So, I like grape soda sometimes. I had a 12-pack of Welch's "sparkling grape soda", and I liked it. And the next time I was out, there was no Welch's grape soda, but there was Fanta grape soda. I figured they would be interchangeable. I was wrong.
I'm going to attempt to explain this using a chart.
| Thing | How much like grapes it is |
|---|---|
| Unused kitty litter | NOT AT ALL LIKE GRAPES |
| Actual molten lava | |
| Fanta grape soda | |
| Death's sweet release | |
| Packing peanuts | |
| Circus peanuts | HAS AT LEAST ONE QUALITY IN COMMON WITH GRAPES |
| Used kitty litter | |
| Purple Skittles candy | |
| A shark egg | |
| Purple kool-aid powder | |
| Welch's grape soda | QUITE A BIT LIKE GRAPES |
| Red, red, wine | |
| Grape juice from concentrate | |
| Grape juice not from concentrate | |
| Actual grapes | EXACTLY LIKE GRAPES |
Used kitty litter scores more highly than unused kitty litter because it has some organic qualities to it. Unused kitty litter is just clay.
Packing peanuts are only made of plain old styrofoam, but are around the same size as grapes.
Circus peanuts only appear to be made of styrofoam. They are sort of sugary, which makes them somewhat like grapes.
Death's sweet release is more like grapes than Fanta is, because I like grapes, and I think I would like death more than Fanta. (I may exaggerate slightly for humorous effect.)
If you program in Java, take a look at Buoy. It's a public domain interface toolkit that makes Swing look pathetic, ill-considered, and bloated. I mean, not that this is hard... But Buoy is nice.
To make a long story short, there was a funny mini-flamewar about Metanoia, and I decided to play around with the style of ranting by "defending" the comic. So I wrote this. This is not merely a bad defense. This is an awful defense. It is a parody of every bad defense ever written for poor fiction.
Enjoy.
---cut here---
(I realize, on reading other wanks, that I've totally missed the point, and I've been, pretty much, No Fun At All. Well, I'm gonna rectify that. I'm no Anne Rice, but I'll do what I can.)
*ahem*
First off, how dare you? How many of you have done a hundred pages of material about a gay hit man who fights demons and chews ice? Not many, I'll wager. Only betting's a sin, so I won't. But Metanoia is the absolute best comic ever, bar none, only it's so good it's not a comic at all, but a manga. Wait, that's not good enough. It's even better than manga. It's a fucking ANIME. That's how good it is.
A lot of comics reduce the world to black and white, with good guys and bad guys. Metanoia is done in TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX SHADES OF GRAY! That's more than you can do with Prismacolors, which is why Metanoia is colored with actual COPIC markers, the kind real mangaka jack off with.
Metanoia is much deeper literature than anything you have ever written, or read, if you can even read at all, which I doubt very much, or if you can recognize a run-on-sentence, which I don't think you could, even if you saw one, or I wrote one, which I wouldn't, because I'm a good writer.
There is no "mary sue" crap in Metanoia. When Star gains the ability to turn into a telepathic unicorn in Chapter 4, it happens for real plot reasons, in a manner consistent with the Quentin Tarantino sensibilities of the rest of the manga. This is not a "self-insertion" thing based on the author's own shapeshifting powers; any idiot can see that the author, who shapeshifts into a white-maned, empathic unicorn with violet eyes, should not be mistaken for Star's silver-maned, telepathic unicorn with golden eyes. This is not any kind of self-insertion; it is literature.
Some people don't think Metanoia's characters have real depth. Bullshit. Star chews ice when he's nervous. That's depth. I mean, you learn a lot about star from that. Like, you know he's not one of those people whose teeth are always really sensitive to cold stuff. How many artists have the BALLS to confront that kind of raw, heart-wrenching truth about their characters?
The artist of metanoia is more woman than you'll ever be, and more man than you'll ever have. She is the epitome of cool, the Pope of Pimp, and taller than most children.
Metanoia's plot is perfect in every respect, and covers every aspect of the human experience in perfect detail, all while maintaining a light and approachable atmosphere with recognizable, likeable characters and a consistently child-friendly sensibility. By the end of the main story arc, the reader will have learned what it means to experience love for the first time, will know what pork chops really taste like, and will have grown two full inches.
Some people complain that Metanoia is a genre-breaker. Well, if the genre was that fragile, it deserved to be broken. We need visionaries. We need change. When we first realized that doughnut holes were not merely edible, but the tastiest part of the doughnut, a lot of people weren't ready for the change. They wanted to keep throwing doughnut holes away. Now we know they're food, and millions of people get fed every day because someone had the courage to eat a fucking doughnut hole. Metanoia is like that, only with a jelly filling.
