Absolutely Anything Else

OH, BTW, the Hungarian women in Hawaii did pull down the dress of the passed out women in the road. Give a friend a helping hand after all...

SimonTrew wrote:

Texas, they do consider themselves a bit separate from the rest of the US and they still have the right to recede from the Union whenever they feel like it.

Sighs..... No matter what some people may "think" or told you, this is wrong.

Texas already tried to succeed. It failed. Because of the Article 4 of the Constitution and by the Supreme court decision In Texas-v-White.

There is enough FUD spread on the Internet by Americans about America. Let's limit what is spread by non-Americans.

That's true Texas has been talking about leaving the union forever and still not able to do so.

My BFF, Lisa, wrote me a few days ago, she mentioned that we should put up a wall around some of our own US states instead of between Mexico and the US.
It was funny, she mentioned a lost year of living in Nebraska, mentioned that is one state which should be walled off from other sane states.

NE , flatlands...
Something about Nebraska having their own sandwich , some mess called a Runza. Ground meat with cabbage on a roll,she said it gave her the Runza!

I was curious and looked up what a Runza was.
It actually seems like a meal I might even enjoy...
Maybe I need a wall built around myself?

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

.....
Maybe I need a wall built around myself?

You can  test drive that "wall" experience just here, living in Hungary right now,  by moving temporarily to the border with Serbia.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

OH, BTW, the Hungarian women in Hawaii did pull down the dress of the passed out women in the road. Give a friend a helping hand after all...

Not quite the same circumstances but strangely enough I was just reading about CPR and how to do it using a defibrillator. 

If the patient is a woman, you have to cut off their bra in order to attach the machine "paddles".   One paddle goes under the right shoulder at the back and the other one, the left hand (heart) side, under the armpit.  Moreover, if the area is hairy, it should be quickly shaved and dried off if wet so the gel on the paddles is in good contact with the skin.

Just occurred to me that any modesty in a moment of danger or rescue would be the last thing on anyone's mind. 

And with that, we're off to the water!  It's been brutally hot the past days.  Less hot now but it'll be 30 C this afternoon.

fluffy2560 wrote:

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

.....
Maybe I need a wall built around myself?

You can  test drive that "wall" experience just here, living in Hungary right now,  by moving temporarily to the border with Serbia.

No what you need to do is expatriate to Oman, which has only maritime borders. Well I think so... I just checked online, and some English geographer name of John Donne says "0 man is an island, surrounded unto itself".

fluffy2560 wrote:

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

OH, BTW, the Hungarian women in Hawaii did pull down the dress of the passed out women in the road. Give a friend a helping hand after all...

Not quite the same circumstances but strangely enough I was just reading about CPR and how to do it using a defibrillator. 

If the patient is a woman, you have to cut off their bra in order to attach the machine "paddles".   One paddle goes under the right shoulder at the back and the other one, the left hand (heart) side, under the armpit.  Moreover, if the area is hairy, it should be quickly shaved and dried off if wet so the gel on the paddles is in good contact with the skin.

Just occurred to me that any modesty in a moment of danger or rescue would be the last thing on anyone's mind. 

And with that, we're off to the water!  It's been brutally hot the past days.  Less hot now but it'll be 30 C this afternoon.

Everyone can doo CPR (cardio pulmonary resusciatation), If you don1t know, here is how you do iot. FIRST CALL THE AMBULANCE, 107 IN HUNGARY FOR EMERGENCY AMBULANCE. borrow someones phone or whatever, call the ambulance. Your job is to give first aid, to keep the patient alive until the experts in the ambulance arrive.

Then check that the patient is breathing, put your ear to their mouth or your hand, put your hand against their chest you are not interested in their tits, your heart is in the middle of your chest not somewhere under your right armpit, remove any restrictive clothing like bras, if the patient is not breathing then cross your two hands, your forefinger and middle finger, to get the heart going, all the time you check the patient is breathing, if the patient is not breathing then pinch their nose and breathe into their mouth check that the lung inflates. Take a deep breath, hold the patient1s nose opush your breath into their mouth, check. Talk to the patient about anything it does not matter, tell them that Sassy Tassy was a croupier in Las Vegas, just keep talking, if the patient is talking they are conscious so keep talking and just try to keep the patient conscious. Count one, two three four five, One hit to the heart, one mouth to mouth breath, three four five and keep doing that until the ambulance arrives, continue, keep doing it, it does not matter if your breath smells or they have small tits or are male or female or black or gay or whatever, you keep going until the ambulance arrives. You might save someone's life.

