Christmas Music Recommendations

Soon it will be Christmas, when we can all settle down for a long winter’s nap. And I think that we should all settle down for a long winter’s nap, a very long winter’s nap, given my previously-expressed opinion on human hibernation.

But, until then, why not relax with some of my favorite pop-rock Christmas songs (of which there aren’t many)?

This one brings back the best memories.

  I find this one the most musically interesting.

If you want that Eighties snarky attitude, try this.  

Or . . . for something that was only a year earlier, but went in an entirely different direction, specifically the direction of a depressing Seventies-style singer-songwriter Christmas, there’s this.  

Fall Fell

As I understand it, in mature forests, most of the trees are of the same kind, and so in the fall they all change color at the same time, leading to brilliant displays covering entire mountainsides.  But in the suburbs, people have planted many different kinds of trees that change color at many different times. In this area, at any point in the autumn one can find trees of different species anywhere on a continuum from fully green to completely leafless.  

To whatever extent there can be said to be peak color around here, it would likely be found in the first week of November.

Here is some foliage from the weekend after Halloween.

Two weeks later, it was all gone.

Ultimately, there is nothing remarkable, or even worthwhile, about my observation; I am just impressed with myself for taking before and after pictures that line up as well as they do.  

The Graveyard of Decorative Plastic Halloween Skeletons

Regular readers of this blog (by which I mean my family members and close personal friends) will be aware of my one-man crusade to expose the scientific inaccuracies of decorative plastic Halloween skeletons to the world (by which I mean my family members and close personal friends).

The weekend before Halloween, I was walking around town looking at the decorations, and I came upon this display.  It contained almost every plastic animal skeleton of which I had previously been aware, and some that I had never seen before, letting me know that there is more material out there should I wish to continue the series for a third year.