Tag Archives: holidays

Merry Christmas

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2015-12-25ChristmasCardclick image to enlarge

Merry Christmas to you all. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the very best of the holidays with the hopes that you truly have Peace and Contentment in your lives. The holidays all mean different things to different people and no matter how you do, or don’t, celebrate them, it is still a time that draws people together.

The blog has seemed to do that even more so this year. The drawing people in part I mean, as we have had thousands of visitors from here in the States and in 2014 we had over 66 different countries visit the blog. This year we are ahead of that total. So a special thanks and Holiday Greetings to all of our International readers. If I could say thank you in each of your languages I would. However, because of the holidays The Director of The Institute and I, gave our entire Linguistic department plus the rest of the staff, even the interns and other minions, the entire holiday season off. Clear into next year. Yes I know, that is unprecedented, but we just felt the spirit of fellowship and good will this year and let sentiment run away with us.

The gorgeous landscape above is actually from where both I and the imaginary Institute are located. High above the plains in the mountains North of Ft Collins, Colorado. This is where I live and where the more trustworthy of our interns from The Institute pass by everyday when we go down the mountain to get the mail or head out on one of our many incredible adventures. It is a real pleasure to be able to share this beautiful sight with you.

I am Dwight Lutsey the blogmaster, and along with The Director of The Institute, who as always will remain nameless, would like to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and the very best wishes to you and yours. Make sure you visit us regularly throughout the rest of this year and the next so you don’t miss a single extraordinary event that happens here at BigShotsNow the blog.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Labor Day 2015

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2015-09-07Labor Day7466

Labor day, one of our most beloved and looked-forward to holidays, was created to celebrate the first Monday in September. It was created out of love and compassion for the working people in America by labor barons who were trying to suck up to the working class, so they would go out and buy stuff without taking time off from work, because they were like, on holiday. This benefitted the little guy and the labor barons as well due to the fact that they both got what they wanted. The workers got more stuff and the barons got the money made off the sale. So… Win-win.

Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24 President of the United States, he took the 23rd term off to celebrate Labor Day, created Labor Day in 1894 at the behest of a bunch of New York labor guys who wanted to show the working classes how much clout they had so they’d join their Unions. It was supposed to be celebrated in May but Grover, feeling rather peckish for some reason, and wanting to display that he was his own man, decided to have it in September, mainly because he liked September and there weren’t any holidays in that month at that time.

Like any sitting President, Grover had his ups and downs. As a politician and more importantly a President, he was for “Anything Good” and was steadfastly opposed to “Anything Bad” consequently he was much adored by the people that liked him. So much so that he was the fifth guy selected for Mt. Rushmore but was ultimately rejected because he was too “jowly” and would take up too much room. Plus they would have needed a foothill just for his moustache alone, which they didn’t have, and according to the engineers and architects spearheading this project they couldn’t bring in. This was a bitter disappointment for President Cleveland and his supporters, but everyone else just kind of shrugged it off and went about their business. They had work to do.

So, there you have it. Labor Day. All you workaholics, take heed. Stop working for today, unless you’re one of the people who are supposed to work to balance this whole thing out and make it work, and go out and buy something, anything, whether you need it or not. That’s what this holiday is all about. Be American, go forth and spend your money so other people can work and make the stuff to replace what you’ve just bought. They’ll make money, you’ll have stuff and America will be great again. Do your part. Make this a great Labor Day. Grover would be proud. Enjoy your Labor Day.

Leftover Beauty

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Leftover Beauty4307Tropical Flowers                             click to enlarge

Well for all you people who slept through the weekend Easter was yesterday. How do you do that anyway? Sleep through a weekend. Do you like go to bed Friday and wake up this Monday morning and say “Hey, dudes, did I miss anything?” That’s always been a mystery to me. Although I can remember one weekend some time ago where I didn’t get out of bed all weekend but that was a special circumstance and best left in the past.

Like all holidays this one brings together families, friends, social workers and their clients, parole officers and their nicer and less dangerous parolees, people who wait tables and people that are  too lazy to cook, big events where they worship, smaller events where they don’t, they just eat ham, watch parades on TV, and make their kids go out and look for brightly colored Easter eggs so they can drink their beer in peace.

It also generates leftovers. Massive amounts of leftovers. Everything from that extra twenty pound ham you cooked in case some of the neighbors came over to sing Easter carols and you felt like you had to feed them, to Aunt Pheeb’s Squid and Applesauce puree that curiously went untouched. Even Uncle Skid wouldn’t eat that stuff and he has to sleep with that woman.

Another thing that people seem to have a lot of on this holiday is flowers. Every kind of flower you can think of but mostly a lot of lilies. They’re the flower of choice for this holiday and you can’t go to anyone’s house without bringing them a big pot full of lilies. They are such a pain in the wha-toot to travel with. They’re top-heavy and no matter where you put them in the car they fall over, bust the buds off the stalks, scatter dirt all over the back seat of your Maserati, and when you get there the people you are visiting already have a bunch of them. All they could ever want in fact. So many that they’re now sticking out through the cracks in the garage door and lined up and down the front walk and set on the stoop so you can’t even get into the house without tripping over the lilies. But you paid $12.99 for the damn things and by god they’re going in the house.

Even we photographers have the leftover problem. I was going through my images this morning before tackling the blog and I found a bunch of leftover flower pictures, some of them going back years and many holidays. I had completely forgotten about them so in the spirit of sharing leftovers I’m presenting this beauty this morning. Plus I still have the full dish, well a pail actually, of Aunt Pheeb’s Squid and Applesauce puree that I’m more than willing to share. Even if you don’t care for it it’s good for killing slugs in your garden. Just scoop some around the base of your lilies and when the slugs crawl through it that’s all, Hasta la vista, baby.

There it is then, leftover beauty. Enjoy.

Time Saver

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TimeSaver3775click to enlarge

Here at the Institute we are all about helping our fellow-man and/or woman, so as a public service we are going to do you a big favor and save you some time. Won’t that be great!

If there are two things we know about at the Institute it is Holidays and saving time. Please see http://www.bigshotsnow.com/zen-and-everclear/ for further information about Holidays and see todays post for information on time-saving.

Because it is a holiday and we know you’re busy and you don’t want to sit in front of a computer even if it means missing one of our posts, we, in the interest of giving you a break, have put up a picture that doesn’t require a lot of time to look at. It is nearly effortless to view. It is all primary colors, simple composition, and registers quickly in the area of your brain that recognizes color. That, of course, is the area that lies near the back of your brain, behind and below your temples, next to but distinct from the area that was believed for years to be the color center. This is another great time saver, sending it directly to the area of the brain that does its job, color recognition. No waiting around while the image slowly bangs around in your head until it gets to where it’s supposed to go and the light goes off, or on, as it were.

So, all you have to do is call up our blog, look at todays image and go turn the brats before they burn. Check on the corn on the cob while you’re there too, it tends to burn quicker and start blowing out the kernels down at the thinner end if you don’t keep an eye on it. There you are, then. Two birds with one post. Holidays and time-saving. Are we great or what.