SO I dreamed last night that today was Official Rub A Cat Day (I think they are beaming subliminal messages or something now, but anyway.) So have some faunal Christmas songs:

The Marty Gold Children's Chorus - The Kitty Ate The Tinsel Off The Christmas Tree.mp3
This song is dedicated to my sister's cat, Miss Georgiana Darcy, who "gets a little fatter every day."
Brad Paisley - Penguin, James Penguin.mp3
My affection for Brad Paisley seems to be only capable of increasing. Also, I want the animated special about "Santa's Secret Agent Bird".
Gayla Peevey - I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas.mp3
An unalloyed Christmas classic, of course.
Lou Monte - Dominic The Christmas Donkey.mp3
I don't know what it is about Christmas songs that feed into horrible ethnic stereotypes, but until now, I've managed to avoid posting any of them. Oops. (Maybe later we can have a day where I post horrible stereotype songs for Mexico, Scandinavia, Canada, Ireland, and ... uh, whatever Cheech & Chong are.)

Also, I have a few errata: The Odds Against Christmas apparently didn't upload right, so I have tried again.

...and, um, Jesu Joy Of Man's Desiring is not by Beethoven. Because I, my brains, I have none.)

Today is December 14, and you all know what that means!

That's right - the first day of Agnostica, celebrating the birth of Quantum Mechanics!

I would tell you all about the meaning of Agnostica, only agnostica.com is down, so basically what it means is that my paper-chains holiday backdrop is up again at nukees.com!!!

(oh, yes, ya'll, I have old skool *cred*.)

So I will continue telling you about the wonder of Agnostica, and perhaps even put *my* Agnostica site back up, until the last day of the holiday, whenever that is. (to quote Jon Stewart: "...I will check.")

Anyway, actual Agnostica music is generally drunken singing of badly-scanned science-themed filks of Christmas carols, but it's hard to find good-quality mp3s of that. So have some actual recorded holiday music that's in the spirit of Agnostica anyway.

Vienna Teng - The Atheist Christmas Carol.mp3
I went to the Christmas play at church tonight, and we all sang "Happy Birthday To You" to the baby Jesus, and I sang the second verse "You Look Like A Monkey And You Smell Like One Too". Because, well, that's the whole *point* of Christmas, isn't it? God is a stinky monkey, just like us.
Meco - The Odds Against Christmas.mp3
Another from the Star Wars album. The statistical analysis is bad, but the crack is strong.
Consortium Of Genius - Science Party.mp3
Music for your Agnostica party. (Also for the Bones S1 Christmas episode, which is becoming something of a tradition for Sister & me.)
Roy Zimmerman - Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa.mp3
A Pan-Humanist Holiday Song.
Stephen Colbert & Elvis Costello - There Are Much Worse Things to Believe In.mp3
Another off of the Colbert Christmas. My favorite one off the Colbert Christmas album! And very much in the spirit of Agnosticism, if not of Agnostica-the-holiday.

I am not finished *any* of the presents I needed to have finished for tomorrow. D: I did do at least a token amount of cookie-baking today, though, so that's something anyway.

But! Today (or possibly yesterday, Baha'i resources on teh web are teh suck) was the Feast of Questions, so have some questioning Christmas songs:

Peter, Paul & Mary - I Wonder As I Wander.mp3
The absolutely last Peter Paul & Mary I will be posting, promise.
Fall Out Boy - What's This.mp3
Why yes, that is Fall Out Boy covering the song from The Nightmare Before Christmas
(I want to like FOB, really I do, but for some reason, all their lyrics *suck*. Instrumental covers of their songs = je les adore. Covers by them of other songs = yay! Actual FOB songs by FOB = deep, deep eh.)
Kathy Mattea - Mary Did You Know.mp3
Another Christmas song about death! Hooray for the true meaning of Christmas!
Stephen Colbert & Friends - What's So Funny About Peace, Love And Understanding?.mp3
The last song from the Christmas special, and the only one that was a cover of a pre-existing song. (Elvis sings the part of the bear.)

