Ironbound

Bleh. 1235 *Cringes*

1232. Oh, I'm just waiting for 1234 for my number OCD to be satisfactorily appeased.

1229

I mean, he hasn't hidden his identity or aimed at secrecy... At all. Team Galactic is among the most blatantly obvious organizations ever, with gigantic, architecturally questionable buildings in multiple core cities. They even have jazz music playing in their lobbies and Grunts everywhere extol how great Cyrus is and how he's going to remake the entire universe and stuff like that. I doubt he cared about being found out. The idea that he does indeed show some rudimentary attachment to Sunnyshore is more likely.

And did Cyrus have some attachment to Sunnyshore after all? Team Galactic has no base there and never did enter that corner of Sinnoh, despite it being just a short way away from Lake Valour. An NPC in Sunnyshore did indeed state that they've never heard of Galactic doing anything nearby.

1128. You are not helping.

1138. It's here again. Wait what? *SOUNDS THE CALL*

1138

1236

1226

Tartar. You have secured your untimely demise. Don't listen to him; he does that just to piss me off. Magneton/Magnezone is one of THE best Pokemon in the game, easily best Electric type and best special attacking steel type. It's got bulk, power, excellent defensive typing that resists a huge range, and learns its best moves, Flash Cannon, Discharge, Magnet Rise (making it immune to its ground weakness), Thunder Wave, Tri Attack etc, and it has excellent abilities in Sturdy, Magnet Pull and especially Analytic, which boosts its power even more when it moves second (which its low speed and good bulk allow it to use well) so do use it. Better, stronger, better typing and moves then Ampharos.

