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Articles: Thanksgiving without a Turkey |
Posted by
Comedian on Saturday, November 30, 2002 - 12:05 PM PST
Time changes everything. Fifty years ago; we have pictures of our fathers and mothers staying at home and baking turkeys and letting pies cool on the window sill; mom at home and dad on the job. Maybe they had a TV if they were privileg'd, with maybe two or three channels that came in on the rabbit ears. The rest of them sat around the radio and listened to Jack Benny and thanksgiving specials. But time changes everything. And families have changed.
I live in a state with a 60% divorce rate. It makes all the holidays interesting, to say the least. My friends who still live at home and learned to deal with the screaming no longer desire gifts, or food, or togetherness. They pushed away and back, and hate the holidays now. They all have a favored parent to spend the holidays with, but out of guilt or a feeling of fairness they spend it with one they favor less. It seems odd to balance family relations on a single day of the year; and it hurts them in ways that show only subtlely now, and will probably show more the older they get.
My youth and family fell away from me in the place I live now; and things have gone on, rather than the world stopping for just a moment, as sometimes people require to cope. The world kept moving.
The Starbuck's on the corner is unusually crowded on Thanksgiving morning, californians and locals cram in the door getting Mochas and Lattes and frappuchinos in model 98'-02' cars. A big black sheep dog sits by the door, big tongue lolling out while the kids stoop to pet him. The high ceiling has smoked glass lamps at the top of the high, red wood roof. I remember walking by from the pool hall on the way home when we had left elementary school, and passing by the abandoned gas station that was the lot the Starbuck's has come to be on. Allan is the one mechanic in town, and had moved when he finally couldn't afford the rent or to keep the place. The old Indian had moved in a little less than a year later, putting up expensively priced fur rugs on wooden rafters under the roof where the gas pumps had been. I saw him once, coming home from school after we had poured 5 dollars in silver and copper change into the jukebox to give the poor, drunk patrons of the pool hall an afternoon of "Disco Nights"... He was sitting in the shop, and through the grease-gray streaked windows you could see him with the can of skoal on the counter looking through the pages of Guns N' Ammo. THe pool hall and the Indian are gone.. And I feel responsible, somehow, for them going. When I left, so did they..
The irony was that the pool hall became a disco Karaoke hall.
Sitting in a car for no particular reason, and waiting again. The door is open, to get the final smells of pine and chicken and beer from the downtown area.. The music of the ice cream van fades, and just above the din of the highway and the roads from the barrio to the south the gentle notes of the old romance song come to my ears. I sing along for a few moments before losing the song back to the constant hum of the city, slowed only slightly by the city shutting down for the evening for everyone to go home. A few chicano children run past in the twilight, back from the park and heading home. They are laughing and skipping in winter coats too large for them, legs impossibly skinny and jutting out like pencils from a massive solid body wrapped in thick layers of water-repelling cloth. I wonder if they're celebrating this day, this ideal. I wonder if they have turkey at home, as they skip into a vacant lot with an overturned shopping cart and broken glass bottles and bent street sign.
Casinos are always open, I think back to the christmas where I spent an evening in the small cafe nestled between the buffet and Chinese bistro. A few elderly couples and families in from god knows where; an Hindi family in one booth and a small group of trourist Kiwis at a table and another of Greek students. But this is Thanksgiving. A year later, and here I am again. The line at the buffet is atrocious and the menu is worse, 6 different ways of cutting turkey and they can turn it into a paragraph of words written in a day-glow highlighter against a black fiberglass board. Quitting that line we head to the multinational cafe and have a basic meal. It's empty, the waitress doesn't want to be there and the busboy hasn't realized yet that his tips for the night aren't going to be much.
Two CSI episodes and a special on Elvis on the tube, and I'm out for the night. I wake up with a sore neck and a cat hair down my throat.
