Christmas Carol Lyrics You Won’t Hear At The Mall

I saw this the other day and I wasn’t sure if I was going to post it. Then I was walking around the Christkindl Market and listening to carols, and my mind was converting them to these ones…so I decided it needed a spot.

I guess this showed up on Jimmy Kimmel Live last year. I just saw it now. I’m late to the party. I’m still laughing. And hey, they even mentioned this old favourite.

Copying the words out because the autogenerated captions suuuuuuuuuck!

We’ve seen a lot of videos of people saying ridiculous things at county board meetings lately, but this one is special, because this one has a holiday twist. This happened at a meeting of the San Diego board of supervisors this week. Somebody got a little…Mariah Carried away.
(music) horribly off-key woman: I don’t want a lot for Christmas, just body autonomy.
I don’t care about the variants, because of natural immunity.

Kimmel: It’s like Karen Caraoke…

Off-key woman: Ivermectin not just horse paste,
and hydroxychloroquine
Vitamin C and Vitamin D
then the zinc and Quercetin.
I won’t wear a useless mask
I don’t need to stay at home…(music fades out)
Kimmel: Maybe you need to stay in a home it sounds like…but Karenmania has been sweeping this country for the last two years and here in Hollywood, there’s a new musical right across the street from us. It’s called “A Christmas Karen.” They’re doing like 18 shows a week, they’re right next door to the Marshalls, and joining us now to give us a sample of what they do, please welcome the original cast of “A Christmas Karen.

(music) Jingle bells, jingle bells, who’s jingling bells today?
I swear to God I’m gonna call the ***damn HOA (end music)

Kimmel: That’s right, doing classics like this. O Christmas Tree.

(music) Stop filming me, stop filming me. I don’t want to go viral.
Stop filming me, stop filming me, as I start to spiral.
I’m screaming in the parking lot.
Put on a mask? I think not.
Stop filming me, stop filming me! I’ll lose my job at Michaels. (end music)

Kimmel: And the beloved song “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

(music) I swear that I’m not a racist,
I swear that I’m not a racist,
I swear that I’m not a racist.
I have a black friend. (end music)

Kimmel: “Hark the Harold Angels sing.”

(music) Hark the Karen angels sing,
We did not do anything.
We just wanted a refund
from pants we bought in ’91.
If you give your boss a call,
we will picket this whole mall!
Just shut up and take it back!
We spend a lot of money at Nordstrom Rack. (end music)

Kimmel: Well who doesn’t?
“Deck the Halls”

(music) Deck my Facebook wall with bull***. fa la la la la, la la la la
This meme is fake but I’ll still push it. fa la la la la, la la la la
The vaccine will give you rabies. fa la la la la, la la la la
Democrats like eating babies. fa la la la la, la la la la. (end music)

Kimmel: Could there possibly be more? Why yes, there are! Auld Lang Syne!

(music) I don’t know what Auld Lang Syne means. It sounds like a muslim prayer.
If I hear you sing it, I’ll call Ice and deport you all, I swear! (end music)

Kimmel: And who could forget the Christmas classic “Carol of the bells”?

(music) How dare you ask I wear a mask?
In I will barge. Who is in charge?
I’ve come here for years, now I’m in tears.
I just want to shop. I’m calling the cops.
Ring, ring ring ring. I break everything.
Starting to scream, causing a scene.
I cough in your face, and blame your race.
In come the cops, tell me to stop.
Still I protest, under arrest.
I start to fight. I know my rights.
I’m in a daze, and acting crazed.
Hands I will raise. Now I’ve been tazed.
Merry Merry (zap) Merry Merry…aaaa…aaaa…aaaa…aaaaa…aaaaa…….(end music)

Kimmel: Wow. Thanks. Karens, that was beautiful!…

And apparently, a year later, A Christmas Karen is an actual movie! I kind of want to see it!

Enjoy.

