>> ^Yogi:

>> ^EMPIRE:
now that house is over, I would love to see Hugh Laurie back in comedy for a bit.... (of fry and laurie)...

I was hoping first for a Travel Documentary in the vein of Fry in America. Just have them traveling about for a bit and chatting about their lives and meeting new people. Wouldn't it be funny watching to giant Englishman stomp around East Asia or somewhere cool? I think so, and it would be a nice little trip for Laurie after House, which had a decent enough ending in my view.
After that I demand some comedy though.


I don't know, it seems Michael Palin has already pretty much covered the world already.

>> ^EMPIRE:

now that house is over, I would love to see Hugh Laurie back in comedy for a bit.... (of fry and laurie)...


I was hoping first for a Travel Documentary in the vein of Fry in America. Just have them traveling about for a bit and chatting about their lives and meeting new people. Wouldn't it be funny watching to giant Englishman stomp around East Asia or somewhere cool? I think so, and it would be a nice little trip for Laurie after House, which had a decent enough ending in my view.

After that I demand some comedy though.

When I speak of ecstasy, I'm not talking about a sense of awe or wonder in the presence of natural beauty or a particularly moving passage in a piece of literature. There is, of course, no religious barrier to experiences of that sort. What I'm talking about is ek stasis, standing outside yourself. The Greeks originally used this term to speak about the powerful trances that would come upon the worshipers of Dionysos at their holy revels.

When I say "ecstasy," then, I'm talking about visions of gods and angels. I'm talking about howling to the bowels of the earth to dredge up demons and bend them to your will. Or alternatively, quiet sitting, focusing the mind on only the tip of your nose for an hour at a time, until a vision of the Unconquered Sun comes on you and explodes your world. The kind of experience that causes you to walk around for the next week as if the blood in your veins has been turned into holy wine. I'm talking about experiences that are life changing, help you to break bad habits and come to epiphanies.

Literal belief in these things is not necessarily key. But our brains need a hook to plug into this transcendence. Very few of us are able to do it without some kind of religious approach. And, of course, literal belief can sometimes be quite dangerous, if the belief is not just wrong, but demands harmful action--the Pentecostals who literally demonize those who disagree with them, for instance.

So we're not just talking about metaphor here. Non-literal interpretation by no means implies metaphorical interpretation, in the sense of the metaphor as a literary device.

This should've been higher up, but better late than never:

http://lyrics.wikia.com/The_Rural_Alberta_Advantage:Two_Lovers

Two lovers stuck in a sweet embrace,
Hoping to never move or change,
In the lost love and dust of a summer home,
Two people growing up and getting old.

And in the light of a thousand eyes,
I never want to lose you tonight.
And all the lovers are civilized,
But they'll never be the one just to hold you tight.
And if I ever hold you again,
I'll hold you tight enough to crush your veins.

I hope your heart's good and strong,
If you find yourself in my arms.
I hope your heart's good and strong,
If you find yourself in my arms.

Two lovers stuck in a sweet embrace,
Hoping to never lose the race,
As the wind travels into the little bones,
From a mouth speaking screaming in hushed tones.

And if I fly away to the coast,
Your face it haunts me more than most.
And if I ever hold you again,
I'll hold you tight enough to crush your veins.
And you will die and become a ghost,
And haunt me 'til my pulse also slows.

I hope your heart's good and strong,
If you find yourself in my arms.
I hope your heart's good and strong,
If you find yourself in my arms.
I hope your heart's good and strong,
If you find yourself in my arms.

It's hard to believe the US is a world superpower.
But then again, if you want to have power, keep your populous stupid and feeding the machine. How do you keep them stupid? Keep feeding them religion.

If you can get people believing in religion, it's like tapping the vein to intravenously feed them the rest of the Stupid, they don't even notice it seeping in, they just go with the flow of what they are told to believe.

>> ^sepatown:

i don't think he makes good points at all. without comparing those pie-charts to the pie-charts of other aid organizations, those percentage splits are meaningless. how does the layman watching the video know if 37% is a lot or not much? is 27% for awareness programs good or bad? who knows? how much of that 27% is essential for boosting their income?
also his problem with the Legacy Scholarship Fun is strange as well, he recognizes that it's a good program but has a problem with $1.1million being spent on 'only' 700-800 kids. once again, without context how do we know if that is bad? 1.1million by 800 kids is like $1400 bucks per kid, per year. that doesn't jump out at me as some insanely unjustifiable figure UNLESS YOU PROVIDE ME WITH CONTEXT which he fails to do, which is interesting because he spends some time attacking the fund for that exact thing.
the only thing more annoying than the people jumping to support this KONY thing by clicking 'like' and then feeling good about themselves are the people jumping just as quickly to the contrarian position and the demonizing this charity because they wanna be in that group that thinks that they're somehow smarter than everyone else because they've read on Reddit or a blog somewhere that Invisible Children's Accountability & Transparency only scored 2/4 on Charity Navigator and therefore must be a scam.


