I'm also in surprisingly bad shape this morning, although I'm optimistic that things are about to turn a corner. While I'm waiting for that to happen I'm at least managing to worry a lot about constructing a playlist for the party. I've been doing what comes naturally: instead of actually getting started, I've been looking up tangentially related topics on the internet.

Which brings me to this: the good folks at the MIT Media Lab have put together a Christmas album! Or more accurately, they've put together some systems that put together a Christmas album. Details are sketchy, but "A Singular Christmas" seems to have been constructed algorithmically, using a lot of traditional Christmas music as the system's input. Their webserver is getting slashdotted at the moment, but I'm very curious to hear what it's like.

This is only the beginning, people. I foresee robotic wassailing aids for the elderly and disabled, untearable nanotech wrapping paper spun from spider silk, and eggnog-flavored barium (for merrier colon exams). God bless us every one. At least until a more efficient, distributed and massively parallel peer-to-peer blessing system can be developed.

oy. DCist happy hour. i went into the evening forgetting the First Rule of Everything: bloggers are a bunch of fucking alcoholics, and they will hitch you to their downwards spiral until you are blathering incoherently on the floor of the big hunt. but overall, it was quite fun. the DCist staff was out in full force, and i had the pleasure of meeting jason, missy, austin, seeing michael again, and enjoying the company of various other blogless people.

anyway, this morning i feel in pain and terribly puffy, which probably has something to do both with the massive amounts of alcohol i ingested last night and the massive amount of food i ingested at the company party. i have sad news: i did not win the bakeoff. my hopes were crushed 15 minutes before the party, when i went into the conference room to set out my eggnog cookies, and was faced with a plethora of professional-looking desserts. turns out many of my coworkers are competitive about baking to the nth degree. a very good cherry pie ended up winning, but i was still satisified with the eggnog cookies, because thus far i've had six people, including the president, ask me for the recipe, and two people have insinuated darkly that if only they'd been the judges, i'd be holding the winner's gift certificate to williams-sonoma right now. oh well, such is life. the circle goes on.

especially with the kickass party that is about to happen tonight! i'm very excited, because several people i thought wouldn't be able to make it can, like mr. jason and mizz corbin, and mr. germ heitz, whom i haven't seen in ages. holla. i feel pretty crappy right now, but with the power of 5 bottles of gatorade, my cute gauzy green top, and a shot of espresso, i will hopefully be in top hostessing form tonight. you know what that means: your cups will always be full, and by 11pm i'll end up slurring at you, "you know, i really think, you are like, so beautiful, yeah? and i'm like, so glad that you came to the party, and it is so awshum, like, that we are friendsh."

UPDATE: okay, this is getting drastic. does that hair of the dog thing actually work for hangovers? because i'm about ready to go hold up a liquor store, take half a handle of vodka and chug it at my desk if it'll make me feel any better.