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    Holiday Hangups

    Baby animals, family photos and nude beauties: Wall calendars are the gift thatkeeps on giving

    John Bumgardner
    Dec 20, 2011 | 9:15 am

    With only two weeks left in the year, it's time to find the next great wall calendar to adorn your office cubicle for the next twelve months. After all, if this is the year the Mayans predicted it's all going to end, shouldn't you have some great baby animal photos to comfort you as you count down the days?

    After an exhaustive search for all the best wall and desk calendars for 2012, we came up with 12 of our favorites for your organizing pleasure.

    It's no surprise why the top-selling wall calendars every year are of baby animals. And we would never dream of denying you the heartwarming, eyeball-melting overload of cuteness that comes from this year's best animal calendars.

    First off, the Sloths of Costa Rica calendar is impossible to resist. The waves of cute emanating from August's baby sloth hugging a stuffed animal actually crippled my internal processing center for a solid three minutes.

    We all know cats are endlessly awesome in action, but they're also adorable when they're sleeping. Especially when they're tiny. And in teacups. Cat Naps is actually going to destroy you if you don't gird yourself against the onslaught of these tiny cats sleeping in teacups for 12 solid months.

    Or just cut to the chase and get one of the 1,500 calendars put out each year called Baby Animals. My favorite one (which is also called "Baby Animals") features a baby giraffe on the cover being nuzzled by the snout of what one can only assume is its mother.

    Also featured in this lush collection of can't-stop-the-cute are a baby penguin, elephant, zebra, orangutan and black bear. Just don't put these babies in the corner (of your office).

    After all, if this is the year the Mayans predicted it's all going to end, shouldn't you have some great baby animal photos to comfort you as you count down the days?

    My personal favorite of this year's offerings comes from Austin Pug Rescue. Whether you have one of these sweet scrunchy-faced angels of your own or you just appreciate their beautifully googly-eyed expressions, you'll love the 2012 calendar, entitled "Pugdorable."

    Every month, you'll be greeted by a new professionally shot picture of one of the Rescue's alumni, who can smile now that they have found their forever families.

    With the release of their brilliant new movie to theaters, The Muppets are back in full effect in the lives of a whole new generation. To welcome your old friends into your everyday life again, there's a new Muppets Movie Poster Parody calendar that parodies famous movie posters the way the Muppets do best. Piggy Woman and The Dogfather are spot-on representations of the movies and the characters you never stopped loving.

    For the artsy, rebellious calendar-needing folks on your list, we recommend the Banksy Unofficial Wall Calendar. The subversive pseudonymed artist is all the rage in the art scene, because his work is thoughtful and really quite beautiful.

    While you might not have the original wheat-pasted image on your blank wall, you can at least have the images hanging there, livening up your cubicle.

    If you're stuck in a cubicle against your wishes, you might be ready for the 2012 Demotivators Calendar put out by Despair, Inc. Perfectly satirizing those inspirational Successories posters that fill doctors' offices across the nation, the sarcastically worded messages of hysterical nihilism will please any eye-rolling cynic that hates everything.

    Also featured in this Baby Animal calendar's lush collection of can't-stop-the-cute are a baby penguin, elephant, zebra, orangutan and black bear. Just don't put these babies in the corner (of your office).

    Texts From Last Night is one of the funniest blogs on the web, collecting for posterity the best submitted text messages from inebriated and uninhibited followers across the country. The 2012 Texts from Last Night Daily Calendar lets you wake up to others' mistakes each morning so you can hopefully forget your own.

    If a website is funny enough encourage me to check in daily, I would say it definitely qualifies as worthy of a calendar, as well. The Awkward Family Photos calendar collects and comments upon the best blackmail evidence in existence, featuring kitschy, nostalgic fashions and tragically unfortunate posing ideas.

    Speaking of awkward, England has a couple of awesome calendars for those who love organic farming in the... ahem, raw. Naked Male Farmers and Lady Farmers show off the fresh goods of these fine folks and their strategically placed vegetation. These calendars are a big hit in the U.K., where they apparently haven't heard about swimsuits or fire engines...

