It never fails. Every winter John Lennon's "Happy Christmas" gives me the chills like I'm hearing it for the first time.

It annoys the crap out of a lot of people, but I'll be damned if there ain't no music like Christmas music.

It totally sucks when someone just runs off and steals your idea.

So, I turn 30 in three weeks.

When I graduated from college I told a fellow music geek friend of mine that in our 30's we'd end up buying the two albums that sold bucketloads during our college career but never bought- Bush's Sixteen Stone and Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill. Both of them were inescapable in the mid-90s. I hated Bush for being so popular despite their lack of originality (I still swooned over "Swallowed", beating out the Toadies and McClusky for best Pixies rip-off ever). I hated Alanis for her calculated confessionalism and that frickin' harmonica. I really hated both of them because the Nerve played them every five minutes.

So, today, inbetween procrastinating and doing an assignment for school, I realized the grunge-hating other half (for some reason) has Sixteen Stone, and I'm listening to it. I'm kind of liking it. Still not diggin' Alanis too much, though.

So, in honor of Bush, here is a list of things that were popular when I was 20 that noone really cares about anymore:

-Sun Dried Tomatoes
-The Smashing Pumpkins
-Doc Martens
-Automobiles smaller than tanks
-Low fat everything
-NYPD Blue
-Drum n Bass
-Compact Discs
-Democrats
-Jeans that cost less than 200 bucks

I love the 90s!!

After years and years of browsing, we just broke down and got a big ass TV. The thing is enormous. We've gone from a second-hand 20" TV on the verge of exploding to 50" of High Def glory. We love it. Movies look nice and big. We watch stuff that we don't even like just because it's in HD.

This begs the question - is my new TV evil? I find myself daydreaming about watching my big ass TV now. Whenever I'm home now, the big ass TV must be on, so I can bask in its glory even if I'm not watching it. My cat (who won't go near the thing) is begging for attention even more now that I'm content to stare glassy eyed at the Discover HD channel. I even have "TV Party" by Black Flag in my head now.

Anybody know if those HD-upconverting DVD players are worth it? Our current player is so old it doesn't even have progressive scan.