Getting the Merry Fucking Christmas Beaten into me

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Ah, the holiday season, seeing relatives and joy to the world and all that jazz. Usually cool and stuff, and I like doing it. Seeing the relatives, sharing in the love of familial bonds.

And now the neccessary but,

This time my visits to the sets of San Jose relatives featured such choice moments as being exploited for menial labor by the step grandparents because I wasn't their "biological" grandchile and listening to an unending list of stuff about my stepsister who is an utter disgrace to society.

The nicest part of the visitations was becoming half-deaf from the ear-piercing screams of ADD riddled children. That part actually involved coming together with relatives I haven't seen in a year and trying to bond and I had a reasonable fun time despite the early ear traumas.

Then there was my favorite grandfather, who has shown me so much, who I love more than life itself, who loved truly and honestly, who after four fucking days of hand-holding and repeated quizzing was able to remember that I was his...brother.

Fuck! Luckily just before I left he finally remembered that I was his grandson and was going to college. However, my name is officially erased from his databanks and he's going downhill fast.

So, from the insults from one side and the use of all my high school emotion-bottling skills on the other. I can say that I am officially a wreck from the Christmas fucking spirit. By Friday hopefully I'll regain the goodly "Joy to the World" and all that fucking jazz mindset, but right now I'm blasting Judas Priest at 11 to keep myself from either creating a new doorway in the wall with my fists or curling up into a fetal position in the corner.




Sorry for the rant everybody. This was not a good holiday visit. Anybody else have a disastrous holiday visit to relatives?

 

[shereads]

Want to switch families this year? We could draw names from a bag or something. Most people behave better with a stranger in the house than with people we know are stuck with us by blood or marriage.



Also, my sister is an excellent cook. She insists on doing it all by herself, resents every moment of it, and will tell you a dozen times how exhausted she is, but if you haven't developed a bleeding ulcer by dinner time you are promised a seven-course feast worthy of Martha Stewart. Takers?

Ah, the holiday season, seeing relatives and joy to the world and all that jazz. Usually cool and stuff, and I like doing it. Seeing the relatives, sharing in the love of familial bonds.

And now the neccessary but,

This time my visits to the sets of San Jose relatives featured such choice moments as being exploited for menial labor by the step grandparents because I wasn't their "biological" grandchile and listening to an unending list of stuff about my stepsister who is an utter disgrace to society.

The nicest part of the visitations was becoming half-deaf from the ear-piercing screams of ADD riddled children. That part actually involved coming together with relatives I haven't seen in a year and trying to bond and I had a reasonable fun time despite the early ear traumas.

Then there was my favorite grandfather, who has shown me so much, who I love more than life itself, who loved truly and honestly, who after four fucking days of hand-holding and repeated quizzing was able to remember that I was his...brother.

Fuck! Luckily just before I left he finally remembered that I was his grandson and was going to college. However, my name is officially erased from his databanks and he's going downhill fast.

So, from the insults from one side and the use of all my high school emotion-bottling skills on the other. I can say that I am officially a wreck from the Christmas fucking spirit. By Friday hopefully I'll regain the goodly "Joy to the World" and all that fucking jazz mindset, but right now I'm blasting Judas Priest at 11 to keep myself from either creating a new doorway in the wall with my fists or curling up into a fetal position in the corner.




Sorry for the rant everybody. This was not a good holiday visit. Anybody else have a disastrous holiday visit to relatives?

 

[English Lady]

LC -sounds totally nightmarific to me! The imprending in law visit seems less scary now...

though you never know what might happen. I love Chistmas but all this family stuff can be a bit much can't it?

 

[doormouse]

One word.

Vasectomy.

 

[Guest]

how about this:

david and john were born in the same hospital room three days apart from one another.
they went to school, went to war, and married ...had kids were the best of friends...
apparently, they shared a bit more then we suspected for a while.

david and pat(john's wife) were having an affair and john and eve(david's wife) were also having an affair....for years. the seven kids between them all knew about it... it was never a secret.
one day, they decided to divorce... all of them divorced...
then a few months later, john and eve married... seven days later, david and pat married...
sound like an evil, horrid plot from a torrid x-rated 70's movie? yes, it does, but thats the story of my parents.
swingers who switched partners down the road... ah! the strife has always been tangible... gatta love it.

tangled web was woven... we all try to keep away from the hungry black widow spider

now that both david and eve have passed on... its the step parents who are still alive. john never stopped loving pat, even though he resents her alcoholism... pat never stopped being a money grubbing ice princess.
yes, i should have written tv soap episodes...proving, yet again, that FACT is stranger than fiction.
enjoy,
v~

 

[Guest]

 

[shereads]

"A dog is a relative you get to choose for yourself."

