Update for Everyone VI: What Is and What Should Never Be

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I want to die. I accidentally sent a sexual meme to my mom instead of my girlfriend. How do you delete yourself from existence?

I wouldn't worry about it too much.  I'm fairly certain that your mom knows a few things about sex.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Writing this on my tablet as I wait for my lying computer to finish updating. While I somewhat understand the motivation behind Windows 10 forcing updates on you, it doesn't usually lie and say it's doing so at the time you selected when it repeatedly refused to allow me to select a time. That's really really aggravating. Really really really aggravating. It's like Microsoft wants me to switch to another OS so it doesn't have to bother dealing with me anymore.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My dad might be buying a boat from a middle/lower tier Trump appointee in the Department of the Interior. Pretty interesting guy apparently.

My sincerest sympathies.  Boats are either a horrendous waste of money, a horrendous waste of time, or both.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My dad might be buying a boat from a middle/lower tier Trump appointee in the Department of the Interior. Pretty interesting guy apparently.

My sincerest sympathies.  Boats are either a horrendous waste of money, a horrendous waste of time, or both.

His last boat was destroyed in the Hurricane, and he somehow got it fixed (with all the drama that also entailed), sold it, and is already buying a new one. I have no interest in boats, boating, or ocean fishing. It's a bigger waste of money, time, and energy than I could possibly ever desire.

I grew up on the side of the Intracoastal Waterway (the mainland side, unfortunately, but to quote Aunt Sarah, "I can see Al Haig's mansion from my house!") so boating has always been a fixture of my dads. No idea what is so fun about slowly cruising up a river having to wave at other white middle class people slowly cruising up a river, nor what is so great about going through the exceedingly rocky and dangerous Boynton Inlet to get thrashed around in a fiberglass boat on the Atlantic while my dad pretends to know what the hell he's doing. He ought to just stick to his restored 1960's semi-trucks and leave the boating to the younger yuppy types

At least he is having fun, albeit rather expensive fun.  Just so long as doesn't start using a National Geographic Map to plan an excursion to the Bahamas, he should be okay.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I just tried to invent a Latin word for mirror, and I have it narrowed down to: imito speculum or imago speculum. For the record, the reason I am doing so is because I want a new word for the “mirror test” for species. Any preferences between the two or other ideas?

Whats wrong with the old Latin word for mirror, which is just plain speculum? Why are you trying to reinvent the rota?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Watching the Jim Carrey movie about Andy Kaufman, and it’s legitimately terrifying. I smiled for two years, and occasionally you get reminded that people who didn’t touch the stuff could still find their bodies falling apart. The wrestling bit was hilarious—being a heel would be great.

That's one reason I like to GM when playing RPG's.  Heels/villains get the best lines.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Well, my tinnitus is back...

At least you'll be able to give ringing endorsements now.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

A year ago, I traded one employer with an alphabet soup name for another.

Yesterday, I found out that my new company got sold.  So now, I'll be working for MRT Consultants.  Or something.  Anyhow, it's another random set of letters.

I should probably start trying to memorize it, since they'll be my employer come April 2nd.

My brother worked for a company that went thru a corporate renaming only to be bought up by another company before the year was up.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I spent almost all of the last two days making this portrait, which I'm quite proud of.



The title is "Blind Owl."

(you can find this painting and more in the art thread on AAD!)

This isn't the PAPOY thread. 😈

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I googled "did mommy rape me" for weird personal reasons, and the results are all f**king porn.

Why?!!?

Rule 34

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My dad called me an embarrassment and said he doesn't want to see me or hear from me again.

That's why we should never tell people that we post here.

But seriously, that sucks.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It could be that it took all of two questions for the interviewer to decide you weren't what they were looking for and ended the interview early, but more likely that the MP in question was doing a multistage process and was asking just those couple of questions to winnow down the medium list you were on down to an actual short list for time consuming in-depth interviews. A single stage of interviews is not that common these days.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Me start posting less words be more efficient save time

When you President, they see. They see.

Covfefe lives!

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The only thing I think I am missing is the specific route I took and motel along the way to move from Dallas to Omaha in 1963 (no interstates).

Unless your parents had some side trips they wanted to make, it's hard to imagine they didn't simply travel US 75 from Dallas to Omaha.  While there have been some realignments of US 75 since 1963 due to the construction of the interstates, I don't think that would affect things at the county level.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Ever since 3 PM, I’ve had a headache. Bedtime can’t come soon enough.

Then go to bed now.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I am increasingly of the belief, with creeping authoritarianism, that one day I'll be dragged out of my house on account of my marriage certificate and disappeared.

No, if you ever do get disappear, it'll be because you annoyed someone long before any potential pink polyhedron purge ever happened, especially in Scotland.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My brother overdosed last night. Took five attempts to revive him with narcan. The worst part is that he checked himself out of the hospital and is apparently just roaming around with no money, no shoes, and no plan. I’m terrified about what’s coming next.

