Dreambiscuit

Gleipnir. It’s a bit out there, which is what I like about it, and so far it’s been delivering pretty well. I’m nine episodes deep in the series and it’s still holding my attention.

I bought some ballpoint pens with cynical sayings printed on each one.

Edmund Gwenn (Miracle on 34th Street, 1947 version). I’m pretty sure he IS Santa Claus! Mickey Rooney (Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town). It’s a classic portrayal and he does it with typical style and flair. Jim Broadbent (Arthur Christmas). This Santa is a bit over the hill and past his prime, but that’s what makes this movie so funny and sharp. Technically there are three Santas in this movie and all are brilliant. David Huddleston (Santa Claus: The Movie). Not the actor I would typically associate with Santa, but he does hand in a memorable performance in a classic style.

Battlestar Galactica (series based on the original 1978 movie), Star Wars: Clone Wars, Rebels, Andor, Bad Batch, Ewoks & Droids, Monsters vs Aliens, Kung Fu Panda Legends of Awesomeness, How to Train Your Dragon Dragons: Riders of Berk, Defenders of Berk, Race to the Edge, All the animated Disney series: Little Mermaid, Emperor’s New Groove, Lion Guard, Hercules, Tangled.

I have: C-3PO & R2-D2, The Max Rebo band, Luke Skywalker (in Landspeeder), Darth Vader, Yoda, Queen Amidala, Belle, Beast, Gaston, Maurice, Lumiere, Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts, Clarice (a chipmunk), Bernard and Miss Bianca, Alice and the White Rabbit, Pepe LePew, Penelope, Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny, Buster, Babs and the cast of Tiny Toons, Yakko, Wakko and Dot, Mickey and Minnie, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and related characters (but they’re not fictional).

Percy Faith Christmas Is… A classic all-female chorus with lots of fun and festivity, and some really sweet orchestra as well.

I Googled paper model downloadable files.

I like Netflix best of all the streamers because it doesn’t mess around with shoving ads and commercials into every nook and cranny, and the navigation is good on some devices and systems, meaning they screwed it up for my FireTV stick but it still looks good on my PS4. Disney has a lot of stuff I like but I always have to wade through a mire of offensive material every time I log on, which shouldn’t be the case on a so-called family site. But I have a cheap deal on Hulu bundled with it so it helps somewhat. Warner, which owns HBO Max, is going to be merging with Netflix, and at the moment HBO is one of my most used streamers because it has just enough stuff I like and I can find my way around without battling ads every step of the way. The worst by far is Prime. Amazon promotes it as having zillions of movies and shows, but once you pay for the service you find that the vast majority of those movies and shows require an additional payment to watch them. They also have the audacity to charge a fee to remove the commercials, and still sneak ads in when you pause your movie. Much of the content is junk made by amateurs and film school hacks added on just to puff up the list of titles, but most of it is unwatchable crap. And when movie rights are sold to a different service, Amazon doesn’t remove them from their lists (again making it look like they’re offering more than they actually have); they simply send you a message that says it’s no longer available, AFTER you’ve already paid for the service of course. Peacock is starting to copy Prime’s crooked example and is hardly worth the effort. Paramount+ is okay but plays poorly on a FireTV stick and PS4. It’s fine though on Roku TVs. I like Crunchyroll a lot and it has reasonable navigation and no ads. It can be a little buggy at times but overall I like it. That’s the rundown of my most-used streamers as they currently stand.

Over the Moon, Klaus, The Mitchells vs the Machines, Extinction, Sweet Girl, Dolemite is My Name, Spectral, Murder Mystery, K-Pop Demon Hunters, How It Ends, Bird Box, The Highwaymen, Project Power, Holidate, Irish Wish, I Am Mother. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few, and I'm not even 100% sure these are all Netflix originals, but this is the basic list of the ones I liked most, in no particular order.

I watched Christmas episodes The Julie Andrews Show and The Red Skelton Hour. Good classic Christmas stuff.

