Rhys Tuck: A Man Alive With Two Legs |
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Dedicated to the ill-fated visionary biped. Stats Theology: Christian Theist Philosophy: Thomist Epistemology and Axiology: Objectivist, Limited Absolutism Predestination: Molinist Soteriology: Inclusivist Eschatology: Amillennial Preterist Political Stance: Pantisocratist Economic Stance: Distributist Myers-Briggs/Keirsey Type: INTP
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Sunday, October 24, 2004
An ironic case of unintended consequences Heh heh, for years, paranoid fundamentalist Christians have droned on about the horrors of halloween, how it turns young children into sex-orgy-animal-sacrificing-satan-worshippers, etc (Strange how much they go on about it over here when I don't usually see it happen here in Australia, it's such an American thing). Now this school has decided to cancel it's halloween celebrations, not because of pissing off the Harry-Potter-bookburning crowd, no, instead because they're afraid they might offend actual witches! Monday, October 11, 2004
Here I wrote: Becoming unemployed sure is a full time job. I need a holiday from being unemployed. If only I could find someone to lend me their job for a couple of weeks, then I could go back to being unemployed refreshed and rejuvenated. It looks like my prayers have been answered, in a way. Today I got a letter for...Jury duty! That's something interesting to look forward to. Plus, I don't have any valid excuses for getting out of it. Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Saturday, September 25, 2004
The other candidates Let's have a look at some of our senate candidates for queesland. Socialist Alliance I guess you'd vote for these guys if you'd feel more safe with secret police everywhere and the security of the gulag. Or maybe for the shutdown of oppressive religious institutions like the Salvation Army and St Vincent De Paul's, or starting a weapons pileup for a new cold war are selling points. On the plus side, you'd get to have some fun slaugtering them nasty capitalist pigdogs. What's interesting is that according to this page, one of them is a lecturer, and the other is a student. Liberals for Forests This is an intersting one. It's not the 'anti-deforestation party' or something else, but people who have gone, well, I like being a liberal, but on the other hand, I do like having trees around. I know! I'll be a Liberal for forests!' Maybe these guys thought that the greens were getting all the environmental issue votes, but were too far on the left on other issues, so decided to make a more conservative alternative. That's my guess, anyway, and I can't be bothered actually looking them up. One is an economist, the other an econometrician. I've never heard of an econometrician, and I'm not sure what the difference is to being an economist. Hemp Like pot? Wish it was legal? In that case, you know where your vote is going. One is an Artist/poet, the other is unemployed. One of them is the guy that changed his name to Guy Freemarijuana. Citizens Electoral Coucil I wonder what these guys stand for. Vote for us and we'll have more elections? Less elections? More well regulated elections? Maybe replace traditional ballot voting with a boxing match between the candidates of the major parties? Great Australians Vote for Don Bradman's corpse? Or is Ian Thorpe a member of this party? Does Shaun Micallef count? I consider him a great Australian. Or, Edmund Barton was Australia's first Prime Minister. We need his comeback to get Australia back on track. Vote Zombie Edmund Barton for the Great Australian Party! Fishing Party I'm not sure what their policies are exactly, but I sure do like the sound of them. Ungrouped Oh, wait, this isn't a party. Thursday, September 16, 2004
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Arnold Schwarzenegger, right-wing fascist intolerantly tells us what we can and can't do in the privacy of our own homes...or graveyards. Friday, September 10, 2004
One of the reasons why I oppose any form of legalised euthanasia. While I can certainly sympathise with those hard cases like terminally ill people in pain who just wish it was all over, I don't really trust a lot of people who may at some point get the power to decide to "put people out of their misery." What with all the nursing home scandals we've been hearing about lately, do you really think they would only euthanise those who expressely wish it, or might they conveniently bend the facts a little for the sake of convenience and efficiency? Not to mention situations where those who could decide whether to have grandma put down like an old pet co-incidentally will also benefit from inheritance? I just don't trust people with that kind of "mercy." Be my boss! I've decided to have a kind of competition thingy for when I'm past my computer troubles. I want somebody to give me an assignment of some sort. It could be something like: An essay on some theme, e.g. "If a mermaid were a real creature, which side dishes would go best with it?" A story, with some guidelines to get me started, like some plot points I must include, or certain characters to use, etc (by character I mean something like, "apathetic record store counter attendant" or "Hitler youth bunny", not anything copied from anything else like "Kramer from Seinfield" or anything.). Could even be something like "A tale of a relationship break up from the perspective of a pudding." A comic I should get around to finishing. Some other weird idea you have. And remember this is to get me started doing something, so I mean like 1000 or 2000 words of writing something, not something novel length or a set of encyclopaedias, one or two comic pages, not a whole comic book. Also give me a set amount of time to do it in. That will start after my computer troubles are sorted out, that will then give me a deadline. I may not get done what you set me to do, but I'm pretty sure something interesting will result. Been having endless computer troubles lately. It's kinda random now whether it will actually work or not. I might even just get a new(er) one. It is kinda old. Well, some bits are older than others. But the advantage in being a bit behind in technology is that I find a lot of second hand and discounted computers to be really impressive. "Wow! Computers can do that these days?" I say to myself. Thursday, September 02, 2004
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Always nice to see snake-oil salesman keeping up with computer technology. Get a different kind of firewall with Ultra Spiritual Protection. "An advanced radionic program that protects you against black magick, curses, hexes, sorcery, sortilegies and psychic attacks." But why be happy with just defense when you can go on the attack with Chaos Magick Spell Caster. Or use your computer as a battery for ethereal energy with the <>iOrgone Condensation Unit. Make sure to read the testimonials and the FAQ (skip the technical one and go to the esoteric faq). A commonly held myth about the Middle Ages. We all know that Christopher Columbus encountered stiff resistance about his idea of sailing off West to try and reach the East Indies. Many of us have laboured under the impression that people were concerned that he would sail off the edge of the Earth which was widely believed to be flat. History is thought to have vindicated Columbus against those filled with the Christian superstition of a flat Earth who held on to old fashioned beliefs. A minority of people are even under the impression that Galileo's trial centred on the subject rather than whether the Earth orbited the sun. It comes as some surprise, therefore, to find that Columbus was wrong and his critics were right - not because the world is actually flat after all, but because at the time everyone knew it was a globe and were arguing about how big it was. The idea that the uncouth people of the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat is an example of the myth that has been propagated since the nineteenth century to give us a quite unfair view of this vibrant and exciting period. Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Another Cringe Alert This is the lamest Bible translation I have come across so far. Compare: After Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he saw ‘‘the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased''' (Mark 1:10-11, Revised Standard Version). Compare that with this new translation: ‘‘A pigeon flew down and perched on him. Jesus took this as a sign that God's Spirit was with him. A voice from overhead was heard saying, ‘That's my boy!''' Cringe Alert New York's planned parenthood wants JK Rowling to include sex ed lessons at Hogwarts in her next book. "For the Harry Potter readers, just think of the possibilities:Snapes, that sullen, nasty professor lecturing on the facts of biology and sex..." Excuse me, what? Wasn't there enough of Harry furiously polishing his broom and wand in the last book? If it isn't, I have one word for these people. FANFICTION. This pagehas some titles for the next book based on this... Harry Potter And The Adulterer's Zone Harry Potter And The Bedchamber Of Regrets Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Abstinence Harry Potter And The Object Of Desire! Harry Potter and the Order of the Penis PRESS RELEASE Chiropractors for Consumers Union blamed the Salvation Army for pooh-poohing the effects of lactose intolerance among habitual adulterers. "Their elitist attitude makes fools of us all," said the spokeshominid, adding that habitual adulterers plan to file a class-action lawsuit in federal court asking $1 quadrillion in damages. Monday, August 30, 2004
