Dr_Evil_Mouse

Too far gone? Then hell, just push back - please! Everybody needs that.

I hear you. But it does take me aback that it's the non-religious who are cast in the role of the bully. Statistically, that's just not the case, and I have to be careful even now not to trip over people's toes at the college I teach at. I grew up as an evangelical, and all I remember being told was that it was the others who were wrong, and who should be our targets. Hell, my grade 9 locker partner was as full-on evangelical as it gets, and he bullied the hell out of me for reasons that I'll never know. Evangelicals are a group that - and I know this from living within their midst for too long - feel that they have a right to take things back, whether or not anything was actually was taken from them. I stick to this thread because maybe there's going to be that space for the middle ground. It does happen; that's what lends ambiguity to the thread title, after all.

Pay no mind, I was just being shitty (and yes, I also had to force myself take a sabbatical away from here, to thin out my addiction). I guess I still can't fathom why it is that you disagree with this thread so much after all this time, is all. Can you put it simply?

[rant] "Community"? That's a helluva thing to try to posit, especially a place like this. In my experience, I have near and dear friends here that I see eye to eye with, along with others where we get on but don't know each other that much, and so on. (Meanwhile, Birdy, you haven't responded directly to anything I've written in, like, the last two years!) Fact is, there are people out there frothing at the mouth around questions about religion, and too often it devolves into violence (see the news around Ayodhya this week). Is anything that happens in this thread, relatively speaking, worth whinging about, as if it really affected our lives? If push came to shove, ok, sure: I would say that people that dug their heels in to defend theism were in fact deluded and threatened to fuck things up for the rest of us. That doesn't mean that theism is bankrupt for me - it works perfectly well on the level of poetry. But this literalism that is new to religion in modernity (i.e. the last 200 years or so) is undeniably catastrophic. So when such stupidity in the world of religion comes up, and someone sees fit to throw it in this thread, I love it - it's still the first thread I check out when I pull this site up - and want to see how it's responded to. [/end rant]

Re. the video above - I had to laugh when I read further into the wiki on Persinger's God helmet:

Well, you're still checking in, which is saying something . Birdy, are you saying that you're identifying with the evangelical voice in this? I'm not sure where you're going with this, except to ask everybody to stop talking about it, which doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Please disabuse me of this prevarication. (sorry, new word of the day, had to use it)

For good reason! Great crowd, and No Buds sounded better than I've yet heard them - despite having no monitors.

Word had it that a Fn+F2 would work, but no. Esau, what command line have you found that works?

I've been savouring the re-issue of Couldn't Stand the Weather lately, with all those notes I hadn't heard before. Velvet, your story of having met him must be a really special memory; he did always give off that nice guy and master of his instrument vibe.

Irking was occasioned? As far as the experience thing goes, I can't help but remember the God helmet.

Looking forward to this!

Remember how when your wireless connection would kack out in XP, most times the problem could be solved with a right click on the bottom right icon and a click on "Repair connection"? There doesn't seem to be any such thing in Windows 7; either you get the "Troubleshoot problems" option, most of which needs you to already be connected to the internet, or the "Network and Sharing Center" option, which, when I go there, doesn't show any of the networks in range - just that I'm not connected to anything. Can't find a disconnect/reconnect, or disable/enable, or anything. Anyone know what I'm talking about? This is driving me crazy - I have to restart my computer every time this happens. Help!

I didn't care for the "religious troll" label either, though I tend to ignore how people label their videos anyway. I did think it was an important question in the dialogue that has to take place between theistic and atheistic thinkers (and who's to say that the questioner wasn't just playing devil's advocate here). I still think the answer was spot-on, though there is lots of tension between the humility that it aimed at, and the smugness in the room that it seemed to generate.

That was so very nicely worded. All I hope for, too.

Yeah, okay, that's pretty funny .

Best jab ever, and worth it for the good news ! Congrats, you guys!

Happy birthday to ye !

Excellent - thanks for the link.

Groundbreaking news, for sure. All those laws in place to try to stop it were arcane, and just ridiculous. I remember hearing the stat once - damned if I can remember where - that Toronto's busiest period for prostitutes every year was the Santa Claus Day parade. Just picture it: all the dads in from the 'burbs, nipping off to "grab a coffee... be right back!"

Way too funny - House leader says Colbert was "an embarrassment" . This is the first time I've seen the comments under an article in any news site in total unanimity: it's not Colbert who's the embarrassment.

Yay, less than six months till Spring!

Cool - just the thing to keep on in the background as I make supper. (I'll actually have to flip a coin - that, or something from season 3 of Family Guy. Tough to call.)

So they say. You hear of those vegans who won't buy certain publishers' books because they use animal fat in the binding. Power to them, I suppose; there are those Jains who wear gauze masks so that they won't accidentally inhale and kill the tiniest little critters. I dig that kind of attention to detail.

He's just bumped Zappa out of first place in my Congressional Hearing testimony top 10. That was awesome.

I'm oldish already, so even though I'm relatively speaking a johnny-come-lately signer-upper (Feb. 2005, I reckon), this thread makes me feel old, but that's awesome, since I like old. First mention, though, that I ever caught wind of for jambands.ca was in fact back in fall of 2001, when Mark, whom I hadn't seen in a while, spotted me at a Hillside fest, and was brimming with the news about this new way to get amazing music happening through this new website he'd been working at getting set up; he asked if I wanted to sign on in a few weeks from then to play at this sketchy old place (as I remembered it from my high school days) - the Lanc - to do a solo set. It was all brand new to me at the time; I remember Mark Wilson, the Fat Cats, Nero, and Jomamma being on the bill. I also remember floating on clouds for days afterwards, thinking, wow, thanks Mark, I am so happy to have been brought into this thing that's going on. It's been a pleasure and an honour to get closer to this group of freaky music lovers in all the years since. I'd say more, but it would be either silly, maudlin, pointless, or all three of those things at once.