I get a good laugh outta almost everything in JF forum, for one reason or another.
Especially my own "work".
How about my work??!!
It's subtle, I know, but it's there. My fingerprints aren't hard to find, but it is an acquired taste.
I get a good laugh outta almost everything in JF forum, for one reason or another.
Especially my own "work".
How about my work??!!
It's subtle, I know, but it's there. My fingerprints aren't hard to find, but it is an acquired taste.
Somehow I tend to try to take you seriously, like you're a missionary or something, incapable of or disinclined to "joke" about stuff. Holdover from your recent trip to Thailand I suppose.
So when you comment about night life it puts it in the whole frame of UN conference goers in places like Phu Ket. Serviced by underaged gangland slaves. Somehow, whenever the UN comes up I see that kind of place and activity.
So of course I'm not there. JazzFanz is seriously about as raunchy as I can stand.
And for some jazzfanzers this thread is about as ranchy as they can stand.
some discerning intellects recognize the subtle difference between "ranchy" and "raunchy". . . . but probably the ignorant masses of mankind wouldn't make the distinction. . . .
Personally, I feel there is a huge divide between the two. Perhaps a bigger divide than any other chasm known to social-man.
But that's me.
Well, aside from knowing a lot of country boys and gals gettin' down on the ranch in a way that might make the bulls and cows look civilized, I think you have a point.
It could be divided along a number of lines. . . . with the word "raunchy" clearly a better descriptive for interests other than ranchers. . . . politicians like Harry Reid, paid political hacks bankrolled by corporate operatives to exert "public" influence on government agencies. . . .,
Somehow I tend to try to take you seriously, like you're a missionary or something, incapable of or disinclined to "joke" about stuff. Holdover from your recent trip to Thailand I suppose.
So when you comment about night life it puts it in the whole frame of UN conference goers in places like Phu Ket. Serviced by underaged gangland slaves. Somehow, whenever the UN comes up I see that kind of place and activity.
So of course I'm not there. JazzFanz is seriously about as raunchy as I can stand.
Well, that's a pretty sad story, Nick. As you know I a bit of an old Asia hand myself and I think I get the way it is.
Here is how I think our Heavenly Father deals with us. If you will notice, there are a lot of things said in the Bible, and if you spend much time there, thinking, you will notice how the moral injunctions can sometimes have a sort of point/counterpoint to them, with intrinsically opposite values cited in different places. Yes in the OT there seems to be an emphasis on submitting to God's law and trying to do righteous things and all kinds of required things. Yes in the NT there seems to be an emphasis on issues of our hearts and conscience and our duty to walk rightly based on principle in the sense of following the example of Jesus. In the OT the grace of God seems centered on the nation or the calling to separateness from the world as a people of God, a kind of "grace" given by God because He has chosen Israel, while in the NT it is given for us to chose God, to choose faith in Jesus, and to claim adoption into the family of Abraham and the family of God.
I think we blink and look at one aspect at a time, in almost every idea we have.
I think God knows us for what we are, and tries to help in every way He can or every way we will accept. your Thai friend I assume might be Christian and you might have assumed that a lot of "Christian" or western values had been assimilated already and so you are disappointed to find her "going with the flow" of Asiatic life, The apparent fact is that that way of life was there all the time, perhaps hidden in a way for a while.
I don't know what we can do about the way people are when God Himself sees things in the light that we are our own judges whether we will choose Him and follow Him or not. It could take a lifetime in serving God to bring just one soul with you back home to God. But God values us in a way we mostly fail to comprehend, in that it would be worthwhile to labor a whole lifetime to just find our own way back home to God. And if we could bring just one person with us, it would be worth another lifetime.
Do whatever you can for anyone who cares to listen. Try to do as much for anyone who just simply is there where you can make the effort, whether they will listen or not.
In the movie Charlotte's Web, at the end, the same point is made. It would take a lifetime to be a friend as valuable as Charlotte was, but a lifetime is what we have.