Good: Got books all ready to send out tomorrow!
Bad: It's, like, a *month* after I said I'd send them.

Good: Pretty much know what I'm writing for my Yuletide story
Bad: Left my Yuletide novel on the bus yesterday.

Good: Am not as far behind as I feared in making Christmas presents!
Bad: Left book of how-to-make-Christmas-presents on the bus yesterday.

Good: Laptop is getting consistent power again!
Bad: This is due only to the aid of a great deal of duct tape and some strategically placed bulldog clips.

Good: BOSTON LEGAL FINALE OMG YAY!
Bad: Was going to make actual rational meta post about strategic importance of Boston Legal finale. Read Merlin fanfic instead.

Good: This is the best Master/Doctor shippy song *evar*.
Bad: There really needs to be a full-length vid of that song to Master/Doctor. With lots of gratuitous Bessie. And cricket. But I am not a good enough vidder to pull it off.

Good: Very queer Christmas songs!
B. D. Wong - Wishing You a Drag Queen Christmas.mp3
Kip Addotta - I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus.mp3
Pansy Division - Homo Christmas.mp3
The Capitol Steps - Away With The Manger.mp3 - this one is kind of a stretch, and also kind of annoys me by totally missing the point of the ACLU, but with the mention on the Daily Show of an actual gay Nativity, I couldn't resist the opportunity.
Bad: Am still a day behind on my Advent Music Calendar posts.

Fireworks in the Colonial style = 10x better than fireworks in whatever the heck style people use these days.

Of course, they were probably also 10x more expensive, and 10x more dangerous, considering how low to the ground and close to buildings they were, and also harder for large crowds to see. But oh, they were brilliant! Totally worth freezing my butt off for two hours for.

The thing about most fireworks shows - you know that the most spectacular display comes at the end, so whenever there's a particularly good display, the enjoyment is spoiled by the fear that it's the finale. This show was *all* finale. It started wild and just *never let up* and then ended on the same note it began on.

...in a minor segue, today was Pearl Harbor Day, so enjoy a special mix of songs for Christmas at war.

Carl Vasta - I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day.mp3
This is probably my very favorite Christmas song, set to a poem that Longfellow wrote during the midst of the American Civil War. It's been set to a bunch of different tunes - I originally learned it out of our hymnal - but this is the tune that everybody seems to record. I've sung it to myself a *lot* over the past eight years or so.

Royal Guardsmen - Snoopy's Christmas.mp3
I always imagine that this song took place on a night of the Christmas Truce, which is one of those stories which always gives me back my faith in my fellow man (even if my faith in men, in aggregate, is gone.)

Judy Garland - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.mp3
This song became the de facto Christmas song of World War Two, with its theme of hope among hardships and taking happiness whenever you can. Of course, it got cheered up a couple times from the original, which disappoints me, because if you haven't noticed by now I like my Christmas with a good dollop of melancholy. But this is the original Judy Garland version from "Meet Me In St. Louis" and keeps at least some of the melancholy that was later excised.

Masters of Harmony - Christmas Eve In My Home Town.mp3
What "Merry Little Christmas" was to WWII, this song was to Korea. Written by a soldier who served in Korea, it quickly became the most-requested song among overseas military, and has been nicknamed "The GI's Christmas Carol". (I like it for being *so much* less annoying than "I'll Be Home For Christmas", too.)

Johnny & Jon - Christmas in Vietnam.mp3
This is another song off the hobo-themed Christmas album. I don't know why it was on there, except as a symptom of massive stereotyping of Vietnam vets. (I've always loved the stories of the 1960s, but that was one thing I never understood - how the peace movement thought it was a good idea to demonize soldiers and veterans. And I am so, so glad the current anti-war movement has, mostly, avoided going there.)