In a 12 minute video he's made some good points but it's clearly a starting point for a debate. He doesn't strike me as a contrarian but someone who's choosing to be reasonably sceptical.

Charities throughout the world too often get a free ride and I would not be surprised if the next big financial scandals are charity-related.

I haven't actually made it through the Kony video. I saw a twitter link with a breathless gushing exhortation to watch it and the first five minutes seemed to follow in that vein. I'd rather a more clear-headed appraisal rather than rushing to frame the subject emotionally.

>> ^ant:

>> ^therealblankman:
Sorry, my mistake. notdead.
Not sure what that was about. I blame Flash- lots of crashes and weird behaviour since the last updates.

Flash sucks. Steve Jobs and others were right about it.


You're right of course. Flash sucks ass but let's face it, Jobs' decision was first and last a business decision in the same vein as it's a business decision for Apple to continue using that ridiculous and crappy proprietary 30-pin interface for their iProducts, rather than a nice standardized USB one.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Then, in that same vein - could you make the case that religion is not necessarily the cause of atrocities either. Correlation is not causation. Or in other words - Nutty sociopaths may be religious - but it's not why they commit atrocities - just a side effect.

>> ^Fletch:

^ Not completely true, and I would argue that the cult of personality surrounding Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Mussolini, et al, is at the very root of religion. They may or may not have been atheists, but they were definitely using religion of a sort to gain and keep power. Dogma is dogma, and blind faith in dogma or a leader IS religion, whether that faith is whipped up through nationalist rhetoric or pious devotion to a deity. "Christian" is just a different flavor on the same banana split.
Hirohito was viewed as a living god. Hitler killed Jews because he felt it was god's will. This whole "atheism was responsible for the Holocaust" bullshit is just that... tired bullshit. It's the reactionary mantra and selective parsing of history by blissfully-ignorant religious zealots who can't compute, or, just refuse to accept the utter devastation religion has wreaked on the human species IN THE NAME OF GOD.
Lack of belief is not a belief, and connecting atheism to 20th century atrocities is several logical fallacies all rolled into one dumb assertion. Believing it and saying it over and over doesn't make it true, and just because some murderous bastard was an atheist doesn't mean some nutter's concept of atheism was the cause.
>> ^dag:
^Shiny makes a good point - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - the biggest baddies of the 20th, we're all atheists. Might it be that extremist ideologies of any kind are the problem?

Featured in W. Ellis' excellent novel "Crooked Little Vein".

New Millenium Cyanide Christ

I'M A CARNAL, ORGANIC ANAGRAM. HUMAN FLESH INSTEAD OF WRITTEN LETTERS.
I REARRANGE MY PATHETIC TISSUE. I INCISE. I REPLACE. I'M REFORMED.
I ERADICATE THE FAKE PRE-PRESENT ME. ELEVATE ME TO A HIGHER HUMAN FORM.
THE CHARACTERS I AM, MADE INTO A WORD COMPLETE, THEN I'LL BE THE NEW NORM.

SELF INFLICTED FRACTURES. I REPLACE MY BONES WITH BARS;
ALUMINUM BLEEDING OXIDE; THE DRUG OF GODS INTO MY POUNDING VEINS

(A HUMAN PUZZLE FOR ALL TO SCORN. NO FACE. NO BACK. DIRECTIONLESS.
MY SCARRED EDITION I'LL DISPLAY; THE ORGANIC WORD FOR NOTHINGNESS)

MY RECEIVING EYES EXCHANGED WITH FUSES; BLINDNESS INDUCED TO PREVENT DESTRUCTION.
CERAMIC BLADES IMPLANTED PAST MY RIBS TO SAVE ME FROM THE DUES OF INHALATION.
I TEAR MY WORLDLY USELESS SKIN. STAPLES TO PIN IT OVER MY EARS.
NON-RECEPTIVE OF UNGODLY SOUNDS - I DISABLE THE AUDIO-GENERATORS OF FEAR.