~ Author unknown

Thank God for my dog. She's my excuse to stay at a motel.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Last year at Xmas, at my BF's parents', the turkey was undercooked. We survived without any botulism, but I'm eating before I go this year.

Luc, sorry about the holiday visit. Sounds horrible.

 

[cantdog]

Far down the range to draw the line

Lime:

Racism can be really distasteful. I worked with a pair of them in an "outside station."

[ Alfred Hitchcock voice ]Tonight's stawry concerns the fire house: five people in a small building, quietly driving one another insane. [ /Alfred Hitchcock voice ]

We had fourteen hour shifts in the night rotation. Never had one go by without a really offensive rant. But, working, you put up with shit that socially you don't have to. Watching someone picking a fight is just an amusing way to help pass fourteen hours at work, but if sibs do it at Christmas, you pack up and go home. I think you've picked a couple of places to draw the line which are quite extreme and demonstrate a lot of tolerance.

Someone did go home, once, when I was young enough to have to hold the baby, still. After that, things quietened. The theory was everyone could jolly well control themselves for two fuckin days. And we did, until my brother had his big crush on my cousin. Those days are over now, and the brother-in-law acting the ass is the biggest thing we have to put up with, now.

Luc: sympathy, man. You got too much to contend with. Take your time and cope the best you can.

 

[Guest]

Re: Far down the range to draw the line

 

[minsue]

Luc, there are few things that can compare to realizing a beloved person no longer recalls who you are. *HUGS* to you and good wishes.

 

[cookiejar]

I saw my family last weekend, it was a really quick visit and I felt cheated somehow. Unfortunately I have to work on Christmas so I will be all alone. My daughter will be here in the morning, then go to her Dad's. The rest of my family are all getting together 3 hours away. I'm the new kid at work so I get all the holidays and the hours no one wants.

Well anyways, I hope your holidays are happy!


Btw Luc, one of my grandfathers is slowly forgetting things too. Last week he thought his sister had remarried at 86. If it wasn't so sad it would have been funny.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

From my thirteenth birthday onward, Christmas was a couple of days spent in a city apartment too ornately (and expensively) decorated for human inhabitation. Most of that time was spent listening to my step-grandparents sing paeans to my juvenile delinquent cousins, accompanied with detailed illustrations of why I would never be as successful a human being as their real grandchildren.

Most of my efforts were expended to prevent myself from blurting out exactly what kind of an antisocial misfit their son had become. When I finally uncurbed my tongue (to the school guidance councillor) he communicated my confidence directly to my stepfather, with a suggestion that I needed psychiatric help. As a result, no two weeks later, and only months before graduation, I both left my home as well as dropping out of high school.

Enough time has passed to channel most of the animosity into less destructive paths. However, my annuals reply to their seasonal invitation to partake of an ‘old-fashioned’ family Christmas is a card containing a printed religious message of peace and joy, and my regrets that I am unable to join their happy family — neither of which, is sincere.

 

[cantdog]

However, my annual reply to their seasonal invitation to partake of an ‘old-fashioned’ family Christmas is a card containing a printed religious message of peace and joy, and my regrets that I am unable to join their happy family — neither of which, is sincere.

Knowing when the game is not worth the candle is a great underrated skill.

The confidences of a minor are never sacred. Not even when they are. People have to learn this one the hard way. Professional mo(u)lders of the youth are such slimeballs for these betrayals.

cantdog

 

[cantdog]

Alzheimer's disease. I imagine we'll understand it one day soon. It'll prove to be environmental. It sort of has to be. There are places in the world where they don't have it much at all.

We found out what caused the spongiform encephalo whatsis (mad cow). It turned out to be a result of feeding meat by-products to meat animals. Period. If we stopped the one, except for the cases already in the conveyor, as it were, we stop the other. Did we stop doing that? No. It would cost the industry money. Ten years later, a case breaks out. The government buries it, and the feed practice still goes on.

We found out that most breast cancers have an environmental component in their causation. It has to do with one of the alternatives for making paper white. Did we switch to the other alternative, which has no causative link? Some magazines did. Time, the real giant, did not, and so the practice continues. Time and the people making the chemicals have a solution. They run National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. They provide free literature and support all kinds of fundraising and consciousness raising efforts--EXCEPT than NONE of the official literature mentions the chemical, environmental component. Instead, to read it, you would imagine that the women's own lifestyles were to blame.

