Semi Christmas Quotes

The next day—Christmas Eve—Musk called in reinforcements. Ross Nordeen drove from San Francisco. He stopped at the Apple Store in Union Square and spent $2,000 to buy out the entire stock of AirTags so the servers could be tracked on their journey, and then stopped at Home Depot, where he spent $2,500 on wrenches, bolt-cutters, headlamps, and the tools needed to unscrew the seismic bolts. Steve Davis got someone from The Boring Company to procure a semi truck and line up moving vans. Other enlistees arrived from SpaceX.

It will be long before everyone is wiped out. People live in war time, they always have. There was terror down through history - and the men who saw the Spanish Armada sail over the rim of the world, who saw the Black death wipe out half of Europe, those men were frightened, terrified. But though they lived and died in fear, I am here; we have built again. And so I will belong to a dark age, and historians will say "We have few documents to show how the common people lived at this time. Records lead us to believe that a majority were killed. But there were glorious men." And school children will sigh and learn the names of Truman and Senator McCarthy. Oh, it is hard for me to reconcile myself to this. But maybe this is why I am a girl - - - so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill, because there isn't time, because there isn't time at all, but instead the quick desperate fear, the ticking clock, and the snow which comes too suddenly upon the summer. Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, into my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Perhaps that would help, to synthesize my ideas into a philosophy for me, now, at the age of eighteen, but the clock ticks, ah yes, "At my back I hear, time's winged chariot hovering near." And I have too much conscience, too much habit to sit and stare at snow, thick now, and evenly white and muffling on the ground. God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

In the fourteenth century, the name Perchta started being used to refer to these women. With the name derived from the word ‘Epiphany’, it may be that Perchta herself was part of a medieval tradition of personifying festivals. From the early fourteenth century on, over the Twelve Nights of Christmas Perchtas joined the gang, roaming about at night, bringing prosperity to those who left them food, occasionally eating babies, disembowelling people and stuffing them with straw. St Lucy, sweet, innocent and pure, would be absorbed into all of this as well – a girl associated with Christmas and midwinter because of the date of her saint’s day, pulled into the pack of semi-benevolent monstrous Christmas women.

I reach out and squeeze her hand, and remember everything we’ve lived through together. The normal things we endured as we grew from girls to women. The days in school where boys would line us up in order of our fuckability. The parties where it was normal to lie on top of a semi-conscious girl, do things to her, then call her a slut afterwards. A Christmas number-one song about a pregnant woman being stuffed into the boot of a car and driven off a bridge. Laughing when your male friends made rape jokes. Opening a newspaper and seeing the breasts of a girl who had only just turned legal, dressed in school uniform to make her look underage. Of the childhood films we grew up on, and loved, and knew all the words to, where, at the end, a girl would always get chosen for looking the prettiest compared to all the others. Reading magazines that told you to mirror men’s body language, and hum on their dick when you went down on them, that turned into books about how to get them to commit by not being yourself. Of size zero, and Atkins, and Five-Two, and cabbage soup, and juice cleanses and eat clean. Of pole-dancing lessons as a great way to get fit, and actually, if you want to be really cool, come to the actual strip club too. Of being sexually assaulted when you kissed someone on a dance floor and not thinking about it properly until you are twenty-seven and read a book about how maybe it was wrong. Of being jealous of your friend who got assaulted on the dance floor because why didn’t he pick you to assault? Boys not wanting to be with you unless you fuck them quickly. Boys not wanting to be with you because you fucked them too quickly. Being terrified to walk anywhere in the dark in case the worst thing happens to you, and so your male friend walks you home to keep you safe, and then comes into your bedroom and does the worst thing to you, and now, when you look him up online, he’s engaged to a woman who wears a feminist T-shirt and isn’t going to change her name when they get married. Of learning to have no pubic hair, and how liberating it is to pay thirty-five pounds a month to rip this from your body and lurch up in agony. Rings around famous women’s bodies saying ‘look at this cellulite’, oh, by the way, here is a twenty-quid cream so you don’t get

