One of my few superpowers is that I’m really good at overcomplicating my life. When then future Mrs. D4L and I got engaged last year, we started planning a fall wedding. We started off with small ceremony with just immediate family and close...

Four examples of music that take a decidedly
different spin on the holidays. by Corbin Smith

Over the years, the recording industry has managed to create Christmas music for every mood. Thousands of sad piano takes on "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts Roasting Over an Open Fire), the pure pop joy of Mariah Carey belting out “All I want for Christmas is you,” the simple, light brain damage you get from a loud, irritating version of “Sleigh Ride.” But what about when you are in a VERY particular mood? When the season has transported you into one of life’s bizarre gutters, left you in such a particular place where you need a very particular sort of Christmas music to haul you out of it? For you, for this, I offer this guide to Christmas music for truly any mood. 

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For when you and your fellow teenage orphans—residents of a foster home owned by kindly old women in deep with the bank— just pulled off the Christmas Eve heist of the century to pay her mortgage and are tipping back a big ol’ glass of hot cider while looking over Portland: Bob Dylan, Christmas in the Heart

A few years back, Bob Dylan, our truest and most loving uncle, made a Christmas album. Surface analysis: it’s weird he did that. Deeper analysis: it’s not actually weird, because Bob admires folk music and the Great American Songbook, and Christmas music is a canon built from both. Even deeper analysis: it’s still pretty weird, because it’s weird to listen to Bob Dylan unleashing his signature late career Warm Croak on Christmas songs you’ve been inundated with your entire life.

But when you get past the sheer novelty of King Gravel intoning “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” a song made famous by Judy Garland, you remember that, oh yeah, Bob Dylan is one of history’s greatest musicians, and offers a wealth of feeling, warmth and energy—even (especially) when he’s pursuing a strange muse. His “Must Be Santa,” anchored by a loud accordion and augmented by a rechristening of the reindeer as post-war presidents, is pure jalopy shit—a sound of the Christmas gathering flying apart at the seams as candy-ridden children roam through the hallway and shove each other into toilets. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” is a standard ‘50s pop music take, lifted into something transcendent by Bob’s presence behind the microphone. “Winter Wonderland” and “Christmas Island” presents an alternate world Dylan, one more into vibing and tipping back, as opposed to an artist with an endless appetite for work and startling discipline.

The best song on here is Bob’s version of “Do You Hear What I Hear.” He is, after all, an old wise man now, wandering through deserts, handing out gifts. His intonation on “A child, a child/Sleeping in the night/He will bring us goodness and light,” is struck through with a warmth and sincerity that you don’t associate with Trickster Bob. Is it a performance of awe, trying to capture a world that still had some sense of the divine? Is it a true wonder in the potential of the child, a hope for the future? Is it just a straightforward exaltation of Christ himself? You can never really know with Bob, of course, but it stirs.

••••

For when your company—an international logistics concern—sent you on a last minute overseas business trip over Christmas, and you stroll the streets alone and alienated on Christmas Eve, until you walk into a fancy cocktail bar and lock eyes with another disaffected expat at the bar: Duke Ellington, The Nutcracker Suite

Did you know that Duke isn’t his real name? You see, when Duke Ellington was a child, everyone who lived in his neighborhood thought he seemed like minor royalty, and just started calling him Duke as a result. That was how smooth this man was, folks. But it would not have meant much if the Duke was not also a world historic musical genius. A bandleader, composer, a thinker, whose work brought a formal precision and imagination to jazz that changed the enterprise forever, transmuting it from an outgrowth of blues into the great American musical form.

One of the ways that Duke built this new form was taking forays into classical music, breaking apart or injecting the classical canon with improvisation and swing time, or likewise, taking the forms of classical music and overlaying them with original compositions informed by his lifetime as an orchestra leader working in a jazz idiom. In Duke’s hands, genre distinctions, of dance music or concert music, become wobbly, fall off the boat, drown in the ocean of his genius, and are reborn into an object of pure American greatness. 

In 1960, Duke, riding a popular revival as newfangled bebop artists codified his importance in their own development, worked with Billy Strayhorn—his longtime arranging partner—to break apart Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker suite, perhaps the most famous piece of dance music ever composed, and reforge it into this album, which takes Pytor’s famous melodies and remakes them into nine swing numbers. 

“The Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy,” all ethereal glockenspiels in the ballet, becomes “Sugar Rum Cherry,” a terribly horny reforging that asks a question that would not occur to you otherwise: What if I kind of want to fuck the Sugar Plum Fairy? “The Nutcracker March” is now “Peanut Brittle Brigade,” a New Orleans parade of nutcracker men. “Chinoiserie,” the Duke’s version of “The Chinese Dance,” loosens up the source material to the point where it sounds like something someone might actually dance to as opposed to the Tchaikovsky original, bloodless to the point of making its subject seem alien.

