discoveries from the internets and some stuff I wrote too
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"Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." - ? | | | | | | |
"If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice. " - shane claiborne | | | | | | |
"If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." --George Orwell ||||||
"On Facebook, no one can hear you scream." - I dont know ||||||
"The reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it." - Machiavelli ||||||
Chest of Drawers
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This chest of drawers is to replace the cheap stand (with no storage) that
was previously holding up our parrot's travel cage. She only lives with us
a few...
An important message from Consumer Reports
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This is our last post on Consumerist.com. We’re deeply proud of all the
work we’ve done on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by
secretive ...
My Milk Toof Travel Update
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*Dear International readers from Southeast France!*
ickle, Lardee & myself will be traveling around the southeast of France
area from 06/02-06/20. If anyo...
The Years Of Writing Dangerously
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Thirteen years ago, as I was starting to experiment with this blogging
thing, I wrote the following: [T]he speed with which an idea in your head
reaches th...
Saint Francis of Assisi
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… everyone who follows Christ receives true peace, the peace that Christ
alone can give, a peace which the world cannot give. Many people, when they
think ...
X-Factor Auditions, Part Two: The registration...
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Kind of creepy to be walking around White Plains at 4:30 in the morning. No
lights on, no cars, no people. I felt like I was in a zombie movie. And,
really...
You remember Ted Haggard, of course, the nation's top Evangelical, former President of the National Association of Evangelicals, and chief adviser to President Bush. Ted Haggard who was disgraced when it was learned that he had a taste for turning Benjamin's into hot sheet motel rooms, gay hookers and crystal meth? Straight Ted who betrayed his congregation, the American Evangelical Movement and his family when he succumbed to sin? Not temptation, of course. You can't be tempted to suck another man's penis unless you're a homosexual, and Ted, as he still insists, was not and is not gay.
before he got caught:
is there even a word for the depths of hypocrisy this clip betrays???? I seem to recall some thing about "white washed graves" that look very pretty from the outside but are full of serpents and worms within - I think somebody like Jesus said that.... correct me if i'm worng?
now AFTER he got caught - "aint my fault" as usual. Accepting responsibility for one's own actions is an indicator of maturity:
- it ain't my fault! and those darn church leaders - they screwed up too! did i screw up? oh, no, it wasn't my fault....
So Ted wants his career back and is positioning himself to become America's Homophobe-in-chief; and who better to fulfill that role than a pathologically self-loathing gay man.
The question is whether or not Evangelical America and the mainstream media will buy into this pernicious and vile con.
just a funny video - but ALL FACTS! :) Hallalujah!... or Allleluia! depending on your Christian leanings. Anyhow, Praise be to God for the Truth once in a while!
The best part of this, of course, is that now that he's working the pulpit again, Teddy can reclaim his tax exempt status so that your tax dollars can subsidize this unique and especially vile brand of hate-mongering and psychopathic behavior.
I know I have at least ONE Johnny Depp fan out there - and she knows who she is - florida. But I think some of the rest of us might find this of interest - not just that he is doing THE MAD HATTER but that anyone is doing Alice In Wonderland! all from huffingtonpost:
With curly red hair sticking out from his quirky hat, a ghostly pallor and bohemian Victorian clothes, Johnny Depp is unrecognizable in his latest role.
The chameleon Hollywood actor is, once again, transforming his good looks for his upcoming role as the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland.
The 45-year-old star is playing a darker version of the tea-drinking hat maker in Tim Burton's upcoming remake of the Lewis Carroll classic.
And this picture is being touted as the first glimpse of the actor in the role.
On Saturday November 15th 2008 I was in Philadelphia for the pro-marriage anti-proposition 8 rally at City Hall. The gathering seems to have ended up falling into three parts actually. The first part was folks with signs and various chants erupting and a little speech and moment of silence for the 18,000 couples in California who married since May of this year but are now in a legal limbo since California passed Proposition 8 by 52% calling for banning gay marriage leaving their legal fates unknown and no further marriages permitted.
A second segment then began involving most of the marriage supporters moving to the edge of City hall along the main thoroughfares and hoisting their sign and receiving a great many honks of horns from the passing cars in support. Whenever the light would change signaling pedestrians to cross a few would run out and wave flags and dance around until the light changed back again.
