An Email Forward

An Email Forward

SOCIALISM

You have 2 cows.

You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM

You have two cows.

You sell one and buy a bull.

Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.

You sell them and retire on the income.

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND (VENTURE) CAPITALISM

You have two cows.

You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.

The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.

The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States , leaving you with nine cows.

No balance sheet provided with the release.

The public then buys your bull.

SURREALISM

You have two giraffes.

The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.

Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.

You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market it worldwide.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.

You decide to have lunch.

A SWISS CORPORATION

You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.

You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You have 300 people milking them.

You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.

You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION

You have two cows.

Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION

Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.

You tell them that you have none.

No-one believes you, so they bomb the crap out of you and invade your country.

You still have no cows, but at least you are now a Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.

Business seems pretty good.

You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION

You have two cows.

The one on the left looks very attractive.

So im going on my first fully blind date...

a friend of a friend thinks he has a great catch for me.. and enjoys setting people up, so i said im down.. here is the preview:


Hey Maryanne,

I'll get back to you on the location for Saturday night... I still have to setup a location and the reservation will be under my name. As a heads up, this will be a blind date. You won't know his name, see his pic... etc. (so you can't google him) Same goes with him... he won't know your name or see your pic. I will tell just him a bit about you through email.

So here's the info on the dude:

1. He is assertive, yet shy.

2. He is getting back into fitness.

3. He is in the finance field or something like that. I believe he manages over 10 million dollars. (the money isn't his) He makes more than the average American, yet he still is not satisfied with his career. He constantly is looking for more even though he has accomplished more than the average person does in their lifetime when it comes to their career.

4. He is really book smart. I don't know if he graduated college, but he got almost a perfect on his SAT (don't worry he isn't too nerdy).

5. He is chill, and is looking for a long term relationship/is wanting to settle down.

6. He is young, my guess is 26 to 28 years old.

7. He looks like an average joe... doesn't show off, nor does he pressure women to do anything they don't want to do. He just wants to get to know someone on a personal level. 

8. He is either Catholic or his parents are. I think that is the same religion as you.

9. Not sure what he does for fun other than hang out with friends... he works a lot.

Let me know what you think.

for your procrastinating pleasure..

These guys do videography for weddings... their videos are so great. Im a web wedding stalker, thanks Meaghan. I think i want someone to do this at my wedding..

http://www.artexproductions.com/se/portfolio/

little cheesy but true - love you ladies.

I'm having an issue...

it is called obsessive blog stalking haha. This is brill:

Modesty, Responsibility, and Common Sense

by Simcha Fisher Thursday, June 30, 2011 5:59 AM Comments (240)

Well, that was the most disappointingly reasonable and benign modesty debate I’ve ever seen.  I guess it’s allergy season, and everyone is just too dopey to care.  One point was worth drawing out, though.  One commenter asked why the boys in the article about track uniforms

thought it was appropriate to be ogling and teasing the girl in the first place? Why is it always on the girls and women to cover up, not on the boys and men to behave themselves and act like gentlemen?

She clarified:

I’m the mother of three (soon to be four) boys, and I hope to teach them that no matter WHAT a woman is wearing, it is rude and crass to make comments about her body and make her feel uncomfortable.

This is exactly the right thing to teach boys, and as the mother of six (possibly seven) girls, I’m delighted that some young men are hearing this valuable lesson.
It is, however, exactly the wrong lesson to teach girls.  You can’t have girls dressing however they want and expect boys to just be gentlemen.  That’s called “putting boys through hell,” and it’s not Christian behavior.  Whenever I heard this argument, I think of a busty woman wearing a skin-tight T-shirt with a big arrow and “MY EYES ARE UP HERE” emblazoned across her chest.  Let’s not be silly.
Many girls and women underestimate the power they have over men.  Even women who are very visually-oriented and who struggle with chastity constantly do not face the struggle that the typical man faces when he turns on the TV or goes to the mall. It’s not impossible for men to train themselves to keep their eyes to themselves (I’ve seen my poor husband almost get whiplash trying to keep custody of the eyes at the beach)—but it’s very, very hard, and takes constant vigilance in this sex-drenched society.
When a woman sees a man who is dressed immodestly, however, it is easier for her to dismiss him, often with a laugh.  Sensible women find nothing less attractive than a man who needs to flaunt his stuff all the time.  Not so for men:  they may know in their hearts and minds that women who show a lot of skin are doing something wrong—but their bodies are more stubborn about the appeal.
And so I agree with one commenter, who said:

Modesty . .  is a form of Christian charity.
It is not that we should be embarrassed about our bodies. Bodies are a beautiful gift from God. However, we are living in a time after the fall. We do not want to be a near occasion of sin for someone else. . . If what you are wearing is or might be a stumbling block to someone else, love your neighbor enough not to wear it.

