It was a tense 48 hours but my computer is back! Keeping up with my blog was almost the most short-lived resolution I have ever made. Anyway, I'm glad I won't disappoint the three people who actually read this.

The one thing that wasn't terrible in 2010 was the music. These were the songs I fell in love with in 2010. They aren't necessarily songs that debuted in 2010-- they were just songs that I was constantly listening to.

Songs with an asterisk = covers of songs (i.e.: the artist listed is not the original artist of the song)

Songs with a caret = my personal top ten within the list

The five albums listed are amazing throughout. Each song is fantastic.

01) A Better Son/ Daughter ^ ~ Rilo Kiley

02) All My Best* ~ My Morning Jacket

03) Ali in the Jungle ~ The Hours

04) Angel from Montgomery* ~ Old Crow Medicine Show

05) Banana Splits ~ The Dickies

06) Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)* ~ Justin Vernon

07) But the Days and Nights Are Long ^ ~ Cheryl Wheeler

08) Change of Time ~ Josh Ritter

09) Confidence ^ ~ "Sound of Music" Soundtrack

10) Dance to the Music ~ Sly and the Family Stone

11) Deeper Well ^ ~ The Wailin' Jennys

12) Downpour ~ Brandi Carlile

13) Fuck You ^ ~ Cee Lo Green

14) Heaven* ~ Brandi Carlile

15) Hot Mess ~ Cobra Starship

16) How You Like Me Now ~ The Heavy

17) Home ~ Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes

18) Lark ~ Josh Ritter

19) Late Night Grande Hotel ^ ~ Nanci Griffith

20) Lightweight ~ Jen + Abby

21) Mahna Mahna* ~ Cake

22) Old Fashioned ~ Cee Lo Green

23) Postcard Home ~ The Lost Trailers

24) Kick Ass ^ ~ Mika & Redone

25) King of Anything ~ Sara Bareilles

26) Raise Your Glass ^ ~ P!nk

27) Smoke Gets In Your Eyes ~ The Platters

28) Spanish Pipedream ^ ~ The Avett Brothers

29) The Call ~ Regina Spektor

30) The Curse ~ Josh Ritter

31) The Great Pretender ~ The Platters

32) There's A Pot A Brewin' ~ The Little Ones

33) This Door Swings Both Ways ~ Herman's Hermits

34) This Too Shall Pass ^ ~ OK Go

35) This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us ~ Sparks

36) Tightrope ~ Janelle Monae

37) Wait Til You See Me Smile ~ Alicia Keys

38) We Are Golden ~ Mika

39) With A Little Bit of Luck ~ "My Fair Lady" Soundtrack

Albums

Brothers ~ The Black Keys

I and Love and You ~ Avett Brothers

I Learned the Hard Way ~ Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings

Lungs ~ Florence + the Machine

Wake Up ~ John Legend & the Roots

Happy New Year (from a classy lady)

When did celebrating the New Year become an invitation for girls to wear fishnets and top hats? Is there a holiday where girls aren't expected to dress like strippers?

I wore my normal (very sexy) attire: a clever t-shirt hidden with a hoodie.

Very chic.

Me and Paul Giamatti have the same stylist.

New Years happened on the patio of Mcouls (surprise!). It was pretty tame but also enjoyable. There were about ten people on the patio as compared to the 60+ assholes crammed inside by the TV. From the patio, you could both hear the countdown on TV inside and see the ball drop across the street at Bin 33.

In a tribute to New York's epic ball drop in Times Square, Bin 33 constructed a ball drop outside the restaurant. Where the ball in New York is 12 feet in diameter and made of Waterford crystal and state of the art lights, the ball at Bin 33 was made out of scrap metal and lights.

Suck it, New York.

Very classy. To be fair, though, it looked kind of cool. Even better? Bin 33 was charging $15 dollars just to get in for the festivities and I got to watch across the street (at a better angle) for free. So while the posh people were eating over-priced hors d'oeuvres and craning to see the ball drop-- I got to watch for free from the patio eating a rueben and drinking champagne.

Dang, I'm classy!

Cheers 2011.

Driving into a White Christmas

When I left Savannah on Christmas, it was raining-- which meant it was snowing in Greensboro. Sometimes the south looses its mind when it snows. It just doesn't snow enough for people to prepare for snow. South Carolina doesn't know how to repair the potholes in their roads so clearing the roads of snow is out of the question. Luckily, it didn't start snowing until I got to North Carolina. There are pretty much only three machines in use clearing the highways in the entire state which means there is usually only one lane that is cleared.

I don't know how to drive in the snow so I was pleased that there were a total of five people on the highway. The last time I drove in snow, I probably shouldn't have in retrospect. It was legit dangerous (Miranda, you could have died).

As I drove up to Greensboro, the roads started to look more and more like a post-apocalyptic landscape right out of a Stephen King novel. There were practically no people on the road. Because of the newly fallen snow, however, you could see the tire tracks of cars that just careened off the road. There were other cars that were just abandoned on the side of the road, slowly being covered in snow.

Otherwise-- its a lot of fun to drive in a winter wonderland (if you ignore the minor horrors mentioned above). Everything looks beautiful. Also-- it looks as if you are constantly in hyperdrive-- which is pretty great.

This is what it looks like to drive in snow. I took this picture

last time I took the Millennium Falcon out for a spin.

Now it is New Year's Eve. I can't wait for 2010 to go away so we can all start talking crap about it.

I plan on updating "Something More Fantastical" more often. There are a bunch of comics and drawings that I have been working on and want to start including on posts. Basically, I want "Something More Fantastical" to be more fantastical... starting tomorrow.