••••

For when you’re driving home from your family’s yearly Christmas gathering—which was good, for the most part, but your Aunt Shelly got WAY too blitzed on eggnog and hot toddies and vomm’d in the backyard: Wynton Marsalis, Crescent City Christmas Card

There’s a lot to know about Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeter, band leader, and academic, who has long represented a kind of traditionalist approach to jazz performance and composition that can maybe seem a little square. And while I personally don’t know a lot about Marsalis, I do know about this album, a suite of Christmas standards he released in 1989. A lot of it is fairly standard jazz takes on Christmas classics: a trumpet playing a slightly off-kilter rendition of “Winter Wonderland,” a brassy vocal take on “Sleigh Ride,” “Carol of the Bells” with the forward momentum of the death chant replaced by laconic swing music jamming, and “Jingle Bells,” with a li’l woodblock that brings horse evocations to the party. 

But some of it is insane—insane in a way that makes you wonder what Wynton is trying to get out. Take this album’s version of “Silent Night”: a standard female vocal, trilling and ethereal, but set to a backdrop of woozy, uncertain horns, that give the thing a vaguely creepy vibe. What does it mean to set a hymn of the infant Christ in front of trumpets that suggest a danger lurking on the horizon? Is it an evocation of Herod’s men in the field, looking for the child so he may butcher any competition for his spot at the top of Israel’s local government? Is it broadcasting uncertainty about the future of this child’s life, over the fanaticism he would come to embrace, the horror of his violent death? Is it a way of juxtaposing the sentimental story of Jesus’ birth with the world of unease and terror that would form in his wake? 

Why would someone make a version of “Little Drummer Boy” that seems to intentionally bury the drums in the mix? Trumpeter’s jealousy? What does a laid back swing version of “We Three Kings” mean? That the kings were cool? Were they cool? I have never thought about it, really. By insisting that he press as much jazz shit as possible into these standards, Wynton runs up against the idea of these things as content about Christmas and into the idea of them as forms.

••••

For when she took the kids home after their mandatory Christmas Eve visit and you have wandered out into the cold night, purchased a six pack of Rolling Rock and a bottle of Mad Dog, and—two brewskies and five sips of fortified in—you plop down in the arched, gothic-style doorway of a neighborhood church, and just sit there, sipping and watching the rain come in, wondering when and how it all went so wrong: Benjamin Britten, Ceremony of Carols

20th Century British Composer Benjamin Britten was a sad man who made beautiful music. Ceremony of Carols is a song cycle for boys choir and solo harp, written on a boat coming back to England during the middle of World War II, when U-Boats were scouring the ocean, looking to send boats full of British guys plunging into the icy ocean. It takes a bunch of old Christmas and Baby Jesus related poems in various languages, sets them to music, and goes at it hard as hell. It’s beautiful, it’s faintly sad, it’s everything you need for a Christmas where the disappointments of the year fight against the idea of a wee babe, born in a barn, bringing hope into the world. NOT FOR LIGHT LISTENING, but essential for any soul slipping into darkness. 

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Global ratings agency, Moody’s, has reaffirmed Australia’s AAA rating and stable outlook, consistent with recent assessments by Fitch and Standard & Poor’s. Australia’s sovereign credit rating is based on the nation’s highly resilient economy, high level of government financial strength and low level of event risk.

In the Mood Canvas by Nenad Mirkovich is a(n) Limited Edition. The Edition is Limited to Limited Edition pcs

Trump returns to Washington for meeting with Biden, promises smooth transition

Good morning Kansas City and welcome again to The Totally Throwback Thursday show. I’m DJ Mason and I’m going to take you back in time, where big hair ,big shoulder […]

The post The Totally Throwback Thursday Show with Special Guest Tracy Moore!! appeared first on KKFI.

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Our inspection of the page (dotmoovsv2.pages[.]dev) has shown that it is a deceptive site pretending to be the original one (dotmoovs.com). The sammers behind it seek to steal cryptocurrency from individuals. Users should be cautious online to avoid falling for scams like dotmoovsv2.pages[.]dev.

"Drowned Town is about the ebb-and-flow of water, rivers, lives, time, and stories. My playlist reflects that back and forth in eras, genres, and moods."

The last time a human visited the moon was in December 1972 during NASA's Apollo 17 mission. Since then, there have been many foiled plans to go back.

A moose wandered into a company's garage in Sweden and trampled all over three BMW cars, causing about $20,000 worth of damage before fleeing.

A time lapse of the moon rising over Windsor, Ont., Nov. 12, 2024, from a CBC tower camera.

Who said wraps can only be made of maida? This high-protein, nutritious wrap will make you forget all those store-bought wraps in just a few minutes!

