Offsite Comments

Randomly selected Select choice cartoon from a couple years ago.

Because this newspaper needs funnies.

http://mindfulwebworks.com/doodles/evolution-of-comics

backhoe: "...the AOS ignore list..."

Have you checked AoSHQhivemind.com?

There's an AOS ignore list? Really?

Am I on the list? I feel like I must be sometimes, when...

when my hellos bring no response from that mean old ONT bunch...

when I'm seemingly an ostracized outsider in the day threads...

when my best comments just lie around unanswered.

If I'm late, no one ever says, hey, where's that ol webworker today?

Do you know, Ace has never once acknowedged my existence?

My keyboard is always awash with my tears of self-pity when I visit here. Now I understand. Ignore list!

Everyone who has me on their ignore list, please raise your hand.

Oh, wait...

1. "Daily grousing? In other words constant complaining. Is that what I have been doing? Complaining?"

At this point, seems so t'me. If you're sincere, consider that. Too hard to tell. I'm done.

2. Mmmm. Cookies.

3. Wait! Mmmm. Beer!

"When he leaves, can it all be about MEEEEEEE? I never get a turn."
Posted by: ---

Well, ---, one reason for that, and the reason you didn't get the monogrammed welcome bag, is that handle. The Hive Mind has been meaning to talk with you about this.

Hard to cuss out --- very loudly. Looks like a RosemaryWoodsian gap, self-censorship, or just a long hyphen.

"Look, --- -- ---, I'm talking to you!"

"That --- is such a ---!"

Maybe you could liven it up. Add an asterisk or, I know, an underscore!

Simon, since your broken toe, I've been watching your decomposure. Sure you didn't hit your head, too? :/

Seriously, I don't see all the comments, so I'm not 100% on what happened, but I see two things.

One, obviously, you got on some folks' bad side or shit list. You got pegged for either a troll or a gripester. Nothing worse online than a rep; harder to shake or rise above than a skunk's spray. And sometimes there's just not much you can do about that. Been watching online conversations since the days of BBSs and CompuServe, so I've seen it a lot. Deserved? Doesn't matter.

Two, either you got your feelings hurt - and keep trying to get an apology, in vain, and in all the wrong ways, so you can post in peace here again; or you don't care about posting in peace again, you're just out to confirm what a bunch of h8rs folks are here; or you were a troll in the first place who came in here with a big chip on his shoulder and using every excuse to malign the group and foment discord. Which discord only involves you.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you fell in the first class, but your daily grousing has moved my assesment of you toward the second, and you're making a good case for the last. Just FYI from someone who hasn't been in your sites or crossed you, right?

Whichever the case, why not just break? Go away. Find someplace nice to play for a while. Contemplate things. Take lots of time. It's not like Ace of Spades HQ has put you back in chains. :/

_____

Two monks came to a river, where an old lady stood, unable to cross because of the rushing water.

Although their order forbade touching women, one of the monks offered to carry the woman across the water, which she accepted. So, they forded the river. On the other side, the old woman thanked the monk and went on her way, while the two monks continued their journey.

After a mile or so, the other monk chides his brother. "We are not supposed to touch women!" he whines.

The helpful monk looks at the complaining brother and says, "I put the woman down back at the river bank. You are still carrying her."

Good morning, mindful webworker. Thank you for your thoughts on our loving Creator.

Science studies the material universe using our external senses.

Religion studies the spiritual universe using our internal guides.

God being spirit, the study of the material universe - and its attendant psychologies - may constantly demonstrate the Author's hand to those of faith, but nothing in the material universe can confirm the reality of the spiritual life.

Study of the universe of values and relationships also cannot affirm the Author's existence in any externally-demonstrable way, but the individual may find a certain kind of subjective proof, faith.

Science tests without presumption (except for AnthroGlobalCrisisWeather). Science tries to identify and measure things, mostly by refutation. Nothing in the material universe suggests one value is greater than another. Indeed, viewed from the animal perspective, values seem anti-survival in many instances (what good was Jesus dying?). To take the material universe as the Supreme Arbitrar of Reality manages to create the ultimate Golden Calf: the idol-fetish of the entire material creation itself.

Faith begins with presumption. God is, now what? Living religion affirms values. Misguided believers may attempt to proffer doubters some materialistic "proof" that God exists, but there is no inarguable proof other than living with God in faith and seeing how that seems to you. Spiritual life is like "feelings," being internal and subjective, but whereas emotions are reactive and therefore relatively involuntary, the spiritual life is a constant, conscious effort of will and re-evaluation.

