Uncategorized
Christmas Music for People Who Hate Christmas Music
I hate Christmas music. Well, hate is a strong word, I’ve just listened to it too much. Many years ago, I worked in the seafood department at a grocery store, and after Thanksgiving they’d play Christmas music over the speakers. This was also an extremely busy time for seafood orders, and I’d stand at the sink with a gigantic bag of shrimp, peeling and cleaning each one for customers’ holiday shrimp platters. This was monotonous work, so I’d end up focusing on the Christmas music being blasted throughout the store.
I think this is a thing that happens to a lot of retail workers. You get so bored that you start trying to figure out what the hell the guy in “Jingle Bell Rock” is talking about or notice that Deen Martin starts calling the title character in “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” “Rudy” near the end of the song.
And don’t get me started on the “Little Drummer Boy”.
My wife tells me I worked retail over 20 years ago and I should get over this. She’s most likely right, but instead of getting over it I’ve compiled a list of Christmas music for people who hate Christmas music.
Bob Dylan – Must Be Santa
Did you know Bob Dylan recorded a Christmas album? It’s true. On the album is a polka rendition of “Must be Santa”. It’s up to you to determine if Dylan is being earnest or making fun of Christmas music, but he starts naming US Presidents during the part of the song where Santa’s reindeer are mentioned. It’s a lot of manic fun like a good Christmas party with friends.
Ramones – “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)”
I don’t know if the Ramones are talking about physically fighting on Christmas, or having an argument with their girlfriends. Either way, it doesn’t matter since the song is only 2 minutes long like most Ramones’ songs.
Fear – Fuck Christmas
In college I knew a guy who wore a little button that was a Christmas tree with one of those red “no” crosses through it. I asked him what it was and he introduced me to the band Fear who wrote this very very short anti-Christmas song.
Macka B – Christmas Cancelled
In Madison, Wisconsin there is this community run radio station called WORT 89.9. It makes NPR look like Breitbart radio. They do a reggae/pan African music show on the weekends which is where I learned about this extremely anti-commercial, anti-Rome Christmas song by Macka B.
RUN DMC – Christmas In Hollis
I don’t understand why this song doesn’t get any radio play during the holiday season. It’s a great morality tale: If you find Santa’s wallet, just send it back to him.
The Kinks – Father Christmas
I was driving with my wife recently and this song came on the satellite radio, then she switched the station! “Oh wow, a Christmas song you like?” she said. Yes of course, this one is about getting beaten up by angry children while dressed up as Santa, how could you not like it?
All I Want For Christmas (is to kick your ass) – Midnight Riders
I have a theory that every year Mariah Carey’s managers drive a dump truck full of money to her house and unload the contents on her front lawn. This is the royally money from “All I Want For Christmas is You” which she then has shredded and used to mulch her rose garden.
I Won’t Be Home For Christmas – Blink-182
Oh to be a young idiot who’s biggest annoyance is having to see their family at Christmas…
BJJ Updates – 3-5-2024
Chakra Status – Feelin’ Fine
Around seven months ago I started doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu at a studio in Baraboo, WI. My tennis team had just disbanded, so I decided now was the time to give it a shot. I’ve always had an interest in martial arts, having done karate as a kid, and boxing and kung-fu as an adult. It was time to give grappling a shot.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu was developed in the 1920s after Judo practitioner Mitsuyo Maeda brought the sport to Brazil. Slightly different from modern Olympic Judo which focuses on throws, Brazilian jiu-jitsu instead concentrates on the ground game of Judo. This includes sweeps, guards, pins, and, most interesting of all, submissions. This system was eventually made famous by Royce Gracie during the first “Ultimate Fighting Championship” tournament. Royce managed to use BJJ techniques to take down much larger and more aggressive opponents. As a result, BJJ is a staple of modern mix martial arts training.
During the first few months of BJJ, I mainly focused on stretching out my hip flexors and tried to avoid getting my head ripped off. This was a time of survival, it was difficult to focus on actual techniques (except for the San Paulo guard break, which rules). Now that I have a better understanding of the sport, I’m using this blog to write down the daily techniques so I can remember them better. This is mostly a personal activity, but if you get any kind of benefit or entertainment out of reading what I wrote, then that is an added plus.
