My favorite Christmas songs!

I love Christmas just as much as anyone else does.  And I love Christmas music.  However, I am not a fan of ALL Christmas music; there IS a lot of crap out there (i.e., anything Justin Bieber claims is Christmas music).  But you can guarantee that the following songs would definitely make my ultimate Christmas mix.  Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order.


Trans Siberian Orchestra, "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12-24"
John Lennon, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"
Band Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas"
Michael Crawford, "O Holy Night"
Michael W Smith, "Gloria/Angels We Have Heard On High"
Trans Siberian Orchestra, "Christmas Canon"
Trans Siberian Orchestra, "Mad Russian's Christmas"
Harry Connick, Jr., "It Must Have Been Ol' Santa Claus"
Bruce Springsteen, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town"
u2, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"
Bryan Adams, "Something About Christmastime"
Tom Petty, "Christmas All Over Again"
Bruce Springsteen, "Merry Christmas Baby"
Alex Lifeson, "Little Drummer Boy"

ok, that's just some of the Christmas songs I love...   but there are a couple of holiday songs I would include (and if you don't like profanity you probably shouldn't listen to them), but they're humorous:

South Park, "Merry Fucking Christmas"
Dennis Leary, "Merry Fucking Christmas"

30 day song challenge... all in one blog.

well, I thought I would just get it all in one blog, instead of doing the month long marathon on facebook.  This is what my 30 day song  challenge would look like.

Day 1:  My favorite song:  Rush, "Freewill"
Day 2:  My least favorite song:  Hanson, "MMMBop"
Day 3:  A song that makes me happy:  Anthrax, "Starting Up A Posse"
Day 4:  A song that makes me sad:  Meatloaf, "Heaven Can Wait"
Day 5:  A song that reminds me of someone:  The Ramones, "I Wanna Be Sedated"
Day 6:  A song that reminds me of somewhere:  Rush, "YYZ"
Day 7:  A song that reminds me of a certain event:  u2, "Bad"
Day 8:  A song I know all the words to:  Billy Joel, "We Didn't Start The Fire"
Day 9:  A song I can dance to:  Los Del Rio, "Macarena"  (yeah, I went there...  not that you'll see me EVER doing this in public.)
Day 10:  A song that makes me fall asleep:  Enya, "Book of Days"
Day 11:  A song from my favorite band:  Rush, "Ghost Rider"
Day 12:  A song from a band I hate:  Fall Out Boy, "Dance Dance"
Day 13:  A song that is a guilty pleasure:  ABBA, "Take A Chance On Me"
Day 14:  A song that no one would expect me to love:  Opeth, "Deliverance"
Day 15:  A song that describes me:  Pink Floyd, "High Hopes"
Day 16:  A song I used to love but now hate:  Green Day, "When I Come Around"
Day 17:  A song I hear often on the radio:  Adele, "Rolling In The Deep"
Day 18:  A song that I wish I heard on the radio:  Kingston Wall, "And I Hear You Call"
Day 19:  A song from my favorite album:  Pink Floyd, "Another Brick In The Wall pt. 2"
Day 20:  A song that I listen to when I'm angry:  Godsmack, "Whatever"
Day 21:  A song that I listen to when I'm happy:  R.E.M., "Shiny Happy People"
Day 22:  A song that I listen to when I'm sad:  Evanesence, "My Immortal" 
Day 23:  A song that I want to play at my wedding:  Trans Siberian Orchestra, "Christmas Cannon"
Day 24:  A song that I want played at my funeral:  Flogging Molly, "If I Ever Leave This World Alive"
Day 25:  A song that makes me laugh:  Sam Kinison, "Wild Thing"
Day 26:  A song that I can play on an instrument:  none. can't play an instrument.
Day 27:  A song that I wish I could play:  Rush, "La Villa Strangiato"
Day 28:  A song that makes me feel guilty:  none.  I can't think of any.
Day 29:  A song from my childhood:  A-ha, "Take On Me"
Day 30:  My favorite song from this time last year:  See choice #1....  :)

lets just hope...

that when I go into work tonight, it's not going to be a chaotic mess like it was the other night.  When I left there, usually positive me felt like a grumpy panda (to quote my sister...).  Started off the night just fine (even got to clock in a half hour early).  I got to clock in early because one of the cashiers we were supposed to work with that night decided they were not going to show up. Great...  strike one of the night.  Then of course at 10, we get busy and the only cashier I have working with me is a lazy pain the ass who likes to whine and complain instead of actually work.  Strike two...  yay me!  I go on break and I kid you not, it was the only time I got to move from my register that night!  Why is that??  Because at 12 midnight we were supposed to have another cashier come into work, but guess what???  Yet another no call, no show!  Strike three...  now I'm fucking pissed.  One o clock comes around and now I'm by myself until I leave, and I have to deal with rush #2 of the night, and people are getting downright rude, nasty, and pissy.  I can only do so much as one person, so if they don't like the speed at which I'm going, they can always shop somewhere else!  Someone proceeds to be a bitch and get all snarky, so I call for help to try and please the jackass...  He finally gets out of the building and things go all better from then.  I finally leave and poor Jason got to hear about my night of assholes and people who didnt want to show up for work.

Shaking my fist at thw world...

You ever have one of those days where everything just frustrates you to the point where you wish you could crawl back into bed, under your covers, and just not come out? Yeah, thats me right now. At the moment, I'm sitting at the local Sams club here in town before I start my shift. I took my usual bus ride here, and let me tell ya, I already have a headache thanks to the noisy little brat kids some lady brought with her. Ugh, what a way to start my day...

