GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

What, you actually thought I WASN’T gonna re-run this one?

Since it seems to be my night for embedding music vids and all.

It’s Cantus, so of course it’s incredible, as one would surely expect. But this year, I’d like to offer a few words on the song itself.

IMHO, “The Little Drummer Boy” is one of the most underrated of all the trad Christmas carols, maybe THE most. I mean, seriously, now: the lyrics are simple but deeply touching; the melody is nothing short of gorgeous, the vocal harmonies ditto; the concept itself is a paragon of creativity, imagination, and understated elegance, as affecting as it is unassuming, even humble. The song gradually crescendos from a pianissimo murmur to a crashing, soul-stirring, fortississimo climax, leaving the listener practically gasping for breath, joyously drained by the end.

The final stanzas exemplify what it is I’m talking about here:

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum
On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum

Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum
Me and my drum

There, see what I mean? Over lo, these many years I’ve heard God-only-knows how many renditions and arrangements of “Drummer Boy,” and for the life of me I can’t remember a single one I disliked. A little background info:

The song was originally titled “Carol of the Drum”. While speculation has been made that the song is very loosely based on the Czech carol “Hajej, nynjej”, the chair of the music department at (composer Katherine Kennicott) Davis’s alma mater Wellesley College claims otherwise. In an interview with Music Department Chair Claire Fontijn, the College writes:

Inspiration for “The Little Drummer Boy” came to Davis in 1941. “[One day], when she was trying to take a nap, she was obsessed with this song that came into her head and it was supposed to have been inspired by a French song, ‘Patapan,’” explained Fontijn. “And then ‘patapan’ translated in her mind to ‘pa-rum-pum-pum,’ and it took on a rhythm.” The result was “The Little Drummer Boy.”

Davis’s interest was in producing material for amateur and girls’ choirs: Her manuscript is set as a chorale, in which the tune is in the soprano melody with alto harmony, tenor and bass parts producing the “drum rhythm” and a keyboard accompaniment “for rehearsal only”. It is headed “Czech Carol freely transcribed by K.K.D.”, these initials then crossed out and replaced with “C.R.W. Robinson”, a name under which Davis sometimes published.

“Carol of the Drum” appealed to the Austrian Trapp Family Singers, who first brought the song to wider prominence when they recorded it for Decca Records in 1951 on their first album for the label. Their version was credited solely to Davis and published by Belwin-Mills.

In 1957, the song was recorded with an altered arrangement by Jack Halloran for his Jack Halloran Singers on their Dot Records album Christmas Is A-Comin’. This arrangement is the one commonly sung today. However, the recording was not released as a single that year. In response to this, Dot producer Henry Onorati, who left Dot to become the new head of 20th Century-Fox Records in 1958, introduced the song to Harry Simeone. When 20th Century-Fox Records contracted with Simeone to record a Christmas album, Simeone hired many of the same singers that had sung in Halloran’s version and made a near-identical recording with his newly created Harry Simeone Chorale. It was released as a single in 1958, and later on the album, Sing We Now of Christmas, later retitled The Little Drummer Boy. The only difference between Simeone’s and Halloran’s versions, was that Simeone’s contained finger cymbals, and the song’s title had been changed to “The Little Drummer Boy”. Simeone and Onorati claimed and received joint composition credits with Davis, although the two did not actually compose or arrange it. Halloran never received a joint writing credit for the song, something his family disagrees with.

The album and the song were an enormous success, with the single scoring in the top 40 of the U.S. music charts from 1958 to 1962. In 1965, Simeone, who had signed with Kapp Records in 1964, re-recorded a new version of the song for his album O’ Bambino: The Little Drummer Boy. This version was recorded in stereo, had a slightly slower tempo, and contained different-sounding cymbals. Simeone recorded the song a third and final time in 1981, for an album, again titled The Little Drummer Boy, on the budget Holiday Records label.

Harry Simeone’s 1965 version is almost certainly the most widely-known and familiar to the majority of us; even Rip Van Winkle has likely heard that one by now. As much as I’ve always adored “Drummer Boy,” I confess I haven’t heard the Trapp Family’s rendition (yes, THAT Trapp family); in fact, I didn’t even know they’d recorded it, so tragically unhip and out-of-the-loop I am.