Hey Babe, have you seen the Danish movie "The Hunt"? It's a very good movie and the underlying theme (from what I gather anyway), is about whether or not you can seek true Justice in this life, or is it really the role of God (as only he can see all the situation, circumstances, etc).
My brother often says to me "How can Christians just repent and get away with doing something wrong? There must be justice for the victim. Forgiveness makes no sense".
But really only God can see all the circumstances surrounding a particular situation, the only logical action is to rest assured that he is in charge, leave all consequences to him, and in your heart find a way to forgive those that have wronged us in this life.
There is forgiveness and meaningful forgiveness.
If someone has hurt another person they have to do 4 things before they should be offered forgiveness.
They have to take responsibility for what they've done, have remorse, do everything they can to repair the damage (<---justice), and never repeat the same action
If the offender doesn't do these things then offering "forgiveness" is meaningless.
Hey Babe, have you seen the Danish movie "The Hunt"? It's a very good movie and the underlying theme (from what I gather anyway), is about whether or not you can seek true Justice in this life, or is it really the role of God (as only he can see all the situation, circumstances, etc).
My brother often says to me "How can Christians just repent and get away with doing something wrong? There must be justice for the victim. Forgiveness makes no sense".
But really only God can see all the circumstances surrounding a particular situation, the only logical action is to rest assured that he is in charge, leave all consequences to him, and in your heart find a way to forgive those that have wronged us in this life.
Zamyatin is perhaps the most insightful political analyst the world has seen, and his fiction was as applicable to the Soviet State as it is to our New World Order.One thousand years after the One State's conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. Meanwhile, the project's chief engineer, D-503, begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship.
Like all other citizens of One State, D-503 lives in a glass apartment building and is carefully watched by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. D-503's lover, O-90, has been assigned by One State to visit him on certain nights. She is considered too short to bear children and is deeply grieved by her state in life.
O-90's other lover and D-503's best friend is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions.
While on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal sex visit. All of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State.
Both repelled and fascinated, D-503 struggles to overcome his attraction to I-330. I-330 invites him to visit the Ancient House, notable for being the only opaque building in One State, except for windows. Objects of aesthetic and historical importance dug up from around the city are stored there. There, I-330 offers him the services of a corrupt doctor to explain his absence from work. Leaving in horror D-503 vows to denounce her to the Bureau of Guardians, but finds that he cannot.
He begins to have night dreams, which disturbs him, as dreams are thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is involved with the MEPHI, an organization plotting to bring down the One State. She takes him through secret tunnels inside the Ancient House to the world outside the Green Wall, which surrounds the city-state. There, D-503 meets the inhabitants of the outside world: humans whose bodies are covered with animal fur. The aims of the MEPHI are to destroy the Green Wall and reunite the citizens of One State with the outside world.
Despite the recent rift between them, O-90 pleads with D-503 to impregnate her illegally. After O-90 insists that she will obey the law by turning over their child to be raised by the One State, D-503 obliges. However, as her pregnancy progresses, O-90 realizes that she cannot bear to be parted from her baby under any circumstances. At D-503's request, I-330 arranges for O-90 to be smuggled outside of the Green Wall.
In his last journal entry, D-503 indifferently relates that he has been forcibly tied to a table and subjected to the "Great Operation", which has recently been mandated for all citizens of One State in order to prevent possible riots;[3] having been psycho-surgically refashioned into a state of mechanical "reliability", they would now function as "tractors in human form".[4] This operation removes the imagination and emotions by targeting parts of the brain with X-rays. After this operation, D-503 willingly informed the Benefactor about the inner workings of the MEPHI. However, D-503 expresses surprise that even torture could not induce I-330 to denounce her comrades. Despite her refusal, I-330 and those arrested with her have been sentenced to death, "under the Benefactor's Machine."
Meanwhile, the MEPHI uprising gathers strength; parts of the Green Wall have been destroyed, birds are repopulating the city, and people start committing acts of social rebellion. Although D-503 expresses hope that the Benefactor shall restore "reason," the novel ends with One State's survival in doubt. I-330's mantra is that, just as there is no highest number, there can be no final revolution.