Shameless Plea for Comments

[qos]

Work has been interminably boring this week. Jeannie is out of the office, and I'm between projects, and it's been mind-numbingly tedious.

Here's an opportunity to earn karma points for an act of charity: please, leave a comment on this entry, which I will be able to read in my webmail (since I can't access LJ itself from work).

Tell me a story, tell me what you're doing today, raise a question for me to wrestle with, write down a funny song or joke to make me laugh. Make a request for information that I can work on writing up a response to and I'll post later.

Please do your part to keep QoS from turning into a complete zombie today!

Comments

[ad-lumen.livejournal.com]

Have you tried Celestial Seasonings Madagascar Vanilla Red tea? I think it's great.

[saskia139.livejournal.com]

It's actually rooibos tea flavored with vanilla.

[preacha.livejournal.com]

I have some of that in my cupboard right now! It is yummy. Come over to my virtual house and we will have tea.

[qos.livejournal.com]

What in the world is rooibos???

[preacha.livejournal.com]

It's red tea, as opposed to black, green or white tea leaves.

[qos.livejournal.com]

I don't actually drink tea -- but I do like vanilla very much.

Ideas...

[kateri-thinks.livejournal.com]

1. You are going to write Anakin's turn to the dark side. . . . GO!

2. Invisibility or Flight?

3. How many feminist theology seminarians does it take to screw in a light bulb [note: I don't know; you write the punchline!]

4. The first time you read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, were you thinking, Hello Jesus?

5. Pitch me a t.v. season premiere!

6. Get this: the card I chose on Monday was the Queen of Swords. In the Celtic tarot deck, she has red hair. Very lovely...

7. And then, Tuesday: 4 of wands, Wednesday, inverted King of wands, and today, King of Cups. What does this sequence mean, do you think? (Me, I like to think that this inverted king yesterday had something to do with Star Wars, but maybe that's just me...lol)

8. Do you have, or have you ever had, premonitions?

9. What did you and Leia decorate when you went to the paint&fire place that afternoon?

10. Do you think this mercurial weather is ever going to even out?

Re: Ideas...

[qos.livejournal.com]

Of course, having made my request, my day turned out to be a bit more busy than I'd expected. Certainly way to busy to properly respond to your wonderful ideas.

1. Anakin's turn to the Dark Side: The biggest difficulty with this question is that I've never been emotionally engaged enough by Anakin to feel a creative urge to get inside his head. I think his pride and his fear of loss were definitely two powerful motivators.

2. Tough choice. I'd probably end up being practical and choosing invisibility because if I had flight without invisibility I wouldn't be able to use it without drawing unwanted attention.

3. None. The feminist theologians find a more brilliant source of light that doesn't require using electricity!

4. Yes! Not until the the stone table, but definitely yes.

5. I wouldn't know where to start.

6. Good omen!

7. I usually interpret 4/Wands as happiness and stability in relationship. King of Wands inverted would be a good Anakin card -- but I would look to your husband for clues to how to interpret the kings following 4/Wands.

8. I have rarely had premonitions. The only ones which were accurate were regarding my daughter, and it's been a while since any of those happened. But perhaps that will change now that I'm opening up more to my intuitive nature? Do you have premonitions?

9. I decorated a four-sided bowl that I'm now using to hold my sage smudging sticks. The Child painted a rabbit.

10. Of course it will -- for a few days at least. ;-)

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

I went to renew my driver's license this morning and the picture turned out *good*. I like this picture. I almost never like pictures of myself, but this one is spiffy. I think this was my birthday present from the universe.

Pity I still need to change my name and therefore will be replacing this one soon.


In other news, it is raining here and I may melt. But in the meantime I'l be splashing in puddles.

Boring Friday

[amqu.livejournal.com]

I just read an interesting essay about Sanctuary and how that is being abused by terrorists, especially in the Middle East. I'd be interested in hearing a variety of views on that. The essay brought out a couple of points I found interesting. 1) Using mosques as ammo supply dumps and bunkers from which to fight, and 2) fighting in civilian clothes from the middle of the general populace, thus taking sanctuary away from the civilians, and 3) using surrender as an ambush tactic.

Re: Boring Friday

[qos.livejournal.com]

I think that it's heinous to do any of those things -- and I would not want to be a commander opposing such tactics who had to make the moral decisions to balance the need to accomplish her mission and protect her troops, against the traditional prohibitions (and my own inclination) against harming houses of worship, hospitals, and civilians.

It's bad enough to use terrorist tactics against the enemy. It's even worse when use of those tactics results in increased danger to one's own people.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness!
I'd want to be in the courtroom too!

[aerden.livejournal.com]

LOL! Well, I'm sitting at my desk just after lunch. The office is very quiet because it's Friday. Lunch was boudin sausage, fried shrimp, hush puppies, bread pudding, and tea.

