Once there was a girl who was plagued by excess static electricity. Through no fault of her own, it seemed that anyone she touched suffered a painful static shock. Her parents were concerned and asked a child psychologist for advice.

The child psychologist said, "If she were my daughter, she'd be grounded!"

BTW, I recently finished "Singularity Sky" and now I'm into "Iron Sunrise" by Charles Stross. I found his short story "Antibodies" several years ago in the British online SciFi magazine Infinity Plus and it is the best damn short SciFi story every written. Now a lot of his fiction is online but the best way to find it is through WikiPedia. Singularity Sky was good, Iron Sunrise is really REALLY good so far. The last SciFi author I got this excited about was Vernor Vinge, and it's funny, because I hadn't read any VV novels until I read "A Fire Upon the Deep", but eventually I figured out he wrote the great short story "Bookworm Run!", which I read in an Analog SciFi anthology when I was summer camp at Interlochen in eighth grade. First scifi book I ever bought, I think.

Anyway, Vinge and Stross are the berries. Now if I could figure out the origin of this phrase about things "going pear shaped"...

Here just in time for Xmas is "Jingle Bells", as a medley by 78 different artists. See if you can find YOUR favorites! 8 meg MP3

In order:
1 Arthur Godfrey & All the Little Godfreys "bell intro, chorus 1"
2 Ferrante and Teicher
3 Count Basie
4 Gisele MacKenzie
5 Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra
6 Gene Krupa verse 1
7 Glenn Miller
8 The Gypsy Hombres
9 Joe Williams DJ Riko mix
10 Sammy Davis
11 Prissy Reed & Margie Singleton chorus 2
12 Tammy Faye
13 Morton Gould
14 Sammy Kaye
15 Dinah Shore
16 Les Paul verse
17 Wayne Newton verse 1
18 Duke Ellington
19 Santo and Jonny
20 MROLI Christmas Megamix chorus 3
21 Toni Harper
22 Unknown Country Male Vocal
23 Duke Pearson
24 Maynard
25 Diane Krall chorus 4
26 Jingle Dogs
27 The P
28 Spokane Area Children's Chorus
29 Johnny Mercer
30 Three Suns
31 Peter White
32 Bootsy Collins verse 2
33 George Jones
34 Blues Magoos
35 Smokey Robinson / DJ BC
36 Ferlin Husky chorus
37 Barbara Streisand
38 Bob Ward chorus
39 Herman Apple extra long
40 Peter Cetera
41 Starland Vocal Band
42 Mitch Miller
43 Wilson Pickett verse 1
44 Vaclav Hybs ????
45 Crazy Frog
46 Dolly Parton verse 1 extra long
47 Fats Waller chorus
48 Sufjan Stevens
49 Rev. Horton Heat
50 Chuscales
51 Dean Martin remix
52 Peggy Lee
53 Paul Mauriat verse
54 Herb Alpert
55 Clark Chambers' Klingon
56 Pig Latin
57 The Simpsons
58 Artie Shaw chorus
59 Andrews Sisters
60 Williams Brothers
61 Platters
62 Joel Mabus verse
63 Al Caiola
64 Sanborn Singers verse 1
65 Jimmy Smith
66 Soulful Strings chorus 4 bars
67 Floral Pops 70
68 Jim Nabors
69 The Roy-Cliffs
70 Guy Lombardo
71 Kate Smith
72 Shannon Quartet verse 3 1st half
73 Gene Autrey verse 3
74 Kitty Wells chorus 1st half
75 Toots Thielmans
76 Julie Andrews
77 Frank Sinatra 1946
78 the Beatles

...I figure with 400 or so versions I could make this go on for an hour, but as I found more this year I started using smaller excerpts instead, so for instance you hear Bootsy, Smokey Robinson, and the Blues Magoos in pretty quick succession. In almost every case I used an excerpt from a complete MP3 of the tune I have, so I'll post a link to an archive of 75 or so versions of Jingle Bells shortly. This archive should be an invaluable tool to those who come after.