Metanoia's characters express everything that is good in humanity; friendship, teamwork, casual murder. Their sex lives are more interesting than prime time television, even during Sweeps Week. Hell, they're more interesting than Adult Swim on Cartoon Network!
The regular series of cameo appearances by famous characters, such as Batman and Robin, the Harlem Globetrotters, or the Addams Family, distinguishes Metanoia from all other cartoons and comics. It is a unique feature which shows a special depth of insight into the human condition which most of ya'll fucktards will never experience, so booya.
In conclusion,... No, wait, I've barely gotten started. More to come.
Everyone who doesn't like Metanoia wets the bed. I can prove it, because we installed special sensors. People who like Metanoia get laid more often than other people, and for good reason -- they're better in bed. Most men who don't like Metanoia ejaculate prematurely. Most women who don't like Metanoia like it when men ejaculate prematurely.
Metanoia's aggressive promotion of Christian ideals makes it the ideal comic for teaching your children about morality. Children need to learn that the career of a hit man is a much more morally acceptable one than a lifestyle of gay sex. Furthermore, they need to learn that you can combine these lifestyles and make twice as much money. Metanoia doesn't indulge in the heavy-handed moralizing of some manga, such as Rurouni Kenshin or Trigun; instead, it focuses on making sure that each episode ends with a clearly stated moral, which is demonstrated when the loveable but incompetent Team Rocket get their just deserts.
Sometimes people think Metanoia is not as good as other art. This is because they are holding their artometer upside down. There is simply no other art in the history of Western Civilization which is as good as Metanoia. Some Eastern Civilization, such as South Jersey, can come close to the quality of Metanoia, but most of it can't, and anyway, who can hold those fucking chopsticks. Metanoia sets the standard by which all other art should be judged.
Some authors need careful handholding by an editor. Some have progressed to a friendly relationship with the editor. An elite few need no editing, because their work is perfect to begin with. The building in which Metanoia is drawn is surrounded by a moat filled with the corpses of editors. It's that good.
(Please let me know if I missed anything.)
So, I have this settlement agreement. With Complex Capital Mortgage, junk faxers extraordinaire.
So. As of the date of the settlement agreement, which I expect to sign tomorrow, the terms of the settlement become confidential. Er. Okay. So, as of tomorrow, I can't tell you that they're paying $2,875. You can read about it if you want, but I can't tell you. I also can't tell you that they're agreeing not to send any more faxes, and that if they do, I keep that money as liquidated damages for breach of contract and reopen my suit for junk faxes they sent.
This is a sort of crappy agreement. In practice, I don't think they really understand what they want, they just want the word "confidentiality". You know, so they can pretend no one knows the important thing: Complex Capital Mortgage are junk faxers who will pay money to settle cases.
Which could come in real handy, given the number of faxes they've sent since I got my faxes from them.
This is another post originally from ChristianForums, reproduced here so I don't have to search for it so often. It was originally in the Apologetics forum.
Okay, long rambling thoughts time.
One of the problems, I think, that many people have with Christianity is all the rules, and how weird some of them seem.
I'll let you in on a secret. There are no rules. If we were gonna have another religion of rules, a set of things you must do, a set of things you must not do... No point in that. It's been done, it's covered, it's nothing interesting for us.
What Christianity offers is that it's okay. We have lots of interesting thoughts on what moral action is. We will try to live that way. But... We do it knowing first that we will fall short, and second, that we will be accepted anyway.
You don't always see this. A lot of people sort of forget it. They like to make lists of people whose sins require them to be kicked out, or separated. We love those lists. They're the lists of the ways we're better than all those other people.
But the fact is, we aren't really. We have our own flaws, and even if you don't see them all, you may rest assured that we do. Well, most of them; honestly, we don't even see all of our own flaws. But you can get a pretty good handle on your own flaws if you take a break from looking at other peoples'.
That's the big appeal, the big magic. The thing that's amazing is not the promise of special treatment, the notion that I'll have an especially great mansion in Heaven, or that my harp will be connected to a Marshall amp instead of a Crate. It's not about how many jewels I'll have in my crown in Heaven. What's amazing is that I am told I get to be there at all.
I don't have to do anything. I don't have to earn this. I don't have to deserve it. I don't have to have cured all my bad habits. I can still pick my nose. I may still be a little angry sometimes. God loves me anyway. I'm covered. Everything I will ever screw up has been covered since 3PM on a Friday afternoon almost two thousand years ago.
A lot of people talk about repentance. Repentance is important. Repentance, however, doesn't mean you always manage to get your bad habits under control. It doesn't mean you always manage to figure out what's wrong; it just means that, somewhere in there, it starts to matter to you whether you're screwing up or not. I don't want to be good because God will reward me. God will take good care of me whether or not I'm any good. I want to be good because it is good to be that way. I want to be good because something happened to let me understand what goodness means, and having seen this, I cannot want otherwise.
