The Advent Calendar has been updated for 12/2.  Actually, it was updated many hours ago, which is another reason why you shouldn’t rely on X-E’s RSS feed to tell you when to come here.  You should come here every fifteen minutes, all day long.

I’ve been staring at these “Tiny Lites” sets for several years now.  No idea why it’s taken me so long to pick one up, considering that I’m the world’s most enthusiastic proponent of Christmas lights.  Perhaps this is proof of my rumored masochism.

Though the idea of tiny-sized Christmas lights is phenomenal, it is apparently a concept still not perfected.  The main issue is that the wires are just as big as those from a regular-sized set.  This seriously limits the amount of potential goofy uses for tiny Christmas lights, which while at the store seemed positively endless.

Another issue is the batteries.  How the frig can a set of Christmas lights with bulbs no bigger than match heads require four “AA” batteries to run?  I could power a small island nation with less expense.  This is like some low-rent 2nd grade science fair project, where a generator the size of a car battery is used to make potatoes sink in water.

The ridiculous amount of batteries paired with the ridiculous wire size denies “Tiny Lites” their expected thumbs up review, but for whatever it’s worth, the bulbs are pretty neat.  It’s hard to tell from the photo, but they give off a bright-but-subtle glow, which could be put to good use if you wanted to do a little indoor decorating but didn’t want to make your living room look like a supernova.

I made a quick stop at some faraway 7-Eleven over the weekend, and picked up this thing without really noticing what it was.  Now I notice, and I’m a little appalled.  “Reindeer Licks” is a kind of Push-Pop candy, where the cherry sucker has been molded to look like a reindeer’s tongue.  I believe common opinion would dictate that there’s something a little off about sucking a reindeer’s tongue.

Granted, the candy is targeted at kids who can get away with weirder shit than the rest of us, but I doubt that even a child could successfully finish a Reindeer Licks lollipop without someone branding them a pervert.  Then again, considering the lasting success of that other reindeer-themed Christmas candy — the one where you push on a reindeer’s back to make it shit out caramel jelly beans — maybe I’m reading too much into this.  Go on and have your fun.  Make out with Dixon.

It’s December!  And it’s Cyber Monday!  I may be in the minority, but I love the concept of Cyber Monday.  If you aren’t aware, “Cyber Monday” is intended to be the web-version of Black Friday, featuring the year’s biggest online sales and assorted brouhahas.

There are some who claim that Cyber Monday is a myth — a baseless term created by retailers to turn a non-event into a cash cow.  Bah.  The same could be said for Black Friday.  Despite its reputation, Black Friday isn’t the busiest shopping day of the year.  It isn’t even the second biggest.  And while Black Friday sales can be noteworthy, it’s mostly the aura of the thing that makes it so newsworthy.  If a bunch of online retailers want to extend that aura to another day of the year, what’s the big deal?  Surely we the people have more important things to worry about.  Killer birds with razor talons, for example.

It isn’t easy to choose the “right day” to blow several hundred dollars on Christmas presents for eighty-four children who will each get at least ten other gifts that they’ll like better than whatever I give them anyway.  I’ll take all the help I can get.

Click here for a vast collection of Cyber Monday promotions.

Spumoni, once merely a misspelling of one of Dick Tracy’s lesser-known adversaries’ surnames, is now also an ice cream flavor from Edy’s.  More correctly, it’s spumoni ice cream based on spumoni ice cream.  True Italian spumoni is a little more rustic, so I guess this is more of a Neapolitan ice cream (also based on spumoni) with extra pizzazz.

As the previous paragraph proves, I seriously enjoy the word “spumoni.”  Say it aloud.  Type it a few times.  You’ll see what I mean.  Makes me want to run out and buy some kind of toy breed just so I can name it “Spumoni” and have an excuse to say “spumoni” all day everyday.

What is spumoni?  In this incarnation, it’s compartments of chocolate, pistachio and strawberry ice cream, fortified with nuts and little bits of cherries.  The color combination is very on-brand for Christmas, and between that and my love for that special word, I can only repay Edy’s with a blood sacrifice.

