james - 04/28/07 11:29
Josh: It is experienced in weird ways in the imagination. Like reading about the below mentioned planet. But, you are right, it is pretty easy to handle.

THe gasbag planets might have a solid of liquid core, but none that you would want trapse around on. Well, I wouldn't at least. The wikipedia article on Jupiter has some interesting stuff about its core as well as it being too small to be a star. An interesting if not horrifying Lovecraftian read.

joshua - 04/28/07 10:58
Well, one thing about this particular phobia is nice - you'll never actually experience it for real.

I do find it weird to think of a planet that has no land mass to speak of. They say Jupiter was a star that never got big or hot enough to ignite.

james - 04/27/07 15:03
Nice try Jason. I am cool with noxious gasses. Just not so much noxious gas that you get a whole huge ass planet.

jason - 04/27/07 14:48
Mmmm! Ammonia and Hydrogen Sulfide! Get two lungs full!

james - 04/27/07 14:17
theecarey: red suns are fine by me. Some of the other colored ones sound awesome. Like Blue! Or those half-dead brown ones. I mean, a brown star? That joke practicaly writes itself!

Josh: Dude you are seriously freaking me out. Thankfully I find this whole phobia really funny. So my cold sweat and terror are making me giggle.

Jenks: right on!

jenks - 04/27/07 13:17
heh, low blow joshy!!

joshua - 04/27/07 11:26
Can you imagine travelling through Jupiter if you could? You'd basically fall straight through layers of gas that eventually turn into liquefied metallic hydrogen and your body would get crushed far before you'd ever arrive.

theecarey - 04/26/07 22:37
Ah see, thats why your post made me think of Goldilocks then ;)

imagine staring up at a red sun?!

james - 04/26/07 22:28
oh ya, I mentioned that planet above. It the hell out of me. And for the record only the hell was scared out of me.

theecarey - 04/26/07 22:22
No bowel loosening intentions here, but I can appreciate a good fear inducing borderline neurosis (babies, spider monkeys and clowns for me). I'm not sure how gaseous she is, but I think 'Goldilocks' may send you crying. Similar to Earth, the planet has just one sun, but its a big ole bright red one. Also possibly inhabited :) read on..

:::link:::

james - 04/25/07 18:11
It isn't a bad drink for cheap gin. Make a Mojita with it and it is delicious even.

ladycroft - 04/25/07 16:12
just last night my roommate and i were wondering how this bottle of segram's lime infused gin got ontop of our fridge....i smell conspiracy

james - 04/20/07 18:58
MC: WWJD? I would hope he would strike Phelps as god did Saul.

Peter: I imagine Jesus as a hip and groovy guy. One who's first miracle was to turn water into wine so that we could all party and get our freak on. The words of Jesus himself make no condemnation against much of anything. He would be as aghast with Phelps as any sensible person or demi-human would be.

Carolinian: Phelps and his bunch are so fucked up they can't even get a moderately large following in a place like Topeka. Or do I think of it that way because Phelps has tainted Topeka? We must all go to a fetish bar in Topeka to feel out what the natives are like.

carolinian - 04/20/07 18:51
Only a small church? I would have imagined such passion and zeal to be at least worthy of a moderately-sized ATF-resistant compound.

metalpeter - 04/20/07 18:17
(e:musemchick) you bring up a good point about what would Jesus do. One of the problems with organised realigon is that you get people who read the Bible and base what they do on a book that was writen 400 years after his death. That would be like if after we got our indepence from England now one wrote a history book until today. Not to mention the fact that there where other scripts that could be in the bible but "The Church" not jesus had a say in what stories where put into the bible. People should do what they belive is right based on what they believe Jesus would do not the church. Most people don't understand that those two are different and think that the church and Jesus are the same. But that being said There are multiple branches of Christianty and some of them hate other branches of the same basic beleif system.

museumchick - 04/20/07 16:14
What would Jesus do?

Would he tell people to picket someone's funeral?

Arrgh.

jason - 04/20/07 14:08
Since his following consists of mainly his personal set of friends and his family, they would be fairly easy to round up. Hell, stage a fake "fag-in" and wait for them to walk right into the trap.

