THE WORST THING EVER!

[Duchess]

Has "the worst thing ever" happened to you yet?

[OnBendedKnee]

A loaded, racked shotgun pointed at my chest from eight feet away, but other than that?
I feel like I've lived a charmed life.

[Donovan]

A loaded, racked shotgun pointed at my chest from eight feet away, but other than that?
I feel like I've lived a charmed life.

It was a service firearm in my case but I feel ya. Kinda puts everything else into context don't it?

Dunno if I'd call my life charmed, unless it was "well, coulda been worse" charmed. I've had some disastrous shit happen and done to me, but for some reason I've dodged a few literal and figurative bullets. And because I focus more on shit that went right for me I don't tend to sit around moping how awful something was or whine about how unfair life is. Nobody ever said life was any fairer than rolling dice made outta razor blades. A lucky few come up sevens, the rest get shredded hands
.

[JsMom]

YES! Enough said.

[Riotgear]

A close friend of mine named Richard died. It was a black time.

[Jezreel]

As of right now, yes the worst thing that could have happened did, 6 years ago this October. I know there now could be worse, but I hope it doesn't happen to me or mine.

[Clang McFly]

None of my friends and family have found out about my crossdressing yet...so NO.

[Lady Cop]

the worst thing ever in my opinion would be the loss of a child.

after that, your own death. after 2 heart attacks i know that surviving is great and fuck death, it's final. when i finally succumb to the next one, i guess that will be the worst thing ever.

a vegetative state would be much worse!

[Riotgear]

Well I don't know about you fucks but I'm going to heaven. It's going to be great!

[JsMom]

What's your ^^^ idea of Heaven? Just curious

[Riotgear]

You know, robes, sandals, singing. A bunch of christians waiting in line to see Jesus. FUN!

[JsMom]

You know, robes, sandals, singing. A bunch of christians waiting in line to see Jesus. FUN!

^^^ Yah I see Heaven wrote all over that post.

[Riotgear]

According to the biblical description 'New Jerusalem' is a Borg cube.

[Donovan]

Well I don't know about you fucks but I'm going to heaven. It's going to be great!

What's your ^^^ idea of Heaven? Just curious

You know, robes, sandals, singing. A bunch of christians waiting in line to see Jesus. FUN!

According to the biblical description 'New Jerusalem' is a Borg cube.

Now then, you have the facts. You know what the human race enjoys and what it doesn't enjoy. It has invented a heaven out of its own head, all by itself: guess what it is like! In fifteen hundred eternities you couldn't do it. The ablest mind known to you or me in fifty million aeons couldn't do it. Very well, I will tell you about it.

1. First of all, I recall to your attention the extraordinary fact with which I began. To wit, that the human being, like the immortals, naturally places sexual intercourse far and away above all other joys -- yet he has left it out of his heaven! The very thought of it excites him; opportunity sets him wild; in this state he will risk life, reputation, everything -- even his queer heaven itself -- to make good that opportunity and ride it to the overwhelming climax. From youth to middle age all men and all women prize copulation above all other pleasures combined, yet it is actually as I have said: it is not in their heaven; prayer takes its place.

They prize it thus highly; yet, like all their so-called "boons," it is a poor thing. At its very best and longest the act is brief beyond imagination -- the imagination of an immortal, I mean. In the matter of repetition the man is limited -- oh, quite beyond immortal conception. We who continue the act and its supremest ecstasies unbroken and without withdrawal for centuries, will never be able to understand or adequately pity the awful poverty of these people in that rich gift which, possessed as we possess it, makes all other possessions trivial and not worth the trouble of invoicing.

2. In man's heaven everybody sings! The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth is able to do it there. The universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on, all day long, and every day, during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays; whereas in the earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is of one hymn alone. The words are always the same, in number they are only about a dozen, there is no rhyme, there is no poetry: "Hosannah, hosannah, hosannah, Lord God of Sabaoth, 'rah! 'rah! 'rah! siss! -- boom! ... a-a-ah!"

3. Meantime, every person is playing on a harp -- those millions and millions! -- whereas not more than twenty in the thousand of them could play an instrument in the earth, or ever wanted to.

Consider the deafening hurricane of sound -- millions and millions of voices screaming at once and millions and millions of harps gritting their teeth at the same time! I ask you: is it hideous, is it odious, is it horrible?

Consider further: it is a praise service; a service of compliment, of flattery, of adulation! Do you ask who it is that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment; and who not only endures it, but likes it, enjoys it, requires if, commands it? Hold your breath!

