Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tammy S on July 11, 2012 at 9:27am

We have state run liquor stores in NC, we still have 'dry' counties and you can't buy beer here until after 12pm on Sundays... Jesus doesn't want you to drink without him!

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on July 11, 2012 at 3:03pm

Have you ever read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land?  There's a sequence that takes place in a "Fosterite" temple...sort of a bastard child of Scientology and whoop-it-up fundamentalist mega-churches.  The bars (and the slot machines) are inside the churches. And people with enough $$$$ to sit in the box seats get their drinks served to them.

RAH was SO far ahead of his time in so many ways!

Permalink Reply by Tammy S on July 11, 2012 at 3:28pm

Shhh don't tell the mega churches! Frankly I'm surprised they haven't stooped to that level yet, I mean they could always explain it away as, " Well...Jesus drank wine" and "Keepin' the money changers 'in' the Temple"!

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on July 11, 2012 at 7:18pm

I think there was a similar line in the book, something like "God wants us to be happy, so drink up and get happy!"  (I don't recall the "Fosterites" mentioning Jesus at all. I'll have to read the book again...but Heinlein intended the whole thing to be a satire on religion...especially on the Jesus story.)

As for the "money-changers" number in the buybull, that is so screwy.  Jews lived all over the Eastern Mediterranean, and went to Jerusalem when they could to make burnt offerings at the temple.  In order to purchase whatever animal they were going to offer the priests to cook for dinner, they had to exchange their money for local money. The money-changers were performing a necessary service, and they were entitled to take a percentage of the amount to support themselves.  No such thing as a non-profit organization in those days, as far as I know.

What Jesus is supposed to have done was utterly meaningless.  And since no historians living at that time ever mentioned what would have been a scandalous event, I doubt it happened at all.

I doubt ALL of the Gospels, and Acts.  That's why I choke and snort whenever I hear somebody say that something is the "gospel truth." 

"It Ain't Necessarily So" is one of my all-time favorite songs.

Permalink Reply by Chris Breman on July 11, 2012 at 5:20am

I'm in a red area: city centre of a town that is famous for its jenever...

Permalink Reply by dr kellie on July 11, 2012 at 10:00am

Dang, why do we need more grocery stores than bars?

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on July 11, 2012 at 2:55pm

I don't get it.  Of course bars would outnumber "grocery stores"! We don't have independent Mom & Pop neighborhood stores anymore, except for 7-11 franchises. 

A supermarket is a huge, expensive operation with a huge, expensive payroll, and a giant parking lot. How many can one neighborhood or town support?   But it doesn't take a lot of space to set up a tavern or a bar...just a lot of time, effort, and money to get the licenses. It doesn't take 50+ employees to run one.  And it doesn't need thousands of customers to keep it afloat, either.

Since the 1970s, with the first fake oil shortage (with fleets of full tankers sitting idle just outside the whatever-you-call-it limit), I betcha there are more bars than gas stations, too.

Economics, my friends.  Economics.

I wonder what the purpose of the original survey was supposed to be...  It begins to have a whiff of the Morality Police.

Permalink Reply by dr kellie on July 11, 2012 at 3:59pm

I agree.  I'm always on the lookout for the morality police.

 

But in good news, I have bars and a grocery store within walking distance from my house.  But also churches:(

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on July 11, 2012 at 7:35pm

Yeah.  Morality police, diet police, even fashion police.  They're everywhere.

But I'm turning into an architecture police-person. 

Some people bought a 1950s house on the street behind us, and tore it down (and ripped out all the trees) just before the 2008 Bush-Cheney meltdown.  They've been trying to build a super-ugly, yardless McMansion on it ever since; they work on it till they run out of money, then quit till they raise more.  I think they thought they were going to make a bundle selling it, but I doubt they'll even get their initial investment back.

It doesn't fit the rest of the neighborhood, and it looks like a giant box; something a real house was packed in.

I want to burn it down.  IF they ever get it "finished."

(I wish I could Paste a photo of it in here, but I don't know how.)

Permalink Reply by dr kellie on July 11, 2012 at 8:18pm

I understand.  My house was built in 1940.  It is almost exactly the same as it was then. 

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on July 11, 2012 at 8:45pm

My house was built in about 1939; my parents bought it in April of 1945 (for $11,500!), and the only change they made was in 1957 when everybody in the neighborhood started putting in pools. 

I wish they hadn't done that, I rarely use it, but we have to keep the water clean and sparkly. The cost of maintenance is killing me. Filling it in with dirt so we could plant veggies would cost even more.  (Environmental "studies" before we could even find enough dirt... I wouldn't think of using the kind the GOP is handing out right now.)

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on July 11, 2012 at 11:00pm

Good point about the big box supermarkets, sk8eycat.

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