brought up by the thoughts of artificial insemination and cyst's list of people's best memories in the ten years since high school (most of which included children)... i've been thinking lately of the real motivation behind having kids. what i mean is, (taking into account that i've had a rather depressed vision of things lately) knowing what you have gone through and the even worse things that others have gone through, and the insane ways that people raise children (trying to make the child into what they weren't, and other motivations full of high pressure expectations) and even more global ideas like remaining resources......still so many people seem to be focused on making a new person. why is this? i ask because i have had these romantic thoughts of happy family and how things are 'supposed' to be- where did i get this? the example of MY family is certainly does not support repeating most of that behavior- most every family oriented activity was full of tension...anyway, i don't want to go into that but... who am i to think that i have any better view? that i won't do the same? it seems that some part of the motivation for having kids includes the enormous energy that most people put toward them, like in a way it excuses you (or at least postpones) from further development of yourself. meaning- now the pressure is on the 'next generation.' i admit i'm looking in large part at people who seem so lost about their own lives...and don't get me wrong, it's because i'm just figuring out how blind i have been that i'm even thinking about this.... those people seem to talk so much about starting families like it might solve some of their disoriented feeling.

it's biological. you should read "the women of brewster place," if you haven't yet, there is this character in it that keeps having babies to try to fill in some hole in her life. it's really sad.

there is a biological urge, that should be embraced, but as advanced thinking animals we should be able to rationalize and make logic of the fact that our planet can't support any more humans and also the fact that most people haave childeren for selfish reasons. Be glad you are an advanced animal and have control the power of thought over such a thing. Use it wisely, make the best decision you can. Biologically i should inseminate every female humanoid i run into but logic and intelligence tells me that is not socially acceptable and feasible (go ahead nate run with that one).

every female humanoid? really?

biologically, i don't think you should inseminate every female (humaniod? human?) you meet. i should, but not you. only humans for me, btw. it all depends on your genes. the better the genes, the more babies you should have.

To an extent, I agree with you Waffles, especially when you say "make the best decision you can." If that decision is one to have a child that you will raise in a responsible fashion and will cultivate to be a productive member of society, then the planet can certainly support at least one more human. Unfortunately, most of the earth's people aren't using that kind of analysis when they start rutting like crazed weasels. I hate like bloody hell to borrow from the Anti-Choice nitwits, but you really never know where the next Albert Einstein is coming from.

Eugenics is kind of an iffy issue. Who determines what genes are good? I mean, do you want the government making that decision? Besides, one's priorities in terms of genetics are, I think, largely cultural. I mean, does that mean that my SO and I should have lots of kids because we're both high IQ, or that shouldn't b/c we're both short? As for resources, I support Zero Population Growth (ZPG) in principle, but I want to be evolutionarily successful, damnit. Those of you who support ZPG, great, I'm all for you. More for my kids.

If only people had children that the parents could provide for,and I mean really provide for,we wouldn,t have 6 billion to begin with.

well line guy, YES, every female humanoid..... and nate i will begin the round up, can we have that even open up for the cage match, i think that will make a nice addition to such an event, get the area stankin with rich human sex, get the crowd all charged for the bloodshed to follow sex and battle.......there's a concept

this is exactly what i'm talking about... "If that decision is one to have a child that you will raise in a responsible fashion and will cultivate to be a productive member of society, then the planet can certainly support at least one more human." a productive member of society? if by that you mean what my parents meant than i think you're buying into that same myth- all of these ideas and values that are held as natural common sense but are really arbitrary and basically just keep the dominant group in a place of power. i mean, is YOUR life exactly what you want, or a pieced together notion of what people have always expected of you? it's almost impossible to see outside of that kind of immersive ideology (the body of concepts that we follow.) and nate, so would you say that a certain cosmologist with lou gehrig's disease should or shouldn't have had his three children. what if the technology that allows him to communicate did not exist?

humanoid n : an automaton that resembles a human being

i did not know that ......i thought i was another term for human, you know as in any random sci fi flic, they refer to humans as humanoids, perhaps built text/vocabulary systems need re modifying.....

the suffix -oid means "like or resembling". in sci-fi they never say earth people are humanoids, the say that beings from other planets who are basically humans with make-up jobs are humanoids. or those times when you're really wasted and, you know, really what's the difference between a sheep and a girl in a wool sweater?

ALS is not a genetic disease... intellegence is. he is allowed children. three is excessive though. one child per customer please. license only granted with 18 year maternal/paternal guarentee. minimum income requirements apply.

intelligence as a genetic disease...i like that

spelling ability, however, is not. i'm beginning to think of intelligence as a handicap. life is so much easier for the stupid.