I don't like to brag about things really but i witnessed or was on the scene when a stupid car driver hit a motorcyclist off his bike at a busy junctoion. if that happens do not remove their skid lid, their motorcycle helmet, because there is a big danger you will break the spinal cord. Anyone who is screaming and shouting comes second, they are conscious, worry about the people who are not screaming and shouting, Yout two hands, two forefingers and middle fingers, make a cross and push in the middle of the chest in between the tits (men have tits too) that is where your heart is, lay down next to opatient so that you can see or hear their breath, keep going, push the heart. Easiest place to check for pulse is main artery well technically it is a vein but check the artery on the left hand side of the neck but do not remove a biker's helmet let the experts doo that, try to check their pulse on one of their wrists but you can hear their oblood flowing if you put your ear to theirs, you will hear the bloodflow from the patients ear if you put your ear to theirs you will heoar the sound of blood flowing. Don't be scared, don't be afraid, don't give a shit about whether it is a sexy bra or a blonde or brunette or the colour of their skin or their religion or whether they can play cribbage, but you might save someone's life one day.

Dang, once while dealing a full table of blackjack players a women at the roulette table next to mine just went down hard.
I had to keep dealing, that's the rules.
Security was called in, 2 old retired cops who now worked as casino security.
She wasn't coming to, they got the defib machine, opened up her blouse and was about to expose the "girls" she came to really fast.
She was just drunk on her butt!
It was sort of funny after all but it also was scary.

Had a old regular player on my baccarat table( one casino I was always dealing bac) he was there almost daily, a quiet old Chinese man who never caused any problems.
He just sank in is chair, other player's checked his pulse, said he was dead. Security came and hauled him away, someone took his seat and the cards kept on going...Sad.
I gave CPR once to a old man outside a grocery store in S. Ca.
I was wearing a pair of brand new pricey Guess jeans and was all dressed up.
They called out on the PA system about needing help outside the doors because some person was down.
I had just finished a CPR class with the Red Cross, just for , "fun" purposes. Can't hurt to learn new things.
No one was volunteering to help out so I thought I could either just go home or help out , only I and God above would know I could do CPR.
Really was not into getting my new jeans dirty or messy... How vain, I was in my 20's and what can I say.
I helped out but was very glad when a actual nurse came over to take my place. At that moment the old guy had a huge amount of blackish bile pour out of his mouth.
I was madder the anything, they didn't tell us to expect that in class! Yuck!!
He had died while I was trying to help him, I had a feeling he had left the building while I was working on him, just got a creepy feeling plus his face was 3 shades of purple and his eyes rolled back in his head.
I was mad too that he hadn't bothered to shave that morning, he made my face all itchy  and red. Man, of course it upset me that he had passed.
I had to go back into the store to collect my groceries and to buy a giant size bottle of mouth wash. I was mad, thought the store should just give me a bottle of mouth wash after all that.
It was a bit tense because a new thing was spreading called AIDS and no one knew exactly how one could catch it.
That did cross my mind because they had no CPR mouth piece to use.
My husband was really mad at the store, he said it was up to them to have a mouthpiece and to have someone who knew CPR, not up to the customers to save each other.
I jumped in because of my family, knew maybe i could get ill but thought to myself at least I could meet my maker knowing I did the best I could for a stranger.
Sounds so corny now but I do believe we are tested by helping strangers not just helping our friends and family.
Thought too how can any one expect a stranger to help their loved ones in need if they them selves are not willing to help a stranger in need, karma , yes, didn't want to mess up my pretty new jeans but also didn't want karma to hit me later in life. Such an old Girl Scout at times...
Other times I can also be a rude punk, depends on the situation and who is pushing what buttons.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Other times I can also be a rude punk, depends on the situation and who is pushing what buttons.

I have always though that ATMs, cash machines, should have a "gamble" button, kinda double or quits, you ask for 20 bucks  and you get a gamble button that either you get 40 or 0
.
"Every man has a great idea that wil not work." I also invented the combined confessional box and photo booth, three Hail Marys and four passport photos, and your photos would be looking very innocent obviouusly. That idea didn't catch on eiother.

SimonTrew wrote:

....Everyone can do CPR (cardio pulmonary resusciatation), If you don1t know, here is how you do iot. FIRST CALL THE AMBULANCE, 107 IN HUNGARY FOR EMERGENCY AMBULANCE. borrow someones phone or whatever, call the ambulance. Your job is to give first aid, to keep the patient alive until the experts in the ambulance arrive......whether they can play cribbage, but you might save someone's life one day.

I was actually just thinking of how there's a question re the "importance of maintaining dignity" in an emergency situation rather than actual mechanics of CPR.  For example, chopping off a bra while sticking on the paddles might expose someone's chest - hardly important of course - but it might cross other (more prudish) minds that a line might be crossed with that exposure.

I was thinking also how does one continue to look good in hospital? 

BTW, I thought hard about the cribbage thing and decided on balance the person should be saved. They can re-educated later.

Oh and BTW again, calling the European wide 112 doesn't always work. They don't answer the phone!

