Tear from HeavenIt seems New Zealanders are getting more superstitious, with a greater percentage believing in fortune tellers and faith healers than believing in God.
An increase in superstition is a very bad thing - before you know it we will graduate as a society from just offering up our unborn babies as human sacrifices to sacrificing the elderly and the useless as well.
I went to confession last night, but it seems I can still blog. I can only put it down to a resolution that was made last night that I've been having problems with for nearly a year. It's released the block, so to speak.
Seven more days until the the remembrance of the greatest sacrifice ever made and nine more days until Easter!
Good evening Lucyna. It always amazes me how harvesters (it is that time of year) find it necessary to move between properties during peak hour traffic ... creates so much dangerous impatience.
ReplyDeleteSuperstitious belief always peaks at times of hardship and at times of affluence. There has been an overall move from traditional christian religous belief over time, as you point out, but hardship always creates a resurgence in such belief ... affluence always brings out the more fringe 'educated' crazies ... those who sit on rocks going 'oommm.'
Did I detect a Zen somewhere there Lucyna??
Here's a ZenTiger.
ReplyDeleteEvening Mojo. I haven't yet checked for further enlightenment, but I'll visit your blog later in my search for answers :-)
Enlightenment, Zen.
ReplyDeleteThe answers were implicit in the writings ... but I will indeed elaborate more specifically in the near future.
A drastic subject change: I was somewhat less than amused to see that a 'sexual predator' in the Hawke's Bay was sentenced to a term of 'preventative detention,' and was not to be eligible for parole for six years. Now first conviction was 1986 ... & believe it or not the Hawkes Bay Today news paper did a big sell job on him ... special feature on his antique boat ... very alluring. So offending from 1986 to 2007 and six year non parole period??
This is redefining 'preventative detention,' which raises the question of what 'pull' does this errant chappy have over the judiciary ... a mason???
& mate ... if you are going to define some folk as 'friends' and a majority as not 'friends' then you are bound to impact on that 'friendly' discourse that is 'Friday Night Free for All.'
ReplyDelete.... sooooo hurt.
Good evening everyone!
ReplyDeleteIt's finally got cold in the winterless north.
I had a jumper on last night for the first time all summer/autumn.
Now, talk fo harvest, reminds me of the harvest festivals we had a school as a kid.
Do we still have them in NZ?
Hi Mojo,
ReplyDeleteIf by Zen you mean empty mind, then no, my mind is hardly ever empty. But if you mean turning into the tiger on this blog, I'm more a lion than a tiger, and more female than male .. oh no, my thoughts are going to get tangled up.
As for the friends on the side bar - that started off as a list of bloggers I know personally and then morphed into a few that I've gotten to know well and/or have an affinity with via the blogs. I certainly hope no one feels left out by not being on that list.
Sigh.
Maybe I'm going to have to scrap that idea.
Contrary to popular belief, If the Judge was a mason and the perp was known to have been a mason- he would throw the book at him.
ReplyDeleteHI FFM!
ReplyDeleteThe local Steiner school does the harvest festival. It's a nice idea, really. Just got to be careful with the pagan overtones.
Mojo,
ReplyDeleteI just checked your profile to see if you have a blog - your profile is not available.
Do you have a blog?
Of course he has a blog. It's on our blog roll!
ReplyDeleteMojo, the "Friends" tag list Lucyna added is brand new. I'll help her find the blogs for our known friends!
PS: any friends on other widgets like the "NZ Politics" for No Minister and FFM will have to put up with a single reference, or we will run out of space.
Hi all;
ReplyDeleteAll well in your own little corners of Godzone, I trust.
I made the mistake of watching TV3 news tonite. Apparently Obama has saved the world or something and his wife has "rock star' charisma.
I am so relieved.
Os, I am sure we did, some time ago, enter an era of accommodation of errant, even deviant, behaviour. I do not believe that 'elite' collegialities stray far from this accommodation or affinity ... there is something awry here.
ReplyDelete'Not guilty on grounds of insanity,' is usually a sentence that visits assay by psychiatrists ... preventative detention generally has been seen as the twenty year plus, indefinite number. Early release for those repeat sexual predators always relied on cyproterone acetate, that medically induced erectile failure and mammary enhancement programme.
This is a change in sentencing practice .... something is awry here.
Relief comes in many forms Andrei.
ReplyDeleteSooo ... I might just be a friend, Zen??
Hi Lucyna , I must have missed out on the pagan overtones at the school harvest festivals.
