I Started a Podcast (Which Started the Whole World Crying)

That's right people. As a Christmas present to my family (provided that they actually like it. If not, it was all an elaborate joke that you would have to be British to enjoy) I started a podcast. I figure it's actually easier than writing in the blog and it'll be easier to consume as well.

Rather than writing in the blog, I think it'd just be easier to do a podcast once a week. I record myself telling stories, relating anecdotes, and generally doing all the thing I do on the blog just in audio form. I even came up with jingles and drops to make it more like a radio show and less like me going blah blah blah (though there is a significant amount of blah blah blah). Anyway, I encourage you to give it a listen and lemme know what you think. You can download the first episode through this link.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the picture above, that's my high tech podcasting setup. If it looks like the arm from a desk lamp with a soup can bolted to it, that's exactly what it is. My kingdom for a shock mount.

Anyway, enjoy episode 1 of the podcast. I have episode 2 recorded as well and I'll drop that when you've had a chance to absorb the first one.

Family Christmas Favorites

Hey everybody. I hope all ya'll enjoyed the Christmas music. Yes, I really went into overdrive this year. If any of you feel like you still have room for more, I gots what you need.

There are a few Christmas albums that were special to me as a kid. We played them over and over year after year and I developed a fondness for them that goes beyond my general love of Christmas music. All of these albums have long since gone out of print. I have never included any of the songs from these albums in the mixes because they don't fit genre-wise. So I figured I'd upload them while there's still a few days 'til Christmas when you can enjoy them.


When you click the link below, you should see three albums you recognize and one you don't. The one you don't recognize is the Christmas album that was passed down to me by Elder Heywood (my grandpa) on my mission. I listened to it for two Christmases in Cambodia and it really takes me back. Anyway, here is the link:

Family Christmas Favs

Lemme know if you have any trouble getting them. (Yes, those are the albums pictured above)

This Year's Christmas Mixes

For the past seven years I have been compiling Christmas mixes for my family and friends. At two discs per mix and roughly 22 tracks per disc I have supplied well over 250 fantastic Christmas songs for your listening pleasure (that doesn't even include this year's mix). Only lately has it dawned on me that I may have oversaturated the market. For most of you 250 Christmas songs are more than enough. As for me, I still have over 900 more mix-worthy Christmas songs that have not yet been used and will acquire even more this year.

What I'm getting at is this: this year will be the last time I'll push my Christmas mixes on you. I'll still make a mix for personal purposes year after year. If you want a copy of future mixes, all you have to do is ask, but I will not be peddling them as I have done in years past.

All that business out of the way, I have decided that this is the year to not just saturate the market, but completely flood it with more Christmas music than you will ever know what to do with. Below are the links to the individual mixes. If you need help downloading or unzipping the files, click here or click the link at the top of the blog that says, "How to Download and Unzip Files". Feel free to download as many of the mixes as you want. Share the links with friends and family if you so desire.

Christmas Mix 2011 Disc 1 This is Disc 1 of the standard Christmas mix. If you have enjoyed previous mixes, you should enjoy this one as well. I have hand-selected the very best songs in my collection for your Christmas enjoyment. There are a variety of styles represented, but it meshes pretty well.

Christmas Mix 2011 Disc 2 This is the second disc of the standard mix.

Country Christmas Disc 1 Country music is like raisins: people either love it or hate it, which is why I've been cautious about including any country in my standard mixes. Because of the large amount of country Christmas music I own, it was only fitting that I give it its own mix. There are modern country singers as well as old timey ones. If you like country, you should like this.

Country Christmas Disc 2 If one disc of country Christmas isn't enough for you, how 'bout a second?

A Non-Anglocentric Christmas: Old School Disc Much like country, not everyone likes hip-hop and r&b. This first disc is dedicated to 100% solid gold 1980s and 1990s Christmas hip-hop. If you like Run DMC, Snoop, and other such rappers, you'll dig this.

A Non-Anglocentric Christmas: New School Disc If you like hip-hop and r&b, but want something a little more up-to-date, this should scratch you where you itch.

Christmas Mix Greatest Hits Disc 1 If you missed out of any of my previous 7 Christmas mixes, this represents the best of all those mixes. This is the best of the best of my Christmas music.

