themaninblack

well good point about the recoil on the .454 although i think the idea of the .454 with the 3$ a shot ammo is, if you aim well, you only need the one shot. for more practical applications than vaporizing guinea pigs and dropping a t-rex in its tracks i prefer a dan wesson .357 mag. simple, tight, foolproof. one cool thing i like about .357 is you can run .38 ammo through it just fine, the recoil then is almost nonexistent and its great for home defense where you might not want to blow a pie-plate sized hole in your intruder and don't want a missed shot to go through the next 6 houses behind yours and bag the little old lady 3 streets down doing her laundry. magnum ammo for most defense purposes is kinda overkill, you know? kind of like the police grade tactical 00 buckshot you can get for a 12 gauge. low recoil, limited destruction, still guaranteed to drop your intruder like a sack of bricks. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

hmm....thing is i wont call myself an agnostic cause i feel that implies possible belief in the christian god....or am i mistaken as to the exact definition of agnostic? (i hate religious labels anyway) i see it as kind of like the way they used to define electromagnetic phenomena they didnt understand....they used to think radio waves were induced etheric waves or some shit. now we know better....no "ether" as they defined it then. when people talk about "god" theyre usually referring to their picture of great maker deity with an all too human habit of inventing rules to follow. irritable personality. demands praise. heaven and hell are usually involved. i don't know whats out there at the higher levels we cant perceive but i seriously seriously doubt its a bearded old dude thats going to torture me forever for sticking my winkie into a girl who im not married to. or eating meat on a friday. or saying "god is a fink." i think whatevers out there bears as little resemblance to established religious ideas as modern technical knowledge resembles the "ether" they used to think was fact. consider this: look at the big big picture the hubble can see. billions of superclusters and galaxies all very very slowly interacting by gravity and radiation over billions of years. inconceivable interconnected complexity on a scale so vast we can't comprehend it. when you think about it, the really big picture and what we can see of how it works bears an odd resemblance to the brain itself in terms of complexity of interaction and number and volume of participating elements. (stars=neurons?) could well be the universe itself as we know it is alive and sentient but its thoughts take billions of years to occur. we can have as little of an idea of what those thoughts are about as any of our brain cells individually could understand US. that gigascale hypothetical intelligence looks more likely to me than anything else ive heard of and we can actually SEE it, or at least a frozen snapshot of a tiny portion of it. i DO know it doesnt even loosely match the anglo-saxon descriptor "god" with all the common attributes attached to it anyway. call me an open minded atheist if you will. im certain enough about the lack of the bearded old man style god to have completely rejected the notion and anything resembling it and chosen to live my life accordingly....i just don't have anything to replace the concept with. so the sum of all that is my conclusion, no "god." nothing would please me more than to be able to believe there IS a point to everything and SOMEBODY bigger gives a shit, but i think we fend for ourselves. we may be concerned with the well being of our own neurons but its kind of abstract isnt it? you dont think about punishing the 445,789,542nd neuron at address 2f8, 0000f6 on the left side of your cerebellum for being irreverent, do you? nor do you particularly care if that particular neuron lives or dies or does anything....your neurons fend for themselves too. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

the .454 casull. simply the last word in oversized hand cannon. takes down a charging bull with one round to the head. or bear. or tyrannosaur. or whatever. if you shot a guinea pig with one the guinea pig would simply vaporize into a tuft of greasy hair and vapor and a rodent smell. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

good question. heres another. why do cats get attracted to kbeytboaedrds?awzty6iiiijk9000000 evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

thanks, racer. a lot of my humor is based on being an asshole. sometimes it comes off as uniquely funny, sometimes it just comes off sounding like an asshole. this kind of philosophy contributes weight to my opinion that everything is in fact a big joke and humanity was picked to play straight man. im probably wrong about that, too. which is whats so funny. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

oh hi again racer.... but if its not about the (anti)religious content of what i said, then what offended you? the sarcastic and high handed presentation? that was for the amusement of myself and others, it was also equally a joke on me since im quite certain im just as wrong as anyone else anyway. "once and for all", indeed. scuse me. and dont worry racer im done trolling you might have noticed i kinda went from fencing to discussing mode here. im just bored on a weeknight not looking to start arguments but sick of the same old shit.. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

so how come it never seems to occur to the people doing that shit that "well shit maybe pulling this guys thumbs off with pliers is an evil thing to do"? why do so few ask questions? question themselves? i think maybe thats why i never majored in philosophy it just leads you in circles. all the answers come in the form of two more questions. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

