Monday, December 11, 2006

Monday Ten, Seven by George

The winner of the Six by Six giveaway is Lis, who should e-mail me at LynnViehl@aol.com with your full name and ship-to info so I can get these books out to you.

Ten Things For Holiday Fun

1. Stop three ghosts from scaring the nice kid by playing Casper's Haunted Christmas.

2. Cooking Light magazine's annual cookie countdown is in full swing now, and will even deliver 25 different recipes to your inbox to satisfy your inner cookie monster.

3. Snowdays Create Your Own Snowflake is having a Flake-A-Thon this year; the more snowflakes you create, the more money PopularFront.com will donate to the Salvation Army.

4. Play with Chabad.org's Chanukah Concentration or Dreidel Spin game.

5. Can't figure out what to give Old Uncle Harry, who already has everything? Get some expert advice from FindGift.com's Gift Wizard.

6. For those of you who can't bear to throw them away, Abigail A. Beal's article How to Make Craft Projects Out of Your Christmas Cards.

7. RealSimple.com can help you through those gift-wrapping woes with the tips from their article How to Wrap Anything.

8. East meets west when you play Santa Mah Jong.

9. Barkley Evergreen & Partners's Make-A-Flake is another place to exercise your flake-making skills.

10. On Christmas Eve, watch the big guy in the red suit circle the globe with his reindeer over at NORAD Tracks Santa 2006.

Speaking of fun, I have adored George Carlin since I first heard his Seven Dirty Words routine, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 during FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation. Tragically the justices decided once again to stomp all over the Constitution to support the government's censorship of George's routine. Some people have no sense of humor whatsoever.

Over the last couple of years George Carlin has also become an author, hitting the New York Times Bestseller list as hard as he does his audiences with Napalm & Silly Putty and Brain Droppings. God knows we need a little humor during the holidays, so I'm making George's most recent book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, the seventh very cool book of December.

For a chance to win today's giveaway, in comments to this post name something about the holidays that makes you laugh (or, if you find nothing amusing, just throw your name in the hat) by midnight EST on December 11, 2006. I'll draw one name from everyone who participates and send the winner unsigned copies of When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops by George Carlin and Talyn by Holly Lisle. Giveaway open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

43 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:28 AM

    My neighbours' Christmas decorations make me laugh. They are really cute, and haven't changed since when their little boy was about 12. (He's 17 now, and huge, but not too stuck up to show his enjoyment of lights and glitter.)

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  2. At some point we'll have an evening telling stories around the dinner table. My wife Luisa will regale us with tales of growing up in the Bronx. We're English, so will think her tails quaint.

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  3. The place where we purchased our tree this year names all it's trees. Our tree's name is Brooke. I thought this was a silly thing to do until the next morning I'm looking at the tree and I'm wondering if Brooke needs any water.

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  4. Eddie from Christmas Vacation.

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  5. Every year we have to laugh about the gifts given to us from some certain relatives. I will tell you, they give the strangest things. My brother (who is 21 now mind you) got a slinky about 3 Christmas's ago. A rainbow one. Talk about the wrong gift. Another year my father got a collector's M&M jar. Now that fine but there were no M&M's in the jar...just the crumbs from the candy. I mean, they could have atleast cleaned it out. Anyhow, we have learned to laugh at these dumb gifts, and take heart in the fact that atleast they remembered us in some weird way.

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  6. the insanity over the latest video thing. X Box, PSIII or whatever.... one of them is selling on ebay for like 1500. when you'll be able to buy it for the normal price after the holidays.

    of course, i absolutely refuse to discuss the Tickle Me Elmo 10th anniversary edition that i bought off of ebay for the baby bratlet. i refuse.

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  7. One of the Infants always begins - and we sing along - the old Mad Magazine's version of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear - about strange Xmas presents.
    "It hangs down from the chandeliere/We have no idea what it does...

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  8. This year the song White Christmas just makes me laugh, mostly because there is not even a hint of snow anywhere.

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  9. Anything by George Carlin makes me laugh. Especially his older stand up routines.

