Dyl was there first, but no one could talk to him. That's what Zoe and Larry found out when they got there, so they talked to themselves about the origins of their names, purclecow and papa_bear.
Ranjana appeared late and Zoe thought that she had been eaten by hungry whales, but it turned out that she had only slept in.
Larry and Zoe were both eating, but when Zoe found out that Larry was eating a mandarin she wanted one too but obviously Larry wasn't able to get one to her. In fact Zoe seemed disappointed when Larry said that he was no longer eating a mandarin because he had eaten it all, so she told him to eat another mandarin.
Then Zoe reminded us that this was going to be her last chat till next April because she was headed out to sea. She had finished her 4 week operation course on navigation aids and was getting ready to do her advanced firefighting course. She still claimed she couldn't work a vcr though.
Dyl came back and was greeted with a flurry of exclamation marks which seemed to make him very happy while Zoe told Ranjana about the dangers of fires on ships which are considerably more serious than they are on land.
Larry and I talked a bit about Mayharm who can't seem to keep track of what I say, what he says, or even what we are talking about and when Dyl heard this he said "who are we talking about? sounds a little like me actually" I assured Dyl that we were not talking about him. Larry summed it up nicely by saying "there is a lot of that syndrome going around in the debates forum"
We were suddenly most surprised by the appearence of Gary who hadn't been at the chat for weeks! Gary told us that he had not only not been to our chat, he rarely visited the forums and had barely kept up with his chess moves. Of course Larry knew Gary since they were both members of the white hats clan but Gary didn't know Zoe so introductions were made.
We got to talking about organic foods and I asked Zoe how easy it was for her to get that when she is out at sea. She said that she doesn't eat much on a ship but she still manages to do her best.
Gary told us about the very interesting night he had when a team of paranormal investigators came to explore the 5th century system of caves beneath his pub. Ranjana asked if they had found anything and Gary said that they didn't find much: "they didn't find much so that was a bit disapointing. I'm a bit of a sceptic, and they seemed to want to find ghosts in everything, so it was a bit of a washout overall, but they had cool equipment and seemed like nice people … They had an electromagnetic field detector, and were getting very excited about a particular area until i pointed out that it was where their power cable extension was coiled up, causing hysterisis"
I told everyone about the really funny comment Ray had made when someone had written a post with "censored" interspersed. Ray suggested that the post be transfered to the puzzles forum so we could try to decipher what each "censored" really meant. Larry had made a joke in there as well and here is the link to the thread:
http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?id=11978
Fjord entered and tried to say hello to everybody at the same time and in the process confused Larry with Mike which is interesting since we do not have a Mike in our chat. Fjord didnt seem to be bothered by his mixing up of names. In fact, he told Ranjana he was eating, that he just came home and that he was terribly hungry. Gary had to go but not before Rachel showed up and Gary commented on her excellent capabilities as a debater which is interesting considering he hardly knows her. As you can see Rachel's fame has spread. Rachel's response was "huh?" so i commented on this and Rachel said it was Sunday and that her brain was dead.
Ranjana brought up the question as to whether it was Dyl's turn to do those Rachel tests. I pointed out that Rachel had all kinds of people doing those tests now, including bbarr! Dyl, fearing the worst told Rachel "Rachel, Prad was just telling me he had a yearning for another test". It was a really a desparate attempt but you have to understand how afraid Dyl really was. However, Rachel's response was that he was next which led me to coin the famous phrase sometimes attributed to Shakespeare "hoist by your own petard". Unfortunately, Rachel continued with "right after i finish with prad".
Larry, Dyl and I talked a bit about the images people maintain on the forums some of which seem to be very unreal and some definitely are unreal. Images maintained by the likes of SVW seem so bizarre that one wonders whether rhp is a big socialogical experiment and characters are planted just to see how others would react.
Fjord and Larry got into an interesting discussion about how to learn to preach since Larry was studying to be a preacher. Larry said "the real learning involves preparing the sermon. your audience is people who know the Bible, more or less, so you can't just get up and say anything"
Dyl went on to give a history of the Zach episode which involved his fictitious creations BigMelon and MissHope. it was a rather unfortunate episode in the history of rhp and resulted in the initiation of the TOS.
Rachel wanted me to do a test on what flavor my personality was but rather than fall for that I started to tell her the story of when Sangeeta got upset with me over colors. This was when Sangeeta was 17 and her class was to do a test to determine personality profiles, the results being given a particular color. So Sangeeta comes upstairs all excited to have me try the test and tells me what the different colors people can end up being are so I tell her I don't need to do the test because I'm purple which of course wasn't one of the colors. Naturally, in those days, in that circumstance, she wasn't too happy with me.
Sangeeta was actually not at the chat because she was on her way back from a Jain conference in Los Angeles. The Jains had wanted PETA president Ingrid Newkirk, but she sent Sangeeta instead because of the tremendous confidence they have in her. Sangeeta had made many Jain friends during her years on the west coast and they were of course glad to see her again. One of the neat things Sangeeta was doing was to inform them about the animal cruelty involved with dairy since Jains are lacto vegetarian. The conference was a great success and of course Sangeeta was a hit for AR as always!
Ranjana and Rachel had a quick discussion about candy which of course has little nutritional value, is bad for your teeth and doesn't do a whole lot for your overall health either.
Then during the Zach story, Dyl said something like "Imagine how you would feel if prad revealed that he was actually joe blow from sweden" so I want to make it very clear to everybody that my name isn't joe and I have never been to Sweden.
We also talked about the efforts of PETA's Bruce Friedrich who is running for president on a reality show. It is a great way to gain publicity for AR. Here is the link to his page:
http://votebruce.org/
It was time for Zoe to leave and we wish her the best over the next 9 months. Hopefully, we will keep in touch with her via email. All the best Zoe!
Ranjana initiated a discussion about how we could assist each other on the forums by contributing ideas and knowledge. For instance, if we are on a thread and need some new ideas we can help each other out and discuss approaches with each other on mutually interesting issues. I explained it to Rachel in the following way: "say i'm trying to convince svw of the value of the tickle tests, ok? now he is totally opposed to them, ok? so i can't make my point clearly as to the benefit of the tickle tests, ok? so i consult with you and you give me some ideas - like they are fun, or they assess your personality with accuracy, or they make you smart etc so now i have some new ideas with which to present my case - and have also learned something in the process so that is the idea behind this in that it can help us all to be better posters."
The idea seems to be a good one and we just have to figure out the details as to how to make it work.
Kyron and Rachel got into a neat discussion about snakes and what to do if you were bitten by one specifically a rattlesnake. Rachel had an interesting question regarding whether as vegans it is acceptable to use an antidote that was made with animal by-products. Ranjana provided the best answer to that from the vegan perspective, I think: " if it happens… and there is really no alternative… and the anti-venom is already there… then it makes sense to use it"
Several people left shortly and Fjord, Kyron and I were left discussing the communication mechanism for Ranjana's forum idea. We figured we would try a maillist or a VeggieChess forum thread. Pleased with this plan, we all left.