BS: A primer on changing your religion

Subject: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 06:35 PM

Yes, indeed! You may find that a new religion can perk up your life!

Follow Agnes as she explores a congenial new approach!
(you can scroll down a bit to see succeeding days...or, just change the 18 -> 19 -> 20...etc.)

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:07 PM

Man....you just want to kick her (Agnes) after awhile. I note that her friend, the one with the pony tail, freckles, and baseball cap, just sort of hangs around all the time to play the "straight man" bit for Agnes. Would her life have any purpose without Agnes there to react to? One wonders.

That's a common routine in comics these days. The reader is supposed to identify with the "straight man" and roll his or her eyes in shared empathy while the main character that drives the action (thus giving the comic its theme and purpose) says or does something ridiculous. The "straight man" frequently even looks sideways out of the comic page right at us viewers to emphasize the shared awareness of the main character's idiocy, but the main character never notices. In this way we are all encouraged to feel that we are not idiots, but that some other people that we know most definitely are. This enhances our shared sense of normalcy and innate superiority to "weirdos".

Very comforting. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:09 PM

This will make the process easier I suspect.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: John Hardly
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:13 PM

Would a numerology fundamentalist only believe in prime numbers?

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:22 PM

On even-numbered days, yes . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:23 PM

Agnes is also used as a "there but for the grace of ∞³ go I!" figure.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:24 PM

What WOULD a cubic eternity look like?

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:25 PM

I knew a girl who was obsessive-compulsive about numbers. She had to have everything in even numbers, so if there was one crumpled up kleenex sitting on the dresser, she would be compelled to go and get another one to put beside it.

She was also absolutely terrified of being alone...since "one" was a number she simply could not abide.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:26 PM

"infinity cubed"?

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: John Hardly
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:27 PM

Naming the religion got awkward for Agnes.



"Agnestic" seemed to confuse the neophytes.

And "Agnesanity" seemed somehow less than flattering.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:28 PM

A cubic eternity looks very much like this

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: John Hardly
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:28 PM

"She was also absolutely terrified of being alone...since "one" was a number she simply could not abide."

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do. I have it on good authority.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:29 PM

How about Agnetology? I think a movement like that could do rather well in Hollywood.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: John Hardly
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:31 PM

A cubic eternity looks very much like this

So does Spirograph™

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:31 PM

Yeah. I took one of them in the 1960s, but it just made the forest melt and the sky change colours to paisley. Much like this if I remember correctly. (And if that's NOT paisley, I'd prefer not to hear about it. No offense.)

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: John Hardly
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:31 PM

"How about Agnetology?"

M tells me that it does hold a certain attraction.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:33 PM

Sorry. (This thread caught fire while I was writing that response to the folks who mentioned cubes and eternity.)

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:38 PM

eternal cube

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:41 PM

And a cube on the way

Too bad Agnes couldn't be blamed for thread drift.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: John Hardly
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:43 PM

Fundamentalist thread drift.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:43 PM

I stared at this for 15 minutes and nothing happened. Why?

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:49 PM

Hang on--I'm getting something here!

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 07:53 PM

OK. Take me to your leader . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 10:21 PM

Will you recognize your Dear leader when you see him?

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 11:06 PM

That's awful!

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 11:16 PM

Well, she really didn't say her prayers right or she might've gotten an answer. Any self-respecting numerologist, radical or not, would never say "forty!" It would be 4+0!

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Janie
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 11:32 PM

Rats! I almost had it all figured out....the mystical significance of this thread, I mean.   It just came to me like a small, still voice from within..."start at the latest post and open the links in reverse order, Janie, and all will be revealed" - and - it was all coming together for me, it was working, you know?

Then I messed up the sequence and accidently skipped a link that I had to go back to and open out of the order of reverse sequence....there I was, right on the very cusp of deep understanding....then....one misguided click...and the path to true enlightment was gone forever.

Unless this really is the revelation?

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 09:34 AM

I'm beginning to wonder if there's any hope at all!

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 10:56 AM

You live in the USA, right? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: wysiwyg
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 11:21 AM

Bill, you troll. :~)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:48 PM

Whom, meem? naaawwwww...

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 08:30 PM

The Seven Spiritual Ages of Mrs. Marmaduke Moore
by Ogden Nash


Mrs. Marmaduke Moore, at the age of ten
(Her name was Jemima Jevons then),
Was the quaintest of little country maids.
Her pigtails slapped on her shoulder blades ;
She fed the chickens, and told the truth
And could spit like a boy through a broken tooth.
She could climb a tree to the topmost perch,
And she used to pray in the Methodist church.

At the age of twenty her heart was pure,
And she caught the fancy of Mr. Moore.
He broke his troth (to a girl named Alice),
And carried her off to his city palace,
Where she soon forgot her childhood piety
And joined the orgies of high society.
Her voice grew English, or , say, Australian,
And she studied to be an Episcopalian.

