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deerydear · 3 months ago

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I guess 'whiny' requires a qualifier. For much of the story, D. is shown as suspiciously silent and stoic... but one can very much see what's going on in his mind. Even I could in some sense, during my first viewing. The fact that he thinks he can use other people as puppets makes him a whiner. He whines without words. He bottles up his whining monologue until you can almost smell it wafting off of him. He has a sort of fantasy narrative that tries to cover up all of his very-real vulnerability and fear...

Ralph Fiennes has such beautiful eyes. I actually want to cry, thinking about that. The casting was a great choice. (Wasn't D. a blond in the book? Yeah, I imagine him to be so, extremely pale from a lack of sun; but large, rectangle-headed, brawny like a horse.) I also had imagined Reba McLane as a redhead, but she was beautiful in the film.

I like Hopkins as Hannibal. Reading the book, I felt that he should be a short and unattractive man with eyes like a beetle's. I don't mean this as an insult to the actor at all.

I'm fond of every single portrayal of Jack Crawford that I've seen in film so far.

I watched the NBC show during a very turbulent time in my life... when I was fresh out of a mental hospital. Then I started to have dreams where I was living my life as Will Graham.. mundanely. I wrote about these dreams a little deeper, and I later analyzed them for symbolism... surprised that there was symbolism in a dream that I'd dreamt up 7 years prior... sitting like a lily-bulb frozen in the winter ground... waiting for the right time to sprout and become noticed.

omgggggg, I want to watch Manhunter next!

There was one dream where I felt a correlation between the figure of Dr. Lector ... and my first-ever girlfriend. It wasn't a happy thing. It's the kind of thing that I actually prayed to god about, trying to wash myself of. I saw a figure of Jesus reaching out to me, while I was in the darkness... praying before sleep because I could feel myself falling back into the mental anatomical maze of a dead relationship... Zombie? Something stitched up and walking around, lacking lifeblood... That's why I went to church for a few months, until I realized that I was practically falling into the ways of the Pharisees that Jesus warned about. So if I ever feel the need to pray to god, I just do it in my thoughts, in private.

I've also been reading a few different books about cult control and psychology. I'm not exactly friendly towards christianity. I feel like many of the churches are some of the most popular cults, but a lot of people are shy to recognise it. They have a fascination about other kinds of cults, especially alternative religions.. but I feel that that's the way that they channel their own feelings of fear and dissatisfaction outside of themselves and towards an outsider 'enemy group', because it can be dangerous to go against your own group. As Steven Hassan put it:

Even buddhism isn't immune to being warped towards a cult ideology. It really doesn't matter how kind, fair, or compassionate that the original idea is... Anything can become warped by a greedy or malicious person. They'll claim to be the opposite.

I recently found an old copy of the novel Silence of the Lambs. I love the movie so much... ))

I don't know... I think it's funny how I like to paint myself with a villainous brush while pretending that the other people in my life are poor little innocent victims barely tolerating my presence. but that person was not a good person. This wasn't her fault, entirely. Of course it was, in some ways... but she told me what contributed to her problems. She grew up with that seed inside of her, trying to deal with it as a child, trying to find a way to live without fear, without being eaten up by the world outside of you. I know how that is.

I think most of the turmoil of my teenage years after our break was due to my preference for fantasy. I was ripe for plucking into a cult. I chose a political cult as my first one.

I still think it's funny how those people claimed to hate christianity and everything about it, meanwhile believing in a convoluted version of original sin, purity, and holiness... secular holiness. Absolution through victimization. I always thought it was because most of the people ripe for conversion in this social climate were ex-christians ashamed of their old culture, because of how they were mistreated in a personal way... but they're viewing christianity through the lense of personal emotion instead of logical analysis of the ideas within. So they end up subliminating their emotional attachments to these christian stories into the way they understand the world around them, and therefore their politics, too.

It's strange to be able to look at cult scripts with two different lenses. You can see how it looks from the outside, and then how it looks inside. They create two different emotional experiences. I find it especially strange with the christian ones, since I grew up atheist with my mother telling me horror stories about the christians. I thought I'd never fall for any of it... but then I had a sort of 'scientific curiousity' after I was approached by a preacher on the street. I'd heard about this stuff my entire life but I hadn't been to a church so I had no experience of my own... just stories from my family who left the catholic church.

Another interesting book is Cultish, about the sort of language that cults use to influence people.

cults are gay. I should've recognised when I was getting caught up in the political one, because I felt that things were not lining up with reality... there were too many emotional variables, not enough logic, and every attempt to systematize the ideas with logic was repudiated as a sin. "You're not allowed to understand the ideas for yourself. You're supposed to just give the reins of your brain over to someone else because you're too rotten to decide for yourself. Listen to me." For a suicidal masochist, this is sweet talk. Well, it's deeper than that. The problems have discrete causes... but it's too much detail for a blog post. (OR IS IT?) I wasn't born that way. It wasn't my entire personality. I was a bigger person than the narrative I was trying to bury my life in.

Saw the Red Dragon film with my boyfriend the other night... wow. I loved it so much.

I saw the film many years ago, before reading the book. I really didn't enjoy it. D's childhood wasn't really shown in the film very much, only alluded to... so he seemed like an unnecessarily uptight whiny little cunt who I didn't care about... at all.

but I read the book this spring, so it brought an extra level of appreciation to the acting. It's like reading a play and then being able to appreciate how it's brought to life by a company of actors on the stage, right in front of you. I also find D's whiny cuntitude very fitting to his character. In the book, it explains everything that's going on inside of his head. In the film, one is able to see what is actually going on in the real world around him, unglazed by his biased perception. wowwwwwieeee

I so, so, so loved that glimpse of Hannibal's life before his capture. Although the original book had a slightly different method of deduction as to his identity... it would have been interesting to see that. What a man...

#how many times I cried during the film & while reading

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pleasereadmeok · 3 years ago

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Goode Rewatch Week 17 - Cemetery Junction 2010

This is a great little Brit coming of age movie, set in 1970′s Reading, directed by Ricky Gervais. ‘Reading’ is pronounced Reding BTW. Why? God knows. This is middle of the road England before the tech revolution happened in the M4 corridor. Coz it is set in the 1970′s some of the language and views from some of the older generation in this movie are shocking - there is racism, homophobia and xenophobia. Even tho’ the joke is about their ignorance, it is still tough to listen to.

It is the story of four young people who are trying make their way in the world - preferably by leaving Reading. One of the main characters is Freddie, played by Christian Cooke, who is training to sell life assurance. That’s where Matthew’s character comes in. He plays obnoxious Mike Ramsey who is the top salesperson who trains Freddie. Mike is an ambitious social climber who wants to take over from the boss, played by Ralph Fiennes.

OMG those two are hideous examples of the male species. I wasn’t around in the 1970′s but I think their attitude to women’s roles was outdated even then. They are sexist, bores, money and status mad and have no redeeming features AT ALL - except that one of them looks like Matthew Goode! They are cut throat sales guys who don’t really care about whether the customer actually needs or can afford Life assurance. They are just horrible. Mike is also engaged to the boss’s daughter, Julie, played by Felicity Jones. [Or ‘No Knickers Flickers’ as Matthew calls her! Would love to know why?]

Even tho’ Mike is played by the adorable Matthew, I was screaming at Julie to leave that A Hole immediately! Seeing Matthew play this awful man is so funny. My favourite scene is where he does the most manipulative sales pitch.

Matthew plays it completely straight. He just ‘gets’ how awful this man is and goes for it. Matthew nails it coz if you met his version of Mike you would probably want to slap him - hard.

Apparently Ricky Gervais had to make changes to the script to make sure we hated Mike.

“We had to make sure that eventually you dislike this character. With his one liners and his charisma they’re liking him too much and they’re not meant to!” [Ricky G to Trailer Addict featurette].

This is a fun watch for a Goode fan - Matthew is a supporting character and only in 7/8 scenes but you will enjoy watching him be so totally CRINGE.

Side note - I always find it interesting to see just how many of the actors Matthew has worked with multiple times - eight of them in this movie!

Felicity Jones (Brideshead)

Tom Hughes (Dancing on the Edge and ADOW)

Ralph Fiennes (Official Secrets and The King’s Man)

Burn Gorman (The Offer)

Emily Watson (Belle)

Michael Jibson (ADOW)

Christian Cooke (Ordeal by Innocence)

Jack Doolan (The Hatton Garden Job)

... and those are only the obvious ones that I noticed. They must have some great reunions.

#matthew goode #cemetery junction #goode rewatch #a discovery of witches #adow #just in case ADOW fans are interested - it's a stretch I know.........

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riceli · 5 years ago

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BANNED CLASSICS

Banned Classic Books - banned in various countries, time periods, etc. Non-fiction, children's, modern, etc.