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

.....
He had died while I was trying to help him, I had a feeling he had left the building while I was working on him, just got a creepy feeling plus his face was 3 shades of purple and his eyes rolled back in his head.
I was mad too that he hadn't bothered to shave that morning, he made my face all itchy  and red. Man, of course it upset me that he had passed.
I had to go back into the store to collect my groceries and to buy a giant size bottle of mouth wash. I was mad, thought the store should just give me a bottle of mouth wash after all that.
It was a bit tense because a new thing was spreading called AIDS and no one knew exactly how one could catch it.
....

Sounds like a rather traumatic thing to be involved in.  Did you get any counselling or anything afterwards?  Or find out anything about the victim?

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

....Everyone can do CPR (cardio pulmonary resusciatation), If you don1t know, here is how you do iot. FIRST CALL THE AMBULANCE, 107 IN HUNGARY FOR EMERGENCY AMBULANCE. borrow someones phone or whatever, call the ambulance. Your job is to give first aid, to keep the patient alive until the experts in the ambulance arrive......whether they can play cribbage, but you might save someone's life one day.

I was actually just thinking of how there's a question re the "importance of maintaining dignity" in an emergency situation rather than actual mechanics of CPR.  For example, chopping off a bra while sticking on the paddles might expose someone's chest - hardly important of course - but it might cross other (more prudish) minds that a line might be crossed with that exposure.

I was thinking also how does one continue to look good in hospital? 

BTW, I thought hard about the cribbage thing and decided on balance the person should be saved. They can re-educated later.

Oh and BTW again, calling the European wide 112 doesn't always work. They don't answer the phone!

Here is the dignity. Saving someone's life is more imoportant than how you or they are dressed. If a bad samaritan walks by on the other side looking at a female's tits while you are giving the CPR, the fault is not with the female or with me, it is with the bad samaritan who walks past and does not give help.

The way to look good in hospital is to be naked, obvoiously. Otherwise, no chance.

SimonTrew wrote:

....Here is the dignity. Saving someone's life is more imoportant than how you or they are dressed. If a bad samaritan walks by on the other side looking at a female's tits while you are giving the CPR, the fault is not with the female or with me, it is with the bad samaritan who walks past and does not give help.

The way to look good in hospital is to be naked, obvoiously. Otherwise, no chance.

Well sure.

I was prompted by Marilyn's story of pulling the dress down when I'd have thought moving the person to a safer location and ensuring they were OK healthwise would have been the priority rather than their perceived dignity.

Some people look good anywhere - hospital or otherwise.  But many many others less so.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

OH, BTW, the Hungarian women in Hawaii did pull down the dress of the passed out women in the road. Give a friend a helping hand after all...

Marilyn you have recommended, "liked" your own post there....

Yes of course try to preserve someone's dignity if you can. But if it is a choice between preserving their life and preserving their dignity, their life comes first, however undignified it may be. The kiss of life, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, is not a particularly dignified thing for either of you, but what are you supposed to do? You don't offer a breath freshener while she sorts out her lipstick, do you? You just get on with it.

I have pushed someone out of the way of a fast train that they hadn't seen coming, at a level crossing at the end of the station platform, they had got off the train as indeed had i and Hungarians  get impatient, and try to beat the train thast is just leaving the station. OK, the train driver will put the brake on and wait, but they had not seen the fast tnon-stop train coming the other way, and 400 tons of metal going at 100kph versus you, there is only going to be one winner.  That was not very dignified either, but the man I pushed out of the way did not complain as we both fell safely at the trackside,  he did not say "why did you push me, i am a bit dirty now".

I am not saying I am superman, I am just prettygoodman but dignity comes second, saving someone's life comes first, however undignified it might be for the short time you are doing it.

SimonTrew wrote:

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

OH, BTW, the Hungarian women in Hawaii did pull down the dress of the passed out women in the road. Give a friend a helping hand after all...

Marilyn you have recommended, "liked" your own post there....

Yes of course try to preserve someone's dignity if you can. But if it is a choice between preserving their life and preserving their dignity....

This is getting a bit morbid. 

Culturally there's a difference between say here and Thailand.  If someone does themselves in or dies in an accident, in Thailand, they'll publish the photo of the death scene with all the paramedics and cops standing around looking at the unfortunate person whereas here, a blanket comes out to cover the person where they lie until the official people come to pick them up. 

Mrs Fluffy told me her countryside great grandma was laid out in the living room with her head resting on some bricks for all to look at.   There's no messing, within a day or so she was already up at the cemetery chapel about to be laid to rest.  There's no formaldehyde or embalming, it's straight on from there into the ground.

fluffy2560 wrote:

Mrs Fluffy told me her countryside great grandma was laid out in the living room with her head resting on some bricks for all to look at.   There's no messing, within a day or so she was already up at the cemetery chapel about to be laid to rest.  There's no formaldehyde or embalming, it's straight on from there into the ground.

