"how do you start without being a bit mean to people" - I'd take that as
a sign that I wasnt ready yet.

Wow there's alot of "would be" illegals. Dont worry, you're secret is
safe with me.

But, what about songs you would buy, but cant find a cd store that would
carry them? Then what?

Pink Floyd
Rush
Led Zepp

...nough said

I'm yet to hear of a person being sued for Downloading songs. When you
read the cases the issue is always the Uploading of songs. In 90% of the
cases, ppl use a tool like "Napster" to download them - and by default
those tools "share" your downloaded files. So, the very act of
downloading now makes you a publisher. When you Publish someone else's
content, you are breaking someone's distribution-contract, and thus
causing damages. Thats the penalty.

Think of it this way. TimeWarner puts out thousands and thousands of
MP3s on the web, legitimately, for free. Its perfectly OK to download
them. iTunes gives away freebies, perfectly OK to download them too.
WebRadio broadcasts music in "streamingMP3" format - perfectly OK to
download that too. What differentiates a song being "freely" offered by
iTunes vs. the SAME song being offered my Pirate Mike? The difference is
that Mike isnt authorized to distribute that song. Whoever receives a
song isnt at fault, otherwise we'd all have to pay a "license" fee for
listening to the Radio.

In general I prefer to buy a CD. Its just nice to have the CD and
beleive that a couple bucks actually goes to the artist. However, I've
been discovering alot of music that simply cant be purchased on CD -
nobody carries it. Doesnt make it "right", but, if Radio's can broadcast
songs for my enjoyment, without my payment or penalty, then the
precedent is established that receiving of music is not a crime.

The baby is 3months old right? Sounds early for 1st tooth [but not
impossible]. Are you sure its teething? Are you seeing swelling in an
area of the gums? If not, it may the onset of a cold or gas etc.

Four Excedrin Asprin will do the trick. Dont even bother to crush them -
just swallow them whole, and your headache will go away in about
20minutes. The little guy will still be cranky though.

Ok, who here downloads them 'illegally'? Raise your hands, one, two....
three...four... c'mon ppl, who's got the most MP3s?

[By the way, downloading them isnt the illegal part. UPLOADING them, or
making them available to other ppl, is the illegal part - because you
are violating distribution rights].

I've got about 5000 mp3s, and I'd say that 1/2 are legitimate (either
ripped from my own CDs, or, 'recorded' from WebRadio).

Grphyn started a fun thread about what is missing from our current
Bible. I posted a lengthy reply discussing the accuracy of the text that
we have (I say VERY historically accurate), and I dissed the political
choosing of which books make up our bible.

Anyway, I realized something tonite, that there are very clearly missing
parts of the bible. For example, Jesus and Paul often make absurd
quotations, (like Paul writing "Women keep your heads covered - dont you
know the angel's fall?") these quotations are from the Book of Enoch
which fell out of favor around the time of Constantine (by political
legislation). Once you read that book, many of the "obscure" quotes that
appear in the NewTestament suddenly make sense, and take on a deeper
context.

Even so, you may argue that these books are "not worthy" of being
considered Cannon. Ok, maybe. But, there are also books that are just
plainly missing - For example, there are two books of Corinthians
missing. How do we know? Because the two books of Corinthians that we
have make references to 2 missing letters. In other words, there were at
least 4 letters written by Paul to the Church at Corinth. We have the
2nd and 4th letter - nobody knows what the 1st and 3rd letters
contained.

Oh Redy, I look fwd to your thoughtful posts.

Capital Punishment & Christianity. Good topic. I say that the bible
teaches that murder is a valid cause of action under specific
conditions. Namely, that the failure to use deadly-force to protect your
family from threats on their lives is a sin worse than killing someone.
In other words, we are required to defend our families with force
sufficient enough to protect them. Not to oppress, not to dominate with.

As stated elsewhere, I reject the idea of "hell". However, if such a
"place" exists, then it would HAVE to serve the glorification of God
(after all, He would have created such a place). So, if it exists, it
was built by Him, and it has to serve his purposes. The only logical
usefulness would be a "remdial teaching", or more exactly, a
purification process (much like the refining of gold). So, there cant be
any "eternal punishment" - the Essence of God [life] cant exist in
'hell' for all of eternity, otherwise God would diminish and wind up in
'hell'. Logically absurd.

Whats the confusion? Nearly every Genesis story is duplicated. In fact,
nearly every story in the 1st five books of the bible are in duplicate
with subtle differences.

Why?

The 1st set was broken up by moses. The 2nd set was dictated by the
angels. Who knows which one is which.

There are three things in the world that smell like fish,
One of them is fish.

-Frank Zappa

If I were in a fox hole, with mortars and mines exploding all around me,
I'd want SPAY there. He'd give me some serious laughs.

Number Four: Un-spoken expectations. We all have them. We all expect our
mate to uphold them. They just dont know about it, but we still hold
them to it.

Three: Frequently stated Demands. "You have to do this...", "Why didnt
you do that?", "I need this to be done..."

Two: Failure to hear what we say. "They just dont get it!"

One: Lack of enforcing Tenderness. We stop giving it, we stop demanding
it. It dies pretty quickly after that.