Spider and Half Lasso Guard
Today we went over a spider guard and half lasso technique. Essentially you get your opponent in spider guard, but loop one foot around and rest your foot on your opponent’s bicep or elbow to achieve a half lasso.
From this you can use the half lasso foot as a “step” to bridge (much like a yoga bridge) up and hook your spider guard leg around your opponent’s head, setting up a nice triangle submission.
You can also hook your spider or lasso foot around for an easy omoplata submission.
Right now I mainly just stick in closed guard, try for a sweep to side control, then go for an easy kimura hold. My goal in the next few months is to utilize more lasso and spider guards to see what I can do with them.
That and keeping my body limber with regular yoga and jogging.
Wish me luck, thanks for reading!
Springfield’s Gate – Enhanced Edition
Bart, I don’t want to alarm you, but there may be a child of Bhaal or children of Bhaal in the house.
Breakfast Burrito Reviews: McDonald’s
The main thing I love about McDonald’s is that you can drive up to any location, tell them a number and a beverage you like, and get some hot food. The meal is going to cost around $6 so there is no need to get specific. The fast food antithesis of McDonald’s would be Subway. At Subway you answer a long series of questions and an official Sandwich Artists will deliver to you something that may or may not legally resemble food. Yes, who cares if the tuna isn’t really tuna and the chicken salad is 80% sawdust? It’s a sandwich that costs $5 and they generously allowed you to have extra iceberg lettuce at no extra charge!
Overall, fuck Subway! This review is about McDonald’s, specifically their breakfast burrito.
McDonald’s is an example of cold heartless American efficiency. Items only stay on the menu if they’re big sellers. The McDLT, Arch Deluxe, and Chicken Fajita were all systematically introduced and unceremoniously executed for not adding to the bottom line. Even the McRib is only allowed on the menu when pork prices are low enough to make the McDonald’s bean counters happy. The breakfast menu is the same way, practically every item is some variation of their biggest breakfast seller: the Egg McMuffin. There are two things that stand out though. First, the pancakes (which are surprisingly good) and, of course, the breakfast burrito.
I always get the breakfast burritos at McDonald’s. For one, you get two of them for some reason, they’re easy to eat while driving, and lastly they come with hot sauce which you can use right away or throw in a kitchen drawer somewhere and forget about.
Tortilla
Hot, steamy, and mysterious. Who makes these? Sysco? I have no idea but they’ve probably been designed to stay edible after being stored in a warming tray for up to 5 hours.
Fillings
Scrambled eggs (most likely powdered), peppers, onions (most likely dried), sausage (most likely pork I hope), and AMERICAN cheese of course. Everything about these fillings has been designed to congeal together nicely. It’s impossible to replicate at home without at least a masters in food chemistry.
Overall
Obviously designed by chemists in a lab somewhere in Illinois, the McDonald’s breakfast burrito is a true triumph of fast food science. You merely tell a speaker box “number seven with a black coffee”. Two minutes later you have something resembling food. Enjoy this miracle and go on with your day.
Rating: Four burritos out of five 🌯🌯🌯🌯
Breakfast Burrito Reviews: Symantec Cafeteria
Earlier in my career I worked in Eugene, Oregon for the Symantec Corporation (they’ve now recently rebranded as “NortonLifeLock Inc”). It was a west coast company with west coast sensibilities, so the building was set up with a wide open office plan. This means instead of standard cubicles, the walls were half size (or non-existent) to encourage “collaboration”. Nice in theory, but if you’ve ever worked in an open office setup you’ll know that most collaboration has little to do with your actual job. Collaboration topics usually included cars, movies, and “weird stuff that happened to me back when I was in the army/navy/air force/high school”.
