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members of the reality-challenged community

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Meanwhile, actual sacraments remain available at your nearest RC church. True, you will have to suffer the proximity of real human beings in order to access these Divine channels of grace. But then God always had this strange fetish for "embodiment". I mean here He is, pure Spirit in zero-lag communication with Himself and He does not only create nature, but actually incarnates into that mess as well, with human bandwidth. His first technical officer Lucifer had a right fit about that one. And I hear He plans to resurrect us in the body. I mean, come on, what better place for cloud computing than heaven? Yeah, OK, we are going to get an upgrade, but why don't we just abstract away from the bioware layer, like, all the way? Because when we Christians talk about meeting God face to face - what we mean is on Facebook!

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...plenty of people on the Ship have taken a while to find their feet here.

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Me for one. When I did bother to find my feet I found that one of them was right there in my mouth.

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Every once in a while some wild-card, loose-cannon, Grace monkey gets ahold of the steering wheel in his head, and wonderful things happen.

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Originally posted by BessHiggs:
YIKES! My two nephews just stopped by the bar to drop off something for me and told me how cool it was that I had hung a big rubber snake over the flat-screen TV. It's NOT FREAKING rubber.

Sadly, its proximity to expensive electronics prevents me from shooting it. It's got itself halfway tucked up in the ceiling and hubby can't get it out. Luckily, my shift ends in about 30 minutes, then the snake will be my partner's problem

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Originally posted by mdijon:

If both partners are going to make lists of priorities, "wife" needs to be at the top of the husband's list, and "husband" at the top if the wife's list.

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
He didn't copy/ paste it to comfort himself. He copy/ pasted it to serve others.

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Originally posted by RuthW:
I'm in a thread-starting mood today. There's a new thread in Hell with [insert your name here]'s name on it.

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One's me slightly estranged Italian grannie, who'll let me in the house and be lovely and has some really lovely kids, my second cousins or first cousins once removed, but she has a houseful of stuff and won't let me take tea with her. The other's her Greek twin sister. Who has a more exotic cluttered house but who's disturbingly attractive because you can see the girl in her still and when she was young she had a truly beautiful mind which is still in there.

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Since this is from the "Differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy" thread, I'm going to assume Martin is talking about churches. But then this is Martin PC Not and maybe I shouldn't assume they aren't actual family connections.

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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

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Originally posted by QLib:
A full-on "Goodbye, cruel Ship!" flounce is one thing, but often it's a declining verb:

• I take time out to cool down and think things through.
• You walk off in a huff.
• S/he flounces out like a spoilt brat.

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[A] long-term resident of her own intestine.

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Everybody marries people who remind them of their mother, even women. She was the first person who really liked us. Maybe the only one.

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Originally posted by Silver Faux:
I think he is looking for a door that says "Piss on their heads from the balcony" and has failed to notice the gathering crowd of people bearing garden shears.

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Originally posted by Twilight:
As we say here in redneck country: It's not true love until someone takes out a restraining order.

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Originally posted by mdijon:
The cognitive dissonance is like a Hitchcock violin track. Only funnier.

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A Heaven Hostie wasn't as heavenly as hoped? A Hellhost didn't reek of sulphur? You found yourself able to stay away through an entire Hostly post in Purgatory? Fortunately, we have a money-back guarantee for all your Ship of Fools™ experiences. Just present your receipt to our helpful Service Fool for a full refund.

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Originally posted by birdie:

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Originally posted by Pyx_e:

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Originally posted by Moo:

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Originally posted by Mockingale:
But that was 2008, and surely we live in a much more civilized time.

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There are many thousands of shipmates. It only takes one to mess things up.

Moo

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I'm Spartacus.

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Yes, you are.

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One professional we have worked with defines homelessness as a "failure of community"-- noting that the difference between you or I and the homeless is precisely that-- you and I experience hard times, bad luck, or screw up thru our own poor choices just as much as homeless people. The difference is we had the good fortune to have family or friends we can fall back on to help us get back on our feet when that happened. The most important component to a "cure" for homelessness is restoring community-- connecting them to a stable community and resources.

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What issues?

As far as the biologists are concerned this isn't even undergraduate level stuff. There are no serious issues.<snip>

As far as the creationists are concerned there are no issues. God created the world. Evolution didn't happen. And the maths is more or less irrelevant.

As far as the ID lobby (normally the Discovery Institute) is concerned, it's a handfull of chaff to throw at orthodox biology. In depth discussion doesn't suit many of them (and those it does get disillusioned).

This is an ex issue. It is not pining for the fjords. It is a 100 years-dead issue that someone has nailed to a perch and is trying to foist off on a poor customer.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
The more I read the posts by Zach and Beeswax Altar, the more they remind me of the World of Warcraft games my brother plays so often. (That would be my other brother.)

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NEW QUEST: EUCHARIST

Your quest, should you accept it, is to perform a magical ritual called 'Eucharist'. In order to succesfully complete this quest, the following conditions need to be fulfilled:
a) All players need to be in the same space (presence through a teleport channel will make the ritual invalid).
b) At least one of the players needs to have reached the level of Priest.
c) The group of players must have acquired at least 1 Wine Item and 1 Bread item, otherwise the points gained at the Eucharist Quest will not be counted. Nothing may be used as a substitute for Wine and Bread.
d) All players participating in this Quest need to have a Sin Level lower than 5. In case of a higher Sin Level, the player can play some Repentance points to reduce his Sin Level.