The eyes from Burma, from Tonkin, watch these women at their hundred perseverances—stare out of blued orbits, through headaches no Alasils can ease. Italian P/Ws curse underneath the mail sacks that are puffing, echo-clanking in now each hour, in seasonal swell, clogging the snowy trainloads like mushrooms, as if the trains have been all night underground, passing through the country of the dead. If these Eyeties sing now and then you can bet it’s not “Giovinezza” but something probably from Rigoletto or La Bohème—indeed the Post Office is considering issuing a list of Nonacceptable Songs, with ukulele chords as an aid to ready identification. Their cheer and songfulness, this lot, is genuine up to a point—but as the days pile up, as this orgy of Christmas greeting grows daily beyond healthy limits, with no containment in sight before Boxing Day, they settle, themselves, for being more professionally Italian, rolling the odd eye at the lady evacuees, finding techniques of balancing the sack with one hand whilst the other goes playing “dead”—cioé, conditionally alive—where the crowds thicken most feminine, directionless . . . well, most promising. Life has to go on. Both kinds of prisoner recognize that, but there’s no mano morto for the Englishmen back from CBI, no leap from dead to living at mere permission from a likely haunch or thigh—no play, for God’s sake, about life-and-death! They want no more adventures: only the old dutch fussing over the old stove or warming the old bed, cricketers in the wintertime, they want the semi-detached Sunday dead-leaf somnolence of a dried garden.

Look into Bavarian and Austrian tradition further and there is another witch monster who bears a striking similarity to Lucy: Perchta. Rather than travelling on Lucy’s Night, Perchta conducts her grim business on the Twelve Nights of Christmas or the week after Lucy’s Night (a period known as the Christmas Ember Days), and is especially associated with Epiphany itself. In fact, it’s where Perchta’s name likely comes from – and why it sounds so similar to the ‘Perchten’ monsters mentioned in the chapter before – both were named after the day they appeared.vii But in all other regards, Lucy and Perchta are almost identical – rewarding good children and gutting the bad before stuffing them with straw (Perchta adds the flourish of sewing up her victims using a ploughshare as a needle and a chain as thread); obsessed with the idea that the tasks of the household – especially weaving – must be completed and set aside before their nights begin, and demanding food offerings be left out for them, bringing good luck where they find them and bad where they do not.viii There’s another Christmas witch too – though an altogether kinder one – the Befana. An Italian variant, Befana, like Perchta, appears on Epiphany, and, like Perchta, she takes her name from the festival. She also gives good children sweets, but the bad children who meet Befana only have to contend with gifts of coal rather than being gutted. The history of these Christmas witches may well be one of the most complex of all the seasonal monsters. After all, only an utter mess of tangling beliefs can lead to a semi-benevolent, disembowelling witch who demands offerings, gives presents, and flies across the land followed by an army of the dead.

During homeroom, before first period, I start a bucket list in one of my notebooks. First on the list? 1) Eat in the cafeteria. Sit with people. TALK TO THEM. 2) And…that’s all I can come up with for now. But this is good. One task to work on. No distractions. I can do this. When my lunch period rolls around, I forgo the safety of my bag lunch and the computer lab and slip into the pizza line, wielding my very own tray of semi-edible fare for the first time in years. “A truly remarkable sight.” Jensen cuts into line beside me, sliding his tray next to mine on the ledge in front of us. He lifts his hands and frames me with his fingers, like he’s shooting a movie. “In search of food, the elusive creature emerges from her den and tries her luck at the watering hole." I shake my head, smiling, moving down the line. “Wow, Peters. I never knew you were such a huge Animal Planet fan.” “I’m a fan of all things nature. Birds. Bees. The like.” He grabs two pudding cups and drops one on my tray. “Pandas?” I say. “How did you know? The panda is my spirit animal.” “Oh, good, because Gran has this great pattern for an embroidered panda cardigan. It would look amazing on you.” “Um, yeah, I know. It was on my Christmas list, but Santa totally stiffed me." I laugh as I grab a carton of milk. So does he. He leans in closer. “Come sit with me.” “At the jock table? Are you kidding?” I hand the cashier my lunch card. Jensen squints his eyes in the direction of his friends. “We’re skinny-ass basketball players, Wayfare. We don’t really scream jock.” “Meatheads, then?” “I believe the correct term is Athletic Types.” We step out from the line and scan the room. “So where were you planning on sitting?" “I was thinking Grady and Marco were my safest bet.” “The nerd table?” I gesture to myself, especially my glasses. “I figure my natural camouflage will help me blend, yo.” He laughs, his honey-blond hair falling in front of his eyes. “And hey,” I say, nudging him with my elbow, “last I heard, Peters was cool with nerdy.” He claps me gently on the back. “Good luck, Wayfare. I’m pulling for ya.