Nevertheless, it’s a lovely piece of music, in all its various forms and performative permutations.

The more I read up on the early pop-era standards, the more I have to just sit back in awe and marvel, goggle-eyed and mouth agape, at Mark Steyn’s capacious catalog of “Steynmusic” posts, a great many of which have been excerpted here. The man is a veritable encyclopedia when it comes to the topic, and writes so brilliantly about the music often referred to in show-biz circles as The Great American Songbook. Steyn’s abiding affection for the old chestnuts shines through in every sentence, at times approaching reverence for the songs, the unsung (heh, sorry) composers who wrote them, and the artists who performed and/or recorded them. As gifted a current-affairs/op-ed essayist as he definitely is, I sometimes can’t help thinking that his true calling is as a music critic and historian.

T’was the night before Christmas

And thru the White House
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a louse

An Alt Christmas Carol
The White House, Christmas Eve, 2023. Imagine the painfully lugubrious scene….

“Joe Biden” rattles around in the upstairs “residence” like a BB in a packing crate. Nobody is around besides a few secret service agents, so still at their posts they might as well be statuary. The Big Guy is all alone. His spouse, Dr. Jill, had enough of pretend caretaking quite a while ago, and flew off to Oprah’s place in Santa Barbara for counseling and commiseration. Hunter is Gawd-knows-where doing Gawd-knows-what.

“JB” shuffles out of the residence kitchen, where he just demolished a half gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream® ice cream, against his doctor’s orders. His gall bladder writhes in revolt, sending a distress signal up the vagus nerve to the shriveled hypothalamus in his brain. A jumbled fugue of emotions — rage, fear, sexual arousal — quickens his step as he navigates by dead reckoning to the executive bedroom where he hurries to bed and falls into leaden slumber — only to be awakened by a cacophony of ringing bells. His eyelids roll open like shades in the windows of a skid row hotel room. Plangent moaning resounds as a mist emerges through the bedroom door and resolves into a mysterious figure garbed in the raiment of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Joe Biden” shrinks under the luxury Boll & Branch signature duvet— acquired when the agriculture minister of Ukraine slipped him an envelope stuffed with 100 hryvnia notes. The spirit wails something that resembles the old Confederate anthem Eatin’ Goober Peas.

“Who are you spirit?” the quaking president asks.

“Why, I am your old pard from the Senate,” the ghost of Robert Byrd declares, removing the pointed hood to reveal his leonine head of hair and scowling face. “Why have you thrown our sacred borders wide open, suh? I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels.”

“Y-y-you don’t uh-uh-understand,” “JB” says, his childhood stutter returning. “They are muh-muh-migrants from oppression and vuh-vuh-very fine people.”

“Fine people, my ass,” the former Senator from West Virginia cries and clears the dust of the sepulcher from his throat. “I will send three spirits to you this night as a review of what has been and what shall become, so beware….” And with that the spirit returns to mist and slips back out through the keyhole…

“Joe Biden” is shocked from slumber again as an attractive blond female ghost floats through the bedroom window.

“Don’t I know you?” he asks.

“Cad! That is the very line you used to pick me up on spring break in Nassau, 1966,” says “JB’s” first wife, Neilia Hunter. “Shall I show you the meretricious spectacle you made of our family after that truck driver on Limestone Road ended my life and your little daughter’s too!”

“No-o-o-o-o,” the president moans, but is magically transported to the Wilmington Hospital room where his banged-up boys, Beau and Hunter, are recovering from their injuries. A TV crew is present as “JB” emotes for the camera, a cruel victim of fate, he blubbers, who will yet conquer his grief and go on to forty years of electoral victories and the sedulous gathering of tribute from “donors” far and wide to soften the blow of his loss. The room dims…

Read on for the other spirit visitations: second being the martyred Saint George of Fentanyl, complete with Neegrow dialect deftly translated from the original ghetto-ese, representing the Ghost Of Christmas Present; Christmas Yet To Come I’ll leave unnamed so as not to spoil the surprise for ya, but take my word for it, t’is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Kunstler uncorks his by no means inconsiderable writerly chops and lets ‘em really soar in this one, and it’s a joy and a wonder to behold.

