Captain_Curmudgeon

Speaking from considerable experience, when you tell people you are from Utah, they will just about always ask if you're Mormon. I regard it as normal curiosity. We get a lot of press, you know. Here in Utah, I often ask people just so I know how to talk to them. If they're not Mormon, then they're not going to get my usual jokes. Shoot -- just remembered: even if they are, they're not going to get a lot of them.

Best treatment of it that I've experienced was in Bible as Lit at BYU taught by Bob Thomas.

Think we've seen this before: "If you vote for the lesser of two evils, don't forget that you voted for evil." U. Utah Phillips.

And then there's "Signature deleted because you're not cool enough to understand it."

Yep. I was born Mormon (as many here were) and I never believed and was often told that we are NOT protestant and that they are about as mistaken as the catholics.

Jesus.Get him a decent hair-cut and shave the beard. Get him out of that robe and those sandals. Then he could get into BYU. Keep him from hanging around with whores and other sinners. Get him a three-piece suit and a white shirt and a conservative tie. Then he could speak at conference. And you've got to keep him from turning water into wine at weddings and giving it away or the Booze Board here in Utah is going to keep throwing him in jail. The last Mormons who could respectably be in jail were the polygamists at the end of the 19th century. (From whom I'm descended.)

An official Olympic Pin and one of the main reasons I keep going to Chuck-a-rama.I could believe more in inspiration if funeral potatoes were in the Word of Wisdom.

Isn't this just the Thirteenth Article of Faith?(Just going to note parenthetically that this is how many Mormons come to naturism.)

True enough. Bad choice of name, for sure. Passover was probably linked to the vernal equinox for the usual reasons (the escape from Egypt looks pretty bogus), but that was when and why Jesus traveled to Jerusalem. And despite Christianity's attempt to obscure it, the passover was when Jesus was crucified (some historical problems there, too). So, call it the "Crucifixion" instead of "Easter" and I can't see any objection. Tell me about it. Believed this from age 7.

Well, I don't chuck the Jehovah's Witnesses off the porch when they come to visit, so why should I be getting after you? Both of y'all think you're doing me a favor, so why should I act otherwise?Reminds me, though, of a Christmas Eve back in the mid-80s. Blizzard out of nowhere totally shut down all traffic in Salt Lake City and some of the electricity. I was out in my hot tub, enjoying the stillness, the silence (obvious links to the solstice when you think about it), the darkness. I heard that crunching on snow that you only get at low temperatures -- a lot of it, a good-sized group of people, I could tell. They stopped on the street, a little beyond my driveway and between my house and the Perkins on the other side. And then, acapella of course, and wonderfully sung, one the old carols that I love. Then crunching of snow and then silence. That's the only time in my adult life that I've felt anything approaching the "spirit of Christmas." But it was profound and I'll never forget it.

That one has got to be the most dismal carol ever. Used to depress me beyond belief when I was a kid.Now "Good King Wenceslas." That rocks.

I got a cat, Guy Noir, from the shelter Saturday and it was almost a spiritual experience. I posted in "Testimonies" but decided that maybe cats don't count there. But in less than a week, we're very deeply bonded and happy.

I went to cash in 2005 when I "retired." Cash doesn't do much and I don't want to get too heavily into my really favorite "investments", guns, ammo, and tuna fish. I mean I can only eat so much tuna fish and then I'm dead. In June of this year, I finally crawled out of my depression enough to do the stupid stuff that had to be done to transfer my wife Mary's Schwab account to her parents (Mary died in 2002). At the same time, the market was in the 12000 to 11000 range and I did talk to my Schwab guy about getting back into the market (= stock mutual funds). Market was down from stuff like 14500. He said it was a pretty good idea and I could start right then (which is what I think you're always going to hear from investment "advisors" (although I really think mine is honest and helpful)). Because I'm slothful (== depressed), I didn't. But when the market got back to where I'd cashed out in 2005 (around 10,500), I said "Here it is." Well it wasn't. But as it was going down, I bought a little every Friday. And then on Monday, I bought CDs. Until the market kept going down and I remembered the old Wall Street Maxim: "Don't try to catch a falling knife." For a while I thought 27 October was the bottom. It wasn't. Looking at the charts, I now think I can't decide. But thinking you can tell the bottom from looking at charts means you think that the stock market is like a physical object. It isn't. Lots of unknown stuff out there. If OUR crisis is mortgage derivatives, then why are foreign markets in a panic? Why don't the various measures taken by congress and the various agencies seem to work? Why am I hearing about a liquidity crisis and the rate I can get for real, honest cash is next to nothing? And what, really, is going on with the price of oil? Well, I bought my Friday stock mutual fund today. But I don't know if it was because the DJA was up today or down for the week. Hey, I really want to hear what other people here think, but even more what they are doing.

I hope you're not calling my grandmother, a granddaughter of Parley P. Pratt, a Grinch.

I agree with you completely. rameumptom. And since as LDS we know better, why not move it from December, where commercialism has already taken its toll, to April, where it belongs?Why should we blindly follow the Catholics and the World when we know better?

Ex-sailor here. I doubt it. Clean navy joke:Street vendor in foreign port: "Hey, sailor. Do you want to buy some filthy pictures?" Sailor: "No. I want to pose for some."

The first thing I learned about Christmas from my Grandmother Despain was that it was a hoax contrived by the Catholic Church to lure pagans. Jesus was born in April. When I read the OT it became clear that it wasn't in December. All I had to do was look at sheepherders. Did they guard their flocks at night in December? Of course not. Spring and Summer. When I got into Roman history, there was another clue: they collected taxes and did censuses in March and April. When do you you pay taxes right now? Easter is legitimate (although the way the West computes it is bogus); Christmas is phonus balonus. As I've said elsewhere, I'd like to move the celebration of Jesus's birth to where it belongs and let what is now falsely called Christmas merge with the other wonderful celebrations of the Winter Solstice.

Hey. Less smoking now than in the 50s.

Alas. Hoist by my own petard. (Used to be an engineer, too.)

Yes, and he did the least of the damage.

Sort of rings a bell. Think it might have been a locale in "The Rise and Fall of Reginald Iolanthe Perrin." True? That series was 32 years ago and I still have a crush on Pauline Yates. Welcome to the site.

I agree completely but you have to do one of two things at the same: Rid local, state, and federal laws of clauses that give legal or tax or other rights to married people (my choice). ORGrant all rights given by law to married people to the contracting people.Has another nice feature that I like: the law already defines who can enter into a contract and who cannot. So, you can have same-sex contracts and polygamous contracts and group contracts but not contracts that involve children.

Wish you had so decided before, oh, 1962. Would have prevented three Presidents that I could do without.

Like most sailors I know. But he was a great navigator and an even better supercargo.

True enough, AA. When I was first in the reading and writing game, alright was nothing but an error. It's always all right. There was a little mnemonic: All right is the opposite of all wrong.Now, my spellchecker allows alright and it's in the on-line dictionaries. Shocking.