.  I'm pretty much the same guy, but I don't think I'd gun for the same stuff today that I did back in 2003.  Since a lot of the people who drew up their lists in previous years are still around today, feel free to review your old comments in the archived Fallout threads:

The 2003 Edition! The 2004 Edition! The 2005 Edition! The 2006 Edition!
In terms of gifts, 2007 was an awesome year for yours truly.  Probably the best ever.  If some kind of nuclear war forced society to remain indoors for the next seven months, I am well prepared with an endless bevy of books, movies, toys, games, and at least six different types of martini olives. Off we go! [more]

I have to get 20 hours worth of stuff done by 7 PM, so this will be quick: Merry Christmas!  #24 is up!  I hate stuffing mushrooms!  The final AC entry may be a bit late, but since those are usually short epilogues, we'll be okay.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas Eve, Day, Day After and Day After The Day After.  Talk about your holiday adventures in the comments, from gifts to guests to food to reindeer.

I don't think I've ever been so busy leading into Christmas Eve, but I remain confident that the Holy Spirit will guide me through all of the cooking, cleaning, wrapping, Advent Calendar entries, clothes washing, tree trimming and cat hair removing bullshit that simply must be accomplished within the next twenty-four hours.

The Advent Calendar has been updated for 12/22 — thanks for your feedback on that one in the previous thread, as the entry was the end result of 247 pictures, whittled down to 57, many with special effects that look bad but still take me forever because me and Photoshop are like, sworn enemies.  It's always interesting when the Advent Calendar hits its home stretch, because frankly, the site's readership drops waaaay down around Christmas, and you start to feel like you're the star in one of those ill-advised "empty arena" wrestling matches.  Meaning?  Your chatter is appreciated!

The photo above is for posterity's sake more than anything else, because there are few sights warmer than 700 presents under a Christmas tree, especially when it's my Christmas tree, and I think it's the kind of thing that I'm going to want to look at again in the coming year.

The woman and I had agreed to take it easy with our presents this Christmas, trying to avoid our usual tradition of trying to outdo each other by giving the most gifts.  We're gunning to go back to Disney this year, but since we won't let ourselves do that unless it's at the ridiculously expensive Polynesian resort, we wanted to give our wallets a break in the hopes that we could save save save.

All was going fine and dandy until two nights back, when she rather victoriously pranced into the living room holding a pile of presents nearly as tall as she is.  Well, fuck that.  I quietly returned to my computer and pretended to be catching up on the latest Scoville scale pepper rankings, when in reality, my ass was all over Amazon playing catch-up with their gloriously cheap overnight shipping option.  I think I did okay.  Not sure if this is a good sign or a bad sign, but pretty much everything I bought her is something I fully plan to steal and use myself.

I mentioned in a previous entry that we're hosting Christmas dinner for her side of the family this year, and this gels perfectly with my lifelong search for an excuse to buy a 100-pack of the hors d'oeuvres shown above.  It's the little things in life.

I can't wait for everyone to marvel at how pigs in a blanket, potato puffs and spicy beef turnovers all manage to taste exactly the same when broiled at the last minute in an oven that already contains too many things to allow for equal heating.  I'm of the mind that no holiday is complete without its fair share of oily, gloppy appetizers, and these are arguably the standard.

We have a fair amount of people coming here on Christmas, but I'm still not sure if there will be enough mouths to successfully eradicate a 100-pack of these breaded bastards.  Perhaps I'll offer twenty bucks to whichever guest manages to eat the most in a ten minute window.

The interesting thing about hosting Christmas dinner is how you find yourself needing to go food shopping for like 12 days straight before the big day.  Every night, we remember some odd cheese, drink or party napkin that is absolutely essential, and every night, we bumrush the nearest supermarket hoping that they haven't sold out.  That was the case last night, but what was only intended to be a soda pickup turned into something far more special: They had packages of "Christmas Crackers" with 50% markdowns, and there is just no humanly way to avoid a deal like that.

If you've never enjoyed the miracle of Christmas Crackers, here's the general scoop: Small, cardboard tubes are neatly wrapped and stuffed with a cheap toy, and apparently loaded with some kind of low-performing gunpowder, as when you pull them apart, they split open with a loud, smoky bang.  The toys inside are almost always crap, so it's that loud, smoky bang that constitutes as "the fun part."

Our original plan was to set one Christmas Cracker by each of the kids' dinner plates, but as I'm no stranger to the suckitude of CC toys, something told me that it'd be a good idea to see just how bad the prizes were before announcing them as a special holiday surprise.  And boy, I'm glad I did that, because there's just no way any of the kids would've responded to these toys with anything cheerier than apathy or outright tears.  See below.

Pens!  Pencils!  Cheap plastic rings!  And…a ponytail holder?  It's a good thing that newspapers don't run on Christmas, because a story of this magnitude would've been a call to stop the fucking presses.  This stuff is awful!  Even if these toys gained the ability to speak and were pleading with me to save them from a nearby fire, I wouldn't give them a second glance.  And that's coming from someone who dreams almost nightly of toys gaining the ability to speak and trying to convince me to save them from fires.