ReplyDeleteWe would bring in a basket of fruit and veges, which would be given to the old folk in the village.
We would sing hymns like
'we plough the fields and scatter, the good seed on ther land."
And Andrei, it was Gordon Brown that saved the world, unless Obama had to do it a second time :)
Well, there's something Uncle Helen cannot claim, yet :)
Good evening all and yes it is tragic that the majority of New Zealanders think God is a delusion.
ReplyDeleteI pray that the Holy Spirit helps change this attitude.
Nothing pagan about the harvest festival at St Marys when i was a young fella, the sunday school and Choir would all go and help on a farm for the day (not much helping was done) and all the local farmers would chip in with produce, the congregation would all compete to supply the most and the it would be distributed amongst the needy. My only fond memories of my protestant childhood are harvest festival.
ReplyDeleteOh, and good evening everybody.
With regards to the blog lists: I'm doing the equivalent of moving the furniture around, seeing how it looks, not being happy, and then moving it again. I have no idea how long this whole process will take. So what everyone sees now will not necessarily be what we end up with.
ReplyDeleteHi Andrei!
Great to see you again. Any chance of a blog return?
Watching TV news is always bad. I very occasionally get sucked in after watching Chuck on Wednesday night. Got sucked into that because of Lost. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteThose durn (you like durn?) widgets!
ReplyDeleteThose widgets and wadgets are failed kinds of gadgets.
We idjits and twitjits can do naught but try fidgets.
I've tweaked them and twanged them and finally said dang them.
I'd hang em and slam em and are tempted to can em.
But they are handy eye candy with a poipose and purpose.
So rather than return em, I'll simply say durn em.
Oops, sorry. Seuss attack.
The ones Lucyna adds, I cannot edit and the ones I add I cannot edit outside of Explorer. And every now and then, I have to delete them and manually recreate them.
So eventually Mojo, after some long and complicated process I think you can safely expect to see your name linked with the mad ultra conservative fundamentalist radical nutjobs that apparently haunt this blog.
Sorry.
The harvest festival at our school was a competition for the kids to grow the largest vegetable and sell all the junk parents got rid of in the annual clean out.
ReplyDeleteThey sold a great hamburger too!
You saw Andrei?
ReplyDeleteWhere?
When?
Hi D4J,
ReplyDeleteI think it will get much worse before it gets better. I saw your link to the lack of dating culture in NZ on your blog. It was shocking, really, reading about young women using sex as a measure of whether or not to have a relationship with a guy. And sex before anything else!
Er, Zen.
ReplyDeleteLook up a few comments back.
My scroll bar dare not climb so far back into the past.
ReplyDeleteIt's time to move on. Helen Clark sings:
Hi Ho,
Hi Ho
To the UN I go.
I'm no back bencher
So goodbye Peter
Hi Ho Hi Ho Hi Ho.
Hi Zen;
ReplyDeleteYou missed my purple prose further up the thread?
Oh fie.
Indeed I should like to return to blogging - soon, the Lord willing.
In the meantime the odd comment or two in the civilized environs of NZconservative and Yes Minister and the swamps of Kiwiblog will have to do.
Well, the odd comment or two will be very much appreciated. You tend to fill out the space, Andrei. :)
ReplyDeleteHowdy Andrei.
ReplyDeleteOdd comments are very appropriate in the rather odd blogosphere. Keep those commenting skills tuned!
Skills are to be honed ... has a much more practical, earthy ring to it, a sharpness.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, music to my ears, that word honed. In tune with what I was trying to say, and sharp, like C. Or see, like sharp.
ReplyDeleteNice little verse their Zen
ReplyDeleteYou have quite an extensive bloggroll there Lucyna
I must remind BB to make mine longer.
Or is it easy to do?
Is it easy to learn?
The documentary channel has some strange stuff on tonight.
Texas teenagers keeping their virginty, followed by Naked Britain featuring people making nude calenders.
The women seemed to like the Cotswold Gardeners.
Andrei, "the swamps of Kiwiblog", I just love that description, as I am always up to my neck in it. Great to see you back on board.
ReplyDeleteYes Lucyna, unfortunately society must hit rock bottom before we can repair the damage.
Evening... or 'night as the case may be... spare a thought for those of us that 'do computers' for a living! Infernal machines that never sleep that are always causing their human underlords to loose sleep one way or another.
ReplyDeleteOff to make Access 2003 talk nicely to Outlook 2003 and share contacts across tables.
