Merry Christmas Everybody!

I made a little compilation of lesser-heard Christmas tunes this year. Some are weird, some are just lesser-known, many are made by people who are probably legally insane. It's called An Outsider Christmas. There must be terabytes of Christmas music out there, and yet the radio and the drug stores tend to pipe out the same fifty Christmas songs over and over and OVER. How many times can a man hear "All I Want For Christmas (Is You)" by Mariah Carey until it completely loses all meaning (probably five)? So here's a small collection of some real gems. Sure, some of them are terrible. But at least they're unique, and you won't be hearing them non-stop from the secretary's little desk radio for a month.

These songs were cribbed from lots of other compilations, found on blogs and other web sites, heard on the radio, found accidentally, and so forth. The cover art is from a Christmas album by Eilert Priam, a Swedish Elvis impersonator who doesn't speak English, doesn't sound like Elvis, and doesn't sing particularly well.

The link is below the cover art.

Merry Christmas!

An Outsider Christmas, Volume 1



http://www.mediafire.com/?r7qr8c115ktycmr

A Real Phone Conversation With Jensen's Jewelers

So I got a little catalog in the mailbox last night. It was for Jensen's Jewelers. It was sixteen large, full color, high-glossy pages of ads. The crappy mass-produced little overpriced pieces of carbon they were advertising were just as ugly as sin. Normally I'd just toss it, but lately I've been politely calling the companies that send me junk mail and asking them to please remove my address from their mailing list. Usually they're quite friendly about it, since it does save them a little money and people are generally nice if you're nice to them first.


(ONLY THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!)

I have a few reasons for taking the trouble to stop the junk mail.

The ads are annoying to me, they show me things I don't want and am not interested in.

Or sometimes they show me things that I do want but cannot afford, which makes me sad.

Sometimes I'm expecting something specific in the mail and then I see something in my mailbox and am momentarily excited only to realize that it's junk mail. Then I am sad.

Sometimes I bring them inside and they end up making more clutter.

Usually I just throw them away in the dumpster before I get back inside and I think to myself, "What a waste of resources." There's the trees, the paper, the printing, the ink, the transportation on trucks on the interstate, the mailman, etc. Just a big waste of time and energy. I don't want to have to feel semi-guilty for it.

Mostly, though, I just don't want the advertisements in my life. I don't want their little colored pieces of paper constantly reminding me and bringing me back to their stores and their sales in my mind. I have the right to not think about Target or Rent-A-Center or Walgreens if I don't want to think about them.

If I want to live a sheltered life, disconnected from corporate ads, should I not be allowed? Even if I live in a town and use the Postal Service, should I not be allowed to disconnect myself from their ads? 

I realize that in most public places, ads have become the norm and that I will have to suffer through them. But when I'm at home, I think I have the right to not be advertised to unless I choose to be. And I typically do not choose to be.

Soooooo,

There was no 1-800 number listed on the catalog so I called the Jensen Jewelers in Rexburg and asked them if they could help me get my address off the mailing list. They gave me a number for their corporate offices in Twin Falls, Idaho. I called them and explained what I wanted to do. The lady I spoke to sounded baffled but said she'd put me through to the right department.

Here's a transcript of the actual call--

Me: I'm not sure if this is the right number to call or not, but I'd like to get my address removed from the mailing list.

Jensen Jewelers: Okay, well can you give me your account number?

Me: I don't have an account.

Jensen Jewelers: What's the name the account is associated with. We can look it up that way.

Me: I actually don't have an account with Jensen's Jewelers. I was calling to get my address removed from the advertising mailing list.

Jensen Jewelers: Oh-- There's no way to do that, sir.

Me: There's no way?

Jensen Jewelers: Those are just ads-- Are they bothering you that much?

Me: It's not that they bother me, I just don't like receiving advertisements in my mailbox that I didn't ask for, and I think they're a waste of time and paper. I'd just like to not--

Jensen Jewelers:  --Well you can't remove your name from that list.

Me: Is there some kind of do-not-mail list I could add my address to?

Jensen Jewelers: No, there's not. Maybe if you gave me the name on the ad I could look up that person's account...

Me: There is no name on the ad. It just says "resident."

Jensen Jewelers: (derisive snort) Well, that's just... Ugh... That means everyone gets one!

Me: Maybe someone else might know who I could call. Could you point me in the right direction, maybe?

Jensen Jewelers: Sir, there's no way to remove your name from the mailing list. Those just get sent out to everyone.

Me: Is there a supervisor that I could speak with?

Jensen Jewelers: Sir, my supervisor is just going to tell you the same thing. We have no power over who gets those ads. Everyone gets those ads.

Me: May I speak with your supervisor anyway?

(puts me on hold)

Jensen Jewelers: Sir, I spoke with my supervisor and he's currently on a call. He said he will call you back.

Me: I just thought of something: do you distribute your ads through some other company? Like some mailing company? Maybe I could get ahold of them directly.

Jensen Jewelers: No, we send out the ads ourselves. We just don't have any power over who gets the ads.

