• XKCD gets us started, bringing to mind the Simpsons where Bart accidentally goes to smart kid school. When asked to give an example of a paradox, Bart says, “You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.”

• Goldblog cites an astonishing editorial from Garrison Keillor that wrecks my warm opinion of the man:

If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”?

Really, Keillor? Pulling out the ol’ red herring of cultural elitism? Get bent.

• design mind took a different approach. Does Gordon Ramsay threaten to undo his small jerk empire by acting personable in a new show? I agree with the author that it might:

Gordon, stick with what you do best, before you set your brand back a decade. Go back to being an f-bomb dropping a-hole. Please.

Is this what the holidays are for? Abrupt nonsensical role reversal? Jerks run amok?

Five synonyms for cool, from a sixth grader:
1. Okay
2. Frigid
3. Good
4. Cold
5. Fine

After several hours of too-slow plot play and several months of bored hiatus, I returned to Chrono Trigger and it finally won my sustained attention. I still don’t love that there’s no separate battle screen (stupid Final Fantasy games, ruining me for everything else) but I do love the music, the graphics, and the entire conceit of the game.

This weekend I watched a sixth grader play this insane-looking game Nazi Zombies (no, really) and the graphics were so real it kind of made me sick — I don’t want to see some real character’s head get blown off, or some real character without legs dragging around on his elbows. It reinforced that I am an eight-bit girl when it comes to my favorite games, and I will play Super Nintendo games indefinitely. Nathan thinks it has the best games of any console to date, and I agree.

Five games I ended up not loving:
1. Super Smash Brawl
2. Final Fantasy VIII
3. Super Mario Galaxy
4. Final Fantasy X
5. Super Mario Bros 2

Five games I loved immediately:
1. Final Fantasy VI, VII, IX
2. Paper Mario 1, 2, 3
3. Super Mario Bros 1, 3, and World
4. Mario Kart Double Dash
5. Katamari Damacy

Let’s visit the more fashionable, shall we.

Critical Shopper has a review of the new Armani flagship (more like battleship for the size of it) in Manhattan. Check this out:

[Armani] has built a variation of [the Frank Lloyd Wright stairs at the Guggenheim] inside his store that quite possibly improves on the original. The Guggenheim resembles a collapsible camping cup; the Armani staircase looks like a Slinky made by unfurling a giant spiral-cut endive. It’s wild, organic and throbbing, a veritable turbine generating the store’s giddy atmosphere.

My goodness, a spiral-cut endive? And we wonder why people claim New York City is a symptom of the yuppocalypse.

A Suitable Wardrobe linked to Stowers Bespoke in a recent post, leading me to discover my new favorite woman’s ensemble, ever, seriously. If you’d ever told me I’d fall in love with a pink tweed three-piece suit, well, I wouldn’t have eaten my hat but you may have eaten my tomboy fist. But as I told Marty earlier, I’m loving the three-piece suit lately.

And for those of you who want to and can walk in stilettos: Watch out, they’re about to get even higher.

Five migraine triggers:
1. Soy
2. Avocados
3. Aged cheese
4. Onions
5. STRESS

Five things we did at our work party last night:
1. Grilled
2. Chain smoked
3. Made mojitos
4. Listened to a coworker’s former band’s record
5. Tried to remember any Eddie Money song by name OR tune

Five people I’ve talked to while out on the shipping dock:
1. The manager of the furniture store
2. A woman whose daughter is finishing veterinary school soon
3. A guy in a jumpsuit who works at 6:30 a.m.
4. A delivery guy who was not excited about several grosses of printer cartridges
5. This really uninteresting guy whose name began with M but was so dull I can’t remember

Five kinds of animals that woman’s daughter apparently had to learn about in veterinary school:
1. Large
2. Small
3. Water
4. Tropical
5. Fish

Five animals I no longer see regularly:
1. Cattle
2. Horses
3. Hawks and turkey vultures
4. Canada geese
5. Deer