Christmas Time Was Here

So, Christmas happened. This was the first year GP and I spent the holiday together and it was fantastic. I had a little trouble (like I always do) reconciling my love for Christmas and my disdain for the Christian theft of Pagan traditions, but I said fuck it and I let myself enjoy the company, food, and most importantly, presents. We went to GP's mum's on Christmas Eve for an enormous and delicious dinner and a metric ton of presents. Then we came home and had Christmas morning here, which was great. I won't get all sappy or nothin', but Christmas with someone you love more than most things is pretty fucking special.
Isn't our tree adorable? I took it (and all other Christmas paraphernalia) down yesterday, which made me feel like such an adult. I no longer innocently come home from school on a January afternoon to find the tree has disappeared. Anyhow... Even Friskies got into the Christmas spirit! And by "got into the Christmas spirit" I mean was forced to wear a scarf I made for her out of the leftover yarn from the stockings I made for GP and myself. I don't care how much it looks like abuse, she loved it.
Here she is, in her Christmas scarf, posing with one of my favourite gifts from GP: The Flavour Thesaurus. It's not a recipe book, it's even better: it's an inspiration book! I barely ever follow recipes anyway, so it's perfect for me. It gives ideas for flavour combinations you might not normally try. One that I'd like to do sometime (probably in the spring) is rose petals and chicken. Sounds so exotic! Other favourite gifts, you ask? There are so many, but the easiest to show you pictures of are my Nigella Christmas cookbook and the bamboo stand on which it sits:

GP's dad, brother and girlfriend-in-law (or whatever a sister-in-law is when they're not married yet) came over for waffles and more gifts on Christmas morning. Then we went to my dad's in Victoria in the evening and had even more presents from him and his girlfriend and another huge meal. We tied up the visiting with a trip over to see my mum. GP was supposed to come to the Nutcracker Ballet in Vancouver with us, but we got the dates mixed up and he had a meeting with a client on the day we were supposed to go. All was not lost, however. My long-time chum Caitlin ended up joining us and we had a fabulous time. She even helped me carry my Christmas gifts home!
Face is blanked out to protect the not-so-innocent. Is it bad that I sang "not-so-innocent" to the Britney Spears tune?

That's my "holiday" in a nutshell. Although now that school is over (wheeee!!!) and I'm unemployed (hm...), every day is kind of a holiday. If you know of employment that pays $17.50+/hour 9-5 Monday-Friday, let me know! And please send positive job thoughts my way.

In This Club

Every time I signed in to my blog to make a post I couldn't stop laughing at the previous post of my cat. It distracted me to the point where I forgot why I was at my computer.

No more! I am now making a post about nothing in particular, but it will start with a song. Specifically, one by Usher. Even more specifically, Love In This Club.

How the hell did I miss this gem of a music video?! Please observe below a carefully googled image of various screencaps:I know exactly how I missed this video and I'll tell you right now: when it came out three (?) years ago, my life was not centred around hilarious internet videos, knitting, and my cat. I'm not really sure what in my life was so important at the time that I couldn't watch this, but there it is.

Anyway, I was watching this video and several things jumped out at me.

The first was that the lyrics for this song are patently absurd. I know this isn't a revelation for any song on the radio, least of all one by Usher, but I HIGHLY doubt Young Jeezy has the power to free me "sexually, mentally, physically, emotionally". Maybe I just have to give him a chance and "make love to a thug in the club with his ice on, 87 jeans and a fresh pair of Nikes on". Clearly he hasn't seen an IPA representation of the word Nike because if he had he would know that it has two syllables, the latter containing a high front unrounded vowel, but I digress.

That's all I really have to say about this song, I guess. I had a lot more ideas when I started writing, but my flowery wording distracted me. I agree with the charts when I say that the song is catchy as fuck and I'm not ashamed to say I like it. The lyrics are terrible, but I'll be the first to admit that the last poetic song in top 40 went the way of Pogs(TM) some time in the mid-late 1990s. The video, however, has no redeeming qualities. I can't stand it when videos are either completely disjointed from the song they're representing to the point of being absurd, or so obviously the EXACT SAME THING as the song that you just know the creative team had a hard night of drinking and could think of fuck-all. In short, I just wish people would make some creative mainstream music videos.

Actually, I do know of one thing that I liked about this video. The Michael Jackson influence. The abandoned bar, the dreaminess, the magic/disappearing stuff? That's Smooth Criminal to a T! And, well, just about every other MJ video.

Happy December

I nearly pissed myself when I saw the above result of my experiments with this website. It's a make-your-own awkward family photo Flash application put together by Sprint. I think GP thought I had gone crazy, or maybe his suspicions were validated once and for all, when I uploaded a picture of my cat for this. Whatever, I still think it's hilarious. Why doesn't anyone else think it's as funny as I do?