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Christmas moozik

Borepatch tells us that A) Allison Krause is a national treasure, as is the peerless Yo Yo Ma, and B) this song is, and I quote, “magical.” He is perfectly correct, on all counts.

As it happens, I heard this one over the weekend on the classical music station as I was trying to come up with a reason to drag myself out of bed; it stopped me dead in my tracks, I was helpless to do anything but just lie there and take it in. The haunting melody of this rendition of the traditional Irish carol (VERY Irish, t’is; an orchestral version is here, if you’re interested in comparing and contrasting) may seem a bit, um, mournful for Christmas, which usually brings to mind more merry, celebratory, light-hearted music for most of us.

But no matter; this song is simply gorgeous, the performances stellar, and the arrangement is nothing short of spectacular, a piece of near-divine musical inspiration. Well done to all involved, and thanks to Borepatch for the reminder.

Update! Any overgrown kid out there like meself who just can’t get enough of that Christmas-y stuff is hereby advised to check out a fine, fine live365 stream I’ve had running pretty much continually since I came across it over the weekend: ChristmasFM Classical. After three days, there’ve been precious few duds so far—if any, even, a point which I am not entirely prepared to concede.

Ironically enough in light of the subject matter of another of tonight’s posts, it appears from ChristmasFM’s own website that the station just happens to be based guess where.

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Season’s greetings

Happy Thanksgiving to all CF Lifers: old hands, newbie shavetails, lurkers, skulkers, stalkers, creepers, peepers, fanatics, and freaks. As of right now, I’m declaring the official opening of the Christmas season, my favorite time of year for my whole life long. So how’s about a little music to celebrate the occasion, then?

Rest assured there’ll be lots more Christmas music to come over the next month around here. I absolutely love it, from the beloved old carols in every Christian’s hymnbook, to the classic pop/secular hits which everybody’s heard a blue million times, to the 60’s Christmas TV-special soundtracks. Rock instrumental combos, full orchestras, mass choirs, swing bands, brass choir, men’s-chorus outfits like Chanticleer and Cantus: you name it, I still adore ‘em all, and I always will. And if you’re one of those grumpy professional misanthropes for whom there’s nothing more enjoyable than kvetching and cavilling to all within earshot about how sick and damned tired you are of Christmas music—well, I feel sorry for your miserable ass, and I hope someday you find a palliative for your wretched disgruntlement.

Update! WRSA finds more positive proof that Leftists ruin everything.

WEFThanksgiving

Mmm-mmm-GOOD. Dig in, everybody!

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Publick Notice

Why yes, I have been just sorta stalling, putting off undoing the Coop-O-Ween makeover until the much-anticipated yearly arrival of good ol’ Scrooge Picard, why do you ask?

Actually, what with the Christmas lights already popping up all over the place around these parts, I’m thinking I’ll go ahead and get cracking on the annual CF Christmas conversion, even if it is a bit early still by the traditional standards for such things. Expect screwups, erratic blog behavior, and general kludginess, folks.

Update! Well shoot, that went a lot faster and easier than I thought it would. Now for the neverending process of bug-hunting and repairing…sigh.

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Publick Notice

Yep, it’s a sad, sad day around these parts: no more Scrooge Picard nor Santa Bettie Page, either one. After much thrashing and flailing about, accompanied by some light screaming and pulling out of the hair by the roots, I finally got Angry Guy back up top, and all the colors reset the way I wanted ’em.

Tell your friends, wake the neighbors, send the word far and wide that Christmas is now officially over, as dead as…umm, Marley’s ghost, shall we say. Yes, it’s a bit earlier than I would usually take the CF Xmas theme-makeover down, but I figured it was the least I could do for CF Lifers with bossheads and/or angry wives and/or girlfriends who inexplicably felt nekkid Santa Bettie might have been just a wee bit much, having done the annual holiday rearranging around this here hogwallow earlier than usual this year.