In the Islamic faith and I think also for some Jewish faiths you are supposed to be buried within 24 hours of death if at all possible.

My late mother, who was neither Jewish nor Islamic -- she was completely atheistic i.e. Church of England -- would have them in their box before they were even cold... but then my mother was rather a formidable undertaking. It would not have surprised me if after she died she somehow managed to come straight back to put herself into the box.

"It wasn!t the cough that carried him off, it was the coffin they carried him off in"

I had a drinking buddy who was a funeral director and he was so stereotyopiocal he had a pint in the pub after work all dressed in black and would rub his hands together, a nice guy honestly but kinda a caricature of a funeral director, in his mid fifties,  one day he said well i only started in this game a few years ago. So, what did you do before then? Oh, I was an air traffic controller, but it was starting to get a bit hectic so I thought try something a bit more peaceful...

SimonTrew wrote:

she was completely atheistic i.e. Church of England --

Huh??

If she was (C of E) Anglican, Church of England. She was a Christian. Not atheistic.

Atheistic is disbelieving or lacking belief in the existence of God.

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

she was completely atheistic i.e. Church of England --

Huh??

If she was (C of E) Anglican, Church of England. She was a Christian. Not atheistic.

Nah, the C of E is a broad church that allows you to believe almost anything, and belief in God is entirely optional. 

SimonTrew wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

she was completely atheistic i.e. Church of England --

Huh??

If she was (C of E) Anglican, Church of England. She was a Christian. Not atheistic.

Nah, the C of E is a broad church that allows you to believe almost anything, and belief in God is entirely optional. 

What?? I never heard of so much rubbish Simon.

SimonTrew wrote:

....
In the Islamic faith and I think also for some Jewish faiths you are supposed to be buried within 24 hours of death if at all possible...

I've been in multiple Islamic countries and a funeral is usually attended by large numbers of people from the deceased's mosque.   Burials are indeed within 24h - makes sense - it's hot usually in those places.

On a recent trip, my hotel recently was next to a mosque. I wondered what all the fuss was about as there were many cars there. 

Looks like they took the deceased there for some rituals like washing the body and wrapping up in a simple white shroud (no boxes allowed), then it was off in the back of a pickup truck in a convoy to the cemetery.  Not like Hinduism where cremation is the norm - cremation is forbidden in Islam. The cemetery I had hiked by some days earlier so I knew where were going. I could see which direction Mecca was too.  The head must point towards Mecca.   Their graves are simple affairs, simple markers and nothing very ornate.  There doesn't seem to be much of a tradition of maintaining the graves.

I saw something similar in Costanta in Romania.  Deceased in the back of a pick up truck but ornately on display, being driven around the city.  It was a woman, perhaps in her 70s. I am not sure if this was a Roma funeral or some Orthodox thing.  Constanta (as a large port) has a mosque too but this didn't seem to be an Islamic affair. 

I also worked in a African town where one of the offices I visited was opposite the morgue.  Outside the morgue they had a lot of coffins of different types and sizes.  Apparently if someone died in the hospital next door, they would lend them a coffin to take the deceased away or presumably when there was a collection.  It was kind of strange seeing all the coffins piled up with a number written on the side.  Deceased person reduced to a number.

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

Huh??

If she was (C of E) Anglican, Church of England. She was a Christian. Not atheistic.

Nah, the C of E is a broad church that allows you to believe almost anything, and belief in God is entirely optional. 

What?? I never heard of so much rubbish Simon.

Element of sarcasm in Simon's posting but also elements of truth. 

I think it's true as well as this newspaper article (click here) says. 

I think it pretty much sums up the CofE (of which I'm nominally a very lapsed member), anything - just about goes.   

I don't really know why the people in the CofE who don't believe just pack it in and join the Humanists or something else or just don't join anything. 

There's the odd one in the Catholic faith where there's a group of married priests who are refugees from the CofE.  Forgot what they split over but it was something probably which we would consider trivial now.  So, yes, we're celibate but....

I am not sure anyone rational could truly be an atheist. At best they are agnostic since they have no reliable proof either way.  Until there's absolutely proof, there's always going to be an element of doubt.  Sorry believers, hate to rain on your parade.  Non-believers are heretics but if God created us all, he/she created them as well! Presumably to test their faith.  Or is accepting them the test?  I mean, get a grip,  WTF? 

And so, once again, the dog chases its tail into it's own fundament of oblivion.

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

Huh??

If she was (C of E) Anglican, Church of England. She was a Christian. Not atheistic.

Nah, the C of E is a broad church that allows you to believe almost anything, and belief in God is entirely optional. 

