The hard disk in Quinn's hand-me-down iPod Classic died last week. If anyone out there happens to be getting ready to upgrade their iPod to something newer and shinier, and is willing to let their old one go on the cheap, give me a holler :-)

Thanks to keyne for this account of traditional holiday cheer from the Alps: Beware the Christmas Krampus.

The name Krampus comes from the Old High German word for claw, apparently referring to just one of this being’s scary attributes. Other less-than-friendly features include a long, long tongue, shaggy black hair/fur, goat's head with horns, and cloven feet. ... The town of Schladminger is home to a sort of Krampus convention, with more than a thousand goat-men roaming the town's streets, harassing the town's young women.

I know you're all thinking what I'm thinking: ROAD TRIP!

Earlier this evening, keyne's MacBook was playing random selections from her catalog of Christmas songs, when a very distinctive rendition of  "O Holy Night" came on.

qwrrty: You put that in iTunes??
keyne: Yep.
qwrrty: Holy hell.
...
qwrrty: You're my kind of sick.
keyne: I think that may be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.

If there is a right time and place to be listening to this song, I think that three days before Christmas when you're frantically wrapping Christmas presents at two a.m. is probably it.

Thanks, folkmew. We owe you one. (One what, I'm not actually sure.)

While driving in to work yesterday, I heard on the radio (on one of our new all-Christmas-all-the-time radio stations) "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas." Mad props to muckefuck for finding a link to the song.

I cannot understand how I have gone 35 years of my life without ever hearing this song before.  A childhood that included annual renditions of "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" and Eartha Kitt singing "Santa Baby" should surely have brought this into my life too, but apparently not.