What Do These Songs Have In Common?

1. Mistletoe and Wine, Sir Cliff Richard (1988)
2. Blue Christmas, Shakin' Stevens (1985)
3. Christmas Wrapping, The Waitresses (1981)
4. Little Saint Nick, The Beach Boys (1963)
5. All I Want For Christmas Is You, Mariah Carey (1994)
6. When A Child Is Born, Jonny Mathis (1972)
7. Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End), The Darkness (2003)
8. Do They Know It’s Christmas? Band Aid 20 (2004)
9. Merry Christmas Baby, Mae West (1960)
10. Wonderful Christmas, Paul McCartney (1979)

I guess it depends on your taste in music.  But these were the ten finalists in a most hated Christmas Songs contest held in 2013 by the British coffee house chain, Costa Coffee.  I ran across this list because I was looking up some information on song number one, Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine, a Christmas tune I was unfamiliar with but was going to add to my collection which tells you a lot about my shitty taste in Christmas Carols.

The prize for the winner of this dubious distinction was banned from being played in all of Costa Coffee’s stores. 

Sir Cliff Richard's singles may be as synonymous with Christmas as turkeys and tinsel, but you won't hear them in Costa Coffee during this festive period. The British coffee house chain has banned Sir Cliff's yuletide number Mistletoe and Wine from their 1,600 stores after the 73-year-old's song was named the most hated Christmas song of all time in a poll. Songs by Sir Paul McCartney, Shakin' Stevens and Band Aid 20 also made the top-10 list, based on Costa's survey of 3,000 Brits. Kevin Hydes, Costa's UK retail marketing director, said the song would be banned from all Costa's in-store playlists over the Christmas season because "the festive happiness of our customers and staff is our upmost priority".

In an effort to rejuvenate familiar Christmas songs, Costa has given £10,000 to Youth Music, a charity which gives young people the opportunity to make music to overcome personal challenges in their lives.

How popular was Mistletoe and Wine at one time? Damn popular I guess until the Brits got tired of overplay and it became more like Stilted toes and Whine than anything to do with Christmas.

Mistletoe and Wine became Sir Cliff's 12th number one single when it was released in 1988. It spent four weeks at the top of the UK chart, and sold over 750,000 copies that year. It also secured the 1988 Christmas number one spot. Sir Cliff's other Christmas hits include Saviour's Day and Millenium Prayer.

Sir Cliff Richard's singles may be as synonymous with Christmas as turkeys and tinsel, but you won't hear them in Costa Coffee during this festive period. The British coffee house chain has banned Sir Cliff's yuletide number Mistletoe and Wine from their 1,600 stores after the 73-year-old's song was named the most hated Christmas song of all time in a poll. Songs by Sir Paul McCartney, Shakin' Stevens and Band Aid 20 also made the top-10 list, based on Costa's survey of 3,000 Brits. Kevin Hydes, Costa's UK retail marketing director, said the song would be banned from all Costa's in-store playlists over the Christmas season because "the festive happiness of our customers and staff is our upmost priority". In an effort to rejuvenate familiar Christmas songs, Costa has given £10,000 to Youth Music, a charity which gives young people the opportunity to make music to overcome personal challenges in their lives.

Mistletoe and Wine became Sir Cliff's 12th number one single when it was released in 1988. It spent four weeks at the top of the UK chart, and sold over 750,000 copies that year. It also secured the 1988 Christmas number one spot. Sir Cliff's other Christmas hits include Saviour's Day and Millenium Prayer.

But maybe you love the song and can’t get enough of it. If that should be the case you can buy it at Amazon and Maybe I’ll make two or three cents. Use the ad link, turn off your blocker to see it. Merry Christmas

Quill Pen How Do You Brighten Up My Day?

You write up a pretty good takedown of the Ebola of Texas known as Rick Perry, and the state of Texas that continually gives refuge to these diseases.  I have no regard for Perry at all, and damn little regard for Texas at all.  Funny how a state that likes to talk about how big they are is the stomping ground for so many backwards thinking small minded politicians and the people who keep them in office.

This entertained me so much, I just had to share.  Here are some highlights but you can read this essay “No Texas Messiah: A Requiem for Rick Perry” in its entirety at Politics USA:

Governor Rick Perry is another in a growing collection of Republican banditti, though one with less personal integrity than his more famous counterpart across the border, Pancho Villa, who at least was fighting for more than personal aggrandizement.