India’s HEX20Labs has partnered with Japanese firm ispace for a mission to send a CubeSat into lunar orbit. Scheduled to launch on ispace's M2 mission, the Indian CubeSat will ride aboard the lander Resilience, aiming to orbit the Moon and conduct critical technology testing. This mission signifies a major stride in India’s cislunar exploration efforts, enhancing capabilities in satellite standardisation for lunar missions. With this launch, India and Japan strengthen their cooperation in space research, marking a significant step toward future lunar exploration and the advancement of technology in low-gravity environments.

US President-elect Donald Trump thanked President Joe Biden for pledging a smooth transfer of power as the victorious Republican made a historic return visit to the White House on Wednesday.

Demi Moore may never forgive Rob Lowe amid Bruce Willis’ health battleDemi Moore not happy with Rob Lowe as he revisits their past fling amid Bruce Willis ongoing health battle.A source spilled to RadarOnline.com, Moore believed it was “mean and even dimwitted” for Lowe as he...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW18WnTDR5o

Они сделали эту вещь похожей на музыку к заставкам сериалов 80–х. А какой бас. Ух.

Написал anarrich на rightmusicvideo.d3.ru / комментировать

Highlights: Maintaining your usual sleep schedule, even during daylight saving shifts, helps keep your circadia

The first casualty in the bypolls for six Assembly constituencies in West Bengal has been reported, as a Trinamool Congress leader who was severely injured in a shootout at Jagatdal adjacent to Naihati Assembly constituency in North 24 Parganas district, died on Wednesday.

Moov Leasing, un start-up românesc lansat de Bogdan Speteanu și Mircea Dihel, propune o schimbare radicală în leasingul auto, transformând experiența de utilizare a unei mașini într-una simplă și accesibilă, la fel ca utilizarea unui telefon mobil. După 20 de ani de experiență la BCR, timp în care a ocupat mai multe funcții de conducere, printre care și ...

The post Bogdan Speteanu, Moov Leasing: “Utilizatorii pot închiria o mașină pe o perioadă medie, de la unu la cinci ani, și au posibilitatea de a o schimba în funcție de nevoile de moment” appeared first on Forbes Romania.

In a brief meeting, the two leaders assured the nation of a peaceful transition of power on January 20, 2025.

The violence occurred at Bhatpara, the area adjoining Naihati Assembly where bypolls are being held on November 13, 2024

In the meeting, the two leaders assured the nation of a peaceful transition of power on January 20 next year.

President-elect Donald Trump made his victorious return to Washington on Wednesday, meeting with jubilant House Republicans and then conferring with President Biden in the Oval Office, where they mutually pledged a smooth transfer of power after a bitter election in which they repeatedly disparaged each other.

Re-release; Larmagnat, S; Lavoie, D. Sedimentary basins of northern Canada: contributions to a 1000 Ma geological journey and insight on resource potential; by Lavoie, D (ed.); Dewing, K (ed.); Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 609, 2022 p. 185-213, https://doi.org/10.4095/326091
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/gid_326091.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/gid_326091.jpg" title="Sedimentary basins of northern Canada: contributions to a 1000 Ma geological journey and insight on resource potential; by Lavoie, D (ed.); Dewing, K (ed.); Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 609, 2022 p. 185-213, https://doi.org/10.4095/326091" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Re-release; Lavoie, D; Pinet, N; Zhang, S; Reyes, J; Jiang, C; Ardakani, O H; Savard, M M; Dhillon, R S; Chen, Z; Dietrich, J R; Hu, K; Craven, J A; Roberts, B; Duchesne, M J; Brake, V I; Huot-Vézina, G; Galloway, J M; McCracken, A D; Asselin, E; Decker, V; Beauchemin, M; Nicolas, M P B; Armstrong, D K; Hahn, K E. Sedimentary basins of northern Canada: contributions to a 1000 Ma geological journey and insight on resource potential; by Lavoie, D (ed.); Dewing, K (ed.); Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 609, 2022 p. 37-76, https://doi.org/10.4095/326090
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/gid_326090.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/gid_326090.jpg" title="Sedimentary basins of northern Canada: contributions to a 1000 Ma geological journey and insight on resource potential; by Lavoie, D (ed.); Dewing, K (ed.); Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 609, 2022 p. 37-76, https://doi.org/10.4095/326090" height="150" border="1" /></a>

1. NASA Stennis Tests Boost Artemis Moon Missions  Mirage News
2. NASA Stennis - Ideal Place For Commercial Companies  Mirage News

“Extreemrechtse samenzweringstheorieën worden er gepromoot”: Britse krant ‘The Guardian’ plaatst geen info meer op X  Het Laatste NieuwsHele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

