O Holy Travesty

First, good things:

Next week, Scrubs will be back in its regular timeslot. I love Scrubs.

Also: (The Search for) America’s Next Top Model is coming back in January! Thanks to Michael! for letting me know.

Now, the bad thing:

The only thing worse than the poorly singing children of strangers (because, of course, the ones you know are cute, no matter how poorly they sing) is poor harmony. It burns me up inside like a habanero pepper! Currently, on CBC radio AM with Rick Cluff, and all day, if you’re reading this later, there is an excellent cause being celebrated. It’s Food Bank Day! You can go to the kiosk at Pacific Centre Mall in Vancouver (or to the Food Bank, in whatever city you’re in. Or town.) and donate. It’s good. CBC AM will be broadcasting live from there all day.

Earlier this morning I turned the radio off because what was coming out of it caused me pain. 7 am is too early to listen to choirs and pan flutes, unless it’s Christmas Morning. At 8, my over-zealous and ever-hopeful husband turned the radio back on to hear the news. Then he left for work, leaving the radio on and I was subjected to a shameful massacre of O Holy Night – a duet of unspeakable tunelessness, showing a zealous disregard for each of the following definitions of harmony:

a. Agreement in feeling or opinion; accord: live in harmony.
b. A pleasing combination of elements in a whole: color harmony; the order and harmony of the universe.
c. Music.
1. The study of the structure, progression, and relation of chords.
2. Simultaneous combination of notes in a chord.
3. The structure of a work or passage as considered from the point of view of its chordal characteristics and
relationships.
4. A combination of sounds considered pleasing to the ear.

I’m still shivering. I like O Holy Night. I like it in English, in French, in Latin, in Italian, sung by choirs, sung by opera singers, sung by little castratos, sung by churches full of people on Christmas eve; it’s a likeable song. Unless it’s being sung by people who don’t like it. Hey, duet people? What did O Holy Night ever do to you?

Another good thing:
Gary of the Miniature Zoo (it sells miniature animals – no, not real ones) said I could use the picture of his chickens for my error page.

And yesterday I finally got to a count of 20,000 words for the novel I’m working on. The trick appears to be in quantifying exactly how much I need to write within a specific time period. The “write an hour a day” thing doesn’t work, but “write 1,000 words a day” does, even though writing 1,000 words takes roughly an hour. My mind is a capricious beastie.

Just plain fucked up
I really think you should go check out Santa’s Prayer. I always thought Santa was God. Why did I never consider that he might be a faithful servant of God?

In retrospect, it is so obvious; the ability to be in several malls…er…places at once; being a foreign invader of the airspace and soil of the United States (AKA: Fearers of God,) but never being shot down or arrested and detained for an indefinite amount of time under suspicion of being a terrorist; being allowed to proceed freely from house to house, breaking, entering, stealing cookies and kisses (and who knows what else!) from housewives. And that beard. That’s a God-sanctioned beard, y’all.