Eerie Snowmen on my Wrapping Paper

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IMG_9035.JPG Here’s a roll of holiday wrapping paper I bought at Papyrus for Christmas in 2003. “Lots of presents to wrap,” I thought to myself back then, “better get three big rolls.”

But I had overestimated my wrapping needs, and ended up using only about half of one roll that Christmas. Ever since then, this has been my standard gift wrap for everyone, and so it shall be till it all runs out. I’m down to a roll and a half at this point, but I’ve been getting lazy and just using gift bags, so I may be with these snowmen for several Christmases to come yet.

At first glance the wrapping paper would seem to present to us a fairly idyllic, whimsical winter holiday scene: snowflakes, trees, anthropomorphized snowmen dressed in casual winter wear, doing various things. But there are dark, hidden messages lurking amidst the cozy outdoor setting. Let’s take a closer look:

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These snowmen are performing a common winter task: sawing wood. Why are they sawing wood? At this time of year wood is used primarily for making fires. But these are snowmen. Snowmen should be deathly afraid of fires. Suddenly the smiles on their faces take on a more sinister, morbid aspect. Are they preparing for themselves the quickest path to a watery grave? Or are they preparing it for someone else? Maybe this guy…

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This snowman sitting in an easy chair would appear to be watching television. But wait. Look again. That’s not a working TV — it’s an empty TV casing, complete with rabbit ears, with the back cut out, and a potted flower placed behind the glass. Get that? This snowman is smiling at a fake, hollowed-out TV with a plant in it. And that plant’s looking pretty healthy for the dead of winter, which means it’s fake too. “Flower” here looks to be a few snow bricks short of an igloo, if you know what I mean. I get the impression that the two Happy Wood Choppers up there are a bit tired of his crazy, idle ways, and might just be planning to cut short his entertainment with an early thaw — perhaps to them, an act of kind mercy.

So what implicitly morbid scenes are on your gift wrappers this Christmas?

Christmas-y Weekend

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This weekend was designated a Christmas-y weekend — for Amy and me to do Christmas-y stuff together before I leave for the Philippines. We dropped by the Postal Museum to get stamps at the Stamp Shop (which was closed, so we just ended up getting stamps from the post office vending machine). We viewed paintings from the Halff Collection in An Impressionist Sensibility at the American Art Museum (I especially liked the suggestions of incipient urban-feminism in William McGregor Paxton’s The Morning Paper). Over at Zenith, we checked out Altered States, the paintings of Drew Ernst. We also bought a table and a lamp from a neighbor and got a few extra pasalubong tins of peppermint bark.

After a Third Sunday of Advent worship service (featuring a lovely choral offertory piece, Paul Manz’s E’en So, yours truly among the baritones), we had green curry and drunken noodles at Bua. I bought the last few items on a mile-long list of padala at Ballston Common, and Amy got cocktail sauce and a bag of shrimp at Trader Joe’s. We then went over to the National Gallery to stand near the middle of an extra-long line and get good seats for a free performance by Nordic Voices of classical and modern Norwegian Christmas music (didgeridoo-like twanging voice effects from a new 2006 piece), followed by a quick trip to the 2006 Capitol Christmas Tree, before going home for a hearty dinner of shrimp cocktail, fish fillets, italian toast and brie, and sparkling pomegranate juice. Sadly there was no time to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, which I have yet to see in its entirety. Maybe tomorrow, I guess.

Caturday!

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Here’s Pandora, caught in the middle of cleaning her face. (I was trying to get another licky pic, but she’s just too fast.)

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Twitter

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The “Recent Content” section above now has a Twitter badge, displaying the latest SMS update posted. There’s a way to have the badge do multiple updates, but I’m not sure I want to take up that much space above the fold — my main weblog content is already bumped down enough as it is. (Update: Well, I went and had it post multiple updates, three to be exact, and just shuffled the “recent content” stuff around till it all fit. The funny part is, the help file above uses the user ID of the guy who posted the example, so it shows his Twitter updates when you use the code as is. I had to dig up my own user ID number by scanning the code of my Twitter page.)

