green

Hi and welcome to you. I thought that I would answer your question even though my answer will not be typical, I believe, of most of the gang who post here. It is true that I am an atheist but my parents, a Jewish father who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, and my mum, a Scot who had tried many spiritual avenues including witchcraft, were people who were fairly loosey-goosey by the time that we showed up. I figured that the parents had us done up Episcopalian/Anglican for we were born during the Eisenhauer era and this bizness of religion was still a big deal at that time. We could say that we didn't believe in any of it and that we prefered to sit at home and watch cartoons and chat with our father. We would sit around the kitchen table in our pajamas while mamma Green would haul herself together, put on her most responsible clothes and set off for church, ignoring her childrens' pleas that she not go, that she stay at home. She never made my dad go to church and much, much later on in my life I discovered that he was a Polish Jew, one who had survived the Holocaust, and a guy who was comfortable in his atheism. Occasionally she would drag me, the oldest kid, or my second born brother to endure these dreadful churchy experiences. In general she did leave us alone and would strike out on foot for these churchy events on her own. She never derived any joy from them and much later on, long after the times became more liberal and she had dropped her church going ways, I became aware that she had been the only one who was valiantly carrying the flag of normalcy for those crazy Greenz during the 1950s. Though my parents have pulled some pretty crazy stunts with respect to us, their brats, I find myself quite fascinated by both the social and spiritual revolutions which must have marked their early years. My two kid brothers never had any exposure to religion and even though I was shopped off to an Anglo-Catholic boarding school, one that was run by Anglo-Catholic nuns, at the age of ten, religious passion never did manage did make sense to me. It is important that fellow LBTers understand that I have often regretted my lack of the religious gene or whatever you want to call it but I still don't git it. Our weddings and our funerals are held without spiritual/religious types. My parents were deeply offended when their friends began to die off and these rent-a-minister types would show up in order to mouth a few platitudes during the funeral rites. They felt that it was disrespectful. We swore that we never pull the same stunt and we haven't.

Oh yah, I am certainly on the same page as BJean. I have been served excessively hot coffee from chain store restaurants from time to time when I have been on the run. I have helplessly watched the servers heat their caffienated beverages up to centre of the earth temperatures and I have not been pleased. Because I am an adult I end up throwing this scalding crap out if I am anxious to go somewhere else ASAP and then I never order it again from any of these dumps. I would certainly never, ever hold hold an item which was drifting into thermo-nuclear heat values near my own personal set o genitals. This would be an act of serious blondeness. (I figure I gets to say this because I have been blonde all my life. :heh: :heh: :heh: So hah, hah, hah, etc.) It is understood that it is important that people understand that they must stand up on their own two hind hooves and take responsibility for themselves. I suspect that because Canada has maintained a much more intimate relationship with Britain throughout the first and second world wars the emotional and intellectual philosophy which animates our courts and the considerable differences in our legal systems is in part that of common sense and stiff upper lip. This is why it is much more difficult to pursue a lawsuit north of the border.

We have recently gone through an interesting case up here. A Jehovah's Witness couple became pregnant with six kiddies. They were born prematurely and began to die off because JW folk do not believe in blood transfusions; it is against their religion and folks who choose to contravene the caveats of the church will find themselves shunned for life. A couple of the kiddies did die before the provincial government intervened and forced, through a court order, that the surviving infants received blood transfusions if necessary. This business of where civil law begins and religious rights end is not only an issue in the United States. Canada struggles with this question, too, and so do the western European democracies. When I left France in early 1984 the big debate in France hinged upon the civil right of cultural minorities to circumcise their female children. There was a big court case going on at the time when I left. With respect to this JW couple, they went through the trouble of having artificial insemination (and not through legal Canadian channels because the excess kiddies would have been culled), they then washed up on the Canadian medicare system, gave birth to their children prematurely and refused, for religious reasons, blood transfusions. It is to the credit of the local system that the names of the couple and their children never were made public. Where I find myself adrift hinges entirely on the event itself. I don't think that it was such a good thing that this grrl was loaded up with so many babies in the first place and I am uncomfortable about the role my government chose to play with respect to forcing transfusions on the remaining children. The family does belong to a religious group which holds a passionate conviction on this very issue of blood transfusion. I find myself terribly confused and would welcome the comments of others....if ya want to, eh.:phanvan

