@medz This MorningSave?

@TBoneZeOriginal So why did you stop at year 15?

@TBoneZeOriginal Past performance is no guarantee of future success.

@TBoneZeOriginal Could be a 6.25% chance.

@TBoneZeOriginal Give it a try. She might like it!

@dave If $10 pearls stops the marriage from falling apart, I’m afraid there isn’t much hope for any of us.

@TBoneZeOriginal I’ve got you beat. I never celebrated Valentines Day in 53 years and will not anytime in the future either.

@cengland0 Do you agree it’s a madeup holiday or are you just alone for 53 years?

@TBoneZeOriginal Oh it goes much deeper than any of those. When I was born, my mom belonged to a cult of a fundamentalist Christian religion. Of course I was under-age from 0 to 18 and forced into the same religion. We could only celebrate those “holy days” specifically mentioned in the bible such as the day of atonement, feast of tabernacles, feast of trumpets, days of unleavened bread, etc.

Growing up, I never celebrated a birthday, Christmas, Halloween, Valentines Day, or any other “normal” holiday. Actually, we did celebrate Thanksgiving and New Years day but that was it.

Shortly after I turned 18, I told my mom I’m an atheist and I am not going to church with her anymore. I nearly killed her with those words. But I’ve been a free thinker ever since and haven’t gone back to celebrating any of those pagan holidays as they don’t mean anything to me.

I am in a dedicated relationship but Mrs cengland0 knows my [lack of] beliefs. She doesn’t get me anything for Valentines, my birthday, or Christmas. We do acknowledge our anniversary though. She’s religious so we visit her friends and family for Christmas and she can do what she wants with them.

It’s not easy being an atheist while being in a long-term relationship with a theist. I have to keep my mouth shut when I see her and her family doing stupid religious practices. It stresses me out but I deal with it.

@cengland0 , I wondered (as a non-believer) what it would be like living long term to a believer. I am too opinionated and too ready to express my opinion on the subject of religion. I’m not sure a faithful woman could tolerate me for very long!

@beachboui It’s not easy. I guess the best policy is to not discuss it and let each other believe whatever they want to without trying to convince your partner in any way. That’s my standard policy with anyone – I don’t get into religious discussions. If I’m dragged into one, I will give my thoughts on the subject but I will never try to convert someone to my way of thinking.

@cengland0
I am a wait and see guy. I too was raised in a cult, the Catholic cult, and we could drink, dance, celebrate holidays, commit sins, get sins forgiven in confession, play with beads like the Muslims, chant in church like the eastern religions, and band together to fight wars vicariously. The
Then they said that St, Christopher was a myth. I believed in him and had his medal around my neck!
THat was it.

I then read every major religious “Bible” including the King James Christian bible edited by pompous fools who left out books they didn’t like in the 1500s.
Also the Catholic with the apocrypha etc still in it, the Hidden works of Baha Ullah, The Bahgavad Gita, Queran, Torah and Talmud, Book of MOrmon, Dianetics, and decided they were all detrived badly from the council of Nicea (in 344 I think) when Constantine ordered them to get their spit together and declare Jesus as divine and throw out all the books they didn’t need for a bible.
That was age 13-16. My spousal unit was from non-practicing Baptists and I got her baptized at 20 in her church. We tried Unitarianism, but weren’t sure about it either. (Inside joke)
Moved to the South due to military career and to take care of her parents for the last ten years now gone. So after 45 years of marriage she still thinks there is something to the Christian fables. I used to claim Christian when asked then went to no preference to joining the FFRF. I am evolved beyond belief. And we are still married. I disowned even claiming a religion and simply tell folks I don’t believe in hell and the rest I’ll find out one day. We are moving to Colorado to get away from the fanatics here.

And we do not celebrate, or not celebrate VD. We just pass that one by, as we have the loves of our almost atheist, barely theist, lives.

@RV I am not going to try to convince you that your general worldview is wrong, but the textual genealogy you lay out for various religious texts is historically impossible.
I mean, sure, you can make a fair argument like that about the Book of Mormon, and probably Dianetics, but some of the works you mention predate Christ by centuries.

@RV Yeah, unless they had a TARDIS, I don’t think the authors of the Bhagavad Gita were influenced very much by the Council of Nicea, which took place several centuries after they were dead and buried. Ditto the Torah. (I’ve never read Dianetics, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that L. Ron Hubbard was influenced more by his own science fiction stories, and greed, than by the early Church fathers).