I commisserate.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, by extending such thoughts by the use of a computer, you will understand the depths I must descend to, to merely offer summary condolences.
They have us right where they want us.
Limited Access 2009 and Outlook Through Barred Windows 2009. Things haven't changed.
Here I Stand,
ReplyDeleteTotally get it, too.
Been there, done that.
A number of years back, after half a lifetime of service to the machines, I said "No more!". Now I homeschool my children and blog.
Zen: I'll remember that one, might even make it a haiku.
ReplyDeleteLucyna: I have just added blogging to the list: home educating 3 boys, computers, blogging.
Would that I could say 'no more!' alas after 15 years of naught else I am stuck with them while I wean myself on to something else.
FFM,
ReplyDeletethe blogroll is easy change if you are on Blogger, as you are and if you don't use a non-Blogger template. Yours looks pretty basic, so I think you are safe there.
When you are on Create Post, have a look at the other tabs. Click on the Layout tab. Then you'll see a layout of your blog on the screen. You can modify existing gadgets using the edit link on each one, or you can click on the Add a Gadget link to create a new type.
Play around, and you'll figure it out. But, don't accidentally delete things.
Here I Stand,
ReplyDeleteI used to be able to home-educate and work when my children were much younger, and I had a nanny looking after them when I was working. Now, it's impossible. That's mainly because of the nature of what my two are learning and the amount of my time they both take. That and housework is basically all I can do - and the housework suffers!
I'm just fortunate that I have a husband on a good income.
Lucyna, please do not try and coach FFM to make changes to his template. I will be the one that has to pass the hankies when he cocks it up.
ReplyDeleteFairfacts i will happily update the list. But not with the 184 blogs, journals, newspapers and tv channels that you originally asked me to put on it.
Cull it down to 25 and I will do it tomorrow.
And you are on my blogroll
ReplyDeleteAnd can we deal with the small headlines as well BB?
ReplyDeleteOh and D4J and others, if you fancy a change from the swampland of Kiwiblog, there's virgin meadowland over at the Fairfacts Media Show.
Come and pick the flowers, catch the butterflies, paddle in the babbling brook and enjoy the chilled wine at you feet.
It's just over a week old and I manage at least 6 posts a day.
BB,
ReplyDeleteHe did ask.
Having not been able to rearrange the furniture over here for a while (being warned of dire things happening), I am very much enjoying setting things up to my satisfaction, like I used to be able to.
Every blogger needs to be able to do this. Surely FFM can be trusted not to break anything?
did you not just see him write babbling brook?
ReplyDeleteDoes that answer your question?
A candidate for a Brooke Shield then?
ReplyDeleteZenTiger - is your poem at the 9:00PM comment a 'Haiku'? I recall learning something about that in 5th form, but can't remember the syntax.
ReplyDeleteD4J - re the Kiwiblog swampland... isn't that your mating ground?
NZC Authors - as I am in Madrid, I guess FNFFA still applies, timewise. As you know we are about to enter Holy Week (Semana Santa) and I have to say I am quite excited at being in a community/population that understands what this means. While in NZ we get the Santa Parade and Boobs on Bikes (in AKL), yet all across Spain there will be Easter processions, an activity of genuine meaning and purpose - sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it?. In my former local parish in Blockhouse Bay, Auckland, we celebrated Easter to a level I have not seen before, but I fully expect a whole new level here, and look forward to it immensely. This is my favourite time of year in the Church calendar.
Hi Sean. You are a fortunate person indeed. What a great experience.
ReplyDeleteRe my poem. Not a Haiku, not even accidentally, just a passing thought.
Although I once did a post on the Haiku: Haiku
Sorry I missed popping by on Friday - family dinner kept me away.
ReplyDeleteFF if you are looking to make your blogroll longer you could always add all blogs that link to yours ;-)
As for MandM not making the friends list, I didn't even notice.
[LOL]
We are currently moving the furniture around too - I got so far then had to call in help, you might notice Bethyada's profile is showing up on our blog at the moment as I am way in over my head on the CSS modification front right now.
Lucyna I so hear you on the balancing front, I have vague memories of working and homeschooling and my house being tidy... Now, like you I have my priorities straight - homeschooling and blogging! (Never thanked you for being my sounding board when I was half-crazed about what I was going to do re homeschooling and everything else on my plate earlier this year - it really helped)
Feel like I caught up a bit - missed hanging out with y'all on Friday - great to see Andrei on board!
Hey Madeleine, you're welcome!
ReplyDelete