Macy's on the day after Thanksgiving is suicide; children fall off their parents by around noon; bored ones begin playing games and jump out at you screaming from around corners and from udner tables. The sales clerks are rushed, pushing Kermit the Frog dolls and praying for lunch. And praying to find parking spaces when they come back from lunch. They opened at 6 a.m., to push the Christmas earlybirds. Items to the first 100 customers, and purchase deals and contests.
And on my way back to the hill, past a car wreck where I get to peruse the numerous bumper stickers of a white wiccan lesbian snowboarder, I see the lake. It hasn't changed from my youth. The mountains have a little bit of snow on them, and the afternoon sun plays the shadows of the trees along the road, cascading light running through the branches like fingers through rich brown and black hair.
I'm tired. I've made my choices and run with them for as far as I have. I look back and wonder if Frost and Housman had the same regrets looking back on their lives. Sometimes I wonder. My movements are beginning to falter. Foundation's cracking. I want something. I was taught that with power and wealth the world is small, and appetites become insatiable; to the poor, the world is large and unconquerable, a thing of wonder and impalpability.
Times are changing again, and I can barely keep up.
"Ay, ay, ay, ay, cantas y no llores.. Porque cantando si alegra cielito lindo los corazones..."
Maybe I shouldn't keep up.
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Thanksgiving without a Turkey | Login/Create an account | 16 Comments |
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Thanksgiving with 2 Turkeys
by MorteAscendo (corpsmanwix@aol.com)
on Nov 30, 2002 - 06:21 PM
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I'm over 5,000 miles away from my family, and i still love the holidays. Its just how you look at it. To each there own.
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The More Things Change...
by Monolycus on Nov 30, 2002 - 06:30 PM
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Sadly, during those highly romanticised days of yesteryear, there were still hyper-aware beings that were waxing nostalgic for something earlier... something more primary... something, well, pure. In that moment when you are wiping the crass commercialism off the soles of your shoes and fanning the air to drive off the stink of corporate synergy, it is easy for the Aware to note that they are living against a cardboard backdrop. The flimsy façade emulates the way we imagine things should be and never are.
As early as fifty years ago it was the same. That crackling, black and white television and sonorous radio were squawking incessantly about imaginary people and how much they truly love one another. How their problems could all be neatly wrapped up inside the half an hour each week that they appeared to everyone. Holidays were especially rich times for these familiar phantoms... and every Christmas would find them miraculously delivered at the final moment from whatever threatened to intrude upon their bliss. Nowadays, we do not have to wait for a weekly visit... one does not even have to touch a button for these benevolent caricatures to intrude into our lives. They are around us every minute of every day reminding of us the way things are SUPPOSED to be.
Before the products of the advertising industry appeared to show us how we failed to measure up during the holidays, life must have been much richer and more genuine, yes? People just accepted things as they were instead of how things should be, didn't they? Before every billboard we passed showed us the way, we only had to go to church to find our unattainable ideals. We could let our friends the prophets tell us how we failed to measure up to the way we ought to be. Every Christian girl could kick herself for not being as virtuous as the Madonna... every Muslim boy could torture himself for having impure thoughts... every Jew, well, they have families to insure that they have something to feel guilty over. Maybe we should look to a time before the God of Abraham came along to make us feel badly. Surely, those must have been the good old days! Only Hercules or the Buddha to demonstrate to us the kinds of lives we would lead and the relationships we would be having if we could only be as perfect as they. Hmm.
Yes, things are artificial. Yes, artificially sweet holidays and sentiments have been determined to cause cancer in laboratory cultures. But this is nothing new. People have always imagined that the world should be things that it is not, nor can ever be. Beyond the constructions of cultural expectations lie what actually IS... and rather than letting the dim curtain of what SHOULD BE distort our view and make us feel badly about ourselves, perhaps we should take a moment to chase away those little imps of artificiality that keep whispering in our ears... they are keeping us from enjoying what we actually have.
~Monolycus
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Re: The More Things Change... by Rogue (Rogue@skew.org) on Dec 03, 2002 - 07:19 AM (User info | Send a Message) | Speaking of artificiality...
Coins are neither silver nor copper, they are usually a zinc planchet clad in copper or nickel.