GOODIE FUDGE 1 cup golden raisins (or any other dried fruit that you prefer, cut in raisin-sized pieces)*** 2 cups miniature marshmallows (I used Kraft Jet-Puffed) 1 cup chopped salted pecans (measure after chopping) ¾ cup powdered (confectioners) sugar (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) ½ cup white corn syrup (I used Karo) 12-ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips (2 cups) 2 teaspoons vanilla extract ***—I’ve used dried cherries, chopped dried apricots, and dried peaches in this fudge. They were all delicious and I think I’ll try dried blueberries next. Lisa makes it with chopped dried pineapple for Herb because he loves pineapple. Prepare your pan. Line a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Make sure you tuck the foil into the corners and leave a flap all the way around the sides. (The reason you do this is for easy removal once the fudge has set.) Spray the foil with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Sprinkle the raisins (or the other cut-up dried fruit you’ve used) over the bottom of the foil-lined cake pan. Sprinkle the miniature marshmallows over the fruit. Sprinkle the chopped pecans over that. Set the pan near the stovetop and get ready to make your fudge. Measure out the powdered sugar and place it in a bowl near the stove. You need it handy because you’re going to add it all at once. Melt the butter together with the corn syrup in a medium-sized saucepan over low heat. Add the chocolate chips and stir constantly until they’re melted and smooth. Remove the saucepan from the heat and add the vanilla. Be careful because it may sputter. Stir in the powdered sugar all at once and continue stirring until the mixture in the pan is smooth. Working quickly, spoon (or just pour if you can) the fudge you’ve made out of the saucepan and into the cake pan. Spread the fudge out as evenly as you can and stick it into the refrigerator to cool. Once the fudge has hardened, pull the foil with the fudge from your still-clean cake pan. Pull the foil down the sides and cut your Goodie Fudge into bite-sized pieces. Store in a cool place. Yield: 48 or more bite-sized pieces, depending on how large your bite is.

Where Jolson conquered, Bing Crosby convinced and charmed, and like Astaire, Jolson too for that matter, he did not possess the physical gifts of a standard leading man (angles and ears and hair, yet again). Also like Astaire, he made it all seem easy, with the laid-back acting and the unforced way that devastating baritone could pour out and swing out. In one crucial sense he was more beholden to Jolson than Astaire, being primarily a solo performer who sang to people more than he sang with them. Recall: who was Crosby’s only steady partner on film? Bob Hope, in a partnership based in jokey rivalry. Other singers in Crosby films, besides Hope and Dorothy Lamour, seldom counted. Nor did most of Crosby’s films. Paramount, his home studio, was a formula-bound factory for most of the 1930s and ’40s, and the golden goose of the Crosby films did not countenance feather-ruffling. One after another, they were amiable time-passers, relaxed escapism that made a mint and sold tons of records and sheet music. For many then and some now, these vehicles offered unthreatening comfort—few chances taken, little deviation from formula, a likable guy ambling through some minor plot and singing mostly great songs. On occasion there was something as glaring as the ridiculous Dixie: as composer Dan Emmett, Crosby speeds up the title song into an uptempo hit only because the theater’s caught on fire. Generally, his films lacked even that cuckoo invigoration, which is why posterity dotes on Holiday Inn and its splashy, inferior semi-remake, White Christmas, and few of the others. While it would not be accurate to view Crosby as another megalomaniacal Jolson type, he lacked Astaire’s forceful imagination. Greater professional curiosity might have made his films—not simply his singing—transcend time and circumstance.

if everyone could be semi-normal, that would be just great.

