On Christmas, friendship, and home
On the 23rd of December, after a somewhat harrowing journey from Florence I arrived home to the States (my flight from Florence was cancelled due to technical problems and while things worked out, for a brief while there was the distinct possibility that I was going to be stranded in Florence for the holidays).
The usual Christmas season madness is still underway - dinner on the 24th, dinner on the 25th, and today, dinner for 17 people. Goose, prime rib...it's the season to eat and eat and eat, and then eat some more.
I'm not someone who is very attached to Christmas gifts. It was something of a relief that this year my parents didn't overload me with largely useless things that I didn't want. Best gift from my parents: a printout of a picture of a Wii. Once they're on the shelves, I get to buy myself a Wii, and that's all I wanted for Christmas. Simple. And since I'm 26 and not 12, I'm not at all upset that I have to wait a bit longer to get one.
The best present I received for Christmas this year, however, came from my friends in New York. They got together and decided to pay for my ticket to New York so I can spend New Year's with them. That's real friendship. It's better than a gift of equivalent monetary value - because it means that they really want to see me. It's nice to feel like people actually like my company. My New Year's plans before this were to sit in my apartment in Ann Arbor with my cat, watching Fawlty Towers and drinking champagne. I think this will most likely be considerably more fun.
So all in all, it's nice to be back in the States - to see my parents, and to get to see my friends. Italy was nice and all, but the States is home as long as I've got my parents and good friends here.
The usual Christmas season madness is still underway - dinner on the 24th, dinner on the 25th, and today, dinner for 17 people. Goose, prime rib...it's the season to eat and eat and eat, and then eat some more.
I'm not someone who is very attached to Christmas gifts. It was something of a relief that this year my parents didn't overload me with largely useless things that I didn't want. Best gift from my parents: a printout of a picture of a Wii. Once they're on the shelves, I get to buy myself a Wii, and that's all I wanted for Christmas. Simple. And since I'm 26 and not 12, I'm not at all upset that I have to wait a bit longer to get one.
The best present I received for Christmas this year, however, came from my friends in New York. They got together and decided to pay for my ticket to New York so I can spend New Year's with them. That's real friendship. It's better than a gift of equivalent monetary value - because it means that they really want to see me. It's nice to feel like people actually like my company. My New Year's plans before this were to sit in my apartment in Ann Arbor with my cat, watching Fawlty Towers and drinking champagne. I think this will most likely be considerably more fun.
So all in all, it's nice to be back in the States - to see my parents, and to get to see my friends. Italy was nice and all, but the States is home as long as I've got my parents and good friends here.
posted by Nixie at 10:47 AM
8 Comments:
Merry Marxmas! Behold a gallery of Cold War Propaganda via Plep!
See also feminine advertising!
Lenin slaps away brainless attempts to smear Chavez, who is apparently Hitler or something.
From Daily Rotten, which is consistently useful beyond entertainment despite suffering libertarianism and credulity theorism:
Bloomberg | Submitted by: anonymous
It's Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers' Week. One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above: "You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!"
Xymphora offers a uniquely smashing one-page case against the Israeli lobby. Is there any other nation on Earth or any other anything in America about which the same things can be said?
You simply have got to fracking read this to believe it. Disco era men's fashion ad for a $45 bodysuit. You can smell the aqua velva.
Alright, last time, but this is honestly worth a look:
How To Be Gay (With The Boy Scouts) and a German ad offered as the greatest magazine ad ever.
Political Oil Price Manipulation
Every day Bush's overtly corrupt crew is in power means more credibility for conspiracy theorists and less for the civilized office-holding academics who have to tiptoe around the obvious to appear to be "credible" and not offend certain funders.
Venal, useless, pro-war, pro-torture, anti-constitutional, extreme-right-wing out of opportunism, back-stabbing self-obsessed Connecticut Senator Joe BaltLieberman, who pissed on his party by making up his own after losing the primary, has had his vanity party taken over by a political science professor who limits members to critics of the Senator and anyone else named Lieberman. I might have to join that.
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