As I understand it BubbleButt is choosing to do something which is very, very cool. She is saying that although she personally would be unable to tolerate abortion as an answer - in fact she finds abortion to be repulsive - she recognises that this is her moral and emotional response. She recognises that if she were to vote according to her personal visceral response she would vote against the right of women to choose or, to put it more bluntly, she would be against abortion. She, however, has chosen to recognise that this is her moral axis and indeed her recognition of those situations which might drive other women to elect to undergo abortions is finally outside her purview. She has chosen the honourable path. She has stated her preferences but has also allowed that this is an issue which is far too complicated for her to opt to control on the behalf of other women. I am pro-choice of course. I am one of those women who believe that the final choice must be left up to the indivual, that the targetted woman must always have the right to decide for it is this poor chick who will be the one who will have to shoulder the consequences, physically, socially, emotionally, and - should she opt to keep the kid - financially. I would argue that there is a long history of infanticide, a post birth form of abortion, and that the material in the Old Testament concerning abortion and infanticide is kinda ambiguous with respect to the attitude of the Diety towards this activity. As an atheist I am comfortable in saying that the needs of the potential mother, the critter who is already here and who has already embarked upon her crazy, mixed-up welcome to the 21st century life, trump that of a clumpling of cells. It is her call. Sometimes that shallow, idiotic, and frightened pregnant momma is anxious to follow through the project and feels that she can make sure that the little baby human which she tosses off is going to be loved and cherished and protected. This is cool but this is simply a matter of choice and it must remain a matter of choice. Green is of the opinion that all children should be wanted children.

Though you all may well be irritated by my comparisons of our two countries, it is well known in Canada that Americans are litigous and thus the array of idiocy labels on all products sold south of the border. Many of the law suits which are successfully launched in the United States would not fly in Canada. They would be turfed out of court for they would be deemed as frivolous. The understanding up here is that basic commonsense must apply when an adult is using tools or indeed any other item. A lawsuit can only be launched when the item can be shown to be defective. Thus a bonehead who ends up sawing his leg off with his brand new circular saw, the one that does not carry the caveat that this item is not to be used on limbs, is $h!t outta luck up here. And for the same reason, the famous MacDonalds' coffee case would be unlikely to fly even though their coffee is both horrible and horribly hot.:heh: The courts up here are never sympathetic when products are misused; they are sympathetic when a product is proven to be defective. My layman's reading of the local system is that the courts are most protective of victims who are children or those victims who have been badly injured by those faulty items produced by major manufacturers, the ones who can afford adequate R&D: of course this most usually comes down to the vehicle folk. The pharmaceutical gang are also vulnerable. The industries which produce items, clothing, toys, and such, for children are also vulnerable and in the case of children's items this is not an area that is easily controlled. There are many, many small companies and then there are many off-shore companies which produce items for this market. I don't know how things work stateside but we do have government inspectors and civilian consumer groups examining toys, etc for potential safety problems. As an example: when it comes to young children there is the concern that they might be able to swallow material from their stuffed animals and other toys. And then there is this issue of flammable clothing. By the way, all my comments to do with the difficulties concerning the safety and protection of children are in the way of a side bar and should be considered as being kind of off topic. (Green got carried away, eh:o )

Thanks, Dynamo. I am already committed to this surgery. I have already put a downpayment on the job. Whenever I take action of this nature it seems impetuous but usually comes after I have spent a period of time fretting over something which really annoys me. This is how I got myself banded; I made a preliminary appointment and when I heard that I qualified I immediately wrote a cheque. Of course a certain amount of blind panic sets in later!:faint: Then when the deed is finally done I end up feeling quite pleased with myself for going ahead with it. In fact this is how I have managed to do a number of the most interesting things in my life. When I was 30 and single I decided that I would take a 7 month unpaid leave of absence from my job in order to live in Europe. After I had arranged to do so I was sick with panic. I didn't know anyone in Europe and I only spoke English. And a year later when I was visiting friends whom I had made over in France I met and had a 3-week affair with a Frenchman. We decided that we were in love. I came home, quit my job, rented out my house, and went back to France in order to live with him. Again, I was sick with panic!:omg: And this business finally ended up very badly when viewed on the short term. I came home heart-broken and without a job. Now I am very glad I did it. It was a painful break-up but it was also one of the most interesting periods of my life. It seems I am always juggling a cautious, almost timid side of my personality with a daredevil side. This is probably not a bad thing - I am 57 and I am solvent.:heh: As for the facelift, I have been warned that I am going to look like a victim for at least three weeks post surgery. This is why I am thinking burqa. And I live down in the heart of the city. As BJean can likely tell you from living in Montreal, Canadian cities are more like European cities or like the American cities of San Francisco and New York. That is to say that urban life is very lively here and our ghettos are more likely to be confined to certain suburban high rise zones. But although life is easy and lots of fun here it will, on the other hand, be much more difficult to hide my face while I am recovering.:cry That is gonna be a downer and very damn difficult. And my mate will have to do a lot of gophering for me during this period of time. He is OK about this stuff. He has discovered that it comes along with having a mate and he has now become used to me, the older of us two by 9 years, presenting him with a fair amount of neediness. He saw me through the deaths of both my parents and of my younger brother as well as the realisation that I needed my first pair of reading glasses. And of course he hand fed me demerol after I had been banded. Nevertheless, I fear that my latest stunt will be tough on him. This has been a long post but it has been a relief to get all of this off my mind. Thanx to all of you who have been patient enough to endure this.

