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My first GF was in Wheaton.   

I'm sorry.


What a horrible place. More churches per capita than any other town in the US.

http://www.facebook.com/editprofile.php?sk=basic&success=1#!/profile.php?id=100001249978273

Christ, I hate you more already.

Dude, you went to Naperville North? I grew up in Wheaton and Elmhurst.

I just fell onto this on stumbleupon

I had a Spotted Cow this summer when I was in Wisconsin, and I remember being unimpressed. But it was maybe also just the atmosphere of the restaurant we were at which affected my taste - the restaurant itself was nice, but 9 people out of 10 were obese, and they all ate like pigs. We spent most of the meal saying bad things about them in French.

I only have one album (Trout Mask Replica), but I love it. Sorry to see him go.

I appreciate your guys' input, it helps.

Well I talked to her a bit last night, but it didn't go so well. She got mad at me for accepting to go to Switzerland, even though she had begged me to do so. It seems like now she's planning to pay for my part though. And we decided that for gifts for her family we could do some of them together in spirit, but she would pay for them. She has a ton of uncles and nieces for whom I was supposed to get gifts.

We spent the whole night in a bad mood though. We've had this conversation a thousand times, but she doesn't get how stressful it is. She keeps on telling me, "but it's supposed to be fun! why can't you just enjoy it?".

In my experience the children of rich people don't understand money, in a huge profound way. They REALLY don't get it. It might be really hard for her to comprehend the whole "work to earn money to barely get by" concept.

Echo'd.

Out of curiosity, does she have any plans for what she's doing if the money goes away?  Or if her parents are older then what she'll do after they're no longer around?

Nigel you're completely right. I think she wants to understand, but it just doesn't go through. With the grocery situation we've made progress. We split the grocery bill half and half, which means that I don't want us to get brand name everything. She still gets her super fancy juice, and I get my nice beer (mmmmm), but otherwise now we've gotten into a good rhythm of not spending to much on groceries, while still eating very well.

But for her, there's something missing if she doesn't go out and buy expensive things she doesn't need. Her mom recently took her to the coat store to get a fancy new coat.. she came back with two.

I don't know what she'll do when the money runs out, but I don't think it will. Her sister graduated 2 years ago, and is still living at their parents house, still hasn't found a job, and still gets everything paid for by her parents. I think my girlfriend's plan is just to stay in school as long as possible.

..I always get negative about her around the holidays.


But yeah I'll see what I can make, instead of buy. Otherwise with the combined-in-spirit gifts it should be fine.

And I'll put up more posters for my English lessons! Pick up some students who are stressing for exams.

Thanks for the support everyone.

(btw I still hate Christmas  )

I used to not like Christmas. I've never like my dad, and I always had to go to his house on Christmas (parents divorced at 6), which I never liked because it meant spending time with people I didn't like.

Now it's a whole other ball game. I HATE Christmas.

Two years ago I worked 70+ hours a week at 3 shitty jobs to be able to move to Belgium, so that I could be with my girlfriend. Many of you know that story, she came to the states on exchange, we were apart for a year and 10 days, she came to visit, and then I moved there. I worked my ass off to come here. I worked my ass off to stay here, working 8 hours without a break at illegal jobs cos they said they would get me a work permit. I was, at the same time, working my ass off to learn French fast enough to stay here on a student visa.

So now I'm studying here, French is no problem, but money, of course, still is. My mom is a pastor who hates her job and wants nothing more than to retire, and my stepdad is on disability, because he has a neuro-degenerative disease that prevents him from walking/standing for long periods of time. In short, they're not rich. So while I'm here studying (in a foreign language none the less), I'm also working my ass off teaching English so that I can have enough money to eat.

My girlfriend does not have those problems. Her parents are rich and she has plenty of money without working at all.

So, as you can imagine, money can be an issue. At Christmas, it's hell. I have to get presents for everyone in her family, which stresses me like crazy. I would be so, so, SO much happier if none of them gave me gifts, and I gave none of them gifts. I don't need things to be happy. I need to not worry about if I'll be able to pay the rent to be happy. THEN, my girlfriend's friend invites us to spend a week in Switzerland with them. Which means, of course, spending a lot of money that I don't have. I told her that I absolutely couldn't afford to do the skiing and all that, which would have been hundreds of euros, but after her begging me I agreed to go without the skiing part. That still leaves me with about 80€ I'm going to have to spend, plus a week that I won't be able to work. She knows that it really stresses me, and at some point she offered to pay for my part, but it was hesitant and didn't sound sincere.

