Doom Shepherd

At first, The Tunnel left me scratching my head. Not necessarily a bad thing - I'm rarely puzzled, so it was a nice change. It took another viewing before "Oh, DUH, this is a Lovecraft story!" to sink in. Then I was all I look forward to some form of continuation. Don't handwave it!

The soundtrack to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode "Once More with Feeling." In my head. Over amd over again. Because that album is FULL OF EARWORMS!!!

Actually, my research on the topic seems to show that that's not true. Or is selectively true, depending on culture. Marriage used to be a lot more about property rights (especially back when wives were considered property of the husband) than about love or religion. Nothing but mutual consent was required in Ancient Greece. In the early Christian era, marriage was thought of as primarily a private matter, with no uniform religious or other ceremony being required. It is believed that same-sex unions were celebrated in Ancient Greece and Rome, some regions of China, and at certain times in ancient European history.

"No one comes to the father but through me." While faith may not be the ONLY determinant, you can't get to any of the nice places without it. I have read. You DO know it's non-canon, right? The "faithful" you see in the Inferno betrayed their faith in some manner. In ny case, Niven and Pournelle's Inferno and sequel Escape from Hell are good analyses of Dante. The only church I know of that actually recognized Limbo as a place did away with it. Limbo = still not Heaven, or anywhere nearby.

It's broken off and on, apparently. Some kind of glitch in the code. I've had the same job (librarian at a college) for just over 9 years now. Before that, I was a children's librarian at a public library. I miss everything about my old job except the pay - which was crap. But... getting paid to pick and read children's books. And read them to little kids. That was FUN. Little kids are awesome... when they're not being evil.

Stay up late online. Drink McDonalds' sweet teas (I'm a diabetic) Let internet arguments annoy me irl. Procrastinate.

I'm not talking about chastizement for harm-doing. Believe me, I have no problem with THAT sort of punishment. I'm talking about punishment for doing no harm whatsoever. Not enough to not send them to Hell when they die. No matter how good they've been otherwise. "I love you! Love ME, or burn in Hell forever!" I knew a guy once who treated his girlfriend that way. He was put away for a long time, and good riddance.

"Yes, it's the Apocalypse all right. I always thought I'd have a hand in it." -- Hubert Farnsworth The ONLY thing I want is a good plan to scam 2012 believers. I've been opening with the old "Well, if the world's gonna end, you won't need all your stuff, so how about signing a binding legal contract agreeing to turn it all over to me on 12/22/12. If we're both going to be dead, what could it hurt?" line, but for some reason none of the "believers" ever seem to believe that much. I'm going to have to start following up by calling their honor into question: "LIAR, you don't REALLY believe that, or you'd put your money where your mouth is."

For the sake of being argumentative, if you're assuming that ALL of God's attributes are "just so," I would suggest that Humans have already achieved something that God can not -- they can love unconditionally, and not punish the object of their love if that person does not love them in return.

Growing enough food is easy, distributing it is what's hard. Food tends to spoil after it sits for a while, and a lot of places are still hard to get to, especially if some of the "natives" are shooting at you. Take Ethopia a few years ago. (Assuming anybody else here is old enough to remember "Live Aid" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?") Was there a natural famine? Yes. But what made it much much worse was that the Communist military government of Ethopia was fighting a war with the southern tribes, and decided that the best way to win was to starve their opponents. What shipments of food WERE getting to Ethiopia were being siezed and held by the government to feed their soldiers, rather than making it to the actual starving people. Personally, I think we can stave off Malthus for a while longer. Assuming we wise up a bit. What we REALLY need to do is to get our various religions to stop misinterpreting the story of Onan and give up their silly resistance to contraception.

I'm straight, and my religious affiliation is... kind of complicated, and varies depending on my mood. My best friend - and by "best friend" I mean "would leave my life behind, pick up my sword and follow, no questions asked if she called for help" is a bisexual woman - who I used to have a crush on. While I am usually what most people would consider "Conservative," this really only applies to economics and security, not to social issues. I reject the validity of "scriptures" as at best inadequate descriptions of the desires of whatever God exists. Personally, I do not believe that the Shaper and Maintainer of All the Universes has the time or inclination to care much what two (or more) consenting grownups do in their bedrooms. That leaves me with economics. Is there any way in which homosexuality or any other alternative sexuality picks my pocket? Not so far as I've been able to determine. I did have a guy friend come out to me once. The conversation went like this... Friend (kinda blurted out) : "I'm gay." Me: "Uh-huh." Friend: "... well?" Me: "Well, what?" Friend: "Don't you have anything to say?" Me:: "um... are you interested in me? Friend: "...what? No. No. NO!!!" Me: "So what do I care if.... wait... WHY NOT? What's WRONG with ME???" **Cue both of us laughing**

Strange facts... hmm. I have had a severe phobia of water in my face/over my head since birth. I'm an Eagle Scout. My ethnic background is Scots/Iroquois/German/English/Irish/Welsh/Polish. In college, I fought and defeated a guy who was twice my size, crazy, and armed with a baseball bat. In grad school, I turned a 19-year-old virgin who wanted to be a nun into a 20-year-old bisexual. I own 51 different variant toys of Optimus Prime. I eat hot dogs by taking bites from alternating ends towards the middle. I've been on a Native American vision quest, and my spirit animal is Coyote. I think that's enough random strangeness to keep people gossiping for days.