Starbuck's is not coffee.
Turkey is murder.
Correlation is not causation. |
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Qui nimium probat nihil probat by Monolycus on Dec 03, 2002 - 03:52 PM (User info | Send a Message) | Coins are copper or silver coloured, just as brass can be polished to appear golden.
One can obtain coffee from Starbucks, or at least a reasonable facsimile. If I say that I am going out for ice cream, it would not be irrational to look for me at a Dairy Queen despite the fact that nothing of the sort is actually sold there.
Turkey is a nation on the Black and Mediterranean Seas that shares a border with Syria, Iran and Iraq.
It is from the degree of correlation that causality can be induced.
I detect more than an epistemological rebuke here. Am I mistaken?
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Re: Cogito ergo shroom by Rogue (Rogue@skew.org) on Dec 04, 2002 - 06:47 AM (User info | Send a Message) | Nickel-coloured would be much more correct, and the original statement was that the coins were copper and silver. This would indicate spending pre-1982 cents (one-cent coins usually are not used in jukeboxes anyway) and bullion silver coins, although the 90% silver coins from pre-1964 were generally regarded as being silver because they only lacked the 10%.
You would not say that you had a gold object if it were merely polished brass, unless you were intending to sell it to a rube, so calling a zinc- or nickel-coloured coin silver is similarly misrepresentation.
Starbuck's is a blight upon the land, and what they sell is a coffee-flavoured chemical. Again misrepresentation, and there is nothing reasonable about Starbuck's and their 45-state saturation campaign.
The equation of correlation with causation is where we get such scientific gems as biogenesis, which posits inferred facts such as "mice are generated from old rags because you usually find mice in old rags".
Marshmallows contain no marshmallow.
Nice geographic reference, but I was trying to confuse the issue by bringing animal activism into it. Nothing like a red herring to generate confused apathy.
No rebukes were intended, although my angle was more of an ontological one. To indulge, let us say that you can speak epistemologically and say that you perceive an epistemological reference which rebuked, and as we can induce or infer (per your earlier statement) that correlation is causation, this means that only your perception is relevant and it would become an epistemological rebuke at the moment you perceived it as such, with a nodding reference to the famed but ill-fated Felis Domesticus of a certain gentleman from Osterreich with an odd penchant for mammalian packaging.
I will not begin to address the issue of what defines a tradition, aside from saying that anything which is traditional is a tradition (reinforced by the suggested strong relation betwixt correlation and causation (Devin, tell me you got the song reference)), even if said tradition involves depositing copper- and nickel-clad coins into a machine to the delight or dismay of individuals who are under the influence of a certain hydrocarbon but otherwise minding their own business, before celebrating a holiday (that somehow manages to omit any reference to smallpox) with unfavoured biological relation. |
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Re: Scientia est Potentia by Monolycus on Dec 04, 2002 - 05:19 PM (User info | Send a Message) | It would take an interior decorator with a much more highly trained eye than myself to distinguish the subtleties of hue between silver, nickel, chrome, mercury or any of several other whitish metallic substances. Nor would I see any inherent misrepresentation to be involved in describing an object by its approximate colour in an instance that does not involve the direct sale of said object. I would not be misrepresenting an apple if I were to describe it as a red fruit when, in fact, it is composed entirely of apple and does not contain a bit of red in any quantifiable sense.
While you are entirely correct when you describe Starbucks as a "...blight upon the land", it is a bit like concentrating upon a case of chapped lips while your pancreatic cancer is metastising. Long before Starbucks has the opportunity to do any more than aesthetic damage to the organism in question, the blight of the Walt Disney Corporation, Microsoft Systems and the federal government will have it confined to life support.
Marshmallows (the confection) have not actually contained marshmallow (Althea officinalis) since before the advent of the last century and could just as appropriately be called rhinoceros testicles.
Herr K. Werner Heisenberg of somewhere at some speed would like to register his objection that the previously mentioned gentleman of Österreich and his housepet might both fail to exist when not under direct observation and that the act of observing them has the unavoidable consequence of changing their properties anyway. As such, the credibility of their example is suspect.