There is proof of the personal Creator, in a philosohpical sense. The proof is simple, obvious, and exists in everyone, even as everyone: that we, beings raised from mud, using brains made of meat, can imagine the ideal Source, even love and aspire to be like that Source.

Look into the eyes of another and see oneself, each of us god of one's own universe, created "in our image" to experience being a personality in the universe of personalities. Such is the only clear hint that the universe's Creator is personal, ideal, and loving.

Although some folks will still hold that the proof is that picture of Kate Upton reading a book from the other day.

Morning, Glories.

morning thread

My good friends Karl and Edna from the NSA inform me that someone from Virginia clicked on my nick a couple minutes ago. But they only gathered the metadata. Honest.

By the dim light of... setting moon? incipient sun? I can see that yesterday's rains have become a moderate fog. I'm used to thick fog rising from the pastures in the morning, but this is right up to the house.

Country fog is magical. Sounds seem different. Light certainly is. And soon dissipated.

Just read zombie's tickle-response tale.

With me, it's a hard, sudden, surprising slap in the face. I actually blank out. When I return, I've done damage. Decked an in-law once. Not as bad now as when I was young, I pray, but I don't know; haven't had to find out in many years, and I try my best to avoid slappy people and hostile situations. Just glad Milady, for all her considerable Irish, was never the face-slapping type.

I told you guys to awaken me at 5am, but when I got up it was 4:59. I coulda used that extra minute of sleep, too! Thanks, anyway.

wife's NEW cell... QUOTE from Will Rogers...

Brain for shot down over Peruvia.

Wife's me cell just got the Amber Alert for the 2nd & 3rd time. No. Thank! You!!

Not asleep yet, and when I got to the end of comments, I saw that I needed to scrape off a nasty old sock, lest I not remember to do so later - you know how it goes - so, I figured, might as well leave a link here on the buffet while I'll at it. Just a little something I knocked out just to keep my hand in, y'know?

Billionaire Idiots
They Know Not Whereof They Speak. Or, Do They?
Quite from Will Rogers.

Nicked in link.
I mean, licked in nink.
Wait. Inked in nickle.
Never mind.

Goodnightagain, Gracies. 5am. Wake me.

In case no one has already mentioned it, the Constitution guarantees every citizen's right to keep and bear a Davy Crockett recoilless rocket system with a tactical nuclear warhead!

Nice post. Thanks, Sir Maet! No time for reading comments. (I know, I know, where are my priorities?) I'm going to bed. Y'all fix the world, and then wake me up about 5am middle-of-America time, m'kay?

Good night, Gracies.

"The more things change…"

Labels may change…

President Taft was a Republican. A Republican whose "domestic agenda emphasized trust-busting, civil service reform, strengthening the Interstate Commerce Commission, improving the performance of the postal service, and passage of the Sixteenth Amendment [Income Tax]. … [Taft] showed decisiveness [!?!] and restraint in response to revolution in Mexico. The task-oriented Taft was oblivious to the political ramifications of his decisions, often alienated his own key constituencies, and was overwhelmingly defeated in his bid for a second term…. After leaving office, Taft spent his time in academia, arbitration, and the pursuit of world peace through his self-founded League to Enforce Peace. … Harding appointed Taft Chief Justice of the United States…." According to Wikipedia. Sounds more like what we think of as a RINO. The obliviousness and alienation sounds like Pres. Chuckles.

Texas Gov. Colquitt was a Democrat. a Prohibitionist, but Texas voted it down under him. He vetoed half the bills sent to him, including some education bills despite having campaigned on never standing in the way of education. He twice sent Texas troops to the border until the Feds finally showed up. Hardly a hard-core conservative by our measures, liked taxes and government regulations, but sent Texas boys when the Feds would not.

Hiya, Bob.

Funny that I should run across “Valerie Jarrett lies” at the top of PoliNation this morning. When I first got going today, I was for some reason thinking quite a bit about the liars and the Lie.

Harry Reid: The borders are secure! Barbara Boxer: The shutdown was about birth control (or whatever like that she said). On and on ad infinitum. Senator and alleged comedian Al Franken’s book title about Lying Liars (IIRC) isn’t ironic, it’s projection.

There are, plainly, two kinds of minds in their camp: those who know they are lying, and those who actually believe the Lie.

The former group are practically the definition of certifiably insane, from a spiritual vantage.

I would think the latter group further breaks down into two species: those for whom the Lie is so important to their self-identity that they will cleve to it in the face of all evidence of error, and who, if pressed, will finally just join the knowing liars group; and those who were beguiled into believing falsehoods because of their idealism, the “good intentions” pavement suppliers, but who, in certain conditions, can be awakened to the Truth.