If SPUMONI isn’t your thing, Edy’s sells holiday-themed ice cream in many other flavors.  I reviewed their peppermint and egg nog flavors last year, if those are more your style.  If they aren’t, there is no satisfying people like you.

Oh, and the Advent Calendar has begun.  That too. 

Survey: What’s the #1 thing on your wishlist this year?  Note that “world peace” is so played.

Every year, the Advent Calendar seems to take up more and more real estate in our apartment.  When I started doing this in 2002, it was just a little box on the edge of a table.  By last year, my imaginary girlfriend and I ate dinner with a three-foot Playmobil “Victorian Grand Mansion” standing between us.  This year?  Good Christ.  I’ll say this: To properly set up everything, I had to spend fifty bucks on lumber and lighting at Home Depot.

Advent Calendaring can be expensive, so if you’re doing any holiday shopping this weekend, do me a favor and use X-E’s Amazon Affiliate Link.  Costs you nothing, but if you buy stuff on Amazon after clicking that link, I’ll make a solid thirty cents.  Yessss.  (Advent Calendar starts Monday.  Barring very few exceptions, there will be a new holiday-related blog entry for each day of December, too!)

Man, it’s Christmassy.  Honestly and truly.  Everyone in our neighborhood used the extended weekend to string blinking lights up outside, and while we didn’t get that far, our apartment is starting to get that familiar waft of artificial pine and cinnamon (thank you Glade), with Christmas decorations old and new beginning to take the place of the many piles of magazines that had been growing in height since last March.  Despite the season’s reputation for being gratingly hectic and full of holiday bustle, I don’t think that there’s a time of year when it’s easier to find peace.  Or maybe I’m just in that tiny percentage of people who are capable of being totally hypnotized by 89 cent silver garland.

I’ve “raised” a fair share of Chia Pets in my life, but it wasn’t until last year that I decided to turn Chia Pet horticulture into one of my bona fide Christmas traditions.  Both the Chia Pet and The Clapper (Chia’s distant, robotic cousin) have long been advertised and sold most aggressively during the holidays, I guess serving as catch-all gifts when you need to buy presents for people you absolutely don’t know at all.

I really wanted this annual rearing of a Chia Pet to be an on-site tradition as well, but I worried that I’d just end up repeating things I’ve already written.  Luckily, the Gods of Chia threw me a bone, because I’ve never seen one quite like this before.

It’s not a Chia Pet at all, actually — it’s a Chia Tree with Star Light!  This cumbersome title seems to be the nondenominational way of selling what is very obviously a Chia Christmas Tree.  Do I need to tell you how much I dig the idea of a Chia Christmas Tree?  Do I even have the words to properly manifest my utter ecstasy over this?

It gets better.  If you’ve grown Chia Pets in the past, you probably remember the sad rule about soaking the “pot” (or “pet,” or “tree”) and the seeds for a full 24 hours before getting to do anything fun.  Typically, I’ve found this waiting period so grueling that I never have fingernails left when it’s over.  Well, get ready for a CHIA NEWSFLASH!!!  At some point in 2008, they modified the formula, and now, you’re only required to soak the pot and seeds for one measly hour!  Incredible!  It’s too early for a Christmas Miracle, so what this is, I suppose, is a November 29th Miracle.

After letting my tree and seeds soak for sixty minutes (it still felt like years), I did the ol’ seed-spread.  The coat of green Chia sprouts won’t fully materialize for up to two weeks, so I’ll keep you updated.  I considered buying a webcam strictly for the site’s readers to have a live status report on my Chia Tree’s growth, but considering that I’m about to spend a month making Playmobil dolls say bad words, I figured that setting up a Chia webcam would push the boundaries of what I can get away with and not be termed an absolute loser by society at large just a little too far.  That, and it seemed like a lot of work.

Oh, and as for the “Star Light” — the set comes with a waterproof, rod-shaped battery compartment topped with a light-up star, which sits right in the tree and beams a rainbow of colors from your kitchen windowsill.  Really nice touch.  I didn’t think I’d find a way to justify my decision to use a Chia Pet as a table centerpiece when we host Christmas dinner in a few weeks, but thar she blows.