What?? I never heard of so much rubbish Simon.

well the vast majority of English people will put "C of E" on their birth certificate etc but never see the inside of a church except for hatch, match and dispatch. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for people who believe in Christ the Saviour etc, or indeed anyone else's religious beliefs. The fact of the matter is that we, er, agnostics the "don't knows" are hypocrites I suppose, I got married in a C of E church by the good old fasshioned Book of Common Prayer and I meant every word I said, and have aíways done, but you can do that without actually having a belief in God, you can say to your wife-to-be for richer for poorer, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, foresaking all others, until death do us part, as long as we both shall live and mean every word of that (i certainly do) without having any particular beliief in God. And even then by the very words marriage only survives until death, so presumably when I go to Heaven I can start over with someone else, the marriage contract only lasts until death in its own terms yet for some reason a lot of people seem to believe that in Heaven you will still be married, that is not what the Bible says... I have never taken the Sacrament because I cannot believe that is the blood of Christ or the body of Christ, that would be sheer hypocrisy and disrespectful for me to do that, but to celebrate the joy of life by sitting in Church and saying thank you to those around you and may you go in peace, that to to me is not hypocritical or disrespectful, quite the opposite.

I believe Jesus existed in the same way I believe Henry VIII existed, I only have other people's word for it but otherwise I would end up believing in nothing, I have no concrete idea beyond my senses (and how can I trust those?) that anything outside my own consciousness exists, I suppose this is cartesian, "I think, therefore I am",  that I just have to take a default position that the world is everythingo that is the case, as Wittgenstein said, because otherwise I would have to somehow give up hope that scientific "laws" will still hold true tomorrow as they do today, that somehow I won't wake up tomorrow and the sky is pink and the sun rises in the north and sets in the south, that the world will still be fairly rational and behave tomorrow as it does today. What you are nearly doing is dismissing my agnostic beliefs when I don't dismiss other"s right to believe, I don't go around like an idiot like Richard Dawkins dismissing others' genuinely held beliefs. There have been far too many religious wars so I am not about to start another one.

I edited my parish church newsletter for four years even though I was almost never seen in church, now who is the hypocrite, the vicar/curate who knows well that I don't believe in God, or me? It is not me, and it is not him either. that is what I meant by the C of E being a broad church, I even put a smiley, that you are allowed to have doubts, like St Thomas in the Bible. The people who have no doubts - the fanatics and fundamentalists - are the ones who cause the trouble, not me. As Nietzche said, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him" - but that is enough philosophy at this time of the morning, "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".

Does anyone take the Bible literally. Do you believe that Adam lived until he was 930, or Methuselah until he was 969? Seems unlikely to me. It is still a good moral book, and Jesus' moral lessons and parables are good words, to be a Good Samaritan or whatever, do you believe that thunderstorms happen when the Norse God Thor is a bit angry? After all, Wednesday Thursday and Friday are named after Norse Gods, would you say that we must stioll believe in Woden/Odin, Thor and Friedag just because some Scandinavians did a thousand years ago? Maybe "skeptic" is the better word, the miracle of science is not that it is "correct", it is hardly ever correct, that is why we continue to evolve science, but that it works in practice most of the time, that we can predict the weather to a certain extent, we can predict what happens when you throw a ball (ballistics), what happens if you stick someone in a Faraday cage, that the power of science is in prediction, even though it is not 100% accurate. Plenty of good scientists have genuine religious beliefs but I am not one of them, I don't believe that you get "pie in the sky when you die".

fluffy2560 wrote:

....Deceased person reduced to a number.

Well that happens in Hungary in a sense, you get a plot number for your funeral plot, I have I don't know exactly what relation, great-aunt and great-uncle on my wife's side and we spent a lot of time tracing their plot in one of the large cemetaries in Budapest.. the great-uncle was a stonemason and so had made his own tombstone and put his and his wife's names on it, just left her date of death as "19..." so that another mason afterwards could add the final two digits, but we traced them and added them to the family history, and of course I laid flowers on the grave and tidied it up a bit, that cemetary is rather overgrown with trees no doubt planted as saplings when the cemetary was first built but very mature now

I don't see how it is somehow hypocritical to go to the missus' father and mothers grave and say thankyou for giving me my missus and tidying their grave up a bit even though I never knew them as people, they live on through their daughter and their moral values, you can call that pantheist or atheist or agnostic or whatever you like.

I suppose others would call me a hypocrite just because I happen to uphold some of the things the Old Testament tells me to do, but "honour thy father and mother" is a moral Commandment, as indeed is Thou Shalt Not Kill, Thou Shalt Not Steal, Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery, Thou Shalt Not Covet, Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness. These are all moral statements that are perfectly good to uphold as a humanist or agnostic or whatever, it is not as if Jews or Christians or Muslims have some monopoly (oligopoly?) on these rules of how we get along with each other.

fluffy2560 wrote:

There's the odd one in the Catholic faith where there's a group of married priests who are refugees from the CofE.  Forgot what they split over....