Well, since we can't do that, we'll just have to do what we do with all radicals - shout them down ourselves.

zobar - 04/20/07 13:50
The Rev Phelps has been around this block more than once :::link:::

- Z

jim - 04/20/07 13:38
I'd say, ignore the trolls. Protesting these people just escalates the coverage they receive.

james - 04/20/07 13:10
oh, I am all for absolute free speach. Yell fire in a crowded theater. I am cool with it, espetialy if there is a fire.

These people are ignorant fucks, however. They picket the funerals of US soldiers because they are in an institution that is friendly towards gays. And I guess unless the military isn't stringing up homosexuals they are freindly to them.

Or picketing the funerals of people who have died of AIDS. After all, AIDS is a fag disease, and all those place in Africa where the infection rate is over 30% of the total population ,well, must be dem fags.

I am glad we live in a country where people can say whatever they want. But I am sad we live in a country where more people don't protest the protesters, though there are certainly several examples of people doing so.

joshua - 04/20/07 12:59
Welcome to the dark side of the 1st Amendment. =/

jason - 04/19/07 13:28
On the issues, Specter gets very low grades from the American Conservative Union, if that gives you any indication. He's basically a moderate, like McCain, with their moderation depending of course on the issues involved.

james - 04/19/07 10:33
Jason:

I don't know anyone involved in Virginia. I don't think most Americans do, or involved in 9/11, Waco, Oklahoma City Bombing, or any of those events. I find it interesting that we have an emotional reaction, a violent one often, based on national lines. That nationhood can define our sense of tragedy is really odd, really disheartening even.

And things like this did happen in the 40's. Things like this have happened throughout our American history without pause. More guns, less guns. City or rural. Surly, our capacity to take out dozens more people than we could with a poswer musket becomes more and more real, but one or more nutjobs deciding to just obliterate as many people as they can happens.

jason - 04/19/07 08:27
James, you make a fantastic point - it's about more than just guns! Shit like this didn't happen in the '40s. Our country is fucking diseased.

jason - 04/19/07 08:25
61.36% of all statistics are made up.

They both are tragedies, but if we want to parse it into how severe a tragedy can be, then I think without a doubt proximity is one of the most important factors.

Consider the fatalities in Iraq for a moment - heck, let's parse it further and only consider American deaths. They are our families and friends, yet I'd bet most people aren't as outraged by their deaths as they are by the VT killing spree. Why is this? Well, the situations have their glaring, obvious differences, but really it is because we don't "feel" the Iraq deaths like we do the VT deaths. No matter how much the media shovels it down our throats we will not feel it as deeply unless someone dies that we know. Would we feel so aggrieved over a massacre at the American University in Beirut? I doubt it.

james - 04/18/07 21:27
Peter: Nah, we didn't care too much in Bosnia either.

Zobar: That is why we should either stockpile lots of guns or start sleeping with a Marine. =

zobar - 04/18/07 21:24
By the numbers: The events of September 11, 2001 killed 2,973 people; the war in Iraq has killed 3,312 US servicemen and 769 contractors*. Therefore, as an American, you are 37% more likely to be killed by George Bush than Osama Bin Laden.

- Z

_______________

• It has also killed 266 non-US coalition servicemembers, 201 non-Iraqi civilians, and anywhere between 50,000 and a half million Iraqis. Considering that I just paid the IRS $2,000 in support of this operation, this is not math I'm willing to consider right now.

metalpeter - 04/18/07 19:06
I will agree that when a Bomb goes off in a market it is a tragedy. That being said there is a perception in this country that they are Muslum, and Iraqi and that it is no big deal. I think if this same thing was going on in a European courntry the perception would be a lot different. But the truth is that we know that some people there don't want us there so we don't care that they die. Some people also think that these 3 tribes of people don't like each other and have been fighting for so long and allways will so if they all hate each other than it isn't tragic. There is also the view that some people hold that everyone in the middle east is barbaric. But I still stick to any people who are freedom fighters, insurgents, terrorist or in an army or fighting force who die isn't tragic. Yes it is to bad for their family but they chose to do something that they knew might kill them. The exception to that is friendly fire. What happend to Pat Tillman and others should never happen.

