Tuesday, January 17, 2006

   Hi Everyone!
I would just like to inform you that I am now the distributor of Hiei Clones! If you would like one, the instructions to recieve one are very simple, and they are located in my welcome message. Also, if you missed it, I posted the second Screwtape Letter yesterday! ^_^
Laters,
Aly
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Monday, January 16, 2006

   Happy Birthday to me... Happy Birthday to me...
Well, the big day is finally here! Im so happy! Anyway, I've had a few requestsd to keep posting The Screwtape Letters so, with no further ado, Chapter 2!

My dear Wormwood,
I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy’s camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favor.
One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on these neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew. It maters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of ‘Christians’ in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armor and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real—though of course an unconscious—difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.
Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants—‘sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.
I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the new pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do—[if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with the squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner—then your task is so much easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question ‘If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?’ You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won’t come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit-balance in the Enemy’s ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and he thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension I going to church with these ‘smug’, commonplace neighbors at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can,

Your affectionate uncle
Screwtape

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Saturday, January 14, 2006

   I'm so excited!!!
Well, as y'all can see on my little sidebar, Monday is my 16th birthday!!! So tonight im gonna have my birthday party, and im just so excited, because its gonna be so much fun!



And to all of my otaku friends, you'll be there in spirit, kk? Well, I wont be on untill tuesday ish, so im sorry, but i probably wont comment on your posts... Well, I hope y'all have a great day!!!!
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Monday, January 9, 2006

Hey Guys!
Well, today was interesting... I went to the orthodontist and FINALLY got my braces off =P so im really happy... then my mom and i went shopping. but i got to miss school, and thats good! So, did you guys like the Screwtape letters or not? (see post below) I really need to know, because if noone liked them I wont post them, kk? Well, ive got to go, so laters!
Aly

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Thursday, January 5, 2006

   Today will contain something new
A few days ago, I started reading The Screwtape Letters by the Christian author C.S. Lewis, it is a set of letters from a demon to his nephew. I am really enjoying the book, and I would like to share some of it with all of you. This is the first of the thirty-some letters in the book, and if anyone is interested, I would be willing to type up a letter a week for all of you to read it. So, if you like what you read, please let me know. If I dont get any comments I will assume none of you want to hear anymore and will not post it, but i would be glad to type it up if it would help strengthen your Faith, so please enjoy!

My dear Wormwood,

I note what you say about guiding your patient's reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result! Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it "real life" and don't let him ask what he means by "real."

Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (oh, that abominable advantage of the Enemy's!) you don't realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument, I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control, and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line, for when I said, "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle at the end of a morning," the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind," he was already halfway to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape, and in later years was fond of talking about "that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safe guard against the aberrations of mere logic." He is now safe in Our Father's house.

You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable "real life." But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is "the results of modern investigation." Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!

Your affectionate uncle

Screwtape
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Tuesday, January 3, 2006

   First day back...
Well today was the first day back at school from winter break, and it was annoying as ever... whats worse, I have homework v.v so today, i will leave you with some interesting pictures, ok? Tell me what your favorite is!

1)
2)
3)

Oh, and a Japanese joke that really made me laugh hard:


Japanese Banking Crisis

According to inside contacts, the Japanese banking crisis shows no signs of ameliorating. If anything, it's getting worse.

Following last week's news that Origami Bank had folded, we are hearing that Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank plans to cut back some of its branches.

Karaoke Bank is up for sale and is (you guessed it!) going for a song.

Meanwhile, shares in Kamikaze Bank have nose-dived and 500 back-office staff at Karate Bank got the chop.

Analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank and staff there fear they may get a raw deal.

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed those.
Laters!

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Sunday, January 1, 2006

Hi Guys!
Im still on vacation, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy 2006!!!

Oh, and Pyro, I want an e-mail as soon as you read this, kk? =P

Laters!

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Saturday, December 24, 2005

   Merry Christmas!
Hello Everyone!

I just wanted to wish all of you a very merry christmas, and a happy new year. Tomorrow I am going to spend the day with my family, as most of you are too... and then Im going to be gone from the 27th to the 2nd Im visiting some family up north) So, again, Merry Christmas!

This is one of my all time favorite Christmas songs, if you have never heard it, I urge you to go do so now, it really tugs at your heartstrings...

Newsong-The Christmas Shoes

It was almost Christmas time, there I stood in another line
Tryin' to buy that last gift or two, not really in the Christmas mood
Standing right in front of me was a little boy waiting anxiously
Pacing 'round like little boys do
And in his hands he held a pair of shoes...

His clothes were worn and old, he was dirty from head to toe
And when it came his time to pay
I couldn't believe what I heard him say

"Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight"

He counted pennies for what seemed like years
Then the cashier said, "Son, there's not enough here"
He searched his pockets frantically
Then he turned and he looked at me
He said "Mama made Christmas good at our house
Though most years she just did without
Tell me Sir, what am I going to do,
Somehow I've got to buy her these Christmas shoes"

So I laid the money down, I just had to help him out
I'll never forget the look on his face when he said
"Mama's gonna look so great!"

"Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight"

Bridge:
I knew I'd caught a glimpse of heaven's love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about

"Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight..."





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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

   *Sigh*
Hi Everyone!
Well, in recent news...im still alive... no, today I babysat for a neighbor for a few hours...1-4 kids depending on how many neighbors showed up to play... and in a few minutes, im leavin for disney world. Yay! My parents and I are goint to see the Osbourne lights and the new Narnia attraction, so that should be fun... well, ive got to go, so, laters!

Oh, and thanks to PyroPrincess for this piccy!


Merry Christmas!

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Thursday, December 15, 2005

   I love sleeoing...
Guess what guys? Today I got to sleep in! I dont have to take my 1st period spanish III exam! Yay! So i woke up later and got a good laugh because right now, all of my friends are in school, so HaHa! Oh, and last night, i finished watching YYH, and it was really good! The FMA ending was still better, but oh well, it was good nevertheless... well, im gonna get some stuff done before i go to take my English exam, so wish me luck! Laters!



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