How many have you read?

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)

The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

The Color Purple (Alice Walker)

Ulysses (James Joyce)

Beloved (Toni Morrison)

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

1984 (George Orwell)

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)

Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

Animal Farm (George Orwell-1945)

The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)

As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)

A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)

Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)

Song of Solomon (The Song of Songs, also Song of Solomon or Canticles, is one of the megillot found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim, and a book of the Old Testament.)

Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

Native Son (Richard Wright)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ( Ken Kesey)

Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)

The Call of the Wild (Jack London)

Go Tell It on the Mountain. (James Baldwin)

All the King's Men (Robert Penn Warren)

The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien)

The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)

Lady Chatterley's Lover (D. H. Lawrence)

A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess)

The Awakening (Kate Chopin)

In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)

Sophie's Choice (William Styron)

Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs)

Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)

Women in Love (D.H. Lawrence)

The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer)

Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)

An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser)

Rabbit, Run (John Updike)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

Candide (Voltaire)

Sons and Lovers (D.H. Lawrence)

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Alex Haley and Malcolm X)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Dee Brown)

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

Howl ( Allen Ginsberg - a poem)

Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)

Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)

Our Bodies, Ourselves (a book about women's health and sexuality produced by the nonprofit organization Our Bodies Ourselves (originally called the Boston Women's Health Book Collective)

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)

The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell R. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin)

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert a Heinlein)

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak)

The Crucible (Arthur Miller)

Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)

The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)

Arabian Nights (Richard Francis Burton & Geraldine McCaughrean)

Gullivers Travels (Jonathan Swift)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)

Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)

Moll Flanders (Daniel Defoe)

A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'engle)

Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Paterson)

The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)

Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling)

The Giver (Lois Lowry)

Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)

The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (lMark Twain)

That Was Then, This Is Now (S.E. Hinton)

The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)

Charlotte's Web (E. B. White)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl)

The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S.Lewis)

The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum)

James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)

Grimm's Fairy Tales (Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm)

The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Anderson)

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Alvin Schwartz

Winnie-The-Pooh (A. A. Milne)

Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)

The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka -1915)

Frankenstein (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)

The Well of Loneliness (Radclyffe Hall)

All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)

The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)

100

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

“A book banned” sounds like a joke.

Are people a bunch of idiots that have to be controlled by some System that decides what can be read and what can not?

It is ridiculous.

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smeemyselfandi · 6 years ago

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1. Isle of Dogs-Great animation, great characters and a great story. Just great great great.

2. Eighth Grade-One of the realest coming of age movies I have ever seen. I hated watching it cause it reminded me of my childhood which makes it great.

3. Hereditary-This isn't all the way horror but it's great when it's not horror and when it is

. 4. Roma-Great camera work. Some people say not much story but I felt for the characters more then most movies.

5. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse-Great animation and the villians and spiders were all very fun.

6. Burning-A unpredictable thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat till the very end.

7. Won't You Be My Neighbor- Great tribute film for Mr. Rogers.

8. Avengers: Infinity War- The first half was kinda blah but the 2nd half was exciting and fun.

9. First Man- I wasn't feeling this movie all that much at the start but that ending man. Wow.

10. A Star is Born- Good acting and good story but felt a bit rushed at the start then slow around the end.

11. Sorry To Bother You- One of the weirdest movies I've seen but entertaining and a bit sad when you think about it.

12. Searching-I was expecting more emotion especially because of the that opening scene but it was still a fun mystery movie.

13. Annihilation- Yes the bear scene was great but the rest of the movie was good as well!

14. Suspiria- Just weird. I mean I loved some of it and also kinda was bored through some but still a good movie.

15. The Favourite- I was so ready to love this movie and while I still think it's good I was kinda disappointed in it.

16. Blackkklansman- Fun little detective movie. Nothing special but still fun.

17. Incredibles 2- I like this better than the first one and I didn't really care for the first one. This one had funner scenes and animation was much better.

18. Black Panther- The action scenes was fun and the characters were good but some of the choices they made in this movie was questionable.

19. Widows- Expected better considering who directed it and wrote it but it's still a fun action movie with some nice twists and turns.

20. Deadpool 2- All the characters were fun and entertaining except Deadpool. I found him kinda annoying.

21. Love, Simon- Nice movie that may help people come out which is a good thing.

22. The Tale- This was difficult movie to watch but important and I'm glad I watched it.

23. The Little Stranger- It's slow but interesting and haunting. I enjoyed it.

24. Boy Erased- Good acting but the editing was kinda weird.

25. Crazy Rich Asians- Just a feel good fun movie. You really root for the main character.

26. If Beale Street Could Talk- The main actress acting was pretty bad but besides that this movie was beautiful.

27. Mid90s- I mean this movie is the 90's but nothing else was special about it.

28. A Quiet Place- Can we stop pretending like this movie is some masterpiece? It's a fun horror movie that's all.

29. Can You Ever Forgive Me-Richard Grant was so good in this. So glad he got nominated.

30. Upgrade- The better venom movie but still isn't great.

31. Bohemian Rhapsody-The last scene makes up for the problems with the movie.

32. Green Book-This movie is cliche and so oscar baitey but the performances were great.

33. WildLife- Kinda boring but it's still pretty good. Parents need to get their crap together.

34. Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay- The best suicide Squad movie even though the storyline is pretty silly.

35. Aquaman- This movie was really fun! But it just kept going and going and going and goinggggggggggg

36. Andre The Giant- I liked it but I wish they would be truthful especially Hogan.

37. Robin Williams: Come Inside my Mind- Nice doc of Robin but nothing special.

38. Batman: Gotham by Gaslight- An interesting take for the Batman story that I kinda enjoyed.

39. Tag- I like this better than game night cause it was more fun and felt more real. Still not perfect thoug.

40. Game Night- It was good but not as funny as people say.

41. Paterno- Good acting by pachino and glad this story was told in movie form.

42. Christopher Robin-This movie was fine but expected more of a drama but it's more like a comedy except some parts.

43. The Death of Superman- Basically one big fight scene that was fun to watch.

44. Vice- Christian Bale acted his butt off but that's probably the only good thing about this film.

45. Ready Player One- It's a fun little movie with a god awful villian.

46. Mandy- It's pretty to look at but not much substance besides that.

47. Ant-Man and The Wasp- It's fine nothing special. Some fun gags and a neat villian.

48. Sicario: Day of the Soldado- The 2nd half of this film is a mess but still good acting and action scenes.

49. Beautiful Boy- This movie should have been way better than it was. It had good acting but the editing and directing was not so good.

50. Halloween- So many dumb moments in this movie. There were some great moments but I really hated the dumb moments.

51. Ralph Breaks the Internet- The first Wreck It Ralph had heart but this one was just a mess. It's like they only cared about making dumb jokes and memes and Gal Gadot was terrible in this.

52. Bipolar Rock 'N Roller- An okay doc but kinda forgettable. I'm glad they made it I just wish it was more interesting.

53. Blockers- It was kinda funny but just a forgettable comedy.

54. Batman Ninja-I didn't realize how dumb this movie was going to be. Still good animation though.

55. Pacific Rim: Uprising- If you liked the first one well this one takes a big crap on it but it does have some fun scenes.

56. To All The Boys I've Loved Before- Just a generic teen rom com. Nothing special what so ever.

57. Venom- Tom Hardy was fun and this was more venom than Spider-Man 3 venom but man it gets really bad at the end.

58. Farenheight 451- This movie tried really hard to pander to teens and it's just not good.

59. The House that Jack Built- This movie is not as smart as it think it is.

60. Rampage- I just wanted a dumb monster movie instead they try too hard to make a story. It's not terrible but not good.

61. The Strangers: Prey at Night- That one scene at the pool was soooooo good but everything else was pretty bad.

62. The Nun- How can you make such a scary character so boring and forgettable.

#Moviesof2018 Worstmovie Bestmovie

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donveinot · 2 years ago

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grunkletony · 4 years ago

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Parapines

I like parapines, I think Norman and Dipper make a cute couple. The thing is I think Norman and Dipper are stand-ins for characters we haven’t met yet. Norman is a horror movie fan and a natural medium. Dipper is a conspiracy theorist with a grimoire. Parapines could go as either a conspiracy-horror story or as a boys love urban fantasy. I lean toward the boys love urban fantasy.

So, who are the characters that Norman and Dipper represent, and where are they living? The place that springs to mind for me is the Ohio-Pennsylvania border; south of Orangeville, Ohio and north of Ohioville, Pennsylvania. Folktales from both Ohio and Pennsylvania shape the boy’s experiences. This isn’t the only place of course. I expect there to be hundreds of Parapines couples out there, not just in the United States but around the world.

