12-17-2025, 03:53 PM
rHere's a few
Here's a few posts about Christmas
from long ago:
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12/2014
I Can Change, You Can Change, Everybody Can Change
Rocky Balboa fought Ivan Drago on Christmas Day in the Soviet Union many years ago in Fiction Land. The season is here again except this time we are heading TOWARD a Cold War instead of OUT of one.
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12/2015
cuts you up - peter murphy
"You lift me up,
And get me out,
Keep me walking,
But never shout,
Hold the secret close,
I hear you say..."
This is one of my favorite songs. It speaks about the society we're in. I often think to myself that our problems have to do with a generational war. Hamilton and Kean were commissioned to put together the 9/11 report and later said that it was "set up to fail". That's our generation, guys. I look around and it seems like all my friends and family are set up to fail. We have this psychotic governments with this psychotic debt and these psychotic policies.
It goes beyond these public things in general. There have been things in my life that defy reason. I have a cousin who's a millionaire. In 1994, my grandfather was gravely ill and eventually passed away of intestinal cancer. He was living in a van in the backyard of our house which we were about to lose to foreclosure. It turns out apparently that my millionaire cousin had given him $12,000 cash to live on. When he finally passed away, a family member went through his van and found the cash. Guess what happened next? She used a few thousand dollars to get breast augmentation. Guess how much money I got out of that $12,000? Not one dime. Guess what happened to the house that we lived in? Early in 1995, it was eventually foreclosed on because payments weren't being made to the bank. It sounds psychotic even now as I think of it.
She eventually moved to LA. She got into the Screen Actors Guild, met her share of rock stars and celebrities, and some guy apparently passed away and left her enough money to buy a condo in Encino. Today I got a slew of calls from a couple of nieces and a couple of sisters because they're worried about her. In October, someone broke into her place and she called the cops. This is the story that I got earlier tonight. When the cops got there, apparently they roughed her up. I haven't had her phone number in a few months because she changed it. Me and my other sisters finally got her new phone number and I called and left a message when I found out all the craziness that was going on. I haven't got a response yet.
I don't know what's going on anymore. Nothing makes sense to me. We lost our house to foreclosure in the mid nineties and it took many years for my dad to get on his feet again financially. He doesn't have a "share the wealth" attitude. We have real estate in a trust, and I'm actually the trustee. I'm always dead broke though. We both live like idiots in trailers, but we own a house in Corona that no one lives in. It's a perfectly good house. This is psychotic.
I thought these nutty things would end. They haven't. I graduated from a good school and I can't keep work. My dad bought a brand new $70,000 Lexus a few years ago, made double payments on it, and recently paid it off. All the while, I worry about running out of toilet paper consistently. This wouldn't matter if I could get a job somewhere and move away and forget about these things. It also wouldn't matter if I didn't believe that his bad business investment during the nineties which lost our house had to do with a lot of my problems as they stand today. He has never been generous, at least not for too long. He was in the military and talked about "subsistence living". I think he wants me and my sister to live the way he did when he was in the military with barely enough to get by. It sucks. It sucks really bad.
I think this is indicative of his generation. I wonder if there was a way that Dick Cheney somehow manifested himself into these older guys. They are not honest people. They are greedy and dysfunctional. They kick people when they're down.
I used to play this game on the Commodore 64 called Ultima V. The goal was to become a virtuous Avatar. At the beginning of the game, your personality was shaped by answering questions in particular scenarios. You might be presented with a hypothetical situation in which attackers storm your castle and demanded to know the whereabouts of the queen. If a sword is put to your throat, do you tell them where she is hidden? Or, do you let them kill you in order to possibly save the queen? You are presented between the virtues of honesty and sacrifice as your choices.
Honesty is gone from our planet. We are living one huge Lie ever since 9/11. The eighth virtues in Ultima V are honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality and humility. They consist of any combination of truth, love and courage. TPTB thinks somehow that they are sacrificing honesty for another virtue, let's say honor, justice, or valor. Everybody thinks of them as a bunch of pieces of crap who sold us short and sold us out. I think about how my dad raised me and my sister and it's reflective of the same attitude of the people that set up the 9/11 Commission. I worked selling flowers when I was fourteen years old and I bought my own clothes in high school. I paid for my own tuition and books during college. The means were often there to have a regular life but we were only given the bare minimum to get by. The proverbial ice was thin and I skated on it. When it finally cracked and I plunged into the frozen water, I was surprised that people that I helped did not return the favor... but I'm fine right now. I really am.
I'm thinking of the Peter Murphy song, "Cuts You Up" and lyrics, "Keep me walking but never shout." That's my life as it has been for quite a few years.
Merry Christmas, people,
– Nemesis Duck
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12/2017
Do They Know It's Christmas? - 1984 Lyrics
It's Christmas time, there's no need to be afraid
At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time
But say a prayer, pray for the other ones
At Christmas time, it's hard, but when you're having fun
There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears (1)
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Well, tonight, thank God it's them instead of you
And there won't be snow in Africa this
Christmas time (2)
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow (3)
Do they know it's Christmas time at all
Here's to you, raise a glass for everyone
Here's to them underneath that burning sun
Do they know it's Christmas time at all
Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
====================
ANALYSIS:
Great song, good intentions, but there are factual oversights...
(1) The Nile is the 2nd longest river in the world and is less than 100 miles shorter than the Amazon.
(2) There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time? Wrong. The Furtwangler Glacier is on top of Mount Kilimanjaro and is doing fine with cold weather.
(3) Where nothing ever grows? Nope! Madagascar is one of the richest places on planet Earth for biodiversity...
Nice try, guys!!
