You used to have to be a real fucking nerd to be festooned in the kind of dorkery you see all over the place now. It wasn't that long ago that having an iPod was some kind of status marker, the headphones their distinctive shade of "Rob Me" white, and now I would probably say that such devices were - if not outright garbage - certainly approaching proto-filth status. If I saw a person with an iPod in one hand, I would assume sight unseen that they had some kind of obsidian hatchet in the other.

Is it? I don't know. Maybe? Sorry I'm still reading "Trust Me I'm Lying" and learning about creating viral headlines.

When you start something, you just hope it will make sense to other people. We have been lucky in this regard, I would say, and nowhere luckier than Child's Play.

I don't really have 5 facts. I'm just reading Trust me I'm Lying right now and trying to move my story "up the chain". I've only just started it but already I am equal parts terrified and intrigued. I thought I sort of new how shitty the blogosphere was but I apparently had no idea.

I'm trying to figure out which rituals are meaningful to me. I did not catalog the year on the site proper, though we did contribute to the aggregated lists of others. I've read a lot of lists that purport to describe the year, but are instead communiques from an alternate universe where Kentucky Route Zero did not win this year and also win permanently in every category. Or maybe I am the one in the alternate universe. Here, let me subtly adjust the atomic weight of hydrogen. Are you picking up on that? How's your hydrogen doing.

As picked by me.

I am especially bad at gifts.

Last year I celebrated New Year's Eve in the bathroom after an especially toxic meal at the Olive Garden. This year it seems I'll spend it in bed thanks to the super virus I've contracted. I went back to the doctor yesterday and this time got four different prescriptions. I took a handful of pills this morning and once this post is done I'll crawl back into bed.

In real life, it was not I but Kara who demanded that he keep the fires of Mt. Doom stoked. But I can be much, much meaner than she can in the strip. Thus was Grabble made to suffer twice.

My kids are always coming home with some exciting new virus they picked up on the playground. This particular one is a real treat that sent me to the emergency room because it felt like I was swallowing shards of glass. Thanks son!

I suggested how it should go in the third panel, but the things I quote in the second panel are what he actually said to give someone that impression.

The principle enunciated in the strip is true, I suspect, for many lives. The solution may be unique. And I don't know how effective such techniques are long-term; one imagines this might get very expensive. And even then, there's no guarantee of success. A man may leer over a Virgin Mai Tai just as easily as he may leer over a hot cocoa.

I hope that if you celebrate Christmas you had a good one. Santa dropped off some cool stuff at my house. I mentioned the Anki DRIVE race set before Christmas and now that we’ve had some time to play with it I can confirm it’s pretty rad.

Aside from pruning and snipping Gabriel's prodigious output as you would a hedge, another task which devolves to me is the maintenance of our growing Library - the compilations of our "works" that will stand, like stone legs, to puzzle the next civilization.

I’m back from my vacation today and feeling pretty great. I spent a week with my family at Aulani which is a Disney resort in Hawaii. It was our second time there and it’s just amazing. We are all huge Disney fans in my family and even though it’s not a theme park, Aulani still delivers an incredible Disney experience. We relaxed in the pools, floated around the lazy river, played on the beach and spent way too much on souvenirs.

After we watched this unboxing video, I think that Gabriel was utterly convinced that he wanted to unbox Anki Drive, if nothing else.