Frankly, I’ve always found this to be the most depressing time of the whole year: the dead of winter; no more cheerful, merry lights and decorations all over the place; nothing to look forward to until early February, when my birthday comes along. And I gotta say, the more I pile up of them, the less there is to look forward to there too. Ah well, I do sincerely hope you all had a wonderful holiday anyhow. If not, here’s a little something to cheer ya up.


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Golden Oldie, revisited

There are basically four universally-beloved animated Christmas TV specials from the mid/late 60s that I’ve looked forward to seeing each year since they originally appeared their, um, advent*: A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (which I wrote about here), Rankin-Bass’s Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (also R-B, actually from 1970). Of these, it was really Rudolph that I loved best of all, and still do. In fact, it’s the only one of the four that I still regard as a must-watch every year.

Now, Rudolph features several really nice songs—Burl Ives singing “Silver And Gold,” to name but one, has become a true staple of the season. Since I seem to have a thing for piano arrangements of the classic Christmas tunes, and since Rudolph has meant so very much to me since my misspent youth…well, I ask you, how could I possibly NOT include this lovely rendition of what in my not-so-humble opinion is the best of a very fine lot from the special, “The Most Wonderful Day Of The Year,” on Christmas Eve?



What a pretty, pretty thing, no? Nice 3/4 time, relaxed waltz-tempo, with a turnaround so achingly beautiful you can almost hear your heart cracking inside your chest from it.

A very merry Christmas to all you CFers and your loved ones, this and every year. In light of the awful situation I was in last Christmas, I consider myself fortunate indeed to have you all along with me for this crazy ride, and can’t even begin to express the depth of my gratitude for that. May your days be merry, and bright.

*Heh; see what I did there? Don’t know how it is I didn’t think of that earlier.

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White man’s burden

The Dark Continent was anything but a peaceful, idyllic paradise well before the first European Whypeepuh ever set foot on the blighted shitpit.

I confess I was quite skeptical about Gilley’s book, given the needlessly incendiary title. Defending German colonialism, given that any story of late 19th and early-20th century German history will inevitably be wrapped up in that country’s condemnable behavior in two world wars, seems a curious intellectual enterprise for a professional academic (and for readers with more liberal sensitivities, it’s likely to be downright offensive). Not only that, but in a time when America’s post-Cold War foreign policy has been defined by constant overreach that has exacerbated various crises (e.g. regional political instability, anti-American Islamic extremism, migration), it seems a bit tone-deaf to be arguing that Western intervention around the world — especially when the West’s power is diminishing — is something to be encouraged.

Nevertheless, regardless of the strength of Gilley’s defense of German colonialism, the story he tells, substantiated by extensive historical documentation, does quite a bit to undermine popular narratives in America about pre-colonial Africa and the African colonial experience. For starters, the peoples inhabiting what would become Germany’s African colonies were far from innocent peoples living in harmony with each other and nature. Human sacrifice was common among at least one of the tribes of Cameroon. Slavery was common across both Namibia (southwest Africa) and what would become the colony of German East Africa (present-day Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and part of Mozambique).

The Nama and Herero peoples, both of whom had migrated to Namibia only a generation before the Germans (and displaced other indigenous African tribes such as the Damara people in the process), were engaged in bloody, genocidal warfare. In 1850, the Nama massacred a fifth of the Herero population in a single day. The Herero raided native Damara and Saan villages, killing all but the young and strong, whom they exploited as slaves. Many escaped to the Germans. Writes Gilley: “Even if left to their own devices, the Herero and Nama would not have lived in idyllic bliss tending healthy herds of cattle and hosting multiethnic community barbecues.”

Our anti-Western conceptions of colonial Africa are equally misinformed. In 1904, a policy in German East Africa decreed that all children born to slaves beginning in 1906 were free. Moreover, between 1891 and 1912, more than 50,000 slaves in the colony were freed by legal, social, and financial means. By 1920, slavery had virtually been eradicated from the region.

German East Africa was also environmentally conscious, codifying laws prohibiting unlicensed elephant hunting and creating the first game reserves. It promoted education by natives: By 1910, there were more than 4,000 students in state schools. “The Germans have accomplished marvels,” noted a 1924 British report on local education initiatives. The education system in German colonies provided instruction in local histories, cultures, and geographies, as well as technical subjects common in German curricula. Because of this, local language media prospered. “German transformed Swahili from a coastal language of Muslim elites to the lingua franca for the future country of Tanzania,” writes Gilley.

