Coreece

Cool, maybe Bill will hop back up on his high horse and cite another love poem for us all. I wonder how much of that trillion dollars of materialistic hypocrisy he's responsible for? . . . and Qualcomm did pretty well this holiday season - with those 5G modems we can spend it even faster!

I'm game. . .

Right after posting this, I walk into the living room where the wife and kid were watching The Sandlot - and it's right at the part where Squints got perma-banned from the pool. "Michael "Squints" Palledorous walked a little taller that day and we had to tip our hats to him. He was lucky she hadn't beat the crap out of him. We wouldn't have blamed her. What he'd done was sneaky, rotten, and low... and cool. Not another one among us would have ever in a million years even for $1,000,000 have the guts to put the move on the lifeguard. He did. He had kissed a woman. And he had kissed her long and good. We got banned from the pool forever that day. But every time we walked by after that, the lifeguard looked down from her tower, right over at Squints, and smiled."

Dafuq, only one warning point? Lol, I can't believe you're still trying to minimize that attack on Ron. The last time you did that at least 3 hardcore lefties here called you out on it. Just own it bro and move on. Oh and btw, I think the correct term used here is elk.

I spent hardly anything this year. I hand-made gifts for almost all of my family. dessert?

Merry Christmas Ron, Thanks!

Merry Christmas. . . .and don't spend too much!

Right, and what better way to do that than by starting a thread for the sole purpose of bragging about your superior beliefs and bashing everyone else's. I don't know how you can read post #38 and honestly come to that conclusion. There's apparently only one angry pagan in this thread, and it's not me.

Many Christians came from pagan backgrounds and they brought along their traditions with them. This is nothing new, and Paul wrote about it extensively in his letters and how to deal with it, if at all. But every year it seems some miserable blokes learn about our pagan roots and then suddenly feel the need to educate everyone as if it's some new revelation - I get it. Like you, my resentment transformed into this type of displaced aggression directed at Christianity, specifically the Catholics. I'd go on about the remnants of Roman pagan goddess worship in the Church and about the Christmas trees, and the lights and Eostre, and all the materialism and how Santa Claus might as well just be Satan Claus. At the end of the day tho, nobody cares because they don't identify as pagans or whatever it is you're trying to make them out to be or whatever it is you're blaming them for. Eventually I realized that I didn't care much either - I mean I like the lights and the trees and everything Christmas that we've grown accustomed to, pagan or not. I built a gingerbread house today with the kids and frequent hospitals with wiccan logos - none of which makes me a pagan dabbling in witchcraft anymore than using chopsticks makes me Chinese. I mean you just said that you're not a pagan but have no problem adopting pagan traditions, so why not afford Christians that same courtesy? There's a big difference between materialism and giving of one's self out of love and appreciation. Personally, the lack of giving and the whole "me 'o clock" thing seemed a little self centered to me. Well I think we found the source of that displaced aggression I was talking about. Honestly, I think that's great - and if that's what this thread was really about, I don't think we'd be having this conversation right now. Santa was real, it's just that over time he became something that everyone wanted him to be, rather than what he actually was. What really seems hypocritical tho is singling out an entire religion for celebrating their traditions and then blaming them for debt, domestic violence and drunk driving, unless of course you're a shut-in. But for what it's worth, I'm very sorry for your loss and can understand why this time of year may be rather difficult for you.

Which means you've completely missed the point. It's sounds like you can't fathom the holiday season without a focus on materialism and excessive consumption. Is that really what Christmas means to you? Food and presents? That's fine, I get it. You guys can't take a joke so outcomes all the pretense.

Sunset, December 21 - 4:56 Sunset, December 25 - 4:59 Exiting times!

This forum really sucks, I had a relatively long post all written up for nigel and then accidentally hit something and now it's lost - I'll redo it tomorrow.

Jeeze, no sense of humor. I'm sorry, I just keep picturing this Clark Griswold type of guy that promised his family the best Christmas vacation ever, but for whatever reason it all fell through - he basically oversold and under delivered as usual. And I see him holding his family looking out of the window of some cheap motel watching the sunset - and with that silly cheese-eating grin he says "see family, isn't it beautiful? We don't need vacations and all that other materialistic nonsense - ahhhhh, this is what it's all about kids, the shortest day of the year. . . . . isn't this just fucking swell!" And then he just flips out like he did at Wally World. But anyway, Turtle, this why so many people here just can't take you seriously anymore and then eventually just add you to their kill file. You just pop in and blurt this crap that has nothing to do with what we were actually talking about.