A more entertaining red herring to generate bemused apathy with than animal activism might be to promote vegetable activism. There is a definite case to be made that agrarian vegetables are farmed and raised simply to be slaughtered and exploited. Unlike their animal counterparts, they are incapable of attempting any form of defense or escape from their aggressors.
At no point did I suggest that correlation and causality were synonomous. I do maintain that a high degree of correlation (while not an agent in itself) is a necessary prerequisite in discovering a causal agent via the inductive method. Of course, there is always opportunity for misinterpreting the data available and incorrectly assigning a causal status to an incidental agent (Fallacy: non causa pro causa), this effect is minimised by the constant reevaluation of data and guarding against dogmatic thinking. The example that you provided in which you concluded that spontaneous generation can never occur might take some re-evalution. While mice might not spontaneously generate from rags nor gnats from open rubbish bins, the original organism from which every extant species has descended according to convential scientific wisdom must, by definition, have spontaneously generated. We see examples of spontaneous generation in nature all the time. Shopping malls and open spaces provide the unique environment necessary for trailer parks and Starbucks to appear.
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Re: Sapere Aude by Rogue (Rogue@skew.org) on Dec 05, 2002 - 07:39 AM (User info | Send a Message) | The terms "copper" or "silver", unlike "red", are first and foremost names of elements with colour names referring to the element itself and thus unless otherwise specified, they must be assumed to mean the element.
Case in point: the current $1 US coins are called "golden" by the government but incorrectly regarded as gold by a portion of the great unwashed masses due to their confusion of the term. "Silvery coins" or "silver-coloured coins" would have been more correct and would not lead to the incorrect assumption (that many people have still) that US coins aside from the cent and dollar coins actually contain silver.
A colour reference was never made, and I may further suggest that non-interior-decorator types have been calling cents "red" (in fact, valid numismatic grades include "red" and "brown" but not "copper") for quite some time now.
Red is understood to be a colour primarily and thus you would use only the colour name when saying things like "my coat is green" or "this table is brown", versus saying "red-coloured", etc. As far as I know, the only things which contain the element Red are Kool-Aid and Jell-o, which coincidentally enough do not contain anything recognizable or edible aside from the aforementioned colour element.
My problem here is with coarse-grained thought and misleading statements, like the marshmallow issue. Rhinoceros testicles would be no less correct a description, but would mislead people to believe that they do contain such and would probably increase their market share as this is a delicacy in some places. "Sugar pillows" or "sweet malnutrition" would be even better still.
Herr Heisenberg would likely dispute me on the shade of meaning which separates a state which is unknown until observed and even then only partially known and a state which is indeterminate until observed but committed at that time. Unfortunately, I have been unable to determine his velocity (speed is meaningless in a relativistic universe, only relative velocity describes motion somewhat correctly) or position for quite some time now, so I am forced to rely upon cats and boxes.
Let the record show that veganism is murder, using the defenseless farm-raised life form argument which is so widely disseminated (another song reference, Devin?) by PETA, or People Extincting Themselves through Activism. (that should get a bite)
Ah, but I was only stating that those few examples of spontaneous generation did not occur, and I freely admit that to issue blanket statements like "because of this there can be no spontaneous generation" would be dogmatic thought and this must be avoided at all cost. "All dogmatic thought is evil" would be a recursive example of this, although it is a safe enough assumption for me.