At thirty our lives are still before us,
But Mr. Moore had a friend in the chorus.
Connubial bliss was overthrown
And Mrs. Moore now slumbered alone.
Hers was a nature that craved affection;
She gave herself up to introspection;
Then finding theosophy rather dry,
Found peace in the sweet Bahai and Bahai.

Forty! and still an abandoned wife,
She felt old urges stirring to life,
She dipped her locks in a bowl of henna
And booked a passage through to Vienna.
She paid a professor a huge emolument
To demonstrate what his ponderous volumes meant.
Returning she preached to the unemployed
The gospel according to St. Freud.

Fifty! she haunted museums and galleries,
And pleased young men by augmenting their salaries .
Oh, it shouldn't occur, but it does occur,
That poets are made by fools like her.
Her salon was full of frangipani,
Roumanian, Russian and Hindustani,
And she conquered par as well as bogey
By reading a book and going Yogi.

Sixty! and time was on her hands----
Maybe remorse and maybe glands.
She felt a need for free confession
To publish each youthful indiscretion,
And before she was gathered to her mothers,
To compare her sinlets with those of others,
Mrs. Moore gave a joyous whoop,
And immersed herself in the Oxford group.

That is the story of Mrs. Moore,
As far as it goes. But of this I'm sure ---
When seventy stares her in the face
She'll have found some other state of grace.
Mohammed may be her lord and master,
Or Zeus, or Mithros, or Zoroaster,
For when a lady is badly sexed
God knows what God is coming next.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 08:49 PM

In good King Charles' golden time,
When loyalty no harm meant;
A zealous High Churchman was I.
And so I gained preferment.
To teach my flock, I never missed-
Kings are by God appointed.
And damned are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's annointed."

So this be law, that I'll maintain
Until my dying day, Sir-
That whatsoever king may reign,
Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

etc...in the database

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Peace
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:13 PM

"Unless this really is the revelation?"

Take it from me, folks. The mints that Janie links to taste crappy. Burp what tastes like mothballs for days afterwards. I ate six of them one night--YES, WISE A$$, I WASHED THEM OFF FIRST.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 03:53 PM

Five thousands years of religious history in a nut-shell. Had me laughing out loud.


A

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 04:34 PM

So...where's the flashlight?

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 06:25 PM

Flashlights are heretical and taboo. Flashlights must be forcibly removed from our society, preferably with extreme prejudice and violence. Flashlights are bad things.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 07:25 PM

No Rap......Not all flashlights are bad. I'm told the special "Faithlight" is supposed to let me see the dragons in all their glory!











I'll just be leaving now............

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:05 PM

Look, I'm not objecting to flashlights. I'm just asking, where IS the damn flashlight? Where is this flashlight that will clear up everything mysterious and answer all our questions? I have not seen it. No one seems to have it.

I think it may be as mythical as Noah's Ark and all that other strange religious stuff. ;-)

No one has the fucking flashlight as shown in Amos's example!!!!!! They just wish they did or they take it on faith that they do, but then they cannot produce it. Thus our collective room remains dark, and the dragons remain hypothetical, as does a lot of other stuff.

No one has turned the frikkin' lights on yet. We are still in darkness.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:10 PM

You idiot.

YOU ARE THE GODDAMNED FLASHLIGHT, OK???


Oh, ye of little faith.



A

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:20 PM

I'm sorry Hawk......I couldn't find the flashlight either. Couldn't find the faithlight or the flashlight.........But see, I'm no longer bothered by that. With either flashlight or faithlight you need to buy batteries and I just have never found any that are worth a shit! So I got me one of them crank-up flashlights and provide the power myself while I stumble merrily along, enjoying the walk. Feel free to join me............or not!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:21 PM

Oh, I am the goddamn flashlight, am I? Well thanks a lot. I guess that's why I believe I saw some (probable) alien vehicles back in the 60s, because I trust the flashlight (my own powers of observation and judgement)...funny how no one else has any respect for my flashlight, though, isn't it?

What we need is a flashlight that everyone can trust equally, Amos, otherwise it just adds up to people trumpeting their own version of reality at each other and nobody having much respect or time for anyone else's version of reality.

A flashlight that is totally inner and subjective only works for one person.

I've always had that flashlight. Big deal. It doesn't work for anyone else.

What I am saying is that our present society...like ALL societies in the past...figures it's got things pretty well figured out and that it knows what's going on, but the truth is, we are living in stark ignorance and drunk on our own mythology and witlessly worshipping the own idols we for granted which were passed on to all of us right from birth.

Society is largely ignorant. We are in the darkened room right now. There are a few small lights here and there, but the room is mostly in darkness.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:21 PM

Oh, pshaw. What Catspaw found that makes him so happy is a Fleshlight!!.

A

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:26 PM

Ignorance. Stupidity. Conventionality. Prejudice. Bland assumptions. Delusions of competence. Delusions of grandeur. And fleshlights.