Quote of the day: In his book "Natural Right and History," Leo Strauss, who taught many of the men who taught me political philosophy, coined the phrase "reductio ad Hitlerum" meaning that a view is not "refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler." I hope I don't ever have to see any more debates about whether Hitler was a vegetarian or not. See also Godwin's Law Rather disturbing divorce story here,and also here. Sometimes attempts to simplify a complex problem like divorce can create even worse situations. Friday, August 27, 2004
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Interesting article here about the wankspeak that reviewers and critics use, especially with regard to books. Monday, August 16, 2004
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Check out these cool robots. Isn't it nice to be living in the future? There's animatronic ones, entertainment ones, domestic ones, walking ones and humanoid face ones, but they don't seem to have many of what we've all been waiting for- sex robots! Just got back from the TISM concert It was really cool of course. They had 'TISM idol' and I think they took some girls out of the crowd, and would sing a line or two from a TISM song, then a panel of judges (non-tism member judges) would insult them, except one I think they would suck up to in a really rediculous way (curiously similar to the real Australian Idol).And I think they called them all Laetitia. This was interspersed between the songs. TISM came out with big signs on their heads, one had paul, another had george, and I think a third one called ringo, and the rest said John (apparently those are actually the names of members of this really obscure band that nobody has ever heard of). And they also did all their usual stylish dancing antics and went crowdsurfing, where they got a lot of their costumes torn off. I think at one point, one of them, either Ron or Humphrey probably, was only left with underwear intact (they kept them on this time, thank goodness). and of course they lost their masks a few times in the crowd, and I was close enough twice to see their faces, so I've seen what two of them look like now. What do they look like, you ask? Well, just some ugly old guys as you've probably suspected, in fact they look a lot better with the masks on really. Oh, and I managed to tear off a little of costume, so now I have a little piece of TISM. The first supporting act was okay, what with the dancing girls and the toy keyboards and salt and lemons and powertools and whatnot. The second one I didn't really like. The lead singer was this big huge fat guy only wearing gladwrap, thankfully with some fake hair sort of stuff to cover his genitals, but still he was pretty gross, and I was glad at that point some people came and stood in front of me, hiding the grossness. They did a lot of their classic songs, they even did the country western version of defecate on my face. And I got to hear the new ones that I hadn't gotten around to listening yet. I Don't think I like them quite as much as I do the Derigour Mortis ones. Now I might have gotten some of these details wrong or mixed up a bit, as for a while I was kind of being bounced and tossed about a bit throughout the crowd of the Mosh pit until I managed to maneuver my way out, reminding me again of why I don't like mosh pits. I mean, you can only take being drowning in other people's smoke-flavoured sweat and being submerged in some strange guy's man-bosoms so many times. I did find some nice calm pockets, and managed to find a nice halfway point, where I could, you know, not be crushed to death. Some people did help me not be crushed to death, and I helped some other people not get crushed too, nice to know that not everybody is keen to trample all over you. And beforehand I visited Shawn's place for the first time, so I was doing the thing where I walk around the house looking at everything in a way like I'm visiting the museum or an art gallery or something. Didn't steal anything though. Thursday, August 05, 2004
Dark Shadows of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement No no no no no! This silly Australia-US free trade Agreement thingy seems to have provisions for Australia to fall in line with America's continuously-extending copyright laws, and their DMCA (digital millenium copyright act). I've been suspicious of this free trade agreement but haven't really paid much attention to this issue. I think our laws are enough as it is (like, copyright is death of author + 50 years), I don't want us to follow us to follow America's path of copyright and intellectual property laws, or their silly ideas about how to deal with this bizarre new internet thingy (with regard to the safe harbour and DMCA bit). Here's some links about America's troublesome copyright hi-jinks: Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act Opposing Copyright Extension More on Eldred vs Ashcroft Free Culture And here's the text of the free trade agreement Tuesday, August 03, 2004
If this is real, then I think George Lucas has really gone off the deep end Apparently, he's decided to change the ending a bit of Return of the Jedi so that that the guy originally playing Anakin Skywalker is replaced with the guy who plays him in the lame prequels. I guess that will be the digitally re-remastered extra-special edition. Does anyone else think that all this retroactive re-editing is getting just a bit silly? Friday, July 30, 2004
Speaking of those wacky, hollywood-esque Religions... After that last post, I saw on my blog ads up the top one was about that weirdo 'A Course in Miracles' thing that my cousin who is a witch is into. Right next to it is an ad that says, 'What is heresy?' Funny when you get a randomly made contrast like that. Got my TISM ticket today! I had this idea today of how I'd like to add some new notes to our currency system. They'd be like the current ones except with five cents subtracted, so you'd have your $4.95 note, $9.95, $19.95, $49.95 and $99.95 note. It'd sure make things a bit easier when paying for some things. It might make it a bit more difficult when adding things up, so I'd keep the normal ones as well. Actually, it'd probably be a pretty silly thing to actually do, I just get a bit annoyed at the way shops make sure they never have a nice round number, they always subtract like 5 cents so they try to make you think it costs a lot less than what it actually does. I don't know whether that actually works or not, I know that I always automatically round it up. I suppose there's probably some study out there comparing people buying nice round numbers versus those with the 5 cents subtracted. Who knows. Why is it that whenever you hear someone talk about their particular line of work, the first thing they say is, 'well, you know, it's a lot of hard work,' or 'hey, it might look easy but it's actually a lot of hard work.' It's not like you ever find people going around bragging about how easy their jobs are. 'pfft. Piece of cake. A monkey could do it. work? well, if you want to call it that, heh heh.' No one ever says stuff like that. What is with this automatic defensive line that these people are taking anyway? Are they assuming that everyone thinks they're just slacking off? There are a few exceptions to the rule though. Like, I was watching Girl TV today because I'm a filthy pervert and one of the girls was interviewing this model, asking questions like, 'I know it looks easy but do you find it hard?' (or something along those lines) and he (it was a male model) replied, 'Nah, it's a pretty easy job really. Not really much you have to do. Someone does my makeup and hair, someone else dresses me, and I go out and walk around a bit. Couldn't be easier.' The other exception is Billy Connolly. Once I saw him on this talkshow thingamajig and he remarked that he hated it when you see people like actors going around saying, 'Oh, no, it's not all glamour you know, it's terribly difficult, not many people would want to do it if they knew what it was really like, oh, yes, it's such a trial!' (with violins playing in the background). 