I know that you must not take pain killers that also thin the blood - such as Aspirin - before surgery. It is important that your blood clots easily after surgery is why. But I take Aspirin quite often. It is an anti-inflamnatory and I have torn rotator cuffs.:cry

Wow!!! The Cirque du Soleil is very, very prestigious!!!! Green is wildly impressed! And the francais that he will be learning will be more useful on this side of the pond. I learned mine through living in France and have great trouble understanding Canadian French, ironic because I am Canadian. And yup, I am no newcomer to this business of vanity surgery! I inherited dewlaps from both my mother and my father's family and apart from them my jawline was getting awfully mushy looking. I also come from a family of no-lips and I wanted to wear lipstick before I died. What the surgeon did was excavate my jawline, give me lips, and fill in the creases that run from the nose to the mouth. This was all micro-surgery and seven years later I still look way better than I should thanx to him. Now - alas - he wants to do big stuff and I was hoping for more micro. Big stuff means a longer recovery and pain! With the micro I had, a week later I was fit to celebrate Xmas and go out in public. It seems with this I will have 3 weeks of wearing the burqa.:cry Note to self: must remember to join local mosque down the street.:biggrin1:

Up here all those other law suits would be considered frivolous and for the law suit against the bartender or host to proceed it would have to be proven that he knowingly continued to serve drinks to someone who was drunk and was going to drive. What many people end up doing is confiscating the drunk's car keys and sending him or her home in a taxi, having someone else drive him home, or having him spend the night if it is a private party. MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving have made big inroads on public attitudes up here and now drinking and driving are viewed in much the same way as smoking is. I know that whenever we go to a party we take public transportation or we cab it. The people who tend to party and drive and then crash are most often teenagers. At that age everyone believes that the rules are made for other folk.

All of the above are enshrined in law where I live. Same sex marriage is legal. We do have strict gun laws and both bartenders and hosts who serve their guests too much can be held partially responsible in the event that the individual later drunkenly harms or kills another individual. They can be sued in a civil court of law.

I take coated aspirin all the time and don't have any problems. I dunno if that's any help to you....

I don't know about thermage but I am getting this done by one of Toronto's big name plastic surgeons. He gets written about a lot and he is interviewed on television shows. I figure better to pay extra because you can't hide your face. If it is screwed up it is right out there in plain view. It is not like a botched tummy tuck. Although I could start wearing full Muslim, couldn't I? And I definately don't want the caught in a wind tunnel effect. I am plenty nervous.... He's the same surgeon that did a little work on me when I turned 50.

Wheets, I concur with Bjean. I wanna be 5'11" and I am certain that you and your husband will produce an excellent sprog. If not, well, maybe you can trade him for one of a different style.:omg: And as for your tiny feet, BJean, I am quite envious. This means that you can always find pretty shoes on sale. I never can.:cry