ALS: the cause is not known only that it is not contagious saying it's not genetic is not exactly true

sheep/girl in a sweater i LIKE that.... thanks abunch spock I am really clear on that....now... WHEW!!! MAN!!!!

the guy who cleaned up at a place where i used to have lunch always looked so happy

Kids move many people out of that centre-of-the-universe place most of us live in. You have to find a new vantage spot. It's a strange but interesting shift. As if someone rearranged your molecules over night. It's not for everyone, but I don't think there's anything wrong in finally giving into biological programming, either, if the initial motivation is healthy. And the potential parent is reasonably stable and doesn't need a regular dose of ego-gratification. That's the million dollar question people need to ask themselves first.

can i borrow the car tonight?

Joking aside, in this country, in this century, it was legal to sterilize people with below average intelligence. Without their knowledge or consent. If that's not morally offensive, I don't know what is.

i'm a strong advocate of the child-free lifestyle (& in the face of the modern breeding frenzy, it IS an alternative lifestyle, reacted to in rather seriously hostile ways at times). i recently read that only about 15% of women who hit 40 remain child-free. that strikes me as a rather alarming statistic. i don't have kids, don't want any, & am getting damn nigh too old to have them, anyhow (although i recently realized that i'm old enough to be a grandparent...now, THAT truly scares the bejesus out of me...the image is sooooo wrong). i've never wanted children. however, if i DID feel some bizarre urge to have a runt around, i'd adopt one, preferably a considerably older one (like 12 or older...no infants or toddlers, ever). but adoption is a sticky issue, too. don't even get me started. =)

i agree with mom. i would also warn against having a kid until you are at least 30. no matter how smart you think you are, or how much you think you know, i don't think real maturity kicks in until then. of course there are exceptions, some people should wait even longer. i found that, for me, the the astrological concept of the saturn return was right on the money. i don't understand how a ball of gas and rock 8 to 20 AUs away can have an effect on me, or how any of that nonsense can but it somehow seemed to have that aspect of my life accurately mapped out. bizarre shit. i am very fortunate to have a child.

'the saturn return'?

saturn return this would explain why i haven't done much of anything else for the past month but sit around my apartment drinking beer and thinking about how totally pointless everything is. man, i fucking hate it when all that astrological spew ends up being right on target. first my mom, now astrology. i can't take much more of this shit.

wow i've been tromped on for a year now, a little early but very appropriate i guess

and if i've gotta go through 2 more years of this, i'm gonna need a lot more beer.

I had a pysch professor once state, "You either think like a child or you think like a parent." After being both I understand what he meant. Until one becomes a parent you don't know what it's like to sacrifice your own desires for the sake of someone else. In relationships with others we sometimes sacrifice to gain something. (like love companionship etc...) But with a child you sacrifice and sacrifice even when that person gives nothing in return, or causes you pain then moves away leaving you with nothing. Quite frankly I liked the "child thinking". Do yourself a favor....sterilize now and enjoy your life later.

ok. so like, what the fuck is up with mr. or ms. __________________ ? Majorlly annoying.

Jimbo finally speaks in over a week.I love my kids but sometmes I don,t like them.They wouldn,t piss on me if I was on fire,sometimes they are so blatently sucking up it,s almost funny.They could be poster chidren for birth control,but nobody better fuck with them or I,ll see they they are sorry.Then again, I,m sure proud of my grandson.Final thought I think they see me as a human purse.

Astrology is the art of claiming success for coincidence and ignoring all glaring exceptions. I really am hoping that they find more concreet proof of a tenth planet to see how the astrologers explain that one. Probably like they did when the astronomers revealed tath the sun passes through a constellation that the astrolgers had missed, which throws off every single calculation. (the new sign is Ophiucus, btw, and my bro's one, i think it falls either late nov - mid dec. or sometime during mid dec.) As far as bio. urgs to reproduce, even I get them, and I am violently opposed to the idea, especially in an era where no marriage is certain to last. If I could afford it and if ic ould be seriously completely OUT when they did it, I'd get a vasectomy. My freind marvin got one, and they didn't put him out but "numbed" the area. He said they use an instrument that resembles a wood burner to do it and offered to position a mirror so he could watch. They must have been joking. Anyway, it turns out they didn't use enough anesthetic and he could feel part of it and damn, my balls just shot up into my abdomen thinking about his description of the pain, um, maybe I'll wait fo rthat vasectomy until I start dating again...

It,s no bed of roses to push a watermellon out of a garden hose either.Having your doctor tell you to never have kids again,or if you are going to be that stupid at least after two other kids have a C-section.Why didn,t anyone tell me that after #1???

It,s no bed of roses to push a watermellon out of a garden hose either.Having your doctor tell you to never have kids again,or if you are going to be that stupid at least after two other kids have a C-section.Why didn,t anyone tell me that after #1???

Pardon me

"J",I want some of whatyour doing!!