Christmas Mix Greatest Hits Disc 2 There were so many good songs on my past mixes, I couldn't whittle the cream of that crop down to a single disc.

Classy Christmas Maybe all this newfangled music just ins't your bag. Maybe you'd rather have a classy Christmas with Bing, Dean, Frank and other Christmas crooners from years gone by. Done and done.

A Heavy Metal Christmas This is probably my favorite mix of the year. It's mostly power metal, but there are a few other subgenres represented. If you're a metalhead, this is for you.

What Did I Do to Deserve This Christmas? If you are a glutton for punishment, this is your mix right here. I have compiled the very worst Christmas music in the universe. Each song is more horrific than the one before it. If you enjoy MST3K, this is for you. I also did introductions for each track so you can appreciate the badness of each one.




I hope you enjoy this year's Christmas music. Also, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I don't normally hear anything about my mixes, and I want to feel like I'm not just throwing this out into the void.

Being a Winner

Over the years I have been to many sporting events, concerts, and other events in which prizes may be thrown or shot out of cannons into the crowd. I have never caught such things for several reasons: 1) I am usually sitting in cheap seats. Even with the aid of a T-shirt cannon, very seldom does a prize reach the elevations where my seats are normally situated. 2) Girls throw like girls. More often than not, there are no pneumatic cannons available for the delivery of prizes to a crowd. I attended a Phoenix Suns game in which the cheerleaders hand-tossed shirts into the crowd. Most of the shirts were distributed to the expensive seats where free shirts aren't needed. Those girls threw like girls. 3) I don't consider myself to be particularly good at catching things. I'm not horrible at it, but in a crowd of 20 or so people who may be competing for the same airborne prize, I'm not so arrogant as to suppose that I would be the most catch-skilled member of the group. These factors being the case, I have never caught T-shirts, knick-knacks, foul balls, flying pucks, or other such prizes...until last night.

Megan and I took Leah with us to the Pima homecoming football game last night. The stands were much more crowded than they normally are, and we didn't sit in our normal seats, which are much closer to the field. At one point, the cheerleaders began flinging little foam footballs into the crowd. Most of the crowd stood and began yelling for the cheerleaders to throw something their way. I remained seated because I had a certain bugaboo on my lap. As I sat there, I saw a little blue prize peek its nose over the outstretched arms of the standing crowd. Due to its high vertical trajectory, I could see that I had a legitimate chance to catch it. I was holding Leah with my right hand, so I lifted my left hand (a hand I don't trust to do the most menial of tasks. My left hand is pretty stupid. It's a wonder I ever learned to juggle) toward the oncoming prize. I placed my hand directly in the flight path of the ball, and none was more surprised than I when while sitting with a baby on my lap and using a hand I don't trust to hold beverages I snagged the ball in mid-flight and brought it in like a falcon on a mouse. It seems such a little thing to catch a mini foam football that probably represents a per-unit cost of less than 10 cents to the pep squad. Be that as it may, I'm still dubbing myself a bona-fide winner.

The Joys of 8 Man Football

One of the many perks of Megan's job is the little card that gets our family into any high school sporting event free of charge. We used her card during basketball season last year, but Leah was too young to stay awake through the entire varsity game. Now she's old enough to enjoy football, which means we get to spend some quality family time watching sports. Don't think I don't love it.

The first thing I noticed at my first Pima football game (aside from the fact that the home stands are pretty small, and the visitor's section is laughably small) was that Pima, being a 1A school, plays 8 man football. If you are a member of my immediate family or a member of Megan's family, you are probably asking yourself, "How many players are there on the field normally?" The answer to that question is 11.

In my last entry, I bored you to tears with comic book minutae. Now I'm going to take a moment to bore you with sports minutae. The thing I couldn't figure when I started watching 8 man football was this: what positions do you get rid of? Off the top of my head I figured it would be the tackles and a wide receiver. Then my brain started wondering how you could tell if the quarterback was outside the tackles (you know, for grounding purposes) if there were no tackles. Well, I did a little research and found out that I was indeed right when I guessed that they got rid of the tackles and a receiver. So how do you call intentional grounding? I have no idea.

