• Can we get a moratorium on covers of “Last Christmas?” Actually, can we get one on the original too?
  • Funny how easy it is to spot a cover by Darryl K. Sweet. It makes me want to mash up Xanth, WOT, and every other fantasy series he’s covered
  • I can’t see giving someone Countdown to Final Crisis as a gift. Maybe a gag gift?
  • Someone EXPANDED The Red Balloon into a full-length film????
  • Nothing says Christmas like 50s xmas song played on a mall stage by a guy with a ukulele. Now he’s singing Over the Rainbow. ????

  • Saw a bunch of Santa hats lying alongside the entire length of the 55 South to 405 South ramp – and it’s a long bridge. Maybe a box came open?
  • Got tech support question in Spanish for wrong company. Replied in bad Spanish with link. Checked against Google Translate. Google has a better vocabulary than I do. 🙁
  • Roger Ebert dismantles Expelled (via @mikesterling).

When I was a kid, I remember the last few months of the year broke down like this:

  • Back to School in early-to-mid September
  • Halloween for the second half of October
  • Thanksgiving for the second half of November
  • Christmas in December
  • New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day

These days it seems more like this:

  • Back to school in August (July, really — as soon as the Independence Day merchandise goes on clearance.)
  • Some weird mix of Oktoberfest, Halloween, and Thanksgiving as “Autumn” or “Harvest” or some such thing covering all of September and October, resolving into Halloween specifically for the last week.
  • Christmas from November through December, with a short break for Thanksgiving
  • New Year’s

Everything’s crept earlier.  There aren’t any breaks between seasons.  And Christmas has swallowed up Thanksgiving as if it were merely an appetizer for the main meal.

Seriously… can’t we let Halloween be Halloween? And let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving? And let Christmas be something special instead of taking up 1/6 of the year?

When Christmas starts showing up before Thanksgiving — never mind before Halloween! — I always find myself thinking of the story about the little girl who wished it would be Christmas Every Day, and found out why that wasn’t so appealing after all.