Pancho Villa actually cared about the future of Mexico. Rick Perry cares only about his own future. The United States does not enter into the picture. In the old days, the Texas Rangers would have been hunting Rick Perry down. In today’s Texas, he was their boss.

It must be remembered here that Perry (and this is to take nothing away from Perry’s complete lack of a moral compass) is a symptom of a greater ill: Texas. Under Republican governance, Texas has produced not only Rick Perry, but George W. Bush, and now provides refuge for Allen West, who couldn’t summon sufficient IQ points to qualify as a Floridian.

Texas is also a state in which Perry’s successor as Governor, the equally unethical Greg Abbott, can meet with a “patriot” militia leader (and shake his hand) days before his arrest on weapons charges, and still win election to governor.

And I haven’t even mentioned Rick Perry’s mythical “Texas Miracle” yet: In Two Sentences Team Obama Shatters The Myth Of Rick Perry’s Texas Miracle. That’s right, there is no Texas miracle, unless you’re a corporation, in which case you can blow Texans up with impunity…….


…………That’s right, you can check all the boxes: Rick Perry hates immigrants, hates women, loves himself some Religious Right theocrats, and hates gays. He’s a Republican all right, bona fides confirmed. And that doesn’t even get into his gun infatuation (because everybody needs a grenade launcher)………..

……..at a big speech he forgot what state he was in, or when he said America’s ally, Turkey, is our enemy. Here we had Bachmann fearful of the Soviet Union, two decades gone, and Rick Perry who wants to attack our allies.

And then there was the time Gaffer-in-Chief Rick Perry thought Solyndra was a country. Considering he once wanted to invade Mexico (a dream he shares with fellow GOP border bandit Sheriff Joe Arpaio), Solyndra should be worried……..

………And I’ll just let Rick Perry’s belief that he can pray away drought and other problems speak for itself. The thought of a president who thinks he can pray away problems also speaks for itself.

Perry is leaving center stage now, and thinking about a bigger venue – President of the United States – which is pretty funny because the secessionist tenther once entertained the idea of being President of Texas. Of course, if Texas Republicans get their way, he may still get that chance.

Which would negate my earlier concerns about Santa Anna’s generalship.

But Rick Perry’s ego is bigger than his prospects will ever be. A new bandit has taken his place in Austin, and Perry wants to take his crime spree to the nation’s capital. But stature-wise, Perry is nothing more than a male version of Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann.

As I said, you can read the article in its entirety at Politics USA and it’s well worth your time.  You will be entertained.

Fifty Shades of Grey–Hot or not?

I’m still leaning towards not.  I think someone chickened out when faced with the reality of the explicitness of the Fifty Shades of Grey novel.  Whether it was Universal Studios (my guess in an attempt to hedge its investment) or the actors or the director, or choose your own culprit(s).  If it was Universal, the irony will be that they could possibly have actually hurt themselves more than help themselves.  Ask anybody who has read the book: Cleanliness is not next to Godliness in this case.

Possibly at least one actor could be a fly in the ointment as well which makes you think that because of Charlie Hunnam’s unexpected departure, they were forced into signing Dornan with not much time to consider too many alternatives. 

In a recent interview Jamie Dornan came off as a stodgy really uptight prude to the point where he had it written in the contract not to show his penis on film.  So he’s going to have to be one helluva actor to be convincing as Christian Grey.  In a key role, Dornan may be a huge mistake.

 

Dakota Johnson on the other hand, at least has a hint of being Anastasia Steele and appears to be willing to go the distance. 


At any rate, Universal’s Focus Features will try to convince you with this trailer that Fifty Shades is going to be really hot, even if they did clean it up for the mass consumption of audiences while crapping on those who made the book a phenomenon in the first place.  But I’ll let you decide for yourself.  Trailer 2:  Hot or Not.

A Vegas Musical Based on Dork Dynasty? Hold Your Nose.

Las Vegas is going to become a less pleasant place to visit.  Anybody who would spend money to see a play based on these bigoted disgusting holier than thou bearded shitheads  really really need to take a lesson in lifting up their self esteem.  Why punish yourself?

Better that you do something useful like put that money into a slot or playing the roulette wheel.  The only thing you'll get from watch this over glorified crap is the need to immediately head to your hotel room and take a shower to wash off the stench. 

Forget that.  The putrid stink of this endeavor is liable to blanket the entire West.  Keep it up, Uhmer’ca.  Soon, we can go back to living in the age of Neanderthal Man.