EXECUTION
The Priest must pronounce the Eucharist Spells that are listed in the Priestly Supplementary Book provided with the game. At some points, the other players need to reply with the answers given in their Supplementary Books. The Bread must be broken and the Wine must be shared.

RESULTS
At the succesful completion of this Quest, each player will receive an amount of Grace Points that will be measurable in his Player's Dashboard. If enough Grace Points have been acquired, then after completion of this level, the player may go on to the Heaven Level.

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That's all nice and coherent and objective, isn't it? Once again, if you want to believe in this kind of a God, I have no problem with it. Go right ahead. But I don't believe in this kind of World-of-Warcraft god

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Originally posted by Mockingale:

I'm so fucking tired of these brainless, dickless, friendless, loveless, soulless, dishonest, disreputable, malodorous, malevolent, pants-on-head-on-fire-insane backward toothless fucknuggets shitting up Christianity and shitting up the United States. 40 years ago we were sending humans to the moon. 40 years from now we'll be condemning the internal combustion engine as a form of sorcery.

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:

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Originally posted by Chorister:
Why on earth did someone leave the cake out in the rain?

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Was exactly the subject of a conversation I got into the day that Donna Summer died. There were beers. The conversation polarised into poets versus bakers. The bakers could conceive of no circumstances in which one might leave a cake out in the rain. The poets talked of metaphor. There were more beers.

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Personally, I've never thought it's a metaphor. It's the tragic story of a woman and her cake.
--Adeodatus.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
It's a library. So pick the genre you like reading, and have at it.

Like history? 1/2 Samuel, 1/2 Kings, 1/2 Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah.

Thrillers? Esther.

Romance/Fairy tale happy endings? Ruth

Social criticism/peace and justice issues? Any of the prophets, from Isaiah onward

Humor? Jonah

Philosophy and "Why am I here?" Job, Ecclesiastes

Poetry for every mood? Psalms, Song of Solomon

Pithy sayings? Proverbs

How the world-as-we-know-it came to be? Genesis, Exodus

True crime? (shudder) Judges

Cultural anthropology/sociology/Law and customs? Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy

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Originally posted by Tortuf:
Is there an icon for IJDGAFF?

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\0/~~~~~~~~(")>

(Giant penguin pointedly looking away from drowning man)

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Originally posted by Johnny S:

Kelly has just been voted Queen of the Geeks at the annual Geek convention in Geektown, Geeksville, Arizona.

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Originally posted by Chorister:
...Some people's need to help others is so strong that they overhelp, causing people either to have to fend them off or else create a dependency culture in vulnerable people who would be able to be independent if left to their own devices.

Rule no. 1 - always check people actually need help (and what sort of help they need) before giving it.

Rule no. 2 - give what is needed and then back off; encourage people to help themselves as much as they are able, keeping their dignity and independence in the process.

Rule no. 3 - Always give the hosts chocolate.

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Originally posted by mdijon:

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Originally posted by Think²:
I feel poetry that makes you wince is entirely in keeping with the ethos down here - its not meant to be comfortable

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Well there's uncomfortable and there's crap. And I move that the former doesn't really justify the latter.

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Originally posted by Trisagion:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
And it's held by a very small group of men in Rome who know that if they say "jump" millions of Catholics the world over will say "how high?".

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If you think that, you are labouring under a serious misapprehension. In descending order of likeliness, the responses would range through:
* not having heard
* having heard but not taking any notice
* having heard but not understanding
* having heard but pretending not to have heard
* having heard but deciding that what they've heard was something else
* having heard but deciding that they're not obliged to jump
* having heard and jumping ever so slightly
* having heard and asking "how high?"

The final group might only include IngoB and me.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Well, I'm more in the "the pope said to jump precisely 63.5 cm, here I made a very nice drawing illustrating the finer trigonometric details that allows millimetre accuracy for my estimate - and I think that all this thinking effort should count as me having jumped, really" group.

But I approve of people like you putting some muscle into this, I really do. *unfurls a yellow-white flag and begins to wave it enthusiastically* "Yay! Good on us! We are a great team, you jumping and me knowing exactly by how much you have missed. Yay!"

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Trisagion and IngoB have been in rare form lately.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
OTOH, I could do without at least half of the book of Joshua - where they're dividing the land. It's the dullest thing in the universe. If only the map had been invented then, it would have saved a LOT of paper.

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I always thought Numbers could be infinitely improved if done as a series of spreadsheets with the occasional footnote.

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And I'd love to see the servers/deacons/priests at mt's church carrying the Holy Spreadsheets in procession.

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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

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I feel like the marching band in my sinuses just gave en epic solo to their most manic and meth-addled base drummer. I've got enough pressure in here to can a herd of elephants.

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Oh my goodness. The shirt I pulled out of the cupboard this morning more or less at random fits me PERFECTLY. It's INCREDIBLE!

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Dinosaurs aren't extinct. One flew by my office window just now.

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I love the fact that the most serious abuse of admin powers I've seen in my years on the ship is for chocorrit.

I laughed 'til I cried at that little pleading 'chocorrit'.

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