As far as the KJV goes, your dismissal of it is a bit over the top. There are certainly tons of contradictions in it, and some amazingly grotesque behavior, and ridiculous rules, but there’s also lots of great poetry, and some really good advice. Regardless of what the American Fundamentalists claim, it’s not an all or nothing proposition- you can believe in what you like and ignore the rest.

What I find really weird about this whole discussion, though, is the suggestion that Valentine’s Day is a religious holiday! Since when? Christmas is almost entirely secular these days, but some people still go to church on the holiday. But Valentine’s Day? Who even knows who Valentine was? Who goes to church or says some special prayer on the day? It’s flowers, chocolates, maybe a fancy dinner, a nice card, but I’ve never known anyone who considered it a religious holiday!

And the pearls are crap.

@phineasgage
Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is an annual holiday celebrated on February 14. It originated as a Western Christian liturgical feast day honoring one or more early saints named Valentinus, and is recognized as a significant cultural and commercial celebration in many regions around the world, although it is not a public holiday in any country.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine’s_Day

@RV Excellent display of copying and pasting skills! The fact that you had to go to Wikipedia to find out who Valentine was proves my point! As does the Wikipedia text: “a significant cultural and commercial celebration in many regions around the world”. No mention of it currently being a religious observance.

@cengland0 When I guess I was in my teens, I told my mom I wasn’t going to (Protestant) church anymore, because of oh, I didn’t believe in this and I didn’t believe in that, and hypocrites, and blah blah. She listened and said, “Fine, but everyone needs a place they can sit and be quiet for an hour a week.”

I’ve always remembered that.

@wew Today when I need my hour of silence, I go to my office.

@hchavers but do you see any white “foam”?

@hchavers Don’t let her know you’re not listening to what she says.

@2many2no he’s not ehh you think he hears the ocean? To drone her out of course!

@guyfromhawthorn I see what you did there.
/giphy brain bleach

@mike808 What? I didn’t even call it a pearl necklace! OK, now I have.

@guyfromhawthorn you said spurt.
/giphy beavis

@katbyter I know that gave me a chuckle

@katbyter So, better than a meh deal if you happen to get burglarized.

@Felyne Why wouldn’t they put the gold on the outside and the silver stuff on the inside? I think it would look a lot better.

@cengland0 That technique is called vermeil, but that is a micron of gold plating over Sterling Silver. Rolled gold or gold fill is a very thick layer of gold over brass. People allergic to base metals can usually wear gold filled from a trusted source without incident.

@Felyne If you’re allergic to something but it’s fully incased in a different metal that you’re not allergic to, your body can still detect its presence? Weird.

@cengland0 with gold plated this is true as it wears off quickly, but as I mentioned, this should not happen with quality gold filled materials.

@lehigh NOT what I was expecting

@lehigh Just edit, don’t change anything and save again to get a different image. Repeat as necessary until time-to-edit expires.

/giphy psychotic-violent-leg

@richmondhokie Partners, spouses, and significant others of jewelry-wearers. Obvsly

@Micah3000

@Micah3000
/giphy welcome

@cengland0 Imgur links don’t work. They’re intercepting them and replacing them with full web pages (so they can load them up with cryptocoin mining hijacker ads).

@Micah3000
/giphy Hi there

Must be seal day at giphy

@Micah3000 I’m a born-again agnostic, but I’ll pray for you.

@brendino You must not read much news about President Shithole asking taxpayers for $25 billion to make Mexico pay for his damned wall to keep the rapists and murderers that his ICE jack-booted thug “Deportation Force” (Papers, Please!) have been kicking out as fast as they can goosestep.

Oh, wait. I meant undocumented parents waiting for their kids to get out of surgery, snall business jobs creators, DACA children, and TPS refugees.

We’re way past ironic and took a hard right deep into cynicism.

@mike808 ::blinks::

What?

I was simply noting that saying “Timeless Elegance” with an octothorpe in front of it was funny to me. Like, when someone’s grandkid is closing the estate in 50 years, they’ll look at that with bemusement because they know what Twitter used to be.

Perhaps I should have said “succinctly ironic”?

@brendino I was just noting that it isn’t even close to “one of the most ironic things” to see these days. More of a comment on the absurdist realism kafka-esque world we live in, being an age of “alternate facts” and such.

@charliez I’m in the same boat brother. Tracking number was created on 1/31!

@capitalist Mine, too.

@Michaelmora Same