About the boys themselves. I imagine my Norman character to be 11, years old, the youngest of four brothers. I call him Charles Haddock. His brothers are Edward age 15, George age 18, and James age 21. Charles was the ringbearer at his brother James’ wedding. James and his wife Hellen are expecting their first child. Charles’ paternal grandmother also saw and talked to spirits. After she died last year his abilities began to increase. His uncle Paul Greenway (61) got him copies of “How to be a Psychic” by Michael R. Hathaway and “The Witch’s Book of Spirits” by Devin Hunter and is trying to help Charles control his abilities.

My Dipper character is Avery Frost, age 11. The Frost family has been active in both AMORC and the Woodcraft Way since the 1920′s. Avery is the 4th generation in his family to participate. Avery has two older sisters Grace, age 17, and Kelly age 14. Avery’s father is 1st cousin to Paul Greenway and Ann Greenway Haddock (57), meaning that Charles Haddock and Avery Frost are 2nd cousins. Charles and Avery were both born on August 10th and grew up celebrating their birthdays together. Although they are actually 1st cousins once removed Avery calls Paul Greenway Uncle Paul. Paul got Avery two books for his 11th birthday as well; “Charms, Spells and Formulas” by Ray T. Malbrough and “The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft” by Christopher Penczack.

Charles and Avery are frequent visitors to Uncle Paul’s home. Two books they read often and try to put into practice are “The Tree of Ecstasy” by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and “The Power of Praying Together” by Stormie Omartian with Jack Hayford. When they pray together the boys face each other with fingers interlaced and begin their prayer: “David and Johnathan, Jesus and John”. Last Halloween the boys talked Uncle Paul into taking them out trick or treating dressed as Grunkle Stan from Gravity Falls while Charles went out dressed as Norman and Avery went out dressed as Dipper.

The boys moved into Uncle Pauls house in April when the schools closed early because of the pandemic. Both of the boys have family members working as grocery store clerks and their parents think they’ll be safer at Paul’s place than at home.

Uncle Paul Greenway age 61, is the oldest of four siblings. His three sisters are Ellen 60, Ann 57, and Jane 52. when Paul was a teenager back in the 70′s there was a fad for combining Pennsylvania Dutch Powwow with Hawaiian Magic. Paul was part of that movement combining John George Hohman’s “Pow-wows or, the Long-lost Friend” with “Hawaiian Magic” by Clark Wilkerson. Unlike many of his peers Paul listened to Pow-wow elders when they said “healing is a gift from God and you can’t serve both God and Mammon”, and has never charged for a healing, thus he has kept his pow-wow powers over the decades.

During the 80′s Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in acconting witha minor in art history. He also expanded his magical practice with “Practical Egyptian Magic” by Murry Hope and “Helping Yourself With White Witchcraft: by Al G. Manning. After graduating he got a job as a bookkeeper. He read a copy of “Money is my Friend” by Phil Laut from the public library and has followed the advice to: “save 5%; invest 20%; spend less than the rest’ ever since. It has worked out very well for him. Paul has been investing in intermediate bond funds. When his savings reach $12,000 he rolls $10,000 into an income annuity.

During the 90′s Paul took the exam to become a certified public accountant. He also expanded his magical practice with “Magical Gateways” by Alan Richardson and “The Occult Christ” by Ted Andrews. He also bought a five bedroom ranch house, with two baths, a fireplace and a walk-in pantry in an estate sale.

In the 00′s Paul became a notary. He expanded his magical practice with “Witchcraft and the Shamanic Journey” by Kenneth Johnson and “Secrets of the Magical Grimoirs” by Aaron Leitch. He also read the library copy of “Jesus Last of the Great Pharaohs” by Ralph Ellis but couldn’t decide if it was useful or not.

In the 10′s Paul expanded his magical practice with “The Red Church” by C. R. Bilardi and “The Tree of Enchantment” by Orion Foxwood.

In January of 2020 Paul was forced into early retirement through office politics. He has added “Conjuring Harriet “Mama Moses” Tubman and the Spirits of the Underground Railroad” by Witchdoctor Utu to his practice. The boys are trying to talk him into beekeeping and raising chickens.

Paul does not believe that the Bible is the word of God. He does believe that YHVH is one God among many. For him the Bible is a useful tool. Paul has read the library copies of “Draw the Circle” by Mark Batterson and “Dreamways of the Iroquois” by Robert Moss, and firmly believes in prayer and dreams to guide the boys in applying the Bible to life. He does not have any faith in the seminaries. Family, neighbors, former co-workers and anyone who calls on him to pow-wow for them describes his faith as Folk Christian Fanaticism

Paul is not impressed with zoom classrooms and has asked that the boys’ teachers send him a prospectus so he can make sure the boys are keeping up with their studies. Many parents in the surrounding area agree with him.

For Pinescone fans I include the following option. My Wirt character is Winston Pines age 14, born March 31. Winston had a traumatizing near death experience last year. Winston did not see visions of light and helping relatives, but instead found himself in the hands of malevolent entities. Paul explained to him and his parents that the place he had his accident in was a sprite sink where malevolent spirits gather together and that mere virtue will not protect someone in a place like that. Paul has gifted Winston with copies of “Christian Wicca” by Nancy Chandler Pittman and “Betwixt & Between” by Storm Fairywolf and is helping him work through them. Winston’s parents allowed him to move in with Paul after Charles and Avery moved in, too help Paul manage the younger boys, so they said. Paul pow-wowed for both of Winston’s parents when they themselves were children as well as for Winston when he was younger.

#Parapines Pinescone

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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A rift in the space-time continuum informed us City wins the Premier League again

Bad news, City wins the Premier League again.

We don’t know quite how it happened. As is traditional, there was a storm. Then lightning struck somewhere nearby. A power surge. A moment of darkness. And then, as the lights blinked back on and we all confirmed we were still alive, it appeared on our computer screens: “Premier League 2019-20 in review.”

The Race for the Title

Ultimately, a bit anticlimactic. A 5-0 thrashing of Spurs in August, victory at Anfield in November, title race settled. Manchester City’s 104 points is a Premier League record, but their season will probably be best remembered for the stunning stoppage time defeat to Leicester that kept them from finishing the season as invincibles. And of course, Shoegate.

The race to finish second was a bit more interesting. If you had asked a Tottenham supporter five years ago if they would take a season in which they finished second-place in every competition, they’d have said yes, but reality stings worse than anyone could have imagined. The League Cup defeat to Manchester United hardly registered as a disappointment, and City were always going to run away with the Premiership; keeping Liverpool at bay is basically a trophy, right?

That FA Cup collapse against United, though. Their capitulation in the Champions League final against PSG. Those games were the stuff that nightmares are made of. Hug a Tottenham fan today.

As for Liverpool, well: last season they finished second by one point; this season they finished third by eight. Last season they won the Champions League; this season they were knocked out in the semi-finals. You could call it failure if you wanted to. But in truth, the standards at the top of professional football are so ludicrous that, frankly, all “failure” really means here is “didn’t quite nail perfection, again.” Although losing to Manchester United in such carnivalesque fashion will presumably sting a little. Who knew Harry Maguire could do that? Well, Spurs did.

The Race for Europe

As with last season, the scrap for the remaining Champions League places was the really thrilling adventure, and we have just two words here: Brendan Rodgers. Brendan Rodgers. No man has ever so entirely got back on his bullshit. Forty goals for Jamie Vardy. At least one team talk delivered entirely nude. Twenty for Ayoze Perez. That photo shoot. That other photo shoot. Youri Tielemans, player of the season. Stealing Pep Guardiola’s shoes. Wearing Pep Guardiola’s shoes. A week in prison. A prison escape. And all the rest.

Leicester’s glory was Chelsea’s loss, though it was interesting to see how the fans coped with having a manager they couldn’t really boo. The more creative among them upgraded their A4 protest signs to A3, and even occasionally A2, the better to allow space for the various caveats their outrage required. On the pitch, meanwhile, things went roughly as might be expected: some of the kids were okay, Christian Pulisic looked excellent until his unfortunate injury, and Lampard’s getting another season regardless.

Everton hasn’t finished above Liverpool for a long time, but this season they did at least manage to outscore their dominant neighbours. The front three of Kean, Richarlison and Iwobi looked even better on the pitch than it did on paper, and Everton spent all season terrorising even the finest defences. And who knows, if they could find a half-decent one of their own, they might end up back in the argument proper.

We’re less optimistic about Arsenal, who were slick, pretty, occasionally thrilling, and had a spine made of candy floss and dreams and wishes. A cynic might suspect that we wrote this review of Arsenal’s season before they’d even kicked off, but we’d be safe, because how could you ever prove it?