The Germans provided free and accessible medical care for many Africans. They engaged in extensive agricultural and infrastructure projects in Namibia, including roads, railways, water holes, and port facilities. A German scientist developed a vaccine that saved native cattle from a catastrophic illness. The Germans built a 1,250-kilometer railway linking Lake Tanganyika to Dar es Salaam, which to this day “remains the lifeblood of Tanzania’s economy and of Zambia’s trans-shipment traffic.” Economies previously based on slavery transitioned to coffee.

Africa’s most insuperable problem remains the same as it always has been: the horrid place is full of Africans.

But what, you ask, does Africa have to do with the recently-manufactured-from-whole-(kente) cloth “holiday” Kwanzaa? Why, not one single, solitary thing, natch.

Spanning from Dec. 26 to the first of January is Kwanzaa, the invented African American holiday celebrated solely by white liberals and clueless public school teachers. Overblown by leftist claiming the holiday has immense cultural significance, a survey by the National Retail Foundation discovered only 1.6 percent of Americans celebrate Kwanzaa.

The “holiday” was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga, who renamed himself Maulana. Karenga, the founder of the United Slaves, a violent rival organization to the Black Panthers, created the holiday for black Americans and derived the name “Kwanzaa” from the Swahili phrase “matunda y kwanza,” meaning “first fruits of the harvest.” That’s about the extent of the deep African roots the official Kwanzaa website claims.

Guess the extra “a” in Karenga’s dimwitted misspelling lends it extra authenticity. Or, y’know, something. Oh, and do be sure to thank the Germans, Ronnie, for bringing you the Swahili tongue you’re misspeaking, fool.

The history of the holiday and Karenga has been seamlessly suppressed by leftists who find the facts inconvenient. Since few know its origins, the current definitions of the celebration are usually nonsensical and made up, much like the holiday itself.

FrontPage Magazine’s Paul Mulshine writes that “the history of the founder of Kwanzaa has disappeared into an Orwellian time warp.” Indeed, CNN informs readers that Kwanzaa’s violent, racist founder was “a black nationalist and professor of Pan-African studies at California State University at Long Beach,” omitting his criminal and misogynistic past.

Karenga is currently a black studies professor at California State University, Long Beach where the administration is apparently untroubled by the fact that this radical racist is also a convicted torturer of women. Despite the troubling past of Kwanzaa’s founder, leftists continue to shove this fake holiday down America’s throat every Christmas.

Yeah, well, fuck them all to Hell and gone, as always. That said, what Kwanzaa celebration would be complete without a stinking-blotto Granny Boxwine slurring and slobbering her way around the stupid fucking word?


Heh. Well said, ya haggard old soak.

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The spirit of Christmas

About as perfectly captured in these three vids as it ever will be, or can be.







For some more personal thoughts on this most wonderful, most blessed day of all days, I’m thinking I’ll do a little self-excerpting from the Christmas posts which can be found in their entirety in the “Greatest Hits” section above, on Christmas Day Actual.

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Christmas ruined by panic-ninnies

An awkward little Christmas.

Have Yourself an Awkward Little Christmas…
Christmas will never be the same again. For the same reason that America will never be the same again. Millions of us will never be able to look upon some of our fellow Americans – including some of our friends and family members – as we once did, ever again.

The ones who turned their backs on us – and worse – for questioning what we rightly identified as a mass hysteria they embraced. Who feared and loathed us, because we would not wear a “mask” – which we didn’t because we knew that putting it on only fueled the mass hysteria. We didn’t wear the things for their sakes as well as our own. For the sake of calm and common sense. To show normality rather than “masked” insanity. For doing that – often at the cost of being denied not merely service but our ability to earn a living – we were abused as pathologically selfish, granny-killing ne’er do-wells.

They told us we weren’t welcome in their homes at Christmas. That we weren’t welcome, period. Unless, of course, we bought in to their hysteria and played along.

We who questioned – and disobeyed – were cast out, by those who did not question and mindlessly obeyed.