Linus: Okay sorry, what is this called ? Scotty: "Huaqiangbei" *laughs* Linus: fantastic, alright so i'm here at Scotty: "Huaqiangbei" Linus: yeah perfect thank you, with Scotty From 'Strange Parts', so I'm "getting me some strange parts" In China Which is actually exactly what we're doing So, in this, like, gigantic tech mall-thing They have everything from components like switches To.. Computer parts, to drones, to cryptocurrency-crap Mobile phones.. Pretty much you name it, they got it here. So I don't really have any objective, other than go shopping and see exactly what it is That I can buy with my little stack of 'Canadian Rubles' here. So, uhh.. Wish me luck. And hopefully that's not for me. Scotty: No, I think we're good. [chuckles] [Intro music: Laszlo - Supernova] Linus: This video is brought to you by Corsair's Obsidian 500D It's a mid-tower gaming case, featuring: Premium tempered glass an aluminium construction Removable top fan trays and more! Check it out at the link below. Scotty: I think this is going to be an uphill battle, To get them to even recognize what those are, let alone know the value of them. Linus: They are gonna be like "what is this $H!T?!" Yeah, no, it's okay; there's an ATM. This is the world's most helpful error message: "Transaction is cancelled for some reason" "Operation Timeout" "Thank you!" Okay.. So like this is the kind of stuff that I wish we had a shop like this. We were trying to do a piece a little while ago Where we wanted lit.. Uhh.. Buttons! Or like.. Like.. Big fun buttons we could press And if we could have just walked into a mall and bought them That would have made my Christmas. Scotty: The cool thing about here, particularly for buttons, is you can actually come in and touch them, right. So, like, the button-feel is super important Linus: Oh my god, I already found something I need. Entire bags of like, motherboard standoffs. I was trying to buy just a bag of computer screws Only place I could find for it was eBay Pricing was just totally unreasonable. Scotty: Yeah and it will be very reasonable here. Linus: Smartwatches, totally 100% real Beats. Scotty: These are probably, like, semi-real Linus: Semi-real? Scotty: Yeah, like refurb-ed type. Linus: Right, okay. Wow. This place is enormous. Scotty: It's crazy, right? This is probably one of twenty buildings Linus: Honestly, it's overwhelming. Scotty: Yeah. Linus: Okay, so here's stuff I mostly recognize. Scotty: "Right!" Linus: There's like A bunch of mining gear.. Like Antminers and.. What else do they got? Mining Power supplies ROG.. Something something Looks like Very similar SKU's Linus: I'm just looking. Linus: just looking Linus: Uhh.. Linus: No, I don't.. Necessarily wanna get lead in here. Linus: Hi! Nah, I'm just looking around, it's okay. Linus: Thank you. [Sad Music] I mean this is the kind of thing you would never find in a retail store back home This is like, dual socket, like server boards and stuff like that. Can you ask how much this 1800W Xfurbish

It was quite common for households in towns like mine to have BB rifles, commonly called slug guns. These were air rifles that shot very tiny soft lead pellets called slugs. They weren’t that lethal unless you shot at very close range, but they could blind you if you got shot in the eye. Most teenagers had them to control pests like rats, or to stun rabbits. However, most kids used them to shoot empty beer cans lined up on the back fence, practising their aim for the day they were old enough to purchase a serious firearm. Fortunately, a law banning guns was introduced in Australia in 1996 after thirty-five innocent people were shot with a semi-automatic weapon in a mass shooting in Tasmania. The crazy shooter must have had a slug gun when he was a teenager. But this was pre-1996. And my brothers, of course, loved shooting. My cousin Billy, who was sixteen years old at the time – twice my age – came to visit one Christmas holiday from Adelaide. He loved coming to the outback and getting feral with the rest of us. He also enjoyed hitting those empty beer cans with the slug gun. Billy wasn’t the best shooter. His hand-eye coordination was poor, and I was always convinced he needed to wear glasses. Most of the slugs he shot either hit the fence or went off into the universe somewhere. The small size of the beer cans frustrated him, so he was on the lookout for a bigger target. Sure enough, my brothers quickly pushed me forward and shouted, ‘Here, shoot Betty!’ Billy laughed, but loved the idea. ‘Brett, stand back a bit and spread your legs. I’ll shoot between them just for fun.’ Basically, he saw me as an easy target, and I wasn’t going to argue with a teenager who had a weapon in his hand. I naively thought it could be a fun game with my siblings and cousin; perhaps we could take turns. So, like a magician’s assistant, I complied and spread my skinny young legs as far apart as an eight-year-old could, fully confident he would hit the dust between them . . . Nope. He didn’t. He shot my leg, and it wasn’t fun. Birds burst out of all the surrounding trees – not from the sound of the gunshot, but from my piercing shriek of pain. While I rolled around on the ground, screaming in agony, clutching my bleeding shin, my brothers were screaming with laughter. I even heard one of them shout, ‘Shoot him while he’s down!’ Who needs enemies when you have that kind of brotherly love? No one rushed to help; they simply moved to the back fence to line up the cans for another round. I crawled inside the house with blood dripping down my leg, seeking Mum, the nurse, to patch me up. To this day, I have a scar on my leg as a souvenir from that incident . . . and I still think Billy needed glasses. I also still get very anxious when anyone asks me to spread my legs.

Golden Heart finalist in the prestigious RWA writing contest. Finalist in the International Digital Awards Semi-finalist in the Best Indie Books of 2012. A featured

Life is like a car swerving around the semi into the oncoming lane of traffic….