oh, god.

[melannen]

So, we're back. I'm still not caught up on lj-- read everything but the fanattack_alley filter. Have no idea how people with two or three times my flist manage. They must be capable of skimming a lot more than I can. Plus, of course, I have been Doing Things. Packing and writing and cleaning and cooking and shopping and fiddling with my computer and mowing the lawn and listening to OotP on tape and trying to get my Angelina Johnson-style hairdo (as Mom put it, why do you want worms growing out of your head?) mildly presentable and reading the diary of Anais Nin and watching lesbian sex scenes on Mom's soap operas and sewing on the Voldemort plushie who now has one leg and one arm in addition to a head and doing stuff at church, and things like that.

We were at Game Night tonight at church. The younger folk played UpWords. And I won, yah, but more importantly I played 'spunk' for 26(!) points and could have played 'quim', only for once it was a dirty word Mom didn't know, the dictionary at church was bowdlerized (imagine not even defining 'fuck'!) and I didn't feel like arguing the point in from of Steven and Emily and Steven's mom and my mom and Paul the pastor's kid. Oh well.

Sigh. My lj keeps going read-only the past few days. So, to kill time until it's back, memage. A fairly stupid meme, but I trimmed out all the uneccessary code, and it does ask a lot of quesstions I've been wanting to answer.

Religion Definition

are you mono or polytheistic? animist.

do you subscribe to a major religion? yes, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America

how do you feel about Jesus? Great guy, although his taste in friends was sometimes questionable

what holy book do you feel is most accurate (Bible, Koran, etc)? The Book of the Damned

do you believe in reincarnation? in a wavery sort of way.

do you believe in the traditional heaven and hell? which tradition?

do you believe in ANY heaven and/or hell? yep, all of them.

do you think the god(s) are vengeful or nice? When I try to shape the personal God they come out quite similar to Holly, from Red Dwarf. It doesn't quite understand humans although it thinks it does, and not quite as omnipotent or omniscient as he remembers being after he spent too much time with nobody else to talk to, but kind enough in her own off-kilter, self-centered and absent-minded way. (Hmm. There ought to be a Red Dwarf story where Holly becomes incarnate from the virgin Lister and is made man.)

do you believe in angels? I believe in beings with powers and wisdom beyond ours who occasionally interfere in human life; it's logical, in a multiverse where everything is possible and more likely to happen than not.

do you believe in miracles? see above.

do you believe in predestination? Nope, I'm Lutheran. (There was a time when I understood the difference between Calvinist and Lutheran beliefs on predestination, but don't ask me today.)

do you believe in original sin? I believe that free will requires the possibility of doing wrong. And that free will was an essential part of the Creation.

do you believe in freedom of will? see above.

do you believe in souls? I want to believe that there is some part of 'self' which is only self, neither biology nor memory, matter nor energy.

what do you think will happen to you when you die? I will be freed of the bonds of time and space, and therefore be (re-)united with everyone ever, bitch at reclusivewaffle for throwing a tantrum and quitting the game before it was over, experience all the boredom possible in a state where by definition nothing can happen, and hie myself back to life and the sound of voices and smell of sweat and touch of pain and the color purple and the promises of death.

do you think there will be an armageddon? You're mixing up the terms Armageddon and eschaton again. Tsk.

why do you think we exist? We are really bored when we didn't.

do you believe in life on other planets? yep.

do you believe in evolution? No, but then I don't believe in gravity, either. Or that the sun will come up tomorrow. Or that the color yellow is not just a collective delusion. It's bad science to become emotionally invested in a theory. (I only believe in two categories of things: things for which there is no evidence at all, like nargles, and things which have been proven absolutely. Only mathematical theorems can be absolutely proven. And theorems : science :: poems : grammar books.)

do you think religion and science will always oppose the other? As long as people define them as opposites. I make no distinction, and there's always been a gray area that's both.

what would you say to God if you met him/her/them today? Well, you know, I *do* go outside and pray every so often, which *would* be the situation proposed in this question. I just kind of talk about life and how I'm feeling today and honesty and stuff . . . God Is My Therapist, as the bumper sticker says.
If I did it tonight I'd probably ramble on a bit about sorry it's been so long but I hate talking on the phone and I'm bad at correspondence anyway as you know, but you read my journals so I hope you weren't too worried, and classes starting and moving in, and being separated from people I care about, and how they will handle that, and I hope everyone is okay regardless, and my self-consciousness about being too self-conscious, and how to make sure I actually get stuff done in class this year, and earning my own forgiveness for all the stupid and thoughtless things I've done lately, and how I hope he really doesn't mind that I'm still too selfish to have faith, and the moon was really pretty tonight, kudos, and the pumpkin is still growing and the jewelweed has started to bloom, and I don't empathize with the grass anymore when I mow the lawn and it worries me that I'm becoming desensitized to the pain of plants, and does he have any advice for how to get Voldemort's head to look right, and hey, listen, I'm really sorry about Bush, that must be awfully embarrassing, but I want you to know that I don't believe any of the stuff he and his clique have been saying about you behind your back. And stuff like that.
Pretty boring, really. I learned how to pray from two places: the lady pastor in communion class who said that if you're shy, take the Lord's Prayer as a guideline-- cover everything it covers, and you'll be fine; and The Door Into Fire, where Herelaf advises "When you're praying, don't beg the Goddess. What mother can stand hearing Her children whine at Her? Talk to Her, tell Her what's on your mind. You'll always get answers back. Lie to Her, and you'll get lies back--but tell her the truth, and you'll find solutions."

anything else we should know? Luther says in an introduction to the Catechism that it's perfectly acceptable to join a church just for the charitable and social opportunities, so no, there's no contradiction in me claiming to be Lutheran. q:.


