Toadfish Monastery

I've played my Christmas with the Smurfs album every Christmas morning for the past 15 years. That always makes me smile.

I lol'd hard at some of those pics. When I was that age, I was generally well-behaved (mostly), but my brother...he was a little git. He would constantly try to run away, leading to the necessity of reins when out, and do whatever necessary to gain attention. It's not that he didn't get it, it's just that he always wanted more, and also thought that he could do what he wanted, when he wanted to (he hasn't changed since then).

I can understand kids wanting to let off steam, but to let them do so in a shop is wrong. Having worked in retail in the past, I fully understand what those thrift store ladies felt like. I'm not an advocate of spanking, and I never will be, but there are times when my moral compass moves towards favouring the idea fully, such as with the mothers who didn't understand why their kids breaking shop stock was a bad thing (I bet you didn't see that one coming!).

I remember back in my retail days, a guy came in from the back of the shop with a really sheepish look on his face, and started apologising for his son knocking over one of our concrete water features (I believe some of you may know Henri Studio). I checked, and it was just a smaller top bowl that had irreparable damage, so my employer only charged him cost price for the bowl itself (you can order the parts separately). He went out looking not too pleased with his son, but at least he realised what had happened, and paid for the damages. We were nice to him, as we were to everyone, and tried to make him feel better, but you could tell he was really embarrassed. The poor guy kept apologising to us.

I remember browsing the Betamax section in my local video rental store, and wondering why some of the films on Betamax weren't on VHS (we only ever had VHS at home).

I remember marvelling at "Speak and Spell", although the last time I saw one a few years ago, I only used it to say notty words.

I also remember thinking this one toy was the pinnacle of achievement when I was around 7. It was a futuristic-looking 4x4 Bigfoot type of vehicle that you could tell to move to a certain point. You pressed the arrow and number buttons on top that told it to "Move forward 3, move left 5, move forward 6, move right 8, etc", and it would move exactly as you had told it to. I never got one of those.

Then there was a game where you had to guide a large metal ball bearing (~12mm dia.) through a kind of maze consisting of magnets and steps and stuff like that, where you pressed buttons to make the ball jump or the magnet move. It was orange plastic, if I recall correctly, but the name escapes me now. I never got one of these either.

Where I lived from around 7 to 10 years of age, there was an unused allotment a literal 15 second walk from my front door, and a playing field the other side of it. I loved spending hours in the overgrown allotment, which must have been around an acre in size, finding fruit and veg that had been left by its long-gone previous users. At the time I was fascinated (read: obsessed) with butterflies, moths, wildflowers, fossil seashells, and pretty much anything in the natural world, so it provided me with so much to search for. Finding a colony of Small Tortoiseshell or Large Cabbage White caterpillars was a highlight, as was the time I collected a few Cllouded Yellow caterpillars, or the time a Small Copper butterfly landed on me. Six Spot Burnet moths were also special to me, as not only did they eat Ragweed, they were diurnal, which is unusual for a moth.

Then at 10 I moved from that semi-urban setting to a much more rural one, where I had free reign over miles of countryside. I miss the very long walks I used to take then, and the camps I built with my friends. I used to be able to name all of the local wildflowers by sight back then, but i've long forgotten so many of their names. I even shocked my old Junior School headmistress with what I knew, as at the rural village school I attended from 10-11, they didn't teach anything about that. I have my Junior School teacher from 7-9 to thank for my love of nature (and the headmaster of that school). Yeah, I was a proper little Gerald Durrell in my youth.

I live in the Lea Valley now, and when the weather is warmer, I still enjoy leisurely walks along the river banks and around the lakes, trying to spot water birds (Grebes, Ducks, Geese, Swans, etc). I love the digital age, and wouldn't change it, but I always find myself so happy when in the natural world.

I've just come from the moat (blame the evil PoN for that one), and there were an awful lot of what looked like bones down there...

Quote from: Opsa on February 28, 2012, 07:45:36 PM
I'm glad you're here.

I too read all I could about the gospel of Judas when it came out, and thought it was wonderful. I loved the stuff that implied that Jesus really hated prosthelytizing and would not have approved of any religion based on him.

