On the further edge of Christmas 2023.

So I got the new fiber cables……

Tv.  Music.  Web.  Your mother’s Onlyfans.

Watched some of a Christmas Eve marathon, of somewhat more obscure Christmas films on TCM.

Tenth Avenue Angel.  Young Margaret OBrien owns the screen and ties the various stories of a neighborhood together.  Obligatory happy ending, but its welcome, and its worth it to see a smile on her face.  Such as:  preggers mum, and the good-hearted hoodlum.

It Happened on Fifth Avenue.  TCM had kind of pimped this movie during the entire month of December, giving at least a weekly showing.  A happy older character, the wise old kindly and fat man, and the grinchy magnate, the good young man, the became-wise divorcee.  All embraced a kind of moral and emotional intelligence, having that mysterious sixth sense of how and when to hold appearances.  It was worth it, and a good investment of two hours.

I had a stray sense that I had somehow inadvertently, unintentionally, cheesed-off Natalie Portman.  The obvious feelings of guilt and shame accompanied the feeling.

I had an awesome daydream on Christmas morning that I was doing edging in my old yard at Mcdougal Circle.  For posterity, I note that there is a grove of pine trees emerging in that spot these days. No more the four colors of Azaleas, and the Mother’s Day Rose, or the Family Dollar plastic bordering; but nonetheless, I had my tunnel vision, my old professional yardman mindset, and I went to it with gusto.  “Making time.”

The thing was to do the yard at my house, then do a heavy amount of edging/sting-trimming next door at the grandmum’s, where I would level out and generally touch up a lustrous front lawn punctuated by a huge stump of an old evergreen oak.  Then I would do a big expanse of the front ditches.  The rear portion of the acreage next door was a kind of orchard, tailored to the locale, bearing pears, pecans, grapes, and strawberries.

A stray memory in the day, collecting pay, going to a now defunct Winn-Dixie, with said cash haul, and buying a cheap Chef Boyardee pizza kit, but bolstering that with copious amounts of mozzarella.  Indeed, I would buy too much for one pizza, and actually too much for even a second pizza.  The end product would be mostly cheese, of course, and then from the locally-owned Chesterfield, SC grocery store, I bought bacon ends, which tended to be somewhat meaty.  I would brown the pork in the pan before adding it to the uncooked pizza.  The happy pork earls would intermingle with the cooking pizza.  Cheese earls.  Bacon earls.  

Happiness.

I had always talked about going over to Cheddar Cheese, and then using spiced-up mashed potatoes as my sauce……

But then, we live and learn, and inevitably, if we don’t die, we make changes that we thing are providential in the ongoing pursuit of the competing interests of health and happiness.

I caught a lecture on the Deep State from Victor Davis Hanson.  It was balls.  He made and presented his case pretty well, though part of the argument hinged on the “clutching our pearls” reactions of GOP congressman in some hearings.  “The Unelected and Unaccountable Deep State.”  Of his examples, it seemed clear, unhappy military officials, doing some hyjinks with the press, James Comey, John Brennan and some other.   The unthreaded needle was supposed leaks from the Steele Dossier, with the only commonality being, not facts from the document, but simply that document existed, that they claimed they had not heard of it, but the very fact of its existence was leaked to the press.

I’m forced to assume, based on information, or lack of such, that Natalie Portman is, in fact, not mad at me for any reason at all, unless I hear otherwise.

But then there was a podcast, God speaking to the believers through dreams.  Biblical examples.  Documented accounts.

And that much, put in publication on Christmas Eve.  You figure what kind of ministry that is, that it takes the great among the faithful to bring a message to the modern man about one way in which God speaks to his creation.  This, in an era of largely “practical” advice in the form of homiletics.