A field of utter folly that imagines itself to be a "modern world", while it builds atom bombs and wages pre-emptive wars over WMDs that don't exist. That's what we have.

A darkened room. No flashlight yet to be seen.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:28 PM

Well Amos, that does wind my crank!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:29 PM

That one of them flashlights that you ummmm...'shake' in an embarassing manner? I always wait till I'm alone to charge one up. My religion demands that a 'healthy glow' must be achieved in a moral manner.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:36 PM

I note that one of the fleshlights appears to have an orifice modeled on alien biology of some sort! It's a sort of horizontal rectangular slit. Odd.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:37 PM

"Made in China" like everything else these days!

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:46 PM

Aw geez Bill........I rarely guffaw, but that did it! And fortunately my coffee was swallowed..........

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:48 PM

hee, hee...

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 09:12 PM

You bigoted racist elitist chauvinist crackpot!!! LOL!!!!



A

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 11:28 PM

Well, just for that, I'm GOING to post the following, which was sent to me:

Last night I had a nightmare. A really bad one.

It was a terrible nightmare, the most horrible one you could imagine. In the nightmare I found myself nude in bed, and I was looking at a mirror on the ceiling, and I discovered that I am a Negro, and I'm circumcised! Quickly I jumped up, found my pants and looked in the pockets to find my driver license photo - and it was that same color. Black. No, no, God no, it can't be!! I felt myself being very depressed, downcast, sitting in a chair. But it's a wheelchair!!

That means, of course, besides being black and Jewish, I'm also disabled!!! I said to myself, aloud "This is impossible. It's impossible that I should be black and Jewish and disabled. "It's the pure and holy truth", whispers someone from behind me. I turn around, and it's my Boyfriend. Just what I needed!!! I am a homosexual whore and on top of that with a Mexican boyfriend. Sonofabitch!!!! Oh, my God..... Black, Jewish, disabled, gay, with a Mexican boyfriend, drug addict !!!

Desperate, I begin to shout, cry, pull my hair, and OH, noooooo... I'm Bald!!!

The telephone rings. It's my brother. He is saying, "Since mom and dad died the only thing you do is hang out, take drugs, and laze around all day doing nothing. Get a job you worthless piece of crap.. Any job." Mom?... Dad?... Nooooooooo... Now I'm also an unemployed orphan!

I try to explain to my brother how hard it is to find a job when you are black, Jewish, disabled, gay with a Mexican boyfriend, are a drug addict, bald, and an orphan. But he doesn't get it. Frustrated, I hang up. It's then I realize I only have one hand!!! With tears in my eyes I go to the window to look out. I see I live in A shanty-town full of cardboard and tin houses! There is trash everywhere .

Suddenly I feel a sharp pain near my pacemaker....Pacemaker? Besides being black, Jewish, disabled, a fairy with a Mexican boyfriend, a drug addict, bald, orphaned, unemployed, an invalid with one hand, and having a bad heart, I live in a crappy neighborhood.

At that very moment my boyfriend approaches and says to me, "Sweetiepie, my love, my little black heartthrob, have you decided who are you going to vote for next November? Hillary or Obama?"

Sonofabitch! Say it isn't so!!! I can handle being a black disabled one armed drug addicted Jewish queer on a Pacemaker who is bald, orphaned, unemployed, lives in a slum, and has a Mexican boyfriend, but please don't tell me I'm a Democrat!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:13 AM

Ha! Damned Americans...they're all crazy! ;-) Everyone else in the world can easily see that the differences between a Democrat and a Republican are about as significant as the difference between a brown rabbit and a gray one.

And rabbits fight with each other too. Like crazy. They fight over territorial shares, just like Democrats and Republicans.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 02:06 AM

Or Episcopalians and Lutherans.................

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Amos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 12:52 PM

LH, you obviously don't understand rabbits very well. THey have unique souls and imaginations, personalities and attitudes.


A

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:17 PM

Oh, so? I'll have you know that I once took daily care of over 150 rabbits and I am well aware of their individuality. There was one who thought she was a princess...wouldn't mate with any of the males. All the males developed an obsession about her, naturally. Just like with people. ;-) She became the hottest item in the rabbit community, simply because she refused to say "yes".

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:19 PM

Again, much like Episcopalians and Lutherans................

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Amos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:22 PM

Not unlike Ms Clinton.


A

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:25 PM

I keep hearing rumours that she's a lesbian, but I wouldn't repeat anything like that. I'm not that crass.

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Amos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:30 PM

I believe she has energetically denied both the lesbianism and the use of methamphetamine in her 3AM policy and strategy sessions.


A

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:36 PM

Denied both? Well right there she certainly differs from Episcopalians and Lutherans and probably some rabbits too........To use Bill Maher's phrase, if you're going to go for the story of the talking snake, you need meths!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A primer on changing your religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:37 PM

As well as the blood drinking rituals at Bohemian Grove.