GeezerSue

I hope you have a small family...or they have a large closet...Matthew 6:5-6 and all. Oh, or should we go with Timothy 2:8? Well, they're both in the bible and so they must both be right.

First, you have yet again misquoted/misinterpreted what I have written. Then, I am not going to engage in a debate with you over what I consider to be your fantasies. But address the point I was trying to make...Christ had himself a bit of a "gang" if you will...a core of a dozen relative unemployed characters who hung with him on a regular basis. I don't recall his building a physical church...and, what with carpenter skills and all...that seems like it might have been possible. No Building Fund was mentioned in any scripture I recall reading. Christ spoke for himself. Your guy Greg, the anti-evolutionist, has his own detractors. (I haven't read much, but generally, NONE of the parties in these debates cause me to want to engage.) He doesn't need me: http://www.gregiswrong.com/site-gregiswrong/ Believe what you want to believe. Do whatever it takes to get you through the night. But if anyone has the right to claim that if I don't believe as they do then I am an anti-Christ or a spawn of Satan or I am a tool of some imaginary demon and doomed to eternal damnation...then I pretty much reserve the right to say that THEY might as well open the Church of the Tooth Fairy, as reasonable as they are IMO. They are, when you think sbout it, all just words...

Christ comes to mind. LOL! After him, can't think of any...

Not all of the cult leaders have television shows; some are still just on the radio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Koukl

(Headless, because I'm waiting for my stalker dude to DIE before I put my photos anywhere he can see them. He's even older than I am. This may not take forever. LOL) Also, remember that revision patients usually have a slower rate of loss and even a lesser total loss than first-time patients...so I'm still "a ways" from where I want to be. Photo on the left is three years AFTER banding and the day before my band removal and revision to the DS. Photo on the right is one year AFTER the DS. Let's see if I can do this:

Here's more info about that "miracle drug." http://www.enbrel.com/index.jsp?f=7

I hate when I'm wrong. ~~~ Perhaps he's just cranky because he's only a couple of weeks post-op. Or...maybe the size of his SAT English scores matches the size of...never mind. I just don't want to go there.

"Pastor Melissa" is the multi-million dollar widow of the late Gene Scott, a cult leader here in L.A. http://www.dymaxionweb.com/kulturedrome/gene%20scott.jpg

Sunta! Well, right off we've got your suspect narrowed down to that "special" 18% of the population that "strongly" supports Bush even now. "Special" being the operative word. Lemme guess...does it start with an "L?" Edited to clarify...NOT Leatha.

Leatha, As soon as Christians are in the same kind of minority as the other groups you listed, it might make sense to get our panties in a bunch about their rights being endangered. And as soon as Christians--the majority, remember...the group with all the power in this culture--set the example as to how to treat others who believe differently, it might be easier to tell the good guys from the bad guys in this drama. But, if you want to feel the wrath of a Christian or two, try to not say the words "under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance. Or ask that the school stop having Halloween parties on school property during the educational day because Halloween is a holiday based on religious beliefs that conflict with yours (not to mention that the school's test scores indicate that they could USE another day of study, not parties.) Try being the non-Christian parent when your kid is in a classroom full of religious motifs this time of year. If you want you kid to keep her solo in the school choir "Winter Holidays" performance, do you even MENTION that every song they are performing is a freakin' CHRISTIAN HYMN!? In terms of day-to-day hegemony, the Christians are millenia ahead of the other groups mentioned. Funny how most people can see only how Islam has taken over the lives of the citizens of Middle Easten countries, without seeing how Christianity has dictated a good part of how our lives are conducted here. There ARE parallels.

Just my wild ass guess here, but I'm thinking that most of the Rapture Ready people do not hold today's mental health standards in very high esteem...and tha the twain would seldom meet.

But wait! There's more! So many end-of-the-world's, and--so far--not one of them available through Ticketron. http://www.religioustolerance.org/endwrl14.htm

My bad...all the Bush supporters look alike to me. Maybe it's the blinders... In that case...if you belong to Rapture Ready or any similar group or espouse those beliefs, yup, you're weird. YMMV Editing to add...here are a few of the INNUMERABLE End-of-Times/Doomsday/Rapture/Second Coming Scheduled Appearances. Do we need to buy tickets for ALL of them? http://www.geocities.com/alma-geddon/infinity1.html

Lying is a good idea if--and only if--you want to find yourself having a surgery that isn't right for you, not having the surgery "deliver" what you thought it would deliver, and if you don't mind dealing with severe depression, substitute addictions and/or thoughts of suicide. If one shrink give you an MMPI or similar multiple choice test and you "fail" the test, look for one who will interview you. If TWO or more shrinks--using different assessment tools--agree that you are not currently a good candidate for wls, you might want to find out why.

I thought you were staying away from this thread because of all the unreasonable people here...and then you post the above...fascinating.