Twitter is such a simple, yet versatile concept: text, IM, email, or post short updates to a tracking page with an associated feed. It’s effectively a weblog — with a limited input capacity, even, and without much that would be considered unique in a weblog service: friend tracking, mobile posting, profiles, feeds, badges, it’s all stuff you can get elsewhere. There aren’t even comments or tags. So what makes this so much more desirable than your average Blogger account, then? Speed and simplicity are certainly factors; Twitter is concise and instant, with minimal steps between command and response. I wouldn’t have thought that one could build a viable content-based business on the concept of brevity, but there you have it. Go Go Gadget Evhead.

Google Earth Flight Tracking Panic Moment

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My brother flew out to Manila yesterday for Christmas, so I was tracking his flight using FBOWeb.com’s über-cool flight tracking in Google Earth — that’s FAA flight metadata mapped in 3D onto Google Earth and updated live! It was pretty cool to watch the progress of the flight as it headed along the transpolar route to Asia (though I still wonder why the route was so zigzaggy) when suddenly I saw this and panicked:

FBOWeb Google Earth Flight Tracking: UAL895

Turns out the flight data was simply returning a TIMEOUT because the plane had gone beyond the airspace within which FAA tracking could occur. So no, my brother’s plane did not come crashing down somewhere in the tundra. (I just talked to him on the phone, in fact — he’s in Manila right now.)

Update: Over on Flickr, wrastle123 explains the zigzagging path:

“Just a heads-up, the zig-zagging is a result of multiple data sources providing the original flight positional data. One source is more accurate than the other; that, and the positions come in at slightly different/offset times, giving the overall track a zig-zagging effect.”

The World According To…

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After seeing Kottke’s link to the “map of the world according to Reagan,” I remembered linking to a couple of similar parody maps in the past, so I decided to hunt down more. Here’s the list so far:

The World According To…

Have I missed anything? I haven’t found a good “World According to Filipinos” map; maybe I should make one.

Candlelight Carol Service 2006

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Choirs

Just finished the Christmas Candlelight Carol Service at First Baptist tonight, as always with the Chancel Choir, the Runnymede Singers, and the Chorale of the Friday Morning Music Club. Musical highlights included Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium, Mendelssohn’s Say Where He is Born and There Shall A Star, and Rutter’s Gloria. Unlike last year, David and I were not needed to light candles.

I got photos. Note Mary’s glasses in the tableau shot. (Rough panorama above was taken by another choir member from the pulpit. Can you find me?)

Caturday!

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Today’s feature cat photo is of Pandora licking her nose. Also check out the ones of her curled up in a ball.

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Cat Curled Up In Ball 1

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Happy Brownpau Christmas Shopping Suggestions

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We’re a week into December! No doubt many of you have brows furrowed, stressed not only by the logistical and pecuniary pressures of shopping for gifts for family and friends, but also by the annual cognitive dissonance of coping with the blatantly materialist trappings with which this traditional Christian holiday has become associated in this modern culture. I cannot help you with the latter, but for the former, I humbly present to you the following suggestions:

  • Cheap and Tiny: a great way to find fun electronic devices of diminutive size and cost. Many of the gadgets on display make excellent stocking stuffers, for not too much cash.
  • Beg The Question Store: what better way to warm the heart of a pedantic grammatico-philosophical stickler than a BTQ mug or shirt (or thong) explaining the horrific truth behind this much-misused phrase? (Alternatively, you can go cheap with a stack of BTQ Cards, which make an okay gift if you print them on good card stock, cut them straight, and present them in a nice business card box.)
  • The Brownpau Store: a shirt for your dog with my cat on it. Nuff said.

Thank you for tolerating my shameless self-promotion. Buy buy now.