W_L

Seems like a mix reactions. I feel kind of used by the consumer economy, but I do want to get good deals for things I want. I feel like I am being a bit vain on things like the PS3. The TV is questionable, but reasonable at the price. The laptop is very necessary and the only reason to go to Best Buy this year if you have a college kid or in my case a younger sister. I could live without call of duty 2, so If the sale item runs out, I won't buy it at regular prices. It's an interesting American tradition; something unique to the US. I really do enjoy the fun crowds and bitter cold temps, (People in the South are so lucky during this day).

Well, I have a little time in between watching the turkey and making appetizers, so I thought why not plan out tomorrows mad rush. I know I will be running around tomorrow mornig like a crazy man, clawing Call of duty 2 out of a pregnant mother's hands, Stampeding to Best Buy to get their door buster laptop deal for my sister, and fighting a mob for the last $500 50' inch LCD TV from Wal-mart. Anyone else feel like they are brave enough to join me on this yearly tradition of savvy shopoholics and insanity? For our European, Asian, and African members, Black Friday is traditionally the friday after Thanksgivng holiday in the United States, where retailers try to push out their excess inventories and start off the consumer invasion of the holiday season. I know many people, including myself, understands the vanity of such sales, but there's just so many bargains to say no to. My sister needs a new laptop for college, she destroyed my old Dell, which I let her have last year. The family TV that we have is fine, but $500 for a 50" inch LCD even at 720p is too good a bargain. My old venerable 80 GB PS3 has burned out and the repair for it would costs $150 according to Sony, so I thought fine I'll just pick up a new one, 120 GB, with these new deals out with coupons and rebates that reduce costs down to around $250, about the same price as the Wii use to go for. Am I being a brainwashed by consumerism or just a savvy consumer?

Happy Turkey Day! ...Remembering to add another layer of honey to turkey Thanksgiving is a time of reflection and hope. On days like this, we should remember both the things we have and the many people who now lack it. I'm thankful for finding a job and getting my Master's degree. Tomorrow night, known as Black Friday, I will be thankful if I am the 10th person outside Best Buy.

I'm getting the feeling CBS is trying turn into the new NBC for gay audiences. The big build up of As the World Turns, also on CBS, with Noah and Luke seemed to have got the studio heads into the mindset that gay= controversy= ratings, like NBC used to do. Hollywood is weird.

I think that's more of a gay boys fantasy to be stripped naked, having stuff in your ass, and doing it with a group of friends. Whoever invented these rituals most likely was into gay bondage.

I guess, I am one of those embarrassed guys, because after a few years in high school, I realized most of the other guys were bigger than me (Yeah, I'm still an extreme grower, which is kind of odd). I did take peaks; most of them were bigger than me and I kind of got intimidated. It was only later on in college that I realized that those guys didn't grow as much as I did (I went online to check some of this stuff out). My 1st roommate can be considered an exhibitionist; every time he got drunk or high, he would strip naked in front of me. I saw him in the shower and in the morning, when he realized he was naked on top of his bed without covers (I won't lie, he was tempting, but I kept my sexual libido in check). By college, I was more or less willing to be around naked guys and probably lost most of my shyness.

We can only wish, but there's enough shirtless, want to kill for those guns, and wild guys in the promos to make me want to see. The books were okay, but I have a thing for werewolves versus vampires. The blood sucking sexual seduction thing is fine for some, but I want me a strong, virile, and hormone driven werewolf, who enjoys getting naked every so often.

Yeah, the disease does seem to affect the young a bit more than the old due to the immune response. Sadly hundreds of children have already died of Swine flu.

I'm no expert on the subject, but one of my clients is a major distributor of the H1N1 vaccine. Anyone who was exposed to the Asian flu of the 1950's is immune from H1N1 and would not require a vaccination, so the elderly in that age range are not priorities. It is one reason why certain elderly people are not being inoculated, because the strain variations from the 1950's Asian flu is similar to the current H1N1, so it would provide the same protection as a vaccine. Just a friendly piece of medical advice. I opted not to take the vaccine; although technically I do fit the criteria as I am involved in health care business consulting and make trips to hospitals and community health centers often. I'd rather people younger than me or more at risk get the vaccine first.

