one of the very first stories ever read about a white community destroying a black community boiled down to simple envy.

two communities, one black, one white, lived adjacent to each other. the blacks were obstinately outcast from the larger white town and in turn, formed their own community.

in short, an economic downturn bankrupted many of the whites; the blacks were rock solid and continued to thrive.

the combination of blacks buying up failed white farmland; whites having to patronize black establishments for goods, and sheer unearned pride led the whites to "Tulsa" the black community.

the black folk did not reincorporate and dispersed. while the whites and their town barely hung on for a while, before it again failed. it only lives on as a name on old maps.

odd thing, even on modern maps there appears to be an area of expansive farmland where those towns once were. in comparison to the peppering of towns all along the state's roadways, that area is abnormally sparse. almost as if the map had a scar.

hidden meaning or not, at least this was the era when Nicolas Cage movies were good. Outcast, anyone?

You know, one could probably make a film along the lines of this video. A comedy disaster film, where The Gay gets unleashed upon the world, and all devolves into chaos. The few people that find themselves immune are suddenly outcasts / freaks in a fully gayed-up world. Shenanigans ensue.

When Nirvana came out I was just beginning to transition out of a very sheltered church every Sunday country music loving family. I remember seeing the Nevermind album in a bin outside a music store in the mall and laughing at the absurdity of it. At the time I was rebelling at the weird sounds and antics of country music but I was also rebelling against Grunge music from the thought of it being to popular and trendy among the social outcasts of my own peers that I did not yet identify with. I had started to listen to our local oldies station and was really into the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album when I heard that Kurt had died. Immediately after his passing Mtv would play unplugged quite regularly and thats when I found my appreciation for Nirvana. I became one of there biggest fans which led into other bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Shamshing Pumpkins, Cranberries, Weezer and then later into bands like Radiohead, Pink Floyd, The Pixies, and the Flaming LIps. All my musical taste has been shaped and guided by this one band.

It's interesting that your traditional fantasy strongmen types (Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Khal Drogo, Jamie Lannister) fare so poorly in this universe, while the outcasts (bastards, dwarves, tomboys, cripples and book readers) find a way to survive.

Not true. You're not just going to be randomly violated for breaking the speed limit. It's going to cost you some money and maybe a day or two in jail. What is the fear involved in going to jail? Impact on career. Jail isn't actually THAT bad in America. It's prison that's bad. You don't just go to fucking prison. That's stupid.

System of greed doesn't punish at the ass rape level unless you're a fucked outcast that goes through the juvenile system, which is majorly screwed up, or you go up to prison because you truly are someone that needs to be ass raped.

@Duncan And yet this is the commonly suggested course of action for those overweight. Eat 1000-1200 calories a day, and exercise. That's a recipe for disaster. Further, your claim that if you intake fewer calories than you expend you will lose weight. This is not necessarily true. Your body is not a bunsen burner. That's why we have terms like "metabolism" as in so and so has a high metabolism or a low metabolism. In other words, some people can eat and eat and eat, and their body will simply convert the excess energy into heat. For others, that energy is stored as fat. My claim is that there are people for whom prolonged caloric restriction will not result in continued weight loss. Instead the body will continue to store the energy it receives as fat and your brain will be deprived of the energy it needs to allow activity levels necessary to burn anything off. Even with continued restriction. There are cases (e.g. with OCD patients) that prolonged weight loss can be achieved, but often it's simply impossible.

With regards to "life-style change," I agree. It's necessary. However, losing weight isn't. Much more success has been reported encouraging an active lifestyle. Eat until you are sated. That's okay (assuming you don't have a broken sensory system in that regard). People that pursue this approach will usually not lose weight, but they will become healthy. All of their bio-markers (e.g. cholesterol) often come into check. They are active, happy, and healthy. Yet still, people would somehow feel justified sending them a letter telling fatty to get off their ass.

I'll give an example. I watched my girl eat 1200 calories a day for six months. She's 5'2" at 180. The first month of this brought her down to 165/170, but the following five brought her no further. I watched her. She measured every meal with a measuring cup. She's also a geneticist, so she knows a thing or two about the relevant biochem. She was depressed as hell, and her activity level dropped. She was miserable and didn't even really lose substantial weight.

