04/06/06

Wow! The longest chat yet - over 5 hours!! Geez you people talk a lot!!!

Dyl started the chat - well in a way he did. He showed up about 12 hours early because they do the time differently in Australia. When he saw that no one was there, I think he thought he was late rather than early, because instead of celebrating his promptness, he merely exclaimed "bugger" three times and vanished!

Rachel showed up early too, but only by about 10 minutes so Dyl wasn't there and she expressed how bored she was. Zoe appeared, but what no one realized was that she had entered the chatroom even before Rachel and remained silent because she had gone to sort out her dinner. Lori then entered after a 3 week absence and announced that she finally made it, but after Zoe remarked that she would have to stay inside for an electrician, all Lori got to hear was how bored Rachel would be even though she wasn't waiting for an electrician.

Ranjana and Michael came in just in time to hear that Zoe sprained her hand playing a video game for 8 hours and that Rachel sprained her eyes after doing it for only 3 hours. Michael on the other hand simply felt sprained because he had finally gone back to work after a long holiday.

Then Breaca appeared in her full 15 years and 2 days glory and received birthday greetings from everyone. She was actually at a party, but tore herself away for a bit to drop in.

We learned that Lori's AR group SOAR

http://swtsurrender87.tripod.com/soar/

was doing nicely and that they had been leafleting recently. Also, Lori had rid her own computer of the virus that had immobilized it and had saved herself $60 in the process!

I started telling everybody about the baby bunny we had rescued a few days ago. He has been named Yoda because of the orientation of his ears. Interestingly enough, Lori had just rescued 2 kittens.

Suddenly, Rachel lettuce know that Kirksey was eating spinach from his own garden. And then even more suddenly, she asked me "what does it mean in a dream when your best friend turns into a vampire and bites you?" I interpreted this to mean that it was time to tell her friend to go vegetarian - especially, when there is a possibility of getting bitten by him!

Rachel said that some of the people on RHP were disturbing. This becomes very evident during some of the debates where unfair and ludicrous tactics are often used. However, I am glad to say that those from Veggiechess have always managed to handle the situation and themselves with wit, equity and calmness.

Meanwhile, Ranjana and Fjord discussed playing their game in the next life since Ranjana was taking so long to move, but Michael wondered if there was an automatic timeout after 5 years. This worried him enough to think up a solution, just in case it was true: "but then you can continue the game by entering the position and you have another 5 years". Ranjana thanked him for that great suggestion, but I think she was being sarcastic. To not get into further trouble, Michael suggested that Ranjana actually plays blitz but through several universes and this had sufficient cosmological immensity to not only appease her, but to confuse me.

Then we learned that Rachel was going away for camp for a week and to prepare for it, she took off for a while to eat and this gave Kirksey a chance to talk, but only for a bit because he was driving Rachel to the camp which was nearly 200 miles away. After he returned, he would have to get back to painting his house. We learned that Kirksey did a lot of driving anyway for his work, sometimes as much as 100 miles a day. I told him that I used to like driving at one time many years ago and that I would pretend I was piloting a starship! Then I realized that Kirksey could be Captain Kirksey of Star Treksey on the starship Enterprisey! Well, it was time for them to go where not one of them had gone before and so they left.

Fjord asked about the possum problem in New Zealand. These creatures were brought there to start a fur industry and some of them escaped into the wild where without natural predators they are causing considerable destruction to the forests. Conservationists want to poison them, the fur industry wants to trap them and take their fur, while AR groups want to sterilize them. Zoe said she really wondered, as did Sangeeta and I, about this because very often people make a bigger deal regarding a problem, just so they can implement a quick or profitable solution. This is why it is so important to have AR groups since they speak on behalf of the victims.

Sangeeta asked Lori how her mother felt about her activism and we were pleased to hear that not only is her mother supportive, she even helps with the leafleting!

Meanwhile, Fjord and Michael were having a discussion about rain turning Austria into a big lake and how it was fortunate that Michael was such a good swimmer and something about his being a duck which caught Lori's attention as well as several of the rest of us. Sangeeta recalled her efforts at swimming which she called drowning which really isn't correct because she actually did learn to swim. Fjord therefore made the most helpful suggestion that she put salt in the water because it would help to buoy her up.

Zoe gave an example of how human intervention to rectify a problem had backfired:"look at ecuador as an example....the banana spider was killing stuff and being a general pain, so they introduced a snake....now the banana snake, that got bored of the spiders and now eats tonnes of other stuff and has doubled the problem." Then she suggested that we look at the animal problem from a different perspective - that it is the humans that were the real problem. This led to an interesting discussion regarding human overpopulation and how forced sterilization or at the very least, restraint could be a most useful solution. If people really wanted to have lots of kids, there certainly is no shortage of them in the orphanages of the world.

Zoe gave some very profound commentary regarding dealing with the real problem rather than pursuing makeshift solutions:

"there are so many animal rights groups....but at the end of the day maybe the problem [humans] is the cause" and

"the cause for the destruction should be adressed before the prevention is decided" and

"humans see themselves as superior which maybe as a race they are, however....when the earth reacts....which it will in time, it will be too late to change our mistakes"

I was fascinated to see all this wisdom being typed by someone who had recently sprained her hand playing 8 hours of a video game!

We were delighted to see Bear enter the chatroom after several weeks absence. I naturally tried to introduce him to Zoe and Lori, but Ranjana ignored me and tried to do the same thing. However, she wrote some things in a very strange way. Here's the sort of thing i mean,

[imvegan] LBear> bear meet Zoe and Lori (beat of me) [pradtf] imvegan> how come you are going through everything i have just done? [pradtf] imvegan> didn't you like my introductions? [pradtf] imvegan> lori is bestofme not beat of me!!!!!

