12 Days of Christmas - Day 12: the last noel

(l-r, Buttons, young Andrew, little brother)
Christmas Day is finally upon us, and to say that it feels profoundly anti-climactic would a large understatement on my part. It's to be expected, I suppose. Nothing drilled so loudly and incessantly into one's consicence over the space of eight-plus weeks is ever going to live up to the expectations. I'm told it's different when you have kids. Even so, I'm in no rush to find out empirically.

In the "plus" column for today was this present from my wife...


...a USB-ready turntable. 2008 bodes to be an interesting year for Armagideon Time. I spent some time in the attic this morning sifting through my record collection, my mind fair to bursting with potential post ideas. (It also means I'll need to purchase a better computer desk to accomodate my new toy, but that had been on my to-do list for a while already.)

Of course, Providence is notorious for caressing with one hand and sucker-punching with the other, and today was no exception. I was out back walking Oscar the Grumpy Pughuahua, distracted by thoughts regarding what record I should rip first, when I slipped on a patch of ice and came down hard on my left (dominant) wrist.


I should be happy I didn't end up with a compound fracture, but it's hard to accentuate the positive when it feels like I've arm-wrestled a belt sander (and lost).

Even given the painful abrasions and the underwhelming feel of this year's festivities, Christmas 2007 did turn out to be rather decent day. I scored some very nice and desired gifts, which also included slick Penguin editions of Fantomas and M. Lupin material, a Blue Devil JLU figure, and the DC Showcase collections of the Metal Men and Aquaman (and few things alleviate the tedium of family gatherings like Ramona Fradon panels of bank robbers getting bit in their asses by telepathically controlled sharks and/or pufferfish).

And so concludes our holiday countdown. Our final musical selection falls outside the expected genre boundaries, but I'm sure the handful of you that are still reading to this point won't mind too much. It's a track which has the capability to slide past my formidable barriers of cynicism and cleave directly and unerringly into the nostalgia cortex. Not nostalgia for the Christmas holiday season, mind you, but for summers spent reading comics while hanging upside down from the tire swing in my back yard -- a perfect refuge from the junior high blues.

I have no idea why I felt like posting it today of all days, but here it is just the same:

General Public - Tenderness (from All the Rage, 1984)