Banned!!!

Wow, those Gun Nuts can hold a grudge. I used to run an annual feature here where i would advertise the annual Christmas photo shoot of Santa and high powered guns at the Scotts Dale Gun Club, you know those wholesome family photo's of Mum, Dad and their children grinning inanely as they stand behind Santa holding a huge weapon.
Obviously being American i even threw in a bit of religion that nothing says peace and goodwill to all men quite like an AK47, the gun baby Jesus himself would ask for and even gave them a free byline, 'Putting the fun back into fundamentalist Christian' but were they grateful? Hell no, they banned me from visiting their website.
Scotts Dale did stop doing the Photo shoot back in 2018 when they began receiving negative media attention and they disappointingly decided that peace and goodwill to all men means not selling high-powered weapon of death that can blow a big hole in another person (or themselves) at Christmas and maybe, you know, instead of a semi-automatic weapon, as used by Americas most devastating mass killers, buy your relatives a pair of slippers or a pair of pyjamas instead.
I was reminded of the Gun Clubs annual Photo Shoot today and wondered if 1) They had restarted doing them and 2) If i was still banned after all these years and the answer to 2 meant that i never did find out about 1 so I have no idea if gun toting parents believe that the greatest gift they can give their child this year is to indoctrinate him or her into the world of automatic weaponry before they are able to walk
Anyway, if you are in Arizona and find yourself in desperate need of an AK47, grenade launcher or assault rifles for those last minute stocking fillers, pop down to the Scottsdale Gun Club, 14860 N Northsight Blvd, Scottsdale, AZ 85260, United States where you will be greeted by friendly staff who can guide you and offer advice on their Family Firearms Safety Course for introducing firearms into the home which is a slip of paper with the words 'INTRODUCING FIREARMS INTO YOUR HOME!!! ARE YOU FECKING MAD!!!'
You can also visit the website at https://scottsdalegunclub.com/ or at least you can if you are not an English Blogger taking the piss out of American bat shit mad gun nuttery.

Ye Olde Christmas

There is much to do before the 25th December which means many of us turn into a Yuleshard (Someone who leaves Christmas preparations to the last possible moment) such as all the cooking, buying presents and just in case people drop by unexpectedly, a quick bout of Scurryfunging (Hastily tidying the house).
Obviously all that has to wait until the Pourboire (Money set aside specifically for drink) has been spent although due to the cost of Christmas, many decide to be Bummocks (brew for specifically Christmas) to save a few quid .
Not that it is a thing where I live on the South Coast where it can be very Blenky (Snow sparingly) but if i woke up in December to a Ningiud landscape (Snow Covered) and cold enough to get Clinkerbell's (Icicle's), I would be Meggling (walk through snow) and Hogamdog (roll a snowball in the snow) to make snowmen with although i understand some people don't like those conditions and prefer to Hiemate (Stay somewhere warm) wrapped up in Mufflements (Warm clothes) but that's up to them, they are denying themselves a good old 'Apolausticism'  (Enjoying yourself).
To me Christmas is more about the build up rather than the day itself but that isn't to say I'm not happy to see someone 'Doniferous' (Carrying a gift) and although i won't partake of Bubbly-jock (Turkey) due to being Vegetarian, i fill up on Vegetables instead and can still get the Crapulence (feeling full) and spend the afternoon on the sofa waiting for the Overquat (uncomfortable feeling having overeaten) to pass while the rest of the family Crawmass (Picking through remnants of a festive meal).  
Once all the commotion of the day is over I do like to sit outside, look at the Yulestarn (Bright Christmas star) and have a nice Nog (Strong, dark beer) with the family and promise not to be so Yuleshardy next year.