Despite being a little odd, 8 man football has its perks. "What perks?" ask those of you who bothered to read this far. Well, I've watched three games so far and have yet to see a field goal. I don't know if they just don't have kickers or if the coaches just play a lot of Madden(tm), but I have never seen the kicking team brought out on a 4th down. Not only that, but I haven't seen a lot of punts. They have a punter, but he only comes out on 4th downs inside the Pima 40 yard line. What does all this mean? It means that more often than not, teams go for it on 4th down and they always go for the 2 point conversion. It makes the games a whole lot more exciting. Why? Because normally going for it on 4th down or going for the 2 point conversion is a gutsy call. You see way more gutsy calls in 8 man football than standard football.

Entertainment value aside, football has turned out to be a great family activity. Megan enjoys watching her yearbook photographers at work as well as the game, and Leah enjoyes being adored by everyone who sees her. All in all it's a good time for everyone.

Comic Book Nerd

As many of you may already know, this is the year of the comic book for me. As a matter of fact, one of the major reasons I wanted to get this iPad was because I can now carry a large comic book library with me everywhere I go. It's a nice perk, but not the only reason I bought this thing (that would make me a huge nerd if it was the only reason, which is why I tell myself it isn't).

Since starting to read comic books back in July, I have read many many comics. It's so much easier to read them digitally than in paper form. I do actually own some hard copy comic books which were purchased from the fantastic Atomic Comics before it closed it's doors for good last month. I own a few TPB's (trade paperback): one DC Crisis, and two UK Transformer compilations. The bulk of my collection, however, is comprised of about 90 issues of Alpha Flight.

What is Alpha Flight? It's a team of Canadian superheroes similar to the X-Men. As a matter of fact, Wolverine got his start in Alpha Flight before running off to join the X-Men. How did I get involved with such a strange group? Well, I started reading comic books because I felt I needed more X-Men in my life. The issues that introduce Wolverine to the X-Men also introduce Alpha Flight to the world. I really like Alpha Flight because it's basically a crisis in every issue. They pull of stuff in April issues that other titles save for December or their annual. They kill off major characters and replace them fairly routinely. Also, Alpha Fight doesn't always have the benefit of sponsorship by generous benefactors, and more often than not they are not even supported by the Canadian government. When you read Alpha Flight, you will absolutely never know what they're going to do next.

Anyway, just because I feel like it and I have the time, I'm going to run down all the comics I have read thus far and give them a rating (no, I won't do it issue by issue. I'll just rate each series).

Alpha Flight Volume 1 There are three volumes of Alpha Flight thus far (well, I think they just started a 4th. I own the first issue of it). The first volume has 130 issues, the second has 20, and the this has only 12. I started the second volume, but I'm not done yet. Anyway, I loved the first volume of Alpha Flight. I read it after having read every DC Crisis. In Alpha Flight, every issue is a crisis. There were very few throwaway issues. they always faced awesome foes, and there were so many twist and turns, I couldn't possibly explain them to you in a concise form. Just chalk me up as an Alpha Flight fan. These issues were as good as anything I've read thus far. Rating: *****

Scott Pilgrim This was the first (and only thus far) graphic novel I ever read. I read it after seeing the fantastic movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. If you haven't seen it, you are missing a movie unlike any other. It's an all-out visual feast. It's as good a comic book movie as there will ever be. Anyway, the graphic novel is as good if not better than the movie it inspired. It's a graphic novel for people who enjoy comic books, video games, and indie rock. If you enjoy any or all of those things, you should enjoy it. I love the story as a metaphor for modern romantic relationships, but I also love it as pure entertainment. It is smartly written, and all the dialogue is almost over the top in its wittiness. All in all a very good read and highly recommended. Rating: *****

As for the DC Crises, I think I'll rank them from my favorite to my least favorite. Before doing that, I think I'd better explain what a crisis is in comic book terms. DC has been around since the 1930s, which means they've had 80+ years to muck up their continuity and make things so convoluted that it became darn near impossible to jump into any of their series without doing a lot of research first. The first major crisis was Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was DC's way of blowing up everything and putting it back together again in a more reader friendly way. With that knowledge in your pocket, here are the crises I have read in order from my most favorite to my least.

