listen in at minute 10 or so.

John “Bowtie” Barstow, super genius.

Click on the Conti Family for the real sound of music.

And if you’re really ready, find the separate link on this page to “O Holy Night.”

Seen today on a walk:

While a couple of dozen steroid-filled multimillionaires prepared to take to the field this Super Bowl Sunday, their every movement watched by hundreds of millions of couch potatoes with eyes, a hundred or so tobogganers and another hundred or so spectators without sponsorships or contracts or monetary gain to drive them gathered on the side of Ragged Mountain in Camden, Maine to race down a chute onto the frozen ice of a pond. It’s called the National Toboggan Championships because they don’t know of any other place in the country that runs a race down a toboggan chute.

This is the other pole on the spectrum of American athleticism.

Since a New Year’s gift introduced it to me, I’ve been having a really good time playing the board game called Settlers of Catan. It’s a flexible Risk-like game based on building and expanding, not on fighting, with a board that can be rearranged in thousands of ways. The most fun part of it, I’ve found, is sitting around a table with a bunch of dear friends and watching them stifle (or not stifle) their rage or their hubris as the cycles of the game pass. Trading sessions are a particularly good outlet for creative thinking: the rules don’t forbid any kind of deal, really. If you enjoy the company of friends and the intricacies of strategy, I strongly recommend Settlers of Catan to you.

Last night, I was all by myself and wishing that I had some companions with which I could play Catan. In lieu of that, I downloaded a trial of a Settlers of Catan video game by Oberon media. The mechanics of the game were OK, I suppose, as good as any other video game, but I still didn’t have a good time. There was no witty banter, there were no cocked eyebrows, there was no visible frustration, there was no consolation. Nobody entered into any hasty, poorly-thought-out alliances. There were no pretzels. It just wasn’t the same.

A couple days ago, I asked for readers’ suggestions of some phrases that Barack Obama tends to use in his speeches, so that I could include them on some bingo cards for tonight’s State of the Union address. Today, I’ve completed the cards, which you can grab by clicking on the pictures below.

Here’s how it works: Grab a bunch of pennies for markers, and lay your bingo card out in front of you. Then, at 9:00 Eastern Time this evening, tune into the President’s State of the Union Address, available on the classic 3 TV networks, news channels, and NPR radio, as well as online from WhiteHouse.gov. Whenever Barack Obama uses a phrase you have on your bingo card, place a penny on the appropriate square, and if you get a diagonal or straight line across the card, bingo – you win the game.

I’ve also included a blank bingo card for you to fill in, if you like, with your own predictions about careworn phrases President Obama will use for his speech tonight.

It’s astonishing, isn’t it, how even in the most harsh circumstances Nature finds a way to carry on.

Temperature Data from Toronto, Canada provide just one example of a cooling trend across the United States, Canada, Russia and Europe:

How is Al Gore going to explain away that?

Given that the government and business offices that ordinarily make much of the news have been closed for a couple of weeks now, journalists have been filing generic end-of-year and end-of-decade retrospectives for a while, filling space until the news cycle starts up again. When I came across the comic book cover you see below, I decided I’d do these puff pieces one better, with a double retrospective, looking back at how people in 1978 thought the beginning of the decade that just ended would turn out: With a crash landing at the bottom of an ocean on an alien world, of course.

In the year 2000, “On a planet totally covered by water, Dan Dare and the seven-man crew of an Eagle craft are spinning out of control into a deepsea trench. The Eagle’s main reactors are useless… and the trench is twenty miles deep!… Not even the Eagle’s reinforced hull can withstand the pressure of twenty miles of ocean!”

I think we can all remember where we were when this story hit the news. I hate it when my Eagle craft’s main reactors are useless.

At CNN, Mark Saltzman names Plants Vs. Zombies the best strategy game of 2009. The game (which you can play a limited version of for free) threatens you with a Grandpa’s vision of zombie hell: they start on the sidewalk, they won’t get off your lawn, and the only way to stop them is with some creative gardening:

The notion of plants defeating zombies is very cute, and the round sweetness of the graphics helps to blunt the vision of charred flesh and dismemberment. The graphics can’t blunt the violence completely, however, so if on-screen violence turns you off you probably won’t enjoy the game.

For me, the real let-down of Plants vs. Zombies was in its simple geometry. Zombies are always on the right, coming toward the left. The lawn is a small set of very large spaces in the game, too. Look at the screen capture of the game I’ve made above. See the areas of light and dark green? You can only fit one plant on each, making for some limited choices. With limited choices, gameplay quickly gets dull.