So how much are they going to white wash these bigoted homphobic jerks?  Probably a lot.

Variety:

“We’ve enjoyed the process of making a musical alongside the team who is interested in telling the Robertson family story from an outside perspective,” Willie Robertson, chief executive of the Robertson company Duck Commander, told the Times.

“The Robertsons are so unusual, their story so juicy, and theater shouldn’t be limited to telling stories about people you resemble or revere,” said David.

Jeff Calhoun (“Newsies”) serves as the musical’s director, according to the Times, and Steven Morris is a composer.

The news comes nearly a year after the family drew massive criticism — as well as support — for Phil Robertson’s anti-gay comments, made in an interview with GQ in December 2013. A&E suspended him after the remarks went public, though it ended the suspension later that month.

The only good thing about this is inspired me to come up with a new label for stuff like this. File this project under totally worthless crap.

Redbox Mucks Up Their Web Page Some More. I Think I’m Done.

Sometimes, you have to wonder what goes through some the mind of some corporate web designers or the big shot executives who tell them what to do.  Lately, any time Redbox has decided to tinker with their web site, they manage to really muck it up. 

I’ve always had my little quibbles with Redbox.  Many of their practices are hardly consumer friendly and they seem to be totally unwilling to make the effort to change.  Make a complaint and you’ll get a brush off.  Oh yeah, occasionally they’ll try to give you a free rental when what they should be giving you is a refund for their incompetence.

You may know that drill.  You reserve a movie and you go over to get it from the machine a few hours later and the machine is broken and not working.  And since you have no clue as to when it might be working again you can either accept your losses or call the Redbox number where the poor patsy on the other end of the phone will try to shove that rental credit on your ass, even if you have no idea when you might get to use it.

Refund?  That would be too much trouble.  After all they don’t really want to give you your money back even though its no fault of yours the machine wasn’t working.  Because that would inconvenience them, and one thing corporate big wigs don’t like is to be inconvenienced.  Better the customer put up with their lousy policies and bullshit nonsense instead of issuing a damn credit on your Visa. 

I can hear them now:

”Hey what’s the big deal?  We have a few million customers so why does one poor shlub in some hick town matter?  Let him/her get pissed off.  Beside, where the hell else are they going to go?  Blockbuster is no longer around, and Netflix takes forever.  We’re practically a monopoly so why should we give a damn?”

Yeah, I think that’s the same attitude Blockbuster took for years and look at them now.

One time I had four movies on reserve at a particular store that has two Redbox machines.  They were in Machine B.  Of course when I went to pick up the movies, it was machine B that wasn’t working at all.  It had even been unplugged to keep people from trying to use it.

This time I called the Redbox number on my cell phone right there in the store.  Basically their answer was that I was shit out of luck.  Could you switch my movie rentals to Machine A since all four movies were in that machine ready to be rented.  Nope, couldn’t do anything like that.  That would be too difficult. 

Could I get a refund?  Nope, and you could almost hear the person on the other end chuckling to themselves over that idiotic notion.

What they could do was give me a credit and I could rent the movies.  Well, eventually I could.  The problem was that their computer, which must be a Commodore 64 the way they run things, would continue to show me with four movies reserved until that reservation ran the clock out.  And the limit on movie reservations at one time is 5.

Therefore, I couldn’t even use the credit until after 9:00 the next night when I would have no use for the damn things because we in the real world have to work this thing called a job. 

There have been other instances as well and if you do a few searches on the internet, you’ll read some real horror stories.  But honestly, with their latest act of corporate stupidity and uselessness, I think I’m done.  You finally have to draw the line somewhere just to keep your sanity.  You can’t say, “What were they thinking?” because obviously they weren’t, and they don’t.  Sometimes policies are invented just to annoy you.

It used to be when you went on the Redbox web site, after having saved “your locations” you could click on one of them and see what was in that particular machine at that location at that moment in time.  If a movie wasn’t showing either it wasn’t in the machine or all copies were checked out.  If they were all checked out you could scroll to the bottom of the page and see a somewhat faded entity marked “not available.”  Pretty simple.  Then you would just click on one of your other locations (if there was one) to see if the DVD or Blu-ray was there, or just choose something else.