You make a great point about the fact that he was mentally ill will get lost. I think that the issue of how do we treat or deal with the mentally ill will get lost also. There are a lot of issues there. Did he not get help cause no one wanted to help him. Or was the way he was brought up he didn't belive he should be helped. This is a large and not talked about issue in our country. Yes a lot of people do get help with issues or problems they may have. But often people fall through the cracks. A good example of this is when you see someone walking down the street and they aren't talking to them selves they are having a real conversation with someone who isn't there and there body movements even fit that conversation. The question is how to you make sure everyone gets help. Then what do you do for those that don't want the help. But also how do you test for it. Does each person come forward on there own or do people have to see a sign.

james - 04/18/07 18:36
Chick: I agree, there is tragedy in everything and we have to be careful to not let numbers dictate the magnitude of tragedy.

Jenks: Oh, how the media can portray a tragedy is a whole other issue. Fucking Wolf Blitzer sitting at his CNN desk infront of a green screan made to look like a campus. It is fake. It is a pony show. And the media shouldn't tell us how we feel about a tragedy otherwise 200 deaths in Iraq is a snooze fest.

Peter: When someone sets off a bomb in a crowded market 200 military personel don't die. Children, mothers, brothers, etc die. You go for some bread and end up smeared over a wall. It makes no difference if you are aware of the possibility of death when we all die. In Iraq one bomber may die but scores of innocent people follow. We are randomly thrown into this world, perhaps in the bloated wealth of the west or into more humble origins in Baghdad. Either way a human life is a human life. Even still, the man who decided to take 32 other people with him into death is tragic. Mentally ill and not receiving treatment, the conditions of his birth and upbringing almost seem that he would inevitably take this path.

There is debate about the second amendment and gun control. I think this is silly. Any arms in the hands of anyone can be miss used. The real issue should be how we treat and care for the mentally ill. I expect this will be lost in the clutter of our self absorbed tragedy.

metalpeter - 04/18/07 18:20
What makes it a tragedy is innocance!!!!!!!

The deaths in Iraq arn't innocant at all. The deaths are soilders who decided on there own to join the military. On the Iraq side the same can be said of the insurgents or other Iraq Military. Then you have waring factions who chose to attack each other. Yes there are some civilians who die and that is sad. But the general view is that they live there my choice and like living there and take the risk instead of leaving. The other view is that they are civilians who support one waring faction or another. So simply it is a war that everyone signed up for and they are all willing to die if it means freedom for there cause.

When you go to school it isn't supposed to be a war zone. You go there for multiple reasons to fight isn't one of them. If there where gangs at the college you attended then you would leave. If you thought that Hey never ben in a gang before this is kinda cool. Or I love that there is a race war on campus this will be fun to watch. Then when you blow up your dorm making a Molitov cocktail then it isn't sad, cause you decided you wanted to be violent. It would still be sad for the innocent people who get hurt.

It is allways tragic when the innocent are hurt.

jenks - 04/18/07 17:02
I think some of it is that deaths in Iraq are getting (sadly) to be 'old news'. "Oh, 200 people died? yawn." It's also not on home turf, and I think there's a bit of 'out of sight out of mind'. But I think the biggest thing is that there's a war going on over there. Death is part of war. Death should not be a part of going to school.

But I'm not saying I disagree with you. It is a little upsetting that we're super-freaking out over what's essentially a drop in the bucket compared to what happens all over the world every day.

Or, maybe it's just that the media needs something to fixate on now that Anna Nicole's baby has a daddy. ;)

museumchick - 04/18/07 16:48
I think any loss of human life, irregardles of the number is a great tragedy. It's all senseless.

It's strange with the idea of media attention to something like this compared to Iraq- because if you look at it, violence in Iraq gets much more attention than some of the other violence in the world.It seems like there is never anything on tv about the Sudan or the Congo and the genocide taking place.

james - 04/18/07 15:22
Absolutely both are tragic. Only I mass murdering fuck head like Uncle Joe Stalin could come up with the tragedy/statistic differentiation.

The thing I find interesting is that on average 100 people in Iraq are killed. But we generally don't care. But now we have prayer services, schools are closing, the media is camping out in front of their green screens that look like a campus. We are mobalizing because of a perceived connection to these people, where we feel a very faint one with the people in Iraq.

I find that both interesting and deeply troubling.

jim - 04/18/07 15:15
Aren't they all tragic?