Some of these friends and family members would have supported more than just excommunicating us from their  homes and lives and from society, generally. When the drugs that aren’t vaccines were rolled out, many were in favor of everyone being forced to take them. Tens of millions of people were effectively forced to take them, being under duress. They were told to take the drugs – or take a hike. Lose your job – or lose your bodily autonomy and your self-respect, having bent knee to a violation of your body for the sake of grubby money.

Some of the most hysteric wanted (and no doubt still want in their secret hearts) to see everyone forced to take the drugs they took, perhaps for the same vicious and ugly reason that some people resent people who “get away” with not being made to do what they were made to do.

They then blamed us when they got the sickness they’d been “vaccinated” against. The illogic of that escaping them.

Logic? What is this “logic” of which you speak? Shitlibs and Fauxvid panic-ninnies (BIRM) know not of this phantasmagorical “logic.”

Now we are supposed to pretend it all never happened and sit down for Christmas dinner with these people. It is not quite sleeping with the enemy but it’s not that far from it, either. For, no matter the superficialities, the feigned pleasantries of our previous association, they regard us with suspicion and contempt.

Just as we so regard them.

They know we know what they did, just as we know they know what we didn’t do. They perhaps feel ashamed, some of them. In which case, it would help things greatly if they were to say so – and ask our forgiveness for what they did to us and supported being done to us. We might then be able to forgive them.

But can we ever trust them again? Would George Washington have given Benedict Arnold another command, if he’d apologized for betraying Washington’s trust? Only if Washington were an idiot.

Are we?

Quite the thorny little conundrum, I’d say. Sadly, we have our answer already, and for all too many of us, that answer can only be: Yes. Yes, we are.

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YES!

So my bleg the other day has borne fruit over at BCE’s joint, as fate would have it. Intrepid commenter Some rando puts us some knowledge:

Hey biggun: BP Mike was asking about Beethoven Christmas muzik.
Skunk works sez it’s Pamela Howland – Christmas With Beethoven.

And sure enough, BLAMMO, just like that: what once was lost now is found. Well, okay, I mean, it wasn’t really lost, exactly, it just sorta…I mean, y’know, I couldn’t seem to find…oh, to heck with it. Many thanks to you, Rando, and a very merry Christmas to ye.

Update! While we’re on the subject, let me revert to one of the Carolyne Taylor arrangements I found whilst poking around for hours the other night, and felt was fascinating: a happy marriage of one of my DeBussy all-timers, Clair de Lune, with the hauntingly beautiful “Silent Night.”

So much wonderful stuff out there just waiting to be listened to and enjoyed, one could never hope to get around to it all. Speaking of, please indulge me for a couple more from my annual Christmas Best-Of list.


You gotta love it, no?

Updated update! And since I’m dealing out the humble thank-you’s here, indulge me a wee bit further as I offer a most heartfelt one to CF Lifer Barry, who graciously assisted me in sorting out an issue with the Gab Pay thingamawheezy I wasn’t even aware I had. It gratifies me no end to be able to report that the GP tech-support folks were most Johnny-On-The-Spot-ish with their much-needed help; I’ve been rooting hard for Torba’s pet project since its inception, so it gives me the warm fuzzies deep down inside to see ’em take care of business in such an expeditious and capable fashion.

Much as I do like Elon Musk, enjoyable as it’s been to watch him pull Twitter’s head all the way up its own ass to the shoulders and wring it right the hell out to the accompaniment of a chorus of weeping and whining from overentitled, too-twee shitlibs everywhere, I really have no intention of jumping the Gab ship and heading there-wards instead.

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Sounds of the season, and a bleg

Okay, I think we’re close enough to Christmas by now to allow me to get away with this year’s repost of one of the very best serendipitous barside a cappella get-togethers in all of human history.



I’ve told the story behind this lovely recording before here, but it always bears repeating: the brilliant and hugely popular vocal ensembles Chanticleer and Cantus, during their annual joint Christmas-season tour, were hanging out at the hotel bar together after a show when they were suddenly inspired to burst into song, performing Franz Biebl’s gorgeous setting of the traditional Ave Maria before a rapt if unsuspecting audience.