Now, she bikes at least 10-12 hilly miles a day, swims a couple miles three times a week, and does yoga. She eats when she's hungry and stops when she's full. She eats healthily for the most part, but rewards herself with a sweet now and again. Every measure known to correlate with health shows that she is healthy despite her weight. People call her fat all the time. There's just no need. Her doctor doesn't, because many doctors these days know BMI is a bullshit measure. She's not a weird case. I mentioned by buddy the pullup champ in a previous post. The dude was vegetarian in boot camp. He doesn't have an ounce of fat on him, and can do effectively perpetual pushups. He's technically "obese." For a medical term, it's about as useful as "idiot."

The fact is evidence is mounting that your disposition towards retaining fat probably has more to do with what was eaten by your mother during pregnancy than anything you do in your lifetime (other than maybe early childhood). Your body has a weight it would like to keep, and it will succeed in keeping it. If people would just change the societal pressure towards becoming healthy rather than losing weight people doomed to carry extra pounds wouldn't have to feel like outcasts, and would probably be more likely to pursue the correct goal. Instead, most people here seem to think it's okay to berate strangers about their weight. Let them talk to their doctor. If their doctor is good with it, you probably should be too.

@scannex Dude... are you really citing a marketing campaign for weight loss pushers? I bet you I could find data that shows the effectiveness of penis enhancement pills too. If you took a few you might find you like 'em thick ;-). Try some primary literature, and I'll respond in kind.

Try to refute this claim: "Overweight or mildly obese individuals with otherwise normal bio-markers show no decrease in life expectancy from normal."

If you can't, then tell me why it is okay to berate someone about their weight knowing nothing about their health overall?

I will be buying the special edition. I hated 2000 and 3000. But the first sim city on SNES and sim city 4 were badass. I'm pretty sure my social life died from these games... and Civiliazation... and counter strike... and Battlefield... and Ceaser III... and GTA... and Roller Coaster Tycoon... and Railroad Tycoon... Can't forget SW X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Rebellion, Jedi outcast, Jedi Academy, Battlefront...

This show turned into shit the minute Rachel was called an Outcast while fucking the Captain of the football team and pretty much every other guy. Glee does songs and performances really well, I bought two of their CDs. I can't stand the stories anymore, just fucking sick of them, and that was well before the Gay Gay Bully (no that's not a typo).

Wow, having just read this... this was horrendously handled.

As said above, this should have REALLY been handled in private messages to lucky/dag by those who had concerns. Publicly airing suspicions with no facts to back them up has resulted in people feeling really set upon and outcast from the get go.

Very sad

And from reading the comments on DFT and Issy's profiles, man they were harmless to a fault.

Blankfist must have really done a number on you guys to get you so twitchy.

I grew up in Finland and went to school there. Yes, some kids were bullied and none of the teachers ever noticed some of that. It didn't happen in the school, but when I was on the second grade n(elementary school), I definitely had two biys bullying me for a while. After school ended and we had to walk home, they'd follow me, push me around, scare the crap out of me. I was the only child and very quiet, timid, easy to scare.

Those boys really scared me, I remember just running off and grabbing the arm of a woman walking home from the store, to make the boys think I knew her. It eventually got bad enough that I just refused to go to school. My mom didn't understand what was going on, and she threw a frigging fit that scared me even more. But still, I refused to go to school.

Eventually it all came out. I eventually talked to my parents, and my mom came to observe this after one schoolday. She grabbed the kids when they started attacking me and scared the crap out of at least one of them. He was nice after that, he just said 'please don't tell my parents, I didn't know I was really scaring her!" My dad went to talk to the other bullys parents on one night, and they had no idea he was doing that. My parents had a talk with my teacher too. I was left alone after that (and luckily thye worse kid actually moved away before too long). It wasn't anything too bad, but at that time, it was awful. Some kids maybe just not realize what they are doing. And the parents really had no idea.

Teaching kids bullying is bad should really start at a young age. You have to make them realize what they nare doing is wrong, and how wrong it can be.

On junior high we had a girl who me and my friends made fun of. We thought it was just a 'fun' thing to make comments about her hairdo, or things like that. We were still 'friends' with her, but I bet she hated us. I myself never realized that little comments like 'your hair looks like a sausage roll', even when made in a 'friendly way' hurt her.