I finally get off the bus, and as Im making my way to Sams club, I get stopped by one of my coworkers (sams club just happens to be directly next door to my place of employment). She proceeds to tell me that one of the cashiers who was scheduled to work tonight decided to call off. Seriously?!?!? Its bad enough Im going to be the senior cashier tonight, but its fucking friday night and your gonna call in?!?!? Thanks alot asshole, you just caused my headache to get worse... And mind you I still havent started my shift for the night.

Now sitting here and listening to all the boring mundane conversations about peoples material bullshit, Im getting treated to yet another screaming kid who is driving me and others crazy... Holy shit I need to go somewhere nice and peaceful for awhile, where I dont have to worry about screaming kids, employees who dont want to show up, and stupid people in general... Like the old commercial goes, Calgon take me away....

Alright, Im outta here for now... Gonna walk back over to the kmart side of the building, and hide for a bit before my shift... I wrote this blog while on my ipad, pretty cool huh? Now I gotta hope that my slight sunburn wont be too much of a pain tonight. Meh.

more bands I found...

I found more bands...  just thought you should know!  :)

Dawn Of Oblivion  gothic metal from Sweden
We Come One  power/neoclassical/progressive metal from Croatia
Smorzando  black metal from Switzerland
Noturna  gothic/progressive metal from Brazil
Sado Sathanas  black metal from Germany
Gauchos de Acero  heavy metal from Argentina
Graveyard Dirt  doom metal from Ireland
Metalucifer  heavy/speed metal from Japan
Heljareyga  progressive metal from the Faroe Islands

A few groups I've come across...

As I've said before, I am a huge fan of music, especially classic rock and heavy metal.  I like the hard to find stuff, and European stuff as well.  These are just some of the bands I have come across in my findings...

Diamond Plate  thrash metal from the USA
Ravencult  black metal from Greece
Stigmatic Chorus  black metal from Russia
Centvrion  heavy metal from Italy
Seelengreif  black metal from Germany
Dhak  power metal from Argentina
Iiwanajulma  heavy metal from Finland

As I find more, I will of course pass along my findings in hoping to spread the word of good music around the world.  Hope you enjoy!

Another day...

Ugh, it's back to work for me tonight.  I just had five days off for my birthday (which in reality, since I didn't head up north to Mackinaw City, I really needed only one day off...), and now it's time to head off to work tonight.  I come back to work being it's the beginning of the month, which means in the state of Michigan, it's time for the bridge cards to start reloading.  It's a big headache for cashiers in the state, especially at midnights, because it seems to bring out all the morons, jackasses, dipshits, and all around lower than life scum.  And 95% of them think that since they get state assistance on their grocery bills, they should get the royal treatment and get helped with EVERYTHING.

One thing that bothers me is that this card is supposed to help getting the essential groceries and goods needed to survive.  I see most of the people coming through the lines with high end, luxury items (which to me, lobster, crab, other fish items, expensive ribs and other meats.)  Now if it were me, if I had the bridge card (or food stamps card, where ever you might reside), I would be buying stuff like chicken, ground beef, maybe 1 steak, salad stuff, and other frozen goodies.  I am guilty of needing the bridge card; I applied for one last week over the internet, because between my little salary and Jason's pay each week, we can barely afford the groceries we do get.  We pay our bills, get what groceries we can, and then decide whether or not to wash some laundry or go have some entertainment (laundry usually wins, Jason goes through shirts, shorts, and underwear quickly thanks to his job.)  We have no social life simply because we can't afford it.  Our free time together is usually spent at home, watching tv together, or on our computers.

Sure, we would love to go out more, be able to attend more concerts, sporting events, and other "luxuries" as I call them...   But we can't, because we have responsibilites.  The last concert we went to was to see Rush back in April, and the ONLY reason we were able to afford that was because of my income tax refund.  Next concert we plan on going isn't until the end of October.  Last time we did anything fun was this past Sunday, which happened to be my birthday, and we took a drive up to Frankenmuth, also known as Michigan's little Bavaria, and took in the sights, ate 2 good meals, and shopped at the nearby outlet mall.  And that was all able to happen because we saved throughout the month so we could have the extra money to do so.

Oy, I have unloaded enough for now.  Gonna go relax a bit before I get to get ready for the day, and take my bus ride through town so I can get to work.  Later all!

My Facebook groups

I have a few Facebook groups that I run.  If anyone out there who has a Facebook wants to join any of them, here is a list:

Curious Cats and Kittens!
Hockey Fanatics Unite!
Metalheads Unite!
Complete And Utter Randomness On The Internet
Free Samples For Everyone
The Rush Movement!

Enjoy! :)

Bands before they were famous...

Being the music nut that I am, I found this article quite interesting.  It's about 40 bands and their names before they were famous...  I knew some of them, but was quite surprised by others...

40 Names of Bands Before They Were Famous

My first post.

Yeah, this is my first post.  I wanted to start out another blog; since my social networking options don't offer a real blogging feature (oh, that was the one good thing about Myspace, at least it offered that for me...)  Now since I set this up, it feels like I can open up the doors a bit.  The doors to where you may ask?  I don't know exactly, but we can see where the journey goes.  If it's anything like my old Livejournal, it could go anywhere at any given moment.  Expect a lot of random shit to be put here, from music roundups, to ranting about sports or life...  :)