Odd how someone starts a thread to express how they and their family celebrate the holidays and then spends 90% of it bashing how other's celebrate. But whatever, you guys are having your fun, I'm having mine. I'm just not feeling the excitement for the whole shortest/longest day of the year thing. Do you guys go all out for daylight savings time as well? More like four minutes. And in case you guys haven't noticed, he's a couple days late and obviously comparing it to Christmas. Nope. Oh, my bad - he was saying how it's soooo much cooler than enjoying 1Trillion dollars of Christmas giving. I thought maybe there was a countdown with balls dropping, and maybe even some champagne. No, I'm not Catholic anymore, but when I was an altar server we had to kneel before it and guard it in 30 minute shifts around the clock during Corpus Christi. . . . . .I know, right?

Why would e say it on Christmas morning? I knew somebody would say that, but really tho, what's the difference? Do atheists sit there with stop watches timing the sunset to see how much longer tomorrow will be?

Ya, tell that to the wife and kids Christmas morning, lol. Talk about bullshit.

Come dude, that was funny, right? Well ya no shit, I'm trying to beat Nigel! Dude, just because I always use the fuck word doesn't mean that I'm always angry.

I see this as just another way of teaching kids to be holiday snobs, and they too will grow up to resent it all when they have a bad year, lose their job, suffer a heartbreak or the death of a loved one, etc. I can see it now. "Pffft, solstice celebration? Ya right, what's there to celebrate, the sun? It just sits there blasting us with with it's solar flares and deadly radiation as it destroys our planet - millions of people dead from skin cancer every year - ya, fuck the sun! And then my parents with their little miss sunshine and their "me o'clock" throw pillows, as if to suggest the world revolves around me rather then the sun, yet they couldn't be bothered to buy me a fucking present like a normal family. Where was my Furby, where were my fingerlings? Imagine all the toys I got skrewd out of as a child - I could've had them all, but nooooo, we had to learn about how the fucking universe works as if we didn't do that everyday in god damn science class. Thanks. . ." Nigel, if you really want to feel better than everyone else, then just teach your kids about the various traditions and how they contributed to how we celebrate Christmas today and how some of those "mythical beings" weren't as mythical as you think.

That's kind of tacky bro, linking to your own news channel like that.

Interesting morning: 8:00 am - DJL and I were having a conversation about poker in one thread where I mentioned player tracking software. 8:30 am - Ron in another thread started talking about Game Theory and Stealth Bombers. 9:00 am - I check my email. At 3am (before the above took place) I was sent a tip about the necessity of poker tracking software basically warning against using a sword and shield when your opponent has just constructed a stealth bomber. 10:00 am - Stumpy posts this link from Christianity Today that talks about a political poker game and it all crashing down when it's time to go all-in.

No just that they're not a foreign news source and have the right to do either, just like other Americans. We all know that if a right winger came in here with concerns about Mexican American or Arab/Muslim American news sources and all their foreigner BS, the left learners here would be talking a different game. I'm sure we'd hear words like xenophobic, and Hitler.

There are guys playing 20+ tables at a time now. Dragging doesn't seem to be so bad anymore with faster time clocks and an added 60 second time bank that you must initiate to use. Once that bank runs out you can earn 1 second per 10 hands, but sometimes you'll still find your self at a slow table. The Newest thing that has came out in the past year to counter that is Blitz or Boost poker (each site has their own name for it) Basically it's the same as regular poker,(cash or tourney style) but you can fold at anytime even if it's not your turn, and then you're immediately transferred to a new table with a new hand and different players. (other players will see that you folded only when it would've been your time to act) It sort of mimics the idea of playing multiple tables given that you can see new hands just as fast as you can fold them until you get your monster and flop a set or whatever. There's usually a pool of 50-100 guys you're playing with. Also, when playing multiple tables or Blitz/Boost, it's harder to learn the other players' styles, so a big thing now is the ability to use trackers that legally collect info on the habits of other players at your tables so that over time, even if you don't remember the guy, you have his stats giving you a better idea of how to play him, if at all.

Did you used to get on the DZ.com poker games way back when. I think Billy Vance put it together. I used to play a lot of online poker. Was fun for a while. I remember guys talking about it way back and thought about giving it a try, but I don't think I ever did. Who knows, I probably deposited some money and busted out before the tournament even started, lol. I think they used PokerStars, but most U.S players can't play there anymore. I know there have been some guys that were doing well enough to actually leave the "land of the free" to keep their accounts open. I thought about asking people here if they're interested, but I play on ACR and BOL and it doesn't look like they have an easy option to start a private game. Most are started by popular poker forums where you register on their website to get the passwords. Competition's pretty tight nowadays given it's been about 15 years since the poker boom.

Damn, here I am talking with you people and I missed late registration for a poker tourney I wanted to play.

No big secret I don't think. Add MSG. Guaranteed improvement. Right, I actually meant to include that in my post, and then got sided tracked with the idea of cat broth - suddenly no MSG.