A friend yesterday sent me a series of texts about some folks singing karaoke to Fairytale of New York.  I love the song.  Part of me says there’s no reason to post it here, because most of you out there have heard it before—but then, everyone has to learn about Fairytale of New York somewhere.  I learned about it from a Megatokyo strip; maybe someone will see it for the first time here.  Once in a while I catch myself assuming that everyone else has exactly the same set of knowledge as I do; of course folks know that FFVI was released as FFIII in the US, or that Starbuck was a dude in the original Galactica, or that A New Hope wasn’t originally tagged ‘Episode 4’ or that in early printings of the Hobbit, Bilbo wins the ring from Gollum in the riddle game rather than finding it in the dark, or that Loki’s bound under the earth with the entrails of his son.  (Huh, interesting list of examples upon review.  This tendency seems to be much more pronounced when dealing with pop culture and myth knowledge—I’m rarely  surprised when someone doesn’t know, for example, the structure of Journey to the West, or how the beginning of the Dao De Jing goes in Chinese, or how to do Deep Excel Magic.  But all this pop culture stuff, well, if I know it, doesn’t everyone?  Maybe a bit of impostor syndrome going on there…)  Anyway, in reality we’re all swimming through this wide and wonderful and weird sea of art and story, and we start from very different shores, and no matter how much we know there’s always more to discover.  I’m just reading James Tiptree Jr for the first time, for example.  So, after all that, here are the Pogues and Kristy MacColl:

And the boys of the NY-PD choir still singing Galway Bay… Um, wait, what?  Sorry, I was, er, distracted there for a second.

Oh, yes, writing.  Progress progresses.  One of the big ice lakes in the story is shattering.  Atomic batteries to power.  Turbines to speed.  And step up the reactor power three more triangles.  Visions of confrontation, double-climax, and societal transformation are dancing in my head.  Can’t wait to see what happens next.

Rock on.  Hope you’re all having a good holiday.

EDIT: Oh!  I almost forgot—my friend, the estimable Alana Joli Abbot, has just released a way cool cell phone game called Choice of Kung Fu, in which your adventures may be chosen from a number of kung-fu related options.  I started playing and was immediately given the option to either tiger-claw a bandit’s face, or choke him out (out of respect for his Buddha nature of course).  This bodes well.  Check it out: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/choice-of-kung-fu/id584710597?mt=8&uo=4