So I think when we find what causes Alzheimer's, we will then determine whether it would cost some corporation money to stop whatever it is they're doing to rob so many millions of their old age. And hide it, and continue to save the businessman his money. Because amicus really is not alone.

 

[impressive]

Alzheimer's disease. I imagine we'll understand it one day soon. It'll prove to be environmental. It sort of has to be. There are places in the world where they don't have it much at all.

Ditto with autism.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

. . . when we find what causes Alzheimer's, we will then determine whether it would cost some corporation money to stop . . .

Considering the present degree of media capitulation to corporate bidding, I doubt that any results suggesting such an undesirable cause would ever see the light of day in any public forum.

 

[Guest]

Ditto with autism.

Yes. And with all forms of cancer.

My mother is so furious with all the cancer institutes in existence. You know, all of those medical centers about a block long with their multitude of hard-working, serious wage-earning doctors, researchers, accountants, etc.

She says "they" will never really try to find a cure for cancer because it would put too many people out of work.

 

[Guest]

Luc -


Need a beating?


(I've got a stick.) http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/kampf/657.gif

 

[BlackShanglan]

She says "they" will never really try to find a cure for cancer because it would put too many people out of work.

Yes indeed. Same reason those bastard candle manufacturers prevented the development of the lightbulb, and the carriage-makers' consortium put the automobile pioneers out of business.

Sorry, can't buy that one remotely. Even setting the human angle aside - and I find it very hard to believe that *everyone* involved in the process could be so totally morally bankrupt, especially as some would certainly have relatives suffering from cancer - whoever wins that race will win quantities of money that will make government grants look rather silly. Tempting though it is to blame such problems on a vast corporate conspiracy, it seems more likely that it's just damned hard to find a solution to the problem of your own cells going haywire and attacking you.

Oh yes. Other than exercising regularly, minimizing your intake of red meat, and eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, all of which have been proven to substantially reduce cancer risk. And for free. Unless, of course, it's propaganda on the part of the agricultural multinationals.

Shanglan

 

[carsonshepherd]

, of course, it's propaganda on the part of the agricultural multinationals.

Shanglan

actually, it's McDonalds.

 

[BlackShanglan]

actually, it's McDonalds.

Telling us to eschew beef?

Oh, that's right. They don't use any

Shanglan

 

[rikaaim]

Telling us to eschew beef?

Oh, that's right. They don't use any

Shanglan

According to my wife, who is employed there, McDonald's and Wendy's are the only 2 fast food franchises to use Grade A beef. Now THAT may be propaganda, but she's my wife and I believe her.

 

[BlackShanglan]

According to my wife, who is employed there, McDonald's and Wendy's are the only 2 fast food franchises to use Grade A beef. Now THAT may be propaganda, but she's my wife and I believe her.

I shall believe her, despite my grandfather's saying that you would never want anyone to yell "whoa!" while you were swallowing a bite of a McDonald's burger

Shanglan

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Yes indeed. Same reason those bastard candle manufacturers prevented the development of the lightbulb, and the carriage-makers' consortium put the automobile pioneers out of business.

Sorry, can't buy that one remotely. Even setting the human angle aside - and I find it very hard to believe that *everyone* involved in the process could be so totally morally bankrupt, especially as some would certainly have relatives suffering from cancer - whoever wins that race will win quantities of money that will make government grants look rather silly. Tempting though it is to blame such problems on a vast corporate conspiracy, it seems more likely that it's just damned hard to find a solution to the problem of your own cells going haywire and attacking you.

Oh yes. Other than exercising regularly, minimizing your intake of red meat, and eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, all of which have been proven to substantially reduce cancer risk. And for free. Unless, of course, it's propaganda on the part of the agricultural multinationals.

Shanglan

Not only that, but a solution in the opposite direction can dramatically lower lifespans.

There is promising research that may in fact both reduce the likelihood of cancer as well as increase overall lifespans (possibly into the fabled immortal levels). But still the whole thing is difficult because the immune system is tetchy, cancer depends on catching it early or preventing it from ever occuring (it's a mutation inflicted condition, there are no miracle pills to prevent that with 100% efficiency). In another fact, cancer occurs far more often than we think in our bodies, but is usually caught early on by the immune system. When it's not (either by the weakening of the immune system by old age or the increase of carcinogen conditions above the level of the system to handle or random bad luck) that's the big problem.

And stuff of the like. I doubt it will be "covered-up", but the solution people want (i take a pill and never have to worry about cancer ever in my life) is unlikely to be found, though more effective treatments that can work even late into a carcinogenic growth will be and will be slowly leaked into the public with very few whoop-yeahs and brag-a-thons.