The Advent Calendar has been updated for 12/2. Actually, it was updated many hours ago, which is another reason why you shouldn't rely on X-E's RSS feed to tell you when to come here. You should come here every fifteen minutes, all day long.

I've been staring at these "Tiny Lites" sets for several years now. No idea why it's taken me so long to pick one up, considering that I'm the world's most enthusiastic proponent of Christmas lights. Perhaps this is proof of my rumored masochism.

Though the idea of tiny-sized Christmas lights is phenomenal, it is apparently a concept still not perfected. The main issue is that the wires are just as big as those from a regular-sized set. This seriously limits the amount of potential goofy uses for tiny Christmas lights, which while at the store seemed positively endless.

Another issue is the batteries. How the frig can a set of Christmas lights with bulbs no bigger than match heads require four "AA" batteries to run? I could power a small island nation with less expense. This is like some low-rent 2nd grade science fair project, where a generator the size of a car battery is used to make potatoes sink in water.

The ridiculous amount of batteries paired with the ridiculous wire size denies "Tiny Lites" their expected thumbs up review, but for whatever it's worth, the bulbs are pretty neat. It's hard to tell from the photo, but they give off a bright-but-subtle glow, which could be put to good use if you wanted to do a little indoor decorating but didn't want to make your living room look like a supernova.

I made a quick stop at some faraway 7-Eleven over the weekend, and picked up this thing without really noticing what it was. Now I notice, and I'm a little appalled. "Reindeer Licks" is a kind of Push-Pop candy, where the cherry sucker has been molded to look like a reindeer's tongue. I believe common opinion would dictate that there's something a little off about sucking a reindeer's tongue.

Granted, the candy is targeted at kids who can get away with weirder shit than the rest of us, but I doubt that even a child could successfully finish a Reindeer Licks lollipop without someone branding them a pervert. Then again, considering the lasting success of that other reindeer-themed Christmas candy -- the one where you push on a reindeer's back to make it shit out caramel jelly beans -- maybe I'm reading too much into this. Go on and have your fun. Make out with Donder.