HEXAGONAL BOLTS TO FILL MY MOUTH, SHARPENED TO DEPLETE THE CREATOR OF ALL VIOLENCE;
WITHOUT SPEECH THERE WILL BE NO DECEIT

(MY FEET I CRUSH. THE FLESH I CUT AWAY, SO AS TO NOT PRODUCE THE SOUND OF THEIR PRESENCE ON ROTTEN GROUND)

BAPTIZED IN VITRIOLIC ACID. A FINAL TOUCH. A SMOOTHING OF FEATURES.
COMPLETION OF THE GREATEST ART; TO CAST THE GODLY CREATURES.
HUMANS, ONCE ASTRAY; MADE DIVINE. STRIPPED OF CONGENITAL FLAWS.
WE'RE INCANDESCENT REVELATIONS IN A WORLD OF DARKENED FORMS.

(CONFIDE IN MY NEW AGE DOGMA. SWALLOW THE INDOCTRINATION. YOU'LL COME TO LOVE IT HERE,
THE SUICIDAL ATMOSPHERE. LET ME INTO YOUR COMMON MIND. I'LL PLANT MY THOUGHTS INTO ITS SOIL.
WALK AMONG US SELF-MADE GODS, DEIFIED THROUGH THE PAINS OF SELF TORTURE)

DISCIPLES, COME JOIN WITH ME TO SAVE A FAILED HUMANITY. FOLLOW THE GOD OF CYANIDE INTO THE NEW ETERNITY.
BEHOLD; A SACRIFICIAL RASE A CLEANSING WORSHIPPING OF PAIN.
THE NEW MILLENIUM CHRIST HERE TO REDEEM ALL FROM LIES

(I'VE COME TO SAVE YOU ALL. I'VE COME TO LIGHT YOUR WAY)

>> ^budzos:

They left a $4200 (+tax) software delivery (IE they basically delivered a card with a serial # on it) sitting on the floor in the hallway outside my apartment as it was a copy of the local coupon rag.
From the same experience, I'll also never give any more money to:
3VIZ Software (Canadian distributor of Autodesk.. based on my dealings with them I'd be surprised if they're still in business... bunch of fuck-heads they are).
Autodesk (Makers of 3DS MAX... pick terrible distributors and now call me every four months to harass me about costly upgrades and "subscriptions" that I'll never buy.)(also consistently set deadlines for the upgrades and subscriptions that are totally imaginary).
FUCK YOU UPS
FUCK YOU 3VIZ
EAT A FUCKING COCK AUTODESK
>> ^Yogi:
>> ^budzos:
Something in this vein happened with UPS almost three years ago and it still makes me so fucking mad when I think about it... I will never use UPS again. Fuck you UPS you useless cunts.

One time a UPS delivery girl dropped off my package and as I watched her from the window, her not noticing, she walked by my sprinklers which were on and saw one was broken. She bent down and fiddled with it for a good 30 seconds until it was fixed and sprayed correctly, I thought that was the sweetest thing ever.



They must like me because I'm such a pleasant person...staring at them through my window like a creeper.

>> ^budzos:

Something in this vein happened with UPS almost three years ago and it still makes me so fucking mad when I think about it... I will never use UPS again. Fuck you UPS you useless cunts.


One time a UPS delivery girl dropped off my package and as I watched her from the window, her not noticing, she walked by my sprinklers which were on and saw one was broken. She bent down and fiddled with it for a good 30 seconds until it was fixed and sprayed correctly, I thought that was the sweetest thing ever.

Something in this vein happened with UPS almost three years ago and it still makes me so fucking mad when I think about it... I will never use UPS again. Fuck you UPS you useless cunts.

I will never forget the veins standing out on my brother's neck as he spit out how disgusted he was at the idea of a penis entering a male anus.

It clearly was personally revolting to him.

I never understood why he couldn't see HE DIDN'T HAVE TO DO IT.

>> ^ant:

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
But not Twilight, right? Right?
stern glare
>> ^ant:
I love both scifi series!


How is Twilight a scifi?


It's as much scifi as Star Wars was, i.e. not at all. Star Trek barely qualifies as soft scifi, but Star Wars is pure and simple (minded) space opera, in the vein of Doc Smith and Flash Gordon.

But I'm sure we can all agree that Twilight is...well, yucky.