Me: Okay then. Thanks for your help.
 
(click)


She hung up on me.


So the the tone I got from this woman was that I was making a totally unreasonable request. Impossible! This is just impossible! I could have asked to please speak with President Obama regarding the upcoming summit between Earth and the alien-people of star system Rigel-14 which would be taking place in the local Rexburg Kentucky Fried Chicken men's bathroom and I would have received the same reaction from this woman.


I wish I could have captured the tone of her voice as she remarked, dripping with annoyance and venom, "Are they bothering you THAT much?"


Funny choice of words, actually. The fact that she added "THAT much" meant that she understood that advertisements to be implicitly bothersome. If she really was surprised to hear that the ads were bothering someone, wouldn't she have just asked "Are the ads bothering you?" But no, she asked "Are the ads bothering you THAT MUCH?"

So what the hell is the problem, lady? You've just admitted to me that your crappy junk mail is an annoyance I could do without. I made the effort to call and act totally polite and civil. Why treat me like you just found I raped and murdered your grandmother?

Elementary School Folk Carols Project

I have a long and storied history with silly Christmas carols, or changing the words to Christmas songs to make them "silly." They were beloved to me as a child, and I even wrote a short book of Christmas carols when I was in fourth grade in which I changed the lyrics to popular carols and made them "violent." Oh, what a precocious youth I was!

I overheard some of the second-grade students singing "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" on the playground the other day, and it warmed my heart. They weren't quite sure of all the words, so I took a moment to sing the whole song to them. They caught on very quickly, and later wanted me to teach them other Christmas songs. I happily obliged them. It made me wonder what other "wacky" Christmas carols might be out there that I may have either forgotten or missed in my youth.

I decided to record what few Elementary School Christmas Carols I know, in hopes of preserving them for future generations.


We'll begin with that old standby, the short but sweet "Jingle Bells." This is a classic that's been around since at least the 1960's.


Jingle Bells
Batman smells
Robin laid an egg


The Batmobile lost it's wheel
And the Joker took ballet [variation: And the Joker got away.]


You really can't do much better than that one. It's silly, it uses a comic character that apparently all children know, and it keeps the Batman theme going throughout. It's also got a the debasing of a revered "authority figure," it's got a pun, and it's got the ridiculing of a villain. It's perfect.

"Deck the Halls"

Deck the halls with gasoline
Fa la la la la, la la la la!
Light a match and watch it gleam

Fa la la la la, la la la la!
Now the school's burned down to ashes
Fa la la la la, la la la la!
Aren't you glad you played with matches?
Fa la la la la, la la la la!

Perfect. I loved this one, even though I had nothing against going to school. I liked it up until fifth grade or so! But it was still fun to pretend to hate it and want to burn it to the ground.


"Joy to the World"

Joy to the world, 
The teacher's dead
We bar-b-qued her head!


And what about the body? [variations: What happened to the body?, Don't worry about the body,]
We flushed it down the potty


And round and round it goes, 
And round and round it goes, 
and rooouuund and roooouuunnd and round it gooooes.

Again, I had nothing against my teacher, but it was fun to pretend to hate her. This one was violent AND slightly blasphemous! Perfection! I heard a variation on this one where "teacher" was replaced with "Barney." The strange thing was that I heard the variation in the past year or so. Apparently Barney bashing is still alive ad well in the world of children?

The last two are focused on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The first is called "Randolph and Red Nosed Cowboy." I suspect this one was just made up by a classmate at my old school because I've never heard anyone else sing it, and it's not really that good. They essentially only replaced one or two key words from the original Rudolph song, so it's kind of lazy. Perhaps we could change it up a bit more and make this one a real classic.

Randolph the red-nosed cowboy
Had a very shiny gun
And if you ever saw it
You would crap your pants and run


All of the other cowboys 
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Randolph
Join in any cowboy games


Then one foggy Christmas Eve, 
The sheriff came to say
"Randolph with your gun so bright, 
Won't you shoot my wife tonight?"


Then how the cowboys loved him
As they shouted out with glee (Yee-Haw!)
Randolph the red-nosed cowboy
You'll go down in history!

The "won't you shoot my wife tonight" is great, but otherwise it doesn't change much, huh?

I think we all know the following song, but I'll include it for history's sake. It is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with the little call and response parts added in.


Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose (like a light bulb!)

And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows (like a light bulb!)

All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names (like Pinocchio!)


They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games (like Monopoly! [variation: like Nintendo!])


Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say (Ho! Ho! Ho!)
"Rudolph with your nose so bright, 
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"


Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee (YIP-eee!)


Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
You'll go down in history (like Columbus!) [variation: Like Adolph Hitler!]

Yeah... That last variation was just used by me because I thought (rightly so) when I was twelve that it would be "hilarious."


I think we all changed Monopoly to Nintendo when we were in fourth grade and I kind of liked it ever since. I loved singing the little extra parts because they ANNOYED THE CRAP out of people, and they're just so mindless and stupid to go along with this stupid song.


So are there any I've missed? Let me know if you've got any more!