On the first day of something my something gave to me … something, something, something, blah, blah blah blah blah, five golden … things!

Arrgh. Leave us face it. For a band that began its recording career with what was ostensibly a Christmas album, we are terrible at remembering even the most oft-repeated holiday songs. Someone – I think it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – once suggested caroling around the neighborhood on Christmas eve, hoping for some charitable cast-offs and crusts of festive breads, but when you glom over too many lyrics, you lose credibility as a caroler and instead of handing foodstuffs to you, your audiences tend to throw them at you with some force. Personally, when it comes to seasonal pastimes, I prefer the ones that don’t involve serious festive injuries and having steaming vats of hot holiday cheer poured on us from second-story windows. Call me Scrooge.

We don’t have any really strong holiday traditions. Probably the most enduring one is our annual Christmas week sequestration, imposed on us by the local DPW, which views the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill as a handy place to dump tons of snow they’ve removed from more affluent and generously populated quarters. Sure, we can’t emerge from the mill for a stretch of days, but that gives us a reason to be innovative in our festive celebrations. It’s not about how many gifts you buy, or how much food you throw in the garbage disposal …. no no, Christmas is about the little things. Really little things, like nano particles. You see, when we’re snowed in over the holidays, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee takes it upon himself to show us slide presentations of particles he has utilized in his more depraved experiments. A four-hour powerpoint on sub atomic particles – now that’s the kind of Christmas I’m talking about.

Speaking of Christmas, as I mentioned before, we are marking the 20th anniversary of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, this season. And when I say we’re “marking” it, I don’t mean urinating on it …. far from it! While 2000 Years To Christmas is not generally available in stores, there are umpteen different ways to hear it, download it, and even get your hands on the disc. If you want to know more, just visit our special Anniversary Page for details.

Otherwise, we’ll be posting a few things over the holidays, as always. Maybe not all twelve days … just the ones we know the lyrics to.