I was just reading what another patient, age about 40, wrote pre-op about her wls goals. She said that she wanted to fall in love and get married. NOT that she wanted to be healthy, or to move better (her pre-op BMI was around 55), or to be able to fit in normal-sized places, or to NOT be pre-judged by strangers based on her obesity, or to be able to go shopping without becoming exhausted or needing a helper, or to NOT base her restaurant choices on which ones had armless chairs, or to be able to go out of town and know that if her luggage was lost she could buy clothes...etc. Nope, she had an adolescent, romantic vision of what wls would do for her. So, after this woman lost a considerable amount of weight and got down to a BMI of 27 or so...and she hadn't found Prince Charming...she picked up drinking as a substitute behavior...and regained to a BMI of 35...so far. I would HOPE that any mental health professional or bariatric surgeon would recognize that having the dream of falling in love and getting married at the top of her list was like a warning flag. This woman doesn't know who she is or what she wants, other than she just wants to be acceptable to a man. WLS does what it does. People who are counting on it to solve all of their problems should be educated on what they can reasonably expect the surgery to do and what needs another approach.

An EDUCATED psychologist will know what one of these MMPI's or MMPI-clones can diagnose and what it cannot diagnose. One thing they are NOT set up to deal with is reality. YOUR issues...and, as I recall, I was dealing with interstitial cystitis, a bladdr disease that makes you need to pee every 40 minutes or so, day and night, and other illnesses...OH WAIT! ONE OF MY FAVORITES!!! The test pretty much diagnosed COPD as panic attacks because I had "difficult breathing" and felt that "I might die." Imagine! Thinking you might die just because you can't breathe...how insane is THAT!!! While that CAN indicate panic attacks, but given that I had Chronic Obsructive Pulmonary Disease and I really did had trouble breathing...you'd think someone who had spent that much time in school COULD have added 2+2. Anyway...you need a shrink who will interview you personally, not one who relies on the easy-way-out tests. Good luck.

My husband has killer psoriasis. His NEW dematologist uses a three-fold approach. He usues a topical (Dovanex, I think) on a daily basis, then he goes to the tanning place three times a week (he started with just a couple of minutes and is up to about eight, I think), and he injects himself twice a week with a miracle drug called "Embrel." It is highly expensive...like $2500/month...but the insurance pays for it because he has psoriatric arthritis inside of all the places that he has psoriasis on the outside. It has made a HUGE difference in his life. I hope you can find something that works as well for you.

I'm not Cherokee, but my Mexican half is, of course, "native American." On that side we have an ancestor from a relatively obscure California Tribe, but it was one of the only tribes that had a treaty with the US that was ratified by Congress. My grandfather started the paperwork to have us enrolled in the rolls of "The Bureau of Indian Affairs," back around 1950. He had fdecided to forgo an earlier opportunity--around 1930--because he was afraid that "Indian blood" would be used to limit his rights. The enrollment closed right around 1970. We each got a check. I voted for them to give San Diego back, but I was in the minority. The check wasn't much...barely four figures. But I guess it's the thought that counts. I'm not Indian enough to be into "the open spaces," except to drive by or look at photos and "ohh and ahhh" appropriately. Somehow, the "room service gene" sneaked in.

Wheetisn, We are nowhere near as orgainzed as you are, but our automatic deposits go into one account, then we write a check from that account to the account from which we do our online banking. I don't know if it really makes a difference...but I feel like it provides an extra layer of something between incoming money and outgoing money.

Okay...so I'm not a Suze Orman fan...but I bought her product and--while getting everything IN the box was a pain--I'm glad it's done. http://tinyurl.com/wjtqq It's also availabe at www.qvc.com Item # F8500 It not only has a place to store everything (except those old HUGE living trust documents that look like big city phone books), it has a list of everything that needs to be in there. My very organized sister saw mine, got jealous and got one, too. Six years ago, my husband had a heart attack. Once the dust settled, I had to go home and find things. Whichever of us has the next emergency, the other needs only to grab the blue box. "It," or a copy of "it"--whatever that turns out to be...medical insurance, disability info, wills, retirement stuff, powers of attorney, social security stuff, credit card info, FICO scores, vehicle registrations, auto insurance, homeowners' stuff and more--is in there. It also has a CD which pumps out boilerplate wills and medical power of attorney documents. We kittysat our daughter's cat and wouldn't give the cat back until she sat down and completed her will, POA and durable POA for medical care. (She IMPLIED kidnapping, but we ignored her.)

Since she's not coming back to this thread, she won't be able to follow this link and see that the US, for the first time since 1933, has maintained a "negative savings rate" (that is, people spend more than they make and there IS nothing to save) of 0.7%. I wonder why, if the economy is doing so well, people aren't putting money in the bank...and what they'll do if their "savings" that they think they have in their property or investments takes a dump. http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/21/news/economy/savings_rate/?postversion=2006122114

And it isn't just the New Testament that has ties to ancient stories. We have a massive deluge in the Epic of Gilgamesh, too, dating back to probably 3000 BC or so. (The apologists claim that ANY flood story would contain similar elements, and claim that the Gilgamesh story is silly and the Genesis story "makes sense.") (To them.)

We say roast beef when we're talking about the finished product. As in, "I think I'll order the roast beef." Same with "roast pork." As in, "I'd like the roast pork with dressing." But when you go to the store, you buy a roast, or a beef roast or a pork roast. I dont htink we ever mean chicken when we say "roast," but it could be in other parts of the country.

I may be the last person on the planet to have heard this...and I DID let it play for 20 minutes before I had to go to the gym. But you can get the drift right away and and become VERY frustrated in five minutes: http://kornkob.consumerist.com/consumer/clips/verizon-doesnt-know-difference-between-dollars-and-cents-220362.php