I'm a single undead gal trying to make it in the big city. I have to start somewhere and they're evil here. They don't judge. They've got necro-tempered glass. No burning up. A great medical plan, and who needs dental more than us?

Harmony ,'Conviction (1)'


Natter 34: Freak With No Name  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Betsy HP - Apr 19, 2005 11:40:42 am PDT #7090 of 10001
If I only had a brain...

No question, the Bay Area is horrifically expensive.

It is horrifically expensive because people want to live there. See also: NYC. If it's what you want, you want it badly enough to be poor.


Betsy HP - Apr 19, 2005 11:42:04 am PDT #7091 of 10001
If I only had a brain...

Hey, Aurelia, I was just thinking about you Friday! My 11-year-old is fascinated by stage lighting now. I was telling him about footlights and then I wondered -whatever happened to footlights, and when did they go out? When I was doing amateur theater as a teenager, we still used them.


erikaj - Apr 19, 2005 11:49:07 am PDT #7092 of 10001
Always Anti-fascist!

I would love to do that, but I think it would push me from "eats a lot of bologna" poor to "crazy crippled chick in a box" poor. I'm not so sure I can stay here though for life. Could I move my box close to y'all?


Nutty - Apr 19, 2005 11:50:02 am PDT #7093 of 10001
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."

Except for the urban Northeast -- Boston area, suburbs (but not city) of New York, Baltimore area, okay maybe Philadelphia area although I have spent exactly no time there -- the Bay Area is the only place in the US I can really imagine myself living. Like, Arizona is pretty, but it's a different galaxy from anything I know.

(I don't think I could handle New York. Once, I drove from DC to Brooklyn -- across Manhattan -- and then on to Boston in one long moving day, and the only thing that freaked me out about that day was driving and driving and driving out of Brooklyn, and never getting out.)

(Okay, we did get out eventually, but the tightly-spaced, no-trees, mashed-together-falling-apart 3-story buildings made it feel like I was going in circles.)

Of course, it helps that I was introduced to the Bay Area by a Massachusetts expatriate, and 90% of the people I know who live there are immigrants to there. They want to live there, you know? And don't just live there because they haven't thought about living someplace else.


Hayden - Apr 19, 2005 11:50:50 am PDT #7094 of 10001
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

The Texas GOP Party Platform is an amazing document.

Dude, the Republicans here won't even consider the bill offering life without parole as an option for punishing criminals (this bill is by a Dem, incidentally). That's right; the state with the highest death penalty rate in the US (and one of the highest in the world) doesn't allow juries to consider life without parole as an option for punishment of criminals. It's kill 'em or let 'em move in next door to your daughter when they get out.

One of the amazing thing about working with the TX Republicans up-close and personal is that so few of them are moderate. You'd think, with so many of them, statistics would hold that more than a tiny handful would be considered moderate Republicans, but the vast majority of them are from the more extreme side of the party, so extreme that it takes backroom dealings to merely, for instance, fund a program providing drugs to children with HIV.

Having written this, I'm struck by a sudden desire to change my online name.


Gudanov - Apr 19, 2005 11:52:46 am PDT #7095 of 10001
Coding and Sleeping

Kansas City is a pretty nice place, and relatively cheap as well.


Katie M - Apr 19, 2005 11:55:55 am PDT #7096 of 10001
I was charmed (albeit somewhat perplexed) by the fannish sensibility of many of the music choices -- it's like the director was trying to vid Canada. --loligo on the Olympic Opening Ceremonies

I'll have you know that research concerning the sexual habits of tree frogs is vital to our country's interstate highways.

Actually, that'd be a fairly easy connection to make. Environmental review, and all that. It might have to be an endangered tree frog, though.


erikaj - Apr 19, 2005 11:57:15 am PDT #7097 of 10001
Always Anti-fascist!

Wow, Hayden, yours are weirder than ours...only just. ( Which is partially why I look at ads for other places and think "Three meals is just a guideline, right?")


Jessica - Apr 19, 2005 11:57:44 am PDT #7098 of 10001
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset

It might have to be an endangered tree frog, though.

Living on an interstate sounds like a pretty endangering lifestyle to me.


Topic!Cindy - Apr 19, 2005 11:58:01 am PDT #7099 of 10001
What is even happening?

"In the 1950s someone said that the undoing of the Catholic church in the 20th century wouldn't come from Marxism but from Buddhism. They were right."
To be honest, even if he didn't use the word enemy, the message that another religion is going to end the Catholic church, when that religion hasn't done anything but be, seems to be the same thing, again- to me.
The "enemy" rhetoric seemed much worse to me. Without context, I can't speculate that this is about anything other than the ideologies, not people.

It may be otherwise. I couldn't find a full translation of the article online. My searches seemed to hit on it, in some larger context some issues the church administration must be having with priests assigned to areas where Buddhism is the ideology of the majority.

From what I understand about Catholicism and Buddhism, some of the fundamentals of the two ideas are worlds apart. If Catholic Priests are importing Buddhism into their theology, it would change the actual stuff of orthodox Catholicism. The reverse would be true, as well. And, if that's the issue Ratzinger was addressing (priests incorporating doctrine that is ideologically opposed to Catholicism), Ratzinger's "undoing" comment is probably aimed at his own, not at Buddhists who are going along, minding their own business.