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9 years ago @ The Toast - Cocktail Hour: Open Th... · 0 replies · +10 points

I lurk a lot and post seldom and I just want to say I'm going to miss you, all of you.

9 years ago @ The Toast - Cocktail Hour: Open Th... · 2 replies · +20 points

I recall that gag appearing in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels. Pratchett could've used it too, of course.

9 years ago @ The Toast - Cocktail Hour: Open Th... · 0 replies · +23 points

It's more egregious than hilarious, but deeply stamped into my memory is the pseudonymous commenter on a friend's LiveJournal (yes, that long ago) who insisted that Zelazny's Lord of Light was an authoritative and accurate description of Hinduism.

If you're unfamiliar with this book, it was marketed as SF, it takes place in the distant future on a distant colonized planet, and there are a number of characters who call themselves by the names of various Hindu gods and exhibit superpowers consistent with those identities. It is crystal clear, to a reader who's paying attention, that these characters are in fact just as human as everyone else, their superpowers come from Sufficiently Advanced Technology, they originally adopted these identities to make it easier to rule the planet with an iron fist, and while some of them may well have come to believe their own hype, the narrative voice does not.

The charitable interpretation of the commenter's position is that they were completely blind to narrative sarcasm. The uncharitable interpretation is that they believed actual real-world Hinduism was, and is, one gigantic long con on its adherents. Not just in the Marxist/atheist "all religion is a tool for the rulers to keep the masses down" sense, but a con perpetrated by the gods themselves.

As I said at the time, *head go splode*.

10 years ago @ The Toast - The Most Exciting Poem... · 0 replies · +16 points

Jacques Yvart and Claire Forgeot liked the Beaufort scale so much, they used it as the basis for an illustrated children's book called The Rising of the Wind. I can't put it better than whoever wrote this sales blurb:

Beautifully illustrated folio book that explains the Beaufort Scale through the tale of two children who visit a blind poet who honors the sea by singing songs of the wind and the waves. Wonderfully evocative full-color illustrations, and marginal notes offering a glossary of nautical and astronomical terms.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Why Finn is the Best C... · 0 replies · +2 points

I was guessing "well, the base is done now, so we can recycle all these construction crews as more cannon fodder" but your theory makes more sense, really.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Why Finn is the Best C... · 0 replies · +5 points

I saw "Rey is the daughter of Princess Vespa and Lone Starr" go by on the Tumblrs somewhere and this instantly became my preferred headcanon. But since the writers will never ever go for that, I think I'm Team Rey Doesn'tNeedSpecialHeritageToBeAwesome.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Charlotte Brontë's Mo... · 1 reply · +3 points

I get the first two of those, but what's the deal with infant baptism?

10 years ago @ The Toast - Charlotte Brontë's Mo... · 0 replies · +7 points

Yah, as I understand it that is the Catholic position, but some Protestants don't buy it.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Charlotte Brontë's Mo... · 1 reply · +16 points

Modern-day Methodism, at least as I've encountered it, seems so ... sensible and inoffensive it's hard to imagine anyone having any problem with it greater than "your style of preaching bores me to death." And yet.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Charlotte Brontë's Mo... · 7 replies · +33 points

The explanation I have heard that makes sense to me (I am also someone raised as and still basically Jewish) is that veneration of saints is thinly disguised idolatry, and idolatry invalidates anyone's claim to be Christian. I don't know if this is actually the doctrine of any particular branch of Protestantism.

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