Twitter Is Doing Great. If It Could Tweet, It Would Tell You As Much

The Elon Musk takeover of Twitter is going even better than I expected. Hate speech is on the rise, advertisers are leaving in droves, half the company got fired and then some of them got asked to come back because they were either laid off by accident or found to be more important than anticipated, a bunch of people who weren’t laid off quit, the entire verification system was blown up and then replaced by a different coloured version of itself…I should probably stop somewhere and get on with it. But yeah, things are going great.

All of this is why I stopped tweeting, in case you were wondering. I was on my way out anyway because it was no longer possible to open the app for even a few minutes without getting unproductively annoyed, but having a pretty good idea of how much worse things were going to get under the leadership of a mentally unstable ultra rich manbaby made for an excellent final push. I haven’t officially deleted my account (one day I might need it for something assuming the company survives), but don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to find that I’ve quietly disappeared.

I don’t expect any of you to notice that I’ve quietly disappeared, by the way. In fact, when I checked in about a month after the last time I tweeted, a grand total of 0 people had asked where I went. Nobody who knows how has reached out through methods outside of Twitter to ask about it, either. I’m not offended by this. It’s what I expected. I said so years ago. If anyone wants to find me, it’s not that hard. You’re already here, remember.

And this is why blogs are fun. I opened this post intending to have a quick laugh at Musk and whatever might be left of his merry band of twipshits locking themselves out of the official Twitter account for almost two weeks and wound up answering a question nobody seems to know they had. Good times.

During Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter takeover, login details for the company’s official account weren’t shared with new leadership, according to reporting by Platformer.
The $44 billion acquisition of the social media company has been disorganized, according to employees and experts alike, with reports of mass layoffs that were in some cases reversed and employees left “in limbo” about their working status.
Sources told Platformer, a newsletter run Casey Newton, former editor of The Verge, the login details for the official @Twitter social account were among the details lost in the fray.
The Twitter team finally accessed its account on Wednesday, after about 12 days, Platformer reported, though the account has not posted since October 13.

Guy Attends Sporting Event

CTV returns with the hardest hitting piece of sports journalism since was that Kawhi Leonard? Who cares, let’s go with it.

I hope you’re sitting down for this one, everybody. Todd from around here has World Cup tickets!

The world’s game will bring sporting fanatics from around the world to Qatar to enjoy soccer’s greatest competition – and a fan from Waterloo will be among them.
On Thursday, Todd Brandt is making the trip to the Middle East to support his long-time love of Canada’s soccer team and watch the men’s squad compete in the tournament.
“I’ve been following it for this long, and I really want it,” said Brandt. “If I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it?”
Brandt has been an avid supporter of Canada’s soccer teams for more than 20 years, enduring many failed World Cup qualification campaigns. Once the team booked its ticket to Qatar – so did Brandt.
“You’re believing it, but you’re kind of still like, ‘is this real?'”
Brandt has tickets to all three of Canada’s group stage matches and hopes to see this team make history by scoring the country’s first goal at the tournament – and maybe even grabbing a win.

If you’re worried that things might get more insightful from there, allow me to assure you that they absolutely do not.

When asked about the very real moral and cultural differences between Canada and Qatar and how he plans to deal with them during his visit, Brandt offered up a profound and extremely well researched response.

“Whatever it is, I’ll just adapt, because us Canadians are very adaptable.”

Thanks, Todd. We all feel so much better knowing that you’ve got this figured out. Be sure to pass this wisdom on to the rest of the world while you’re there. It should really help the gays.

And if you’re reveling in the shared excitement of Todd finally attending his first World Cup, don’t bother. He’s gone before.

It won’t be Brandt’s first visit to a World Cup; he attended the soccer showcase in South Africa in 2010.
“There [were] a lot of Canadian people in South Africa, but this one is going to be concentrated,” said Brandt. “[It’s] very exciting.”

Now, my favourite part.

What is Todd most excited about?