Time to go prep, prep and prep some more.  I hope you’re all getting into the spirit, and if you’re not, I’m going to beat you over the head with it for the next month.  Over and over again.  You’re really going to hate me when all’s said and done.

Holy bird, Thanksgiving is tomorrow.  Insane.  Quickest year ever.  We’ve been enlisted to contribute both stuffed mushrooms and baby artichokes to the family spread, which is a tall order for someone who would much rather do nothing at all.

The bad news: No new Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade review this year.  Sorry…time just wasn’t on my side, and really, the parades I have left in my archive of dusty cassettes are nowhere near as interesting as the ones I’ve already covered.  The bright side is, if you’ve never read those, I’ve got about six thousand pages worth of Shamu balloons, He-Man floats and old Christmas commercials for you to spend the next two days pilfering through:

I’ll see if I can round up some new ancient parades for next year.  As penance, I’ve already begun working on a fairly gigantic “real” article that I hope to have published sometime between now and the year 8000.

Finding the aforementioned baby artichokes was no easy task.  The mission took me from one side of town to the other, spanning no less than four supermarkets and, on a real hope shot, a corner deli.  I didn’t mind the endless search, as it seemed like each supermarket carried an entirely different line of holiday-themed goods.  Certainly, none of the places I’d usually buy baby artichokes at had one pound Sugar Daddy pops in stock.

Read again: ONE POUND Sugar Daddy pops.  Honestly, they feel even heavier.  And they’re huge.  Sold as edible stocking stuffers with random holly graphics on the wrappers, these may be the weirdest “Christmas edition” foodstuffs I’ve ever encountered.  You needn’t be a fan of Sugar Daddies (I’ve never eaten one in my entire life) to appreciate a candy that feels like a Honey, I Blah Blah Blah prop.  I feel dwarfed and empowered, and perhaps a little unworthy.

The paddle-shaped wad of milk caramel is a serious weapon.  It’s denser than commercial lumber, and I’m pretty sure that if I whacked you across the head with it, you’d die.  A one pound Sugar Daddy is an impressive sight, but make no mistake, no good can come of this candy.  Nevermind the ravages done to one’s intestinal tract upon eating the equivalent of 9.5 regular-sized Sugar Daddies; I speak more to the nearly-irresistible temptation to misuse this thing.  From unlikely instruments of murder to the focal point of some bizarre manner of foreplay, one pound Sugar Daddies are the most innocuous of all evil things.

Despite their natural fit for criminal activity, these giant-sized Sugar Daddies would admittedly look great under the tree or in a stocking.  If nothing else, no gift-getter, young or old, would ever predict such a gift.

Ehhh.  This is bittersweet.  I’m kind of over Star Wars-themed Christmas decorations, because I feel like there’s only so many times you can see Darth Vader in a Santa cap before the visual loses its punch.  At the same time, these are probably the best Star Wars-themed Christmas decorations I’ve ever purchased.

Made by Kurt’s Adler, it’s a collection of six large statues ranging from the above-pictured Yoda to R2-D2 to Boba Fett and beyond.  The packaging says that they’re “hand-crafted fabriche,” and I’m left wondering what the fuck “fabriche” is.  Must be Italian.  I guess I could look it up, but then “fabriche” would lose all of its awesome mysteriousness and become just another one of those words I avoid typing because I never learned how to make that little accent symbol appear above the letter “e.”  Let’s pretend that “fabriche” is street slang for “neat shit.”

I picked up two of the statues, which range from 15 to 25 bucks.  First up is Yoda Claus, who is desperately trying to look casual about his sudden casting as Christmas’s marquee star.  More impressive is the Darth Vader statue, where the Sith lord temporarily lets go of his anger to build the Death Star out of snow.  Cute, but I already got the snowglobe-version of this joke last year.  Surely they could’ve portrayed Vader in the midst of some other, never-before-seen Christmas activity.  Like you wouldn’t pay 25 bucks for a statue showing Darth Vader scraping morning ice from the front window of his uniquely-winged TIE Fighter.