The Race for the Middle of the Table

Set up for success by a stunningly competent summer, the Hammers finished a respectable eighth, their best finish in four years. Sebastian Haller and Pablo Fornals turned in outstanding campaigns, but the real story was Jack Wilshere, who defied the odds to start in all 38 matches.

This also marks the first time in Premier League history that West Ham have finished above Manchester United, though the Old Trafford faithful don’t seem too concerned. ”WE LOVE YOU SLABHEAD, WE DO,” echoed around the league all season, as the fans paid tribute to their captain Harry Maguire: rock in defense, set piece scoring maestro, and star of the League and FA Cup finals. His signing was a revelation, a true bargain at £80 million. This league finish is a mere bump in the road for the Red Devils; with Maguire and new manager Michael Carrick leading the side, United’s future is bright.

Despite being stretched thin by Europe, Nuno Espirito Santo’s squad turned in another solid Premier League campaign to finish tenth, but it’s unclear how sustainable the Wolves project is. With superagent Jorge Mendes’ shock announcement that he’s quitting the football business to live in a Tibetan monastery, and taking Rui Patrício with him, there are huge questions about the future makeup of the squad at Molineux.

No one was talking about Southampton before the season, but it turns out that a man who finished second in the Bundesliga with RB Leipzig can coach. Ralph Hasenhüttl appears to be building a solid foundation for the future with Che Adams’ solid campaign and the debut of three new academy products. Also, Watford has a Premier League team. Each week, they fielded 11 professional footballers, and they played football well enough to not get sucked into a relegation battle. For that, they should be applauded.

Finally, you know that season Bournemouth have? The one where they start okay, then look like they might be in a bit of trouble, then win five on the bounce including a 4-0 over, idk, Chelsea, then end up in the lower mid-table? Yeah, that happened again.

The Race to Stay in the League

The best of the rest: Aston Villa, who finished in an ultimately comfortable 14th. Heaton & Mings may sound like the consequences of leaving a salmon behind a radiator, but it turns out they are also a decent basis for a solid Premier League defence. Nobody tell Everton.

They were joined in assured safety by Burnley, and while plenty predicted they’d survive again, nobody saw the method coming. Nobody predicted that Sean Dyche would, while on a mini-break in the Dordogne, consume a piece of cheese so strong that it induced a hallucinogenic episode; that the voice of God would speak to him as he writhed in psychedelic delirium; that God would tell him to start playing delicate attacking football and to reinvent James Tarkowski as a no. 10; and that all this would kind of work? Best of luck to Tarkowski at the Camp Nou.

Never has a team felt more “just there” than Sheffield United. Nondescript. Unfussy. Quietly scraped some 1-1 draws against top-half teams and finished on 41 points. Good for them! Crystal Palace’s survival was less assured: it turns out that selling your best defender and annoying your best attacker in the same window can put a club in a bit of a spot.

However, the vagaries of the season conspired to do Palace a massive favour: if the title race had been alive in the final week, Spurs might have picked a full-strength team, and Palace would have been in trouble. But the race was run, and those members of the Spurs squad that weren’t actually on holiday were certainly trying to remember where they’d left their passport. One Gary Cahill hat-trick later, and Palace were safe.

The Race to Get Back to the Championship

It’s sad that such a promising young Norwich side is about to be gutted. The Canaries finished one point from safety while playing ambitious attacking football, but they’ll be entering the Championship with a completely different squad. Offers are already pouring in for Max Aarons, Jamal Lewis, Ben Godfrey and Emi Buendia. How will Norwich rebuild with £100 million-plus in the bank?

Also looking to come straight back will be Brighton, and though the steady rise of Graham Potter has encountered its first serious stumble, in truth, neither he nor any of Brighton’s players need to take particular blame. Sometimes it seems that the Premier League itself gets tired of certain smaller teams, as though snobbery and elitism are embedded in the very bones of the competition. We can think of no other explanation for a side scoring sixteen own goals in consecutive games.

And finally, that Steve Bruce, he’s a proper football man. Don’t blame this on him. None of this is his fault. His 3-4-3 diamond with Miguel Almiron at the libero was genius. Imagine if Mike Ashley backed him in the transfer market and bought the players to fit his system? Newcastle would have been pushing for Europa League instead of finishing bottom by thirteen points.

We’ve doubled checked with SB Nation’s Experimental Quantum Physics department and they tell us that, as far as they can tell, it’s genuine. So there you go. The future. Or at least, one future. Maybe this one, maybe not. Maybe the very act of reading it is enough to destroy it. We don’t know for sure. The EQP’s emails tend to run on a bit.

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eyesaremosaics · 8 years ago

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Howdy :) questions, seeing as you can't sleep: have you had any experiences which majorly helped to shape who you are today? Dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be? Where do you feel most safe? How would you describe what love feels like for you? One fundamental element of who you are?

Hi there! Thank you for asking!

I believe all my experiences have shaped me into who I am today. All the characters I’ve played, the people I’ve met, the trauma I’ve survived, the deep connections I have formed. My psychic grandmother had a huge impact on who I grew up to be, as did my impetuous and fiery mother. My father also shaped me with his “rebel without a cause philosophy” and his independence. My significant relationships shaped me for sure. In both good and bad ways. Being forced to move out at 18 and support myself entirely with no financial support whatsoever was a big thing. Moving to Berkeley, and then to SF definitely shaped me.

I also think, that doing hospice care for a friend who was dying of cancer, and raising her two little boys really significantly shaped me. More than anything else I suppose. It was the most meaningful experience of my life.

Dinner with anyone… Living or dead… That is hard. There are so many. Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, Bowie, Walt Disney, Queen Elizabeth, Clara now, Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp when they were together, along with Tim Burton, Edward Gorey, Jhonen Vasquez, Alan Rickman, Anais Nin and Henry Miller, J.D Salinger, J.k Rowling, Oscar Wilde (you KNOW he would be hilarious), Edgar Allen Poe, Anne Sexton, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Ralph Fiennes, Al Pacino, Kate Winslet, Aleister Crowley (I’d be terrified yet fascinated), man ray, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Edie Sedgwick, Aldous Huxley, Judy Garland, Dario Argento, Stanley Kubrick, Louise Brooks, Stuart Townsend, Martin Luther King, Louis CK, Rasputin, Aaliyah, Josephine Baker, Nat King Cole, Joanna Newsom, James Earl Jones, Robert smith, Siouxie Siou, grace Slick, HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Obama, Carrie Fischer, Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel, Abraham Lincoln, Cate Blanchett, Juliette Binoche, Viola Davis, Edward Albee, Shakespeare, Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez (back in the old days), Tori Amos, Bjork, Lauren Graham, Simone de bouvoir, Socrates, Jean Paul Sartre, Jack Kerouac, Aristotle, Gene Tierney, Lupe Velez, Rose McGowan, Liz Frasier, Fiona Apple, Diana Ross, Lindsay Kemp, Kate Bush, Bill Hicks, Cillian Murphy, Ibsen, Joan of Arc, Brandon and Bruce Lee, Cleopatra, Nefertiti, Helena Bonham Carter, Prince, Peter Steele, Ray Charles, Billi Holiday, Eva Greene, Martin Scorsese, Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, The entire cast of golden girls, especially Bea Arthur, Robin Williams, Miyazaki, Kevin Aucoin, Nico, Anne Frank, Chris Rock, Mary Pickford, Elfride Jelinek, Anne Rice, Marlene Dietrich, Mary Shelley, Gia, Howard Hughes, Vincent van gough, Dustin Hoffman, Vincent price, Hans Christian Anderson, Gary Oldman, Daniel day Lewis, Michael Caine, Rumi, t.s Eliot… Laurence Olivier And God so many more.

Overall though, I would choose to have tea with Vivien Leigh. My one true hero and inspiration.

Where do I feel most safe? Disneyland, my bedroom, and my grandmother's house.

Love feels like… A drug to me. It feels like the entire world is suddenly made beautiful–even the ugly parts. I feel like my heart has wings, I feel more excitement and desperate passion than I have ever felt, I feel a warm glow, a blue lagoon reflecting the sky. It feels like suddenly everything in the world makes sense, and like I am a little girl again in awe of the world for the first time. When the initial honeymoon phase passes… It feels like… A heartbeat in my head. Like my right arm. Something that is always with me, and very deeply a part of me, everywhere I go. It feels like an omnipresent thing. Like the feeling of suddenly knowing you are alive, it feels like a warm blanket to cuddle up with. Like flowers blooming in the spring, or the sun shining through the clouds. Though in my sad and limited experience… It often ends up feeling sad. Like an echo, a stain on your consciousness. A shadow slinking along the walls… At least romantic love. Live for my friends and family, is something eternal. The power of miracles. That which shines, and it can never be diminished or destroyed. My love once given, is forever.