Favorite childhood movie: Lion King (1994)

The thing about lawyers defining things, it takes three thousand pages and an act of congress just to define "The law". (I'm not joking either without things like legal definitions the field of taxation would be just as boring as regular accounting and auditing. It's for that reason that most people studying tax are learning the subject from J.D's rather than regular professors with doctoral degrees.) Steve, I think Mark had a different kind of pirate in mind or it could just be my dirty mind. 0:)

Darn, I could do some improv and pretend to be a comparable grouchy college professor without tenure and a fear of cheese. Or a deceptively cute lad with a fatal attraction motif.

Mark have you ever thought I was a fraud? I mean how many 22 year old Master of Taxation with an interest in history and philosophy are out there, who also happens to be a former vice chair of a Republican party branch. Plus the fact that I am blind in one eye, it makes me almost too weird to believe. Yet, I hope I convey my situation and reality well enough for most people to understand that I am an actual person.

Well, I'm an oddball. Recent Master's Degree and I do think most business school people from the northeast are a bit different. I'm younger than most Master degree holders and college graduates, so it's not really a surprise. I also have a contrarian sense of interest in history and philosophy, which are kind of alien to Accounting majors and Master of Taxation. Syntax wise, I have never been a very strong grammatical person; although, I can use and create my own imagery within stories with linguistic components. I am more or less not what you would consider accomplished in such fields even with an advanced degree (Quite frankly in business, there tends to be more expression in bullet points, but I prefer longer explanations. That comes from my accounting background.) Now age wise, I am 22 with a dab of old soul. I am a very classical person due to my love of history. I can remember and recite nearly two thousand years of history compromising of a few hundred different cultures, which is an odd feat (my history professor still think that I should go to doctoral school and study a history subject, but I prefer the business world at the moment over academia). I am also an ongoing student of philosophy and religious concepts, which I consider life lessons rather than educational lessons. Yeah, I am a bit strange.

Oh wow, Happy Birthday Gandalf! Hmmm....I thought Gandalf was ageless

You know what happened to Merry and Pippin after the war in the books; they get married to female hobbits and had kids, but during their last few years of life, they left the shire again together and spent their final days with each other. When they died, they were buried alongside each other, not their wives. (Tolkien was either hinting or their's something fishy about hobbits) I don't know, it sounds romantic to me, but then I am not a hobbit.

Happy Bday CJ, don't go near any cliffs!

It's not sam and Frodo either, if you have the extended version of the Return of the king, then you see a touching scene of Merry and Pippen too. My favorite line from them, Merry: I knew you will find me Pippen: Yes Merry: Are you going to leave me (again)? Pippen: No Merry I'm gonna look after you. (Scene ends with Pippen embracing Merry) Tolkien calls it a close bond between men in war, but I think that an interesting sexual aspect is also apparent underneath it.

It's been my hobby and fascination. I love space tech and theoretical physics/engineering.