6.6/10

1217

1215

1213

1211. Where are sheep and tacos

Well said. For the most part, I may not myself be of the same mould, but understanding, as it if said, breeds empathy and friendship. Though my own ideas of what divinity is and what is the basis of life and living have already been told, to some extent, a little earlier; I find that the same summary can continue. The fact still remains, and to be acknowledged, that divinity's existence and nature, like the Buddha's philosophy tells, is quite beyond the scope of men as they are, and so the counsel of Bushido's agnosticism boils down to a gentle rap on the knuckles and a homily on doing your duty and not asking questions about things over your head. Though this was palatable to the public at a time when the parent philosophy of Sanathana Dharma was forgotten amidst the throng of ritualistic rigours, and the public were disconnected from Hindu spirituality, which decay fostered the rise of simplistic condensation in the form of Buddhism and Jainism. They preserved the Dharmic philosophy, but did away with the knowledge of the Vedas, and as such remain wilfully silent on that regard. The discussion, turning now towards mythology and historical relevance of philosophy, can be allowed to flow naturally that way. I am not yet approaching the advent of later faiths and their origins, such as Islam or Christianity, or indeed even of the Graeco-Roman pantheon, which marks the western indistinction between Mythology and Philosophy, and which made the mould, so to speak, of Judaism and Christianity seeking to impart knowledge through faith, and not faith through knowledge as is the case with Indic philosophy and lore. To return to that aspect, the nature of the divine is beyond human knowledge, certainly, but not beyond human inference. As I come from the lineage of the Madhva school of Brahmanic thought, the idea of duality or Dvaita between the Soul and the Divine (atma and the Paramatma) is the acceptable one to me. Setting intricacies aside, the condensation of its logic is that the soul, which is never perfect, cannot be the same as the divine, regardless of how much it seeks to refine itself through Dharmic harmony, and regardless of how many cycles of rebirth it progresses through, until and unless it loses its own identity upon salvation and nerves with the Divine Energy. Think of it rather like the conversion of energy from one form to another, through different vessels or conductors, each with a variable 'resistance', for indeed God in Indic thought is represented by Shakti, a device energy, the mother of all matter and thought. All the 33 million deities, and all their lore and graven forms, in Indic mythology serve to manifest particular aspects of the one philosophy, in order to better enable the masses to understand divinity and draw inferences to a better Way of Life. Life, according to my understanding of what I have read of the Upanishads and modernist scholars such as Vivekananda and even Gandhi (when he was yet in his lucid moments), is chielfy to be happy. Now, if you would say that 'living to serve' is vanilla, then 'live to be happy' is even more 100% genuine vanilla, and all the truer for that. And yet, "moderation in all, even in moderation" is a truly wise notation. Happiness is subjective, and yet true happiness is only derived by adherence to our Dharma. It is unfortunate that in these enlightened times, man (and woman) seek happiness in mundanities, trivialities and even banalities, varying from limited to downright abusive sources, but the satisfaction of a 'job well done', as you also acknowledge, is the ultimate happiness. That engenders the age old question, "what, then, is our job?", which is where my interpretation steps in. I am not a believer in Fate per se, in that I do not imagine that all actions are predefined and ordained. Nor do I think God to be any one overarching entity which micromanages our lives like a vast AI playing a universal video game. As stated above, God is energy, presentiment, omnipresent and omnipotent, a vast reservoir that is everywhere and everything. Defining that is utterly complex and yet inordinately simple, seeing as how simplicity is the ultimate efficiency, and God by definition being purest energy, is efficiency personified. To quote Einstein, "God does not play skittles with the world" (taken in a philosophical sense, not with regards to the bizarre world of himan understanding of quantum physics!) God being energy means that She is present in every entity, including us. There is undeniably divinity in us, and that is manifest in our true, noble nature. As Vivekananda simplified it, "ye are all the Children of God, pure, sinless and happy in divine light". Analysing the context, we infer that humanity is a part of divinity, and vice-versa. Here the schools of Dvaita (dual), Advaita (undivided) and Visishtadhvaita (severally divided) philosophy differ in interpretation. I have already elaborated the distinction, so it will suffice to say that Advaita defines Man and God as indistinguishable, and to proclaim that man himself was divine. Reasons for Madhvacharya's dissent has been told already, and Visishtadhvaita sought a compromise with the logic of sentient existence being several, and not just dual or singular. My assertions stands with the Dvaita school; divinity may be in us and we may hear it and feel it as our conscience and morality, or instinct in lesser life forms, but to say "Godhood is in me" and to say that "God is me" is fundamentally different and in my view, proven arrogance. So, since my personal belief is to live happy, and not in unproductive or nihilistic ways. True happiness is to be found by obeying our Dharmic conscience (or instinctive law, for an animal or plant), the soul evolves from lower to higher life, from one body to another, from higher resistance to lower resistance, until the objective of reunion, Moksha Sadhana, is attained. Explained therein is the motivation to do good, not as an absolute commandment, nor as an incentive for future reward or divine favour, as some would interpret, but merely because such is the natural behaviour of life; water does not flow in a cycle and convert from form to form because it is commanded to do so or because it is seeking a reward, but merely because that is what is natural truth, the Dharmic state of being of water. Of course, I speak to personify it as an allegory. Which is why there is no conceot of Hell or Heaven in Indic philosophy, merely an increase or decrease in the number of birth and rebirth cycles a soul has to undertake until it is sufficiently true to its nature to progress to a next level. Similar to an electron in various energy levels, perhaps, as the atom itself evolves. There lies the interpretation of free will of the soul; akin to the choice of obeying or disobeying a law, and therein lies the pairing of Dharma, duty, with Karma, consequence. A soul which deviates from its Dharmic nature must suffer its Karmic consequences in the Eternal Cycle. The more intelligent the organism, i.e., the more evolved the soul, the greater the scope of it deviating from its nature. An ant, we can assume, has lesser scope of immorality than a human, and the smaller the rise it gets from adherence. Risk v Reward, in a crude sense, though again reward is not the way to think of such progression. The irony, which perhaps only humans who think about it can comprehend, is that doing a deed is not merely enough to be pure, but rather the motivation of the attempt. Amd so there lies my Philosophy of life; doing such duty as circumstances place us in, and seeking not for reward but to enjoy the journey as we go along. Happiness is in loving and living, I say, not life or love in seeking happiness. I consider myself a spiritual person, not a religious one, though here I may also admit to knowledge and study of Indic mythology and indeed a study of religions itself. I believe that the sequence of human thought must progress from the physical, to the psychological, thence to the faiths of their choice and stature, and thence to spirituality, which in and of itself may be as varied as stars in the sky and yet all be the same in fundamentals. Who I am, is what I am, so to speak, and what I am is up to the one who interacts with me to understand for themselves. My underlying instinct is to desire to know more, and that, in part, is a primal motivator.

1210. Call sheep and tacos.

Curse or Dbond Cofagrigus is fat enough to take any one hit. If you breed it with a +Def nature and decent IVs and max out its EVs in physical bulk.

I wake up and see this. Okay... Happy birthday, scrub. Have a great year ahead!

1206

For once I can thank you, catpleb, because you give me the numerical joy of stating 1199 again. However... SOUND THE DRUMS!

The blessed satisfaction of 1199, ah. Watch a catpleb bring it down just to annoy me.