Infinite Crisis Oddly enough, Infinite Crisis was the comic Joel always tried to make me read when he was trying to convince me that I should read comic books. I liked Infinite Crisis the most because it seemed like it had the most compelling story lines. It just generally had the most going on, and the things that were going on were all worth following. You really can't ask for more in a massive crossover series. Rating: *****

Crisis on Infinite Earths You really can't do much better than the original massive crossover. The only thing I didn't really like about this series was that at times it seemed like story lines were being laid out in a very meticulous way simply because they needed to shape certain characters in certain ways in order to get themselves out of certain corners they had painted themselves into previously. I'm just saying that the story seemed a little less organic than it could have been, but I understand why they did it the way they did. Aside front he one gripe, Crisis on Infinite Earths is very good and highly enjoyable. Rating: ****

Identity Crisis Identity Crisis is more of a minor crisis than other crises in the DC catalog. It centers around The Elongated Man's wife going missing. I love this story because of the awesome husband/wife relationship between Sue and Ralph Dibny. This is a story that carries over into Infinite Crisis, and even though the conclusion is fairly senseless, there's a lot of real emotion in this story. I'm only downgrading it because it makes me so sad and it seems senseless in the end. Rating : ****


Zero Hour: Crisis in Time Zero Hour continues to story of Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) and his transformation to Parallax and his attempt to rewrite time. I loved the story of Hal Jordan's fall, and Zero Hour is a good story, but it has waaaaaay to much rainbow in it. Seriously, it's very distracting to look at that much rainbow without seeing unicorns. Oh, and there were a couple pieces of the story that seemed like too much of a stretch, even for a comic book. I would tell you what they were, but it's been a while since I read this and I honestly can't remember. Rating: ***

Final Crisis I just really didn't like Final Crisis much. If I was a goth (no, not a Visigoth or Ostragoth or any other sort of actual goth. I'm talking about the people who misuse the word goth and take it to mean "draped in black and obsessed with death") I would eat this with a black fork and spoon, but since I'm a normal person, I didn't like the satanic overtones. I also really hated the aftermath story lines. The Super Young Team is an abomination, and the whole crisis seems 1) unappealing 2) not so critical that it can really call itself a crisis. Rating: * After reading this one, I wanted to hit it with a rolled up newspaper and shove it's face in the Super Young Team side story so it would know what it did wrong.

In addition to all these crises, I read all the lead-in and aftermath stories. I won't bore you with the details of all of those, except to say that 52 was an excellent series and really made me care about Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. The last comic book series I'll tell you about (you didn't really read this far did you? I wrote this more for myself than anyone else) is...

X-Men I have read the first 200 or so issues of X-Men, and loved every single one of them. With all I've reD thus far, I'd consider myself much more of a Marvel man than a DC guy. The X-Men are now so iconic that people who have never read a comic in their life have a general sense of the characters and their respective stories. It's just been a pure delight to get a deeper sense of the X-Men. Although I like to tell people I'm an Alpha Flight fan, I think the X-Men are my favorite comic book characters of all-time.

Well there you have it. I've read a bunch of comic books and loved most of them. If you actually read this, I hope you're a nerd, otherwise I'm sorry for wasting your time.

Typos Aplenty

If you are one of the three people who has started reading this blog now that I am writing in it again, you might have noticed a large number of typos slipping past the editor. There are two reasons for this: first, this blog has no editor. I just write things and throw them on the web and rarely if ever read them again. Secondly, I am writing this from my iPad.

You may have not been aware of the fact that I am now a proud owner of an iPad, but it's true and here's the short version of how I came to own it despite the aforementioned poorness (see last entry). In order to acquire this highly-prized technical wonder, I had to give up something else I treasure. A few years ago back when I used to be in bands, I spent more than I could afford on an Ashdown bass amp. I loved that amp, but I chose to give it up. I haven't played in a band for a while, and I haven't plugged in and played loud since I got married, and certainly not since Leah was born. I put the amp on craigslist and got a few bites before selling it.

The funny thing is that the guy who bought the amp is the former bassist of Redfield, a local band whose demo CD I once owned. They were pretty good, so feel free to look them up. So not only is the amp going to get a good home, it will play more gigs than it ever did with me. If it was a dog, this would be the equivalent of it going from an apartment in the city to a nice farm in the country where he can run free and not poop on my lawn.