Hey can you get me some white cross,s.I have put on weight this last year and a half.I was real happy about it till I noticed I was getting a belly,now I,d rather have there is not much to you you,even though it hurt my feelings at the time.

sem, there are some astrologists who use chiron in their analysis. antero alli is one. he read my chart years ago. i dunno about that other stuff but i'm sure some wiseguy or wisegal will explain it all away and make the world safe once again for exploiting sucka astrologistas.

just like they always did in the past whenever another planet was found. i notice that it seems that changing cosmologies, such as the location of the earth in realtion to the center of the universe, doesn't seem to have affected astrologers either. I sympathize,J. you should have shoved a watermelon up the ass of the doctore who didn't tell that after the first one!

Just haven't had much to say -- or felt like sayin' anything.

Scratch the request for white crosses,I must hve been really gassed.Even though I had to lay on the bed to get my shorts on,I think I,ll just have to get off my lazy ass and do some exercising.Now that it,s cooling off,I don,t mind.I have some bulbs I want to plant anyway,going to make some Christmas decorations.

that saturn return craps is the absolutely worthless, that link tells you nothing, as if the cycles is personal to each and every one of us.........last i check the planet evolved irregardless of each of us........cosmic excuses for earthly behavior.....

that saturn return crap is absolutely worthless, that link tells you nothing, as if the cycle is personal to each and every one of us.........last i check the planet evolved irregardless of each of us........cosmic excuses for earthly behavior.....

Ya gotta blame someone/thing. Like the song in SouthPark movie (Blame Canada, before someone thinks of blaming us). Blaming Stars is easy they don't complain. They're rather indifferent to the whole situation, if you ask me.

waffles, you're a genius. all that shit is based on where the planets are when you are born. after a cycle of years it returns to that point. hence "saturn return". the perspective is from the planet's astronomical position as it relates to the individual's birthdate. anyway, i thought the link was funny at the time. you want more information? work out your search engine.

so it's different for each person, which seems to me it would be hard to make a hypothesis such as the Saturn Return based on everyone's 28th birthday when the planet was in a different position for each individual birth

i mean its not like I am cynical skeptic of this type of whohaw,I am willing to listen to most any idea, hell i even read horiscopes from time to time but hey are generalized in such away that they will always make you say "ohhh thats me, they are talking to me" Try seperating the horiscope text from it's proper header, take sagitarius, scorpio leo etc and mix em and see if you can find the one that is yours. I bet you could read them all with similar results

<<so it's different for each person, which seems to me it would be hard to make a hypothesis such as the Saturn Return based on everyone's 28th birthday when the planet was in a different position for each individual birth>> what's wrong with ya, boy? squint real hard and think "cycle".

ok i am proably overlooking the obvious, we agree that planet has it's natural rotation and positioning. right? right! NOW, people are born all the time right? right! the position that planet was in for my sisters 28th birthday is NOT the same as it will be for my 28th birthday. I understand that after 28 years one has experienced all of the cycles in question and perhaps thats where my blind faith stops........ ahhh fuck it, my tarot cards are enough to keep me puzzled

now you've totally lost me. screw all the heavenly voodoo, i'm just tripping on your logic. object X cycles every 28 years. chucklehead1 is born on 5/15/72 when object X is at point A. because object X cycles every 28 years, it will return to point A in the year 2000. everytime object X completes a cycle, it forces chuckleheads to eat shit and die. this means that chucklehead1 will eat shit and die in the year 2000, because object X's cycle (in relation to chucklhead1) began in 1972 and came to completion 28 years later. chucklhead2, who was born in 1975, will eat shit and die in 2003. chucklehead3, who was born in 1974, will eat shit and die in 2002. etc, etc. so the fact that you will eat shit and die on a different day than your sister's shit-eating endnote really has no bearing on the concept in question.

yeah but the planet will physically be in a different position for each one of these chuckleheads.......so it seems to be about the cycle of a human rather than about some planet.

the planet saturn just happens to cycle around during the time of your "30's crises" just like someone else on here seems to be having. it's just one of those astral coincidences that you can make something out of for fun. you don't have to argue it.

no one is fighting man, were just tossing the ball back and forth

chucklehead

i'm fighting man

i'm super man logic is coincidence. coincidence is logic. everything you know is wrong.

that's great if you're boddhisatva.

i'm glad someone understands.

i know my head feels like it is gently resting between a pair of oversized vice grips with maximum gripage in tact..i know this, i know this for sure motherfucker

knowledge is ignorance.

Ignorance is bliss.

your mother is stuck between my teeth.

thats really nasty........nate you gonna let him get away with that?

