***look what I got in the mail the other day ***** free free free, except for $2 shipping

[Heddi]

TOTALLY WORTH IT

http://www.celebratecommunion.com/prefilled-communion-cups-with-wafers-free-sample-box.html

free sample of 4 pre-filled communion grape-juice-and-wafer combo. Paid $1.95 in shipping and it was here 2 days later. TOTALY WORTH IT.

Mr. Heddi grew up catholic and has always told me how much he loved those dang communion wafers. I grew up Methodist and we didn't do communion. So I'd never HAD a wafer.

You can buy them on ebay, you know.

But anywhoo, I saw these and I was like OH YEAH So I got some and i have to say. They are very bland. I really question my husband's sanity.

But you get 4 of them, and they come with grape juice and wafers and it's just so neat.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. How do they say that?----

There's a sucker born every minute.

Anyways, it doesn't count if a priest doesn't stick that wafer in your mouth, and if you don't drink out of the communal ritual chalice. Sorry, you are still going to hell.

So which of your evil friends put you on that mailing list????

[Heddi]

2. No I am a member of a freebie message board

My life motto: If it's free, it's for me, I'll take three.

Things I've gotten free (with no strings)
Ipod x 2
RT to california incl airfare & hotel : 4
$350 Starbux gift cards (probably more)
$1000 amazon gc (probably more)
more headphones than you can shake a stick at
I won a cookie basket with cookies shaped like nascar cars
leaf blower
zune music player
jewelry out the ying yang
clothing
sonicare

etc etc etc.

THat's just the good stuff. Thousdands of bumper stickers and bracelets and temporary tattoos and shit like that.

Freebies aren't as flowing as they used to be about 10 years ago.

But the cigarette companies give out good stuff. I've got glasses from Marlboro, Stella Artois, Newcastle Ale, I've gotten a tons of shit from Marlboro: flasks, darts, dice, dozens of zippo's, headphones, knives, multi-tools. I don't even smoke!

So I saw this on the freebie board. I thought I gotta get me some of that!

and I did.

Only thing I've paid postage for in...oh...12 years or so

[Curmudgeoness]

3. So....what's the catch?

I am always skeptical of freebies. I was raised with the motto "nothing is free". So, what did you have to give up to get all this free stuff?

[Heddi]

4. Nothing. My address. A throwaway email account. That's it.

For the cigarette co's, you have to sign up with their website. Again, I use a throwaway email address that I rarely check and is okayif it gets filled with spam and newsletters. The cigarette and beer/alcohol companies have to verify your identity, but they're all legit. I think you put in the last 4 of your SS and your dob, I can't remember it's been a long time. Malrboro has good freebies. Black and Mlid just sent me some headphones. I got a multi-tool from Copenhagen. V&M gave me a set of beach towels a few years ago.

http://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4

just don't use your real email, get a tosser from gmail or hotmail or whatever. One that you don't get real mail sent to. I haven't noticed a single bit of increase in junk mail based on getting shit sent to the house.

[Heddi]

5. I also get more free magazines than I know what to do with

on that link I shared, there's a page "free magazines."
Rewards Gold is a co that gives mag subscriptions. So is Mercury Magazines.
I have had an ongoing subscription to Wired magaizine for about 5 years now, and it's never going to expire. I get US Weekly til 2016 and at one point had a 5 year sub to Star and Entertainment Weekly. I've been getting Martha Stewart Living for several years with no end in sight, as well as Simple LIving or something like that. Cooking Light is free, as is Popular Mechanics and POpular Science and SPIN and Rolling STone.

I had been on some list where I got Bloomberg weekly and could never get it to stop.

Currently have 3 years of Marie Claire and Cosmo and Vogue and some other one that starts with an A.

It's nice because I take the mags to work---when I worked in the ER they were a welcome addition to the patient rooms. I work in a clinic now and they get read until they're shredded in the waiting rooms and patient rooms. SO they're recycled. ALso my co-workers love the women and gossip magazine.

Being in school full time I barely have time to read them. But they're free, and not tossed...they get quite a life out of them.

[Curmudgeoness]

8. Did you get a free crocheted angel for those in need?

Or a free rosary?

I think this is pretty interesting. I had a reaction just this winter to all the face creams that I had used for years and some others that I tried, and I was trying to get some free samples of different creams from manufacturers, since buying a whole jar of something that would cause a reaction didn't make sense, and five different manufacturers refused. Luckily, one didn't refuse and I had no problems with it.

[progressoid]

11. Dammit Heddi.

I just spent an hour at that site!

I have work to do!

[Heddi]

14. This is my web browsing order

DU
FB
Freebies
kitten porn

[progressoid]

16. Ha. You have a little overlap there.

DU and Kitten porn.

[Heddi]

18. kitteh

it's kind of mixing 3 in one because 1/2 of my "Friends" on facebook are actually cats :-/

[onager]

6. Do NOT watch the movie "Blue Like Jazz..."

One scene takes place in a factory where they pre-fill those communion cups with juice. And...uh...well, let's just say it will have you examining the cup VERY closely before you drink.