Too much of currant(sic) thought is based on phallacy(sic) (porcos non ablocamus) which is reinforced by dogma, which can be a bitch (get it? dog ma?) to unseat or even set aside for a moment when dealing with people. Unfortunately, this sort of avertising-fuelled non-thought seems to be the greatest single example of spontaneous generation yet observed (although now we are unsure of its velocity). |
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Re: Unius dementia dementes efficit multos by Monolycus on Dec 05, 2002 - 04:59 PM (User info | Send a Message) | Both Kool-Aid and Jell-o are able to be marketed and sold using the inorganic red and hyphens because neither of those substances contain any known nutritive value and do not, as such, fall under the purview of the Food and Drug Administration. It was a similar dodge of the FDA that prompted the Kellogg Company of Battle Creek, MI, to manufacture one of their more popular breakfast products out of "froot" instead of an actual food item with a similar pronunciation. Interestingly, marshmallows also are able to escape regulation by using precisely the same loophole. To maintain the freedom in the marketplace that marshmallows currently enjoy, they can not be called "sugar pillows" as it has been demonstrated that a trapped victim of an earthquake in Ankara, Turkey was able to stave off death by eating a pillow. The suggestion of "sweet malnutrition" would also not be technically correct as marshmallows (being composed entirely of not-marshmallow and stray electrons) have no known flavour at all. In the interest of consistency in nomenclature, we would entertain the idea of rechristening this confection as "floaters".
Herr Heisenberg was unable to be located (although he was clocked at 4.243 km per hour) for a response as to the nature of the state of an unobserved Schröedinger. Instead, we asked Herr Einstein for his comments and he was able to assure us that time (and therefore speed) is simply a property of space and that if we are able to determine the speed of an unobserved housecat it makes no difference where it is at or what state it might be in. I regret that he was unable to clarify this any further as he then leaned two degrees to the left and displaced himself to a position which was approximately fifteen minutes before he made those comments.
The record clearly shows that veganism is murder. Until such time as human beings are able to produce thier nutrition photosynthetically they must abandon the pretense that they are capable of ethical action. We would also like the minutes to reflect our Modest Proposal to spare innocent vegetable lives while keeping the exponential growth of human populations in check (Please speak with Mr. Swift after the meeting for the details).
We are agreed that dogmatism stunts our understanding of the world. To combat dogmatic thinking we are adopting the axiom "All dogma must be abolished" which will be translated into Latin and chanted before every meeting of the Hidden Agenda Committee (chair, Al Anon). After discussion, we have come to the conclusion that it is dogmatic to believe that mice never spontaneously occur in piles of rags and have decided to adopt the non-dogmatic stance that, while unlikely, nobody should be surprised if, once in awhile, piles of rags or even single rags are the sites of the spontaneous generation of mice, other animals, or even other rags. Q.E.D.
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Ahih Ashr Ahih by IamSquid (undisclosedgettheaddressfrommeepersonally) on Dec 05, 2002 - 05:58 PM (User info | Send a Message) http:// | Red is only red because of the position and motion of our eyes relative to the position and motion of the object relecting or producing the light perceived as red. Herr Doppler's effect applies here as well. Meaning according to our eyes the motion of which is determined by the movement of the Earth around the Sun, the Sun through the Galaxy, etc. a star producing "white" light from the perspective of a planet in it's orbit, may appear "red" or "blue" according to the direction of it's motion relative to our perspective here on Earth.
This in no way explains what Red #3 tastes like or if it would taste different at an enitrely different tragectory and velocity as "red" has not been assigned any specific chemical make-up. Let's face it though, those "cherries" in Runts candy do not taste like cherry, they taste like "red!"
This all goes to show that the Universe is NOT digital as Western thought tends to presume (attempting to find the smallest part of an atom etc.) but is in fact analog. What is the moment the Moon is entirely full? If yoo are trying to step 2 meters forward, start by stepping 1 meter each time taking a step half the distance of the previous step forward (50 cm with yor next step, 25 cm, 12.5 cm...) yoo DO reach the goal of 2 meters even despite the fact that mathmatically yoo should not!
Veganism IS in fact murder as every form of human exsistance is murder! We inhale mircobes with every breath, walking on grass is murder. I chose to be a vegetarian for many reasons but most of all because I don't like the taste of meat!
Exsistance IS exsistance despite whatever name may be associated determined not by thought or function but quite simply because it exsists! Yes! Through names and images are are powers awakened and reawakened HOWEVER exsistance is not limited to recognition. |
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Re: Ahih Ashr Ahih by Domkitten on Dec 08, 2002 - 12:01 AM (User info | Send a Message) http:// | I do not exist, which is very fortunate. Of course it may make one pause as I am still posting.