'Get your hand off it' he says to those folks, and he also said that he loves doing what he does and would rather do it than anything else. Finally, some honesty! I'm glad that at least some people with wanky jobs finally realise that you'd have to be a moron not to see that you'd rather be doing their jobs than cleaning up piles of shit or telemarketing and that they should stop whinging, shut up and be grateful for once. Honestly, those celebs sometimes. They spend all that time fellating their way to the top of their field, only to complain about the trials of life being the cream of the crop. What, Mr or Ms Celeb, you're surprised that wealth and fame is just that, wealth and fame, and not spiritually fulfilling? Well, surprise surprise, you finally learned what everyone has been telling you since preschool. All those sunday school teachers were right when they said that those things wouldn't make you happy. It's just that most people prefer to have a bit of spare cash around rather than struggling to make ends meet, and have daydreams about the glory of fame to take their minds off being a mediocre nothing that nobody cares about. If you wanted to fill that emptiness inside, how about saying a prayer for once? Maybe visit one of those church thingies? And no, please not one of your bullshit hollywood religions like Scientology or Kabbalah. Why not one of those mainstream ones? Judaism, Chistianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism? If I haven't heard of it or it's got less than fourteen million followers it's probably not worth bothering with. I mean, if your god or spirit guide or whatever has only ever bothered to tell the secrets of the universe to your guru's little class of 25 and no one else he (or she) is probably not really worth bothering with. It also helps if it's a tradition that goes back further than, say, a year. Of course, I'd prefer it if everyone was in the same one as me, but I'd just be happy if more of those hollywood types joined a religion that can at least get a paragraph mention in a general knowledge encyclopedia. Thursday, July 22, 2004
Close your eyes and it will soon be over I'm going through one of my periodic jealousy fits at the moment. It's not something I usually write about, well, not publically write about. So look out, dear reader, because it might even be YOU that I am jealous of. It kind of annoys me that I get jealous over really stupid things. Like for example recently I've been jealous over some pious people. Well, I don't really know whether they actually are pious, I can't peak inside their heart and examine their spiritual life. But they project this image, you know (for all I know it could all be an illusion). Like there's these couple of guys I know like that. One guy, see, he already has this magazine catalogue thing going, he's got the looks, the style, the washboard abs, plus he's got this whole spirituality thing going for him, like with his worship leading and stuff, so of course all the Christian chicks are throwing themselves at him. You know that saying or whatever about a cute guy being a woman's handbag, like an accessory to make her look good,well I think these Christian chicks want him as an inspirational postcard. I can see him now, in the postcard standing on a beach, no, sitting on a towel, there's the glare of the sunlight reflecting off his polished abs,surrounded by hot bikini babes, and they're like got open bibles and he's leading a bible study, maybe a big flower or something in the foreground, and somewhere in the middle of the sky is some inspirational message, or a bible verse, or the worst, an inspirational bible verse. Besides Calvin-Klein billboard guy there's this other guy, and it's even worse because physically he isn't any better looking than me, no, he gets by with this personality thing, which is even worse because I've got no excuse. How am I supposed to reassure myself when he's there throwing his personality about all over the place? I'm like, "well, you know, we're not all born looking like...hey! What are you doing?" What really annoys me about those guys is the way they can get away with all that dirty-dancing type shit with complete strangers, but, of course, if I try it the girl's all like, "get away, you creep!" But of couse, this guy wouldn't actually do that because remember the topic here is these spiritual people. What's worse about these guys is that they're so gosh-darned nice and friendly, they're all like, "Hi Rhys! How are you going?" and I'm like, AARRGGHHH!!! Competitor for female attention! DESTROY! But I say, "Oh, hi! Fine. How are you?" And then there's these girls that I'm jealous of as well. Or just plain angry. The way they just walk around projecting spirituality and purity everywhere, and the way they make you feel bad when you stand next to them because you were imagining them naked just before, and even if you weren't you still feel bad cause they're like up there with the angels and you're like this dirty little worm compared to them. And they're all nice and friendly as well, and I'm all conflicted because on the one hand I want to ask her out, and on the other I'm like, no, I can't do that, she's outta my league, on too high of a level for me. Then I just want to get out of there and take some deep breaths. One really bad situation is when you're in a class, or in a discussion group or something, and then the spiritual girl will say something, and everyone will nod their heads knowingly, thinking it's all very profound, and I'm thinking, 'man, that was just plain stupid!' but, you know, I can't say anything, because when I do everyone turns and looks at me and gives me the nasty look, or the spiritual girl starts crying and runs out of the room. I get jealous of the way everyone will listen to every little thing that comes out of this girl's mouth as if it was sent there straight from God. Okay, that might happen occaisionally, but not every single time! And she's like seen as this wise sage and everyone will go to her for advice about their relationships and personal problems and stuff. No one ever asks me for advice about their relationships. Oh sure, I give it out to people, whether they like it or not, but no one actually comes to me for advice about their personal problems, unless they say something like, 'hey, I got this really weird rash happening...' and I say, 'eeew, gross. What are you asking me for? Go talk to your doctor.' Oh, wait, there's an exception to that. If there's a girl that I've been rejected by, that will be the person who comes to me for advice, or the boyfriend. And of course I say things like, 'yeah, I really think you guys should spend more time apart from each other. At least a year or two. In fact, I think it'd be best for both of you if you broke up altogether, you're just not suited to each other.' or, 'okay, why don't you pretend to go out with me for a while and that will make him jealous and want you back. So we'll stand here in his line of sight and pash for ten minutes or so. I'll probably have to grope your boobies a bit too to make it more believable.' And what happens? They follow my wonderful advice and end up getting married. AARRRGGGHHH!!!! So yeah, I get this weird jealousy thing happening, then I get all angry with myself because it's so stupid. I'm like, hey, so I want to become like this more spiritual person. WELL BEING INSANELY JEALOUS AND INFURIATED BY THEM IS PROBABLY A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. Oh, wait, I can't forget my best jealousy story ever, when I was on this kid's camp, and there was this other guy called Rhys. And one day some kid was calling out my name, so I turn, and he says, 'Oh no, not you. I meant the cool Rhys.' GGGRRRRR!!!! I can't have someone being better at being me than I am! Ooooh how I hate that other Rhys! AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!! Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Chuck Palahniuk is giving writing lessons Looks like he's going to use the tutorials he has temporarily on his site as material for putting together a book on writing. Probably be more useful than a lot of other books on writing I've seen. There's a lot of writers seem to get by on having a good concept or something while having rather mediocre writing skills (the Da Vinci Code, anyone?) whereas Chuck Palahniuk writes very effectively. What I'd like to see, though, is for someone to use the kind of techniques his uses to write a very different book, a different genre with a whole different tone, I don't just want to see a whole crop of Fight Club clones. It's true that there's no really original story, but you can easily tell when a writer is influenced by just one particular author. They become like a sidekick to them, this miniture inferior copy that really wishes they were that guy. Like the Wraith, tee hee hee. I prefer the approach where you draw from a variety of styles and genres, and picking up various techniques from different schools of ideas. I tend to be rather ecletic in everything, really. Wait, does ecletic have one or two c's? Ecletic. Eccletic. Maybe I'll give it three or four just to be safe. Eccccletic. Oh, wait, spell checkers are good for this sort of thing, aren't they? Let's see, ah, turns out it does have a second c, but not where I was putting it. Eclectic. Tuesday, July 20, 2004
My family are watching Australian Idol in the next room That show is one of the biggest loads of wank ever. Saturday, July 17, 2004