Tis The Season To Say Strange Things

Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year and it is so special that we seem to have words which we only hear uttered this time of year.
At no point in the other 11 months of the year do we deck anything, in January to November we just decorate, adorn or even furnish our hall but in December it is specifically 'Decked' and Figgy Pudding sounds like something full of Figs, which it isn't, no Figs were in it whatsoever but why we sing about it in the song and not change it to Christmas Pudding is a strange one, both have four syllables so swapping out Figgy for Christmas would still scan.
We don't listen at Christmas, we 'Hark' be it we are harking Herald Angels sing or the neighbour singing 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' in such a way that Roy Wood would sue them.
An animals feeding trough is a manger for the month and we turn our dictionaries back to the 16th Century version to say 'Ye' and how 'Tis the season to be Merry' which leads to the question why can we only be Merry this season? Can't we be Merry in Summer or Spring or can we only be Happy in those Seasons?   
Wassailing sounds like some sort of torture although if you had me me massacre 'O Holy Night' then you would probably agree but Caroling sounds much better and how much jollier would the News sound if was called Tidings.
It is also the only time of the year that you can hum along to a Cliff Richards song without dying of embarrassment if someone over-harked you. 

Shock Celebrity Photo In Epstein Release

The Department of Justice's website was so busy yesterday that journalists were placed in a queue for access to the released Epstein files although once we got there, we seemed to be staring at more black rectangles than anything else but all the expected names and faces were there and nobody was surprised to see the likes of  Bill Clinton and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor but there was one celebrity that bought sharp gasps in the newsroom.
There with his arm around a smiling Jeffrey Epstein was the beloved children's favourite, Winnie the Pooh.
Obviously it goes without saying that inclusion in the Epstein files does not suggest wrongdoing but it is hard to see how the Hundred Acre Wood resident can survive this association with one of history's most prolific convicted child sex offender's who died in prison while awaiting sentencing in 2019.  
We have approached Mr W. Pooh  for comment but have yet to receive a statement with regards to this unsettling revelation.

Hiya 3i/ATLAS

It's the closest approach of what we have come to call 3i/ATLAS which is an interstellar comet...or is it?
Speculation has been growing that rather than a massive ball of ice careening around the Milky Way for the last few billion of years, the thing 168 million miles away is actually 'a hostile alien threat' according to Harvard Scientist, Professor Avi Loeb.
He has pointed out the changing colour and acceleration as well as the parallel jets which indicate technological propulsion which when taken all together, points to an alien spacecraft which is on a trajectory to study the Planets of the Solar System while staying far enough away to avoid close detection by Earthlings armed with powerful telescopes.
So are we going to wake up today and discover lots of little green men with red glowing fingers asking us to 'phone home' or not I asked Open University's Physics and Astronomy Department and apparently it's a firm not.
'This object is a comet. It looks and behaves like a comet. All evidence points to it being a comet' explained the spoilsports so how do they explain the changing colour?
'Oddities in nucleus properties like composition, shape, or structure which would have been acquired from its host system or over its long interstellar journey' which makes sense i guess so maybe we don't have to worry about that question I have often pondered on if they ask to be taken to our leader.
Then again, if i was an alien coming to Earth to have a nose around and see if we need to be vapourised out of existence then i would make my Spaceship Comet shaped and behave like a Comet until the moment i landed and began herding humans into cages so who knows.
I would avoid the UK though because it seems like everyone here is going down with colds and Flu and we know what happened in War of the Worlds when the advanced Alien invaders were defeated by people sneezing at them so maybe we should keep some snotty nosed kids on standby, just in case.