I'm mostly a vegetarian to irritate people. It's almost as irritating as saying "I'm a goth" or "I'm a lesbian".
I refuse to believe in the existence of red. |
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Re: Carpe Canis by Monolycus on Dec 08, 2002 - 06:39 AM (User info | Send a Message) | I do not have any proof of your existence and am willing, therefore, to take your word for the fact that you do not exist until you can be repeated in a laboratory environment.
Saying that one is a lesbian does not irritate anyone. As a matter of fact, it is a great way to sell videotapes of your Spring Break.
The Food and Drug Administration also refuses to believe in the existence of red, however numismatists are apparently fighting them on this issue (see: several entries above).
~M. |
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Re: Carpe Cani-whatnow? by Domkitten on Dec 09, 2002 - 03:56 AM (User info | Send a Message) http:// | After reading most of your comments I'm surprised you would take anyone's word on anything, but perhaps that is one of the joys of not existing.
Acutally, saying one is a lesbian can be fairly annoying, especially if the person you are saying it to is Rush Limbaugh, although it still might help to sell him a copy of my spring break video.
I refuse to believe in the existance of the food and drug administraion, as most of the foods and drugs they administrate are fairly uninteresting and the ones the refuse to allow us access to are far more fun. |
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Re: Carpe Dei by Monolycus on Dec 08, 2002 - 06:34 AM (User info | Send a Message) | The so-called "red-shift" or "red menace" that you have described has nothing to do with the Doppler effect. It is actually due to the fact that, in an expanding Universe, stars are growing more distant from the Earth and, consequently, more anti-American. If a single star abandons the capitalist way of life, it becomes red and converts neighbouring stars to this redness (This is known as the Domino Effect). In order that goodness, American Capitalism and the appearance of democracy does not perish from the Universe, it is imperative that these reddened stars be fought and their regimes changed as soon as they are discovered. American ground troops can establish puppet regimes on these stars to ensure that they remain friendly to our interests, and the occupied stars will be covered with blue lake dye in the meanwhile.
The moon is entirely full the moment that it ceases to eye the dessert cart.
Zeno's arrow does not apply here. He was merely being a pain in the ass.
F. Lee Bailey has agreed to represent vegans as charges against them have now been filed. It is expected that he will employ the defense that if the vegetables had not wanted to be eaten, they would not have dressed so provocatively.
The idea that "existence is existence" based upon the observation that it exists is not only the worst form of dogmatic thinking, it is not even a neat tautology. P can only imply P if there is a sentient to make that implication (see: One hand clapping trees while they fall in the woods). The whole "Cogito ergo shroom" line of Cartesian reasoning has borne this out (see: How many René Descartes can dance on the head of a pin?). It can not be demonstrated that anything unobserved continues to exist in any meaningful way and to assert the unproven maxim that it exists anyway just because it pleases you to believe so is an article of faith and does not fall under the umbrella of enlightened reasoning (see: Rogue's rail against coarse grained thought).
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Re: Thanksgiving without a Turkey
by Merry_Widow on Dec 01, 2002 - 02:05 AM
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I didn't have my thanksgiving turkey. He was up in Bakersfield with his family. So I nibbled on roast beef instead. Almost as good.
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Re: Thanksgiving without a Turkey by Dolorosa (SixOfSwords@IU.zzn.com) on Dec 02, 2002 - 10:17 AM (User info | Send a Message) | I'm not a Turkey! I'm a Coyote!! |
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Re: Thanksgiving without a Turkey
by Dolorosa (SixOfSwords@IU.zzn.com)
on Dec 02, 2002 - 10:16 AM
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That was such a living and visually-potent description of reality it was eerie.
I kinda' forgot about holidays myself, so I have to get used to 'em again...
You can come to my place for any holiday man...we don't have too much, but we're a warm and generous tribe, if not a bit weird.
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