Unrequired Reading: Dec. 21, 2007

The year-end 400+ page issue is finished at last! This one is dedicated to QuarkXpress, the layout program that includes such features as “This file cannot be opened by this version of QuarkXpress” and “Why would we bother making our font-handling system compatible with Mac? It’s not like the Mac is a computer of choice in the publishing industry!”

Time to embarrass myself and others at our office holiday party!

I continue to refuse to believe that the CCTV building is going to stand up.

* * *

Stephen Root has played an awful lot of good roles. (I still love Mr. James best)

* * *

Slate’s “Explainer” columnists usually offer pretty good primers. Here’s a list of questions they chose not to tackle in 2007. (I think it’d be great if those questions got resent here.)

* * *

P.J. O’Rourke has a good review of a new business bio on Starbucks. By “good,” I mean it’s entertaining; he dislikes the book and picks it to pieces. (He also supports my thesis that the terrible quality of Starbucks coffee is actually part of a strategy to get consumers to buy their more expensive confection-coffees.)

* * *

End of the year? Time for Wired‘s Vaporware Top 10 list! (Way to call out Axl!)

* * *

There’s a new flickr pool up for the World’s Best Urban Spaces! Here’s an intro by City of Sound!

* * *

To all my Christian readers — as well as the otherwise unaffiliated one who find Christmas to be a great opportunity for chilling out and catching up with family & friends –: may you have a great holiday. The official VM wife has been posting a fantastic Advent Calendar all month, so you oughtta spend some time checking that out.

We’re off to Louisiana for the holidays. I’ll try to post some pix of New Orleans, but I can’t promise to be too diligent about general posts next week. Because I’m done with the year-end 400+-page issue, son!