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  10. Anonymous8:24 AM

    I second Eddie from Christmas Vacation. The whole movie is side-splitting gold but Eddie is just inspired.

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  11. George Carlin is a very funny man!

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  12. I get a good laugh watching the kids tear into their presents and should they happen to contain clothes, toss them over their shoulder and grab for the next.

    And no matter how many times I watch The Christmas Story (You'll shoot your eye out!) and Elf (Candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup!), I laugh like I'm watching for the first time!

    You're right...George Rocks!

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  13. Anonymous9:17 AM

    What amuses me is how stressed out some people can get over Christmas and the commercialism of it.

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  14. That song, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." It's just insane.

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  15. A story I heard on NPR this morning made me laugh. A man (I forget where) used Christmas lights to write "Bah-Humbug" on his lawn.

    There's also a very funny episode of Family Guy where Peter & the family watch "KISS Saves Santa" in which the rock band KISS saves Santa, who has apparently been kidnapped by pterodactyls.

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  16. The comments that the children say when they open their gifts. They are so sweet and cute.

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  17. My husband is insanely fond of Christmas crackers (for those not in the know, a cardboard tube covered in paper or foil, twisted at both ends, with a snap, a toy or gift, a paper hat and a riddle inside) and there are always dozens pulled around Christmas in this house. This generates far more paper hats than two people can wear.

    Back when we still had our Great Dane, we got into the habit of putting the hats on her. Sometimes this big black dog would be wearing three or four pink, yellow, purple or blue paper hats around her neck at once. She loved this tradition, too, despite being made a little nervous by the snaps, and would stretch her head out hopefully whenever a new hat appeared.

    Oh, and we used to put those goofy reindeer antlers on her, too.

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  18. The movie "Christmas Vacation"-- those wild lights and decorations make me laugh every year--not to mention the slapstick humor.

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  19. Anonymous10:52 AM

    I usually don't get into the contests anymore because, well, I'm not a writer, just a fan and I'm pretty busy so--by the time I read the site, the contest is over anyway! lol.
    However, today I am home with pneumonia so I got to get online, read the updates on the site and enter this. I figure that's rather ironic and in the land of George Carlin, a tad funny

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  20. My dad's goofy versions of Chrsitmas carols usually make me laugh.

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  21. Oops, sorry, I transposed the i and the s there. You'd think I'd be fully awake by 8:00 am, but I guess not.

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  22. One of my friends has a Christmas tradition with his sister: they each try to outdo one another in finding tacky Christmas cards with a gay theme (my friend is gay).

    This year the card his sister sent him featured, on the front, a picture of several transvestites wearing just red noses and strategically-placed wreaths with the words: "Deck the Dolls". On the inside, it said, "Don we now our gay apparel".

    He was passing it around at his party last weekend, it amused me to no end.

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  23. Anonymous11:23 AM

    I don't really have anything to laugh at, so I'll just throw my name in the hat! :)

    Thanks, PBW!

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  24. Anonymous11:56 AM

    I laugh at how I used to take Christmas vacations for granted when I was a kid. I laugh at the only people who are missing snow are the ones who never see it :) I laugh at the funny warm feeling Christmas carol music gives me as it gets closer to Christmas (but it doesn't have the same effect the day after Halloween). Mostly I laugh because this is supposed to be a season of good cheer, and there is never enough good cheer in the world. Since this is supposed to be the season, I try a little harder to be a little cheerier, despite everything, because if not now, when?

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  25. Anonymous12:24 PM

    The crowds shopping pretty much crack me up. At no other time of year, do you see two grown women fighting over a Bratz doll. I try to save my laughter until I get out to the car, though, as I don't fancy being attacked for Christmas.

    I think the whole season is fun. It sort of absurd, with the decorations and the gifts and the mass quantities of food, but also touching with the reminders of family.

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  26. What makes me laugh is that dh just had 7 teeth pulled a month ago and the other day had 3 titanium implants put in his lower jaw to hold new bottom dentures AND on Thursday I go to the dentist and have 4 crowns and 2 porcelain veneers fitted SO HOW ARE WE GOING TO EAT AT CHRISTMAS; it will be mashed potatoes and all soft foods for both of us.