Fundamental element of who I am? Empathy.

Sorry so long! Thank you for keeping me busy on this long sleepless night. I wish you much love my dear! 💋💋

#asks

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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Snowflake Quotes

Official Website: Snowflake Quotes

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• A flame may love a snowflake, but they can never be together without each harming the other. – Chris Colfer • A love of neighbor manifests itself in the tolerance not only of opinions of others but, what is more important, of the essence and uniqueness of others, when we subscribe to that religious philosophy of life that insists that God has made each man and woman an individual sacred personality endowed with a specific temperament, created with differing needs, hungers, dreams. This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. God apparently did not want a regimented world of sameness. – Joshua L. Liebman • A snowflake is probably quite unconscious of forming a crystal, but what it does may be worth study even if we are willing to leave its inner mental processes alone. – Northrop Frye • All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty. – Andre Bazin • As a child I often wondered whether I would be allowed to live such moments- to inhabit the slow, majestic ballet of the snowflakes, to be released at last from the dreary frenzy of time. Is that what it feels to be naked? All one’s clothes are gone, yet one’s mind is overladen with finery.- Muriel Barbery • As white snowflakes fall quietly and thickly on a winter day, answers to prayer will settle down upon you at every step you take, even to your dying day. The story of your life will be the story of prayer and answers to prayer. – Ole Hallesby • At last there dawned the most beautiful day of all the days of my life. How perfectly I remember even the smallest details of those sacred hours! The joyful awakening, the reverent and tender embraces of my mistresses and older companions, the room filled with white frocks, like so many snowflakes, where each child was dressed in turn. – Therese of Lisieux

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Snowflake', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_snowflake').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_snowflake img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Baseball games are like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two are ever alike. – W. P. Kinsella • Because, ten-year-olds of the world, you shouldn’t believe what your teachers tell you about the beauty and specialness and uniqueness of you. Or, believe it, little snowflake, but know it won’t make a bit of difference until after puberty. It’s Newton’s lost law: anything that makes you unique later will get your chocolate milk stolen and your eye blackened as a kid. Won’t it, Sebastian? Oh, yes, it will, my little Mandarin Chinese-learning, Poe-reciting, high-top-wearing friend. God bless you, wherever you are. – Sloane Crosley • Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake. – Francis Bacon • But then, Cap’n Crunch in a flake form would be suicidal madness; it would last about as long, when immersed in milk, as snowflakes sifting down into a deep fryer. No, the cereal engineers at General Mills had to find a shape that would minimize surface area, and, as some sort of compromise between the sphere that is dictated by Euclidean geometry and whatever sunken treasure related shapes that the cereal aestheticians were probably clamoring for, they came up with this hard-to-pin-down striated pillow formation. – Neal Stephenson • But when a snowflake, brave and meek,Lights on a rosy maiden’s cheek,It starts-“How warm and soft the day!””‘T is summer!” and it melts away. – Mary Mapes Dodge

