Top Five Tuesday: Top Five Christmas Songs

This Tuesday I find myself lacking the energy to comment on my top five.  Also, seeing as I erected a Christmas tree, we're going festive.  Bands listed are versions I'm particularly fond of, but the songs are mostly chosen for lyrics.

5. You Gotta Get Up - Five Iron Frenzy
4. I Hate Christmas Parties - Matthew Thiessen and the Earthquakes
3. White Christmas - Bing Crosby
2. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Frank Sinatra
1. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Viva Voce

Top Five Tuesday, Wednesday Edition: Top Five Ways To Kill a Squirrel

By popular demand (and by popular I mean one guy who apparently has a beef with squirrels), today's Top Five Tuesday (I know it's Wednesday, but I'm a sucker for alliteration) is the top five ways to kill a squirrel.  There's really only one reason you'd be going on a squirrel killing rampage.  To eat their tiny hearts and gain their powers.  As such this list will be constructed in order of ease.  Remember, he's cute, but it's him or you.

5. Traps- You don't want to engage a squirrel in direct combat right out of the gate, that's suicide.  Fortunately squirrels are pretty fixated on the whole eating stuff thing, so if you take their food, and put it in a place where retreiving it will kill them, they'll fall for it every time.  If you need plans for a starter trap, here's a british guy telling you how to kill red squirrels.  I know it seems harsh, but that little guy wants to steal your girlfriend.

4. Guns - It is possible that you might be able to skip directly to this step providing you're absolutely certain the squirrel you've targeted is unarmed. However in any early attempts at squirrelicide it is imperative that you remain concealed until the moment you strike, and that you make each shot count.Otherwise you're pretty much hosed. I recommend something about this size.

3. Hadouken - To perform this ancient technique simply visualize your chi rolling in a quarter circle from your feet forward to your belly, and being released when you throw a punch.  You're not going to throw a punch though, just imagine it.  Your actual physical motion is going to look like this.  Note that this technique is going to be a lot harder if you imagine your chi as controlled by a directional pad rather than an analog joystick.

2. Badgers - Badgers are the natural predator of all living things, they know neither good, nor evil.  Only of honor, and the hunger that drives them.  For this reason this is possibly the most dangerous technique on this list, enlisting the aid of a badger always comes at a cost.  But if you feel you have no other options, it is a choice, though not one that should be entered into lightly.

1.Become This

Top Five Tuesday: 5 Muppets That Should Terrify You

1. Sweetums - Sweetums is a giant hairy Ogre thing.  He's usually a  bad guy on some level, and he carries a large club, with which in his first appearance he broke a giant stone pillar.  He's only got the two teeth, but I'm pretty sure they both mean business. 

2. Oscar The Grouch - I sort of believe Oscar is the Clint Eastwood of Sesame Street.  There's really no indication of what he might be keeping in that trashcan, so I'm forced to assume it's firearms.  Or possibly just a lighter.  Go ahead.  Bang on his can.  Find out.  Punk.

3. Grover - Grover always sort of seems like the crackhead of the muppets, and that means he's alright with stabbing you for a fix, but more importantly,  Grover is insane.  In 1971 there was a book published called "the monster at the end of this book"  Grover's goal throughout the book, was to convince the reader not to finish the book, lest they face the monster at the end.  (spoiler alert)  It's Grover.  And if you finish the book he jumps out of the page and kills you (I just saved your life, and if anyone tells you the end is different, he's lying, had he finished it, Grover would have killed him).  He's got multiple personalities, and I believe most of them are murderous.

4. Miss Piggy - When I was a kid, I always just figured miss piggy was a spoiled brat, and that if someone started not giving her what she wanted, she'd learn to be a more independent figure.  As it is, Miss Piggy has a violent temper and is particularly demanding of her unwilling lover, Kermit. Miss Piggy is also a Pig.  A funny thing happens when you stop spoiling pigs.  They get feral.  Feral pigs kill.  Tell her no.  Go for it.  Just expect a change.

5. Animal - When I was little we had a crazy (fictional) uncle named Ivan.  His (fictional) son, Sven challenged him to consume an entire drumset.  Uncle Ivan died that day.  Animal is the craziest puppet in the world.  And he eats drumsets constantly.  If he can eat a drumset, he can eat you.  And he's always hungry.  Always.

Juice

I've begun writing a screenplay.  It's unlikely it will ever be any good.  Or that any eyes but mine will ever see it, or really even that I'll finish it.  But for now, it excites me.  I find myself in a profoundly isolationist attitude lately, and also, desperately in need  of expression.  For now, it's about breakfast.  My breakfasts.  I tend to draw up big plans for the meal.  I'll make pancakes, some scrambled eggs on the side, couple strips of bacon.  Have some juice, maybe a cup of hot cocoa with a splash of Bailey's in it.  It doesn't happen that way though.  I'll maybe make a pancake, or the eggs, or, on a bad day, I'll just pour the juice.  I dream of the "part of this complete breakfast" style meals.  My breakfast is incomplete.

Top Five Tuesday - Directorial Debut Features

1.Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black- 2005) - My favorite movie of all time in pure enjoyability.  Robert Downey Junior and Val Kilmer at their absolute best.


2. BRICK (Rian Johnson- 2005) - A heavily Noir inspired film filled with hardboiled detective movie tropes brilliantly shot and acted.  Oh, and it's set in High School.


3. Thank You For Smoking (Jason Reitman) - A first outing adaptation of an "unadaptable" book, screen-written and directed by Reitman and giving Aaron Eckhart's career a much needed boost.


4. Maltese Falcon (John Huston) - Bogey doing what Bogey does best...  This is the movie where I was least taken by the directorial work, not that it wasn't great. It was.


5.Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)  - It's a shame Laughton didn't direct more movies, when this movie is on, it's the best technical direction I've ever seen, brilliant use of light and shadow, and the nature shots are just perfectly done.  90% of the shots in this movie are absolutely brilliant.  The other 10% show a new director enamored with some of the gaudier tricks of the industry.