Captain_Curmudgeon

You know my Dad's parents gave their sons unusual and significant names: Parley, Parker, Marden (you could figure out that part of the family tree right there), Orin. He and his brothers mostly hated it because they got cruel nicknames in school (my dad was particularly enraged over "Snorin' Orin"). So he insisted on giving all his sons names that had obvious nicknames: Robert, James, Keith (OK, Mom got her way with that one). And what did we do? I'm "R.O.", James is "Arlo" and poor Keith's main tormentors about his name were us (we were imaginative, but bad brothers, when all is said and done). Naturally, R.O. PS. Keith named one of his kids "Pratt." OK here, but a slightly obscene insult in most English-speaking countries.

You say "comet", I say "sweet chariot."

I suspect that "cult" is nothing more than a label that means "I don't like or understand this group, but I haven't got anything specific to offer." You see a lot of that these days. But if I get specific, I'm going to breaking the board rule about being non-partisan.

Starberry, You can consider our advice but in the end only you have the feel for the situation. I'm sure that when you do decide, it will be the right decision.

I'm a total skeptic but I never ignore my dreams. Of course, I always approach them from a number of different directions including "Could this be warning me of something real in my current life." (And my current approach to emergency preparedness is to stock-pile ammunition.)

This posting would be more on-topic, if we were talking about Memorable. I particularly remember some remarks by J. Golden Kimball about smoking that made me want to go off and try it. I'll try to track that down (and start another thread with it rather than breaking this one).

One of the things that's a life-long puzzle to me is that my great-great-grandfather loved Joseph Smith but couldn't seem to get along with Brigham Young. So I've got to think that there was something very likable or lovable about Joseph. (A lot of my ancestors seem to take after me in being a bit curmudgeonly.)

Good reminder, connerific. When I first started teaching, Bob Thomas (later became Robert K. Thomas, Academic VP or something of BYU) took me aside as a friend and told me straight out NEVER to be sarcastic to a student in class (he knew my natural tendencies). "You may get some students to laugh, but most of them will see it as picking on the student and eventually you'll lose their sympathy." I kept that with me all of my teaching life (not that long, however). Naturally, R.O.

Number one with a bullet. Any time any religion has secret parts, people are going to think the worse. And call it a cult.

90 percent. One where I read too fast and one where I had "temporarily" forgotten the actual answer. This happens when you get to a certain age.

I see we both have connections to HI as well and we're both writers (if only for posterity). Naturally, R.O.

As close as I can find out from his profile, no. Can't seem to locate the friend from the Mormon nudist group who got me here, nor can I seem to locate the thread. I see it's been "moved" but I can't see where just yet. Is "moved" a euphemism for "removed?" Naturally, R.O.

(Called out by anyone who first detects the presence of the commanding officer of a ship.) I'm not a Captain (although I was a naval officer), but I am a curmudgeon. I was born of goodly parents (all of my ancestors came to SLC before the railroad) in 1940 and caused them to strongly believe in the preexistence, since they couldn't see how I could be their kid. I became a Skeptic at age 5 after busting Santa Claus by counting the oranges in the fridge on Christmas Eve and then counting them again Christmas morning and adding in the oranges in the toes of the Christmas stockings. As soon as I heard about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, I became a believing nudist, although I did have to test it out in my Grandfather's orchard before I could fully accept it. Both beliefs have continued to the present. (I came here when a friend in a Mormon nudist group pointed out that there was some discussion of the topic here.) William Penn Elementary School, Central Junior High, Olympus and Granite High schools. CalTech, until my senior year when I decided to switch from EE to English. The only Utah school I could find that would let me graduate in a year (to keep my National Merit Scholarship) was BYU, so there I went, got a B.S. in English (minors in math and physics) and started in on an M.A. Got tired of being in school after a year of the MA program and joined the Navy, serving on the USS Sellers (DDG-11) and then sent to Viet Nam with MCB6, attached to MarDiv III (that means I was on the mainland with a bunch of Marines). Back, finished my M.A. and wandered off into Ph.D. program at the University of Connecticut and teaching, ending up at the University of Hawaii. Discovered that teaching was not for me and got another B.S., this time in Computer Science (not at BYU), and have been earning my living as one sort of a programmer (or Computer Scientist or Software Engineer) ever since. I have always been a bicycle nut and rode from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1976 as part of Bikecentennial and did a 3,000 mile jaunt by myself back in 1982: UT to ID to WY to MT to ID to Canada to Jasper to eastern WA, across the Cascades, around the Olympic Peninsula, and down the Oregon coast. CA was just too weird, so I caught a plane back to SLC. Reading, writing, wandering, always. Naturally, R.O.