Weekend Picks 11/22/06

Hey there, people -- it's like, too late before the Thanksgiving holiday. Everyone on the entire East Coast is competing for a position on I-95, myself included ... so I'm putting up my Weekend picks a little early, with a holiday theme.

 I drink cranberry juice all year, but I only think about those hard little berries as a solid twice a year: Christmas and Thanksgiving. J-Land regular Monponsett has a pretty cool post on her blog High Above Courtside documenting a trip to an actual cranberry bog. The phrase "cranberry bog" sounds like an unfortunate intestinal condition, but it's actually quite picturesque!

Princess Aurora's response to Scalzi's last Weekend Assignment absolutely cracked me up. She details the struggle between those who love dark turkey meat and white meat really well, but she coins and uses the "Battle of the Meat Shades" so much that I honestly cannot get it out of my head.

Don't ask me how I found it, but I found a blog post that has unearthed the crappiest, weirdest Christmas song ever: 'Dominic, the Italian Christmas Donkey'. The sick thing is, the song's sorta catchy -- so it may replace the phrase "battle of the eat shades" in my brain eventually.

Syd Barrett was the founder of Pink Floyd -- he created a type of psychedelic rock that had never been seen before and has never been heard since he left the band after desceneding into schozophrenia triggered by constant heavy drug abuse. The album 'Wish You Were Here' is actually a tribute to Floyd's lost band member. Why am I telling you this? Because for some reason, Barrett's Christmas tree is for sale. Check it out on Tech Digest.

Our very own John Scalzi put together a hilarious parody post a while back entitled The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time. This also cracked me up. A mild content warning applies here, just so you know.

At the year's end, we are inundated with lists chronicling the best/worst of (blank) in the last year. It's easy content for harried editorial staff (like me) to crank out before hustling off for our own holidays. Fimoculous aggregates these best-of lists into one tidy place. Right now the list is thin, but then again, there aren't that many lists out. As they're released, this post will update -- so check back in, and share any lists you find with the blog's editor.

That about sums it up. I'm sure to be doing more holiday-themed blog picks in the future, so if you have a post you'd like to share, please either mail it to me or leave it in my comments. I definitley am planning to do an all J-Land blog holiday, so keep it in mind as you're sitting down to write this winter. Have a great Thanksgiving ...