Though Eugene is a ways north of Silicon Valley, the office building had many of the amenities you hear about the actual Silicon Valley having. In addition to the odd open office setup, there was also a yoga studio, gym, spin class (with staff instructors), nap rooms, and a recreation center complete with a basketball court and ping pong. Now, no one would really take naps or practice their yoga poses during work hours. I believe the idea was you would get done with work, go down to the gym or studio for some exercise, take a shower, get dinner at the brewery next door (which we referred to as “building 3”), then pass out in the nap room until the next day. Everything you need is at work so there is no need to go home! Work is home, home is work. A pocket utopian Arcology right there in Eugene! At least until the CEO took a look at the bottom line, fired everyone, then sold the building to Wayfair Inc.
By far the best part of working for Symantec was the cafeteria. They did breakfast and lunch to order and it was all surprisingly good. Since we were on the west cost, coffee was taken extremely seriously. The company hired a barista and the beans were always good quality by office standards. A big change from midwestern office coffee which is made from recycled grounds filtered through old socks.
What made the cafeteria really stand out was it’s breakfast burrito. It was made fresh and contained the usual ingredients, eggs, bacon/sausage, shredded cheese, sour cream, and hash browns. It was rolled up in a gigantic fresh tortilla so the resulting meal was roughly the size of your head. There was nothing better than taking a break from fielding calls from angry IT managers to go down to the cafeteria and order a humongous burrito topped with Cholula hot sauce. I’ve since moved back to the Midwest and I’ve tried to replicate the Symantec breakfast burrito at home, but it’s never quite the same. Maybe I should try and get a job at Wayfair and see if they’re still making them.
Rating: Five out of Five 🌯🌯🌯🌯🌯
Twitter Bot Upgrades
Important news! I have upgraded my Raspberry Pi. No longer will my pihole and twitter bot run on an ancient Pi 2, no, we have seen the future, and the future is the Pi 4!
The Pi 4 includes new amazing features such as:
- Two 4k outputs, so you can view your black and green terminal screen on two monitors instead of just one kind of like in that movie “The Matrix”
- Throw out all of your old power cables since this baby works with USB-C!
- More RAM? There is probably more RAM.
That being said, the main reason I upgraded is that I couldn’t believe my old Pi 2 lasted this long. I had left it powered on since 2017 without a single hardware issue. I’m honestly surprised the thing didn’t melt.
To celebrate this monumental occasion I’ve added another type of Python script twitter bot post to the Team Venom account. Using the “vcgencmd measure_temp”, “date”, and classic linux “fortune” commands (/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp, date ‘+%A, %B %d, %Y’, and /usr/games/fortune) I can pull the CPU temp, current date, and random “fortune” and post it to twitter as seen below:
This is sure to delight a handful of nerds on the internet, which is always my goal with posting online.
I also updated the PiHole, a DNS based ad blocking service, to v5.6. Wow, who the hell is my Roku talking to all the time?
If you’re interested in doing any of this nerd stuff on your own, check out the following links:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/
Breakfast Burrito Reviews: Don Miguel’s
We all have favorite foods. Breakfast burritos happen to be one of mine. Here is a review of one of the many I’ve had.
One of the few nice things about the PANDEMIC is that I been eating out of less vending machines. Yes, I have been working from home for the past two years, so I have direct access to a “stove” which I can use to prepare “food” for “consumption”. Before this I have a few options for lunch at work:
- Bring something from home and microwave in the office kitchen (note: if you do this with fish your coworkers will ritualistically execute you)
- Order a gigantic meatloaf sandwich at a nearby restaurant and pass out at 2PM
- Pray to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of office workers, that someone ordered pizza for a meeting and had leftovers
- Get something horrible out of the vending machine
Usually I would forget 1, be too busy for 2, and my prayers would go unanswered for 3, so 4 would be my last option. That’s where my good friend DON MIGUEL would come in.
As you can see this breakfast burrito has friendly packaging that displays quite a bit useful information. “Whole Eggs”! “Three Cheeses”! “Hand Made”! As far as office vending machine meals go, this one is halfway appetizing. But how does it rate up?
