Ho Ho Ho

It's almost Christmas break, and that means it's time for a special Holiday post to fill up the remaining time before I can go home.

I had vague plans of writing a big Christmas post, packed full of weird stuff like artist Peter Terren's Tesla-powered Christmas tree, which could make Clark Griswold weep with envy, or this lovely snowglobe which the Frau just sent to me. A centerpiece of this grand Yuletide project of mine would certainly have been the list of "16 Morally Dubious Holiday Entertainments" from the beloved Onion AV Club.

But I just couldn't get into the holdiay spirit. I couldn't figure out why this was, until I read this article from Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author perhaps best known for his defense of Mother Theresa on the Colbert Report. Between the weather, shopping, and the now-annual War-on-the-War-on-Christmas, Martin says perfectly what I've been trying to express for the last two Decembers.

Anyway, now to go home, see my wife, and enjoy a few days of spending time with our families.


Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

A Czar is Born

(EDITOR'S NOTE: We're getting lazy with picking titles. Yes, this one was blatantly stolen from Time Magazine. Our spelling is much cooler, though.)

Congratulations to Time's 2007 Person of the Year, President Vladimir Putin of Russia. (Sorry, Al, better luck next year. If there is a next year.)

I could go on and on about Putin's restoring Russia's political greatness at the cost of its short-lived date with democracy, or make the obvious comparisons to certain other members of the Person of the Year Club, but the articles linked above explain all that better than I could in the space available here.

So, in closing, let me make just one brief point instead:

Note to the Frau: told you so.

Happy Birthday, Arthur

After the previous post I just wrote, I also wanted to add something on a much more positive note.

Legendary science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke turns 90 years old today. Best known as the author of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and a founding father of "hard science fiction", he wrote numerous other classics including "The Hammer of God" and "Childhood's End", which in its own weird way might be the scariest book I've ever read.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, 1917-???

Clarke is also famous for his "Three Laws of Technology", especially the third one:

• When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
• The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

He seems to like the number 3. Besides his Three Laws, he is the last surviving (and by far my favorite) member of the "Big Three" SF authors (the others being Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein), and now he offered his Three Birthday Wishes. Here's hoping they come true.

Finally, in tribute to Sir Arthur and his achievements, I offer Planetary Politics, a very amusing article about science fiction books and the presidential candidates who should read them.

Baby, why you make me do that?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Frau Skippy, who contributed the title of this post.)

We at the Daily Marmoset would like to bid farewell to America's Most Lovable Wife-Beating Crackhead, the late Ike Turner. Everyone knows Ike Turner was a bad, bad person. But the world would be a much poorer place if only nice guys were allowed to play music (or write, paint, act, etc.). Turner was a bastard, but he was a talented bastard.

See the Videography page of his official website, for instance. One of the Youtube videos is a slideshow set to a medley of "Rocket 88", which many music historians consider to be the first true rock & roll song, followed by "A Fool in Love" and "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", two of the better (if somewhat ironically named) songs from his years with Tina Turner.

There is also a RealPlayer video of Ike performing on Conan O'Brien in 2001. Turner's guitar work slipped quite a few pegs in his later years (I hear smoking crack does that), but is still very impressive. I wonder, though, if Conan's staff paid any attention to the lyrics before they let him play his then-newest single, "I Gave You What You Wanted". In the context of who's singing it (and who he's probably singing it to), it's a very disturbing song.