The best bagels are found in Montreal. My city lost the big bagel competition! As for the face lift, it is scheduled for the third week of June and is going to cost me a car. Good thing I've never learned how to drive and always take public transit, eh! lol :biggrin1: And yup, I was banded last September. I have lost 30 lbs so far and now weigh in at 170. The lapband doc and his magic hi-tech computerized weighing machine say that my target weight is 150 and I am inclined to agree. I am not of a delicate build; I've got big boney hands and giant feet and broad shoulders. I still wear a 3X sweater thanx to my shoulders and a fondness for loose garments. The plastic guy said that a loss of 10 lbs post lift isn't going to affect a face lift. And I will probably be down by another 10 by the end of June. I am very restricted right now. I can't guzzle water in my usual careless style. I've got to drink it daintily. And I can always postpone the surgery until the fall. I am really scared of the pain and the recovery time. He wants to give me the full monte. I was kinda hoping that I could get away with a facelift lite! but it seems I am gonna have to have the old fart treatment....:phanvan What did make me decide to sign on for a face lift was the positive results which I have received from the lapband surgery. :welldoneclap: I should also tell you, BJean, that I had my jowls - they were really driving me nuts - hoovered by this guy when I turned 50 and I was delighted by the results. In fact my jawline still looks good. I guess I now have a positive attitude towards surgery.:Banane20: As for my husband, he always has the same attitude: you don't need it, but if you want it I will support you.

My parents were short slim elegant brunettes. I am comparatively tall, blue-eyed, prone to being a fatty, and reddish blonde with fish belly white skin! A total recessive, genetically speaking! blehhh! Then my brother was born and he took after them. I was so furious that I refused to speak until I was 3 years old with the result that they hauled me off to all sorts of specialists.

Come on down, sez Green. The prices are getting really cheap now that winter and March break are over.

Oh! That is a terribly, terribly sad ending to it all. You have my condolences, Carlene. I know that this has affected you deeply (as it would me).

BJean: it sounds like that spa should be called a 'getting fat farm.' I am deeply in love with bagels but there ain't no way a grrl is going to lose weight on a bagel diet.:faint: As for me, I have just signed on for the next frontier: a face lift!!!!! :welldoneclap: And I am kinda terrified, eh.:omg: It seems that there will be pain and I am a sissy when it comes to pain.:nervous Jeez, I hope I don't end up looking like Pamela Lee Anderson....:rolleyes Now that would be false advertising!:heh: I could get arrested..................:Banane20:

Haha, BJean, Green can certainly relate. She herself is a kinda fishbelly white and she also glows like snow in the sun! *sob* Her mate tans real nice and he has often been mistaken for being part Native American or Spanish even though he is German and French. Oh yah, the body gods were kind to him. (Good thing Green is a smarty pants.)

Woohoo! Green adores being turned red! Although I am an atheist and a cynical individual by temperament I am not inclined to agree with the above statement. I believe that religions were often established in a more innocent fashion - Jesus's activities may be considered to be somewhat akin to those of oh, let us say, a Che Guevara or a Ghandi, given the political and religious power structures in place at his time; in brief, Jesus was certainly a revolutionary and he did fall afoul of the local power brokers. This is easy to decypher whether one believes in the Bible or not. Jesus came from the common people even though his antecedents were royal, the line of the Jewish kings. Jesus tossed the money makers out of a place of worship. Jesus recruited members of the working class to follow him. Jesus taught the notion that all humans have equal standing under the eye of God. He protected and valued a prostitute, Mary Magadalene, and taught that the rich are at a disadvantage when it comes to entering heaven. He sure did challenge the existing power structure, eh? I am inclined to suspect that many movements, religious or social, are initially founded in idealism and with the best of intentions. The corruption and the greed are things that sadly follow later on. If we wish to look at the dreary result of an initially idealist secular movement we could examine Communism as it was applied to Czarist Russia. The initial impetus was an honourable one. This was a country which was still living in feudal times. Wealth was gathered in the hands of very few and fewer still were literate. And though the United States and Europe were arenas of modern industrial progress and were thriving, this country was still managing on the social and economic structure of the 1400s. There were peasants, there were illiterate local landowners, and there were a handful of power brokers who lived in the capital city of Russia. Communism did serve to toss the country into the 20th century, free the serfs, and raise literacy. Along with these benefits there grew an oppressive totalitarian state, and a new corrupt power structure. In just such a way Christianity was, I believe, an idealistic folk movement at its birth. At various points later on this Christian movement became lost to the idealists and the revolutionaries and became, like all successful movements do, machinery which comes to be used and owned by the establishment. The Franciscan monks were a group of folks who rebelled against the perceived wealth and power of the Catholic church; they were a group of Roman Christian adherents who were anxious to emphasize poverty and simplicity as part of their commitment to their religion. They chose to follow the teachings of another revolutionary, an individual who later came to be known as St Franciscus. The earliest Protestant schisms, excluding that of the Anglican/Episcopalian church, were prompted by a desire to reject the power structure and to return to basics. The efforts of these revolutionaries stand in stark contrast to the more questionable aspects of the Christian churches: the wealth of the Vatican, the former empire of Jimmy and Tammy Fae Bakker, the desire of Benny Hinn that his adherents buy him a personal aircraft, and the personal wealth and power of a Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc. Although I am an atheist I believe that the role that faith/belief plays in the hearts of mankind is exceedingly complex. I personally think that one role of religion is to help men believe that they can make sense of their emotional and physical environment, an environment which might otherwise be much too terrifying for many of us to endure. This comfort would have been particularly crucial in those times when science was its infancy. And, as I have previously stated, all sacred texts are filled with rules which not only instruct us, but command us to maintain social order.