Thanks, Opsa. It's good to be here, even if I have been absent for a little while.

As opined above, the NT is a political statement, and not necessarily a wholly religious one. We can hypothesise all we like about what could have been if Christianity wasn't adopted, but the truth is, we will never truly know (I want my damn Holodeck!).

If John really was on mushrooms, that was one hell of a trip. I took some mushrooms years ago, and all I did was giggle for an hour. Considering that I was at a rock/metal festival at the time (Download), i'm glad I didn't see all that he did. It would have made being at the front for Machine Head, Slipknot, Slayer, Archenemy, and Cradle of Filth a bit of an eye-opener, that's for sure!

I remember a while ago reading about Manna, as allegedly eaten in the desert by the Jews in Exodus, actually being a type of hallucinogenic mushroom that grows on dew pockets, or some such. Can't remember where I read it now, as it was a long time ago, but it certainly seems as if hallucinogens are part and parcel of religious experience.

Some are pure energy, and some are inert. Great video there. As Carl Sagan says in Cosmos, "We are made of star stuff." Those who deny it are afraid; afraid of the consequences of that revelation. We are all connected; to each other; to the universe.

Quote from: The Daily ShowDear Great Britain,
We're terribly sorry, but full episodes and video clips
of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart are not available.
Please don't send any Red Coats in retaliation at
this time, as you CAN get your headlines at Channel 4.

At that message, I felt a little I love listening to Neil. He's very much like Carl Sagan in his enthusiasm, and the way he explains things (ok, so I know why, lol). To all those in my homeland thinking of clicking the link to 4oD (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/4od), it's worth it, but unfortunately, Dr Degrasse Tyson does not appear.

Right now, i'm seriously considering sending the Red Coats...

Great thread. I've seen the apparent intelligence (or problem-solving skills) of crows, rooks, ravens, magpies, and jackdaws too. They can all be tamed quite easily, although they retain a wild element.

Another group of animals with intelligence are the great apes. I watched a programme on the BBC iPlayer a little while ago, and it featured a woman who was studying chimpanzees in the wild. The type she was studying lived mainly in the savannah of Africa. Although apes exhibit tool use to get food, this specific type of chimpanzee uses tools far more frequently, and will stand up on their hind legs to see over the long grasses. It's quite haunting seeing that, as to me it feels like an echo of what happened so long ago in our own past. This is history repeating itself.

I understand now, Swato. A "real" religion is one where (from an atheist's point of view) a person is delusional, and truly believes that their god is speaking to them, and an "invented" religion is one where its progenitor knows that what they are spewing is from themselves alone. I'm wondering where Buddhism would come in that definition? I shall have to think on that one.

Griffin, feel free to laugh at anything I say. I even chuckled at that, which is why I wrote the sentence after it.

Thanks for the film recommendations and the website. I've not seen either of those films yet, and there are plenty of others I really need to see, going by the lists. Are the two films you mention any good, and are the any that for you stand out as being excellent?

There's an awful lot of cases like this that don't even get heard about in public. My nan was virtually bed-ridden near the end of her life, and needed care. My mum stopped working to care for her, and my brother and I used to sit in with her regularly at night to keep her company, as her bedroom was upstairs, not to mention me being the one mostly helping her onto the commode at night. As a young teen, it wasn't what I wanted to do, but she was family, and as such deserved our care and attention. Seeing how big a difference these seemingly small things made to her quality of life, I just cannot imagine what that poor woman in the OP, and the thousands like her around the country, must be going through. Not everyone has the benefit of family members to help them out, and as such the state MUST provide for them. When a country fails to do something as fundamental as caring for its elderly in a respectful manner, it fails as a country.

^ That's ridiculous. I think I remember that, although it's been an awfully long time. The older FB gets, the more you have to delve into it to discover its secrets.

Quote from: Aggie on February 27, 2012, 04:59:49 PM
Regarding your last point, how many top-level politicians' children do you think attend state/public rather than public/private school?  Similar to the provision of public healthcare, the decision-makers are ones with very little personal interest in the public system and lucrative connections to alternative service providers. The poorer that the publicly-funded schools are (in terms of performance), the more profitable commercial education providers will be.

