Day 67: Philadelphia Skyline Panorama

2026-04-14

Hello! My first ever panorama photo!

I have a couple of ideas on what to talk about floating around, but none of them fit a certain photo. So today, let's talk about Christmas.

We're about as far from the Christmas craze as we could be today, so it's a perfect time for me to recount a story from Christmas 2025.

I'm not sure if it was from my annoyance with ads in music streaming, my short-lived obsession with physical media, or an itch to do something funny, but I ended up buying a stack of blank CDs and a CD burner in the fall. I had no purpose for them yet, but I knew this could lead to something interesting.

That opportunity came when my friends at school started talking about their gift shopping, and ideas were going 'round on what people liked. I thought that a CD with Christmas music would be unique enough to stand out, so I decided to start collecting music.

For the next few weeks, as I listened to music, if any thoughts popped into my head on funny Christmas tracks, I would find the accompanying YouTube video (or Spotify track, or Bandcamp link) and bookmark it. By December, I had collected too much music.

I realize that reading and writing to CDs is not supposed to be some arcane magic, but it is to me! I'm still not sure if I bought the right CDs for the job — apparently there's, like, seven types. But I knew that I could only fit so much music onto one disc, and so the process of filtering began.

I ended up with 15 tracks, including such classics as: A Christmas Miracle leading right into a mashup of Mariah Carey and My Chemical Romance, Jingle Bells by Hampton the Hampster, Mr Blobby's 1993 reveal for the blissfully unaware Americans, Vulfpeck's Christmas in L.A., and Al Yankovic's tale of when Santa Went Crazy. Also a few other songs that weren't nearly as funny.

The night before gift-giving was to commence, I was up until midnight learning how to quickly burn music to my discs. When I had eight copies, I grabbed a marker and drew simple holiday symbols unique to each disc. When passing them around to friends at school, I quickly realized I'm not the only one too young for CDs — most people didn't have a CD player, and the rest could only play it in their old car... and they didn't trust me enough to blast my choice of music to their parents on the road (a smart decision, I'm sure). Oh well.

While a few people listened to the tracks (especially after I sent out a digital folder of the songs) and laughed, it didn't get the punchline I was hoping. I've forgotten about it since. A digital copy of the songs live on my computer, untouched for months.

Until now. A friend recently dug up a monitor and CD player, and texted me that they were finally listening to my gift, months late. I promptly stopped what I was doing, pulled up my own copy of the songs, and listened to the playlist one more time.

Man, the grin on my face...

Cheers,
David