“I think it’ll be super emotional, just how emotional will be interesting, and as we progress, if we do start to make results, what I want to know is what it’s going to be like back home.”

Then why not stay here, Todd? You could have saved yourself a lot of money.

And CTV could have saved itself a few bucks by not paying people to produce and air this. But it seems like that’s kind of their thing, so who am I?

Have a nice trip, Todd.

Operation Shake The Baby

My sister went on a Black Friday shopping trip to the States this weekend. I don’t know why people do that, but some combination of her, my aunt and my mom have been doing it for at least a decade now and no one’s been killed, so whatever.

I was talking to her for a bit before she left, and I asked her what she was doing with the nephew while she was gone. That’s Seppa, if you’re keeping track. She said that he’s staying with a friend of hers and he’s happy about it, but it took some work because he really wanted to go with her. How she did that work is the reason for this post, because I’ve got to give her credit for some pretty solid thinking.

Obviously, one of the main reasons she’s going in the first place is to buy things for him. You can’t just come right out and say that, because that’s not what she does. That stuff is Santa’s department. Duh. So she explained to him that Santa is sending her on a mission. He’s finding it harder to make every present and get all of them into the sleigh nowadays, because there are just so many kids. So he’s asking for mommies to go find some of the things on his list so that everything can still get done on time. I guess he tried the old “I promise I won’t look,” but that was dealt with easily enough by a reminder that if you see anything even by accident, it ruins Santa’s plan for you.

A mission for mommies. That’s good stuff. I need to remember it in case I ever have to explain it to another kid.

Thinking on that level isn’t something I remember our mom ever having to worry about. Half the time if she wanted to buy something for my brother and I she’d just throw it in the damn cart. What were we going to do, spy? As long as she could keep us from touching it, she was in the clear. And even if we did it was often in a box, so chances are we weren’t figuring it out anyhow. She didn’t have that same luxury with my sister, but I don’t remember her being all that hard to distract. None of us were, really. We were generally happy to not go shopping if we got to stay with somebody fun, and if we did go there was usually a group of us so as long as there was someone to get us mesmerized by something in a different department or to get us something from the candy machines, it was all good.

I don’t know if any of this means that young Seppa is already smarter than the rest of us, but it might. It seems like he’s already better with numbers at six than I am at 42, for one thing. That’s a low bar, but I think it’s also a good sign.

Santa Booby

I swear, I will write about other things than my adventures with my CPAP machine. It’s just so fascinating right now…at least to me.

Remember when I said I hoped to have lots of weird dreams fuelled by good sleep? Well, that didn’t take long. Last night’s session with Santa Claus went the best it ever has. It went so well that dear old Pinocchio, my nickname for the app that tracks my progress, gave me a 100 percent score and sent me an email that said “Congratulations! You’ve started your therapy!” Hahahahaha! I started it last week, but my results were so bad that I could have, and did, fool Pinocchio.

I also had a series of crazy dreams and I thought I would write them down. In the first dream, I found myself in a Service Ontario office with my whole family. The lines were all snaky and I couldn’t figure out which way I was supposed to go, so I kept checking in with my family. This didn’t sit right with someone else in the line. She told me off for making too much noise, at which point, I lipped her off and told her to mind her own business. Then, my sister said to me, “Did you seriously come in here without a shirt on?” At which point, I was appalled to find myself flashing my boobs at everyone. I did have a shirt, but somehow, it had come off in my coat. I don’t know how this happens, but this is dreamland. So I spent the rest of the dream frantically trying to get my shirt back on, and realizing that there was no reason for me to be in Service Ontario because all my ID is up to date. I also think a badly-behaved service dog wandered in and started jumping on everyone, but I’m not sure.

The next dream consisted of our whole family being home for Christmas, including one nephew who had RSV. We spent forever trying to keep our distance and worrying about him giving it to my folks. Then we were watching Star Wars, and my brother kept rewinding to see stuff again, and my dad got mad at him and said we should just watch the movie. My dad doesn’t care about Star Wars and usually falls asleep in movies. What the heck?