Thus, opening these early has effectively saved our Christmas party.  I can only imagine what the reaction of some of the six-year-old boys who will be in attendance would've been had they popped open their Christmas Crackers to find a ponytail holder inside.  Even by my teen years, I was crying over less.

In lieu of Christmas Crackers, we're just going to give all the kids animal-themed party plates.  They won't erect statues in our honor over this, but at least nobody will kill themselves and help boost Christmas's false reputation as being a time for increased suicides.

Mandatory Christmas Party Item #556: A bowlful of red and green M&M's.  Doesn't matter if anyone eats them.  They need to be there.  Did you know that M&M's used to sell the special red and green-only bags under a different moniker without the familiar "m" markings?  It's true, and actually, it wasn't all that long ago.  I guess that's not a very interesting story, but a trivia bit is a trivia bit.

When I bought the M&M's shown above, I thought they were the peanut versions.  I didn't read the fine print.  They're almond M&M's.  I feel so disgusting.  Nothing against almonds…but they ain't peanuts.

I hope everyone's having a great, long holiday weekend.  I'm off to unravel the mysteries of Box #23.  If you're heading off for family time and won't have Internet access for a few days, thanks for being a part of the site's holiday season, and though you are not responsible for it, I'd also like to thank you for peanuts because I love them so much.  Will try to post another blog on Christmas Eve…stay tuned.  Stay merry.

Holy Mary, we're getting dangerously close to Christmas.  It really kinda flew by this year, didn't it?  I'm getting the feeling that a lot of people just want it to be over and done with, but I could go for another 2-3 weeks.  This may be the first year that I make a genuine attempt to forgo my usual post-holiday blues and try to extend the Christmasness until the actual end of December.

Growing up, I always felt a little dirty and ashamed after Christmas.  I'd always spend December thinking about nothing but presents and our family's big party, completely neglecting my schoolwork to the point where it was a given that my grades were going to be total shit for the winter quarter.  My notebooks were always a giant mess throughout December, and I'd pretty much dog it on every test and homework assignment until the holidays were out of my system.  By 12/27 or so, it'd hit me: Christmas was over, school was coming back, and I had a shitload of work and explaining to do.

Obviously, living as an adult in the real world taught me that such attitudes don't fly, but I still always feel like I've done something wrong when Christmas finally passes.  Or maybe it's just that there's a void when you can no longer live through your tinsel and trees.  Or maybe January just sucks.  It's cold, it's decidedly non-merry, and I waste around 5,000 checks because it takes me at least three months to remember that the year has changed.

I can't believe that I'm only just finding these now, without any prior knowledge that they even existed.  These extremely cool SweeTarts "Squeez" bottles are 100% Christmas, bearing holiday tributes both in design and flavor.  I've seen a ton of candies with a vaguely North Polian twist, but this one may trump 'em all.  "Mystery Squeez Slush" caters to two very important markets: People who want a little holidayness in their candy flavor names, and people who don't want to know what they're eating.  I consider myself a card-carrying member of both of those markets; thus, "Mystery Squeez Slush" is my new god.

If you've never had a SweeTarts Squeez, they're essentially half-sized toothpaste tubes, filled with sour-flavored goo instead.  Though I expected the "mystery" flavor to be something negotiably within the Christmas palette (Peppermint, maybe?), it's actually a lot closer to lemonade.  Lemonade doesn't have much to do with Christmas, but then, neither do SweeTarts.

I'd also like to take this time to draw attention to the ice blue touches on the packaging.  I absolutely love how ice blue has entered the secret club of acceptable Christmas colors.  Red and green are nice, but sometimes, situations call for a color a little less pupil-dilating.  Every time I see something in this shade of ice blue, I feel like I just took a shower.

Thumbs up!  As far as special holiday editions go, this one clicks on all cylinders: It's got the Christmassy packaging, a limited edition flavor with ties to Santa, ice blue highlights, and the perfect size for stuffing a stocking.

Hey, remember that Charlie Brown Christmas tree replica I wrote about last year?  Well, Urban Outfitters is at it again, this time with the "Authentic Whoville Tree," from Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  Since it's already a few dollars cheaper than Chuck's older model, I guess my initial reaction was on the money: A Whoville tree probably isn't iconic enough to drive anyone batty with joy.

The novelty tree is around two feet tall, with the correct bunch of stringed ornaments, curvable branches, and a perpetual drooping tilt.  The only problem is that…well, if I didn't tell you that it was a Whoville tree, would you have known?  Maybe, but most wouldn't: They'd just think it was an ugly, misshapen fake tree picked up from a closeout outlet.  That's not the kind of impression I want to make for twenty bucks, so it's fortunate that I have no friends and nobody will see this thing on top of my wall unit.

I exaggerate.  I consider the UPS man my friend.  And maybe the casino host at Bally's.

Click here to see the Whoville tree's big cardboard box, or here if you're interested in buying one.  They're especially nice if you have an errant corner shelf just waiting for the right objet d'art.  We don't have such a corner shelf, but I like it well enough anyway.  It's kooky.  Slanted trees are kooky!

