So we’re making Christmas cookies this weekend with the little nieces, and the little nieces have a predilection for the messy work, the tasks that involve sticking one’s hands in melted chocolate or dough or sprinkles, and I’m looking for volunteers to help me with a particularly sloppy task and I actually say, to these little nieces, all under 10, I say: “Who wants a messy hand job?” A faux pas that could be solved, in writing, with a well-placed hyphen, and perhaps could serve as a cautionary example in the next edition of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Man’s Guide to Dating or whatever that book is.

The thing is someone in the office sent around a link to a relatively popular site which, in turn, had a reasonably prominent link back to this here site. It was like One Degree of Impending Firing. I blame another popular site that linked here, a site whose very name has become synonymous with getting fired because of one’s website. She put her Mormon curse on me. She put her disease in me! But anyway I didn’t get caught or at least no one’s said anything yet. Maybe they’re still deciding which pants they’re going to wear when they take me in the office supply closet and crush my head with a vice.

Well you know what time of year it is! Time for my picks of the best CDs of the year! I spent all last week making lists and revising them and then totally throwing those away and coming up with new ones when I changed my mind! It was a total blast and I think you’ll really enjoy reading through my personal best-of and maybe learn about some great stuff that might’ve slipped under your radar!

1. Temptation by Heaven 17

This was the only good thing I heard this year. I have it on an endless loop and through the magic of MP3 player technology, it actually crossfades into itself, forever and ever. I’m not going to say you’re a retard if you don’t immediately download it and then delete all the other garbage that is currently clogging your hard drive. I’m just not.