I'm typing this out while staying at my dad's place for Christmas. My brothers are downstairs drinking enough booze to put our local SAQ owner's kids through college, Dad's wrapping last-minute presents, and I just inhaled so much dog hair, I horked up a Yorkshire terrier.

God, I miss Pointe-Claire.

Anyway, as my little Christmas present to you -- which I'll let you unwrap a little early because, what the hell, it's Christmas! -- here's RuPaul's Christmas Ball in its full run. Yes, even on Christmas I'm still preaching the gospel of Ru. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas is nothing if not a collection of illogical, complex traditions. Think about it: putting presents under a tree? A jolly felon breaking into your house via the chimney and being greeted with milk and cookies? Cable news pundits screeching their flibbedy-flabbedy jaws because imaginary people are waging a war on holidays? None of that would make any sense without Christmas.

So now it's time for one of my own little traditions: as we used to do on an old blog I used to write for, every Christmas we post this video of Patton Oswalt tearing apart that terrible fucking "Christmas Shoes" song, that cloyingly sweet, manipulative little Yuletide leech that squiggles into your ear every December to just skull-fuck the holidays straight to hell. Enjoy! 

Man, Kate McKinnon became the best part of Saturday Night Live really quickly, huh? I mean yes, part of that might be the fact that people really missed Kristen Wiig and wanted to fill the funny-lady-shaped holes in their hearts, but still, Kate's acting and impressions border on chameleonic, and as the first-ever out lesbian on the show, she's already established as a part of SNL history.

Turns out, her performances haven't gone unnoticed, as McKinnon has topped Forbes' 30 Under 30 list, beating out other gay faves like Chris Colfer and Rebel Wilson.

Over the past decade Saturday Night Live has gone from being a boy's club to a launching pad for great female comedians. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig all started as SNL players before making it big. McKinnon is on target to join their ranks. She debuted on SNL in April and is already a massive hit. Her impressions of Ann Romney, Penelope Cruz and Ellen DeGeneres have won her fans around the country. DeGeneres even praised McKinnon's impersonation on her talk show. Says McKinnon, "It's very flattering. But my one goal when I started was not to actually vomit on TV or run away."

Now, if anyone ever says that women can't be funny, you can either sit them down in front of Saturday Night Live and point out how the women are objectively funnier, or you can just ignore them because they're probably just an asshole. 

No. NO. Goddammit, stop it with this already.

Tomorrow is Dec 21, 2012, or the supposed date of the Mayan apocalypse, an imaginary doomsday concocted by crazy people who seem to think that the world will end because the Mayans got tired of hand-carving calendars out of stone. To which I reply: seriously? We're capable of mass production on a global scale, and we can't even be bothered to make calendars up through 2013; can you imagine having to chisel thousands of years' worth of dates? Exhausting. But that doesn't mean the world is ending.

But I'll level with you here: here's drag legend Peppermint's pitch-perfect Azealia Banks parody about the Mayan apocalypse. There, we even now? No more of this shit. No more apocalypse parties, no more terrible movies and fake TV specials, just . . . stop this shit. Stop this shit now.

Show of hands: who had an Easy-Bake Oven growing up?

Let's face it, an Easy-Bake Oven was like the first step down the long, fulfilling road of homosexuality. The moment you cooked a bland, tasteless, single-serving brownie using nothing but a lightbulb and some pink plastic is the moment you took destiny into your own hands.

Well, good news for a new generation of kids: the first line of unisex Easy-Bake Ovens are coming, featuring non-gender-specific colours and ad campaigns showing that both boys and girls can enjoy fake baking!

According to news reports, McKenna Pope, a 13-year-old New Jersey girl, "got more than 40,000 signatures on her online petition at Change.org and the support of celebrity chefs including Bobby Flay." She wanted to get a gift for her little brother, 4-year-old Gavyin Boscio, but could only find purple and pink ones. Although these nifty Easy-Bake Ovens don't seem as feminine as the ones of yesteryear, McKenna wanted one that she thought would be appropriate for her lil bro.

Hasbro invited McKenna and her family to its Rhode Island headquarters and executives showed off a prototype of their newest Easy-Bake: one that's black, silver and blue. [Source]

On one hand, I think the larger problem is the idea that girls can only do things A, B and C, while boys can do things X, Y and Z, so I think the better long-term solution here is to just let kids play with whatever they want (within reason) and tell anyone who doesn't like it to fuck off. On the other hand, this comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal sums up exactly why the world needs gender-neutral toys: