Christmas, huh? Yes, i know, not the 25th yet here, but hey, it works on my OG timezone, and we actually celebrate the 24th, so, it works!

This year's feels different, in a good way. The change of scenery and climate is definitely helping (25 degrees here, it feels like june, summer definitely reached the Tropics)

I have a big post for new year's eve, complete with grievances and best wishes, but today, it's Christmas cheer all around! Do your best to actually try and feel it, and if you are the type to hate the holiday, i pray you get better soon, because it's not a way of life i'd like.
As for me, I did the same thing as last year, choosing to spend as much time offline as i could, especially with family (let's be real here, just my mom, but i did get to see some of my extended family again). As i've said to others privately, i've had posts in the back burner for a lot, but i don't want to force things i don't feel like saying before i've had a chance to crystallize them into something i want to say. Not that this will help in any way to limit the absurd amount of assorted typos, mistakes, grammatical errors and what-have-you that always slip through the cracks whenever i work on these, even after proofreading multiple times. Haha. Writing ain't easy.

I truly wish everyone in here the best Christmas possible, i hope you see family you actually like seeing, i hope you get gifts you like, and if not, i want you to care less about gifts and more in remembering what this festivity is all about, which is the birth of our savior Christ and what this means for all and how his teachings can help even freak weirdos like me have a better life, even after having been away from faith most of my life until relatively recently, and for those who don't believe in Him, that's fine, you'll come around eventually, and i pray for your conversion soon enough.

Cherish what you have, who you are with, and throw yourself at life with a smile, things will fare better that way. I have a loooong post for new year's eve with a lot to say about this topic, and a lot of grievances i have to vent in that regard, but for today you get a pass.
What you do get is the Traditional Channel Albums i post every fucking year to everyone, because they're fun. SUUURE, they are remixes of the "songs about christmas that don't talk about christmas at all because of reasons" genre i quite hate, but hey, the remix factor washes that down a lot.

I just find it really hard to take something like 'let it snow' seriously when i'm in a t-shirt sipping on Argentinian malbec wine and waiting on a huge pot of beans to be ready.

Merry christmas to you all! With all my heart.

Without further ado, here's the classix: Thunderdome: The X-MAS Edition and CHRISTMAS SPEED!

And for the Italian subscribers, forced to the worst part of Christmas (seeing the shitty side of family, being inundated with shitty movies, having it be an exhausting marathon of errands and chores and duties) here's another Christmas tradition, a bit on the icky mopey side of things, but at least funny and with the decency of scowling at actually bad things.
And for those actually enjoying it, i hope you enjoy it even more, but i notice it's a rarer occurrence each year. I think i know why, but we'll talk about that some other time.

Hang in there, my lovelies, don't let them rob you of another good thing in your life. Find a way to be happy or you'll run out of chances to do so.

Forza e coraggio, che la galera è di passaggio.

Buon natale anche a voi.

THEY BROUGHT IT BACK HELL YES

now give me that kyamisama onegai SPL chart on the main game and we're cooking, but this is GREAT

also konami is a bunch of fucking assholes for doing this

the SPA chart was already unforgivingly punishing and now they come up with a leggendaria

okay then, fuck me i guess

Of all the things i was not expecting to get this Christmas, this was the one i was not expecting the most

It's been decades and it's still the funniest shit put on camera, i quote it daily to this day, holy shit dude

Another year, come and gone.

This would usually mean hoping for the freshly departed year to never return and to hope for a better one, but for a change, 2025 i am quite fond of despite its ups and downs. This is news, good news, for a change!

I have good wishes for you all, and i hope you managed to spend your last days of the year with either family or friends and made some fond memories, yadda yadda, you know how it goes.

My advice for the new year is learn to be patient more. If i've learned something these past 12 months is definitely that patience with people is usually more rewarding than you would imagine. Being less on your toes with people and genuinely patient helps more to break hostility than responding in tone, being straight up sincere and welcoming helps tear down walls and prejudices people have about you for whatever reason, not making enemies outright of people who disagree with you even on fundamental levels and at least trying to be civil is more productive than going around with a stick to make lines in the sand with, and being kind fucks with people who are being assholes with you even more than the instinctive "suck a lemon" and derivatives (or outright caving their god damn skull in, as some people really, REALLY try their hardest to goad you into).
This isn't some new age "empathy and understanding peace and love equity" prepackaged bullshit, it's more than that, and i say this because everyone says this shit but nobody really gets it. Even with proper intent (which i doubt many have), people fail at it. People here get it better, i think. You sit at a restaurant alone and end up talking with 4 other people in the nearby tables, because it's nice. You go have a drink alone or with another, and you end up tagging along with 6 other people singing salsa on karaoke, because it's fun. You go outside, sit on one of the many benches around (hostile architecture hasn't reached the same magnitude as it has in europe!) and chat up 3-4 people around before going your separate ways, because it's normal. We're in one of the harshest periods in our history (and that took some god damn effort considering we've been in a civil war since the 50s), but life goes on as usual. You don't really 'feel' it, even though it's there.
The contrast with italy specifically is quite astounding. It's like people go out their homes with a chessboard and upon meeting someone else, they smugly go ahead with their opening move and see how you react. It's quite exhausting. It's always a series of checkboxes you haven't filled, an exam you haven't studied for, some sort of beauty contest you're stumbling through, all for placement in a ranking system you are never explicitly told about but you can tell you're being placed in. In all honesty, it makes me stop trying. I know a bunch of people with social anxiety and whatnot, but the more i go through life and interact with normality, i blame the environment more. I don't even blame the ones doing it anymore, it's a survival instinct at this point, if you don't do it, it's naivete and weakness and you WILL be taken advantage of, because you're bad at the game.

I like kicking down the chess board a lot. It's fun, but that result sucks too. Things could have worked better if they had been kept simple, but alas. Too much distrust going around, and people are outright insufferable if you don't score high enough in the eternal social gaokao you're subjected to. I can't be arsed to allot this much energy into masking for people, it's not worth the hassle, and either way, none of what's built on top of posturing is ever real.

If i had any advice, if i had ever had any authority to give any advice whatsoever, is to probably let some of those defenses down, be a bit more naive and simple in talking to new people, and don't outright refuse someone because they're not posturing the way you like, speaking the way you speak, or thinking the way you think, or you think they SHOULD think.

Some old fart would probably shrink this to a simple "stop taking yourselves so seriously, get over yourselves" and wouldn't be wrong. Takes a good while to understand what that means though.

I've tried to write this stupid text several times, and this is the most concise and to-the-point version i could muster up with my allotted time here, and i'm out of patience, so this will have to do.

As for me, this year's resolution is probably along these lines, with some of that focus on more self-confidence and self-worth, since i seem this whole riggamaroo has eroded some of it in having to rub shoulders with some of these types over the past few years.

That, and some god damn discipline, because i have a lot of shit i want to do, and now i feel like i can, and not for the change in calendar numbers.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Oh and if you're wondering why this didn't go up on the 1st and i'm posting it only now, it's because i'm living in the same house with my mother atm and she has a bad fucking case of the shingles and have been helping her out and keeping her company, so this channel was more of an afterthought than usual. Sorry about that.

I'll try to get those posts i've been procrastinating for weeks now out at some point, time just kinda flies out the window and i'm not online as much, but it's getting out of hand. Besides, i'm a bit obsessed with catching up with only one or two genres of music as of late, and that kills whatever variety i try to maintain here, so i gotta work on that.

Besides, i'm staying here until late february, i don't want to keep silent this long and until then.