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Calvin: Today for show and tell, I’ve brought a tiny miracle of nature: a single snowflake! I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water just like every other one when you bring it into the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I will be leaving you drips and going outside. – Bill Watterson • Christians, like snowflakes, are frail, but when they stick together they can stop traffic. – Vance Havner • Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? – Chuck Palahniuk • Drifting snowflakes brushed her face as light as lover’s kisses, and melted on her cheeks. At the center of the garden, beside the statue of the weeping woman that lay broken and half-buried on the ground, she turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams. – George R. R. Martin • Each person’s grief journey is unique as a fingerprint or a snowflake. – Earl A Grollman • Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty. – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec • Every moment of life mattered. Even the perfect snowflake that alighted on his palm and melted in seconds. – Kristen Britain • Every snowflake is unique, yet they are each perfect. – Unknown • Everyone of you has a health that is unique and totally different from everybody else. Completely! Because we… are all like snowflakes. – Lewis Black • Everytime you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory – Leonard Cohen • Footballers today are forced to conform to a bodily aesthetic that in its rigidity and uniformity makes fashion models look as varied as snowflakes. This wasn’t always so. Up until the 1980s most teams in all divisions had a couple of fat ones, a couple of little ones, at least one bandy one, one completely covered in hair, two weaklings and a chap with no neck. This was an era when you didn’t need names on the backs of shirts in order to tell who’s who, you could clearly identify them with your eyes half shut from the other side of the pitch. – Danny Baker • Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. – Orison Swett Marden • From the shadow of domes in the city of domes, A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That’s all There was to it. – Mark Strand • God created each one of us in our own unique way. Just like a snowflake we all hold a blueprint that differs one from another. It’s great to lose weight and keep our bodies healthy and strong, but it’s also important that we appreciate who we are today – with or without extra pounds. – Candace Cameron • Harvey wasn’t interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they’d been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair. – Clive Barker • He tasted like snowflakes and wine, like winter and Will and London. – Cassandra Clare • Her touch was as soft as a snowflake falling onto my skin. – Jennifer Estep • How do we know for sure that no two snowflakes are the same – we haven’t got anybody watching. – Dennis Miller • How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius. Full of the divinity. So that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. – Henry David Thoreau • I am not yours, nor lost in you, not lost, although I long to be. Lost as a candle lit at noon, lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still a spirit beautiful and bright, yet I am I, who long to be lost as a light is lost in light. – Sara Teasdale • I do not wonder at a snowflake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • I fail to understand why gethes (Humans), talk about individuals versus society. They are the same thing. The action of every individual counts, and those individual acts of personal responsibility accumulate to create society. Snowflakes are equally blind to their role in causing avalanches. – Karen Traviss • I feel all agitated, like one of those snow globes you see resting peacefully on shop counters. I was perfectly happy being an ordinary, dull little Swiss village. But now Jack Harper’s come and shaken me up, and there are snowflakes all over the place, whirling around until I don’t know what I think anymore. And bits of glitter, too. Tiny bits of shiny, secret excitement. – Sophie Kinsella • I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops. – Nikki Giovanni • I think a lot of snowflakes are alike…and I think a lot of people are alike too. – Bret Easton Ellis • I think people are as individual as snowflakes, they kinda look alike but no two are the exactly the same, and all classification is the root of prejudice. – Craig Ferguson • I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none – there were just snowflakes. – Pierre Trudeau • I want people to know their palate is a snowflake. We all like different things. Why should we all have the same taste in wines? – Gary Vaynerchuk • I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes. I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets. Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace. I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve. I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein’s brain. I want a city’s gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods. And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella. – Tom Robbins • I was watching souls going down into the abyss as thick and fast as snowflakes falling in the winter mist. – Benedict Joseph Labre • I wish i could press snowflakes in a book like flowers. – James Schuyler • I’m like the weather, never really can predict when this rain cloud’s gonna burst; when it’s the high or it’s the low, when you might need a light jacket. Sometimes I’m the slush that sticks to the bottom of your work pants, but I can easily be the melting snowflakes clinging to your long lashes. I know that some people like: sunny and seventy-five, sunny and seventy-five, sunny and seventy-five, but you take me as I am and never forget to pack an umbrella. – Naomi Shihab Nye • In case I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want to make something clear – I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death. – Stella Young • In life, no two days are the same for me. It’s like a snowflake. – Bethenny Frankel • Its so fascinating to think about how each snowflake is completely individual – there are millions and millions of them, but each one is so unique. – Kate Bush • I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, ‘Why?’ Why did I cause so much pain? Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, ‘No, that’s not right.’ Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything. – Chuck Palahniuk • Knowledge and power doesn’t come from an entity, it comes from within yourself. What can these things tell you, to put five bucks on Snowflake in the third race? – Frederick Lenz • Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner’s grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general’s map. – Julian Barnes • Light That’s how I feel- like the winter-fringed breeze might scoop me up into its wings, fly away with me trapped in its feathered embrace. I am a snowflake. A wisp of eiderdown, liberated from gravity. My body is light. Ephemeral. My head is light. I want to sway beneath the weight of air, dizzy with thought. Light filters through my closed eyelids. The sun, chasing shadows, tells me I’m not afloat in dreams. – Ellen Hopkins • Like snowflakes,’ Franny said,’none of them the same and yet each one, from where we stand, exactly like the one before – Alice Sebold • Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. – Alice Childress • Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvelously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne. – Alice Childress • Lives are snowflakes – unique in detail, forming patterns we have seen before, but as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There’s not a chance you’d mistake one for another, after a minute’s close inspection.) – Neil Gaiman • Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice – it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*. The storybooks are *bullshit*. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and *get* in my bed! – John Patrick Shanley • Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child. – Jack Kerouac • Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she’d said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us. – Khaled Hosseini • My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging in slow motion. – Joan Baez • My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heaven’s kaleidoscope. – Patti Smith • Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. – Henry David Thoreau • No human being is the same; we are like snowflakes, none of us are the same but we are all COOL – Pharrell Williams • No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane – it tells of something beyond….a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity. – Fulton J. Sheen • No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. – Unknown • No two snowflakes are alike. – Wilson Bentley • Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea. – Dylan Thomas • Old & New put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marked by both. The present moment gives the motion & the color of the flake: Antiquity, its form & properties. All things wear a luster which is the gift of the present & a tarnish of time. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • On common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea. – Loren Eiseley • People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of attention) have often been likened to snowflakes. This analogy is meant to suggest that each is unique – no two alike. This is quite patently not the case. People, even at the current rate of inflation – in fact, people especially at the current rate of inflation – are quite simply a dime a dozen. And, I hasten to add, their only similarity to snowflakes resides in their invariably and lamentable tendency to turn, after a few warm days, to slush. – Fran Lebowitz • Resolutions are flying like snowflakes around here. – Arlen Specter • Sadly, my socks are like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike. – Graham Parker • She closed her eyes and jumped. For a moment she felt herself hang suspended, free of everything. Then gravity took over, and she plunged toward the floor. Instinctively she pulled her arms and legs in, keeping her eyes squeezed shut. The cord pulled taut and she rebounded, flying back up before falling again. As her velocity slowed, she opened her eyes and found herself dangling at the end of the cord, about five feet above Jace. He was grinning. ‘Nice’, he said. ‘As graceful as a falling snowflake. – Cassandra Clare • She was spirit and presence, as rare and brilliant as snowflakes in sunlight, and he could not bring himself to harm her. – Shana Abe • She’s not my type,’ Carter says. ‘So what is your type?’ ‘Tall, skinny, black hair, blue eyes, freckly nose. Blue tinsel wig and snowflakes optional.’ ‘Skinny?’ I squeal. ‘Definitely. Pretending to be shy, sensible and stand-offish when really you’re mad about me.’ ‘You sure about that?’ ‘No, but I’m hoping. – Cathy Cassidy • Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche? – Franz Wright • Silently, like thoughts that come and go, the snowflakes fall, each one a gem. – William Hamilton Gibson • Snow always inspires such awe in me. Just consider one tiny snowflake alone, so delicate, so fragile, so ethereal. And yet, let a billion of them come together through the majestic force of nature, they can screw up a whole city. – Betty White • Snowflakes fascinate me… Millions of them falling gently to the ground… And they say that no two of them are alike! Each one completely different from all the others… The last of the rugged individualists! – Charles M. Schulz • Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream. Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks. There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers. There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart. There is mystery unfolding. – Vera Nazarian • Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist. – Paula Gunn Allen • Sometimes I come here just to be a lost mariner but I am never lost: there are the snowflakes frozen to the porthole of a jewelry store, here is the treasure chest open to a single pearl laid on a velvet slab, there is the plashing of faces in the aisles and the row of lockers stuffed with the coats and hats of the drowned and it is night, and the moon rows over the gentle waters of the parking lot. – Nancy Eimers • The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one forest guard is employed. – John Muir • The cause of the six-sided shape of a snowflake is none other than that of the ordered shapes of plants and of numerical constants; and since in them nothing occurs without supreme reason-not, to be sure, such as discursive reasoning discovers, but such as existed from the first in the Creators’s design and is preserved from that origin to this day in the wonderful nature of animal faculties, I do not believe that even in a snowflake this ordered pattern exists at random. – Johannes Kepler • The imagination doesn’t crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever’s there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he’s been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it? – Julian Barnes • The last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler, or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don’t know. – Lauren Oliver • The left they’ve got their little security jackets and bubbles they live in, and they don’t let anything in that isn’t preapproved. These are snowflakes. They’re not gonna let anything in that’s gonna upset them. – Rush Limbaugh • The northern ocean is beautiful, … and beautiful the delicate intricacy of the snowflake before it melts and perishes, but such beauties are as nothing to him who delights in numbers, spurning alike the wild irrationality of life and baffling complexity of nature’s laws. – John Lighton Synge • The present never ages. Each moment is like a snowflake, unique, unspoiled, unrepeatable, and can be appreciated in its surprisingness. – Gail Sheehy • The productions of the press, fast as steam can make and carry them, go abroad through all the land, silent as snowflakes, but potent as thunder. It is an additional tongue of steam and lightning, by which a man speaks his first thought, his instant argument or grievance, to millions in a day. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche. – Jon Ronson • The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere. – Matthew Fox • The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy. – Orison Swett Marden • The Washington Post is quickly trying to become the safe space for Donald Trump deniers, for the Trump-won-the-election deniers. I think the Washington Post is establishing itself as the safe space for anti-Trump delicate snowflakes to go. – Rush Limbaugh • The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists. – Francis Bacon • There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds. Snowflakes, of course, are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two alike. This creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send us support for our creative ventures. – Julia Cameron • They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? – Jeanette Winterson • They say that there can never be two snowflakes that are exactly alike, but has anyone checked lately? – Terry Pratchett • This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun. – Anais Nin • Time-Use it or lose it. Time, like a snowflake, disappears while we’re trying to decide what to do with it. The surest way to be late is to have plenty of time. – Leo Kennedy • To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes. – David Mitchell • Turgenev saw human beings as individuals always endowed with consciousness, character, feelings, and moral strengths and weaknesses; Marx saw them always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because utterly conditioned by their circumstances. Where Turgenev saw men, Marx saw classes of men; where Turgenev saw people, Marx saw the People. These two ways of looking at the world persist into our own time and profoundly affect, for better or for worse, the solutions we propose to our social problems. – Theodore Dalrymple • Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind. – Wilson Bentley • We are all shitty little snowflakes dancing in the universe. – Lewis Black • We are like a snowflake all different in our own beautiful way. – Unknown • We writers – we’re the snowflakes of the literary world. We each have our own shape. – Alice Walker • What is one man’s life compared to the eternity of time and space? No more than a snowflake that glitters in the sun for a moment before melting into the flow of time. – Osamu Tezuka • What is spiritual experience? A snowflake melting, a bee sucking honey, a fat man at a traffic light. Trivia. – Frederick Franck • When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff. – Joseph Boyden • When I was doing local weather full time, I would wake up in the morning or stay up all night to make sure the snowflakes started at the time that I said they would. – Sam Champion • When it is time to part, then it is time to part. There should be no regrets. The beauty of marriage is like the fleeting perfection of a snowflake. – Ming-Dao Deng • When night falls people become as lonely as snowflakes floating down from a gray city sky. Now and again we fall past a streetlamp and are visible, a brief moment apart, REAL– we can be seen. We exist. Then we vanish into the gray darkness and the earth draws us to it. – Erik Fosnes Hansen • When you work on a computer in the studio, it’s almost like fossilizing on the spot, you know, the idea of getting solidified on the spot, like a snowflake might create branches by accumulation. – Rob Brown • Whenever a snowflake leaves the sky,It turns and turns to say “Good-by!Good-by, dear clouds, so cool and gray!”Then lightly travels on its way. – Mary Mapes Dodge • Winter is the king of showmen, Turning tree stumps into snowmen And houses into birthday cakes And spreading sugar over lakes. Smooth and clean and frosty white, The world looks good enough to bite. That’s the season to be young, Catching snowflakes on your tongue. Snow is snowy when it’s snowing, I’m sorry it’s slushy when it’s going. – Ogden Nash • Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia… …Wolfe seemed absorbed in the pictures. Looking at him, I said to myself, “He’s in a battle with the elements. He’s fighting his way through a raging blizzard, just sitting there comfortably looking at pictures of snowflakes. That’s the advantage of being an artist, of having imagination.” I said aloud, “You mustn’t go to sleep, sir, it’s fatal. You freeze to death.” The League of Frightened Men – Rex Stout • Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes-each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands. – Sharon M. Draper • Yes, the sky was now a devastating, home-cooked red. The small German town had been flung apart one more time. Snowflakes of ash fell so lovelily you were tempted to stretch out your tongue to catch them, taste them. Only, they would have scorched your lips. They would have cooked your mouth. – Markus Zusak • You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake… This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. – Chuck Palahniuk • You are not a powerless speck of dust drifting around in the wind…we are, each of us, like beautiful snowflakes-unique, and born for a specific reason and purpose. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross • You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. – Chuck Palahniuk • Your children are not the same. Not at all. Each one is unique. There are no “boiler plate” clauses that fit all children. They are like snowflakes with their own patterns and their own shapes and their own sizes. – Bob Benson • Your kisses are snowflakes: each one is unique. They land on me, before they melt away and leave me cold. – Joseph Gordon-Levitt

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equitiesstocks · 5 years ago

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Snowflake Quotes

Official Website: Snowflake Quotes

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profgandalf · 7 years ago

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Can Humor Be Holy?