The results are nothing short of miraculous; as many times as I’ve watched this vid, I still can’t help but think to myself that, to quote Salieri’s unforgettable line from Amadeus, “This was a music I had never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the very voice of God.

And this is where the bleg comes in, folks. See, there’s this fantastic Christmas album—recent, I believe, since I don’t recall the local classical-music radio station playing it before this year, although admittedly I pretty much missed out on last year’s Christmas completely—off of which I’ve been hearing a sort of mashup/medley for solo piano of Beethoven’s Für Elise with “We Three Kings.” I thought the album’s title might have been something along the lines of A Very Beethoven Christmas or Christmas With Beethoven or something along similar lines, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the dickens it actually was/is called.

Believe me, I’ve tried; I spent the last three hours Duck Duck Go’ing every permutation of “Beethoven” and “Christmas” I could conjure with and came up straight snake eyes, every single time. BUT…I did run across what I suspect might be it:



The only related info I’ve been able to locate online, other than a mere handful of vids on YewToob, is the “Classical Carols” book of sheet music on Amazon. No albums, CDs, tapes, or other audio-recording media at all. I’m stumped, I confess. So if anybody out there has any information for me concerning this elusive Beethoven Christmas album I may well have hallucinated, do speak up in the comments.

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A good and decent man

That would be the greatest Supreme Court justice we ever have had, the completely admirable and honorable Clarence Thomas.

“Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” — Matthew 6:2

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas embodies this verse well, as it has recently come to light that he has been quietly placing Christmas wreaths on the graves of American veterans for years.

D.C. journalist and author Emily Miller spotted Thomas volunteering for Wreaths Across America at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, as seen in a photo she posted to Twitter.

Wreaths Across America is a charitable organization that mobilizes thousands of volunteers every year to put wreaths on the graves of veterans and fallen soldiers.

This isn’t the first year Thomas has volunteered at Arlington Cemetery, either.

The justice can be seen in a candid photo from 2013 helping to clean up the cemetery after the Christmas season on a rainy January day.

The un-self-conscious nature of the photo stands in stark contrast to the contrived photo-ops that Democratic politicians conjure up for their own selfish ambitions and narratives.

Which, there have been plenty of those, to the surprise of no sane and aware person. Exhibit A:

Democratic New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim shamelessly attempted to gain clout from the Capitol incursion by cleaning up the “carnage,” as described by one Facebook user — the carnage being a few water bottles.

A photo captured Kim “experiencing the horror firsthand,” while everything around him looked hilariously pristine.

The photo-op photo in question:

The horror, the horror
Nope, doesn’t look staged at all to me

The thing to remember here is, as the author reiterates in his closing ‘graphs, Justice Thomas has been going about his good works on the QT rather than making sure plenty of Enemedia cameras were on hand to publicize him for it. It’s exactly as the last line says:

We could use more people in Washington demonstrating a spirit of humility and gratitude rather than selfish ambition.

Couldn’t we, though. Couldn’t we just.

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all you Furians, Furries, Droogs and Droogettes, and uncategorized Riffraff.

Make sure to keep Mike in your thoughts. Pray for his recovery if you’re religious.

And a hearty “Eat a pile of toadstools” to any anti-American who objects to seeing or hearing the words “Merry Christmas”.

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Publick Notice

I had forgotten it, but as it happens I have an old alternate image, part of a much older CF Xmas theme, which might make a worthy stand-in for my beloved Scrooge Picard—of whom I shall brook no evil spoken, ever—buried deep in the Trusty iMac’s file catacombs. This alternate is a real humdinger itself, featuring as it does my all-time favorite pinup hottie, Bettie Page—of whom I shall also brook no etc etc.

Upon stumbling across the Bettie header by a stroke of sheer good fortune, I piddled about some with the thing and found its dimensions to be all out of whack with what this current theme calls for, tragically enough. So I’ma do a little mild immersion into P-shop World and see if I can’t make things right. Then, if all goes well without undue hassle, maybe I’ll poke around a bit for a header-image-switching script that will work. Should that endeavor prove fruitful, well…we shall see what we shall see.

Why yes, I DO in fact just loooove tinkering with shit that I should probably leave the hell alone, always have. Why do you ask…?

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