Then the dream morphed, and I was trying to go to my book club, but they were suddenly living near my parents. My dad and brother were driving me to book club, and stopped off at some computer store and I think my brother was trying to buy my brother-in-law a new laptop bag. But he somehow got tricked and ended up bringing him a used one, and a worse one than the one he had in the first place. Not only that, but it had the previous owner’s stuff in it. There was some fruit and a sandwich. So, my brother was sitting there, trying to get rid of the garbage and hope my brother-in-law didn’t notice.

Then Dad drove me to book club, and then came in with me! He just sat in the corner, and grumbled about the kind of friends I had. I think one of my friends was trying to do some kind of massage to us, and another one’s guide dog was trying to steal crumbs off the floor. And then it just ended.

This all happened in one night. Wow! I must be sleeping deep.

I’ve also done my first dopy CPAP-related things. I wondered how long it would be before I would stumble off to bed and do something stupid when putting the mask on. Well, it was Tuesday night. I fell asleep on the couch, and got up and took myself to bed. I got out of my clothes and tried to get into bed and put the mask on. But I tried to make some sort of unholy alliance between my mask and head gear, and my bra! There I sat, confusedly staring at the bra, wondering where the hose hookup was. I even managed to think, “Well I’m glad someone from the machine company is coming over tomorrow because I think I broke my mask!” Then I thought “I’m completely stumped. I’ll go to the bathroom, come back, and try again.” When I came back and saw what I was doing, I laughed. It went a lot better when I wasn’t trying to hook mask to bra.

Last night, I don’t know what happened, but I zonked out on the couch again. When I got up, I realized I hadn’t filled up the distilled water chamber and said to Steve, “I just need to get that stuff for Peter.” Peter? I think that was a mutation of pail and water. But in any case, I accidentally named the water reservoir thing. Oh my.

If this is any indication, the dreams tag is going to balloon in size, and Steve’s going to have so much that he can use to make fun of me that we won’t need a Sleep Talkin’ series. Good times, good times ahead!

Get Ready To Remember Another Damn Area Code, Southern Ontario

I know the answer is that nowadays each individual has at least one and sometimes more depending on his job, but now and then I still can’t help asking myself just how in the hell there are so many phones.

Even though southern Ontario just got a third area code in 2016, its already in need of another one and will be getting it in 2023.

Truth be told, I still have trouble remembering that 548 belongs to us. When it calls here, I generally assume it’s from the States and ignore it. So far I haven’t missed anything important, but still. I expect to have the same problem with 382 when it starts rolling out next June, and for things to only get worse as demand keeps growing and we’re forced to add new area codes more and more quickly.

Without Me, Bluegrass Style

I’m a big fan of rap songs being turned into other things (acoustic ballads are my favourite), so it was pretty hard not to enjoy this for it’s pure ridiculousness.

Ladies and gentlemen, Marshall Mathers & His Saggy Bottom Boys!

If I’m ever in a band again, I hope part of our show can be silly crap like this. And by part of our show, I mean the part from where we come out on stage to the part when we leave.

A New Reaction To Chain Reaction

For a little while there, the Game Show Network had episodes of Chain Reaction on after 5. I don’t know what it is about that show, but it’s addictive. You can get sucked in so easily.

I had to laugh at my scathing review of Chain Reaction from 13 years ago. I really had a hate on for that show. While I agree with my younger self that some of the teams look suuuuuuper out to lunch, especially back then, for some reason I now love yelling out suggestions of words at the struggling team as if they can hear me. I also think that although some of today’s teams are frustrating, they seem to have grasped the concept of the game a little more than the older teams. The other day, we saw some episodes from years gone by, and the game actually let people put up all the letters in a word before they guessed them. Way to serve up points on a plate. Sometimes, the host had to prompt the team member for an answer! Have they forgotten where they are?