Tortilla
This burrito comes out of a vending machine. Sometimes it’s completely frozen, other times it’s only halfway frozen. As a result the tortilla doesn’t really hold up. It kind of flakes apart as a result, perhaps the worst part of the Don Miguel Breakfast Burrito
Fillings
The burrito comes in two flavors: “Bacon” and “Sausage”, but there really isn’t much of a difference between the two. Overall I’d say sausage is the better of the two. The eggs remind me of the powered eggs I’d eat while camping as a kid, you know the kind you’d mix with water and they’d turn kind of green.
Overall
So the tortilla is bad, and the filling is also bad, but overall the burrito is quite good. Why is this? Well, it’s better than every other option in your work vending machine. Much better than the frozen cheeseburger, much better than eating two granola bars, and a whole lot better than the white bread ham sandwiches which I assume the vending machine company shop lift in mass from nearby Super America gas stations
Rating: Two out of Five 🌯🌯
Most Venomous Games of 2020
I don’t need to tell you that 2020 has been an obnoxious year. With the pandemic came lockdowns, which brought more idle time than one can manage. Luckily some of the greatest minds on planet earth are working hard to create the most popular diversion of my generation: video games. Here’s a list of the ones I enjoyed the most this year and think you should give a try.
Nioh 2
The Nioh games are Team Ninja’s version of the “Dark Souls” game. Think punishing difficulty, weird monsters, and a convoluted plot. Nioh stands out on it’s own since it’s a very difficult game, but it throws so many weapons and abilities at you that you’re actively encouraged to break the game. You can spend a lot of time memorizing enemy movement patterns, or you could also combine weapons and abilities to create a yokai killing machine who throws poisoned shuriken and hits stuff with a gigantic sword. I was also reading James Clavell’s “Shogun” at the time, a book that also takes place in 16th century Japan. Some of the same historical characters even overlap, of course in Nioh 2 they can throw giant fireballs at each other which is an added bonus.
Paper Mario: The Origami King
Nintendo knows what they’re doing. They want you to play their games, on their hardware, with your family. They specifically make family games, and they do a very good job at it. Paper Mario: The Origami King is no exception. The RPG elements are extremely light, but the main draw of the game is the fun puzzles that are intertwined with a whimsical story. This was a blast to play with my daughter before bedtime.
Chess
Chess didn’t come out in 2020, it was created in India some time in the 6th century, but I have been playing a lot of it. I was always a casual chess player, but I got more into it in 2020. I couldn’t SEE my friends very much this year, but I could play chess with them on chess.com. After a few dozen games you start to realize how little you know about the game. I started studying chess tactics, openings, puzzles, and reading chess books. I even taught my 5 year old daughter how to play (and she shows an interest in it which really surprised me!). If you enjoyed “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix I’d recommend signing up for a free account on chess.com or lichess.org, playing a few games, then getting a little obsessed like I did.
Street Fighter V: Championship Edition
The first version of Street Fighter V came out in 2016 to a few complaints. The online netcode wasn’t very good, and there wasn’t a whole lot to do in single player. But I don’t have any firsthand experience with this since I only started playing it this year when the Championship Edition came out this year for around 40 bucks. It’s a good value, you get all of the DLC characters released to date, the netcode has been fixed so it’s now easily playable online, there are plenty of single player training missions, and there is a huge playerbase (with cross console/PC play) so you never have to worry about finding someone to play. The initial release of this game might have sucked, but the Championship Edition made a lot of very nice improvements worth checking out.
Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate
I built a new gaming PC this year. RTX 2060, a bunch of RAM, new CPU and case. I spared no expense! But the new PC game I ended up enjoying the most was this simple looking dungeon crawler that I can play on my laptop. Another roguelike in the “Mystery Dungeon” series, you play as a wondering swordsman named Shiren who’s best friend is a talking ferret. Shiren is a very well made roguelike, it’s easy to learn the basics but you start to understand the more complex systems as you progress through the game. It’s challenging to make it to the end of a dungeon, but building a new character with new equipment after you get knocked out is fun too. All very zen.
Happy New Year
The Team Venom Website 