Attribution: Musyajackson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper will be doing his Christmas shopping today, since everyone else obviously did theirs yesterday. In what can only be defined as a total lack of judgement, the keeper planned a brief shopping stop yesterday afternoon and was …
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Category:Holidays
Kickass and White Christmas
Attribution: Ruth Hartnup from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, accepts the keeper’s assessment that a gray or a brown Christmas is as good as a white one, except as it comes to singing about it in the mode of Bing Crosby. (Who is Bing Crosby?, you …
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The Pen in Hand’s Collection of Unconventional Christmas Moments: “Ice Dance”
Artwork by Michael DiMilo Ice Dance from “Edward Scissorshands” By Geoff Carter The holiday season is all about family tradition. Whether it’s about going to Midnight Mass, carving the Christmas ham, avoiding the mother-in-law’s homemade eggnog, or sampling Grandma’s oyster stew, traditions are what makes our holidays special. But some people are hurting. Many are …
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The Pen in Hand’s Collection of Unconventional Christmas Moments: “Fairytale of New York”
Attribution: John Tenniel , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Katzenjammer and Ben Caplan The holiday season is all about family tradition. Whether it’s about going to Midnight Mass, carving the Christmas ham, avoiding the mother-in-law’s homemade eggnog, or sampling Grandma’s oyster stew, traditions are what makes our holidays special. But some people are hurting. Many are …
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Kickass and Shortest Day
Attribution: Photo by Kacper Szczechla on Unsplash Kickass, the doorstop dog, suggests to the keeper that on this shortest day of the year, even though he has lived for some 33,680 days of varying lengths and loved every one of them, he might follow suit and post one of the shortest Kickass messages of the year: MERRY CHRISTMAS to …
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Smart Cookies
Photo by Geoff Carter By Geoff Carter Tis the time of year for holiday traditions. We hang the lights, trim the tree, sing the carols, buy the presents, drink the eggnog, and bake the cookies. We watch our holiday favorites on TV. Some of us still send Christmas cards. Like most of us, I have …
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Kickass and a Gift of a Cold
Attribution: NIAID, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, cannot help but admire the way the keeper and Phyllis dealt with the Christmas gift exchange issue by sharing a common cold. It was apparently Phyllis’s idea as she shopped around until she found a cold that suited her and after …
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The Pen in Hand’s Collection of Unconventional Christmas Moments: “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” by Tom Waits
Attribution: Archives Branch, USMC History Division, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter The holiday season is all about family tradition. Whether it’s about going to Midnight Mass, carving the Christmas ham, avoiding the mother-in-law’s homemade eggnog, or sampling Grandma’s oyster stew, traditions are what makes our holidays special. But some people are hurting. …
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The Pen in Hand’s Collection of Unconventional Christmas Moments
Attribution: Marek Slusarczyk, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story The holiday season is all about family tradition. Whether it’s about going to Midnight Mass, carving the Christmas ham, avoiding the mother-in-law’s homemade eggnog, or sampling Grandma’s oyster stew, traditions are what makes our holidays special. We are lucky to be able to …
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Kickass and Santa Assignments
Attribution: John Malmin, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Kickass, the doorstop dog, indulges the keeper on this pre-Christmas day as he–the keeper, speculates on just what crazy assignment the late State Journal city editor Glenn Miller might have hatched up were holiday things in place as they were back in Madison in the 1960’s. Once …
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“Just Like the Ones I Used to Know”: The Pen in Hand’s Guide to Vintage Christmas Movies
Photo by Geoffrey Carter (Originally published, December 10, 2021) By Geoff Carter Well, the Christmas season is upon us in full force. The commercials are everywhere. We’ve seen that ad for the car—or Energizer Bunny, wrapped in a bow and sitting in the driveway on Christmas morning at least one hundred times. Sometimes it’s hard to find the …
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The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: An Embarrassment of Scrooges
Attribution: MGM, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Originally published December 18, 2022) By Geoff Carter It’s only about a week until Christmas, and we’re into the full swing of the holiday season. Shopping, decorating, traveling, baking, wrapping, entertaining, and all the other painfully joyous activities are part of the annual hustle and bustle of the …
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