It's December, which means it's also time for a semi-annual tradition: my infamous Christmas Tunes Acronym Quiz.
This year, there are 350 300 tunes to decode / identify1 - most of what you'll find on almost any Christmas CD, plus a lot more besides (including some very obscure ones!).
While the more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed recent comments from me scattered across a handful of stories, it actually marks a 'soft' return from a prolonged absence (from here - those who frequent the BCTS group on the Book of Faces will probably have seen me quite frequently...) of about 3 1/2 years...
A paranormal organisation who have managed to pick up thousands of online followers (Spiritual Research Foundation) have debuted their own daft theory on the predominant cause of homosexuality - posession by ghosts and "subtle-sorcerers" from hell. They apparently believe most gay men are possessed by female ghosts, and lesbian women possessed by male ghosts (!).
If you've been here a while, you'll know what this is all about.
For several years, I've run a "Christmas Tunes Acronym Quiz" through December, whereby I post up a spreadsheet containing acronyms of Christmas tunes, and The Internet attempts to solve them.
Some interesting nuggets of information have been revealed by the Tavistock Clinic.
The number of young people referred to England's only gender identity clinic for under-18s has doubled in the past year to nearly 1,400, figures show. The data also shows that nearly twice as many biological girls than boys were referred to London's Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust last year.
So we're approaching that time of year again, so it's time to roll out my annual tradition - the Christmas Tunes Acronym Quiz!
This year, I've compiled over 200 tunes to decipher, including a handful of instrumentals in addition to the usual mixture of songs, carols and novelty / parodies. There's also an "Add Your Own!" tab in case your favourites aren't represented in the list (already filled with a handful of songs I discovered which didn't make the 200).
As those of you who engage in the Great Waste Of Time known as Facebook may already be aware, today marks my completion of another lap around the sun - not that I feel any different to yesterday or appreciably older. Just an ordinary day at work attempting to make sense of a pile of social care data, hoping to massage it into shape by the end of the week ready for the annual government return.
Five years and 21 hours, according to the counter. I'm sure I didn't register at midnight BST, so I think I'll take the hours figure with a pinch of salt :)
Harry and Hermione shippers, rejoice! While in the books, Harry ended up with Ginny and Hermione with Ron, Jo Rowling's admitted she now feels differently...
Since you've so far got over 70% of the tunes on my infernal acronym quiz without much difficulty (although I've noticed edits have dried up recently (Hint Hint)), I thought I'd search out some more obscure songs for the next iteration.
Among them, I discovered this ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek track, which for rather obvious reasons never makes it onto seasonal compilation albums... :)
So, as we're well into advent, it's time to roll out my infamous Christmas Tunes Acronym Quiz again. This year, I've bumped it up to 160 songs - most of which are either carols or secular seasonal pop songs (i.e. ones that actually mention winter / snow / Christmas, rather than just those that share nothing in common with the season other than release date), but there's a handful of secular songs considered traditional and the occasional novelty / parody track.
It is apparently "an internationally observed civil awareness day celebrating individuals who publicly identify as bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender–coming out regarding one's sexual orientation and/or gender identity being akin to a cultural rite of passage for LGBT people. The day is observed annually by members of the LGBT community and allies on October 11."
So if you weren't already aware of it, consider yourself informed :)
Admittedly the story's in the Daily Mail, but apparently Gulf Cooperation Countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) are to use a medical test developed by Kuwait to supposedly 'detect' homosexuals and prevent them from entering their respective country.
Who'd a thunk it? I've been entertaining you with my random comments (which I've been assured on previous anniversaries are not incomprehensible gibberish, despite the joke in my Twitter bio) and (very) occasional story for just over four years now.
Righteo, tomorrow I'm heading off for Hastings for a week (well, heading to Mum's, then on to Hastings on Friday), so it's likely to be a week Saturday before you start seeing my random comments starting to appear on your stories again :(
Spotted over at Crystal Hall, a link to a very well handled story about Laura Jane Grace. Laura was previously known as Tom Gabel, and remains the founder and lead singer of Against Me! - whose latest album will be called Transgender Dysphoria Blues:
Uruguay's Congress passed a bill on Wednesday to allow same-sex marriages, making it the second country in predominantly Roman Catholic Latin America to do so.
Using a slide rule and caliper, Professor Jean-Denis Rouillon spent fifteen years carefully measuring changes in the orientation of breasts belonging to 130 women, at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (University Hospital) in Besançon.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
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