Eclectic. My music collection has everything from Tori Amos to Metallica to Enya to Genesis to Johnny Cash to Nightwish to Immediate Music to Weird Al to Sting to Alanis to Red vs. Blue to TV Theme Songs.

What? That IS my name. No, really, "Doom Shepherd" was the name of a character in a Werewolf: The Apocalypse role-playing game that I played long ago... he started off as an NPC, but when I joined the game I was asked by the GM to play him because, and I quote: "He goes from friendly and polite to psychotic killing machine in a split-second, and you're the only person I know who can act that out." I kept the name for other characters I played. I rather like it.

Someone here is claiming to be older than me. Damn, and I was so looking forward to being the forum geezer!

We've already launched a number of small nuclear reactors into space. The US has done so without incident, although the USSR lost one or two back iin the day. The space probes Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons, Viking, and so forth, were all powered by Plutonium Radioisope Thermoelectric Generators. They test the containers these things are made out of by crashing speeding locomotives into them. They're pretty secure.

It's a sad fact of human behavior that people LOVE to give others power over them. As individuals, we like to talk a big game about how independent and original and free we are... ...but a lot of us do it while dressing identically to our peer group, joining collectivist organizations, and generally asking other people, from priests to politicians, to tell us how we should be living our lives. Somtimes we feed bad people power, and sometimes they take it, and nobody stops them, because they don't want to get involved. It's 'somebody else's problem.' I don;t want to risk my cushy job/lifestyle. That is the safety that Ben Franklin was taking about in that famous quote that gets misued a lot: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

You just need to glasses with a slightly different shape, and let your hair grow out another inch or two... I agree. He's really cute though. Actually, since this picture was taken, I've gotten slightly smaller glasses - narrower, top-to-bottom, - and my hair is longer. So's the chin fuzz. Guess I need to update my photos... Still...

I doubt aspartam will ever taste like real sugar. And with my sugar intake, it wouldn't be weird if I turn diabetic too. Splenda seems a bit closer than aspartame. And better, it's not a migraine trigger like aspartame is.

*SIGH* Fine then. Shield your eyes from the horror...

I'm a diabetic. Which really sucks because I looooooove sweet foods. Like southern-style sweet tea, and those doughnuts with vanilla frosting inside them. I swear, I'm gonna make a millionaire out of the guy who invents sugar-free vanilla cream doughnuts that taste like the real thing. All by myself, I will make him a rich man.

We prefer the term reality-independent

I'm not certain how I should vote, because I'm a bit of both. I'm not religious, so I don't have that whole "life is sacred" thing going on. And I very MUCH believe in contraception and education and preventative measures. But, as a trekkie, I can say I have an objection to killing an otherwise harmless life-form, except in cases of self-defense or where its quality of life is a consideration. I also take the position that if killing a sapient being is wrong, and killing an animal is wrong (as the vegetarians keep telling me,) then killing a life form that will, left unmolested in its natural environment, become sapient, must also be wrong.(Anybody remember that Futurama episode "The Problem with Popplers?" If its' wrong to eat a poppler, then it seems to me just as wrong to abort a fetus.) So If I wouldn't harpoon a dolphin, or take a hatchet to a computer that's about to achieve self-awareness, or blast Commander Data with a phaser, well... On the other hand, I do understand the occasional need to abort a fetus to protect the mother, or because it will have a severe disease like Cystic Fibrosis or Sirenomelia, or (and this is where it starts getting dicey for me) because it is SO unwanted that it is likely to suffer because of that, or be abused. (My girlfriend was abused as a child. She tells me she'd rather have not existed. I am understandably biased against that position.) So... I end up seeing abortion pretty much the same way I see war: As an evil which, while terrible, is also sometimes necessary, and as such should never be taken completely off the table as an option. So I guess I'm Pro-Life, BUT Pro-Choice.

Oh, if only it were that simple. Couple of thought s touching on this subject... I have the same problem with this philosopy that I do with many others... it only works so long as everybody does it. If you have people in country A who say "yeah, we're not going to initiate force, ever," but countries B, C, and D who don't, in short order, A is going to find itself in a messy situation. I believe your personal freedom has an inverse correlation with how much you ask other people to do for you. When you're waiting all day for the plumber, you get a really good object lesson in how much power over us we voluntarily give up to others, just so we can go about our lives normally.