Then there's the shopping! She really wanted a new hat for Christmas, so we went to the mall in our town so I could get her one as her present. This mall is a terrible, terrible building. It's like they actually consciously tried to take every commercial aspect of American Christmas and concentrate it under one roof. So we spend an hour and a half there, at the end of which I was understandably in agony, though trying not to show it. She understood though and then got mad at me.

I know it sounds cliché, but I really just want a Christmas where I can spend time with people, no shopping, no stressing over money, just good food and people. But that's not how they do it in my girlfriend's family, and she already thinks I don't like her family enough.

I hate Christmas so fucking much.

I just need to get that out. Or kill me.

I am definitely still a Discordian after however many years it's been, and to me that means looking for new information and perspectives; constantly seeking to surprise myself and others.

I think that you can still "be" a Discordian, or at least self-identify, without holding on to much of the trappings it originally came in. 

This sums up pretty well what I would have said. I still consider myself a Discordian as well, as I still appreciate and apply the thought patters that Discordianism brought me. That doesn't mean, however, that I continue to read the texts that originally taught me those thought patterns. I kept the form while leaving behind the material.

And this is the main thing holding me back from getting the Chao tattooed to me, it's that I want to stay like water, fluid, able to change form completely at the drop of a hat, and be a different kind of nutjob tomorrow.

The reason I got the chao tattooed on my leg is the very opposite. I knew that I would change, I knew that in the future I could be vastly different than what I was, but I understood that the chao represented something very important for me that I didn't want to forget. So if I end up someday, through some bizarre turn of events, as a businessman in a corporation, I don't want to be able to forget the ideas that are inextricably linked to my ankle. Identity preservation insurance, if you will. I never want to be without the joy of nonsense.

Right now, I'm a lit major. But I plan to do programs in history and philosphy as well.

I've been told German is easy, and I've been thinking about taking French. Latin would be a sure fire winner, but it's not offered where I'm at right now.

So, I guess it's a toss-up between French and German... But aren't the French really snooty about thier language?

Learn French and go to Belgium! They're nice to foreigners with accents, as long as they're trying.

I think French is easier than German, but that's because I was in a French-speaking country when I started learning it. Once my ear got used to picking apart the words people were saying, it because quite simple, and now it's what I speak all day (I get my English kicks on the internet).
With German, I feel like it's pretty easy to speak barbarically, but speaking correctly is a pain in the ass, what with the declension of the articles and all. It's useful for philosophy, true, but so is French.

I know it's anything but revolutionary on this board to reject the strict adherence to the Principia, or the application of the pineal crap everywhere, but the reason I felt like it was a good idea to write this out is to not discredit that which one can take from the book.

For me, the Principia helped me get across a river, but I left it at opposite shore once I'd arrived there.


Also they're just useful metaphors that are worth sharing to anyone, in my opinion.

by "activate" you mean start?
open terminal, type ddate
as you see in the manpage there's a load of options too.

or you mean using ddate as default? i've never heard of something more useless.

yeah I wanted to see if there was an option to put it as default, though of course I wouldn't keep it. Was just out of curiosity.

Emperor Norton Utilities

I don't (yet) see a clear way to activate it though, I'm on the newest release of Ubuntu.

So, as we often see here on this board, many people find the Principia, read it, and then swear by it. While reading some stuff on Wittgenstein lately, I came across something he wrote at the end of this Tractacus that seemed quite relevant to this situation. It was his belief that his, and any other, philosophy, should be considered as a ladder. You climb the ladder to get a better view of your surroundings, but then you don't stay up there, you get down and get on with your life. My personal addition to this concept is that each philosophy is a ladder that will show you a different secion of the landscape, and so you can climd as many as you wish in order to get varied views, and then remember what you've seen, but move on.

Andre Compte-Sponville, in his books L'Amour, la Solitude, referenced a slightly different version of this, which apparently comes from the Buddhist tradition. The Buddha, arriving at a river, building himself a raft to cross it. Once built, the raft serves its purpose of bringing him to the other side. However, having crossed the river, the Buddha would not continue to carry the raft on his back, which would only weigh him down.


So yeah, once the Principia has served its purpose, the pineal crap should be left behind. Not saying I don't still get a laugh out of the pentabarf, but come on.

Do you also enjoy cough syrup mixed with simple syrup? That's pretty much what Kasteel rouge tastes like. Neither me or my girlfriend could get down more than a sip.

remember the days when it was obvious what articles were satire and what was legit news™?

oh this.