In my case, there are three Redbox Vending Machines within a half mile or so radius from where I live.  One of these is just two blocks away.  After that, you have to travel eight miles to the next Redbox and unless you have Quaker Oats for brains, you’re not going to make that trip.  You’ll just wait for the movie to arrive or be checked in or whatever.

But now you no longer know if it’s in or not because Redbox Executives in their infinite wisdom decided to no longer make it readily apparent whether a movie was at your chosen location or not.  Now, they simply list all their movies available at all locations, whether it’s checked out or not or whether its in the machine or not.   In my town, which seems to be last on the delivery list, this often happens.  What a machine in the big city may get on Tuesday, we may get by Friday, if we’re lucky.

So now when you click on a title that’s not even at the location you are browsing, it says “Find DVD nearby” instead of just telling you the damn thing wasn’t there in the first place.  And just checking one certain movie right now, I’d have to drive 30 miles to get it.  Some recommendation that is.

 

Why the change?  Why not just tell you up front that a movie is not at the location you’re browsing and let you make your own choice as to whether to check a box that isn’t 30 miles away?  It worked for me just fine.

Because like politicians, Redbox thinks you’re too stupid to do that.  And I guess they think somebody’s willing to spend $10 worth of gas to drive to a Redbox and get $1.20 movie so they might as well make that sales pitch for the stupid people.  It’s just idiotic and unnecessary.  And worse, you still don’t know if all copies of that movie are all just checked out or if it even arrived at that location yet.  IF ITS NOT AT THAT LOCATION JUST SAY SO INSTEAD OF ME JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS TO FIND THAT OUT!

Really, I think I’m done.  I’ll just order them from Netflix.  It may take longer sometimes, but at least I can watch them at my leisure and not deal with the frustrating antics of Redbox and their total disregard for customer convenience.  I can only be annoyed jumping through corporate hoops before I change the game plan.  Having helped do Blockbuster in, I don’t think copying that company’s little regard for their customers is a great idea.  I’m sure with all their customers, Redbox won’t miss me.  But I won’t miss them either.

Sims 4: Here Comes The Swimming Pools!

EA has released an update for Sims 4 that brings swimming pools back into the fold.  If you’ll recall, the majority of Sims fans weren’t too pleased when EA in its infinite wisdom (uh huh) decided to shit can toddlers and pools for The Sims 4.   There is nothing so bad in EA world as a Simmer scorned.

The cost is free, and along with it are things that will make your pool experience a happy one with new bathing suits and the ability to put your pools anywhere you damn well please.  Except in the basement.  Because there are no basements and no way to make them.  And there are still no toddlers to swim…oh well, never mind.  Toddlers never could swim in The Sims.

Plus the usual abundance of fixes that will fix some things and probably break others.  So here you go.

From EA:

One of the aspects of pools in The Sims 4 that I’m personally very excited about is the new way to build. For months now, we’ve been talking with you about Build mode and just how easy it is to create homes. All that great technology has now been applied to pools, making pool building faster and easier than ever before.

First off, we have diagonal pool building! Many of you have asked for this so we’re happy it will now be included in The Sims 4 after you update your game.

I’ve always longed to recreate those visually dramatic pools that are often seen at exotic resorts. Now, players can place windows on the walls of pools to create an infinity-pool aquatic escape for your Sims. And we’ve also added the ability to adjust the depth of your pools by adjusting wall heights.

Rooftop pools! Yes, in The Sims 4 you can now build pools on the ground level, on the second floor and even on the roof!



But what about your Sims? They need awesome poolside outfits. Check out the new line of swimwear in Create A Sim! You can mix and match swimwear pieces or try out the “Swimwear” Styled Looks for today’s hottest trends. Now your Sims can really dress the part before taking a dip.

Your Sims don’t have to swim, they can sit along the pool ledge and chat with other Sims who are in the pool or snuggle close to a loved one. Spectators beware – they could be subject to some splashing from the other Sims in the pool. Watch out for that angry Sim who is cooling his temper by swimming around.  

Of course pools would not be pools without a new death type. Yup, our old favorite, Death by Drowning is back!  And you will see that the resulting ghost may be a little more wary of water than before.

You can read more about this particular update and patch fixes by using the link.  Have fun!

Updated:  Can’t have pools without a pool video can you?

All Fall Down–A Short Indie Horror Film (remastered) by Kyle Riesenbeck.

A relative of mine asked for this to be shared.  So I thought this was the best way I could fulfill that wish.  Let me know (or him) what you think either here or on youtube.