Ways to inspire and motivate your employees

"When you are unhappy, is anything more maddening than to be told you should be contented with your lot?"

-Kathleen Norris

I work at a coffee shop. It shall remain nameless-- but its a typical coffee shop. Nothing special.

Negotiations began at 5:45am. I presented my reasoned arguments to my boss.

My boss said that he could probably give me some time around New Years off-- which would be great if I wanted to celebrate Christmas when everyone else had moved on to another holiday.

Negotiations ended at 5:47am. I probably wasn't going to go home for christmas. No one came in the store for two hours so I was left alone... up front... listening to Christmas music for two hours on the overhead.

Thanks, Boss.

Things that are AWESOME part 1

The show Community is amazing.

Community has been silently delivering one of the best seasons ever. I say silently because in terms of ratings, it usually trails behind its NBC comedy brethren.

The episodes have had been pretty fantastical lately. Community takes place at Greendale Community College where no one's life has quite turned out how they expected. Rather than generate jokes that are exclusively sarcastic or deprecating -- the writers have expanded the narrative to incorporate more fantastical story-lines. Writers have worked in shoot-outs, secret gardens, a modern day space-race, and a zombie apocalypse (set to the music of ABBA, of course) and they are nailing it!

Now the holiday episode is nigh and Community rises to the challenge with: an entire episode using stop animation (à la the Rankin/Bass holiday cartoons)! Observe!

AMAZING!

~----~

More "Community" clips

--"the funnier side of chloroforming someone ("my whole brain is crying")

--Pretty much any time Troy and Abed rap-- it's comedic gold (see the "Anthropology rap" they do with Betty White or the original "Spanish Rap" that won the hearts and minds of millions).

In Contempt of Court

I had to go to Troy NC yesterday for court because of a speeding ticket I got about a month ago. The cop came out of nowhere. Not because he was hidden or cleverly concealed-- but because I was going so friggin fast.

In North Carolina, going over 15 mph is considered a misdemeanor and you have to show up in court. Instead of getting a lawyer, I decided to gamble everything on the judge falling in love with me and dropping all charges (full story: I waited until the last minute and the lawyer wouldn't take my money).

Anyway, Troy is a tiny town off of US-220 and all of its streets are tiny and all of its buildings are tiny. Its courthouse, however, is a hulking monolithic structure that looks like every condemned insane asylum in every TV show ever.

I learned rather quickly that Troy is bloated with criminals because the parking lot was full. Cars were parked along the sides of the road and some one had started the trend of parking on the nearby patches of grass outside the parking lot. So where do you think I parked? If you guessed the graveyard-- then you are correct. Not the graveyard parking lot-- the graveyard. I parked on Mr. Martin.

I sat in the back. In the pew ahead of me, someone had gouged the star of david into the wood with the words "F#%k u blood." To the left of me was another star of david with several little pitchforks around it. I looked around and took in the folk around me. These were not my people.

I suppose court should be a time for reflection but I'm pretty sure that people just sink into a self-righteous funk where the only thought in your head is "at least I'm not as bad as them." Its not a particularly enlightened mindset but it couldn't be helped. All I could do was look around me and think "Well at least it wasn't a DUI" or "at least it isn't my second DUI" or "at least it isn't my second DUI and I'm on meth."

There were a lot of DUIs.

(Also a lot of meth addicts).

Everything dragged on. I wasn't surprised per se because I imagined it would take some time to hear the cases (there were at least 100+ cases). It was the sheer amount of time dedicated to NOT hearing cases that blew my mind. One hour was dedicated to roll call. One hour was just lawyers (as far as I can tell) milling about. Then we had a 15 minute recess which, of course, lasted an hour.

When I was finally called up-- it was in a group. The judge was going to do a lightning round of justice. On my way up to the bar, I fixed my hair and dolled myself up. Here was where the judge would fall madly in love with me. I was the first up. Before I had to face the judge, the DA pulled me aside and told me that they knocked it down to speeding 10 miles over (instead of 20).

Let me just say first off that I am grateful that they let me slide. But when you think about it-- I was speeding (to the best of my knowledge) 85 in a 65. Basically in order to reconcile the situation they have to forge a document that says I was going less than I was. I still did it. The court system just committed fraud in order to get me off the hook. I was tried for an imaginary crime.

I still think I was let off the hook because the judge had a crush on me.

Let me dream.

What were you THINKING?

Angela Merkel announced yesterday that "multiculturalism has... utterly failed" in Germany. As much as multiculturalism might have failed in Germany-- its probably working out a lot better than their attempt at a monocultural society.

If I am honest with myself-- my chief complaint concerning Joe Miller is that he can't grow a beard. He has a weak chin that he tries to cover up with a beard that looks more like a way out of control five-o-clock shadow. It is pitiful. But Joe Miller doesn't want your pity-- he wants you to know he doesn't let the press mess with him. His security detail detained a reporter-- and by detained I mean handcuffed and detained by people who weren't police. Joe Miller really is the conservative choice for senate ... if by conservative you mean power-hungry control freak.

The unemployment crisis has been a major issue. You would think that the students of Columbia would have a leg up in these dire times. Apparently not because a memo was released this week reminding the students to bathe. So the unemployment isn't actually a problem for ivy leaguers-- its more an issue that no one wants to be in the same room with them because they are disgusting and tacky. Crisis solved!

Huffingtonpost.com is running a headline right now that reads "Conservative Ultra-Rich Plot Their Takeover." When have the ultra-rich not been in charge? Who are they taking their power back from? Way to look super naive Huffington Post. If this counts as an expose, then investigative journalism is officially dead.