Jamie123

Merry Christmas to all! I was just stuffing the "turkey" (actually a chicken) and my father came in and said he'd read in the paper "don't stuff your turkey" because of "contamination". Have you ever heard such rubbish? People have been stuffing their Christmas turkeys for years and years and I've never heard of any "post-Christmas turkey stuffing disease epidemic". I've stuffed our turkey every year for years and no one in my house has ever died from it. I'd actually just finished the stuffing when my dad came in with the news, but much as I love him, I'm not going to unstuff the turkey just because some silly twonk who writes in the newspaper wants to make himself sound clever by saying "don't stuff your turkey or you'll die of malaria". If we do die of malaria I shall stand corrected. P.S. I have now unstuffed the chicken. My Dad was fretting.

I've been lagging behind, but I'm finally up to date again. This is all very grim stuff. Sorry if someone explained this already and I missed it ( i will go over the comments again more thoroughly tomorrow), but why is the latter part of Mormon, written by Morono, still called the "Book of Mormon" and not part of the book of Moroni?

The Michael Bubble song made me think of this. Almost at the end of The Magic Flute when Papageno finally gets to be with his "Papagena" - his ideal woman for whom he has been searching the whole opera. He has met her already - firstly in disguise and then in her true form - at which point the priests chase her away because he is "not yet worthy of her". (He comically shouts at them "Don't interfere in my family affairs!") I love The Magic Flute and Papageno is one of my favourite characters ever. This is an English translation, but I like it as much as listening to the German while reading the subtitles. (I have studied German but made as little progress with it as I did with French. So if you tell me its been murdered in translation I believe you - but this is good enough for me!)

We have those too, but they are not the same as crackers. Crackers look like this:

I think you got gypped. A proper cracker has a kind of cardboard strip inside it, which is bonded in the middle with a very tiny explosive charge. If both people grip the cracker tight and pull it goes off with a "crack" (similar to a squib). There are cheapo crackers out there that don't have this.

Now here is a very good woman wearing her hat and laughing at her joke: No Humbug for her! One more: How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizza? Deep and crisp and even

Just got back from work Christmas party. The jokes in the crackers were up to the usual standard: What do sheep say to each other at Christmas? Merry Christmas to ewe What would you call a cat in the desert? Sandy Claws Which playwright was afraid of Christmas? Noel Coward Can't remember the rest. I'll let you know if more come to mind... If you don't know what Christmas crackers are, here are some: they go bang when you pull them open and they contain jokes, paper hats and other small things (such as badly made plastic whistles, combs, thimbles, fortune-telling fish, tape measures, dice etc.) I say it should be the law that everyone must belly-laugh at all the jokes in all the crackers (however lame) and wear the paper hats, on pain of being crowned King (or Queen) Humbug for the evening.

Thanks for the support guys. Apart from saying "Quirnius" instead of "Quirinius" I got through OK. 😁

Nearly time to go... think of me...😟

28:6 - There is a long-running tradition John never died and is still somewhere alive today. But if this is true, it's odd that John 21:23 makes it very clear that Jesus did not promise this. Maybe the JST says something different?

Silicon, not silica (which is silicon dioxide) but otherwise you are correct.

Oh how can you miss it? It's a "Walkie Talkie"!

Who can tell me what this is?

We don't even know that there were three of them, any more than we know that they were kings, or that their names were Melchior, Casper and Balthazar. I think the idea that there were 3 comes from the gold, frankincense and mur (can't be bothered to look up the spelling) but we don't know that all of then didn't bring all 3. When I was in infants school I was in the Nativity play as Mur. I really wanted to be Gold, but they said no I could only be Mur. P.S. there are so many versions of this joke:

I like Jordan Peterson. He doesn't mind standing up to the demands of political correctness. (That's something that takes a lot of courage these days!)

22:16 - I have created the smith... I wonder if that's a coincidence

This brings back memories. 3 Nephi was the first part of the Book of Mormon the missionaries had me read. I couldn't believe the violent things Jesus seemed to be saying, and since I had also been reading about blood atonement, Danites and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, when they came back a week later I told them theirs was "a very violent and disturbing religion". I was somewhat aware even then of the violence in the Old Testament (which is far worse than anything in the Book of Mormon) but I never quite connected it with "gentle Jesus meek and mild". The sisters gave me the "same yesterday today forever" thing, but I couldn't really get that. I vaguely saw the "Gods" of the Old and New Testaments somehow in opposition to each other (an idea which you find in Gnosticism and William Blake) but I was an atheist back then anyway.

Absolutely right of course. "A weight only humility can bear and the backs of the proud will be broken."

I'm not sure what you mean by the second part of your question, but a carol service is an extra church meeting where the congregation sings carols. (Sorry its the autocorrect which makes it come up as Carol and not Carol. It thinks I'm talking about a person called Carol.) A christmas carol is a hymn sung at Christmas like Once in Royal David's City or While Shepherds Wash their Socks...err...Watch their Flocks by Night or Hark the Herald Angels Sing or...well you know the sort of thing. The carols are interspersed by "lessons" which are usually Bible passages read out, or else other poems or readings to do with Christmas. Back in the day we had a choir and I used to sing tenor in it. ( It took me ages to learn the tenor lines, but once you learn them they stick.) Back in the day it was also by candlelight. The electric lights were turned off and everyone held a candle - we're not allowed to do that any more because the church is an ancient heritage site and there's a fire risk.

Wife texted to say she's coming to the church Carol service next Sunday and would I have a problem with that? Then she tells me how important it is to her and she's coming whether I have a problem or not. I told her that she has as much right to come to church as anyone and I have never tried to stop her coming to church. Which I haven't. She has not come to church since May, but that is her choice not mine. I have not stopped her. But none of that changes the fact that I don't want to see her, so I've a good mind not to go, but if I don't go to the Carol service I will come over as a churlish ingrate who stays away from church Carol service just because he can't bear the sight of his wife. And anyway I am down to read one of the lessons. But a lot can happen in a week. Maybe I'll have an accident and spend next weekend in hospital. Not that I would pray for an accident but if God could arrange for me to have one without it being my fault and without me actually praying for it (which would be wrong) I would owe him a big favour.

Well yes - debatable. If an American comes from German immigrant stock (like Oppenheimer) do we still refer to him/ her as "German"?

It does seem incredible to me that my father, who is still alive (and still drives even!) lived right through World War II and can remember rationing, evacuations, air raids and friendly American GIs sharing out their chewing gum with the kids. Yet even back when I was at school, Nazi Germany belonged to comics, war movies and history books. It was not at all connected with the colourful modern Germany that school trips sometimes went to.

Only partially relevant I know, but I recently watched a video that argued it was not the bomb that caused Japan to surrender, but the fact that the Soviet Union chose that same moment to declare war. The Japanese knew they would need to surrender to someone (bomb or no bomb) and the Americans seemed like the softer option. The US promptly rewrote history to make their glorious bomb the big deciding matter. One could say that the Soviet invasion was triggered by the Americans' use of the bomb, but it was going to happen anyway whatever. Had Truman not given the order to drop it, that would only have delayed the inevitable. Another thing (not in this video): the Manhattan project was an international effort, not just purely American. There were British scientists at Los Alamos. After the war, Truman broke the agreement and made the bomb "USA only" - which achieved absolutely nothing except to make him look like a jerk. The British scientists just developed their own bomb at Harwell.

My Christmas Poem (writted by me for English class at the age of about 11): On Christmas Day was Jesus born In a stable dry and warm Sung by angels from the sky Seen by shepherds from the hills And the magi travelled far Led to the stable by a star