Was L Frank Baum a Communist? Except from The Emerald City of Oz: No disease of any sort was ever known among the Ozites, and so no one ever died unless he met with an accident that prevented him from living. This happened very seldom, indeed. There were no poor people in the Land of Oz, because there was no such thing as money, and all property of every sort belonged to the Ruler. The people were her children, and she cared for them. Each person was given freely by his neighbors whatever he required for his use, which is as much as any one may reasonably desire. Some tilled the lands and raised great crops of grain, which was divided equally among the entire population, so that all had enough. There were many tailors and dressmakers and shoemakers and the like, who made things that any who desired them might wear. Likewise there were jewelers who made ornaments for the person, which pleased and beautified the people, and these ornaments also were free to those who asked for them. Each man and woman, no matter what he or she produced for the good of the community, was supplied by the neighbors with food and clothing and a house and furniture and ornaments and games. If by chance the supply ever ran short, more was taken from the great storehouses of the Ruler, which were afterward filled up again when there was more of any article than the people needed. Every one worked half the time and played half the time, and the people enjoyed the work as much as they did the play, because it is good to be occupied and to have something to do. There were no cruel overseers set to watch them, and no one to rebuke them or to find fault with them. So each one was proud to do all he could for his friends and neighbors, and was glad when they would accept the things he produced. Thursday, July 15, 2004
Mark Shea is coming to Australia! Don't know whereabouts though yet, might only be Sydney or Melbourne or something. have to wait for more details. Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Gosh, It's a bit of a wasteland, isn't it? I keep forgetting to update this here weblog. I come up with these cool things to write about, and even write them sometimes, but I never get around to posting them. Then, when I do log in, I just feel blaaaaah and don't want to bother even posting those things I've already written. Also been forgetting to update the keenspace account as well. Same thing happens with that. I've been trying to get into the habit of putting up a comic every couple of days, but that just hasn't been happening. I really need somebody to tell me to do these things. Or maybe I'll set particular times for doing these things. It's not like I'm too busy or anything. I'm thinking maybe I need to start a friendly debate with someone, I seem to be most productive when I'm writing in response to something else. Where are those Calvinists when you need them? Oh, wait, I said friendly debate. Haven't been checking on Smurflist for quite a while. Taking a holiday from it, I guess. After a while it just seems like it's always going in circles. Been more checking up on other people's blogs, dropping a comment here or there. I'm tending to like following different blogs now rather than email discussion lists or web forums. I check up on Patrick's fora every now and then, it might be kind of slower with less posts and less frequent posting, but it's higher quality, what with very strong anti-moron rules. Bec's got me hooked on the Oz books now, since she mentioned it at Patrick's birthday thing. I've been ordering all the ones they have in the library, and reading on the internet those they don't. At this famous forty website they have the texts up to Ruth Plumly Thompson's first one, The Royal Book of Oz. I don't really like reading stuff on the net, I prefer a book in my hands, but I just can't resist these Oz-urges. So the Oz books are joining GK Chesterton, whose writings I also cannot resist and I read off the net because I can't buy them anywhere. I've been meaning to read more fiction lately anyway, since even after finishing uni I've still been reading mostly essays and some scholarly type stuff. I want to get a kind of balance between reading that and reading fiction, I guess like balancing out the sides of your brain or something. Been meaning to write more fiction too, seeing as I've been mainly writing essay and journal type stuff, besides doing some comics. Did an interesting little thingy earlier today, I might type that up and post it here eventually. I gotta see that Return to Oz movie at some point. I haven't seen it since I was a kid, and I think it was this film that gave me these freaky images that haunted my dreams for ages. I've been trying to work that out for ages. "Now, which movie was it that had the such and such?" I'd say to myself. I looked at a few other movies but they weren't the ones. Then when I started reading about Return to Oz, I went, AHA! YES! THAT'S IT! THAT'S THE ONE! Can't get it in any of the videostores I go to. I'll buy it if I have to. Then I will have finally resolved my childhood dream issues! Sunday, May 23, 2004
Rhys desires to cruise da 'hood. Well I finally got around to booking another driving test, so please send out heaps of prayers for me. If you're Catholic like me, you can ask Elijah, St Frances of Rome or Bl. Sebastian of Aparicio to pray for me too, seeing as they are all patron saints of drivers (among other things, see the Patron Saints Index). If you're a Raelian or Scientologist or something, put on your tin foil helmet and send a message up to the mothership for me. Pagans, Wiccans and new age folk can put in the good word for me with the greater powers. Atheists/Agnostics etc, well, you can't really do much I suppose. Unless you want to send me a monetary donation or something. Monday, May 10, 2004
Hoorah! A decent webcomic! Mine, that is. I decided to use my keenspace account at http://rhystuck.keenspace.com/ I had previously scanned and saved on cd about 60 pages of this ongoing epic storyline thing, and it updates daily at the moment. Until it catches up to where I am in the story now, then I guess it will probably update once a week, fortnight, month, millenium etc. At some point I suppose I might fix up the look of the website a bit, at the moment it's just the default templates. At some point the looks of all the characters will suddenly change, as I finally decided what this alien species should actually look like (hooray for six-breasted alien princesses!). Before that I just used a human look by default. I think I might just leave this unexplained in the storyline, like the way some TV shows change the actors of main characters and expect nobody to notice, or like the mysterious case of that period of Star Trek history of the original series where the klingons lack bumpy foreheads. Saturday, February 28, 2004
shoujo This is something I wrote that is too long for the comment boxes: Sometimes guys will seek out to be friends with girls first and then get romantic, but then it seems like some females think that unless you try to shag them within the next 24 hours, you can only ever be friends and never have anything romantic with them, so then guys like Bill will react to that, and might try to date a girl as soon as they meet in order to get in there in a chance for romance. Me, I think I'd rather just not bother with girls that do funny things like that and try to play mind-games with you and instead try to ferret out the ones that think like Shawn does that 'friends - then maybe romance later' is a better way to go. As for being overtaken, I think that is just the normal human background level of inadequacy and feeling that lots of people are probably doing way better than you are, rather than anyone in particular, unless there are specific people that Bill is thinking of. I know I'm not in any better position than Bill, I've got no job, no car, no woman, live at home with my parents, won't be able to afford to move out or get a car anytime soon, will end up with a big uni debt, and the world has not yet recognised my genius, not to mention the chances that I might go insane, with all the hereditary mental illnesses in my family. And all of you guys aren't really all that much better off, you seem to be also doing either the poor uni student thing, or are stuck trying to make your way with a pretty ordinary low-paying job. So whoever these people are that Bill is jealous of, I'm pretty sure we aren't any of them, so I guess whoever they are, they are probably sucky people I don't know anyway. Friday, February 13, 2004