There's a whole big list of people who aren't good enough. We all hear that list all the time. Well, those lists. Lots of people got lists. You use the wrong God words, you're bad. You don't know what a hypostatic union is, well, you're in big trouble. Think God loves the wrong people, that's bad too. Love the wrong kind of people yourself? Hopeless. Why even bother preaching to you? You probably have lustful thoughts.
My wife is one of those lucky people whose gender identity and body type don't quite align. So far as she's concerned, she's a guy. She looks in the mirror, sees a girl, thinks it looks weird. It's been thirty years now; I don't think anything's changing. Lucky for me, she's a gay guy, so she's interested in me. Lots of people would have all sorts of problems with her. She wears pants. She doesn't act like a submissive woman. It's all good, though; God made Jesse, and God saw that she was Good. She doesn't have to change, to try to live up to some human's checklist of acceptable gender roles. She just has to be glad that the world is large and wonderful, and pleased to be a part of it, and she is, and will always be, a part of the Kingdom which has no end.
I know a lot of folks here. A lot of us have all sorts of stuff we don't always talk about. I'm a second husband, and there was about a year and a half of overlap between me and the first husband. Bad, bad, seebs. Everyone hates the seebs who is so bad. Except, see, this Jesus guy. He doesn't hate me. He forgives me. (For what it's worth, so does the first husband, and we're still good friends, just like we were before he went and married that crazy chick I thought was no good for him.) Other people, well, hey, they can tell their own stories, or not.
But... This is the wonder of it. It's okay. There is a place for me, too.
My wife does a comic called Metanoia. I'm not about to link to it from here (but I do from the blog version); it's got a gay hit man, and it goes downhill from there, so it's not the kind of site you link to from a Christian site. But the name is a pretty Christian name. "Metanoia" was a Greek word, before those English folks stole it. It's sorta translated as "repentance", but that's a mediocre translation. It involves a transformation of worldview, a change in way of thinking.
Repentance, I will say again, doesn't always mean you change what you're doing. Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. Maybe it's too hard to change. Maybe you're not ready. Maybe you just have to learn to live with one of the ways you're not all that great a person. Life is full of surprises.
But one day, you can maybe turn around and realize that it's all good, it's all covered, and it's all okay. You've been invited to the party. There is a place at the table for you.
And once you realize that, you realize that you can send invitations to anyone you want, and they're all invited too.
So, I dunno. That's why I've been here; trying to figure out how to put this big and scary concept into words. And I can't really, so I think I'll call it a night. I'm also going on vacation a bit, but I'll post about that separately. Just wanted to let you guys know that there is a point to all of this. You might look at some of the other people at the party, and wonder why you were invited to a party with people that cool... But they might be thinking the same thing.
Have fun!
There's a game, called Towers of Hanoi. The basic idea is that you have a bunch of disks of varying thickness, and with holes in the middle, and you start with them stacked on a central pole, and you move them to another pole. You can only move one disk at a time, and you must never place a disk on a smaller disk. There are three pegs.
Here's a sample game. The numbers after each row will be explained later.
| | |
=== | |
===== | |
======= | |
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 000
| | |
| | |
===== | |
======= | ===
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 001
| | |
| | |
| | |
======= ===== ===
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 010
| | |
| | |
| === |
======= ===== |
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 011
| | |
| | |
| === |
| ===== =======
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 100
| | |
| | |
| | |
=== ===== =======
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 101
| | |
| | |
| | =====
=== | =======
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 110
| | |
| | ===
| | =====
| | =======
+----+-----------+-----------+----+ 111
Now, here's the interesting part. It takes seven moves to solve this, for a total of eight positions including the starting state. There are three disks. In fact, for N disks, it always takes 2^N-1 moves to solve the puzzle. So, if you start with all disks on the left peg, and end with all disks on the right peg, you have 2^N stages, represented by N things. Since there's always exactly one correct move, there's a set of 2^N possible circumstances in which the disks can be.
This suggests that this is a particularly beautifully inefficient way to represent numbers. Now, the question is... Given a set of disks which we are assured is some portion of the way through a game of Towers of Hanoi, how many moves have we taken? If we can find a way to describe the positions as corresponding to numbers, we can count easily.
Here is the way to do it. Begin with the largest disk. If it is in the correct position, write down a 1. If it is not, write down a 0. Now, for each smaller disk, if it is on top of the previous disk, write down the number you just wrote down, and if it is not, write down the other number.
When you're done, you have the current move number encoded in binary, as illustrated in the picture above.
This is an interesting example of a coding where adding or subtracting one from a number only involves moving one thing. You'll note that a single piece moved can change all three bits of the binary representation. Fun, huh?