The Religion the Almighty & Me Works out Betwixt us
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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Another Open Thread
33 comments:
I cannot talk about anything without talking about everything. --Chesterton
Fundamentally there are only three miracles: existence, life, intelligence; with intelligence, the curve springing from God closes on itself like a ring that in reality has never been parted from the Infinite. --Schuon
The quest, thus, has no external 'object,' but is reality itself becoming luminous for its movement from the ineffable, through the Cosmos, to the ineffable. --Voegelin
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. --Wittgenstein
That sucks. I hope you feel better soon!
ReplyDeleteGet well soon Bob! We will try not to make too much of a mess of the rec room.
ReplyDelete(looks around, eyes the glass bowl between the Laurel & Hardy decanters)
ReplyDeleteOoo, a matchbook collection...
Oooh, careful - you never know what Dupree might have left in there....
ReplyDeleteThe preacher came by
ReplyDeleteWith a tear in his eye
Said his wife had come down with the flu
We told him he ought
To get her a quart
Of that good ol' mountain dew
Great new picture, Julie.
ReplyDeleteWhen my 16 yo granddaughter is hauling her 20-month-old little brother around, she has to keep telling people, "No, he's not mine. He's my mom's. I'm only 16!"
Looks like you might have the opposite problem.
Thanks, Mush. I don't have that problem, but I figure it's mostly because everyone wants to talk to Liam, not me ;)
ReplyDeleteLiam's awwww-fully cute.
ReplyDeleteWhen M. was down here a few weeks back, he brought a couple of dinosaurs. I sat in the floor with him and would have one dinosaur sneak up and bite the tail of the other causing the victim to flip in the air like a mortally wounded armadillo and emit an authentic saurian screech.
I usually accompanied this with a shout of, "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" (Firefly ref).
M. found this hilarious. Now if you play dinosaurs with him, you have to play the way the Old Man does it. I wouldn't have thought he would have remembered it for fifteen minutes.
@mushroom.
ReplyDeleteThe raccoon points north. Repeat, the RACCOON POINTS NORTH!
Anybody have a good story?
ReplyDeleteToday's schadenfreude.
ReplyDeleteOne can only hope the experience will have a beneficial impact on at least a few of the folks there.
@julie. Oh, that's sweet. It's the Western Civilization Lab course they didn't take in college.
ReplyDeleteI do have another true story involving Appalachian hill folk and a raccoon. But instead of putting one over on the revenuers, magic is involved.
ReplyDeleteIt starts like this. Twenty years ago when our family lived on a mountain farm west of Bristol TN/VA, on the Virginia side, Our neighbor Steven was walking down the dirt road in front of our house chewing on something. Steven was one of three teenage boys who lived next door. Imagine your worst Appalacian hill folk nightmare and that would proabably accurately describe those particular neighbors. (I'm thinking that may have been one reason we got the farm so cheap)
I'll continue if I get an "up twinkles."
:D
ReplyDeletePlease do! I meant to say, I liked the other ring-tale as well.
Oh, fine: ✌ ✌
ReplyDeleteBest I can do - my symbol library doesn't carry jazz hands...
Ok, well, so Steven is chewing on something like a chicken leg and I don't know why I would ask him outright but it turned out in our exchange of pleasantries that he was snacking on some raccoon and he asked me if I wanted some. I politely declined and he headed on down the road.
ReplyDeleteFast forward a few months and we are having a small bonfire in the bottomland next to the dirt road and creek that ran in front of the house. It was a small party of, maybe eight of us. Two of them were contract programmers we were working with and befriended that had come up from Research Triangle in NC. One of them was a practicing witch. You may know the type, long hair, very intelligent, programmer, D&D, witchcraft. Nice guy, and I'm not being sarcastic. So, we are hanging around the bonfire, singing songs, telling jokes, playing with the fire when out of the shadows appear the immuminated faces of Steven and his two brothers....
Crap! I mean illuminated faces...