A new analysis of data from NASA's Voyager 2 mission reveals that the planet Uranus and its five largest moons might harbor subsurface oceans and potential conditions for life. The BBC reports: Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa's Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago. But a new analysis shows that Voyager's visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like. [...] So, for 40 years we have had an incorrect view of what Uranus and its five largest moons are normally like, according to Dr William Dunn of University College London. "These results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans below the surface that could be teeming with fish!". It has been nearly 40 years since Voyager 2 last flew past the icy world and its moons. Nasa has plans to launch a new mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, to go back for a closer look in 10 years' time. According to Nasa's Dr Jamie Jasinski, whose idea it was to re-examine the Voyager 2 data, the mission will need to take his results into account when designing its instruments and planning the scientific survey. "Some of the instruments for the future spacecraft are very much being designed with ideas from what we learned from Voyager 2 when it flew past the system when it was experiencing an abnormal event. So we need to rethink how exactly we are going to design the instruments on the new mission so that we can best capture the science we need to make discoveries." Nasa's Uranus probe is expected to arrive by 2045, which is when scientists hope to find out whether these far-flung icy moons, once thought of as being dead worlds, might have the possibility of being home to life. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Newlyweds Sam & Lena joined Transform as part of their honeymoon, because they wanted to honour God from the very start of their life together.

President-elect Donald Trump was welcomed at the White House on Wednesday after declining to do the same for President Joe Biden after the 2020 election.

Returning to Washington, Trump meets with Biden in the Oval Office

1. Donald Trump meets Joe Biden in White House; both pledge smooth transition  The Hindu
2. Power Transition Will Be "As Smooth As You Can Get", Says Trump  NDTV
3. US President Biden meets President-elect Donald Trump at White House, leaders vow smooth transition of power  The Financial Express
4. Joe and Donald warm up by the White House fireplace  The Times of India
5. Biden greets Trump with handshake, both pledge smooth transition  Moneycontrol

Indian-American Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi today won the Congressional election from Illinois, defeating Republican former Elmhurst Mayor Peter DiCianni.

Welcome to the new Contending for Truth website! We are excited to have an opportunity to streamline the site, focusing more on the content and delivering the teachings to you. God Bless you, Dr. Scott Johnson.

Welcome to the new Contending for Truth website! We are excited to have an opportunity to streamline the site, focusing more on the content and delivering the teachings to you. God Bless you, Dr. Scott Johnson.

Welcome to the new Contending for Truth website! We are excited to have an opportunity to streamline the site, focusing more on the content and delivering the teachings to you. God Bless you, Dr. Scott Johnson.

Welcome to the new Contending for Truth website! We are excited to have an opportunity to streamline the site, focusing more on the content and delivering the teachings to you. God Bless you, Dr. Scott Johnson.

Well, I did it. I jumped on the Moo MiniCards bandwagon & I'm happy I did. My cards are beautiful. Everyone that sees them just "Ooos" & "Aaahs" over them. The photo below doesn't really do them justice, but at least you get a basic idea of what they look like. They're lovely!

Hop on a flight from the Atlanta GA to your over the water bungalow use to involve a long flight and jet lag. No more. You can be in your bungalow in time for breakfast. Pixie Honeymoons heads to Sandals Resorts to bring you the latest in all-inclusive luxury.

Starting a business is a bit like falling in love for the first time: it is exciting, exhilarating, and new. You want to savor each moment and be your very best every minute of every day.

After the adrenaline rush subsides, however, reality sets in and you may discover that not everything about running a business is so wonderful. There will be tasks you don’t like to do, activities you find stale and boring, technical difficulties to test your patience, and clients and vendors who might challenge you.

complete article

POLJUNK, the National Affairs desk of Glorious Noise

Here we are again. In the year of someone’s Lord 2024, we are back in time. We had a slight reprieve with four years of competent governing that resulted in record economic growth, withdrawal from historically disastrous military entanglements in the mideast (brought to you by the formerly worst president in US history), and at least some sense of normalcy, but I guess we are going back. This was after what many thought was an aberrant Trump presidency–surely that was a blip in the American experience, right? As it turns out, the aberrant is the accepted. It’s America’s true face, one we occasionally veil but never actually change.

I could list all the reasons Donald Trump is a terrible person and worse “leader,” but we all know them. And that’s the point: This isn’t some unknown or misunderstood element. This is Donald Trump. We know him and unfortunately, he knows us. Better than many of us know ourselves.

Trump isn’t some genius, he’s just a guy who is willing to do what others won’t because most of us live between imaginary lines of decency.

Read more at Glorious Noise...

Published at LXer: Amarok 3.1.1, a free and open-source music player, has been released with enhanced toolbars, track editor fixes, and more. Read More......

Juice shop, vegan restaurant, vegetarian restaurant | Lilburn