After all this, Ranjana finally admitted that she wasn't listening, but she didn't type "wasn't" properly turning it into "wan't" which was probably a freudian typo indicating that she wanted listening which didn't surprise me very much considering the immense volume of verbosity I have had to deal with for over 4 decades!

Zoe then started an interesting commentary about merchant ships vs navy ships. It was surprising to learn that while the former are luxurious with "our own double bed in a huge room, with tv, fridge, VCR and sometime sky tv", navy ships are about as spartan as they come. Sangeeta who had toured a navy ship agreed wholeheartedly with Zoe's descriptions. Zoe also made the very interesting point that the level of skill training in the navy is pitifully inadequate in comparison to that of the merchant fleet and related an incident in which one of her counterparts in the navy through incompetence was suggesting a course which would have caused her "to navigate straight into a fishing vessel"!

Meanwhile, Bear told us that he was injured because he fell while feeding his pets and had to have "a little chirugic repair of my left eyebrow". His vision was impaired for a while too.

Zoe went on to tell us a fact of interest regarding banana transportation on merchant ships. Apparently, the crew get longer port time, because they have to be very careful unloading bananas and have to do it slowly. Additionally,

"the bananas start off green and then produce a gas called ethane i think but if you stop them producing the gas by regulating them at 14 degrees C and put only nitrogen in the cargo holds they remain fine for up to 3 weeks still green unripened."

All this talk reminded us that we didn't have bananas to make smoothie today, but as it turned out we did so it all worked out right.

Then Bear and Michael decided to have a discussion on their respective ages, which are very close since they were born in the same year, but Michael was born in November while Bear was born in December. They both seemed very pleased with all that so I figured I'd better not say anything.

Lori suddenly popped in again and Sangeeta told her about the Social Justice video and curriculum she had produced for high schools. Lori said she knows at least 2 teachers in her school who would be very happy to use it in their classes.

Then Fjord returned to the chat after his cycle ride, so I suggested he was a recycled Fjord, but he didn't get the 'car' joke which is ok because I didn't know I had made a 'car' joke till just now. Instead I went on to ask the profound question "why can't a cycle stand up by itself?" and after much deliberation had to provide the answer which is that "the reason a cycle can't stand up by itself is because it is two tired". Ranjana was obviously not interested in this because she left the chatroom before hearing the punchline and both Fjord and Bear could only manage a single laughing face after I had prompted them twice with triple laughing faces and had even written "two tired!! get it???" as well as "how come i'm the only one laughing??"

Fjord countered by asking "What do you do when your bike is too high?" to which I replied "deflate it?","try to handle it?","settle on it being unseatable?" and "see it as an offender?" after which I was told by Fjord that he hadn't quite asked the question correctly. But it was too late anyway because Lori couldn't stand it anymore and had taken off. Bear shouted for Lori to bring her back and was successful because she did reappear, but didn't say anything and then disappeared again. She was probably Loritering just outside the chatroom.

Bear kept saying he had to go and wash the car, but since he didn't go to do that chore we kept talking. Fjord had made a new friend, David (rhp Dreamlax, whose posts we liked very much) and so did I, Larry (rhp huntingbear), both of whom have joined our family and may join our clan as well. Bear had also found a couple of new friends who he thought may enjoy our clan and will arrange to have them get in touch with me if the idea appeals to them. However, he said that Lori was obviously his best friend since she had him shouting for her recently. I informed him as to Lori's real identity - one of the students who saved Daisy the pig and Bear was very pleased that she had joined our group. He was naturally also very glad to have met Zoe as well and commented on how the internet provides us with good opportunities to meet such interesting people.

When Bear found out that David and Larry were going to join our family, it reminded him that he was supposed to fill out the Veggiecarta a long time ago so that I could put him up on the family page. It was ok though I guess because I had lost his picture because of the harddrive erasure a while ago, so he put both items on his agenda.

Sangeeta told us that she had made friends with a Buddist monk recently from Dharam Shala: "he is pure veg and fighting for animal rights in thier tibetan parliament". She went on to ask Fjord who had lived in Nepal, "have you heard of Thich Naht Hahn? he is a vietnamese Zen Buddhist teacher...he is also very socially active...i like it when people take thier faith and put it into action- it is the best way to honor the faith i believe.."

Sangeeta continued by mentioning that she had been inside some amazing churchs with incredible architecture and that she planned on going there to meditate in them and Fjord told her how the shop he used to own was about philosophy, meditation and yoga.

Bear talked about some interesting prime number puzzles he had which were in Spanish, but he said he would try to post them anyway and this got Sangeeta talking about a fascinating book she was reading called the Da Vinci Code and what was neat was that both she and Fjord were roughly halfway through the book at present. According to the writeup on Amazon.com, "the book masterfully concocts an intelligent and lucid thriller that marries the gusto of an international murder mystery with a collection of fascinating esoteria culled from 2,000 years of Western history".

I then made the observation that this chat had already gone over 5 hours and tried to blame it on Sangeeta for talking so much, but it didn't work. However, Fjord left shortly afterwards perhaps to read the Da Vinci Code and Sangeeta took off to practise her sitar. Ranjana appeared again briefly and somehow that reminded Bear that he really did have to wash his car, but Ranjana left before he could, leaving me all alone in the chatroom until I left too.

Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 10:17 pm by dyl 12 hours?! I was 12 hours early?? Prad, I swear the start time for this chat changes every week! I arrived the same time the chat started 3 weeks ago. I'll try to co-ordinate my efforts with you during the week.

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