oddly enough im totally familiar with the info you just put up, michele, my family has been in the northeast u.s. for some time now, a relative of mine worked up a geneaology back to 960 a.d......turns out we lost a couple female relatives in salem, massachusetts a couple centuries ago. local hysteria problem you might have heard about. hanged, not burned. up till then i thought they just burned witches. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

that, sir, is the reason i first set foot on a dropzone not yet a year ago. its brighter than i ever thought possible up there. i like it. ive had a permanent grin ever since. so i dont have the answers. so what? evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

oh fuckit why not... the thought train went like this:if i may make myself a bit clearer: im not sure about divinity or the concept of per se: i DO know what i can see and what the universe looks like bears no resemblance to the picture presented by any religion ive ever seen. to me everything and every opinion ive ever seen boiled down to "someone made this stuff up and someone else believed it and it persists to this day." i won't rule out higher orders of existence than i can personally perceive, after all, after the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum we discovered that what our senses tell us is only the tiniest perception of a millionth of reality. instead it seems everyone out there thinks THEIR flavor of religion and world picture is the ONLY one the only TRUE one and all others are damned/wrong/evil/deluded. some, (radical islam, radical christianity, hell, radical anything) think they have to "civilize" or "save" anything that is NOT themselves. if i could say any one thing to the entire religious population of the world it would be: "have any of you considered the possibility...the overwhelming probability... that youre ALL wrong?" i mean, we as a species outgrew every religious belief system that came before the modern day ones, if you become aware that someday your beliefs will be as obsolete and laughable as the old greek gods, doesnt that invalidate them here, now? the part of my own philosophy that bugs me is, if they were all wrong, and everyone today is all wrong, and i already know IM wrong, what can be done about it? anything i can think up is still from a limited perspective and thus probably just as wrong as everything else. i bet the ancient greeks thought they knew it all, too and were so elevated above the previous set of truths, too. someday our great great grandkids are going to snicker at our beliefs just as we do our old ones. that includes me. if we know someday we'll know better, that makes us wrong now, so how can we know better, now? doesnt that mean we already DO know better, here, now? the metaphysical solution to this one escapes me. but i think thats the point of the question in the first place. damn. im stupid. how bout i shut up and jump? evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

never mind i decided its unspeakable evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

now THATS the spirit! handgrenades for everyone! death and destruction and devil take the hindmost! build a pile of bodies and whoever climbs to the top first wins! depopulate the planet! feed the worms! celebrate human supremacy with festive mushroom clouds! radiation is good for you! shrapnel tastes better in the afternoon! decorate your car with a skull for a hood ornament! eat meat and save the plants! kill everything ask questions later! did i leave anything out? evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

hmmm. maybe it was the all caps we are alone part. or was it that i presume to make a sweeping generalization like that? or is it that im so arrogant as to think i know better than the vast majority of people on this planet? every major improvement in humanity's lot in life was made by people who thought they knew better than everyone else. history proved them right. i dont expect to have jack of an effect on the species but i DO sometimes attempt to get people to question their beliefs, maybe think it through instead of accepting what someone else told them about god. after all, who told THEM? no matter. i cant make my posts so sterile as to offend nobody, but sorry anyway. disturbing someone else's calm in a negative way is usually a bad thing. you seem pissed. that was not my intention. goodnight and blue ones man. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

hmmm. i deduce that you are not an atheist. not being religious i am unable to see things from your point of view and thus cannot tell what will and will not offend you. if you wish to explain further, by all means, please, indulge yourself. edit addon: no sarcasm or inflammation intended either. im always looking for something that will improve or upgrade my philosophy. maybe ill learn something from you. you never know. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

hmmm. do i detect a faint odor of sarcasm in the air? sorry if that notion offends you sir, just trying to do my bit to promote good mental hygiene. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

now THAT is a cool ascii graphic. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

um, i think i am a troll. im not sure what trolls are but if trolls are people who say stuff like what i just spewed, than yup im a troll. i think ill stop speechmaking now. few people feel as i do and even fewer want to hear about it. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