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  27. Your links today made me laugh. I'm such a kid at heart. Playing with my grandson...you know, getting down on the floor with a 21 month old is enough to make everyone else in the room laugh since it usually takes a crane to get me there and another to get me UP off the floor. Hey, every minute I see a smile on his sweet face is worth it. He just loves seeing Santa everywhere. Suddenly his face lights up and he says, "Ho Ho Ho Nannie. That's Ho Ho"
    How could I not laugh and be in love?

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  28. I love George Carlin! And TALYN in paperback will be given away, since I have the hardback - which I'll keep forever.

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  29. My youngest child opening presents. He was such a shock to us since my oldest one who is almost 6 yrs older just tore into his gifts and was done in ten minutes. My baby has to open each gift carefully and then take it out of the wrapping and play with it for however long he deems necessary. All the while my oldest is what else did you get. Hurry up come tell hurry up I want to see what else you got. He's learned to just let him go at his own pace and check with him later.
    And George Rocks

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  30. Last year I received a pair of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer panties that still make me giggle. I think mostly because the nose actually lights up. There is nothing like having a red homing beacon well you know... down there, to make it seem like Christmas lol.

    Love Carlin! Thanks so much for the giveaways! :)

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  31. Sadly, several of these could keep me busy for hours and hours and hours and hours. :-/

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  32. Anonymous2:36 PM

    My neighbor's eight foot picture of Jesus... paint by numbers...on black velvet... circled with Christmas lights.

    No kidding!

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  33. Catlin is writing books. I didn't reallize that. I was a job coach with disablity kids one Christmas. We were working with laundry shoot at a hotel.

    Some one had put down guy throng shape as a reindeer. The kids got upset that they had to show everybody that work there. Some of them were so funny they wouldn't work in the laundry are for a long time.

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  34. The consumption all types, that takes place at this time of year gives me a good chuckle.

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  35. congrats Lis.

    My daughter and I look forward every year to the dreaded newsletters that are really obnoxious - we make such fun of them - if they only knew lol.

    And george carlin - got to see him live years ago - I hate any form of censorship - if you don't want to hear/read/see something - don't listen/read/watch it roflmao.

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  36. My sons are all grown up and married, but everytime I hear alvin and the chipmunks I have to smile and laugh.

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  37. Well, by laugh here I mean "chuckle at good-naturedly." Did you know that Christmas is celebrated in Japan? Did you know that it is something close to Valentine's Day? Oh, yes, the big thing is to give gifts, and for young girls to be seen out at very fancy places, dressed to the nines, with their boyfriends. I find that so fascinating.

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  38. My late grandfather taught anatomy, and watching him carve the Christmas turkey an event I always looked forward to -- especially when he'd add in the improvised lecture on giblets.

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  39. My three-year-old twins and their never-ending additions to the "List for Santa" makes me laugh.

    Also, on the topic of George Carlin, how talented can a man be to let loose with some of the raunchiest jokes ever created and also be the voice of a children's series (Thomas the Tank Engine) and pull both of them off brilliantly? George is the best!

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  40. Rudolph and Frosty and i still sing both songs and watch the shows. My kids are grown and now I do it with my grandson but the memories make me laugh

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  41. Pinky and The Brain Christmas always makes me laugh

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  42. Buffy Squirrel, your Great Dane story reminded me of my St. Bernard and Great Dane stories.

    My St. Bernard would sit on the couch (she wasn't supposed to, be we couldn't resist her), and we'd put a pair of sunglasses on her. She's just sit there and look cool. We'd get her a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a cup when we went out for ice cream. She'd wrap her tongue around it and swallow it whole.

    As for the Great Dane, his name was B.U.D. (Big Ugly Dog), and he liked to dance. He'd stand up with his front paws on your shoulders and you could sort of slow dance around in circles. He's the only dance partner I've ever had. I won't dance with anyone else.

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  43. Love Carlin. The guy just throws it out there and it's always smart, clever and, best of all, funny.

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