Plants vs. Zombies is an example of a “tower defense” game, so named for the image of being holed up in a medieval tower with invading armies to be repelled. Another “tower defense” game I enjoy much more is Bloons Tower Defense 4 by NinjaKiwi. In this game, the only violence you’ll encounter is that of popping balloons, making it safe for the eyes of the littlest kids (like Plants vs. Zombies, it’s also price-accessible — you can’t beat free). Also as in Plants vs. Zombies, the number of defenses available to you expands as you play the game more and more. But unlike the unidirectional gameplay of Plants vs. Zombies with few gamespaces, the gameplay of Bloons Tower Defense 4 features a variety of twisty, turny, splitting and joining paths along which balloons drift. Choices on the placement of defensive weapons can also be made down to the pixel, and with range in mind that choice is strategically crucial.

Plants vs. Zombies is fun for a few hours of snow-bound fun before it gets old. But when the drifts come up to your door and you won’t be able to get out for days, settle into Bloons Tower Defense 4 for harmlessly absorbing escapist fun to fill the time.

Christmas just isn’t Christmas without Ziggy the Christmas lobster.

O Come all Crustaceans
Come on little lobsters
Come over here for herring bait
And get stuck in my trap
Sing! about that white meat
Suck it out His leggies
O Come let us adore Him
O Come let us adore Him
O Come let us adore Him dipped in butter.

It’s shocking but true. In both politicians’ speeches, regular episodes of inhaling are almost invariably alternated with exhalation. While Sarah Palin and Jimmy Carter can both lay some nominal claim to the pattern, it is Jimmy Carter who engaged in the practice first. Former Governor Palin has yet to respond to these new charges of plagiarism, although in a perhaps-sarcastic reference she has pointedly looked at the camera in recent television appearances while inhaling, exhaling, then inhaling again.

In other news, the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation are far along in their development of the “Einstein 3″ system, which in order to assure the security of U.S. Government websites will be engaging in regular surveillance of activity on non-governmental websites. The goal: find in advance lurking hacker cyberterrorists in their natural environment, on private servers, before they reach the government. Also on private servers: you and me.

But enough of that. Look! Sarah Palin is inhaling again! In jogging shorts!

“New high-concept Burger King near Exit 48 in Portland” reads a headline in my morning newspaper. What merits a full-length article about a Burger King, one with matte photos and all? The Burger King has a rail with barstools, and a flat screen TV, and they put up a wall between the place you order your food and the place you eat it. Otherwise, it’s basically a regular old Burger King.

What makes this a “high concept” Burger King?

“High concept” is a bit of a silly term that comes from marketers and pitchmen, and as with so much in marketing it means just about the opposite of what it appears to mean. Far from original, it’s about cribbing from someone else’s original idea as much as possible. Far from deeply conceptual, it’s superficial and quick and formulaic. The practice of “high concept” design for movies or books or fast food restaurants is to start with a cliche, add something unexpected, and sum it all up in a sentence lacking a verb.

Theater: Muppets… with Sex!

Books: Jane Austen… with Sea Monsters!

Movies: Snakes… on a Plane!

Compared to these zany possibilities (no matter how well or how poorly realized) “A Burger King… with Barstools and a TV!” just doesn’t measure up.

We can do better than this. If you were asked to come up with a high concept Burger King by the folks at corporate HQ, what would you throw their way? Share your high concept Burger King in the comments section below.

Jim wrote earlier this morning about the heavy risk these days of buying a Christmas present that was manufactured using slave labor or child labor. One way to make sure you’re not giving such an unethical gift this year is to buy something that you know is made right here in the USA.

One place to look for such gifts is Skreened, a company that prints t-shirts in Columbus, Ohio. Skreened only prints on shirts that are made by American Apparel. American Apparel only manufactures shirts in the United States, so you can be confident that sweatshop labor abuses aren’t being supported by your holiday shopping.

But which shirt at Skreened makes the best holiday gift? Let me recommend this one in particular, which mocks the right wing’s anti-foreigner campaign of fear, suggesting that President Barack Obama is a foreign-born socialist. This t-shirt identifies the person the right wing really ought to be worried about: Santa Claus.

As we enter the season for another war on Christmas, it’s time the right wing target its fury at Santa, who tries to usurp the position of the Baby Jesus with a program for radical redistribution of wealth.

Gifts for everybody, even for children who don’t contribute to the economy by getting a job? Why, that’s welfare! It’s socialism! Worse than that, it’s European socialism! Santa Claus is a European Socialist!

You thought Barack Obama was a threat to international capitalism? He’s got nothing on Santa Claus. Haven’t you noticed the striking similarity in appearance between Santa and Karl Marx?

This all-American anti-santasocialism shirt is available in a variety of colors and styles for men, women and children, so that we can all stand together to defeat the radical agenda of the man dressed in flaming red.

They seemed friendly at first. They promised to protect us from the rain. But then, just when we needed them most, they turned on us… U. They Arrive. Tonight.