Reply With Quote
I guess we all have our own ways to get aroused. I'm not judging......just sayin that nekkid chicks is what works for me.
My God this thread just keeps going and going.
I guess we all have our own ways to get aroused. I'm not judging......just sayin that nekkid chicks is what works for me.
Chapter II
MY SISTER, MRS. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow—a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off every day of her life.
Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in our country were—most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.
“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she's out now, making it a baker's dozen.”
“Is she?”
“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her.”
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame.
“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did,” said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at it: “she Ram-paged out, Pip.”
“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as a larger species of child, and as no more than my equal.
“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, “she's been on the Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you.”
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by throwing me—I often served as a connubial missile—at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.
“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. “Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys.”
“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, crying and rubbing myself.
“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn't for me you'd have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by hand?”
“You did,” said I.
“And why did I do it, I should like to know?” exclaimed my sister.
I whimpered, “I don't know.”
“I don't!” said my sister. “I'd never do it again! I know that. I may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife, and him a Gargery, without being your mother.”
My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.
“Hah!” said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. “Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.” One of us, by-the-by, had not said it at all. “You'll drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you'd be without me!”
As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the grievous cir stances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with his blue eye, as his manner always was at squally times.
My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter for us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib—where it sometimes got a pin into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaister—using both sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.
On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe. Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down the leg of my trousers.
The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices, by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then—which stimulated us to new exertions. To-night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly compe ion; but he found me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched bread-and-butter on the other. At last, I desperately considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the cir stances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at me, and got my bread-and-butter down my leg.
Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss of appe e, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter was gone.
The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister's observation.
“What's the matter now?” said she, smartly, as she put down her cup.
“I say, you know!” muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious remonstrance. “Pip, old chap! You'll do yourself a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip.”
“What's the matter now?” repeated my sister, more sharply than before.
“If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do it,” said Joe, all aghast. “Manners is manners, but still your elth's your elth.”
By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him: while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily on.
“Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter,” said my sister, out of breath, “you staring great stuck pig.”
Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless bite, and looked at me again.
“You know, Pip,” said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite alone, “you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell upon you, any time. But such a—” he moved his chair, and looked about the floor between us, and then again at me—“such a most oncommon bolt as that!”
“Been bolting his food, has he?” cried my sister.
“You know, old chap,” said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in his cheek, “I Bolted, myself, when I was your age—frequent—and as a boy I've been among a many Bolters; but I never see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't Bolted dead.”
My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair: saying nothing more than the awful words, “You come along and be dosed.”
Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence. On this particular evening, the urgency of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would be held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and meditating before the fire), “because he had had a turn.” Judging from myself, I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had had none before.
Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe—I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his—united to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread-and-butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy, declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until to-morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a cons utional impatience, or should mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow! If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then. But, perhaps, nobody's ever did?
It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the load on his leg), and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. Happily I slipped away, and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom.
“Hark!” said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; “was that great guns, Joe?”
“Ah!” said Joe. “There's another conwict off.”
“What does that mean, Joe?” said I.
Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly, “Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like Tar-water.
While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, “What's a convict?” Joe put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word, “Pip.”
“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they're firing warning of another.”
“Who's firing?” said I.
“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work, “what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.”
It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite, unless there was company.
At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form of a word that looked to me like “sulks.” Therefore, I naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of saying “her?” But Joe wouldn't hear of that at all, and again opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most emphatic word out of it. But I could make nothing of the word.
“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if you wouldn't much mind—where the firing comes from?”
“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't quite mean that but rather the contrary. “From the Hulks!”
“Oh-h!” said I looking at Joe. “Hulks!”
Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, “Well, I told you so.”
“And please what's Hulks?” said I.
“That's the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships, right ‘cross th’ meshes.” We always used that name for marshes in our country.
“I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put there?” said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.
It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what, young fellow,” said she, “I didn't bring you up by hand to badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”
I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went up stairs in the dark, with my head tingling—from Mrs. Joe's thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.
Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young, under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I might have done on requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.
If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one, I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.
As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was shot with gray, I got up and went downstairs; every board upon the way, and every crack in every board, calling after me, “Stop thief!” and “Get up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very much alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught, when my back was half turned, winking. I had no time for verification, no time for selection, no time for anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice), some brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly used for making that intoxicating-fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that was put away so carefully in a covered earthenware dish in a corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it, in the hope that it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some time.
There was a door in the kitchen communicating with the forge; I unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's tools. Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the misty marshes.
Popcorn is the best snack with a movie.
I can see people blaming the Rapture disappearances on nuclear weapons or aliens or something of that nature.
.
As for people taking the anti christ's word for it... look for example at Oprah's current influence- I.E. how many masses of people look to Oprah and her show for answers- and we are not even in a state of real crisis.
My guess is that when the Rapture happens, people are going to be looking for answers and will listen to anyone who says he has them.
The antichrist will know this and will capitalize on people's fear, sense of loss, and desparation.
Last edited by angel_luv; 01-06-2009 at 12:01 PM.
Do you believe in Aristotle's and Plato's work (ie, do you believe they were really written by by men 300 years before Jesus was born)?