My mate and I love Mexico, too, and we are going there this Friday to spend a week on the Pacific side near PV. My mate and one of his good pals, a Polish immigrant by the way, both figure that they would love to move to Texas; the pair of them share powerful cowboy fantasies. I think it's a guy-thing.:phanvan As for me, I am built the opposite to you, Carlene. I thrive in the cool and suffer mightily in heat and sun. Though I am blonde I have the complexion of a red-head and I sweat. Boy do I sweat!:cry This is kinda tragic for me: I find the hot countries more interesting to travel in. And during the dog days of summer in Toronto I am more or less confined to my air conditionned house. On the other hand, my skin is fabulous for my age and I walk a great deal when the temperatures plunge. I will spend this week in Mexico loitering in the shade covered in number 55 sun block. We will be strolling along the beaches early in the AM and late in the PM and I will likely spend part of the day in my room with the A/C on max reading a book. And like you BJean, I adore the handicrafts of Mexico. The artisanal traditions of Mexico are far richer than those of the other get-away countries of the tropics. I particularly love the carved and painted animals though we did have problems with the one we bought, a big one, which turned out to be infested with dry wood termites. I discovered this pretty quickly after we got it home through the sawdust that the thing kept shedding. Anyhow, I went on line and found out that one of the ways of killing this particular type of termite was to expose the wood to prolonged periods of sub-zero temperatures. The cat - it was a jaguaranda - was far too big to fit into our freezer and so I stuffed it into a garbage bag and left it in our garage for a couple of years. This has solved the problem but just to be sure I have the cat sitting on top of a metal plate.

Oooh, shopping! Green is jealous! I hope you get better fast.

I became quite chunky after being exiled to boarding school. The grub there was mostly carbs. My mother came from England and cooked plain and often rather boring food. We did eat vast quantities of over-cooked meat in those days. But the most fattening things we ate when I was young were potato latkes and pierogis, a lethal combo of carbs and fat. As an adult I acquired a taste for food with sauces and cheese and then post-menopause - which happened when I was 41 - I started to get a little meatier. The real damage began after I turned 50!!!!! By 57 I was a chunky monkey and on the road to worse. That is why I was banded last September.

I agree with Cloe. I am totally envious of your eyebrows! Mine are thick but they are now so light that they look like basteing threads. :cry And the rest of you looks fabulous!!!!:clap2: Thanx for the pix.

I very much like Bjean's comments in the above quoted post. It does seem to me, too, that those who are believers would require that their spiritual guidance involve every aspect of their daily lives and this is provided by the leaders of their churches, of course. What dismays many of us is when that guidance omits common sense, kindness towards others, tolerance, and acknowledgement that there has been certain changes in our social fabric, some related to our greater scientific knowledge, since a sacred text was written. It seems to me, a atheist, that apart from the command to worship God, the overwhelming thrust of all sacred texts is establish and maintain social order among men. This is what all the rules are about: things you shouldn't do and things you should do. Now, the Bible has a number of rules concerning the treatment of slaves and captured women of enemy tribes which are entirely inappropriate for modern times. So too, I would argue, is the material contained in this Book which is viewed by some Christians as being hostile to homosexuality. Indeed, it could be argued that the story of Sodom is more a comment on sexual excess and sexual degradation than a complaint against two loving members of the same sex who wish to live in a union and enjoy the same civil protections that the rest of us do.