The Advent Calendar has been updated for December 18th.  Yes, I realize that this is the 19th, and I've only got four hours or so to stay on deadline.  Joke's on you: The entry for the 18th was posted well over twelve hours late.  I've already missed one deadline, so there's no sense in becoming reliable now.  I'm free to cavort with the other procrastinators and party till my eyes water.  See ya in Hell, suckers!

We found out late last week that Christmas dinner was going to be at our apartment this year.  For the woman's side of the family, at least.  I hope this doesn't necessitate of a slight curtailing of the usual amount of alcohol downed at my family's party on the Eve, but even if a little voice told me that it did, I'd probably ignore it.

I was completely fine with this turn of events at first, but I think that was just blind optimism.  We've gone from having a casual stroll through the holidays to needing to write up gigantic lists while hopping from grocery store to grocery store trying to pick up the little necessities that always seem to sell out when you're trying to obtain them a week before Christmas.  What, does everyone on the planet need plastic cups?  Can't anyone just use real glasses?  We would, but I don't think I want to make her family drink from my collection of Star Wars Burger King cups, or those frosted Batman Forever McDonald's mugs.  After all, it's Christmas, and Christmas isn't about watching everyone fight over who gets to drink from Two-Face.

So far, the biggest bone of contention between us has been over what we're going to serve.  Her family's tastes are very American, while I was brought up on gluttonous Italian Christmas dinners where no dish is complete until it has incorporated at least three ingredients that will offend half the people at the party.  Take the stuffing, for example.  She's of the mind that we should keep the stuffing simple, and dare I say, of the Stove Top variety.  I could live on Stove Top all year long, but on Christmas, stuffing isn't complete unless it's got sausage marbles, apple chunks and raisins peppered all over it.  And keep in mind, I hate raisins and apples in stuffing.  It's just the way it has to be.  I mean, if I wanted to eat Stove Top stuffing for Christmas, I'd make my car run out of gas near a Holiday Inn on the morning of the 25th.

Still, I'm kind of excited about doing it.  It's the first time we've hosted a major holiday party, and as host, I'm at full liberty to correct the many things my own family has clearly done wrong for so many Christmases.  For one, I plan to have Christmas music blaring throughout the entire soiree, no matter how much it drives everyone nuts.  For two, eggnog will not be something that just sits sealed up in the refrigerator as a lark until I finally find one or two lost souls willing to have "half a glass" with me.  No, this time, I'm putting out the freakin' bowl and I'm going to stare down everyone at that table until they discover its true glories.

And if you're pressing me to come with a "for three," let's go with this: Christmas specials on the television throughout the day.

I mentioned our little snowstorm a few entries back, completely forgetting that fact that many of you live in climates that have completely precluded you from ever touching the funny white stuff.  I can't imagine that.  I feel for you.  Fortunately, some two-bit company from someplace or another has seen fit to deliver us from the evils of snowless societies with a little kit that will let anyone create and play with a substance that, on a stretch, passes as actual snow!

The "Super Snow" kit consists of a little baggy of magic powder, and if I were you, I wouldn't try bringing it through airport security.  By stirring even a small amount of powder with a few ounces of water, an icy, sticky and sopping wet mass of snow-like alien gel will form!

If the process sounds exciting, I have some evidence to disprove that: Check out this video, and note how even the most hard-driving action music couldn't save it from being the most boring two minutes in YouTube history.  Then again, it's not the process that we came for…it's the reward.

As you stir, the water and powder will join hands and transform into a white blob that looks sort of like really clean oatmeal, and incredibly, it works very much like real snow: You can roll a snowball, make little snowmen, and if the mood strikes, I'm pretty sure that you can eat it without dying.

In reality, the substances used to make this "instant snow" are borrowed from another purpose.  The snow gel is actually more often used as plant soil in dry areas.  I'm not making this up; it says so right on the back of the package.  Then again, the back of the package also claims that Super Snow can be used at parties, weddings and festivals.  They may have taken a few liberties.  Sure, it could be used at a wedding…but for what?  Did the upstart tradition wherein man and wife consummate their contractual bond by making fake snow together somehow escape me?

All in all, I was really surprised at how well the stuff worked.  I was expecting a gloppy, powdery mess, but the faux frost really does feel like the end result of some foreign utopia's ten year research expedition.  I really can't think of a single way to improve the stuff.  It's not poisonous, it looks like snow, it feels like snow, and it's kind of shiny.  Those are the four hallmarks of any item worth purchasing.

I found my Super Snow in an actual store with real doors, but it looks like there are plenty of online options.  True, it might be a bit late to be ordering the stuff for Christmas, but I think snow is safe to enjoy in January without anyone telling you to get over yourself.

The Advent is technically up to date so long as I put #18 up before midnight.  Vegas odds never favor me, though.  I've got a few others things that need to be covered before Santa arrives, lest I be left with a big plastic bin of "stuff to write about" that has to rot in the closet until next Christmas.  Maybe another blog entry later today?  Vegas says no, but we'll see.