The third part of the rally ended up seeming the most interesting to me. way on the other side of the plaza the "Repent America" folks showed up. These folks are a slightly less nasty version of the Westboro Baptist Church people - the "God Hates Fags" church who go around doing such enlightening things as crashing dead Iraqi soldiers funerals to alert everyone there that the reason their loved one is dead is because America tolerates gays and therefore God is punishing America through the death of this or that particular soldier. Like I said, that'sWestboro Baptists - this is Repent America. Repent America shows up at each and every gay event in Philadelphia and position themselves and their bullhorn someplace unavoidable and begin to shout and yell at the gay people. They are at every gay parade and pride festival etc in Philadelphia and they are almost always ignored by the vast majority of the crowd.
This time they got the attention they so obviously crave. The marriage supporters began to converge around repent America (all three of them) and their sign and bullhorn and funny little soapbox and respond to them for a change. Chants of "We don't hate YOU" and "God is Love" and "Cast the first stone!" and "We have a permit, you do not" came up from the crowd. Not having received any real attention at their previous protests the Repent America people began to sweat now that they found themselves surrounded by a couple thousand gay people shouting back at them.
Several plan clothes representatives of the Police arrived. They were identifiable by bright orange police arm bands that they wore. They asked the Repent America people of they felt ok and whether they wanted to continue. Apparently at first they said they felt ok if the police would back the crowd up a bit. About 10 minutes later the police were up front negotiating with the Repent America guys again, it seemed to me they were trying to convince them to stop or move somewhere else - they couldn't force them to, but they were asking. Repent America remained where they were but said they felt threatened by the crowd so a pro gay clergy member along with the police representatives began to ask the pro-marriage folks to form a clear "escape route" - basically right down the middle the sea parted and the progay folks linked arms and made a corridor for the Repent America people, should they decide to make use of it.
They did not make use of it for some time and the corridor only became longer and longer as the repentance bullhorn and the alternating chants drew most of the other rally attendees over tot he area. Eventually Repent America decided they had had enough and packed up their banner and walked right thru the corridor of linked arms. They took a breather and started back up a little further from the plaza about a half an hour later, but by this time the crowd had reverted to the standard tactic of simply ignoring them.
Huckabee: Gays Haven't Crossed Civil Rights Violence Threshold - as evidenced perfectly by this blog post! video - note: he maintains that "institutional rights" and "individual rights" are two different things - can you explain to me how that is so?
De Tocqueville understood the genius of American Christianity better than most Republicans today:
"I have no belief in the virtue or durability of official philosophies, and when it comes to state religions, I have always thought that, though they may perhaps sometimes momentarily serve the interests of political power, they are always sooner or later fatal for the church.
Nor am I one of those who think that to exalt religion in the eyes of the people and to do honor to the spirituality of religious teaching, it is good to give its ministers indirectly a political influence which the laws refuse.
I am so deeply convinced of the almost inevitable dangers which face beliefs when their interpreters take part in public affairs, and so firmly persuaded that at all costs Christianity must be maintained among the new democracies that I would rather shut priests up within their sanctuaries than allow them to leave them."
These people will kill Christianity before they get to enforce by law the fantasies of their own neuroses
"President-elect Obama's office gave the media a new way to present him as Franklin Roosevelt 2.0 by announcing Friday that it will be posting weekly addresses - fireside chats for the web generation - on YouTube.
The first address will appear on Change.gov this Saturday, after it airs in audio. An Obama spokesperson says that this innovation is just the beginning of the digital, transparent presidency." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/14/obamas-transparent-presid_n_143805.html
well, it would be an improvement over the near total absence of Bush over the airwaves for the last 8 years, I remember when I was a kid Reagan was interrupting my tv shows at least once a week!
"Old people sing hip hop in choir robes. They seem to identify with Nelly more than Eminem, so don't miss “its getting hot in here, im gonna take my robe off!” at the end."
and listen to the old ladies sing "try and catch me dirty" lol:
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the “Redneck Mansion” is actually a set for the outdoor Theater het Amsterdam Bos. It seems so obvious in retrospect. It was designed by Catherina Scholten for the 2005 production of Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov, his early play about a disillusioned young intellectual... it strikes us as an imaginative, witty and good fun bit of adaptive reuse, not at all vulgar - and probably fairly expensive to build. http://adaptivereuse.net/2008/03/03/well-ill-be-a-seagull/
Be careful what you wish for. If the American government were to become "bible based" lets hope it's based on the beatitudes and not Leviticus, eh?
"Focused on Sharia or Islamic law, key to the initiative will be to carry the message that gay sex is illegal, immoral and legitimately punishable by death.