All right.  But here’s the tricky part—the “might be a stumbling block.”  It’s true that women have a responsibility to dress decently so as not to deliberately provoke lust in men.  But they do not have a responsibility to make it impossible for men to lust after them.
Some Catholics think that pretty much any time a man sins against chastity, it’s a woman’s fault.  And so we have the ludicrous “pants are for harlots” argument.  We have women who think that dressing dowdily is a virtue.  We have men working themselves into a righteous froth over a woman in shorts, for instance, as if it’s her fault that he has a thing for legs.
Here’s the problem:  first, dressing with utter, lust-proof modesty is literally impossible.  There will always be some man somewhere who manages to lust, no matter what you’re wearing (just ask a hijab-wearing rape victim).
Second, an extreme “better safe than sorry” argument can lead to foolish and dangerous attitudes toward women. There is nothing pious about treating women like some kind of pestilent instrument of spiritual warfare, designed to infect innocent men with lustful thoughts by her mere presence.  At some point, the woman’s responsibility does end, and the man’s begins.  This point varies widely from culture to culture, age to age, region to region—and man to man.
Women are designed by God to be attractive to men, because this attraction leads to all sorts of good things:  protective behavior, fidelity, hard work, and babies, not to mention happiness. Our goal isn’t to reject the notion that women are attractive to men, but to channel it in a way that benefits everyone.
So, yes, modest dress is an onus that is put mostly on women —just as self-control is an onus that is put mostly on men.  This difference is not because life is unfair or inherently sexist, but because men and women are made differently.  Men and women both have the responsibility to contribute to the decency of the world—in their own ways.  There’s no sense in pretending there is no difference between them.  Just as importantly, there is no sense in pretending the tension will disappear if either men or women just tried harder to be good. 

Courage

Someone put this on facebook. It really affected me. I have never heard such eloquence with regard to homosexuality and Catholicism. What a strong person. 



Fact: The Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality is anything but popular.

It’s something we as Catholics shy away from talking about.  Maybe that’s because it makes others uncomfortable, or maybe because often we don’t truly understand it ourselves.  The fact is that I can sit here all day and tell you that my stance against same-sex marriage is not born out of hatred, bigotry, or ignorance, but the majority of people would probably not believe me. When it comes down to it, this issue isn’t going to be solved in political debates.  It’s far too personal.
So rather than getting into a lesson on Catholic moral teaching (though feel free to contact me if you want me to cover that later), or talking about homosexuality in the abstract (creating hypothetical people and hypothetical situations), I thought I’d refer you to an article written by someone who understands the Church’s teaching on homosexuality far better than I do, because as a Catholic who happens to be gay, he is choosing to live it.
[I have never met this man. I found the following post on the blog, Little Catholic Bubble.  Apparently, though, he recently went public with his own blog, as well.]