With the money I got from selling the amp, I caught the tail end of a refurbished iPad sale at the apple store. Shortly after ordering the iPad, our dryer broke, our rental house fridge broke, and we found ourselves in a bit of a financial bind. I felt selfish for having purchased something that basically serves only me. The rest of the money I got from the amp went toward taking care of our basic and immediate needs. I don't want to spend too much time talking about our finances, and I'm realizing that my short explanation is much longer than I intended. I guess I still feel bad about owning something as expensive as an iPad during a time when we don't have the budget for such extravagant items. Of course timing is everything. If appliances didn't choose to all break at once, our belts might not have been so tight the past few weeks. If I hadn't ordered this iPad when I did, all of the amp money would have gone into the family budget. I'm getting bored with this paragraph, and it's time for it to end.

So why this business about typos? I'm not quite used to typing on this thing yet. I also can't figure out how to turn off the feature that tries to autocomplete every single word I type. So basically my writing is going to be full of a lot more mistakes than it would be if I was using my regular computer. You have just taken a very long walk for a very short sip of water. If you've enjoyed this half as much as I have, then I've enjoyed it twice as much as you.

Vacations for Poor People

So Megan and I have been feeling kinda poor lately. It might be because we're kinda poor. Megan isn't making as much this year as she did last year, and we recently had to buy a new dryer because our old one konked out on us. Immediately after replacing our dryer, we got a call from our tenants in our Mesa house, and the fridge there is dying.

Megan has a long weekend this weekend. We wanted to take a little bit of a family vacation, but we have to do it on the cheap. We thought about going to St. Johns, but we ended up coming to the valley of the sun so we could take care of our refrigerator problems.

Yesterday we made the drive from Pima to Mesa. We dropped Leah off at Shannon and BJ's so she could play with her cousins and not come appliance shopping with us.

We found a refrigerator that meets our needs and our price range without too much trouble. We bought it from this giant used appliance warehouse. They best thing about them is that they deliver and haul away the old one, not to mention the warranty, which is nice seeing as how it's a used fridge. Anyway, we have the business end of our plans taken care of and have the rest of the weekend open for pleasure.

So that's where the poor part of our vacation comes in. We're desperately trying to not spend money on this trip. We have two free passes to Castles and Coasters that we inherited on the Senior Trip we chaperoned. We'll be hitting that tonight, and we'll spend the rest of the time hanging out with family, playing board games and generally trying to not do anything that costs anything. So far we're right on par. We might pull off an entire 3 day weekend in which we only pay for gas and appliances. We just might make ends meet long enough to replenish our accounts and give ourselves some breathing room. We have been blessed with some unexpected income (all of which has come after paying our tithing) and we should be ok. It's just funny that we're on holiday and yet we're doing all within our power to have a fantastic time and not spend money.

Why I Don't Like Facebook Anymore

The title of this entry alone sounds arrogant and self-serving. I am telling you right from that start that you might get exactly that kind of an entry. This being the case, I am including the following disclaimer:

The following entry does not reflect the views of The Badger Family as a whole or any member of The Badger Family other than James.

Over the past year I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the Facebook experience despite the fact that it is the only link I have to many of my friends and family members.

I joined Facebook back when I was single. In those days you could easily be left out of a party because you weren't on Facebook. I was very pleased to discover in my early days of facebooking that I could stay in contact with friends and family members who were far away without much effort on my part. It was a glorious thing and I loved it. It was clean and slick and wasn't covered in glitter and animated gifs like myspace was (I only joined myspace so my band could have another friend). I thought I had found a social networking utopia.

So why am I now bitter and curmudgeonly? Because my Facebook experience has turned into something I didn't want it to be. I used to look at my Facebook news feed and see things of interest and import, but now it's so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

Please understand that I am not attacking you, my friends and family who read this blog. I genuinely want to know what you are doing in your lives. That's why I got onto Facebook in the first place. What follows is a list of reasons why I don't go on Facebook much anymore.