NO MORE WHEAT, RYE OR BARLEY FOR ME! I discovered the other week that I have Celiac, so on Leader’s Weekend I joined the elitist little clique of those fancy-pants special meals people. It wasn’t really all that different, seeing as there was so many different foods, all those different salads and stuff. It was just every now and then I had something different like a piece of chicken instead of the meaty pasty thingies and stuff. In the past whenever I heard about people having special meals I kept thinking of those weird foods they have on the original series of Star Trek, like differently coloureds cubes and ambiguous looking goop and that sort of thing. Space food. It’s kind of tricky this Celiac thing because even though something might not have wheat in its list of ingredients, sometimes wheat is used in some of the thingies like different kinds of starch and I think even that mysterious ‘vegetable gum’ stuff. So it’s easier for me to just not eat those processed foods and stick to the ‘gluten free’ ones. You’d think the companies would be more careful about that sort of thing with all the litigation going around. Like you see ‘may contain traces of peanuts’ on foods. Maybe that’s because those peanut allergy people seem to have pretty drastic reactions, like collapsing into unconsciousness and needing to be taken to hospital, it tends to have more of a reaction on those current affairs shows. “How could they let this happen?” the teary mother cries. Whereas for me, having wheat is more like smoking. You won’t drop dead tomorrow, but if you keep having it, it will cause a lot of huge problems later on and can kill you eventually. At the moment effects of it aren’t that obvious. Maybe on the next camp I do I should do some reviews of all the special meals I have. I think I might have been a bit sick while on this camp just passed. I didn’t realise beforehand, seeing as I was at home in my room, but being surrounded by all these healthy people made me think, “hey, I think I might not be feeling all that well.” That was on the last day anyway when I realised that so it didn’t really make much difference. I’ve had one of these telemarketing people ring up when I’m the only one home, and they ask if they should call again later or call tomorrow. I tell them to call tomorrow, and as they keep calling back at the same time, this has been going on for like a week. I wonder how long this can keep going. Maybe forever. Saturday, January 17, 2004
 You are Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writer of unmitigated wierdness, abandoner of wife, and stoned for most of your life! What Romantic poet are you?(except Keats) brought to you by Quizilla Sim World looking a lot like real world It's about the Sims Online. Here's a quote from the article: Alphaville, the game's fictional city, could have gone in any number of directions, depending on the arbitrary decisions of the online game players who make up its people through their chosen "avatars", or game characters. Alphaville could have become a socialist utopia, a grand experiment in free-market capitalism or simply a reflection of the allure and the pitfalls of any real Western city. As it was, Alphaville quickly turned into a hellhole of scam-artists, crime syndicates, mafia extortion artists and teenage girls turning tricks to make ends meet. It became a breeding ground for the very worst in human nature - a benign-sounding granny, for example, who specialised in taking new players into her confidence, then showered them in abuse. Then there was the scam-artist known as Evangeline, who started out equally friendly and then stole new players' money. Friday, December 19, 2003
No longer a Protestant, not yet a Catholic Well, I guess it's time to come out of the closet. After a lot of reading about, writing about, thinking about and praying about a whole heap of theological, philosophical, exegetical/hermeneutical and other issues, I have decided to join the Catholic Church. I hesitate to use the word 'convert' seeing as I don't consider myself to be changing to a different religion, rather, as I am already a Christian, I am simply embracing a 'larger' form of Christianity. I seem to have gone through Chesterton's 'three stages of conversion:' The first phase is that of the young philosopher who feels that he ought to be fair to the Church of Rome. He wishes to do it justice; but chiefly because he sees that it suffers injustice...I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than of becoming a cannibal. The second stage is that in which the convert begins to be conscious not only of the falsehood but the truth and is enormously excited to find that there is far more of it than he would ever have expected. And the third stage is perhaps the truest and the most terrible. It is that in which the man is trying not to be converted. I started off merely defending Catholics from the rather ridiculous accusations made against them by Protestants. I always thought it rather unusual (as Chesterton also noticed) that the people who criticised them the most didn't even seem to know what the Catholic Church actually taught. You would think that the first thing people would do if they were trying to offer a reasoned critique would be to know what exactly it was they were criticising. So I did defend the Catholic Church, but the idea of actually becoming one was the furtherest thing from my mind. Then, I began to investigate more and more of what the Catholic Church actually taught, and found a lot of things that make sense and I could agree with, and even things I didn't really like, (such as those tricky Marian doctrines), I could at least understand where they were coming from and the reasoned basis for them, and there were other things that I could accept because I did not really care much eitther way (for example, I don't really care whether a church has guitars and drums and modern music, or just does things the traditional way, although on second thought I think I prefer the more traditional ways of doing things). I kind of reached the point where I could agree on an intellectual basis on the bits I didn't like, so I couldn't really find any good reason for remaining outside the Church. And then, of course, was the third stage, when I had the feeling like perhaps I'd been duped, lured into a snare by Romish charms, quite an emotional resistance, and I looked for reasons why I could be wrong about the whole thing, but couldn't really raise any real objections. So, I've been convinced that the Catholic Church is the 'most true' form of Christianity. So now I'll be going into the conversion process for joining up (there's a period of time of having catechumal classes, then there's a first confession, confirmation and first communion, I've already been validly baptised by the Church's standards so I won't need to be baptized again). Larissa wants to join up as well. I suppose dad will be pleased, seeing as he is a Catholic, although mum might get a bit upset for a while, as she is a Pentecostal and all us kids were brought up as Pentecostals. It's a bit strange, all my life I've heard the testimonies of people who say they were brought up in a lifeless, antichrist Roman Catholic Church, and discovered the joy of the presence of God in Charismatic churches, yet in my experience it is the other way around. Sunday, December 14, 2003
This morning I woke up with these thoughts in my head: St. Nicolas was a Catholic Bishop. So what's all this "mrs Claus" business then? and: That John Rhys-Davies who plays Gimli on the LOTR movies. What's all this sudden "comic relief dwarf" business in the two towers? I think that movie also needed more ents. If there's one thing I know for sure, you can never have too many ents. If I was directing those movies, I'd have ents coming out of my ears, so it's probably for the best that I didn't. THEY'RE LIKE TREES BUT THEY CAN WALK AROUND AND DO THINGS! How could you not love them? Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Hooray!!! I got my results back today, I got distinctions for all my subjects. I was a bit worried about one of them, the exam for it was rediculously hard and I wasn't sure if I'd passed, but it turns out I did well. So that's it, really, I've finished my BA degree, so I guess now I'm qualified to be an elitist snob. Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Schpoodle! I've just about finished pencilling in Schpoodle, the comic I'm doing with Patrick. We wrote a script for it together, and we're both doing a version of it, and when we have both finished we can compare them and see what each of us has done with it. I'll leave it aside for a little while before inking it in, seeing as you never quite pick up all the mistakes the first couple of times you look it over. I've tried doing comic books several different ways, and I think the best way is to pencil in all the pages first and then ink them all in (if you're doing a comic book all by yourself, that is). It's a lot easier seeing as I make quite a lot of changes, so then the inking in becomes the 'point of no return'. I used to try to completely finish each page before going onto the next one, and that was a lot harder for me, it just didn't suit my style of working. It's 17 pages long. This keyboard is annoying me a bit, the space bar fell off, and when I put it back in I couldn't get the wire thingy in properly, so I left it out, and although the space bar still works, sometimes every now and then the right side of it gets stuck down, and I have to hit it again more in the middle or to the left to make it pop up again. Sunday, November 02, 2003
Where did it go? Here I was, typing away and I accidentally hit a key or something and the whole page of text I was writing disappears. It didn't vanish while trying to send it, which is what usually happens, no, I was just typing away and before you know it it's all gone. I must have accidentally hit some key combination for "delete everything irrepairably" or something. Friday, October 24, 2003