See a larger photo of Yoda Claus and Darth Vader here.  See a small photo of a happy orange here.

And oh!  Ho ho!  Those stupid Fizz ‘n Find toys have managed to eke out their own Christmas edition.  The toys are exactly the same as the ones I reviewed for Halloween, save for the fact that the hidden monster figures have been replaced with hidden Christmassy tree ornaments.

You can refer back to the Halloween review to see how Fizz ‘n Find toys work, but the short version is this: After unwrapping the toy, you’re left with a rough, white hockey puck, which dissolves in warm water to reveal a prize inside.  Nobody could claim that this isn’t an interesting concept.

After repurposing a cereal bowl as a dunk tank and letting my Fizz ‘n Find brick melt away, I was left with a cheerful Santa Claus figurine, complete with looped string for easy tree branch hanging.  I can’t say that I was too amazed with it all, but then, I am sixty-seven years old.

PS: If you were having trouble running X-E’s Christmas Jukebox, I made some tweaks and believe that it’s now completely operational.  If it isn’t, then you’ll just have to be satisfied with the five radio stations currently playing nothing but Christmas music from now until New Year’s.

Gah.  I don’t want to make baby artichokes.  I hate babies.

I’m not a churchgoer, but our local parish can always count on me to blow half a paycheck at their annual Christmas fair.  Stuffed with gift basket raffles, longtime readers will remember my trials and triumphs at the 2004, 2006 and 2007 fairs.  (I can’t remember what made me miss the fair in 2005, but I have to assume that it was really, really important.  Perhaps that was the night I foiled the Swedes from realizing their long-plotted terrorist strike.)

The setup is not uncommon for church-hosted Christmas fairs: Local residents and businesses donate wicker baskets filled with prizes (ranging from toys to electronics to holiday decorations and beyond), with visitors buying tickets to shove in their desired basket’s corresponding raffle bag.  Since I’ve come to consider winning one of these baskets as the true kickoff of my own personal holiday season, I always spend way too much cash to guarantee myself a win.  (And when I say “way too much,” I don’t mean that in any form of subjective or relative manner.  There is not a person on this planet who would consider the amount of raffle tickets I purchased this year as anything less than clinically insane.)

I’ve gone to this fair year after year for as long as I can remember, and as far as the raffles go, my strategy has always been simple: “WIN SOMETHING.  WIN ANYTHING.”  For me, it’s less about gunning for the truly awesome prizes and more about making sure my tickets are in enough bags to guarantee me at least one prize.

To aid in this endeavor, I always make sure to slightly fold or otherwise mangle my raffle tickets before chucking ‘em into the bags.  The thought process behind this is that the ticket-drawing churchy folks are more likely to pluck out a non-flat ticket than, uh, a flat one.  Regrettably, I didn’t realize that it was “legal” to affix preprinted name-and-address stickers to the raffle tickets, which is what pretty much all of the other compulsive gamblers were doing.  These players would claim that they were just trying to save their wrists from a writing cramp, but I’m not stupid: They were thickening up their tickets to increase their chances for victory.  Lousy, cheating dicks.  Next year, I’m gonna tape pennies to each of my tickets and call it a side donation.  On the other hand, when I consider my passion for this subject with a level of objectivity that can only come after a nap in the wee hours, I kind of want to strangle myself.

Anyway, I won Basket #64, filled with a bunch of Italian foodstuffs donated from a local store.  (This was a common motif.  Tonight, there are at least three dozen residents in my city basking in the glow of their newly-won baskets full of bullshit pine nuts.)  Sure, I could’ve bought my way into silent partnership with this particular pork store for the amount I spent to win two bottles of balsamic vinegar, but the thrill is in the gamble.  Still, I’m more convinced than ever that this raffle isn’t entirely on the up and up.  With the unholy number of tickets I spread around this stupid thing, there’s just no way to explain why I didn’t win eighteen or nineteen different baskets.