ReplyDeleteI figured, and yet it seems as though "immuminated" ought to be a word...
ReplyDeleteWhere was I? So Steven and his two brothers appear out of the shadows.
ReplyDeleteSo I say, "Oh, Hi guys". Now that I think about it, it may have been the fireworks we were setting off that attracted them. (I really miss the Tennessee fireworks). So we continue on with the fire prodding, jokes, singing, fireworks when Steven kneels next to the fire. He then, I believe, holds up a stick or something and says, "This stick (or whatever) represents somethingortheother." and tosses it into the fire. Then he pulls out a small plastic baggie containing a raccoon foot and says "This raccoon foot represents somethingortheother." and tosses that into the fire. My guess is that it was from the same raccoon he was snacking on a month or two before. Then he pulls out another small baggie and sprinkles a substance onto the flames. He says, "This is sugar and this represents somethingoranother."
We were all staring in silence when
Steven gets up and says, "Well I just put a curse on my girlfriend." That was a buzzkill, to say the least. I'm standing next to my witch friend and say quietly, "Can he do that?" My friend says, "Yes but not to worry, I grounded the spell." What a relief!
But there's more to the story...
Fast forward a couple of months and I'm giving their mother a ride over the ridge to the general store that will extend her some credit until the checks arrive. On the trip over we were engaged in small talk, she mentioned that she didn't like the Virginia death penalty laws because she was concerned for her boys. She also mentioned that Steven's ex-girlfriend got sick with "the cancers."
ReplyDeleteVery odd.
My dad was a very skeptical person. However, he got a work horse in a trade that had "fistulo" -- that is, fistulous withers or "poll evil" -- it's kind of like inflammatory bursitis that breaks open. To the old-timers, it was more or less incurable. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Dad took the horse over to a woman known to be a faith-healer, which, of course, he had no faith in.
ReplyDeleteWhile Dad talked to the woman's husband, she took the horse around out of sight. When she returned, she instructed Dad to turn the horse out in the pasture and not look at him for, I think, two weeks. Dad figured he could at least follow the rules, so if the horse came up around him while he was in the field, he would look the other way and walk off.
After two weeks, the horse's withers were completely healed -- no sign of the "fistulo" at all. Dad would always end the story by saying, "I guess my faith wasn't too strong. I took him and traded him without ever putting him back in the harness."
Wow - I've known some "interesting" folks in my time, but you two might have me beat.
ReplyDeleteTo John and me, "The Beverly Hillbillies" was a reality show.
ReplyDeleteWow,that was a good Game Six. During Game Four, I said to my wife -- who is a fan of Nolan Ryan and the Rangers due partially to this -- that David Freese was a dangerous hitter. Now she believes me.
ReplyDeleteNo worries, Bob.
ReplyDeleteI will be lightly tethered in high orbit, near the celestial fire pole, ready to seize the wheel of the cosmic bus when you get better.
http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/bong.htm
Wow... two out of 4 of my favs out of commission. Life is gonna be soooo dull for a while. :D
Take your time, I'm going 'nowhere'. Come to think of it... where is 'somewhere' on the internet?
Hmmmm.... :)
Mushroom - I finally just now watched the first episode of Firefly. That dinosaur line is a lot funnier now... :)
ReplyDeleteJohn, and anyone else needing to know which the Raccoon points....
ReplyDeleteWhat is it Brigid says? Another Browncoat.
ReplyDelete*way*, which *way* the Raccoon points.
ReplyDeleteGood thing there are always signs.
Good story mushroom!
ReplyDeleteI do miss the VA/TN hills. When you made that left turn off the main road that went up the valley and followed the the twisting road up and over the small gap and into our holler you passed through a stationary wrinkle in time which popped you back 40 years.
Mushroom said " "The Beverly Hillbillies" was a reality show."
ReplyDeleteLol.
"... reality show", or as we like to call it, turning the wrong way on Hwy 79.
ReplyDelete@Van. LOVE IT!
ReplyDelete