I hope I don't get LEFT BEHIND for writing this Ah...premillenial dispensationalism. There's a lot I could say about that, like its extremely dodgy biblical and theological basis, and the fact that if you've been in evangelical/pentecostal circles for a while now, you notice that the prophecies and interpretations made over time tend to change, the old ones quietly discarded (when it becomes clear that they probably won't happen, like communism taking over the world etc) and new ones proposed, often based on the same scripture proof texts, and soon after a world changing events occur, like the fall of the berlin wall or september 11, end times writers get busy showing how obviously the literal interpretation of scripture had in fact predicted these events (none seem to be bothered by the fact that they don't seem to manage to make the predictions before the events occur). In fact i might do some sort of research project, comparing all the old predictions to the new ones. I remember them saying things like the USSR going to invade Israel, along with China, Russia being the big bear from the east or something. Nowdays, I hear of predictions of where the Muslim terrorists will next hit. It seems to me, rather than a scholarly analysis of what predictions the bible might have, it's more like using the bible to support whatever political agenda is on the table at the moment. These days I have to remember to check for Muslim terrorists under my bed instead of communist spies. They do make some predictions that could be said to be coming true, that of general trends like the lowering of moral standards or privitisation or globalisation, predictions that Joe schmuck from down the street could make. Going back to some of the old books, like Barry Smith and others (Barry Smith died recently, just last year or the year before or something) I noticed a few suspicious things, like the date-setting for the return of Jesus, which we are specifically forbidden to do, no one knowing the time and the hour, coming like a theif in the night (I suppose you could say, 'hey, that just says the time and hour of the day. Doesn't mean I can't pick the year! But that would be silly). There's also this tendency to not give any details on his information or where it came from and stuff, to protect those innocent anonymous sources, but Mr Smith assures us that he has the information in his files at home, so I guess I have to trust him. Where he does cite sources, it's often rather obscure things like secret masonic handbooks or documents written by Jesuits centuries ago, the sort of stuff you're not going to casually pick up off the shelf at your local library. In fact, I get the suspicion that for a lot of things in his books, he just plain made it up. And the kind of theology behind a lot of these books is just plain strange, when you think about it. First there's this tribulation thing, but that's okay, because we get raptured before that. Seems a little too modern, american and comfortable to me. What about all those Christians in the first couple centuries AD, facing all kinds of persecution? Being fed to lions and being used as a human candle sounds a lot more like a tribulation to me, and seems to me more like what the bible refers to than our modern ideas. And what about all those Christians being persecuted throughout the world today? Of course, they're not really being persecuted, nobody's forcing to put a barcode on their forehead. Mark Shea keenly observes: For we modern Americans are not slaves groaning under the lash or persecuted Christians faced with the colossus of hostile Roman culture. Rather we are comfortable people with cell-phones and hot running water who dread the loss of American creature comforts. And so modern Last Days scenarios tend to portray an End of the World in which the surest sign of the Trump of Doom is an infringement on American Buying Power. Hence, many fundamentalists warn of the "Mark of the Beast" as a barcode on marketable goods or postulate as the ultimate evil some Vast International Economic Conspiracy aimed at harming American economic and political sovereignty. http://www.mark-shea.com/apoc.html And then, after this tribulation thing, Jesus comes back. But not for a final judgement, no, he comes to set up a thousand-year kingdom on earth, ruling with an iron fist, or a 'rod of iron'. A kind of totalitarian dictator. And that's fine for a while, until some evil people like the devil get loose at the end of the thousand years, so then Jesus deals with that and everything, sending them to hell and his saved to heaven. Seems a bit like a funny thing to do. If he's ruling, on a kingdom on earth, why put off the judgement? And what's going on for this thousand years anyway? It all seems a bit rediculous and pointless. It sounds, in fact, a lot like the same kind of expectations the disciples had about a future earthly kingdom, Israel conquering Rome, them at the right hand of Jesus. So my view over the years has changed from the premillenial dispensationalism I heard about when i was 12-15 and is now a view called, 'Amillenial preterism.' The amillenial meaning that i don't think their will be a literal 1000-year reign on earth, rather, than the millenial kingdom is Jesus's reign both in heaven and on earth in the hearts of His people, from his ascension until his second coming. The 'preterism' part means that i think that a lot of the predictions made were in fact already fulfilled in the first century, like the destruction of the temple in 70 AD etc. The only things left to happen is for Jesus to come back, and have a big final judgement thing. Prophecies could also be fulfilled in the end times, like in the left behind books, but that would be a 'double fulfilment.' It wouldn't need to happen, but it's not going to cause me too much trouble if it does. You can find out more about preterism on JP Holding's website, here: http://tektonics.org/eschatology.html Thursday, September 25, 2003
The Katt's Lair Well it's one of those times when I don't really feel like doing anythidng in particular so I'm bumming around on the Internet. I'd thought I'd have a look at fellow cartoonist/comic/manga creator type person (whatever she prefers to call herself, she can insert here, some people are happy with a general title like 'cartoonist' like me, other people get a bit uptight about that, preferring a specific title like manga author/artist or whatever. I can never be sure what a particular person prefers, so I put this note here. Myself, seeing as i haven't been very productive lately, have adopted the new title, 'professional slob.' By the way, this 'blog this page' button on the google toolbar is something I think I will get to like very much, because so often you see something on the internet and I think, 'I should write a blog entry about that,' but then I forget to get around to doing that. If I have a book that I own or a photocopy, I might write something in the margin or something, but more often on a separate piece of notepaper. I don't understand all these people who write in the margins and underline sentences in LIBRARY books. I mean, that's just stupid. How are you going to remember it later when you return the book? You'll have to write it down somewhere else anyway. And seeing as it's NOT YOUR BOOK, it's VANDALISM. Okay, okay, enough about that. Let's see, oh, I'm still in a bracket, I'll have to close that) Kinoko's manga thingy on the Interweb and there's a handy like to it just up above there. Now there's a note here about her use of manga distinctives, such as having to read it from right to left and using Japanese language for some sound effects. She was kind enough to have the dialog in English, which I think was very nice and generous of her. Having everything right to left, I think, is one of those things that kind of loses its effect on a computer screen. I mean, if you have the book, you see 'aah, everything goes this way', but on the computer it gets a bit strange if you have to scroll over one side first and then scroll back to the other. But I think It's really just one of those things that can't be helped. Okay, so I'm looking at the comic now. It's one of those ones where the Artwork is so good it makes my best ones look really crummy by comparison, so It's kind of embarassing for me. It's more a matter of the final, polished look, that is, rather than the quality of the art itself. It looks like how a comic is supposed to look. With me, I kind of just vomit onto the page. If it kinda makes sense, and everything looks something like how it's supposed to look, it's good enough, because just getting anything done at all is a big enough struggle for me. There's also the unity of the look. I haven't read through the whole thing, but I suspect it look unified, that things will generally stay looking like the same kind of thing. In my comics I'm lucky if the characters look the same from one page to the next, not to mention everything else, like the setting. Hmm, this man doesn't seem to have any nipples, which is another of those manga distinctives. I'm up to about p. 7-8 now. These girls are moving into this guy's house, and he doesn't know why. I'm going to see If I can guess the plot. This guy declared he would start a brothel in his own home when he was blind drunk, and these 'working girls' are responding to the ads he put in the newspaper. I'm probably wrong though. Oh, they're relatives. Perhaps there'll be an incest storyline? I'm probably wrong about that too. Aha, adopted daughters, so it can't really be an incest storyline. Although, Judging by other manga comics you can find on the Internet, or fanfiction, having an incest storyline or a high school pimp would be rather ho-hum, and perverts would be yawning and getting bored. So I'm glad this comic probably won't be going into any of that stuff. p.13-14 This page features a very interesting clock. p. 19-20 Tee hee, see here for what I mentioned about the importance of the girls being adopted relatives. p. 23-24 I just thought I'd mention here that I wish I had 3 beautiful girls to clean up my house. p. 33-34 Tee hee hee. Gosh look at the time, I think I might go to bed now. Sunday, September 14, 2003