Andy Williams - O Little Town Of Bethlehem.mp3
Go read this article in National Geographic. And then weep for humanity.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve In Sarajevo.mp3
TSO does rock-opera type things with stories, so I have heard, but I have only got my hands on their CDs, so the story is always a bit elusive. They apparently have a multimedia video for this song up on their website, though, which my computer refuses to stream properly.

[rx - happy rxmas and a whole lotta love.mp3]
Yeah, I'm totally duplicating songs already, but this mix is over twice as long as the others anyway, so suck it. And I couldn't think of anything better to stand in for our current mess, anyway.

Weird Al Yankovic - Christmas At Ground Zero.mp3
Ah, yes. A carol for the *next* big war.

John Lennon - Happy Christmas (War Is Over).mp3
It's hard to fight wars when you're rebuilding a world devastated by nuclear (and chemical, radiological, biological, and explosive) contamination. But I have faith that we could still manage it, if we wanted to badly enough.

Have some Williamsburg-y-ish music! Only not very, because as noted it's hard to find good vocal versions of old-fashioned Christmas carols, and if I find good CDs here it will be hard to not buy them.

But anywho.

Tinsmith - Greensleeves.mp3
As the man who was playing at dinner said, this doesn't technically turn into a Christmas carol until, oh, next week sometime - until then it's just the old folk tune about My Lady Greensleeves, which some people say is a reference to Goddess as spirit of the evergreen, so I suppose you can pretend it's actually a Solstice carol anyway.
Mediæval Bæbes - The Holly And The Ivy.mp3
Another of my very favorite carols, and authentically ancient-flavored, though if the tour guide tonight was correct, all the greenery around here this time of year is actually not historically accurate, can you believe it?
Duke Froggus - Joy to the Creek.mp3
"Joy to the World" is actually a carol that first came into popularity in late Colonial Virginia, right about where I am right now. Of course, this is actually a cover in faux-swing style, starring a keyboard that plays frog and owl noises.
Clam Chowder - Have Some Madeira, M'dear.mp3
Not actually a Christmas song, but I did have some Madeira tonight! Malmsey to be specific. And it was actually good. Very strong-flavored, but in a way that wasn't alcohol-tasting-y. I liked it. Even if Sister only got it 'cause it was the cheapest drink on the menu. And this is an excellent fun song full of wordplay that my sister had never heard of. So I share.

Nothing in particular grabs me about December 3rd, so let's start in on fandom songs!

Have Yourself a Shiny Browncoat Xmas.mp3
I've had this since track, like, before I even watched Firefly. So yeah. Have yourself a shiny Browncoat xmas, everybody! (There will be many more versions of this tune appearing later. I adore the original beyond all reason. Christmas is, after all, a season of melancholy.)
Neil Hannon (written by Murray Gold) - Song For Ten.mp3
My sister refuses to file this away as a Christmas song, but it so totally is. It's actually a fairly touchingly complicated Christmas song. As long as you don't spoil it by playing it the rest of the year. (Or, like, watching the Dr. Who episode it was written for. Which I still haven't done. Because that would mean accepting that David Tennant is actually the Doctor now. Euuugh. :P )
The Twelve Days of Christmas at Sacred Heart mp3
...somehow, any time there is Scrubs + singing, there is awesome. (Okay, anytime there is Scrubs anything there is awesome, but you know.)
Meco - What Can You Get A Wookiee for Christmas (when he already has a comb).mp3
Yes, Virginia, there was a Star Wars Christmas album. Titled "Christmas in the Stars." Why yes, I do own a copy on CD. Why? Well, whyever not?

I am off tomorrow for an extended weekend in Colonial Williamsburg (+the Smithsonian Mall + Leesburg) with Sister, which ought to be amazing, and on which I had *better* get a very good start on my Yuletide story. There will be internets, if all goes according to plan. But I have to get up at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning to get there. Blahhh.