A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) It’s perfect and that’s all there is to it. Don’t settle for the chopped up version Disney was selling as the ‘theatrical’ version, but the full movie with the missing scene of Ebeneezer and Belle which WAS in the actual theatrical version. It’s available on Disney+ but you have to look in the ‘Extras’ to find it. 10/10 The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas (1973) This is not a feature film but I don’t know where else to mention it. Anyway, it’s a great classic that really captures a certain feeling. 8.5/10 Unaccompanied Minors (2006) A great gem of a movie with a lot of style and cleverness. 9/10 Klaus (2019) Really sharp, funny and nicely put together. A modern classic. 9/10

Free will makes perfect sense. It gives each person the ability to direct their own lives and either do (or not do) certain things. We can have our lives dictated by physical impulses or we can take control of our existence by exercising our free will to do what we choose. There is nature, but nature is what humans were put on this earth to overcome. We all know right from wrong and good from bad, even if the weakness of our own human nature makes it difficult to overcome more animalistic impulses. And even though God may know what our lives will entail, it doesn't mean WE do. It's all a matter of seeing what we're made of and learning through our successes and failures in the course of it. Experiencing life is a very effective education, even when it's difficult.

I have a leaf I plucked from a little tree at Disneyland when I was 6 years old. It’s been carefully preserved in one of the little plastic windows in my wallet for years and years. It’s now 28 years old; not bad for something organic.

A t-shirt I ordered as a gift.

I love foxes, but I also like dolphins, mice, bunnies, koalas and platypuses (platypi?)

It certainly led to making many new friends I would otherwise never have known. Most of them right here on the forums. And it also helped me to improve a few internet skills and how to behave online.

Some of my old toys that got lost or tossed over the years. I always tried to keep and take care of my toys but over the course of many moves from state to state, some went missing. I also regret tossing all my first editions of the Harry Potter books. I threw them out to make room in my cluttered apartment. I knew they’d be worth something but tossed them anyway. They weren’t very rare at the time but I should have known better. Books always appreciate and besides, I’d like to read them again.

Let’s just say I can fake it really well. I can use chopsticks and even manage to make it look good but I’m not 100% certain I’m doing it correctly according to the manual.

Right now it's 54 degrees F and cloudy. The air is damp so it feels a bit cooler than it should. But there's no wind at the moment. I like cold temps in the winter because I get too overwhelmed by the heat all summer long. As it is we have relatively mild winters in California.

I didn’t really do many of my usual traditions (playing Monopoly, and watching the Macy’s parade, Charlie Brown and A Christmas Story), but got so tired from all the L-tryptophan from the turkey that I had to take a nap while other people cleaned up the mess after dinner. Later in the evening I had my traditional pizza though, but that’s about it.

I brought mostly traditional fare to my Thanksgiving table; a turkey, my mom’s classic recipe stuffing, cranberry sauce (both berry and jelly), with the one new element of green beans with toasted onion topping instead of the usual yams, mashed potatoes and corn. Next year we’ll be going back to the latter. I don’t do all the cooking; I have a permanent houseguest who is far more adept in the kitchen and she did the heavy lifting so to speak. I helped a little and made the pumpkin pie for dessert. Later in the day when everyone else was having turkey sandwiches, I kept my personal tradition of leftover pizza.

Straight and rigidly so.

It doesn’t really bother me when people swear around me, unless they do it without any flair or artistry. Crude for crude's sake ’s just inarticulate and boring. Now if someone swears with great gusto, effective timing, proper inflection and originality, yeah, I’m down with that. I swear sometimes but not as bad as I used to, and I try to be artistic about it if I can. No point in doing things half-assed.

I’d like to be a RICH kind of person. I’d be very good at being rich, and I’m sure it would make me a lot more friendly and approachable. Bottomless caches of cold hard cash tend to have that effect. Otherwise I just want to fly under the radar and be a positive little noise in the world.

All anyone can do is keep on living their lives after they’ve made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes; sometimes really big ones, but no mistake is beyond forgiveness. Sometimes the hardest part is forgiving one’s self. It’s good to keep in mind that mistakes aren’t only inevitable but necessary to become a better person, and that’s the goal of life; to learn and improve. The opening post in this thread mentions religion, and speaking for my own Catholic faith, there is the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) which is very important and brings forgiveness to things we regret. Mistakes are something everyone has to deal with, but if we can learn from them we’ve given them constructive meaning, so they don’t have to be a big black hole in our lives.