It is God! This race's god, I mean. He sits on his throne, attended by his four and twenty elders and some other dignitaries pertaining to his court, and looks out over his miles and miles of tempestuous worshipers, and smiles, and purrs, and nods his satisfaction northward, eastward, southward; as quaint and nave a spectacle as has yet been imagined in this universe, I take it.

It is easy to see that the inventor of the heavens did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere.

All sane white people hate noise; yet they have tranquilly accepted this kind of heaven -- without thinking, without reflection, without examination -- and they actually want to go to it! Profoundly devout old gray-headed men put in a large part of their time dreaming of the happy day when they will lay down the cares of this life and enter into the joys of that place. Yet you can see how unreal it is to them, and how little it takes a grip upon them as being fact, for they make no practical preparation for the great change: you never see one of them with a harp, you never hear one of them sing.

As you have seen, that singular show is a service of praise: praise by hymn, praise by prostration. It takes the place of "church." Now then, in the earth these people cannot stand much church -- an hour and a quarter is the limit, and they draw the line at once a week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then they do not look forward to it with longing. And so -- consider what their heaven provides for them: "church" that lasts forever, and a Sabbath that has no end! They quickly weary of this brief hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one; they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they are going to enjoy it -- with all their simple hearts they think they think they are going to be happy in it!

It is because they do not think at all; they only think they think. Whereas they can't think; not two human beings in ten thousand have anything to think with. And as to imagination -- oh, well, look at their heaven! They accept it, they approve it, they admire it. That gives you their intellectual measure.

4. The inventor of their heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be "brothers"; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together, Hosannah together -- whites, niggers, Jews, everybody -- there's no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart, and hug, and hug, and hug!

He is a marvel -- man is! I would I knew who invented him.

5. Every man in the earth possesses some share of intellect, large or small; and be it large or be it small he takes pride in it. Also his heart swells at mention of the names of the majestic intellectual chiefs of his race, and he loves the tale of their splendid achievements. For he is of their blood, and in honoring themselves they have honored him. Lo, what the mind of man can do! he cries, and calls the roll of the illustrious of all ages; and points to the imperishable literatures they have given to the world, and the mechanical wonders they have invented, and the glories wherewith they have clothed science and the arts; and to them he uncovers as to kings, and gives to them the profoundest homage, and the sincerest, his exultant heart can furnish -- thus exalting intellect above all things else in the world, and enthroning it there under the arching skies in a supremacy unapproachable. And then he contrived a heaven that hasn't a rag of intellectuality in it anywhere!

Is it odd, is it curious, is it puzzling? It is exactly as I have said, incredible as it may sound. This sincere adorer of intellect and prodigal rewarder of its mighty services here in the earth has invented a religion and a heaven which pay no compliments to intellect, offer it no distinctions, fling it no largess: in fact, never even mention it.

By this time you will have noticed that the human being's heaven has been thought out and constructed upon an absolute definite plan; and that this plan is, that it shall contain, in labored detail, each and every imaginable thing that is repulsive to a man, and not a single thing he likes!

Very well, the further we proceed the more will this curious fact be apparent.

Make a note of it: in man's heaven there are no exercises for the intellect, nothing for it to live upon. It would rot there in a year -- rot and stink. Rot and stink -- and at that stage become holy. A blessed thing: for only the holy can stand the joys of that bedlam.

Mark Twain, Letters From The Earth

[Riotgear]

^This.

[cladking]

The one thing I've learned from adversity is that no matter how bad you think you have it someone else has it far far worse so you should count your blessings. It might be hard to remember as you watch a soldier catch your baby on a bayonette but it's always true. Even Job had it easy compared to the things some have had to endure and then mercifully had their lives ended.

I've had a couple very bleak times and nothing is a bed of roses any longer but I'm doing just fine compared to some of the alternatives.

I believe the Gods get tired of hearing people whine about little things like disease and death so give them something else to deal with as well. Always remember that where there's life there's hope and every cloud has a silver lining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo

There's no way out alive and nothing to do for Easter but to hang around.

Even magic figs will just give you more years. Improve the world and have fun while trying not to complain.

[LuciferLynn]

I've been through hurricanes, tornadoes, an abusive relationship, pets dying......but when my oldest son was 6 years old, we were told he may have child leukemia due to his blood cell count. They tested for it and the test took 4 days to come back. His doctor told me not to go home and start looking on the internet about it since nothing was confirmed. So of course I did that. For four days I didn't eat or sleep. I spent every minute of every day with my children and every minute of every night crying and surfing the net, convinced he was dying. THAT was the worst thing ever.

[LuciferLynn]

He was ok, by the way. No leukemia.

[Riotgear]

You have excellent comic timing.