If we can estimate the retail value of loaves of provolone and dry sausage at fifty bucks each, I guess I almost broke even.  Most of this stuff will likely sit in our cabinets for so long that we’ll completely forget where it came from, but all in all, I could’ve done worse.  One of the other raffles was for a $15 gift certificate to a barbershop across town, nestled in the center of a plastic Easter basket, surrounded by four bottles of travel-size shaving cream.  If I’d won that, then tonight CNN would be richer one headline about a mysterious church fire.

Just a random SNT.  I’m working on a couple of things, but mainly I’m working on relaxing.

I buy a lot of DVDs.  I don’t watch all of them.  Actually, I probably haven’t watched more than half of them.  Yet, I continue to buy DVDs.  They’ve sort of become comfort food for when I’m not hungry.  The jury’s still out on whether I’ll actually watch it my latest DVD purchase, but I’ll say this: If I haven’t seen it by Christmas, it’s just another shelf decoration.

The Holiday Treats DVD is awesomeness, but in an odd, arguable way.  The total shoestring presentation includes eight random Christmas-themed sitcom episodes, spanning from The Andy Griffith Show to Frasier to Family Ties to The Brady Bunch.

I don’t know what it is, but something about this DVD depresses the fuck out of me.

Maybe it’s that nearly every included show has at least one actor who is now dead.  Maybe it’s because so many of these once-sung television heroes now find their opuses bagged together with random Wings episodes, with the DVD production handled by the same company who makes generic brand Honey Smacks.  Or maybe it’s because three of the episodes are in black-and-white, and if all of the full-color sitcoms on the DVD taught me anything, it’s that people only watch black-and-white shows when they’re having dramatically depressing personal moments.

The DVD only cost a few bucks, let’s say seven, and I kind of want to watch it.  When I bought it, I only just kind of wanted to have it, but now, I don’t know.  It has the Carol Brady Vs. Laryngitis episode.  That’s something.

Holiday Classics would be perfect to watch if I had the flu.  It just seems like such a flu DVD.  A small part of me is lobbying for some form of “Flu-ray” joke, but I admit that this is the part of me that I find most disgusting.  When you’re sick but still somehow bored, you need something that’s entertaining enough to hold your attention…but not so entertaining that you have to struggle through “fever vision” to find the pause button when you need to go inside and puke.  Honestly, I wouldn’t give a shit if I missed the last five minutes of Taxi’s Christmas special.

I wrote about tri-flavored holiday popcorn tins last year.  I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on writing about them again, but it’s gotta be longer than a year.  Instead, I’ll just point out that they’re available in some really terrific tins this year.  The themes range from A Christmas Story to A Charlie Brown Christmas, and other shows/movies that I cannot remember because I did not buy popcorn tins based on them.

PS, now’s as good a time as any to get this out there: I know that there are cases where I use the word “that,” and I really should be using the word “which.”  I also know that I misuse quotation marks.  It is a stylistic choice.  Besides, you’re the asshole who trolls around town saying “for all intensive purposes.”  I hope Christmas is bad for you.

Oh, and there’s a pair of “Holiday Hot Rods” three-packs, from Mattel’s Hot Wheels collection.  Mattel must have a lot of faith in this concept, as there are roughly 87 different three-packs available.

I’ve long been a proponent of kids receiving Hot Wheels (or Matchbox) cars on Christmas morning.  I guess I have no reason to be — there’s no commission or anything — but I still am.  If nothing else, toy cars are a good way to guarantee a child at least one welcomed surprise on Christmas.  Every kid loves Hot Wheels, but nobody asks to get them for Christmas.  It’d be like spending a genie wish on a good bagel.

The vehicles are clearly repainted versions of existing Hot Wheels cars, as few would dare insinuate that Santa Claus drives around town in a forest green van unless there was some cost-cutting measure involved.  On the upside, I rather like the other car.  I’m sure it’s a model based in reality, but it looks like a sportscar powered by a giant, vanilla-scented pillar candle.

Let’s attach a survey: In the comments, talk about your own personal favorite “flu movies.”  “Flu TV shows” are also acceptable, though not as catchy.