"Women bishops" in general parlance, more formally the "Ordination of women". Here at wikipedia

Priests in the C of E have always been allowed to be married (in a heterosexual relationship) and have sexual intercourse etc so I am not sure which split you might be thinking of, gay bishops perhaps? here at Wikipedia

To disambiguate, you mean I am sure the Roman Catholic faith, not to be confused with Anglo-Catholicism (which is part of the C of E). The C of E has continually been having schisms since almost its foundation, but I suppose we can complain to someone, Maybe her Majesty The Queen who is head of the Church of England, she might be able to tell them all to pull their socks up, Look, it says there right on Brtish coins (and Canadian) DEI GRATIA FIDEI DEFENSOR, By the grace of God, Defender of the Faith, surely she could do something about it?

But I am a bit antidisestablishmentarian, it is one of those institutions that are just part of the fabric of being English and have lots of vey fine buildings, parish churches with nobody in them and often with the door left open so anyone can wander in and out whenever they want to get a bit of peace and reflection, you look at Lincoln Cathedral, for something like a thousand years it was the tallest building in the world for 238 years (1311 - 1549) and is just astonishingly beautiful, Ely Cathedral, the "Ship of the Fens", is also very beautiful. Many of Wren's small London churches are masterpieces, and in all kinds of architectural styles for hundreds of years these have been contributing to the fabric of our society, there are lots of nice churches in Budapest too but few are open except during service and I dont want to distrupt the service so I rarely get to see the insides of them

I am no expert in it, but my late mother was a lay reader, my father is an organist. I was Confirmed in a C of E Church. I also participated in the church life....  Acolyte, M.C!  So I can say I know more than others.

We actually do have one Anglican Church in Austria but that is in Vienna so for me to attend it takes me on a 2 hour a train ride. Although I love the Austrian rail service, they have a reduce rail service on a Sunday.

SimonTrew wrote:

......What you are nearly doing is dismissing my agnostic beliefs when I don't dismiss other"s right to believe, I don't go around like an idiot like Richard Dawkins dismissing others' genuinely held beliefs......

....do you believe that thunderstorms happen when the Norse God Thor is a bit angry? After all, Wednesday Thursday and Friday are named after Norse Gods, would you say that we must stioll believe in Woden/Odin, Thor and Friedag just because some Scandinavians did a thousand years ago? .....

Genuinely held beliefs? So people cannot challenge my flat earth theories?  Or that aliens are amongst us?  Or school shootings are faked?   Or The Donald is not Putin's poodle?  All these rights can of course be held by people but the problem is trying to convert others.

Dawkins is a rationalist.  I've read some of Dawkin's books and they are pretty good analytical descriptions of delusional behaviour or even mass hysteria - particularly The God Delusion.  I quite enjoyed Christopher Hitchen's as well -  God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  All very well written and presented.  When I came across him, I almost thought Hitchen's was a word god.  Dawkins less so. 

As for the Norse Gods, what great stories they are.  Like Greek and Roman myths.   Brilliant.  My own view is that thunder is Thor and chums are moving Ikea furniture around and rapping Abba songs.  I'm  a  great fan of Viking sagas (at least the TV show anyway).

Re the married priests, it was about women priests. Seems ridiculous now but that's what they were protesting about. As far as I can see on the Internet, there are married priests without the vow of celibacy in the RC church.  The Pope has given a dispensation for them. Google it!

Let us get out of religion or politics......

Feeling hot? Some parts of Spain and Portugal are getting 47°C 

How is it with you? 37°C here, and I am slowly melting 

SimCityAT wrote:

Let us get out of religion or politics......

Feeling hot? Some parts of Spain and Portugal are getting 47°C 

How is it with you? 37°C here, and I am slowly melting 

I'm on the south side of Balaton almost opposite Tihany and it's brutally hot. It must be past 33 C in the shade. Mrs Fluffy says 40+ C in the sun.  It's so hot, I'm wearing a hat and T-shirt when I'm in the lake or in my canoe.  In the holiday house the Mrs Fluffy family own, we don't have airco, just a fan and it's not enough.  At 5am the other day, I moved outside  to sleep on a sun lounger. It was just baking hot inside and it was the only way I could get relief. 

Yesterday, I also cycled 26 km on my MTB and it was dire - I got through over a 1.5L of water and I was going slowly.  I am thinking I won't do any cycling until it drops below about 28 C or to go out after say 17h when it starts to cool down.

fluffy2560 wrote:

[
Dawkins is a rationalist.  I've read some of Dawkin's books and they are pretty good analytical descriptions....

His books are quite interesting, knowledgeble and insightful, but watching his lectures or guest appearances on television he always comes across to me as an intolerant bully.