I have heard a lot about how mean the Church is, and how bigoted, because she opposes gay marriage. How badly she misunderstands gay people, and how hostile she is towards us. My gut reaction to such things is: Are you freaking kidding me? Are we even talking about the same church?
When I go to Confession, I sometimes mention the fact that I’m gay, to give the priest some context. (And to spare him some confusion: Did you say ‘locker room’? What were you doing in the women’s…oh.) I’ve always gotten one of two responses: either compassion, encouragement, and admiration, because the celibate life is difficult and profoundly counter-cultural; or nothing at all, not even a ripple, as if I had confessed eating too much on Thanksgiving.
Of the two responses, my ego prefers the first — who doesn’t like thinking of themselves as some kind of hero? — but the second might make more sense. Being gay doesn’t mean I’m special or extraordinary. It just means that my life is not always easy. (Surprise!) And as my friend J. said when I told him recently about my homosexuality, “I guess if it wasn’t that, it would have been something else.” Meaning that nobody lives without a burden of one kind or another. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel said: “The man who has not suffered, what can he possibly know, anyway?”
Where are all these bigoted Catholics I keep hearing about? When I told my family a year ago, not one of them responded with anything but love and understanding. Nobody acted like I had a disease. Nobody started treating me differently or looking at me funny. The same is true of every one of the Catholic friends that I’ve told. They love me for who I am.
Actually, the only time I get shock or disgust or disbelief, the only time I’ve noticed people treating me differently after I tell them, is when I tell someone who supports the gay lifestyle. Celibacy?? You must be some kind of freak.
Hooray for tolerance of different viewpoints. I’m grateful to gay activists for some things — making people people more aware of the prevalence of homosexuality, making homophobia less socially acceptable — but they also make it more difficult for me to be understood, to be accepted for who I am and what I believe. If I want open-mindedness, acceptance, and understanding, I look to Catholics.
Is it hard to be gay and Catholic? Yes, because like everybody, I sometimes want things that are not good for me. The Church doesn’t let me have those things, not because she’s mean, but because she’s a good mother. If my son or daughter wanted to eat sand I’d tell them: that’s not what eating is for; it won’t nourish you; it will hurt you. Maybe my daughter has some kind of condition that makes her like sand better than food, but I still wouldn’t let her eat it. Actually, if she was young or stubborn enough, I might not be able to reason with her — I might just have to make a rule against eating sand. Even if she thought I was mean.
So the Church doesn’t oppose gay marriage because it’s wrong; she opposes it because it’s impossible, just as impossible as living on sand. The Church believes, and I believe, in a universe that means something, and in a God who made the universe — made men and women, designed sex and marriage from the ground up. In that universe, gay marriage doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the picture, and we’re not about to throw out the rest of the picture.
If you don’t believe in these things, if you believe that men and women and sex and marriage are pretty much whatever we say they are, then okay: we don’t have much left to talk about. That’s not the world I live in.
So, yes, it’s hard to be gay and Catholic — it’s hard to be anything and Catholic — because I don’t always get to do what I want. Show me a religion where you always get to do what you want and I’ll show you a pretty shabby, lazy religion. Something not worth living or dying for, or even getting up in the morning for. That might be the kind of world John Lennon wanted, but John Lennon was kind of an idiot.
Would I trade in my Catholicism for a worldview where I get to marry a man? Would I trade in the Eucharist and the Mass and the rest of it? Being a Catholic means believing in a God who literally waits in the chapel for me, hoping I’ll stop by just for ten minutes so he can pour out love and healing on my heart. Which is worth more — all this, or getting to have sex with who I want? I wish everybody, straight or gay, had as beautiful a life as I have.
I know this isn’t a satisfactory answer. I don’t think any words could be. I try to make my life a satisfactory answer, to this question and to others: What are people for? What is love, and what does it look like? How do we get past our own selfishness so we can love God and our neighbors and ourselves?
It’s a work in progress.

(Me again) – I don’t know about you, but I am pretty blown away by that kind of courage.  …Thoughts?

I hate feeling anxious! I’ll be in such a good place and still am in a good place, but I freak myself out about the future.

Why do I do that? And how do I make it stop? I just want to live in the moment. It will be the most random ridiculous things that make me flip out too.

I was on facebook and one of the guys that people back home went to school with died yesterday. He was probably about 28 or so and had some chronic random disease. No idea who this guy is but I just started thinking about the future and how you never know what’s going to happen. And I really don’t know that I care what happens. I mean I do care, but I’m excited for it. It’s like I freak out that God has it out for me and I’m going to wake up one morning with cancer or die in a freak accident or not be able to have kids or never meet a guy or I will have to be a nun. And God will just look at me and say tough tuna. But that’s not normally how I think. And that’s surely not a God that I want to believe in. But it does get hard at times to see what’s so providential in death, disease, war, etc…

Sometimes I think I'm afraid of losing control. I really struggle with acceptance. I know by my nature that I am such a perfectionist and things that aren't perfect by nature just throw me for a loop. I think I lack trust. Trust in God, His goodness and mercy and trust in myself. Hope, trust and peace... Those are my grown-up Christmas wishes.