so many people "behave" themselves not because of personal strength of conviction or real greatness of heart but because they got brainwashed in early childhood by some child molesting whackjob in a robe into believing if they dont spend their lives in abject false humility on their knees theyll spend eternity being tortured by the dark side of the merciful god they worship. i think after we die there is nothing. just the cold white light of eternity. i also think it takes far greater strength to remain an honestly good person in the face of that awful nothing than it does to live a "good" life under duress and fear of eternal torture. one way of life is forced. the other is chosen. when you help others or make someone smile you have made more light. when you kill you extinguish someones light forever, and all the light they could have spread themselves. THAT is why killing is such a crime. im here to help make some light. when im gone i wont be remembered for my religious convictions or my charity or my job or my cool car. if im remembered at all itll be for how much brighter i left the world than it was as i found it. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

damn. the first response i get to that admittedly provocative declaration and instead of the expected verbal nuke i get applause. thank you lazerq3, you just vindicated my faint hope for the maturity of our species. can you give me an AMEN! evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

ok folks this ones going to get me screamed at cause historically the human species has zero tolerance for this sort of excessively freed mindset, but.... its not the guns and wars that we need to outgrow folks what we need to outgrow is the strange delusion that there is this entity called a "god" and that it cares about what we do with ourselves. once and for all folks, WE ARE ALONE we are on our own. there is no justice, no payback, and no absolute morality except that which we decide to make and follow for ourselves. you know why i dont kill people? because its rude, because i have absolutely no right to DO that to someone else, and because, hopefully, if i dont kill anyone nobody will kill ME. its worked well SO far. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

hmmm were getting off topic here...i lived in the tropics once but all i know about coconuts is theyre hard to open and theyll derail you instantly if you try to run over one on a bicycle. is the harth the hairy part or the shell over it? and wouldnt the heavy lift capacity be determined more by power output and wing loading? for a 5 ounce bird to carry a coconut it'd have to be moving so fast you could barely see it. and will someone tell me where the coconut came from in the first place? never mind id be better off asking the bird whos lugging it, but....oh hell i give up evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

wait a minute....african swallow? why? is an african swallow a really overbuilt version of a small bird or something? the 3/4 ton option? if i ever saw a small bird with heavy-lift capacity enough to be carrying a coconut im grabbing my helmet and running for cover! in any case i know it wasnt an african swallow, heavy-lift version or otherwise, because 1:) i live in the northeastern united states. i dont think theres an african swallow to be found within 8,000 miles of here. 2:) if there WAS one he'd have to be wearing cold weather gear, i dont think african birds tolerate winter very well...it was about 15 degrees F outside at the time. this bird was NOT wearing a parka. i checked. just feathers. and i STILL don't know how the coconut got involved. has anyone here EVER seen a bird lugging a coconut? why a coconut? if a bird was going to lug around heavy natural food items wouldnt it prefer something softer and easier to eat? why not a cucumber or a squash or something? easier to get a grip on too. every time anyone adds anything to this fast-expiring thread it just gets more confusing. help. evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

...uh, do snipes live in the northeast? cold climate? the bill was about inch and a half long if that helps i.d. the little guy. but you lost me somewhere.....where does the coconut come into this? evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

it IS a hard job....12 hour shifts fixing heavy automation, i have the futuristic sci-fi job i read about in books when i was a kid....i sit and watch the robots do my job FOR me and when they break i slap em silly till they work again. involves everything from brute forcework with prybars to computer programming and a lot of wrench-turning. for excitement there's always the hazard of getting caught in a 500-ton hydraulic cylinder and smeared into a thin film of grease on the injection housing. pays just well enough to skydive on and still be able to feed my kitten. (from a can...!) evolution WILL be served, one way or another!!!! im not jumping, im imitating a reluctant meteor.

i work in this plastics plant. has a grinding room for chopping up recycle material. incredibly harsh concrete and cinderblock room, confined area, unbreathable air full of fine plastic dust, noise like a dozen jackhammers, shakes the ground. even with earmuffs its bad in there. some bird somehow got in through a piece of pvc pipe comes in through the ceiling. nonspecific brown no-name-brand small bird about fist sized, long narrow bill. found the poor thing flying around in tight circles desperately trying to find a way out of this hellish place. every time it stopped for a second you could see it was starting to suffocate on the plastic dust, it'd stand there with its beak wide open, shriek a couple times then start panicking again. it finally found a crack in the wall next to a chunk of conduit and wedged its head into the gap trying to get out or get some real air. no way this thing dies while im around. went up slow, lifted its feet off the concrete, eased him out of the hole, carried him outside, opened my hands. bird wasnt too far gone yet cause he took off, last i saw he was climbing to altitude over the treeline. DAMN did that feel good seeing him go. i wonder why? i think the little guy was maybe a relative of mine.