Swine owns my mommy he can do what he wants to with her,but if he values his life,he won,t swallow her,she,s toxic.

he was speaking figuratively. it concerns his displeasure with the state of earth (mother). He can neither stomach Earth, nor spit her out. She is stuck between his teeth. of course, you can take the base, literal meaning: but then it would be a reference to your mommy.

but knowledge of that would inherently make you ignorant...so what are we to do?

As J said: Ignorance is Bliss. please, try to keep up with the rest of the class.

it hurts

Pain is sanity. Sanity is pain.

cliche is pain pain is cliche

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Link weakest its as strong as only is chain A.

i'd like a big mac, with a small fry.....and a medium Hi-C........oh wait,, i guess thats combo #4........can you hold the tomato?

i'm the queen of rock and roll.

http://www.napanet.net/~lina/sk/joey.wav

Catpower?

I don't like that girl. What's her name...Chan Marshall or something? I don't like her face. I guess if 1290172 million teenage girls can like the Backstreet Boys because of their faces, I can dislike Catpower because I don't like her face, goddammit.

her voice annoys me, i have never seen a picture

it's sleater kinney. i couldn't find any sound clips where the line "i'm the queen of rock and roll" are actually audible. darn.

Be kind to your Children....... they pick your Nursing Home

and if you haven't been kind to them,you WON'T get the "window" bed

I,m trying to talk my mother into going to a home,but with her "personality" the personal would probably kill her.

they have good seditives for that.

"J", maybe in that case she'd be safer with Swine?

Yea,at least when he,s pimping her,she gets some exercise,and he makes a few(very few)bucks.

oh,poor,poor Swine.Perversity carries such a high burden of responsibility.

life insurance commercials are funny. what would your wife and kids do? I've actually seen what they do when dad gets the insurance before he dies. they don't talk about it in the commercials. mom buys a fancy-schmancy car that costs like a year of take-home pay from her job. son buys a lot of cds. when he gets laid off or whatever, he spends a year playing video games until 8 a.m. and sleeping past, oh, what time is it now, 2:20 p.m. more than a year. until the money runs out. because god knows if you're given like $25,000, you shouldn't invest it or save it or travel or make a down payment on a house -- you should just let it drain out slowly while you're busy getting stoned and watching videos all night in your house where the mice lick the dishes in the sink clean for you and the phone gets cut off because everyone is too busy watching tv and getting girls pregnant to bother paying the bills. dad would be so glad he took out that policy. made a world of difference.

trust funds too but even more money wish i had one

for some reason, the trust fund kids I've known have never turned out as bad as the life-insurance ones. the trust fund kids do stuff while they figure out what they want to do. the insurance orphans just sit around feeling sorry for themselves.

This is part of my horror-scope today, and I don't understand a word of it, "The Scorpio Sun enters your fourth house, stimulating Lions to focus on their private dens. A retrograde Jupiter re-enters your solar ninth house this week, which could turn your thoughts toward relocation or career counseling, especially if you don't feel secure where you are now. When it comes to love, a solar sextile with Mars also prompts the desire for change. Bored Lions aren't content with the same old routine. Fortunately, your partner may be more sexually uninhibited or open-minded, so make a date with your love. If you're looking for love, a square with Neptune has your imagination running rampant. Slow down, because Neptune can be the master of illusion." Anybody feel the urge to explain to me how Mars and Lions decide that I want change?

are you a leo?

yea

get out of my house

What sign are you Waffles?

scorpio.....

Just what I thought,so when is your birthday?

nov 3rd

my first job was at an old movie theater. the assistant manager was an astrology freak. his greatest memories were playing with larry hagman when they were kids and seeing "star wars" in san francisco on acid. he asked me about this guy who came to see me at work. my first date. "I guess he's a scorpio," I told him. "you better be careful. scorpios carry vd. the poison sting."

I'm a Rat.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE! :o)

Scorpios have it kind of rough. all of those intense moods and . . . . well, it can be great, but the downs are really down. try not to burn out.

i burned this weekend....Rhi, you remeber those spells? had one this weekend i hate myself,

Is it still going on? Just remember that in a few days it will go away and you'll be okay again. Do you know what brought it on? I've figured out that, with me, they come when I get too close to somebody -- like when I tell them something really personal or embarrassing. Then I start hating them and hating myself. I'm fine in about a week or two. Is this the same way for you? Bonus: I priority-mailed you your leaves on Friday (so they wouldn't shrivel by the time they reached you)....you might get them today or tomorrow. Maybe burning them and smelling that nice smoke will put you in a good, nostalgic mood.

ok, I will eagerly check the mail today, yeah, it's over, i come on hard and strong, a total dick, it's gone, it rarely lasts more than a few days and then the wife is on the phone to a lawyer and I snap around, apologize profusely, kiss her gorgeous ass for a few more a days and then I am all good.......it was a busy weekend, lots to do, lots to think about......a little pressured.....i am good now i think.....