1. The non-friend Without looking I would guess that I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 friends on Facebook. They can't possibly all be my friends. Studies have shown that human beings are really only capable of handling about 30 actual friends. There are really only about 10 friends of mine that have moved out of my life that I actually want to keep tabs on. Even taking family into account, there's no way I (or anyone else for that matter) should have even 100 friends on Facebook. In my group of Facebook friends I have people I don't even know, people I know but don't really like, people I know only vaguely, and people who would have naturally drifted out of my life were it not for social networking. My actual friends and family are probably the smallest piece of pie in the pie chart that represents my Facebook friends. It just isn't natural and it isn't the sort of thing a friend purge would fix because deep down I feel bad about it. So I have minutiae from people I don't really know or care about cluttering up my feed and keeping me from my intended purpose on Facebook.

2. The copy and paste I can't swing a nyan cat through my Facebook feed without hitting a dozen blowhard-ish statuses that feature the words "Copy and paste if you agree." These statuses are usually political or religious in nature. Here's the thing: I don't need a hallmark card to tell someone how I feel about my religion or my country. Should the need strike me, I can write my own feelings about such things with no help from anyone else. The statements that litter my feed are hackneyed, overwrought, and at times factually inaccurate. It boggles my mind that people won't use their own words to express how they feel. Copied and pasted statuses clog my news feed and actively deplete my faith in humanity.

3. The offensive political comment Facebook affords people the opportunity to say whatever is on their mind. Many people take advantage of the opportunity to throw their political views around a bit. I used to be a fan of talking politics until I realized a couple things: 1) Over the past decade, everyone has chosen one side or the other and nobody is really interested in what the other side has to say about anything. There is no true debate or discussion, only argument. We have effectively allowed punditry to destroy the ability to discuss politics calmly. Also, nobody seems to change their opinion one iota because of a political discussion. Everyone already has their minds made up, so you would literally be better off discussing politics with rocks. And yes, I am including myself in these sentiments. 2) The Internet is a horrible venue for the discussion of politics. It's so easy to misread someone's intent when you are looking at words on a screen and not their facial expressions. Not only that, it provides a screen of perceived anonymity and distance. People will readily say things online that they would never say to someone's face. On two separate occasions when discussing politics I have had friends say things to me that definitely crossed all lines of common decency. On both occasions they made it personal, and on both occasions I emailed the friends and asked them if they really meant what they said. When faced with the unnecessary sharpness of their own words, they both apologized and recanted. Like I said, the Internet is a horrible forum for political discussion. If I discussed politics face to face with either of the two aforementioned people, I don't think they would have attacked me personally. Anyway, with those two points made, I feel I need to say that I am looking forward to not logging into Facebook during an election year. I anticipate such a maelstrom of political offensiveness on both sides of the coin that I will be better served doing almost anything else.

4. The time-waster Facebook is set up in such a way that you can waste hours upon hours of time while accomplishing nothing. The sum total of useful things that I have learned or done on Facebook in the past year would account for less than an hour of my overall Facebook usage. I have wasted hours upon hours on Facebook doing practically nothing. And I don't even play farmville or any of the other horrible time-draining games people beg me to join. I have wasted hours that I could have spent reading books, watching sunsets, or playing with my adorable daughter. Forgive me for getting all high and mighty, but I have much better things to do.

5. The low-opinionator Facebook has rarely if ever improved my opinion of anyone. I feel like I get along a lot better with people if I don't know that they really like lady gaga. I have never looked up to someone because they had to guts to make insensitive political statements online. I have never seen pictures of someone's appendectomy and felt closer to them afterward. Facebook is a place without borders, and borders are what make us a society and not a random collection of primates throwing feces (an image apropos to political discussion on Facebook). Oftentimes Facebook simply provides too much information for me to respect people I would be otherwise inclined to respect.

I feel like I could go on and on, but it would just devolve into something more bitter than it already is. Once again, if you are a true friend or family, you are the reason I joined Facebook in the first place.

After all this, I will not be deleting my Facebook account. Why not? Because there are a few people that I will never hear from again if I delete my account. I still plan on logging in once every few months to see where life has taken them.

So where can you go if you want to know what I'm up to? You're looking at it. I'm not promising to suddenly become the world's most faithful blogger, but I do intend to write shorter blog entries that are a little more like status updates. I really do get winded when I undertake long, drawn-out and preachy entries such as this one. So there you have it: a system that might work better for everyone...or at least just me.

Badger Baby Blog

So we started a new blog that follows Leah and her antics. It will be much more interesting than this blog and probably be updated more often. Check it out:

http://badgerbabyblog.blogspot.com/