A few years ago I was disturbed by an idea presented in Milan Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting. "Laughter” he writes “belongs to the devil because laughter happens when the meaning of things is subverted." Now I, as a Christian, want to believe--in contrast to this--that laughter is firmly in the domain of Heaven because “all good things come from Him” (James 1: 17). (Also I love to laugh although my enjoyment of something is hardly a measure of its healthfulness. I love coffee but doubt it will be in Heaven.) Still. if you’ve read my article about “Hallowing Halloween,” you know that my central argument is that Halloween should be used by Christian to mock the claims of supernatural power claimed by Satan and his followers.

Kundera has a Point:

That all being said, I must admit Kundera’s point. Humor functions to undermine, to tear down, to prick someone’s bubble, to reveal the weakness of a position or stance. That’s what it does: it points to the absurd and holds it up for ridicule. “All comedy,” according to John Cleese, “is critical.” (For an excellent exposition on this see this short video in which he is featured.) This, however, may make many of us uncomfortable. First off we know that humor has been used to destroy or at least devalue what many of us thought of as being sacrosanct. Sexual purity, love of country, the role of the father within the family are all concepts which have been held up for ridicule in contemporary comic media. It should be noted that these ideas do not lose support because they are intrinsically weak but because there are so many who espoused them who were less than successful. Their foolishness gave the humor a recognition of truth. Ralph Kramden, Fred Flintstone or Peter Griffin when bellowing that he is the head of the house is all the more absurd since each represents a class of men who may claim that without fulfilling it. Furthermore in argument the rhetorical tool of mockery is recognized as profoundly effective even when there reason provides little to advance a cause.

”Senator, Your No Jack Kennedy”

Witness the famous line “"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." This put-down was a remark made during the 1988 United States vice-presidential debate by Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Lloyd Bentsen to Republican vice-presidential candidate Sen. Dan Quayle. It was devastating and yet in no way met the actual observations Quayle was making.

Still as noted by Wikipedia “Bentsen's comment was played and replayed by the Democrats in their subsequent television ads as an announcer intoned: "Quayle: just a heartbeat away." It proved sure-laugh fodder for comedians, and more and more editorial cartoons depicted Quayle as a child (Saturday Night Live actually used a child actor to portray Quayle in several sketches.” (”Senator, Your No Jack Kennedy”)

Isn’t it Just Mean?

Many people of faith also wonder if tearing things down fits into the life-style consecrated to holiness a life-style supposedly epitomized by love, a goal that all serious believers are supposed to be aspiring towards. Isn’t laughter, they wonder “by its very critical nature mean?” The reader may recall Buzz Lightyear’s suspicious confusion in Toystory, when facing Woody’s laughter over him not realizing he’s not a Space Ranger, not living in a world where aliens exist. “Your mocking me aren’t you?” He doesn’t lie it and I for one felt a little bad for him.

(Side Note: My family finds this scene especially hysterical, pointing at me since apparently I periodically miss the ludicrousness I am revealing in my own behavior.)

“Clueless Buzz” as the creators of the Toystory series call him does have his world crash down upon him and it is traumatic. But the fact is that the befuddlement depicted is that of anyone who does not realize that he or she is being absurd. He is guilt of affectation not from hypocrisy but from ignorance.

Henry Fielding says that humor should be used to mock individuals out of affectation so that they will be better people. But that means that the motivation of the comic must be wholesome. What may be of some concern Buzz’s case is that the humor is not being used to improve him, but is instead being used by Woody to bring him down. Oh sure he’s delusional and one can argue that having a true understanding of one’s self is vital for effective living (“You ARE a toy!”) But what is the real final intent of the mockery? To put him in his place.

Keep in mind that in this scene Woody is using humor as a weapon against the toy who has replaced him in his high post in Andy’s affections as well as his room. So does Buzz deserves this treatment because of his arrogance and self delusion? It is interesting to note that in the film Woody finds himself cast out of Andy’s room because his own dark agenda is revealed. And this “weaponization” is perhaps the point.

Humor is a Weapon

Weapons are not always evil. As a gun owner I affirm this. But they are always weapons. If gun can be used to stop evil perhaps wholesome humor, exists because some ideas deserve to be shown to be the absurdities they are. As I said in my article of Halloween, Satan’s Rebellion is a doomed farce and he knows it. But the struggle against evil requires weapons. So, like it or not, humor is a weapon and perhaps a necessary one.

But when or how does one use a weapon? Potentially a consciousness comedian might be like a consciousness objector. The later asks “Can one use deadly force to do good?” The first should wonder “Is it suitable to hold up others or things up for scorn?” Humor, it must be remembered, is a kind of force, a potentially dangerous one. It has recognized as such since ancient times. However I affirm that it can be used in this way and still be Holy. Others may feel differently just as good people disagree with me about guns.

Weapons Must Be Used with Care

In the Stanford online Encyclopedia of Philosophy John Morreall in his article on the “Philosophy of Humor” reminds readers that while “Aristotle considered wit a valuable part of conversation (Nicomachean Ethics 4, 8), he [also] agreed with Plato that laughter expresses scorn.

Wit, he says in the Rhetoric (2, 12), is educated insolence. In the Nicomachean Ethics (4, 8) he warns that ‘Most people enjoy amusement and jesting more than they should … a jest is a kind of mockery, and lawgivers forbid some kinds of mockery—perhaps they ought to have forbidden some kinds of jesting.’ Morreall goes on to say “These objections to laughter and humor influenced early Christian thinkers, and through them later European culture” (”The Philosophy of Humor--Humor’s Bad Reputation.)

This may explain why a blogger when posting an analysis of the concept of the laughing Jesus completely admits that the whole concept of a laughing Jesus is actually a “newish” concept (Check out Happy Jesus, Part 1: ) He even goes on to quote G.K. Chesterton

“There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.” -G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)

Did Jesus laugh as the above opening painting suggest? But at what? Would he find anyone falling on a banana peel funny or would his empathy always make him go “aww” when a disciple missteped on the rocky Roman roads of the Holy Land? Did he think that watching Peter bubbling in the water as he sank under his own doubt hysterical? I do, but did He? What about the look of incredulity of his disciples’ faces when he revealed himself as alive after stopping from the road to Emmaus? And do you find the images of a teethy Christ which I found when looking for this article’s main painting, a bit creepy? I confess I did.

This brings up another aspect of humor separate from the recognition of it as a powerful weapon.

Humor is Often at Odds with Cultural Norms and Culture Shapes How We See It

Part of our discomfort of Holy Humor (and Jesus finding us funny) is that laughter has very little to do with how we traditionally view Christ. Cultural expectations are powerful. And understanding culture is a vital when talking about humor.

The aforementioned Kundera, for example, started life under the repressive regime of Communist Czechoslovakia, a nation at the time ruled by a system in which the authorities claimed to be good but crushed any who apposed it. Any humorous criticism of the state would be branded as evil, a stance he personally embraced. Thus, he is by inclination wanting to side with the rebellious.

Orthodoxy maintenance never has a sense of humor. (In another novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera presents a character named Sabina who admits to her distaste for parades, explains her feelings as being because in her Communist past children were forced to parade. This stands in contrast to her all her western friends who love parades both official and for causes.) In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Kundera sees the forces of Heaven as not being specifically always supporting the good but as powers which are concerned with maintaining God’s creation. Thus, they are always by nature preserving never tearing down. Heaven keeps rules, Hell breaks them. The trouble for us here on Earth is that we know that there are some rules which need to be broken.This is not an especially new idea

Kundera, in some ways, is articulating the ideas of the 17th century British poet William Blake who saw the active, dynamic poet organically as being rebellious in contrast to those in culture who are submissive and sedative as being Godly. Specifically he was trying to explain why for many readers Milton in Paradise Lost is so compelling but somehow is less so in Paradise Regained:

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ca. 1790–93)

The trouble then comes down to the basic assumption that goodness is supposed to be non-aggressiveness, submissive, and un-confrontational, but does any of that actually describe Christ? The answer is a resounding no.

Humor a Weapon in A Holy War

I will concede that humor, like any weapon, can be misused. I have seen it done so. I will also admit that humor has been an effective tool to make me laugh at what I should not. Sexual promiscuity is destructive and making jokes about the break down of a family’s moral structure should not be funny. However none of that takes away from the profoundly healthful and important role holy humor has in our world. It is a weapon against darkness.