I do have to give credit to the newer version of the show for helping me come up with a new phrase. One team had the word “genius”, and they were trying to complete the word below it. They had the letters “B” and “A” up on the board. And what did they come up with? Why, “Genius ball”, of course! What the heck is a genius ball? Is it a dance for smart people? Is it some sort of new sport that is still unknown? Do you buy genius balls at the snow shop? What is a genius ball? Of course, the correct answer was “genius bar”. So now, when I think someone has the answer right in front of them and they pick something ridiculous, I call them a genius ball!

I totally realize that if I was under pressure and trying to pick words, I might be the biggest genius ball of all. I can only hope not.

Santa’s Coming And He’s Gonna, Fix Your Mask

Allow me to give everybody a chance to laugh at me. Here we go.

So, remember when I said I needed someone to come over and adjust things on the machine? Well, it appears that more than the machine needed adjusting. For the last week, I’ve been wearing my mask wrong.

I don’t know how I did it, but I got the idea that the fabric strappy things went to the top of my head, and the hose was around the back. Whenever I would wear it like this, the nose holes would be under my nose, but at a funny angle. This, of course, would not get the air right into my nose, and make the machine not sense my breathing, which started my whole cascade of problems.

So, she showed me where it was supposed to go, and wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I wore it correctly, the air was flowing into my nose and doing all the things it should. She changed the other setting anyway, but I felt like the biggest dope. She kept telling me not to worry, but I still felt like a big dope.

She also told me that I’ve been more dedicated to the treatment than lots of clients. Um, why? I know it’s weird to stick a mask on your face and sleep like that, but when you’re either having to pay for it out of pocket or get a doctor’s authorization, it’s not exactly easy or cheap to get one of these. And when you’ve experienced the benefits at all, why would you go back to sleeping the old way? Here I am with the thing on my face wrong and still feeling miles better than I have in years! I understand the temptation to just take the damn thing off when you’re having mask issues in the moment, but the point is to figure them out. That’s why you’re connected with someone you can bug for help.

Here are some pictures to illustrate the right way, and the wrong way, just in case someone else is screwing it up too. The mask is an AirFit N30i.

Me wearing the mask with the Velcro straps at the back of my head and the hose coming down from the top. The nose holes are directly under my nostrils.
The right way to wear this particular CPAP mask

The Velcro straps are positioned on the top of my head, which puts the mask at a stupid angle under my nose
So close, but so, so far!

My last night’s sleep wasn’t the greatest, but I think it might have been because of other stuff. We’ll see how things go. My score in the app they give you was much much higher, and the place where I lost the most points was for playing with my mask, which I definitely did. But even with my kind of crappy night of sleep, I have felt pretty good today. This thing works wonders!

I sent a picture of myself in the mask to the technician, and she says I got it. This gives me hope.

So, if you’re blind and getting one of these suckers, I recommend recording your whole training session, including the part where they fit you with a mask. Then get them to describe out loud where all the parts go, so you can look back on it. For everybody else, you can just rely on the videos that are in the app, but I don’t find the videos to be super descriptive in a helpful way. “Put the blue strap with the logo facing up” does not help.

Let’s hope the next posts that Santa fuels are about weird and wacky dreams that I’m able to have because my sleep is so good.

Finally, A Metallica Song I Enjoy!

That’s not quite true. there are a couple I don’t mind once in a while, but even though I can recognize that they are extremely talented and I have no really good reason for not liking them, I just don’t. Never have. And let me tell you, I had a handful of friends back in the day who took their Metallica very, very seriously. Like to the point where I’m pretty sure that if I wasn’t funny or if we didn’t have sports or wrestling or other music or whatever in common, they would have been rethinking the entire relationship. But if every Metallica song sounded like this, there would never have been a problem.

Music used in this mashup:
Men at Work – Down Under
Metallica – One
Judas Priest – Painkiller