On this night before Christmas, the stores are all dead;
Hardly a creature is stirring from houses or sheds.
I passed on the pudding for brief yule rhymation;
I'll soon resume most lives of quiet desperation.

Tomorrow two five is the holiday factual;
But I find the eve of the holiday actual.
Tomorrow roast church, then usher the fowl;
Once that is over, I'll sit back and loud howl.

Twinkling lights, jingling bells, and sugary over load,
Tons of force fed cheeriness the prophets so foretold.
Noël and New Year cheers send I to you from here.
Let nice vibes fill up the rest of this God damnéd year.

One dead after Christmas Eve shootout at packed North Carolina shopping mall. Jolly. What fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1jCu66CdFI

'nuff said.

Yes. Thank goodness there was an armed under cover Police officer there to take out the shooter.

Did anyone get any cool things for the holidays? This year was especially nice for me, I received four books on philosophy and a book on world mythology. The introductory philosophy books are one on the mind, another on cognitive science, a third on epistemology, and the fourth was The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger. I think I'll be reading quite a lot in the future. :)

Ego tunnel is great - people all give me deodorant and cologne... I must really stink I think :O

Remember, it's not that you stink...it's that everyone else stinks. Don't conform. Don't assimilate.

Get well into 2016 everyone.
And remember to take care of yourselves and others.

(opens an Erdinger Weißbier)

Happy New Year everyone!! :)

Auld Lang Syne, and all. Glugs a swig from a bottle of Summit Brewing Bohemian Style Pilsener. Brewed in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hoppy, hoppy, joy joy.

Happy new year. Today, I got to use one of my Christmas presents: a 2016 calendar filled with Shakespearean insults. Per'aps I'll use 'em on 'ere.

I do desire we may be better strangers.

I was just in Scotland, an appropriate place for Hogmanay, Hi jamalrob, did I pass near you on my way to and from Edinburgh? Happy New Year to the forum !

No, I've been living in France for a couple of years. In all my time in Edinburgh I never went to the Hogmanay street party, despite living around the corner from Princes Street.

Happy New Year!

Like... You peasant swain! You whoreson malt-horse drudge!

or... No man's pie is freed From his ambitious finger.

or... A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

or... Thou shit!

Yes, just like that, you whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-ear'd knave!

(That's today's one).

Oh dear... I do object to being called "flap eared" -- did they have beagles back then? Some of the insults are a bit obscure, and then they pile up such as in "three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave". I get what I am being called with "mongrel bitch" or "whoreson". Not very mysterious. But worsted stocking? What was it about worsted stockings? Was this fellow over-dressed for the occasion? Did his socks not match his pumpkin pants?

Oh dear... I do object to being called "flap eared" -- did they have beagles back then? — Bitter Crank

Yes, actually. Queen Elizabeth I had pocket beagles.