Henry Fielding began his ground-breaking work (today called “a novel”) on a belief in the moral value of humor. In his Preface to Joseph Andrews, part of his first great comic novel, Fielding argues for the moral importance of humor--tying it in to what he as a neo-Augustine would have considered the height of art, the classics, He describes his work as the “Comic Epic in Prose.” He makes it clear that for him there is only one worthy target for humor, that of human folly in affectation:

The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation. But tho’ it arises from one spring only, when we consider the infinite streams into which this one branches, we shall presently cease to admire at the copious field it affords to an observer. Now affectation proceeds from one of these two causes; vanity, or hypocrisy: for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavour to avoid censure by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues. and tho’ these two causes are often confounded, (for they require some distinguishing;) yet, as they proceed from very different motives, so they are as clearly distinct in their operations: for indeed, the affectation which arises from vanity is nearer to truth than the other; as it hath not that violent repugnancy of nature to struggle with, which that of the hypocrite hath.

And so Fielding perhaps best calls the best of what Holy Humor is. It is a weapon that should be aimed at the folly we all carry within us. Cleese in the above cited video mentions what he calls the most inclusive of jokes; “How Does one make God laugh? Answer: Tell him your iron clad plans.” CS Lewis in his epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters (which Cleese actually performed in the audio book version of) indented his “book as a fairly humorous work, Lewis's goals included both reflections on the nature of evil and an effort to create a different portrayal of the Devil than the sort normally seen in pop culture. Screwtape has practically No Sense of Humor himself, and comes across as a sort of cranky cosmic killjoy” (TV Tropes “Screwtape letters”) Humor is a great weapon which is especially dramatized as Screwtape in a rage at being a source of entertainment to the patient’s love interest (the kind of woman who would find ME funny) turns himself into a worm.. In Christ’s hands and in ours humor should be used to laugh us out of our own folly and the diabolical forces who attempt to use it.

#holiness #humor

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pastorhogg · 7 years ago

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Evangelical Advisers Condemn Charlottesville Rally More Than Trump

While many American politicians and citizens criticize President Donald Trump for not specifically calling out white supremacists for the deadly violence in Charlottesville over the weekend, his evangelical advisers have been more vocal.

All but a handful of the two dozen evangelical leaders on the President’s advisory board posted in response to the “Unite the Right” rally that drew white nationalists and neo-Nazis to the historic Virginia city on Friday and Saturday, spurring counter-protests from interfaith groups.

One noticeable exception was Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., who was silent on the incident even though his school is only an hour from where the rally took place.

Among the advisers, evangelicals who meet with and pray for Trump in the White House, most restated their condemnation of the ideologies represented by the protesters and offered prayers for the victims, Charlottesville, and the rest of the nation.

“These protesters do not represent in any form or way the Christian faith or the values followers of Jesus stand for,” said Ronnie Floyd, past president of the Southern Baptist Convention which passed a resolution condemning the alt-right in June. “In fact, white nationalism and white supremacism are anathema to the teachings of Christ, who called us to love and to serve our neighbor—regardless of skin color, gender, or religion—to give up our life for our friends and to even love our enemies.”

Trump’s initial response blamed hatred “on many sides”—repeating the phrase for emphasis—and did not explicitly name the groups responsible for the protest. Several Republican members of Congress criticized his statement.

Especially since some participants claimed to support Trump, wearing his Make America Great Again hats or invoking his name like rally speaker David Duke, some like Charlottesville mayor Michael Signer accused his campaign and presidency of emboldening white supremacists to shout their views in public.

Even amid a greater push to racial reconciliation and healing over the past decade, white and black evangelicals have grown further apart on how they approach race, culminating with the election of Donald Trump, where evangelicals of color were shown to favor Hillary Clinton nearly as strongly as white evangelicals favored Trump.

In the midst of the violence, Ed Stetzer, director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College, challenged Trump’s evangelical advisers to encourage the President to speak more directly against the alt-right supporters behind this movement.

A couple evangelical advisers defended the President against the blame. Franklin Graham spoke out on Facebook, referencing plans to remove a Robert E. Lee statue which drew the group to Charlottesville in the first place:

Shame on the politicians who are trying to push blame on President Trump for what happened in #Charlottesville, VA. That’s absurd. What about the politicians such as the city council who voted to remove a memorial that had been in place since 1924, regardless of the possible repercussions? How about the city politicians who issued the permit for the lawful demonstration to defend the statue? And why didn’t the mayor or the governor see that a powder keg was about to explode and stop it before it got started? Instead they want to blame President Donald J. Trump for everything. Really, this boils down to evil in people’s hearts. Satan is behind it all.

Pastor Mark Burns, an African American leader of a small congregation in South Carolina, posted a video distancing Trump supporters from the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups involved in the Charlottesville rally. “Even though they mention the name Donald Trump as though they are doing Donald Trump a favor, that is a lie straight from the gates of hell,” Burns said.

Several advisers referenced the ideologies and hate groups involved:

Consultant Johnnie Moore wrote, “EVERY evangelical I know condemns antisemitism, white nationalism, & supremacism. The Christian church is proudly and increasingly the most ethnically diverse movement in the world.”

Evangelist Jay Stack tweeted, “Racial hatred, violence, white supremacy & Nazism are Satanic. AntiChrist As well as Anti-American!... Praying for @realDonaldTrump. For our President @attorneygeneral jeff sessions, The victims & families, law enforcement, first responders & USA.”

National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) vice president Tony Suarez wrote on Facebook, “The racism and hate being spewed by the alt-right and white supremacists, that have invaded our state this weekend, is an insult to Christianity and our country. God be our Prince of Peace! As a citizen of Virginia I'm offended these hate groups chose our state to drive their agenda.”

Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, shared and affirmed a message from a fellow Prestonwood pastor, who told their congregation, “Our hearts go out to the victims in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I think it’s important on a day like this that we stand together as a church … to say in the strongest terms possible that we condemn any sort of racial bigotry, white supremacy, prejudice, and intolerance.”

Ralph Reed retweeted Kellyanne Conway and Melania Trump’s statements, and also added his condemnation, saying, “Those who twist the cross of Christ into a swastika exchange his message of love and redemption for one of hatred and evil.”

Others spoke more generally about the sin of racism:

Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas wrote, “Pray for peace in Charlottesville and across our nation. Let there be no misunderstanding. Racism is sin. Period.”

Paula White, who regularly prays with the president and leads a majority-black congregation in Florida, wrote, “The tragedy of Charlottesville extends beyond the loss of life into the very heart of race relations in America. Dialogue has been overcome by violence. Progress is sacrificed at the altar of fury. We need a renewal of grace. God help us.”

Georgia pastor Jentezen Franklin posted, “This is evil personified and we denounce it. This is what hatred and sin looks like. Their hate will not win. Racism is still alive and well, the only answer is God's love and the church of Jesus Christ standing hand in hand with our brothers and sisters of every race.”

Tim Clinton, a Christian counselor based in nearby Lynchburg, Virginia, tweeted, “Horrific scene in C'Ville - say no to racism - let's pray and work together” and “Love and Pray for one another: An amazing morning @ThomasRoad denouncing racism, praying for #C'Ville and for our Country #healourland”

Trump’s evangelical advisers were among thousands of Christian leaders being looked to for a response. “Our voice is necessary to remind those under our care and those listening from outside that when there is wrong in the world, we fight for what is right,” Stetzer said to pastors. “Call this what it is and then call it wrong.”

About half of Protestant pastors say they have preached on racial reconciliation in recent months, according to a LifeWay Research survey released earlier this year.

Jemar Tisby, president of the Reformed African American Network (RAAN), argued that white pastors in particular are essential to putting an end to the movement.

“We are waiting for the day that the racists in Charlottesville at least feel enough shame to practice their hatred in secret,” he wrote for The Washington Post. “But black Christians cannot do this alone. White pastors, now is the time for courageous action in the face of white supremacy.”

Bruce Ashford, a Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor and author of One Nation Under God: A Christian Hope for American Politics, wrote for Fox News:

Throughout American history, there are many ways in which white conservatives have admirably represented Christ and his gospel. I am convinced, however, that overcoming racism is not yet one of the ways that we represent him admirably or consistently.

Events like the one in Charlottesville give good-willed conservatives—especially Christian conservatives—an excellent opportunity to begin rectifying the situation by speaking a good word in the midst of a bad moment.

Al Mohler shared an apt reflection from Berlin, a city determined to ensure “that the ghosts of the Nazis do not reappear in neo-Nazis.”

“Even a secular observer can see the lessons of history from Berlin. The evidence is pervasive, irrefutable, terrifying, and still visible,” the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President wrote. “But Christians must see much more than the lessons of history, though we dare not miss them. We must see claims of racial superiority—and mainly that means claims of white superiority—as heresy.”

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