America Back On Regime Change Trail

Donald Trump has been threatening a land strike on Venezuela for months and while the military build up off the coast continues, he shot in the face everyone who argued with me that it wasn't about oil by saying: 'They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back' which in my reckoning makes it all about oil, apology accepted warmongering right wing dingbats.
Removing Maduro and installing a much more USA friendly leader such as María Corina Machado who will get the oil pumping towards Washington seems to be the call then but if the US goes down the regime change road, it will not be for the first time.
In the last 80 years, Washington has overthrown many foreign regimes and found the removing part easy but not so much the getting the expected outcome they wanted and in recent memory we have had the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Removing them were easy but after two decades of insurgency they left Afghanistan with their tail between their legs and with the Taliban back in power and Iraq became a hotbed of terrorism and gave birth to ISIS as well as being a gift for Iran.
Military intervention in Libya in 2011 removed Muammar Gaddafi but it is yet to become a viable state as it is now controlled by the very people they were fighting against in Iraq and now we are waiting for the Venezuelan misadventure to begin and if the plan is for an invasion party happens, then that would require the US to prepare to pay a hefty price in American and Venezuelan blood.
How would a forced change of regime affect the character of Venezuela who it is unlikely will greet America as a liberator and more likely a murderous bully going to war to control their resources.
The buzz is that the much anticipated attack will come within days as a way to bury the bad news of the Epstein Files which are to be released imminently and will incriminate Trump even more than it already has so on we go onto the latest bout of American regime change in oil rich countries under the flimsiest of justifications.  

Merry Crimble??

Christmas goes by many names – from the traditional shortening ‘Xmas’, to the French ‘noel’ and the Germanic ‘yule’, through to informal nicknames like ‘Crimbo’. But a new YouGov poll reveals that not all these terms fill everybody with festive cheer.
68% dislike hearing it called Crimble, 58% Yuletide, 57% The Festive Season', 55% Holiday Season, 48% Xmas and 40% dislike the term Crimbo.    
89% of Britons celebrate Christmas with 34% saying they 'love it' 39% saying they like it but 9% say they dislike the whole thing.
The most acceptable time for shops to start putting up displays is late November, but for people’s own homes it is early December and 76% have an artificial tree and 18% a real one and 15% of Brits will forego the washing up and dine out on Christmas Day
Over half (53%) of parents will buy their kids clothes, shoes and accessories this year and 39% will buy Board games, card games and puzzles, books, journals and diaries.  Only 14% of parents will be buying musical instruments.
62% say they watch at least 1 Christmas film and 57% will eat Turkey on the big day and 41% will have Christmas pudding for dessert,
Silent Night is the nation’s favourite Christmas carol, All I Want for Christmas Is You the favourite Christmas song, and Elf the favourite Christmas film.
The average spent is £550 and 40% say they are worried about the impact of Christmas on their personal finances and it is split 50/50 with whether to call the Jolly present bringer Santa Claus or Father Christmas.

Smiley/Sad Face

I find anything to do with Computers mind-numbing and really don't care how or why they work but years ago i sit in on a lecture by the British Psychological Society (BPS) about 'Psychology and the Virtual World' because i thought it sounded interesting. Turned out it wasn't because it was all about how websites can use Psychology to make themselves more appealing, something they called Cyberpsychology.  
This must have been mid 2010's i guess and looking at my notes it seems i either fell asleep or noticed something more interesting out of the window because they are very sparse but piecing together my scribblings i can see that Cyberpsychology is the scientific study of our psychological experiences with digital technologies and aspects of the internet.
Yep, a yawnfest indeed but according to them: 'It is important because in contemporary society, technology and the internet form such an important part of our everyday experiences. Technology is very much a part of how we socialise, how we entertain ourselves, how we work, and how we learn. Psychology is all about understanding human thought and behaviour, but critically we want to know how this works in 21st Century society. This is where cyberpsychology can give us a unique perspective about contemporary human behaviour.' Apparently.
I did have notes on emoji's and how we process them because they are a significant part of online communication and people’s expression of emotion.
According to whoever it was, we process them in the way we do with other emotional stimuli such as faces or emotion words. We can use methods from other areas of psychology such as cognitive psychology to test this experimentally. Generally, what we are finding is that on an unconscious level, we don’t seem to process emoji like other emotional stimuli. And that’s really interesting in itself'.
To them maybe, not so much to me because i drew a little smiley face which was more ACIIIIIIID from the 90s than the smiley emoji face they were thinking of but certain personality traits seem to be related to the type of emoji people use based on extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and neuroticism.
The most common used Emoji and Personality Clues to the people who use them are:

Happy/Smiling Faces (😊, 😄): Often linked to being agreeable, conscientious, and open; they add positive emotional tone, making communication clearer.
Heart Emojis (❤️, 🥰): Strong indicators of high agreeableness, showing warmth and affection.
Positive Emojis (🔥, 🎉): Indicate an energetic, enthusiastic, and hype personality, bringing energy to messages.
Negative Emojis (😠, 😥): Can correlate with higher neuroticism or mood instability, though they're also used to avoid awkwardness.
Thinking Face (🤔): May suggest deeper thought or intellectual curiosity, although not always linked to specific Big Five traits in studies.
Praying Hands/Monkey (🙏, 🙈): Can suggest a tactile nature.

I hardly ever use emojis which apparently shows 'discomfort with intimacy and distance themselves from emotional expression in digital messages', or i'd go with feel that there are no need for them if you write the email clearly in the first place.

What Happened Don?

Don't know what could have happened but over the last 12 months the Global view of the U.S. have worsened and views of China have improved
Surveyed by Pew Research on what they think of the two leaders of both Superpowers  to do the right thing regarding world affairs, the obese, orange sex pest in the White House is dropping faster than shares in a Trump Casino at 22% and the last time the American President was less trusted than the Chinese President, currently 25%, was in 2020, the last year of the first Trump Presidency.   
The small handed criminals reputation is worst in Germany where 18% of Adults have confidence in Trump but 25% trust Xi and he didn't come out much better when asked who was the biggest threat to Peace , in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the U.S. is the second-most commonly named threat after Russia). People in Spain name the U.S. as their top threat about as often as they name Russia. The U.S. is the most commonly cited as the greatest threat in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico and i would expect Venezuelans are not keen on him if they were asked.
In Australia, Japan and the U.S., people name most frequently name China as the country posing the greatest threat.
The pussy grabbing liar doesn't fare much better in his own country with most Americans (63%) not trusting Trump and even his own AI Truth Social chatbot calls him a liar so bit awkward for him when asked  about whether he is trustworthy, replied that 'Major fact-checkers, courts, and official investigations have documented numerous false claims by Donald Trump over many years'.
Not to worry though, only another 3 years if he lasts that long and judging by the many medical diagnosis by amateur medical medics online, he will be lucky to see New Year.

Climate Change = Crap Tasting Coffee

Climate Change is bringing some scary things with Mother Nature getting ready to ramp it up further but if the thought of us all being wiped out by floods, droughts and extreme weather doesn't do it for you, maybe the thought of missing on on your morning coffee will.
The snappily titled 'UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment' have been pointing to the findings from World Coffee Research that found that by 2050, the land area suitable for Arabica coffee production could shrink by 50% with all of the main production nations in Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and Colombia becoming increasingly hot and dry and unsuitable for cultivation due to Climate Change.
'Without swift and substantial action, the viability of coffee as a global commodity could be in jeopardy. The impacts are already being felt with global coffee prices surging , driven by weather disruptions in major producing countries' they explained.
Coffee experts (who knew they were a thing?) warn that without both climate mitigation and serious adaptation, coffee will become scarcer and more expensive, with supply chains disrupted and quality eroded, or 'flavour-flation' where taste suffers.
Another snappily titled office, 'The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service' has described Brazil as enduring its: 'most intense and widespread drought in history,' with serious consequences for coffee flowering and yields in the 2024–2025 season and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agree that their own study found that since 2000, increased evaporation driven by higher temperatures underscoring that climate change is intensifying drought beyond simple rainfall shortages.
Dr. Ernesto Méndez, co-director of something called the Institute for Agroecology and professor of agroecology at the University of Vermont, spelt it out that: 'There’s no question that climate change is affecting coffee regions and communities around the world. Coffee shrubs are very sensitive to weather conditions for their development. For a coffee plant to flower, it needs to have just the right amount of moisture and temperature. The right conditions are also necessary for the flowers to set and then become the coffee cherries that are harvested.'
There you go then, join the fight against Climate Change or face the very real prospect of paying much more for a crappy tasting cup of Coffee.