This is so very true, but has this not almost always been the case? In the UK, there were almost scandals over top MPs and PMs sending their children to public schools instead of the state-funded ones, when they were saying that there was nothing wrong with state schools. If you can afford it, you have the right to do so, but if the state schools are so good, why not save the money and send them to one?

Swato, could you define a "real religion" and an "invented religion" please? From my perspective, all religions are invented, so it would help to know how you define each one. I would say that if there is a supernatural part of our lives (would that not make it natural?), then it would either be something like Buddhism or Deism; either there is no god, and our consciousness lives on in some way, or something created the universe, gave it its laws, then left it all alone. I just can't get along with the idea of a personal god, I suppose.

Aggie, I spend, on occasion, a lot of time debating with creationists on Facebook (i'm a glutton for punishment, I know), and from time to time feel burnt out and need to take a break. I am on a break now, but what you say in your first paragraph reminds me of a few conversations i've had with them on how they feel victimised (ie - Christians; usually in the USA). In these cases I pointed out to them that, as a group, they only have themselves to blame. My reasoning is this. For years it was taboo to come out as an unbeliever in most places, especially in the smaller communities, where people tended to know one another. In cities and much larger communities, it was pretty safe to just not go to church. This meant that although the agnostic/atheist population may have been high, it was repressed due to the stigma of coming out, such as rejection from family and community. Over time, science has progressed to the point where it has started to chip away seriously at the Bible/Koran/Torah/Whatever, and people with a more rational bent have enacted laws to take account of the new science (abortion, evolution in schools, etc). This chipping away has reached a tipping point, but instead of the religious teaching their children "correctly" as they see fit, they seek to change the law to accommodate their own views, and try to publicly undermine a lot of what rational minds have fought for. Abortion is not mandatory, yet the way the religious right reacts, you'd think it was. Evolution is taught due to the overwhelming evidence for its simple truth, but instead of teaching their children creationism as usual, they try to get creationism taught in schools once again.

This backlash against scientific progress has probably brought more unbelievers out of the woodwork than any other tactic they could have used, with the effect essentially snowballing, yet they do not understand this, and keep trying and trying. They almost force unbelievers to become fanatical because of what I consider to be their rank stupidity. Therefore, they only have themselves to blame for the current situation. I know not every religious person is like this, as i'm not that stupid , but the most vocal are usually the most fanatical, and they don't give their fellow believers a good name. I'm not condoning discrimination against the religious, as everyone is entitled to their own views, but when you fight hard against truth and knowledge, don't come crying when people hit you back.

As an avid fan of H P Lovecraft, i'd like to compile a list of films based on or around, or even influenced heavily, by his works, and also to start a discussion on them. Here are the ones that I can remember, but there are bound to be many more that I forget. All should be linked to their IMDB page if possible:-

In the Mouth of Madness
Cthulhu
Dagon
From Beyond
H P Lovecraft's Necronomicon - To Hell and Back
Re-Animator (plus sequels)
The Call of Cthulhu
The Last Lovecraft - Relic of Cthulhu

These are the ones i've seen and own. I enjoyed every single one of these films. In the Mouth of Madness has to be one of Sam Neill's best films, in my opinion, and has a great atmosphere throughout. Dagon and Cthulhu are both very enjoyable, although i'd rate Dagon, with its creepy Spanish fishing village (replacing Innsmouth), as by far the better of the two. From Beyond, Necronomicon, and Re-Animator all star Jeffery Coombs (yes, he was Weyoun in DS9), and are the quirky 80s ones. They're fun to watch, with moments that make you both laugh and cringe, and I would recommend these for sure. Relic of Cthulhu is the latest one, and is a little quirky. Based on the Cthulhu mythos, it takes a geeky ride through Cthulhu fandom, and is well worth watching. The Call of Cthulhu is the odd one out, as it's shot totally in black and white. It's probably the funkiest of the lot, but seems to fit well with the timeframe that it is depicting.

There are plenty more either based on parts of a book, or have a Lovecraftian theme. Check out THIS WEBSITE for more.