Don't be. I know this will sound cruel and heartless, but at this point, all your family can really do is be there for him if he decides to change his ways and be ready to hold a funeral if he doesn't.  From the first of the 12 steps of Nar-Anon, adapted from those of Al-Anon and AA:
We admitted we were powerless over the addict — that our lives had become unmanageable.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Looks like I'll be running for some office in the upcoming regional election. Purely as a sacrificial lamb, as there are places my guys still need to fill the ballot (we have multi-members proportional lists, so I'll be somewhere at the bottom. In small towns/villages/communes you have single-member districts).

May I ask where?

Poland, I would presume. 

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Saw this on the signboard of local Southern Baptist Church surprisingly enuf.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Looks like whoever has the signboard duty there this week/month is not a Trump fan.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Heading to charleston tomorrow for a college visit/mini vacation.

CoC, CSU, and/or Citadel?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Warning! The following caused me to wake up my wife last night when I saw this commercial on the TV and I literally couldn't stop laughing loudly for several minutes because it was so absurd.

https://youtu.be/EwArMFCLmZY

We have this one friend who always gets a gag gift for Christmas.  I think we've found it for this year!

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Sadly, I suspect I'll soon be changing which church I call my home church.  As I've mentioned before on the Forum, I'm a UU, tho I'd be most comfortable as an old-line Universalist.  My home church was at the time I joined it one that unlike many UU churches steered clear of politics.  (Strangely enuf for someone on here, I'm not all that political but more interested in how politics works in the abstract.)  I go to church for spirituality, not politics, tho I realize there is no clear dividing line.

However, there's been turnover since I joined.  The old pastor was great but the new one not so much, at least not for me. In place of sermons on how to be spiritual when dealing with a particular social topic, it's mostly lessons on comparative religious experiences and holidays. I don't find myself in need of social studies lessons, even ones with a veneer of spirituality attached.

Moreover, the membership has taken a turn for the political.  They're doing so in a manner that I think leads from the heart, but isn't considering the head.  They're considering going in a new direction and jumping into it feet first. While some members of the congregation have taken an interest in immigrant issues and been active in them, the congregation as a whole has not. Getting active in those areas wouldn't be a bad idea, but going from essentially zero to considering becoming a sanctuary church is a bit abrupt, even if we had the capacity to do so, which I doubt. It's a very small church and we've run a deficit for quite some time.  It's not enough to cause a quick collapse, but I do see this as significantly hastening the decline in finances.  Build it and they will come is a movie line, not a financial plan.  Granted, I don't think offering sanctuary is the best use of resources to help the immigrant community, but it's not the policy itself, but the haste and recklessness combined with a major lurch into politics that has caused me to reconsider my connections to my current home church.

So what to do?  There really is no perfect fit, at least not in my area.  UCC would work theologically for me, and indeed my first few years up until my family moved from Florida to South Carolina when I was not quite five were with a UCC church being my family church.  I even read a good bit of leftover UCC youth literature that my older siblings had used in Sunday school there when I was of an age to read.  But the one UCC congregation in the area is a former Metropolitan Community Church, and while it's not an LGBT-only church, it understandably is a major focus, but it's not a focus for me. LGBT issues don't significantly impact my personal life.

The Moravian Church would be a good fit for me , but they have no churches in South Carolina, let alone my part of it.

Disciples of Christ would also be a good fit theologically, but the one congregation in the area I might consider joining suffers from a serious lack of membership and it's not in a convenient area for me.  It has a fairly large 1960's era church built to accommodate the expected continued growth of that church, but like all mainline churches has suffered declines instead since then. It just doesn't strike me as vibrant.

So I'm considering joining the ELCA. I do regularly attend one for Bible study and serve every so often as a lay reader on Sundays there.  My qualms at becoming a member are mostly that I take doctrinal creeds seriously and while the ELCA is liberal theologically it still has creeds.  As it is, I have to take a minor liberty (see below) with the reading of the Apostle's Creed that conforms to Isaiah 7:14, without placing a particular interpretation thereof.

But I like the church and the pastor, and I've begun preliminary discussion with her laying out my concerns about joining.  We'll see what happens.  There is still a couple weeks before the vote at my current church, tho I have little doubt that at most my concerns will cause them to proceed more cautiously, but I do think I am likely to switch from being a member of a UU church and an associate of an ELCA church to the reverse, even while remaining the same theologically.  It's odd in that I'll essentially be going from being one of the most conservative members to one of the more liberal members of my home church.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Almah Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Sam, I like you but don’t ever forget that you’re basically a rich white kid from Saint Petersburg. Nobody is perpetrating “mass violence” against you.

Again, I want to clarify: I like you a lot. You’re a good poster and person. We’re all a little high strung right now but we don’t need to assault each other.

I mean, I'm sure I probably still like SJoyce as a person, but his views have drifted very far recently. It's not entirely unrelatable; for one, he's at college, and for two, the Trump years have pushed many people into directly opposing camps. But (subjectively) it gets more than off-putting more than occasionally. What I typed still stands. It's hard for me to judge someone's character when they are within certain ideological prisms primarily because I tend to try to assume some good faith arguments, and because I know there are situations where one could understandably say action outside of the law was necessary (the American Revolution is a pretty uncontroversial example). That said, it's an approach I more than disagree with and one where I believe there's good reason we have law.

Says you. I happen to have Loyalist ancestors who had to flee to Canada because they didn't think a disagreement over taxes warranted being traitorous rebel scum.