It has been quite warm here in Budapest, but nothing exceptional for August... the BBC News channel had on its rolling strapline thing  (which is always rather a somewhat misleading teaser it seems to me)  "European Heatwave"... where we live we always get a lot of thunder but not much rain, the buda hills probably make it all fall there, lightning trynig to find the shortest path to earth etc, it has felt really hot tody because there is no wind

I do not have a thermometer but young Hungarian ladies' skirts and shorts are definitely losing centimetres, and that is usually inversely proportional to celcius One in Aldi must have had at least 5cm of her buttocks hanging out the bottom of her shorts...

I think it has been very humid here which is a big problem for me because the humidity tends to make all my cigarette papers stick together, when the gum on the paper gets moist, so that when I go to take one out of the packet all fifty come out like a concertina, it is very annoying. S'il vout plait Monsieur LaCroix, can you make a humidity-tolerant verion of Rizlas?

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

[
Dawkins is a rationalist.  I've read some of Dawkin's books and they are pretty good analytical descriptions....

His books are quite interesting, knowledgeble and insightful, but watching his lectures or guest appearances on television he always comes across to me as an intolerant bully.

It has been quite warm here in Budapest, but nothing exceptional for August... the BBC News channel had on its rolling strapline thing  (which is always rather a somewhat misleading teaser it seems to me)  "European Heatwave"... where we live we always get a lot of thunder but not much rain, the buda hills probably make it all fall there, lightning trynig to find the shortest path to earth etc, it has felt really hot tody because there is no wind

I do not have a thermometer but young Hungarian ladies' skirts and shorts are definitely losing centimetres, and that is usually inversely proportional to celcius One in Aldi must have had at least 5cm of her buttocks hanging out the bottom of her shorts...

I agree he seems patronising and some others are too.  The one which makes me cringe is Matthew Paris (sorry non-UK, he's guy on the radio, former MP and journalist).  Smarmy schoolteacher voice. Oh and Peter Mandelson (another ex-politician smart*ss), jeez, what a creep.   

But Christopher Hitchens was altogether a different kettle of fish - level voiced, persuasive and an excellent wordsmith that makes you think.   His brother is almost a clone in the way he speaks so now Christopher is dead, we've got Peter Hitchens instead who is just a shadow from an alternate universe of his older brother.

I could have a pop at you over the women's shorts and we should have some equality.  Nothing wrong with improved ventilation within the range of genders under any weather conditions.   But if we want a weather whinge, look at those awful people wearing Speedos two sizes too small in their gardens!  Mowing the lawn in their swimming gear!   But we've been here before in this forum some months ago.

The other day, we saw some guy getting ready for swimming in Balaton in the buff.  He was on his jetty, getting his kit off and when he saw us approaching (in a canoe), he quickly covered up.  I think he only did it because of the Fluffyettes.  Not that they haven't seen others similarly uncovered.  At least he wasn't wearing ludicrously small Speedos.

It's still about 35 C here at Balaton and in the sun, well past 40 C.  Everyone is dripping with the heat. It was very busy in the water yesterday so I expect it'll be packed on the motorway back to Budapest this evening.  At least the locals with the cafes, pubs and restaurants are doing excellent business.  It's their time to make their yearly money.  Good luck to them!

It was the misssus' and my wedding anniversary yesterday and as a treat she got a bottle of Hungarian champagne on the way home from her work, unfortunately it was, wel,l corked would be the wrong word as they use plastic corks but it was brown and had no fizz, she got this at the Prima supermarket at Kobanya-Kózpont. I said, not tonight but in the morning, take it back and demand a refund. We had a nice game of scrabble which she won by about ten ponits, it was very close.

She said this morning Oh they will not refund you. Yes they damned well will there is three quarters of their pigswill in the bottle and I have corked it and i am damned well prepared to have an argument with them.

Torley is a perfectly reasonable mass manufatured drop, nbut this Hungarian habit of not demanding your consumer rights is ridiculous and someone has to take a stand and it seems that it is me. You sold me a product that was not of merchantable quality, unfit for use, and moreover probably unfit for human consumption. Probably it is full of bacteria. I have had enough of this Hungarian attitude of that is OK, just one of those things. From a decent bottle of wine I can accept it, but any decent wine merchant who you say this wine is corked will accept it without question, will not say oh maybe you kept it overnight up the cats arse or whatever, This is a mass manufactured champagne/peszgo so if my bottle is contaminated then probably thousands other are on the factory line so someone has to complain, and today it is going to be me.

SimonTrew wrote:

It was the misssus' and my wedding anniversary yesterday and as a treat she got a bottle of Hungarian champagne, unfortunately it was well corked would be the wrong word as they use plastic corks but it was brown and had no fizz, she got this at the Prima supermarket at Kobanya-Kózpont. I said, not tonight but in the morning, take it back and demand a refund. We had a nice game of scrabble which she won by about ten ponits, it was very close.

I am splitting hairs here, The easy and short answer is that sparkling wine can only be called Champagne if it comes from the region of Champagne, France, which is just outside of Paris. Further, champagne can only be made using Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier.