Long as I'm here..."Blue Like Jazz" is another movie that started out great, then wimped out with Goddery at the end.

The great start: devout Texas Baptist finds out his Mom is boinking the Youth Pastor at their church. So he goes off to "the most godless college in America," Reed College in Portland, OR.

One good scene has a "Does God Exist?" debate. Protagonist asks the atheist how we can find "meaning in the Universe." The atheist says: "The Universe doesn't owe us any 'meaning.' If you need meaning, buy a dictionary." LOL...

EDIT: fixed location of Reed College, since I put it in the wrong state...

[Curmudgeoness]

7. Oh my.

I hope Heddi didn't get, um, THOSE cups. She was ready to party down.

I always love that "meaning of the universe" or "meaning of life" crap. How do I function without worrying about it?????

[Gore1FL]

9. Guaranteed not to transubstantiate before opening! n/t

[AlbertCat]

10. Guaranteed not to transubstantiate before opening!

Yes.... the body and blood of Christ in a convenient recyclable container. Check the safety seal!

[deucemagnet]

29. The body of Christ on the go!

First they put yoghurt it tubes, now this. What a time to be alive.

[Arugula Latte]

30. What is the shelf life of Jesus meat?

2,000+ years I guess.

[LostOne4Ever]

12. Very bland?

That is an understatement....

[Act_of_Reparation]

13. I remember the first time I attended a Protestant service...

...when it came time to commune, the minister -- my friend's father -- broke out a loaf of wonderbread and a jug of Welch's grape juice. The Catholics may have been severe, but at least they boozed us up midway through mass.

[progressoid]

15. My parents church still does that.

Grape juice and white bread.

[Heddi]

17. I thought the bread had to be unleavened? Or is that just passover?

I thought the un-sacremented-communion-wafer tasted like a bland matzoh. Maybe I'll buy some and un-sacremented-communion-wafer-ball-soup. I bet it'd take a bunch of wafers. Those things are pretty tiny.


I was hoping they'd have a flavor. Like vanilla wafers or lemon cookies or something.

[Act_of_Reparation]

19. It depends on the denomination

Catholics like their crackers unleavened. Smaller, Protestant sects go for Wonderbread. But, I guess if you're already ditching wine for grape juice, there's no sense standing on ceremony where the glutens are concerned.

[onager]

23. SoBs: grape juice and bland unleavened crackers

Southern Baptists. At least in the church I attended as a child that's what we got.

And just FTR, I never heard the word "communion" until I was fairly old. Southern Baptists call the ceremony "The Lord's Supper."

I also remember serious theological debates over the meaning of "wine." IIRC, the consensus was that Jesus would have never turned water into an alcoholic beverage. So grape juice. Many Baptists were shocked at the idea of churches using real wine.

AFAIK, the "no real wine" rule applied to all the Prot churches in our area - Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. This was the Deep South, though.

[Act_of_Reparation]

24. Of course it was grape juice

Makes perfect sense.

To be fair, it is practice for Catholic priests to dilute the wine with water before the Communion Rite.

[FiveGoodMen]

25. Really??

So they get the watered-down blood of Jesus?

Does it work as well?

How about for really BIG sins? Do you need the pure stuff then?

[Act_of_Reparation]

26. It is pretty funny now that you mention it...

...that THE blood of the PERFECT Christ is too concentrated to do what it is supposed to do, so alterations must be made.

Also funny is the order in which this is done. If I recall, the water isn't added until after the transubstantiation is believed to have happened, not before. There's gotta be a reason for that... and I bet it'll make me rofl.

[Goblinmonger]

27. Various interpretations

The Greeks used to add a small amount of water to the their wine because it was thick and gritty. That's probably the main reason, if you ask me.

BUT...two major theories are:
1. wine is divinity and water is humanity and they are mixed to show Jesus' humanity and divinity mixed.
2. Bible says water and blood flowed from Jesus' side when pierced. Hence, add water to the wine.

My seminary days didn't go completely to waste (actually look very fondly on those times).

[Act_of_Reparation]

28. Interesting theories

Before modern plumbing, people generally lacked access to potable water, and drank dilute wine instead (a funny side story there: When Brunelleschi was assembling his famous dome on the Florence cathedral, his workers made to two parts water to one part wine, which, at the time, was customary for pregnant women and children; adults typically consumed stronger stuff). I suppose the Catholic practice makes sense in historical context, but I never gave much thought to how traditional the practice of dilution was. Apparently, it is much older than I realized.

[JNelson6563]

32. It seemed like dense rice paper to me.

[progressoid]

20. Meh. They're Presbyterians.

They don't give a fuck what the Catholics do.

My mother-in-law is Lutheran - her church does wine and grape juice. Sinners' choice.

[LiberalAndProud]

21. Have had homemade bread, wonderbread and cardboard wafers in communion. Never wine though.

I prefer the homemade bread, as far as snacks go.

[Arugula Latte]

31. I didn't even know that Protestant sects "did" communion.

[Jgarrick]

22. It has occurred to me just how easy it would be to make money preying on people's gullibility

in regards to religion, pseudoscience, etc.

Not terribly ethical...but easy!