    And now that we've opened that floodgate, the 2012 Pirelli's Calendar is the quintessential calendar of tastefully shot nudes that generates a lot of buzz round this time of year. This year Milla Jovovich and Kate Moss join the parade of au natural ladies, and Mario Sorrenti is the big-name photographer behind the shots.

    The Pirelli company is primarily a tire manufacturer, but they started making calendars back in the '60s for the VIP customers, and the tradition never went out of style. (People really seem to like looking at pictures of pretty ladies, I guess?) So for the collector, this calendar is the holy grail of wall calendars.

    So there you have it: Amazing calendars for all types of calendar users. Give 'em as gifts, or keep 'em for yourself if the receiver doesn't seem as in to it as you are. After all, you put a lot of effort into picking these out, wrapping them up and delivering them. Maybe, with a new calendar, you'll be able to plan more in advance.

    unspecified
    news/city-life

    hottest headlines of 2025

    Houston's richest residents, best suburbs, and more top city news in 2025

    Amber Heckler
    Dec 22, 2025 | 3:45 pm
    Museum of Fine Arts, Houston gala 2025
    Photo by Wilson Parish
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    Editor’s note: As 2025 comes to a close, we're looking back at the stories that defined Houston this year. In our City Life section, readers will notice several of our local universities earned high praise from prestigious global and national publications. Houston's sprawling suburbs continued to skyrocket in popularity for their livability and safety, and no top-10 list is complete without mentioning the city's wealthiest residents. Read on for the top 10 Houston City Life stories of 2025.

    1. 2 Houston universities named among world’s best in 2026 rankings. These two high-performing local institutions – Rice University and University of Houston – are in a class of their own, according to the QS World University Rankings 2026. QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) compiles the prestigious list each year; the 2026 edition includes more than 1,500 universities from around the world.

    2. Richard Kinder is Houston's richest billionaire in 2025, Forbes says. The Kinder Morgan chairman is the 11th richest Texas resident right now, and ranks as the 108th richest American. Kinder also dethroned Tilman Fertitta to claim the title as the wealthiest Houstonian.

    3. 2 Houston neighbors shine as top-10 best places to live in the U.S. Pearland and League City, respectively, claimed No. 3 and No. 6 in U.S. News & World Report's annual "Best Places to Live in the U.S." rankings. The 2025-2026 rankings examined 250 U.S. cities based on five livability indexes: Quality of life, value, desirability, job market, and net migration.

    4. 5 Houston suburbs deemed best places to retire in 2026 by U.S. News. The Woodlands and Spring should be on the lookout for an influx of retirees next year, U.S. News predicts. Three more Houston-area neighbors also ranked among the top 25 best places to retire in America.

    5. Activist group calls out Houston highway as a 'freeway without a future'. A May 2025 report from Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) included Houston's Interstate 45 expansion on its list of highways with infrastructure that is "nearing the end of its functional life." CNU claims further expansion of Houston's highway system could eventually lead to the loss of the city's bayous, while also diminishing the remaining flood-absorbing land.

    6. 10 things to know about America's first Ismaili Center opening in Houston. After nearly 20 years in the making, the long-awaited Ismaili Center, Houston finally opened its doors to the public. The 11-acre site was painstakingly designed and constructed to offer indoor and outdoor public spaces for all Houstonians to enjoy, connect, and engage.

    7. Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta asking $192 million for superyacht. Fertitta, who owns the Houston Rockets and restaurant and hospitality conglomerate Landry's, decided to sell his 252-foot yacht, named Boardwalk, to make room for an even larger superyacht he is expected to receive in April 2026. Among numerous luxurious amenities, Boardwalk also features a helipad.

    8. 2 Houston neighbors rank among America's safest suburbs in 2025. Spring came in at No. 19 and West University Place followed at No. 21 in SmartAsset's August 2025 study, which is the first time the two Houston suburbs have made it into the top 25.

    9. Houston is one of America's most overpriced cities, study finds. This likely isn't a surprise to some Houstonians. The study, conducted by Highland Cabinetry, said Houston "struggles with heavy pollution and underwhelming income levels."

    10. 9 Houston universities make U.S. News' 2025 list of top grad schools. Among the newcomers this year are Houston Christian University and Texas Southern University. HCU's graduate education school ranks No. 21 in Texas, and TSU has the 10th best law school in the state.

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