Sooo...what's the difference? After a few different events, I recently realised something that I find terribly amusing. There are certain people who will start to look nervous if someone (of Catholic or Eastern Orthodox persuasion) cross themselves, or kneel to pray, they will cringe at the sight of rosaries or icons, get nauseous the minute they hear recitations of form prayers or the mention of the words 'veneration', 'rite', 'ritual' or 'sacrament', and generally crusade against what you might call the traditional forms of devotions or mysticism. And with the same breath, they will then turn around and starting speaking in tongues, involving a lot of shouting, sometimes shaking and repetitive prayers, and fall down and start wriggling around on the floor. I can understand the kind of Christian, perhaps of a staunch Reformed persuasion, who equally rejects all of these expressions of Christian spirituality. What I cannot understand is the Charismatic Christian, with this curious kind of short-sightedness, as if they have blinders on, that they cannot even see what a double-standard this must appear to be to anyone outside their particular group. It reminds of CS Lewis's approach of 'Mere Christianity', where he says that Christians should appear as a 'unified front' to those outside, and focus on what we have in common and not our differences. I think that is particularly important in issues like this, because to the outsider it can only appear to be rather silly. The response of someone outside would be, 'er, so, uh, what's the difference here?' Saturday, September 06, 2003
Grr! I just wrote a really good post and blogger lost at all! I shouldn't have deviated from my usual practice of writing them out and saving them beforehand. Aargh! Tuesday, September 02, 2003
I just remembered... I might as well add while on the topic of Gnosticism, that Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of my favorite anime series's, seems to draw heavily on Gnosticism, as well as Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. Monday, September 01, 2003
Restorationism One of my numerous email accounts is subscribed to a couple of self-help 'pop psychology' email lists. The kind of things you get from them are very often quite amusing, sometimes veering into all sorts of things like scientology or detecting energy fields through crystals and all sorts of new-agey type stuff. I haven't seen any detailing the health benefits of drinking your own urine yet though (apparently there was someone with a stall for that at a psychic fair type thing). Recently I recieved an email with some new 'finding your inner consciousness' or whatever type thing, and I noticed that it was in fact Gnosticism. Gnosticism, by the way was a heresy that existed mostly in the 2nd - 4th centuries that was combatted by the early church (actually, it was more like several heresies, although often with similar traits). The writer of the article mentioned something like 'this is the true meaning of the Genesis story in hebrew that had been mistranslated by Christians.' Which is really a quite silly thing to claim. Anyone can check out the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek versions that the translations of the bible come from if they really want to. There's no secrets that magically appear when you look at the hebrew rather than the english version. Sure, there's always some debate on the different ways that things are translated, but any look at the different english translations will show you that the differences aren't as great as they are commonly made out to be. It is more a question of interpretation than translation, and there is of course much debate on how different things should be interpreted, based on the differences in the original languages rather than the english languages, meanings of words and grammar issues, as well as all sorts of debates about the context and 'how those at the time would have read it' and so on. Yet even though there are different ways of interpreting parts of the bible, some, I think, can be automatically ruled out due to their sheer rediculousness. The Gnostic view seems to fit into this category, as it states the exact opposite of the actual genesis account. Just so you know what I'm talking about I'll just do a quck comparison between the Biblical and Gnostic accounts. If you remember from sunday school (and if you didn't go to sunday school, I'm sure you heard it anyway), God makes universe. In this universe is a planet called earth, on it somewhere is a place called the garden of Eden, and it has the first human pair in it. God says: 'Okay, you guys, I'm giving you this planet. Just, whatever you do, don't eat the fruit on this here tree.' They reply, 'okie-dokie, you're the boss.' A little while later, Eve's walking around, Satan in the form of a snake says, 'hey, that fruit's not so bad.' Eve says, 'duh, okay, gimme one!' Adam isn't much brighter, because then he says, 'hey, that looks tasty, gimme one.' They get kicked out of the Garden. Now, the Gnostic view says, 'well, actually, the being that created the universe and everything in it wasn't the real God, that was a lesser being called the Demiurge. He created evil matter, that traps poor little souls. The higher God is a good spirit being. All people's souls are actually the divine spark, that comes from this higher God. Now, the snake in the garden wasn't the devil, it was a being sent from this higher God, who wanted to rescue the souls of adam of eve. So that is why the snake wanted them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because that is the wisdom that will rescue their souls. But the evil demiurge didn't want them to have this secret wisdom. The demiurge then went on to create the evil Hebrew religion, with laws to keep people entrapped in his evil, material universe. Jesus was another being sent from the higher God to give the same secret wisdom, like the snake. And because Jesus was pure spirit, he didn't really have a physical, material body, he was more like a hologram.' The gnostic view also says that God didn't make Eve out of Adam's rib, actually it was the higher consciousness and wisdom of Adam emerging out of him, represented as Eve. You can easily see that these Gnostic ideas are like the exact polar opposite of what Christians teach, so it's easy to see why they were so heavily opposed. Of course that doesn't mean I approve of the way heresy has been opposed in the past, although some people do just make you want to burn them at the stake. Now in terms of these modern Gnosticism, This is a example of restorationism, or primitivism, the idea that the original Christianity, or some issue etc within it, has disappeared or been corrupted, except of course for the particular person who somehow found out about this missing thing, and we now have to get it back or go back to the way things were (so we had to wait over a thousand years for the higher God to get someone to tell us what we forgot about). It never seems to occur to them that maybe it was a good idea to get rid of the Gnostic ideas. Often they do not even approach the question of the truth or falsity of various ideas, being so obsessed with just the idea of fair play. Letting everyone have their own say is fair enough, but when ideas are mutually contradictory they can't all be right. One must be right, and the others wrong. Or they could be all wrong, and something else right they hadn't considered. Gnosticism cannot be true simply because it was suppressed. After all, the idea of absolute monarchy has been suppressed in the past, yet not many people are saying that are governments are corrupt because they have suppressed absolute monarchy and embraced democracy (they say governments are corrupt for different reasons). This seems to be a common trait in a lot of new-agey people. They seem to think that the church is oppressing them or their spirituality, which seems a bit rediculous today. I mean, fair enough if you lived back in the days of witch burnings, or if you live in an Islamic country, but where's all the oppression in our modern, western societies? All you need to do is switch on TV to see that the church isn't really controlling society. Although I suppose they might feel they are alienated from their friends and family. Or maybe they've just gotten paranoid from smoking too much pot. This restorationist idea is common in Christian circles too. People write books on things like, 'hey it looks like the Early Church did this. Nobody does that anymore. The church must be corrupt. Let's do this thing we've forgotten about.' I've done this myself in the past, and it's an easy thing to do. But just because something was a common practice at one time, doesn't necessarily mean it's appropriate for every situation. For example, I've read a bit about how baptism may have happened in the Early Church, and it says it's likely people were baptised naked. Does anyone want to start doing that again? That's one way to get people to attend your church, at least as long as you have some fairly attractive converts. Friday, August 22, 2003
