Spotted these Choco Crosses made by Harry London at Target last night and snapped a shot with my phone. I almost picked one of these babies up, but it was milk chocolate. I only eat dark chocolate religious icons.

I mentioned the odd confection to a coworker, and he lamented the absence of Jesus on the cross. We then discussed whether or not Jesus would need to be molded out of regular or white chocolate, a centuries-old debate.

I ordered a new CD player for my truck, but it hasn’t arrived yet, so I went back to the box of cassettes this morning and fished a few more out to listen to on my way to work.

The 80’s were once again well-represented, as my initial grab was an old record by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. I never understood the name of this band. Were they suggesting that their music was sexy like the things one might do in the dark? Or that they’re incompetent musicians who play their instruments as if they were in the dark?

I reached back into the box and pulled out some more 80’s pop. This Echo and the Bunnymen album was a favorite of mine way back when, so I set it aside for a quick listen in the truck, if only to just to hear The Killing Moon.

Speaking of the 80’s, Pretty in Pink was a seminal album, distilling the essence of 80’s pop into two sides of huge songs by huge bands. Many of us heard our first bit of New Order from this record.

PJ Harvey’s album “To Bring You My Love” rocked the shit back 1995, and was on the stereo at my apartment on and off for months after its release. I decided to bring it with me in the truck to see if it would hold up.

The songs are still fantastic, but the heavily distorted vocals on some of the tracks became annoying. And speaking of distortion, many of the drilling bass lines in the album are distorted to the point that they sound like the rapid-fire farts you might expect to blow out of a robot’s pneumatic anus.

While I wanted to hear more of her distinctive, powerful voice on the record, I clearly remember a time in the early to mid 90’s when distorted vocals were the status quo in alt-rockland. Placed in this context, I felt more forgiving towards the music.

Lastly, I grabbed a well-worn tape from the box. It was Blind Melon’s self-titled debut from 1992. Most people remember this album or the band from the video for the runaway hit song, No Rain, which featured the dancing bee girl. I never really cared for that song myself, but found the album as a whole to be fantastic.

One song on the album seems like it could very easily have been their signature tune, had it not been for the success of No Rain. The song, Change, was apparently written by Shannon Hoon at the end of a 3-day coke binge in Indiana. Here’s a YouTube link with an acoustic version of the song accompanied by random pictures of the band.

Those of you who listened to Blind Melon probably know that Hoon overdosed on cocaine in 1995 after a long struggle with sobriety, only 13 weeks after the birth of his daughter, Nico.

According to the band’s web page, the following lyrics from this song are on Hoon’s gravestone:

But I know we all can’t stay here forever,
so I want to write my words on the face of today and then they’ll paint it.

My wife snapped this photo yesterday of our son, Hayden, playing in the back yard. He insisted on wearing his new red cowboy hat and little else as he splashed around in a wading pool we recently picked up.

This photo immediately got my attention because it is the archetypal moment in time. I can see years in the future, this very photograph shown again and again as Hayden grows up. Graduations, wedding(s), and other defining moments in his life will arrive, and a possible collage of photos will be put together tracking his life up until that moment.

This photo will surely be among them.

I bought a truck last weekend and drove the Honda Dadmobile off of a cliff. Of course, the truck could also be considered a Dadmobile, with its four doors and modest 2WD. However, I feel that as far as Dadmobiles go, the truck adds a significant boost of macho to my overall look (bringing my macho to its maximum).

It’s a 2000 Nissan Frontier, so many of you won’t count this truck towards any significant macho boost. I can assure you, the macho is there and ready to rock.

This is the official font of the “Old West.”

The truck has many great features that my last car lacked, but as with the original Dadmobile, the new vehicle only has a factory tape deck installed. Time to dig into the old box of cassettes! Thank the Lord I haven’t thrown them away!!

Sadly, this box is marked for deletion in our house, but my inability to actually chuck the forgotten music is a blessing today. Every three years, I listen to one or two of these tapes for at least 30 seconds, until the sound quality becomes too much for me to take. How could I every part with them?

I closed my eyes and jammed my hand into the box, pulling out the first tape I grabbed hold of.

Although I do believe in the philisophical concept of “2Hype,” I can’t take credit for this tape being in our collection. Clearly, my wife picked this up during her “high top fade” phase in junior high.

I reached in and snatched another tape.

Another one of my wife’s tapes! Perhaps this is the tape she received for Christmas many years ago since she already had this one.

I closed my eyes again and selected another tape.

This one is a mixed tape that someone made for my wife years ago. I can only imagine that by the end of Tape 3, all of the Sentimental Feelings in the world had been covered. Tape 4 would just be a rehash.

Once more into the box.

Finally, I found a tape that I bought. I got this Ice Cube tape during a very confusing time in my life, when I thought that I would try to plumb the literary depths of gangsta rap. This endeavor proved fruitless, so I removed the blue bandana from my head, tied it around my neck like a scarf and scurried off to intensively study polka.

I decided to take this tape to the truck and give it a go. Turns out, it kind of sucks. Luckily, the liner notes provided some entertainment lacking in the music.

Ice Cube wishes to acknowledge white America’s continued commitment to the silence and oppression of black men … the failure of the public school system to teach all of its students about the major contributions made by our African-American scientists, inventors, artists, scholars and leaders … America’s cops for their systematic and brutal killings of brothers all over the country. … You say Ice Cube is a problem. Well, you’re right. He’s two people in the same body: one African, one American. (clipped from this review)

I wonder if he still feels this way. Certainly, he’s not referring to me, right?

Remember when you were young, and you slaved over your Christmas List for your parents. This one document alone taught many greedy children how to construct a business letter and make copies in triplicate: one for Santa, one for the parents, and one for the personal records (which consisted almost exclusively of previous year’s Christmas Lists).

I remember writing words like “X-wing Fighter” and “CD Player” and “Parachute Pants” in my Christmas Lists, recognizing at the time how big the impact each item would have on my post-Christmas life. In fact, I wish I still had my X-wing Fighter! At least I’m wearing the parachute pants right now.

My personal Christmas Lists, as important as they seemed to me, have all been downgraded to mere chicken scratch after viewing the Magnum opus of Christmas Lists unearthed by my wife this weekend. She’s in the process of dumping old papers from her childhood, and came across a Christmas List she wrote in the mid 80’s. Nay! It isn’t even a list. It’s a Christmas chart!

Check out a high-resolution scan of the list. My wife’s parents were so impressed with the list that they laminated the paper and shoved it into a box for her to save.

P.S. I hope you know how to read graphs.