Grr. Okay. lj is working again, I'm posting this now.

Comments

Can you use it in a sentence?

[theemptylife.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'm ignorant of the word "quim" and none of the dictionaries I have access to contain it either. Can you define it without making me blush?

Re: Can you use it in a sentence?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Proabably not. It's a victorian term for girlie bits.

Re: Can you use it in a sentence?

[theemptylife.livejournal.com]

Nice!!! Victorian dirty words, sweet! Was it acceptable euphamism language for victorians, or was it actually a dirty word?

Re: Can you use it in a sentence?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

My understanding is it wasn't a euphemism but it wasn't *excessively* dirty either, sort of the equivalent of "penis" in dirty-ness. If you were, say, reading period erotica that's the word they might use. (not that I've ever spent hours staring at victorian porn (http://www.livejournal.com/community/vintage_sex/info) or anything.) It's been proposed by modern feminists as a word that could be reclaimed, which is why I know it.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Imagine my surprise at finding a lovely file named "Quonochontaug.txt" in the "stuff" folder on my laptop. d-; Want it back?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Back?

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose I mean: would you like a local copy of it? d-:

[melannen.livejournal.com]

er. What is it that I would want a copy of it?

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Well, it appears to be a transcription of a postcard sent to one Dana Scully several years back; but, y'know, if you don't know anything about it, I suppose it's possible that someone very, um, interesting snuck into our hotel room while we were in Boston, and borrowed my computer ...

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, it does sound interesting and mysterious. You're finding x-files stuff on your computer that you don't remember writing now, huh? I would say something about obsession reaching dangerous levels, but we knew that already. q-:

Should I be insulted or flattered that you assumed it was my fault?

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

I think you should be contrite. d-:

[melannen.livejournal.com]

*blink* What, do I have a history of tricksy behavior or something?

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe I should refrain from mention the fact that when I read the first line, I remembered reading the beginning of it over your shoulder as you wrote it at the hotel. d-:

Or possibly you were possessed. Maybe it was a ... residual haunting. *snicker*

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Is residual haunting a reference I should know?

Also, *so* bad manners to read over someone's shoulders without giving a sign that you've read. Good thing I didn't try to work on the secret project then. q:

Also, I'm getting awakened at six to haul heavy boxes up three flights of stairs, so I'm going to bed now. qc:

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Well, if you'd read the fic I posted a couple days ago, you'd get the reference. *long-suffering sigh*

I wasn't actually *reading*. I was just *glancing*. Pfft. d-:

You have fun with that then. Hehe.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Ah. I thought I'd wait till I'm back on my computer to catch up on that stuff. Sorry. You put out *so much*. q: I did read today's though. It was lovely. It may have inspired the fact that I just fell over backward in your office chair in a perfect pratfall, which reminds me of Mom telling me that while I was fixing dinner she fell asleep at the computer and the chair leaned back and her knee hit the off switch on the power strip, at which point the sound of the computer being off woke her up.

...yes. Bed *NOW*.

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Hm. The LJ user tag didn't seem to take.

Sigh. My lj keeps going read-only the past few days.
Does that mean the site went down?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Not exactly, they'll put a cluster of journals on read-only when they need to mess with the servers they're on. I would try to be more detailed, but I've spent the past two days on Snow Crash, so it's probably a bad idea for me to try to fake computer knowledge. status reports all that stuff.

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Oh! Neat! (Well, neat to know, not neat that it goes on read-only, cause that's... I'll shut up now)

Snow Crash?

In any event, I'll take a look at status. Thanks.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

cyberpunk novel by Neil Stephenson.

Also very trippy drug/virus in the novel which crashes people's brains. :)

Also old term for computer crashing so badly it gives you snow-static, which doesn't happen much with moder graphics systems.

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Brain-crashed people sounds extremely fun; I shall have to read sometime.

...

Is that woman wearing a phoenix-feather hood? It looks nice, but doesn't it possible run the risk of... you know... bursting into flames? A neat icon, in any event.

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

It should also be noted that, the very night I read this, my computer (with its already dying motherboard) had a crash so catastrophic that it fits your final description. If I hadn't been angry at the computer, I'd have laughed at the very silly coincidence. Blarg.

Kinda reminds me of an old commercial:

"I think I killed the motherboard... and the fatherboard, too."