This weekend was my first big Christmas Shopping weekend, and after 5 hours of listening to the sugar plum sweet sounds of the season, I needed an insulin shot. Not only are the classics unbearably sentimental and cheesy, but I can’t even relate to them – I’m a California boy, there’s no such thing as a “White Christmas” out here. Still, I like having appropriately seasonal music for my christmas parties, tree trimmings, and present rapping sessions, so below I’ve published my list of off-beat songs for the Christmas Season.

The Residents – Santa Dog and Dumbo the Clown
Classic. Perhaps the strangest Christmas songs of all time.
They Might Be Giants – The Bells are Ringing
Explores the connections between xmas music and mind control
Oingo Boingo – The Cat is Dead
A sweet childrens chorus delighting in their tale of offing every member of the family
Akira Soundtrack – Dolls Polyphony
Music from a scene in the film when dolls and teddy bears magically come to life only to latter attack. Sweet, childish, and creepy all at the same time.
Danny Elfman – Nightmare Before Xmas and Edward Scissorhands soundtracks
Aphex Twin – Girl/Boy Song
There something classically Christmas to this song, and then there are breakbeats. Perfect for breakdancers out on the promenade at Christmas.
Perrey Kingsley – Baroque Hoedown
Classic moog experimental cheesiness makes the perfect soundtrack for toystores
lHans Reichel – Bubu and his Friends, and Street Song
A jolly little jingle played on a wooden daxophone. What’s a daxophone you say? I’m glad you asked
King Missile – The Bunny Who Wanted to be a Rat
A Christmas wish to eat garbage and spread disease
Cibo Mato – The Candy Man
We all know this one from the original Willy Wonka movie, but Cibo Mato make it sound so sexy.
Wesley Willis – Chicken Cow
About a mythological beast that only comes out in the dead of winter and can flap like a bird and stab you in the ass
Tom Waits or Ghost of the Robot – Chocolate Jesus
Let’s take the two things everyone likes about Christmas and hold our Christmas mass in a candy store.
Traditional -Carol of the Bells
No other traditional carol expresses the anxiety I feel at Christmas so well.
The A-team – Christmas Claws
Screaming hardcore that’s hard to figure out, but they do yell Christmas a couple times, so it counts. “ho ho ho fucking ho”
Run DMC- Christmas in Hollis
Too christmasy to be cool, too old school to be cheesy.
Baboon Torture Division – Cobras
A track composed entirely with a rewired singing santa doll. Sounds like the devil.
Dresden Dolls- Coin Operated Boy
Finally a sex doll for girls.
Cowboy Bebop soundtrack– Green Bird
Sounds like a traditional religious choir, but was specifically compossed for a scene of brutal mob violence. Why do these two great tastes taste so great together?
Pogues- Fairytale of New York
Spend Christmas Eve in the Drunktank this year
Rolling Stones or Only a Mother – Mother’s Little helper
Mom’s on drugs, what’s more christmasy than that?
Rasputina – Gingerbread Coffin
Because gingerbread houses are for kids who don’t use their dollys for black mass
Tom Leher – Hanukah in Santa Monica
While there aren’t that many Hanukah songs, their batting average is way higher.
Richard Cheese – Holiday in Cambodia
The Dead Kennedy’s classic gets the full tilt holiday treatment
Only a Mother – How they Show Their Love
About families and force feedings
Ralph Carney – Solstice Time
Tom Waits’s horn player gives us a appropriately cheesy secular Christmas song dedicated to feasting and solar orbits.
Dan Bern – Jerusalem
Tired of waiting for the second coming? Dan Bern is your man.
Traditional – Korobeiniki
Better known in this country as that Tetris song. To me Russia means Christmas, because it’s snowy, and there are pine trees and the kremlin looks Christmassy, and even the big fur coats look christmassy. I bet that’s why Russians are so jolly
Mastodon – Linus and Lucy
A Charlie Brown Christmas goes Metal
Logan Whitehurst – Snowman and Me
The Ramones – Punk Rock Christmas and We’re a Happy Family
Babyland – Mini Mall
Industrial anti-mall rage
Momus – Old Friend, New Flame
The ultimate gift a friend can give you is his girlfriend
Nick Cave – Opium Tea
Between the call to prayer and the thinking of his children, I do believe this is a lonely junky’s Christmas.
Depeche Mode or Johnny Cash – Personal Jesus
Who knew you could play the same song for both cynicism and sincerity and have it work and rock both ways?
LL Cool J – Rock the Bells
So much better than jingle bell rock
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Sleepytime
Play this song to get your kids ready for beddy by and they’ll never forget it.
Leonard Cohen –Story of Isaac
What does god want for Christmas? Your son.
Tiger Lillies – Struwwelpeter
Good kids get pretty picture books for Christmas, bad kids get horribly disfigured.
Soul Coughing – Drunk on the Train to Chicago
Going home for the holidays is a great chance to get drunk on the way.
Primus – Toys go Winding Down
Totally Rad – Turtle Eggs and Mumblety Pegs

What Christmas Music Do You Reccomend?

You know you want it. I don’t know how I could stand living before I got a Haunted Toaster

Have you ever been browsing for plastic surgery tools and come across a picture of a woman about to go under the knife for liposuction and the lines drawn on her belly look almost exactly like Hello Kitty in a Bunny Suit?

Now you have.
But I’ve got to know, is the resemblance coincidental, or was the surgeon getting creative? Really now, what’s up, doc?

This entire week has been filled for me with things that have just made me step back out of the moment and realize just how bizarre my daily life is.

It started with a prophetic, voice-o-gawd type phone call – “I have what will seem like a strange question to you”” they began. “I doubt it will be a strange question to me,” I assured them. Very little seems strange to me.

I spent a good part of yesterday talking on the phone with an organ broker, a job I never even thought about before. These are the fellows who have to negotiate a whole host of legal and temporal pitfalls, not to mention the shock and dismay of relatives, and get organs from the recently deceased donors to terminal patients before the organ goes bad. Everything is racing against the clock and every account is a life or death type of deal. Imagine that.

I also spent a bad part of yesterday arguing with a felloe who wanted to underpay me for a prop torso I’m making him that’s going to be torn apart by lions in a bicycle commerical. And even though arguments about pay are always stressfull, never the less, I am making a rubber torso to be torn apart by lions in a bicycle commercial. If that doesn’t sound awsome to you I don’t know what I can do aside from repeating it again…slowly.

Then, there’s this:

and this

which are genuine medical antiques and so charming, I must have one for my kitchen!

Bad day at work yesterday:
Spent two hours yelling at a mexican dwarf who brought me the wrong coffins.
Bad days at work are like a Tom Waits song.

Good day at work last week:
client: “we just got a call. One of our vigilante street priests won’t be able to make it. that means we don’t have enough priests to defeat the vampires. Could you don a robe a join us?”
Good days at work are like the old tales from the crypt comic

“I really desire this book. I’m sure it is probably a sin of some kind to want something that much.”

The Codex Seraphinianus, AKA the Codex Serafini is one of the great inpenatrable tomes of our time. An encylcopedia written in an invented language that slightly resembles tamil . and detailing every aspect of a place that vaguely resembles earth, from chemistry to clothing, and especially zoology.
I know what it is to sinfully desire a book. I get shivers just thinking about it. I’m considering taking something from one of it’s volumes as a tattoo. I think it captures my ascetic of humor, mystery, science and transcendance greater than any other work. At the very least I want sections of it written all over my flesh in wet ink so I can be photographed lurking naked in dillapidated old victorians.