Case in point: Lara Croft. They spent three games loading her down with horrific trauma and tragic backstory and guilt, and it just never worked. They just announced a new game where she's glammed up again, and while I hate that reactionary chuds will take it as a win, it's probably the right move.

I was hoping against hope that the Silksong portion of the medley would just be Sherma's song. That guy would have killed it on little-metal-thing-you-hit-with-a-stick.

youtu.be/XOmW7gm25_8

The show was fantastic, marred only when, during the big closing musical number, the guy directly behind me started singing along.

He wasn't belting and he wasn't off-pitch, but jeez, my guy, this is not Frozen Sing-Along for the kiddywinks.

Now off to the movies, to have myself a Merrily little Christmas.

(You might even call it a feast of Stephen. That might come off as unintentionally grisly, though - more befitting Sweeney.)

Just did a little more research, and was surprised to find that Aimee Mann went with "highest bough" too. And Sufjan Stevens! God, maybe the original really was too depressing.

youtu.be/mGvmiZS1ZKQ

The "highest bough" line has pretty much supplanted the original. It came about because Frank Sinatra wanted the song to be jollier. Well, there are plenty of jolly holiday standards, but not many like this. As a lifelong muddler, who at present can only aspire to muddling, the song's a comfort now.

I got to see The Beths on Monday, and they used "highest bough" when covering the song - even though the title track of their new album is about muddling though. (That's my only quibble about a great show - I'm a sucker for peppy songs about insecurity, loneliness, and anhedonia.)

I have less of an appetite for Christmas music than most, but I'm not a Grinch about it. I do have a few rules, though, and one is: in "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", it should be "until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow", NOT "hang the brightest star upon the highest bough".

It's even worse! The Labour line is that the Tories were right to try to close the borders, but failed. Jeffries is granting that Trump succeeded!

It reminds me of how it took me ages to convince YouTube that I really, truly did not want to see ads from PragerU. There's all this talk about the almighty algorithm keeping people in media bubbles, but somehow the hateful garbage finds a way through, even to people who are actively hostile to it.

...why would they think this shit would appeal to me?

Then I realized it had nothing to do with the reams of data they no doubt have on me. It was like the Ed Sheeran recommendation - just the most popular choices by default.

Which is much worse - it means they're promoting this shit to everyone.

...but they're still pushing podcasts hard. And right near the top of that section was the latest from Tucker Carlson, immediately followed by Candace Owens.

I took this personally at first. Unless my most played artist this year was Skrewdriver, and my top track the Horst Wessel Leid...

There was a funny guy I used to read in the British press, renowned for his take-down of Dan Brown. Now all he does is grouse about wokeness. But at least with him I know how it happened: as with most of the British press corps, fear of a trans planet consumed his brain. What's Pollack's excuse?

How does that happen? How can anyone go from parodying media bloodlust in the Iraq war, to cheering the even sicker (but "nonchalant") bloodlust of Pete Hegseth? How does a satirist pass up a target like a day-drunk sex-pest Christian-nationalist war-crime-advocate TV chat host cosplaying as Patton?

But now? Over the summer, he became an editor at arch-conservative rag The Spectator. I don't know if he's a Trump fan, but he's at least a sympathizer; yesterday he began a piece by excusing Trump's current maritime murder spree. (A merciful paywall spared me whatever chuckles followed.)

"Strong floor, no ceiling."

"Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture."

Oh, hell, I didn't even remember that he helped to write the screenplay for Brazil! That'll have to go in the queue soon, too. After all, it's my favorite Christmas movie.

I also got to see Arcadia once in Boston, outdoors. By the time it finished, the stars were out. I can't imagine a better way to see it.

Well, I know what I'll be watching tonight.

"Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box?"

youtu.be/tdADTzvJtSY