Deep Thoughts....

[ER]

I wonder if the deepest thoughts in history we're thought by the people who explored the Marianas trench...

Ha!

[indianasmith]

Light a man a fire, and you warm him for a night.
Light a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.

[Svengoolie 3]

Light a man a fire, and you warm him for a night.
Light a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.

New take on that:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0612.html

[ER]

...it's masochistic to get up this early to take my kid to church just so she can meet her fellow masochists there for dawn Mass instead of later services. Wasn't there a Protestant Revolution to quell this sort of thing? It's parental abuse to deprive me of sleep like this, grrr. I'm supposed to be the boss in this relationship, aren' I? Couldnt I tell her no, go back to bed? Hours of out of body pain having her led to this? I hope she  remembers these sick-early mornings someday if she ever decides  to write a mommy dearest type memoir about me (I am not anti-wire hangers!). If I could think of these dark mornings as investing in career development that'd be one thing but surely nuns will be extinct by the time she's eighteen, right?

[indianasmith]

I'm telling you, there ARE later services.  Being miserable is NOT a prerequisite to Godliness!

[ER]

Today I offered to take her to a museum instead but she had the fortitude of an abbess. Maybe I should take up sun worship: better hours in sun worship.

[Alex]

I'm telling you, there ARE later services.  Being miserable is NOT a prerequisite to Godliness!

Unless it is Catholic services in which case you have commiserate your faith rather than celebrate it. 

[Trevor]

I'm telling you, there ARE later services.  Being miserable is NOT a prerequisite to Godliness!

I always used to go to our church's evening youth services which were more relaxed and less formal than the morning services.

[ER]

I'm telling you, there ARE later services.  Being miserable is NOT a prerequisite to Godliness!

I always used to go to our church's evening youth services which were more relaxed and less formal than the morning services.

If one of you could explain that to my daughter I'd be deeply grateful, lol. It's actually the fault of these people she likes, this family that feels like the... suffering, of rising early for the dawn Mass earns Graces that they can apply to others, which I suppose from their perspective is a noble deed. So I try to make her happy when I can and being at that particular service makes her happy. (Sigh.)

[indianasmith]

All roads lead to the dog barking up the wrong tree, therefore divided we fall, but with three you get egg rolls!

[ER]

All roads lead to the dog barking up the wrong tree, therefore divided we fall, but with three you get egg rolls!

Coming soon to FOX TV, when preachers smoke dope!

[indianasmith]

When in Rome, the guilty dog gathers no moss!!

[ER]

...I remember one New Year's Eve in the '00s my (not yet) husband and I celebrated the night in the historic Gaslight district with Russian Satanists and I got black candlewax on my clothes, so the hostess, D'Arcy, said to send her a cleaning bill. I said no that's okay, I don't think my dry cleaner takes Infernal Express. She looked blankly at me and I thought, girl, you are not witty enough to be a devil worshipper, because if there's one thing you can count on from the Prince of Darkness it's wit. It was disillusioning because I somehow imagined Satanists as having a good sense of humor about, oh, I don't know, virginity tests on human sacrifices and things like that. I did have strangely good sleep that night if by sleep I mean sex, so maybe that was what I got out of the black candles and mumbled mojo that was more banally boring than half the Masses I sat through in school. Truthfully the service was more ecumenical than diabolical and the Satanists weren't trying to recruit anyone just grant us charms for a good year, which was nice of them in an outreach kinda way.

[ER]

Actually writing that last night about the "Satanists" made me look up what I had to say about it almost twelve years ago...


Monday January 1, 2007

(7:12 PM)
Okay, so last night Landon came for me and we drove down to the gaslight district in the west of Clifton. We got there about ten, late, early, whatever, and I met Darcy and Mikhail, and I’d asked earlier if Mikhail was any connection to Andrei, (note: Andrei was a creepy but freaking beautiful Russian we knew who was omnipresent for a while but one day in fall 2006 he seemed to vanish from the scene for a long time) and Landon said he didn’t think so. I was thinking, yeah, but Andrei has a way of connecting all over.

I can’t believe how much Landon still misses him, and I’ll never tell him.

We pulled up to the address, this gorgeous old home near a genuine gaslight lamp post, all very Sherlock Holmes, even the night was chilly and nice, with a stern wind that sent the clouds scuttling past the bright moon, making the moon look like it was flying by. I met Darcy and Mikhail at the door. Darcy is a red-haired, approximately beautiful as sin woman of about my age, maybe a tad younger, flat-chested but willow-like, graceful, and with the posture of a model; Mikhail was cocky and forward and almost jaunty, Prussian is a weird connection I kept thinking of. He reminded me both nothing and everything of Andrei.

So we went in, some others were there. No one really knew anyone else. No one knew our hosts, these New Yorkers who’ve come here to get rich and return in a few years.

Except for Darcy and Landon and me, everyone was drinking truly excessive amounts, even for New Years’. No one knew what to say to anyone else, despite Darcy’s promise that everyone would leave as “perfect friends.” This made me have to try very hard not to giggle, recalling as I did all the “we’re going to an orgy” jokes I made to Landon on the drive over.

So, there was ethnic food, Russian rock music, American rock music, odd synthesizer music, and at one point I leaned over and whispered to ask Landon if these were all actors he’d hired to play a New Year’s prank on me. It simply seemed beyond unreal that this was what I was doing for New Year’s Eve. Then toward eleven-thirty, Darcy and Mikhail did this Russian thing and lit red and black and white candles, and passed them around the room, letting the smoke and flames touch each of us, and they said that bound our spirits together for the year and that in 2007 we’d each unexpectedly come into contact with one another.

They also charged spirits to watch out for us, and granted us one favor, to be asked in our dreams, that the forces of the beyond would grant, without us ever knowing they’d granted it, it’d only be done and we’d be surprised, and probably never know was done for us, we’d simply enjoy the outcome.

People were plastered by midnight, and just before the hour struck, Mikhail dimmed the lights and left one candle burning and chanted and then threw plants into water in a silver bowl, and howled, and then dipped a plant into the water and splashed each of us with it. I got it all across my face. Then midnight came: 2007. A year that excites me very much.

So later I asked Mikhail all about the ceremony and he said he and Darcy are not devil-worshipers but they do sometimes pay homage to the devil, as they do God, and the Mother, and spirits, and past powerful humans, and the forces that exist, like wind and heat and ice and fire and blood and sky.

I said cool, okay, and was thinking Diana would go for this. (Diana was some then-teenage girl whose brother I knew in Maine.)

He invited me to do more things at another time, ceremonies, all that, and I said thanks, maybe, and he said okay.

There was no orgy, no sacrificing of a baby, but I wasn’t expecting an evening like that, and I don’t think Landon was either, but he was amused and I was observing it all, so I was glad he found this venue.

Left there by 1:15 and spent the night in Newport. Slept past one. Up and eventually home by mid-afternoon. Mild weather. Twilight Zone marathon continues on Sci Fi.

Hello, 2007. Glad to be here to meet you. I hope we’re friends.

[Svengoolie 3]

Someone mentioned Russian rock,  so....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=-D02111Z4k4

If you're not  into wh40k you may not get it but the singing it still good.