Compare it to other works of its time. Plato's writings include only seven ancient manuscripts, the earliest dated 1300 years after the date of the original text. Only ten copies exist of the Gallic Wars (a third-hand account), and the earliest is dated 1000 years after the original writings. The Iliad only has 643 copies.
There are over 5000 Greek manuscripts, some dated as early as the first century, which cite gospel writings. Quotes from the gospels were made by church fathers as early as the first century. All together, there are over 24000 ancient do ents (exponentially more than The Iliad, Gallic Wars, and Plato), with some as early as the first century. So, we can see that New Testament evidence far exceeds other works of its time. So, you should either accept the accuracy of the NT writings, or you have to label pretty much everything we know about the Greek and Roman Empire as fictional as you say the gospels are.
see above...either accept the NT as historically accurate, or reject what you know of the Greek and Roman empires as fiction.
I would just ask that if there are other things in your life (or life in general) that you believe exist or happened, in spite of the lack of physical evidence?
so what will the antichrist's answer for the disappearance be? Aliens or nukes?
if it's aliens, you are saying that the masses of people would rather believe in unseen aliens than the book of Revelation which actually prophesies a rapture?
and if someone disappeared out of a car or a plane, how would a nuclear weapon accomplish such a feat?
this is the fun stuff here.
just curious, do Plato and Aristotle make claims about people rising from the dead?
lemme get this straight......
I either accept that Lazarus came back from the dead or else everything I know of those empires is wrong......
do I have to accept that Sampson also had super strength unless he got a haircut?
This point was touched upon by ES.
Christ dies in 33 AD. Gospels, Acts and Letters are written as early as 50 - 60 AD, most of them by eyewitnesses of Christ's life. We have surviving manuscripts from 125 - 175 AD.
So tell us exactly who and when did these embilishements and changes to Christ's life occur. Was it with the original authors? Or was it with the copyists?
What we do know is that by 150 AD (120 years after Jesus died), there were Books of the Bible going around that look 99.9% what the modern Bibles looks like.
I think this thread proves that a lot of people would rather embrace anything over God.
Sad but true.
As for accepting the anti christ's explanation... who says the answer has to be a good one. People will be desparate for some sort of explanation they feel they can wrap their minds around.
People can imagine aliens. People have heard of nuclear weapons. It is within the grasp of their carnal understanding... unlike the Bible, something they have spent a lifetime rejecting. ( And all the people remaining will be those who have spent their lives rejecting Christ, otherwise they would not have been left behind.)
Yes.
Haven't you ever read Aristotle's book "How to raise the dead: Three simple steps"?
First of all, Sampson was OT, not NT.
Secondly, you are arbitrarily presupposing miracles cannot and did not happen. You start your argument with a presupposition that cannot be justified. Instead, you should just proceed with the caveat that you'll give credibility to any fact of history that is well-substantiated (what HISTORIANS do). You do that, and you'll find that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John pass with flying colors as good history.
Finally, if you state the gospels are false, or legend, or tales that revolutionize the genre, you have to say the same for any other historical event of that time. You have to do so because the evidence that's supports the historical accuracy of the gospels is greater than the evidence that supports the historical accuracy of what we know of ancient Greece and Rome. If you hold a standard of reliability to the gospel accounts, you should hold the same standard of reliability to any other account of history from the same time period.
Smeagol you just cited roughly a 100 year difference. For some reason you don't see how a century could create a legend.
I don't really feel like digging up a bunch of stories but there are thousands of stories within the last century that have exploded into myth like proportions.
As far as Plato and others work. I've offered no opinion on their existence. I don't know the nature of their work. If it envolved the supernatural I'd likely question it.
I watched "The Bible Code" on the History Channel last night. That is all.
Nah . . . you simply have to say that Jesus was a crazy guy who dupped a bunch of guys in believing he was the Son of God, and those guys convinced other guys and they wrote the story of His life, and more people believed them until modern times, where millions of people still believe this big fairy tale.
Or that Jonah lived inside a whale . . .do I have to accept that Sampson also had super strength unless he got a haircut?
Why are you believers avoiding the facts presented earlier in the thread?
Why does it bother you so much that we Believers refuse to take your word for it?
Its not his word for it. He and myself are frustrated at the lack of reasonable considerations for strong points of interest.
I was an atheist a couple of decades ago when I knew it all, too.
I PM'd monosylab1k. I'm willing to bet she doesn't have the balls to reasonably respond to me. She'll probably post some additional annoying because at best she has a loose understanding of exactly how to troll with purpose. Really all it does is show how weak her self esteem is by attempting to get a rise out of us. A real troll would pull the mark in properly. I'm not suprised this gals style has always been garbage before substance. Its why no one on this board listens to her.
You have repeatedly, sometimes quite harshly, mocked our believes, yet you condemn our rejection of your/ your sources point of view.
Ironic.
What of Extra Stout's responses to each of those points? The information he provided was compelling enough to dismiss those "facts" as either completely false or considerably irrelevant.
Yep. Ironic or not I feel my sources and my views are considerably more realistic and viable than happy magic time.
There is probably some additional irony there too.
all of his arguments were destroyed.
SEVERAL TIMES I EVEN SHOWED HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT HE WAS SAYING
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