The universe was not made so mortals could be pleased; our monkey nature would never mature without challenge. The universe was made (from our perspective, at least) to harvest souls for the family of the Father. The most troubled worlds are the most blessed with rugged personalities who have withstood, or risen above, the temptations of life in time and space. The Creators may weep with us and for us in our struggles, like the angels who stand with us, but they don’t answer every prayer for solace or healing or lottery winnings, because that doesn’t produce robust souls of faith.

So, every lying liar that the Prince of Lies can seduce is potentially a soul lost. It’s not just political and social corruption. It’s mass murder, in the eternal sense. (No surprise, of course, considering their joy in material death.)

Every lost soul surely is dearer to our Father than a lost child is to a mortal mother as that harvest of death continues to mount.

I guess my original thought, and it’s hardly just come to me this morning, was that the lies, and the bold-facedness of the liars’ lying just seems to me to be becoming so pronounced, so obvious, that by its very obviousness should cause many souls to get off the moderate fence and fall one way or another. Almost like a time is arriving of commitment, of choosing, forced upon the world, rather like the way Germany-favoring Americans had to choose after Pearl Harbor. (And if you thought that war was something, wait’ll you see the Next Big One. Sorry, wandered off again there.)

The first time you shade the truth
You want to run and hide
Your tongue gets tied
Your mouth gets dried
Then you start thinking maybe
no one knows you’ve lied.
And now you’re shady all the time.
-Steve Goodman
Looking for Trouble (great song)

Hillary is like Reagan.

Except, when Reagan got to that stage, Nancy respectfully pulled the public drapes closed. Hillary shows why that was a good idea.

Morning, Glories. Wish I could bottle these days for August!

I would suggest atheism is the silliest notion humans have ever devised, but we are a profoundly silly species. Atheism is not necessarily any sillier than a lot of other things we can blindly take on faith, it just tends to require more focus and concentration to willfully keep it going.
Posted by: BurtTC

Which is more proof I'm winning! I am teh won! as my disciple might say! Truth is evil! Up is Down! I'm as God as God is! Winning!! Mwaha haaahh! Hawwggkk...
*choke, cough*

AllenG: This being Marvel, I'm guessing a 9 - 12 month storyline.

Or as someone noted, until the next Thor movie, whichever comes first. You nailed it, Allen. I feel like I just read the series. What a time and money saver you are!

Nice nod to Gwen.

Still the most horrifying sound effect ever printed. Tiny, almost imperceptible "krik" - and so painfully obvious what it was. "Just a funny book."

Funniest sound effect in comics:
BA-THROOOM

[Wearing turban,, holding envelope to head.]

Can Anti-Corporatist Populism Save The GOP's Electoral Fortunes?
No.

The Stupidest Article About Guns You Will Ever Read
Must be the Rolling Stone one the Mrs told me about.

WaPo Doesn't Like The Results Of Its Election Model
Fire that model and get a new gal.

The Problem Of Emotional Immigration Stories
is that the majority of people don't actually think, they feel.

House Republicans Take Aim At EPA Climate Rules
Only the Climate Rules? Why not the whole thing!!!

Maryland Gov Doesn't Want Obama's Illegals
Governors should have busses waiting. When Obama dumps them somewhere, herd them all onto other busses, heading for the White House lawn. Or South Chicago. What, the Court said States can't? Tough.

How Obama Questions Your Patriotism
Hm. I might click this one. Just for fun.

NYFD Finally Reaches Gender Equality
Fired everybody?
Fired, get it?
Be here all night. Tip the veal. Try the waitresses.

Man Arrested For Stabbing Watermelon
I'm pretty tired of these Communists in Ecofreak clothing myself.

Thor's Getting A Sex Change
In the name of Equality and Fairness, a demigoddess with large orbs bulging out of her tunic. I liked the Beta Ray Bill stories, when that orange-skinned extraterrestrial had the hammer. Walt Simonson I think did those.

California May Vote On Six State Plan In 2016
2016? California, indeed the USA, should only last so long!

Things Are Getting Dicey In Jersey City
Jersey. Whatcha gonna do? It's like a whole 'nuther planet. This the fake 911 cop story?

TSA Agent Unaware The District Of Columbia Is In America
Colombia, District of, like Mexico, New, easy to get confused. Could happen to any product of the public educational brainwashing institutions.

Follow me on twitter.
Don't I need to be a Twit myself to do that?

I promise not to do this again. Much.

Okay, guess I'll go click on that Obama link.