Morena! Tell me you're joking with you post. I couldnt imagine you
asking such a question(thats serious not a poke).

I would say that we're all "here" because we all realize that most ppl
our age (mid 30s+) are already married. I feel really STUPID asking a
seemingly single Soccer Mom out on a date to find out she's happily
married. At least here, we're among ppl who are more or less looking to
meet other single ppl.

"When do you decide its time to go?"

Simple. When the relationship goes from "maybe some hope Critical" into
"cardiac arrest call the coroner" its time to leave. Money, or not. When
you're not wanted, you're not welcome. Its time to leave.

so what if patricia is now cute? is that "ok"? oh man that would be so
weird.

Oh yeah, it can happen. And it sucks.

I met a girl literally a half-world away from here. Spoke maybe 5
sentances to her, on her wedding day. I was totally smitten. She was the
sister of my buddy in India, and he invited me to the wedding. She just
had a presence that was amazing - easy to talk to, witty, charming,
thoughtful - and I cant recall what it was we spoke of for 5 sentances,
but that was enough.

A few years passed, and I thought of her very frequently. I came to
understand that she got divorced (dowry-scam) but by then I was married.
Now I'm not, and now she is.

I have a picture of her that I took - ppl have told me its an amazing
photo because it captures the moment so well. To me its a haunting
reminder of 'what could have been'.

This will be a long post, but, its true, and you'll enjoy it.

I'm a software consultant, and previously I was part of a team to
convert a large company's "paper and pen" process to an internet
real-time system. This insurance company was ancient, and they were a
pain in the azz about making sure every single character was exactly
correct. Since we were mostly programmers who could care less about
commas, or semi-colons, we sub-hired a bunch of spot checkers to make
sure we got it all correct. One guy in particular was excellent - Pat.
He had a real talent for analyzing a page, and quickly identifying
missing punctuation, wrong numerical values and so on. He was mid 20s,
fast, efficient, and always right.

His personality was a little tough to deal with. He came off like a
hard-azz. And when he was drunk, he came off as a real prick. When he
was stoned, he was pitiful. He was often in some mixed state. Sometimes
he'd stumble into work wasted from an all night party. Sometimes he'd
come into work clearly beat up - bloody face, black eyes. But, it didnt
affect his work performance. He was always excellent - even drunk he was
twice as good as the next best copy-editor. Somehow, us programmers got
along quite well with him. Dunno why. The management of this Insurance
Company (a very large, and wealthy one) were appalled at his appearance,
but, even more impressed by the quality of his copy-editing work.

Project was ending. The managers asked if I wanted to become an employee
there, and I politely declined. I said "..but ya know, Pat could really
use a job. He's incredibly talented, and the medical benefits would be
really important to him". My boss grinned, then grimaced. A few weeks
later Pat was offered a full time 'employee position' which he
immediately accepted.

On my last day, Pat had realized that it was my recommendation that got
him the spot. In a private conversation he said "Thanks man, I REALLY
needed a full-time job. Thanks, I know it was your recommendation that
did it." And it was the most sincere thank-you I have ever received.
Just a thank-you that made me proud that for once I did the "right
thing".

A couple years passed. I ran into Jim, who was one of the guys from that
project. I asked "Hey, hows Pat holding up? He quit yet?" Jim laughed.
"No." with a sh1t eating grin.
"Pat's still there?"
"Nope" with that same grin.
"Fired?"
"Nope"
"Wha? Pat isnt there, but wasnt fired, didnt quit - he didnt die did
he??"
"Nah. Pat aint dead." Now he was laughing, but continued talking "Pat is
now Patricia. He had a full sex-change operation that was paid for by
The Company! On your recommendation you azzhole - you cost them $50,000
in medical bills!!! Haa haa haa"

I had a "medium sucess" story with "online dating". I signed up for
Yahoo Personals, and the first month or so was a total waste. Most were
"bots", fake accounts designed to drag guys into forking over money. You
can instantly tell a 'bot' email because it says nothing about your
profile. Anyway...

I did post a bunch of messages to several ladies. Most were no-reply,
except one or two. On one of them the lady was in NYC, my age, and
seemed very interesting. We went out on a couple dates, had a wonderful
wonderful time, but no "spark". Dunno why - she was pretty, intelligent,
funny, but, just no mutual spark. We even had a good laugh about that -
we each sorta shrugged our shoulders and said "you're great, but, its
not working".

Havnt met anyone from JSH as yet.

Thanks everyone - good thoughts.

Or, maybe its all very simple. Aliens, Angels are one in the same? The
idea that angels are 'fat babies with wings' is from the Greco-Roman
influences. In pure and simple terms, angels often come in various
visual forms. Archangel "Uriel" means Light. When the vision of an angel
is said to be Uriel, it means the manifestation of God's message in
light. Messages from the heavens in the form of light = the concept that
we call "Archangel Uriel"

Gabriel is associated with "fire" and the tribe of Judah. When Mary
perceived a message in the form of a fire, it was recorded as the Angel
Gabriel bringing a message to her (the 'Annunciation')

Each archangel has a particular manifestation form. So when a message is
perceived in a certain form, it is said to be from that archangel.