![[Image: t07011.gif]](https://yoursmiles.org/tsmile/christmas/t07011.gif)
Here's a few posts about Christmas
from long ago:
===========
===========
===========
12/2014
I Can Change, You Can Change, Everybody Can Change
Rocky Balboa fought Ivan Drago on Christmas Day in the Soviet Union many years ago in Fiction Land. The season is here again except this time we are heading TOWARD a Cold War instead of OUT of one.
===========
===========
12/2015
cuts you up - peter murphy
"You lift me up,
And get me out,
Keep me walking,
But never shout,
Hold the secret close,
I hear you say..."
This is one of my favorite songs. It speaks about the society we're in. I often think to myself that our problems have to do with a generational war. Hamilton and Kean were commissioned to put together the 9/11 report and later said that it was "set up to fail". That's our generation, guys. I look around and it seems like all my friends and family are set up to fail. We have this psychotic governments with this psychotic debt and these psychotic policies.
It goes beyond these public things in general. There have been things in my life that defy reason. I have a cousin who's a millionaire. In 1994, my grandfather was gravely ill and eventually passed away of intestinal cancer. He was living in a van in the backyard of our house which we were about to lose to foreclosure. It turns out apparently that my millionaire cousin had given him $12,000 cash to live on. When he finally passed away, a family member went through his van and found the cash. Guess what happened next? She used a few thousand dollars to get breast augmentation. Guess how much money I got out of that $12,000? Not one dime. Guess what happened to the house that we lived in? Early in 1995, it was eventually foreclosed on because payments weren't being made to the bank. It sounds psychotic even now as I think of it.
She eventually moved to LA. She got into the Screen Actors Guild, met her share of rock stars and celebrities, and some guy apparently passed away and left her enough money to buy a condo in Encino. Today I got a slew of calls from a couple of nieces and a couple of sisters because they're worried about her. In October, someone broke into her place and she called the cops. This is the story that I got earlier tonight. When the cops got there, apparently they roughed her up. I haven't had her phone number in a few months because she changed it. Me and my other sisters finally got her new phone number and I called and left a message when I found out all the craziness that was going on. I haven't got a response yet.
I don't know what's going on anymore. Nothing makes sense to me. We lost our house to foreclosure in the mid nineties and it took many years for my dad to get on his feet again financially. He doesn't have a "share the wealth" attitude. We have real estate in a trust, and I'm actually the trustee. I'm always dead broke though. We both live like idiots in trailers, but we own a house in Corona that no one lives in. It's a perfectly good house. This is psychotic.
I thought these nutty things would end. They haven't. I graduated from a good school and I can't keep work. My dad bought a brand new $70,000 Lexus a few years ago, made double payments on it, and recently paid it off. All the while, I worry about running out of toilet paper consistently. This wouldn't matter if I could get a job somewhere and move away and forget about these things. It also wouldn't matter if I didn't believe that his bad business investment during the nineties which lost our house had to do with a lot of my problems as they stand today. He has never been generous, at least not for too long. He was in the military and talked about "subsistence living". I think he wants me and my sister to live the way he did when he was in the military with barely enough to get by. It sucks. It sucks really bad.
I think this is indicative of his generation. I wonder if there was a way that Dick Cheney somehow manifested himself into these older guys. They are not honest people. They are greedy and dysfunctional. They kick people when they're down.
I used to play this game on the Commodore 64 called Ultima V. The goal was to become a virtuous Avatar. At the beginning of the game, your personality was shaped by answering questions in particular scenarios. You might be presented with a hypothetical situation in which attackers storm your castle and demanded to know the whereabouts of the queen. If a sword is put to your throat, do you tell them where she is hidden? Or, do you let them kill you in order to possibly save the queen? You are presented between the virtues of honesty and sacrifice as your choices.
Honesty is gone from our planet. We are living one huge Lie ever since 9/11. The eighth virtues in Ultima V are honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality and humility. They consist of any combination of truth, love and courage. TPTB thinks somehow that they are sacrificing honesty for another virtue, let's say honor, justice, or valor. Everybody thinks of them as a bunch of pieces of crap who sold us short and sold us out. I think about how my dad raised me and my sister and it's reflective of the same attitude of the people that set up the 9/11 Commission. I worked selling flowers when I was fourteen years old and I bought my own clothes in high school. I paid for my own tuition and books during college. The means were often there to have a regular life but we were only given the bare minimum to get by. The proverbial ice was thin and I skated on it. When it finally cracked and I plunged into the frozen water, I was surprised that people that I helped did not return the favor... but I'm fine right now. I really am.
I'm thinking of the Peter Murphy song, "Cuts You Up" and lyrics, "Keep me walking but never shout." That's my life as it has been for quite a few years.
Merry Christmas, people,
– Nemesis Duck
==========
==========
12/2017
Do They Know It's Christmas? - 1984 Lyrics
It's Christmas time, there's no need to be afraid
At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time
But say a prayer, pray for the other ones
At Christmas time, it's hard, but when you're having fun
There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears (1)
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Well, tonight, thank God it's them instead of you
And there won't be snow in Africa this
Christmas time (2)
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow (3)
Do they know it's Christmas time at all
Here's to you, raise a glass for everyone
Here's to them underneath that burning sun
Do they know it's Christmas time at all
Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
====================
ANALYSIS:
Great song, good intentions, but there are factual oversights...
(1) The Nile is the 2nd longest river in the world and is less than 100 miles shorter than the Amazon.
(2) There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time? Wrong. The Furtwangler Glacier is on top of Mount Kilimanjaro and is doing fine with cold weather.
(3) Where nothing ever grows? Nope! Madagascar is one of the richest places on planet Earth for biodiversity...
Nice try, guys!!
somehow, we find each other