SimCityAT wrote:

I am splitting hairs here, The easy and short answer is that sparkling wine can only be called Champagne if it comes from the region of Champagne, France, which is just outside of Paris. Further, champagne can only be made using Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier.

You are absolutely right, I tjhink "just north of Paris" is a bit of a Uber driver's direction, because it is rather east of the pas.de calais, but I put in Champagne just for our non-EU readers, it is Designated Region Of Origin, yes it must be from the Champagne region in the EU to be called Champagne. On the other hand, Peszgo is perfectly OK and would translate nearest as champagne or sparkling wine. It is perfectly OK for example to call a sparkling wine made in California with Chardonnay grapes as a California Champagne, in the US, but you cannot call it that in Europe. You are quite right to split hairs when the EU do. I was only referring it as to the style of sparkling white wine for our dear Non-EU readers.

Preumably when old Frank Sinatra was singing "I get no kicks from champagne..." what the lyricist should have written was "I get no kicks from sparkling white wine"

I  went out early morning to get some tobacco, and to get some fresh air which is about the only time I get it obviously... I had forgotten to take a lighter with me. I tend to hang a cigarette out of the side of my mouth but it was patently unlit, since I had no way to light it. I could of course have picked up a disposable lighter up at the tobbaconists but I thought I had one on me . but did not. yet even I can survive a fifteen minutes' walk without a cigarette.

On my walk I passed a man who made  what I call the "non-smoker's cough" as I walked past him, this little cough they do when they have spotted a smoker within about a twenty metres radius of them. This I presume is because he was one of those absurd fanatics  who believe that my cigarette smoke causes more harm to you, in a public open space next to a busy road than those horrible belching petrochemical consuming nitrous oxide emitting vehicles right next to you on the road right next to you? That somehow MY CIGARETTE CAUSES MY HARM THAN WHAT COMES OUT OF THEIR EXHAUSTS?

AND MY CIGARETTE IS NOT EVEN LIT, SO IT IS CAUSING YOU NO DAMNED HARM YOU STUPID IMBECILE. BUT YOU HAVE TO DO THE NON-SMOKER'S COUGH AS IF MY UNLIT CIGARETTE IS HARMING YOU. IDIOT. That is my rant for the day.

I thought you smoked Roll-Ups?

SimonTrew wrote:

.....Torley is a perfectly reasonable mass manufatured drop, nbut this Hungarian habit of not demanding your consumer rights is ridiculous and someone has to take a stand and it seems that it is me. You sold me a product that was not of merchantable quality, unfit for use, and moreover probably unfit for human consumption. Probably it is full of bacteria. I have had enough of this Hungarian attitude of that is OK, just one of those things. From a decent bottle of wine I can accept it, but any decent wine merchant who you say this wine is corked will accept it without question, will not say oh maybe you kept it overnight up the cats arse or whatever, This is a mass manufactured champagne/peszgo so if my bottle is contaminated then probably thousands other are on the factory line so someone has to complain, and today it is going to be me.

Consumer rights are horribly weak here and compounded by bad attitudes. Rights have been normalised (i.e. diluted) across the EU by our friends in Brussels.  It's resulted in a worse situation for everyone.   Buying mail order gives you better rights (theoretically) than just walking into a shop to get something. 

I've been in supermarkets here and elsewhere and I've seen mouldy fruit on sale.   You'd think the staff would notice but I suspect here they know but simply don't care about it.   

Aldi is the only supermarket that does no question returns.  That's the place to get basic materials such as fizzy pop (i.e. Torley).

fluffy2560 wrote:

Consumer rights are horribly weak here and compounded by bad attitudes. Rights have been normalised (i.e. diluted) across the EU by our friends in Brussels.  It's resulted in a worse situation for everyone.   Buying mail order gives you better rights (theoretically) than just walking into a shop to get something.  .

Indeed. We ordered from the UK a simple doorbell, that should according to them have arrived a few days ago. I tell the missus the distance selling regulations and ultimately since it was sold in the UK the Consumer Rights Act 2015, cancel the contract since we are not waiting till the 22nd of August it was supposed to be here on 5 July. Just a simple doorbell, nothing posh. I have all the wiring in place ready for it to be connected. My Hungarian missus will not cancel the contract. In the meantime if anyone wants to get hold of me they have to knock loudly on the kitchen window... WELL CANCEL THE CONTRACT AND I WILL GO TO OBI AND GET A DOORBELL THERE. This is my frustration, this oh well these things happe attitude. I am not all for suing if you trip over a kerb, but =I think in america for cars in particular it is called the "lemon law", you sold me a pup, a dud, a lemon, give me my money back,

Someone once said, I forget whom, "We are not asking for a penny piece of [European] Community money for Britain. What we are asking is for a very large amount of our own money back." Blonde girl, face of some kind...