Iran is reported to have executed at least six juvenile offenders so far in 2008. More than 130 other juvenile offenders are currently sentenced to death. These are all boys averaging 15-16 years of age.
Iranian human rights campaigners estimate that 4,000 gay men have been executed since the Islamic revolution in 1979. -from PAYOR"
Then there is the state of Israel, they are also a biblically based nation. You must be Jewish to gain citizenship there, either a convert to Judaism or the child of a Jewish mother. They do not use the new testament as the basis for their laws, culture or attitudes politically. And yet they are one of the few (if any?) nations in the middle east where Homosexuality is not illegal, despite Leviticus and friends. they do not force menstruating women to stay at home. They do not stone adulterers. Even though the Jewish scriptures demand such actions. Why hasn't Isreal, the darling of a certain wing of American evangelical Christianity, enforced these scriptures as secular law? Because, among other reasons, the modern Israeli state, like the United States of America, is the product of the European "age of enlightenment" and all that came thereafter until at least the 1930's. A vast majority of the Jewish population of Israel is of European background and relatively recent immigrants and they have brought these European values with them.
The state also has to deal with a multiplicity of religious views, from Reform Judaism to Ultra Conservative Judaism and as such, in order to maintain a cohesive modern society, have needed to incorporate a respect for these varied religious views in to the law of the state. In order to preserve crucial unity in the face of great external threats they have adopted religious and social freedoms that do not exist elsewhere in the middle eastern world.
It is not America's heritage, nor in America's interests to become divided politically over matters that are fundamentally an issue of faith. America will not become stronger if her government is given over to the hands of one particular religious group, even if said group considers itself the "chosen ones" of God.
I write all of this because, the only reasonable argument left against employment rights for gays (one can be legally fired in many states based upon their sexual preference), marriage rights, etc in America is a faith based argument that is founded upon the particular interpretations of a particular set of very limited Scriptures by Christians of a particular outlook. Should we follow the example of Iran and attempt to impose faith based arguments onto the entire population via governmental decree? Or should we follow the example of Israel and, though acknowledging the common cultural reality that religious history has given us, choose, for the sake of unity and perhaps one day, the survival of our culture, freedom and mutual respect even if various groups disagree over a handful of faith based issued?
Leslie Lemke didn't have a great start in life. He was born with severe birth defects that required doctors to remove his eyes. His own mother gave him up for adoption, and a nurse named May Lemke (who at the time was 52 and was raising 5 children of her own) adopted him when he was six months old.
As a young child, Leslie had to be force-fed to teach him how to swallow. He could not stand until he was 12. At 15, Leslie finally learned how to walk (May had to strap his fragile body to hers to teach him, step by step, how to walk).
At 16 years of age, Leslie Lemke bloomed. In the middle of one night, May woke up to find Leslie playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Leslie, who has no classical music training, was playing the piece flawlessly after hearing it just once earlier on the television.
Orlando Serrell wasn't born autistic - indeed, his savant skills only came about after a brain injury. In 1979, then ten-year-old Orlando was playing baseball when the ball struck him hard on the left side of his head. He fell to the ground but eventually got up to continue playing.
For a while, Orlando had headaches. When they went away, he realized he had new abilities: he could perform complex calendar calculations and remember the weather every day from the day of the accident.
anyone who knew me before the age of 12 or so would know that i find this one very interesting due to my obsessive drawing of imaginary cities on the giant rolls of paper my dad would bring home from his office mailroom job:
Urville isn't just an idle idea - Gilles has 250 detailed drawings, complete "history" of the founding the the city, and has even published a book detailing it (Sneak peak at Google Books)
Visit Urville at Gilles' official website here: Link
Does you're creepy friend hiding behind the couch come with the place?
"Oven? What oven? Found by Whitney, who points out that "the listing remarks say that the gas bill is less than $10.00 a month -- BECAUSE YOU CAN'T USE THE OVEN." "
and then a bit from her bio on Wikipedia that pretty much sums it up:
Leslie first began displaying herself in "strangely glamorous and unflattering ways" while attending Ames High School in Iowa. During her senior year, she entered the homecoming parade, as part of a prom queen campaign, donning a sparkling pink Goodwill gown, a neck brace, and a tiara (won by her mother who was crowned Miss Auburn, Nebraska in 1970). Her publicity stunt made the front page of the local newspaper the following day. Her campaign was a success, and when springtime came, she was crowned queen. After graduating from high school, Hall moved to Boston, Massachusetts and completed her education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in May 2006. Currently she resides in Ames and lives with her parents.