I didn't even realize that until I was way older! If I could go back in time, I'd never make those comments! We all thought we were just being funny, but little things like that can also hurt. I am not sure how one could deal with things like that, but we all should just be taught that little things can hurt. It doesn't have to be pushing and hurting, it can be just silly little remarks, and I know I will feel bad about all that for the rest of my life!

Bullying of even that kind usually stopped (mostly) after people graduated from Junior high, and went to either highschool, or vocational school. I went to highschool, so I have no idea how life in a Finnish vocational school is (we were told horror stories though, that vocational school woulod be really bad and everybody was being bullied to death, but I think it wasn't true, or at least not today).

To me watching American TV shows about high schools, and seeing kids bullying, being bullied and so on, was awful. To me, high school was a whole different planet. Kids were trying to be nice, or at least more adult-like, and bullying wasn't there. At least according to the TV shows, High school is bullying heaven! And all about cliques! Maybe because we really didn't have jocks or cheerleaders, it was better? No drama clubs, glee clubs.. You might have bene classified as a 'nerd', or a 'good girl', but at least not too many peoiple were outcasts in my school. And if they were, it was because of their personality, not because of what they wore or were interested in.

It really breaks my heart to know kids are bullied so bad they feel like the only way out is to kill themselves.

People will need to care more, to put themselves in anothers' shoes. When you are a kid, it can be hard. But I think it should start from the home, and schools should try to do whatever they can. People just need to understand how it feels, and how you'd feel if somebody did that to you, or to your loved one.

Excuse the rant, my dog has gotten me up at wee hours (around 4:30am, though this morning she graciously let me sleep until 5:15am) every night for quite a while and I am seriously lacking sleep and can be emotional and/or weirdy irritated and grumpy, not to mention insane.

Phenomena such as Faith Healing, Glossolalia and Snake Handling existed in US christian movements as early as the 1800's. It seems like the video you replied with is more like one christian group trying to distance itself to the embarrassment that is evangelicals, and it's easy to rope in foreign adaptations of Pentecostalism to use as evidence.

Pentecostalism itself is a foreign adaption which is based on a heresay known as montanism (now neo-montanism). It got its start in the early 1800's by the "Irvingites", who followed an outcast pastor teaching heretical christology doctrines. The father of the modern movement (early 1900s), John Alexander Dowie, believed he was the prophet Elijah and the first restored apostle to the church. It also has links with free masonry.

Ultimately your embed is just commentary on internal strife in an overall larger movement that I don't care about, and is a distraction from the real issue. What all of these have in common is the fact that human beings have a fundamental inability to avoid large scale social misdirection, and that is observable through every aspect of our existence regardless of culture, religion, social structure, lifestyle, sports team, et al.

The embed is about the false spirit which has invaded the church, which is the same spirit working in the video above. It is highlighting the abberant behavior that people who don't know much about Christianity assume is normal for Christians. This is due to the proliferation of the pentecostal and charismatic churches. This is not a judgement against pentecostals or charismatics, it is simply to say that this spirit of disorder is not from God.

Yes, there is a herd mentality, which is why the bible tells us to discern all things. Human beings are fundementally vulnerable to spiritual deception. Only God can protect us from this delusion that society is steeped in.

While I wholeheartedly agree with you that the obsession over materialism, commercialism and sexuality as exploited by modern media, such as the original video portrays, is in many ways a poison to the human condition, there are many worse examples of this in every society. Least of which would be this exact scenario played out in Western culture when a pop-star pays a charity visit to support their government sanctioned killers in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Evil doesn't often come dressed in red skin and armed with pitchforks. Evil can be banal and mundane, and it will usually come camouflaged as something good. I don't condemn the good deed, but I think you have to admit there is something profoundly disturbing about seeing grown men, soldiers no less, lose their minds as if someone flipped a switch. And yes, there are worse things, but that isn't really the point. I was pointing out the strings so someone might notice the puppeteer.

I really feel like you come here to show other people your belief as a way to convince yourself. Having a personal crusade to publicly disclaim everything that you judge as contradicting to the beliefs you were raised with makes it easy to put the doubt you have about your own faith out of mind.

