The Advent Calendar has been updated through December 14th. After I finish writing about cereal and bad cologne, I'll get to work on the 15th. Tomorrow, I'll try to get two done, so we'll be back on track. A Christmas miracle!

We got a bit of snow this afternoon. Not enough to build my oft-imagined army of destructive ice henchmen, but maybe enough to build a dog-scale igloo. It's been a much busier month than I was anticipating, but Decembers always are. Still, it's nice to know that when I'm done working, and writing, and taking pictures of Legotron, there will still be enough snow on the ground to turn my window-side midnight martini slurpage into a Christmassy Kodak moment.

Hate that there's less than ten days left of this, but if the season lasted forever, I guess garland and shiny tree ornaments wouldn't seem as incredible.

Yup yup, it's baaaack! Christmas Crunch, possibly the greatest cereal of all time and one of the few that I've devoted entire articles to, has returned, complete with the requisite artwork of Cap'n Crunch in a Santa Claus outfit.

I'm pleasantly surprised that Quaker still makes the stuff. In Christmas Crunch's heyday, it was advertised heavily on television, with such frequency and vigor that even kids who had no existing interest in Cap'n Crunch had to have it. Much like adults who don't consider the Christmas season "legit" until they chug a cup of egg nog, kids thought of Christmas Crunch not as breakfast, but as a personal holiday responsibility. If it was there, it was our duty to eat it.

The 2008 version of Christmas Crunch comes in a neat blue box, and after a little trimming, we can easily say that the box can and should be framed. Honestly, we don't even keep Christmas Crunch in our kitchen cabinets. It sits out on a shelf alongside our myriad snowglobes and doesn't look an inch out of place. I see no problem with this; it's simply an evolved version of the bowls of fruit people keep on their dining room tables.

Christmas Crunch has changed considerably over the years. In the beginning, the holiday connection came by way of limited edition red and green Crunchberries -- simple balls of corny oats. Nowadays, the Crunchberries have been replaced by red and green morsels in a variety of Christmas shapes, including stars, Santa hats and snowmen. These pale in comparison to the original Christmas Crunchberries, if only for the thought of them being joyously picked from snowy bushes by Cap'n Crunch's secret team of dexterous pirate monkeys.

This year, Christmas Crunch has partnered with Charlie Brown. The box includes a cut-out coupon for a mail-in rebate on Peanuts DVDs, while the boxback is saturated in Snoopy-related Christmas activities. Poignant as one could ever hope to be, a word balloon attached to Santa Crunch's head on the back of the box states: "This much fun only happens once a year, so get out and enjoy it!" I'm trying, Cap'n, I'm trying!

PS: Nice photo above, aye? I took it outside. Cereal seems to photograph much better under outdoor light. I hope you appreciate it, because it was fucking hailing while I was taking the pictures. Also, I noticed a neighbor peering at me after the picture-taking process was done. I'm not sure if there is any reasonable explanation for standing outside while it's hailing to take pictures of a martini glass full of cereal. Perhaps tomorrow I will sit on the roof with a little drum and sing Marvin Gaye songs.

PPS: X-E is the #1 Google hit for Christmas Crunch. It's another Ghoulies IV moment for me.

Oh good Christ. I found this today and had to pick it up. I can't believe that they still sell English Leather gift sets! I doubt that they mean anything to 99.9% of you, but as kids, my neighborhood friends and I seemed to end up with bottles of English Leather each and every Christmas. Through some malformed butterfly effect likely orchestrated by bored space aliens, English Leather was right up there with Brut on the whole "children experimenting with smelling good" front.

You know how the return to school after Christmas vacation was all about showing off your best gifts? (Or in the cases of stuff you couldn't bring to school, bragging about them?) Well, we would all lose interest in our stupid bottles of cheap cologne fairly quickly, but for the first few weeks of January, every boy in my elementary school class smelled like they had been embalmed over the holidays. Nobody was moderating us, and what did we know? Imagine my surprise when I learned that cologne bottles weren't supposed to be depleted after the fifth pour.

Oh God, that smell! That overpowering stench of musky rubbing alcohol really takes me back. Totally forgot about this shit. When people think of the odors that remind them of Christmas, it's usually more along the lines of gingerbread and pine. But this? This is really doing it for me. I'm in grade school all over again, and my number one priority is making the top of my bedroom dresser look all snazzy with a topping of English Leather cologne bottles and Tetley Tea ceramic animal premiums. Fuck yes, I love Christmas. From now on, I am introducing myself as Christmatt.

Off to Advent land I go. It'll be a late one, but better late than rushed. I'll have another blog entry tomorrow, because I'm getting a little worried that I bought too much to possibly cover between now and Christmas. MUST...SUCCEED.