Mark and I are planning to see Revenge of the Sith tonight, and I'm hoping to get more work done on my Nanowrimo novel from last year over the weekend. I read the first six days' worth last night and was impressed that I didn't cringe nearly as much as I feared I would. There are some typoes, but the story itself holds my interest, so far. Yea!

I was a zombie this morning because I stayed up to watch Crossing Jordan last night. It was a rerun I'd never seen before, which was nice.

Other than that, not much going on around here. I hope the Star Wars movie will be as good as I've been anticipating.

See you later! :)

Chantal

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

Hush puppies ... it's impossible to find good hush puppies in the Northwest. Every restaurant has granola, but not a single thing resembling a hush puppy. Or boudin sausage...

[blessed-harlot.livejournal.com]

WORK STORY: Well, there are seven resident positions for my bosses to fill, to start work on September 1st. They say the resumes they've been receiving for months are so sucky, that they only yesterday starting interviewing people... and they turned yesterday's guy down! And I'm stuck in the office with him when he gets the news! Hey, I'm all for being a chaplain, but offering comfort after a job rejection hits a little too close to home these days! Throw in a huge language barrier on top of that discomfort (turns out that Hungarian is unlike any other language, and makes it difficult to pick up other languages fluently, especially English)... well, let's just say I'm glad that's over.

TRIVIA UPDATE: So, as far as films go, I'm studying Hank Azaria these days. A brilliant comedian, but also trained in drama. And, he's Sephardic Jew by background, so I've had chance to learn more about the Sephardim, which is very interesting. My favorite thing I've learned about him in general... he based the voice and mannerisms of Agador Spartacus, the maid/butler he played in The Birdcage, on his grandmother!

I'm trying to think of a good question, but damn. Kateri covered that in a kickass way.

How about a joke? I actually used this a couple days ago to illustrate a difference between Catholics and Protestants, even though it's a Unitarian joke.

HA HA: There's this street where a fire has started, and it's consuming all the buildings. There's a Catholic church on this block. The priest arrives, and realizes that the fire is consuming the church and he only has time to save one thing, so he runs into the burning building, grabs the communion wafers, and runs out quickly.

There's a Protestant church there too, and the minister arrives to realize she too can only save one thing. So she too runs in, she grabs the Bible, and she runs back out.

At the end of the block there's a Unitarian congregation. The minister arrives, and realizes he has time to save only one thing. He runs into the burning building, grabs the coffee pot, and runs back out again.

Pasted post

[toesontheground.livejournal.com]

Yesterday I went to a discussion (held at DogsBollix pub) with Green MP Sue Bradford and Act MP Stephen Franks. It was about Sue's Private Members' Bill to repeal that part of the Crimes Act which makes it legal for parents to do to children that which would be considered criminal assault if they did it to any adult.

There are a whole bunch of really interesting issues that unpack out of looking at that issue: How best to reduce the level of major violence in our society, what lies beneath this violence (especially in relation to poverty and "family"), is "smacking" ever necessary or beneficial, what is the role of law in relation to changing public attitudes, to what extent is aggression "human nature" and, having answered that - what does it imply for public policy?

It's a complex debate on many levels - as are most things, when you actually look into it!

As usual, I felt that the strongest parts of the Act position (they are libertarians) was their acknowledgement of the possiblity of public policy having unintended consequences, their acknowledgement of the seedier/darker side of "human nature", and their concern not to just throw public money at issues. While the strongest part of the Green position was their willingness to see that public policy can make a difference, their willingness to acknowledge the good/lighter side of "human nature", and the acknowledgement of how much poverty matters and how much it actually ends up costing society to leave people in it (an aside here: it costs $60,000 per year on average to imprison a person in NZ - that adds up to a lot of money that could be better/more economically spent on prevention rather than cure - especially when you consider serious crime and repeat offenders).

It was pretty cool, too, to have two MPs and members of their respective parties (so far apart in so many ways) having a respectful, meaningful, face to face discussion about actual issues! If only more politics could be like that.

Re: Pasted post

[qos.livejournal.com]

That sounds like it was a very interesting discussion and a complicated issue. Let me know how it all turns out!

[justbeast.livejournal.com]

Nooo, no comments for youuu!

Ok, I will share with you my favorite joke, in its entirety:

Hedgehog was walking through the forest, forgot how to breathe,
and died.

[justbeast.livejournal.com]

.. it sounds better in the original Russian.

[qos.livejournal.com]

That's very, very strange, my friend. . . .

Ooooo! A captive audience....

[preacha.livejournal.com]

Want to read a 35-page research paper on pleasure?

Re: Ooooo! A captive audience....

[qos.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough. . . yes, I would.

Can you email it to my Yahoo address?