I grew up without any religion in my life. I was formally agnostic, and so I understand your perspective. You don't see any evidence of a spirit, and none of it adds up in your mind. To you it's all some kind of mass delusion or hysteria. That's what I used to think until God showed me He is very real, and very much involved in what is going on on Planet Earth. I found that material existence is but a veil to a much larger reality. I pray that God will give you that experience as well, and show you that Jesus loves you, and that He is the way, the truth and the life. I am not here to prove something, I am here to do the will of God and tell you that Jesus died for your sins so you can be reconciled to God and have eternal life. I am here to warn you that the wages of sin is death, and that if you die in your sins without Gods pardon, you face Gods judgement, and hell. I say these things out of love, because I care about what happens to you.

PS - have you ever seen Japanese tentacle porn?

Hell vomited up that garbage, there is no doubt. I find though that true corruption comes by 1000 cuts. By the time a child is six years old, they will have spent more time in front of the Television/media than they will have spent quality time with their dads in a whole lifetime. That is what is really disturbing, and no one is standing in the gap. Modern parenting is putting your kid in front of a TV and giving them whatever the TV programs them to ask for. Sadly, this is just scratching the surface.

>> ^artician

see, i still get the impression that if you were born another place, you'd be defending the finer points of lord krishna or loki's behaviour instead of god's "might makes right" episode with job. all this to me just reads like "because i know it in my heart to be true". this i suppose is true for any follower of any religion, people around them believe in the same things so that must make it true..?
my final fall/departure from the religion was reading the bible really thoroughly, two different english translations and one norwegian in parallell. that took away everything divine about the religion for me. there still might be a god or gods, but the religion and the book to me is just so shallow and human.


>> ^shinyblurry:

You are still just a follower of your local mythoogy... maybe one day you will realise that the universe wasn't made with you in mind, and your god doesn't have a special plan just for you. After that realization, be free to enjoy reality :-)
Those were my previous thoughts; experience convinced me otherwise. The material world is the very thinnest of veils, and sin is slavery. The only freedom is in knowing your Creator, in Jesus Christ, who laid down His life to take away the sins of the world and set us free.
and you will not live forever. just like the egyptian pharaoes' religion didn't make them immortal and just like the vikings are not in valhalla fighting and drinking and feasting forever.
We're all immortal, it just depends on where you will spend your time. The myths that people have invented since the beginning do not invalidate the truth.
I think all religious texts were written by people with sincere beliefs... so whats the difference? the number of different authors of the bible makes it more valid than other religion's texts? and whose christianity is the right versions of the textsts and interpretations? After 2000 years of pondering the texts does christianity stand together as a united whole?
The difference is, outcast suggested it was a conspiracy. The early church is the model for Christianity..it is no real suprise that whatever man does, he spreads conflict and dissent..but again, the truth of the gospel remains the same.
>> ^lavoll:
You are still just a follower of your local mythoogy... maybe one day you will realise that the universe wasn't made with you in mind, and your god doesn't have a special plan just for you. After that realization, be free to enjoy reality :-)

You are still just a follower of your local mythoogy... maybe one day you will realise that the universe wasn't made with you in mind, and your god doesn't have a special plan just for you. After that realization, be free to enjoy reality :-)

Those were my previous thoughts; experience convinced me otherwise. The material world is the very thinnest of veils, and sin is slavery. The only freedom is in knowing your Creator, in Jesus Christ, who laid down His life to take away the sins of the world and set us free.

and you will not live forever. just like the egyptian pharaoes' religion didn't make them immortal and just like the vikings are not in valhalla fighting and drinking and feasting forever.

We're all immortal, it just depends on where you will spend your time. The myths that people have invented since the beginning do not invalidate the truth.

I think all religious texts were written by people with sincere beliefs... so whats the difference? the number of different authors of the bible makes it more valid than other religion's texts? and whose christianity is the right versions of the textsts and interpretations? After 2000 years of pondering the texts does christianity stand together as a united whole?

The difference is, outcast suggested it was a conspiracy. The early church is the model for Christianity..it is no real suprise that whatever man does, he spreads conflict and dissent..but again, the truth of the gospel remains the same.

>> ^lavoll:
You are still just a follower of your local mythoogy... maybe one day you will realise that the universe wasn't made with you in mind, and your god doesn't have a special plan just for you. After that realization, be free to enjoy reality :-)

Love the content, but ummmm... I seriously think that this video would have had more impact if the woman didn't look like a hipster emo.

Besides the other things she said, YES SHE IS LOOKING TO BE A SOCIAL OUTCAST! Just as I was in those days with my silly 'goth' thing.