Saturday, May 17, 2003
The Latest Jerry Springer Show
Thursday, May 15, 2003
What's with all these good looking people?I'm always surprised, not just at all the good-looking people I find that exist in the world, but also the fact that it seems like more are born every day. Where do they keep coming from? You'd think that the supply of pretty faces would be exhausted by now. I mean, there's certain things you have to get right, like the right amount of eyes and noses, and I mean, there's only so many variations you can do on the same theme, and there's so many more things that can go wrong then right. So why are there so many beautiful people? They should have run out by now. "Sorry," comes the announcement. "We've run out of all the good genes. The rest of you are scewed." "Awww..." comes the cry of all the pre-incarnate soul that haven't been born yet. "Why do we always get stuck with the leftovers?" But no, and there's so many people who are at least moderately attractive, and so few grotesquely and hideously ugly. I thought we'd be up to our knees in ugly bastards by now. Where are the freakish mutants? With all the greenie hippies moaning about pollution in the environment, you'd expect quite a few. Or maybe there is just something wrong with my idea of how the world works. Sunday, May 11, 2003
Not feeling too wellI haven't been feeling too well recently. I've been tired a lot, doing a lot of sleeping, had a woozy feeling head sometimes. A couple of days ago I slept most of the day, but I've been feeling a bit better everyday. I have this feeling like I may have brought it on myself by stressing myself out and exhausting myself. I'm trying to take it easy and not stress myself out so much. I tend to try to use stress as a motivator, which is silly because it doesn't work very well, it doesn't make me more productive, in fact I tend to be less productive, so now I've been looking at finding new ways to motivate myself. My default setting seems to be, "go back and forth from laid-back lazy mode to anxiety stressed mode and back again." Then there's also creative mode, that only seems to ever hit me by surprise. If I could take that mode and harness it, I wouldn't need to see-saw between the other ones. My dad has an anxiety panic disorder, so I might as well learn better ways of studying and stuff before I develop that too, or one of the other many hereditary illnesses in our family (bipolar disorder, depression, paranoid psychosis). It's just that there's so many things I'd like to do in one day, but only so much time in one day. Maybe I should focus more on what I do each week rather than each day. I've only got one lecture each week to go to at the moment, as all my other subjects are education subjects, and aren't on while the Education students are on Prac, so I've got more time for me to get over being sick and experimenting with things. Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Avril Lavigne Worship AlbumOh yes, how could I forget? Someone on the bus home from Arts Weekend of Doom mentioned that Avril Lavigne has in the past made a worship album(s). So I guess her original plan was to become a mini-Darlene. That reminds me of another little thingy I've been thinking of doing, writing Ten Songs About Avril Lavigne.I've only got the titles so far:
Arts Weekend of DoomRecently I went on the Arts Weekend of Doom and lots of interesting things happened, so I thought I’d write a bit about some of them. Why,I’m only scratching the surface here! I liked the fact that on the concert nights there were quite a few songs aboutoh-I-like-this-girl-but-she-doesn’t-like-me-so-I’ll-winge-about-it type stuff, (comedy ones, not serious ones) like there was Patrick’s nerdy teenage boy maths book margin poetry, after he did the goth weblog poetry one with Bill. And then there was also Bill and Stan and Co. with that stalker type song. And not only that, there was also that band with those girls and they sung a song that was like, a get-it-through-your-thick-head-that-I-don’t-like-you,-thank-you-I-know-I-have-nice-tits-now-can-you-please-leave-me-alone-and-go-away type song. It was sort of like on the same kind of theme, but that one was from the girls’s perspective. So it kind of all balanced out and stuff. Maybe there’s some kind of karmic principle there or something.
It’s almost as scary as these articles here on Christian porn (look for them in Too Much Coffee Man magazine no. 13.) It seems to be mainly about this guy from a Christian band, who became a porn star. But he maintains that he is a still a Christian because they are Christian porn movies (that’s one of the strangest oxymorons I’ve ever heard). They have all the normal stuff in porn movies (I’m not sure if ‘normal’ is quite the right word) with the exception that they all find Jesus in the end, realise that they are sinning, have an instant conversion and no longer have sex orgies anymore. Now, a word of caution here, this is the Internet we’re talking about here, so there’s the possibility that the whole thing is just made up. I find it rather hard to believe. Even so, even if it is a complete load of crap, it is still an interesting story. That’s the thing that some people just don’t
Now I’ve been noticing the weblog ads changing depending on whatever I’m talking about. I think I remember bill mentioning getting Christian dating services ads on his, which makes sense, tee hee hee. Now I’m wondering what kind of ads I’ll get now with this post. I might also get some of those weirdo visitors as well, like people who want to buy some of that ‘Christian porn.’ There is lots of other things I could talk about, but I’ve already written over 1700 words so that’s enough for now. Maybe I’ll write some more another time. Hmm. I probably won’t. Oh well.
Saturday, March 08, 2003
TIMECUBE!!!Hey, did you know that the Timecube guy had a public debate? Here's an article from someone who went to see it. check out this bit... Gene Ray began to explain his theory, one that he said he has been trying to get people to understand for nearly 20 years. He says that his theory will change everyone's understanding of the world and that universities don't want to hear the truth. He says that authorities at other campus' have threatened to arrest him because his principle is so world-changing and threatening. The sad part about it is that he doesn't seem to understand that the arrest threats never came because they were "scared" of how the theory would change the world, but because he quite literally does not have the "cubeless" words to try and explain what in the hell he is talking about and he comes across as some senile, crazy guy...and no one wants a senile, crazy guy cluttering up their campuses. He wasn't invited to debate the theory at MIT because they were open-minded...these geeks invited him to make a mockery of him and he didn't seem to understand that either. Poor old timecube guy. Thursday, March 06, 2003
Just Imagine If...Imagine a world without lamers Wouldn’t it be divine? No more “Mainstream Alternative” music, Reality TV, Or Deconstructionist movements Within Literary Criticism. Human resources would become Staff, and Information Resource Centres would become Libraries. Cafe Lattes, Tall Blacks, Short Whites and Espresso Would All become coffee. Teenyboppers Would be Domesticated. There would be no more talk of: Moving to the next level Backsliding, Unpacking, Or comfort zones. Government propaganda Would be outlawed, And, Rather than elections, Beauty contests would Decide who rules. Girls would always date Their lonely nice guy Nerd friends, Thus, eliminating Much angst-filled Weblog entries. Conversly, other nice Nerd guys Would date all the Fat girls with nice Personalities they Never noticed before, As, They were too busy Worrying About their female Friends who Wouldn’t date them. Life would be Beautiful. So come, Let’s lock up these Lamers, and first Begin with me. Monday, February 17, 2003
Friday, February 14, 2003
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