Actually, it's not impossible to make an interstellar voyage even with our limited scientific capabilities: SmartIes I think you are referring to the Drake Equation. N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible; R* is the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets fℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space. I love the idea, when I grew up watching re-runs of star trek TNG and still do. As for space travel, I believe it is very possible with a few selective problems solved within our lifetime. The key issues of deep space travel are: 1. Power, what can you use to power a deep space vehicle? (Atomic power just doesn't cut it) 2. Propoulsion, How will it get to it's location? 3. Supplies, How can you solve the issue of long term supplies for spacecraft? 4. Long term exposure to radiation, How can you protect people from long term stellar radiation? (We are protected not only with our atmosphere, but the sun's heliosphere, which prevents many cosmic rays/particles from entry.) 5. Living in space, if you don't have things like Warp Drive, Hyperspace, or a form of FTL, then how can you live in space? 6. Finally, Human psychologically, how well can we psychologically live in space even for short durations of time? (There are a host of issues here) I hate plugging for my story, but Exodus does answer all the questions with sustainable scientific prospects. 1. Power would in my opinion be best achieved with matter/anti-matter annihilation. While Dan Brown imagines stories of anti-matter weapons destroying Rome, the super collider experiments in Bonn are very good first steps to achieving anti-matter power. 2. Propulsion must be a mixed bag. I do agree that there might be possibilities out there for FTL drives, but they are centuries ahead of us unless we discover an interstellar secret, i.e. wormhole or cosmic tunnel network (Andromeda Slipstream/Star War Hyperdrive/Babylon 5 Jump Drive). I think magnetic drives/solar sail drives would be the best approach in combination with a Bussard concept. The Bussard collectors could capture in cosmic matter and the ships could use that matter to generate power for their antimatter/matter annhilator generator. The power generated could be redirected into a magnetic field generator, which could augment the solar sail propulsion systems by providing additional push generated by the ship. Think of my example like someone going down hill, you could speed up the process if you add in your own energy by running down the hill versus the slower process of acceleration. The same can be said of solar sails, which would take a while to gather the necessary momentum from the sun to get that far. 3. Here's where things get interesting, some people believe the best approach in space travel is through hibernation, i.e. some form of suspended animation. However, I tend to believe that freezing is not going to be possible with the human body due to issues of tissue damage. I believe that supplies can be gathered simply if you plot out a course with small pit stops along the way. Think of the flyby asteroids/comets/ and other space objects as McDonald's. Supplies can be fashioned out of the raw material there. As for food, well you'll get to see space farming as it has to be done with next few chapters (Can't give you everything that I have been working on). Also, supplies of a more advanced nature must be fashioned onboard. That is where advances in nano-technology comes in. You will also want to have new things created and styles changes; that is where my belief in the future of Holographic technology would be headed in the next decade (Holography is very impressive). 4. This is where a magnetic drive comes in handy. The magnetic field of the earth and the sun are my inspirations for developing a conceptual magnetic drive field that can cancel out interstellar radiation. If you can generate a suffiecient enough field around a localized area, then you should be able to protect several ships from radiation exposure. 5. Space illnesses are not rare and they are just be documented. All I got to say is that McCoy was right, "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence."- Star Trek (2009). Remember to keep a few doctors handy. 6. Psychology of human beings is very uneasy in space. It's not simply being lighter in weight (in my story, I actually borrowed J. Michael Straczynski Babylon 5 concept of centrifical force replicating gravity, the rotating Cylinder concept). Space psychology is just beginning to be conjectured, but I think there are as many issues of physical wellbeing as there are psychological issues. However, having a psychiatrist on staff would be handy. The three major discoveries and advances are in the fields of: Anti-Particle generation, advances in nanotechnology, and applicational three dimensional holographic systems substituting desktops or laptops as the main way human beings access or work with computers, i.e. a true tactile interface.

Wish I had a finished long story for nomination, but I have the ADHD equivalence in story writing; I like developing a lot of different story. Expect Exodus next part as a Christmas present to my readers.

Happy Birthday Rush

I can understand storytelling ambiguity to protect the author, but there are ambiguous characters, who you wish will have a happy ending with that "special guy" or "special girl". Another two movies I forgot to add, "My own private Idaho", I want to believe that at the end of the movie Keanu Reeves will end up with Phoenix, but the movie left their sexual and emotional reality in disarray. I want a happy ending, not a sad ending for the main character. "Thelma and Louise", you get this feeling that these two women deserve each other after being through so much crap from the world. I think they were not lesbians or thought of themselves as bisexuals at the start of the movie, but there was a connection and strong bond that transcended those labels by the end. I think the jury is out on this one as both have had relations with men; yet remain faithful to each other until the end. The possible "best bisexual couple ever" title might belong to this movie.

There are many male and female characters, who form very deep and long lasting bonds with a character of the same sex. However, does that mean they were gay or bi? I thought about this as I watched Midnight Cowboy, there was clear implied indication that they might have been gay. However, it was never mentioned in the movie explicitly only implied. There are some characters like the Hobbits of Lord of the Rings, who have more in common with gay couples than heterosexual. However, there is no indication that they were gay or bisexual either. Is there a way to know whether it is true implication or just a close bond?

Hmm, I'll finish my novella first, but I'll join for a short story. For mood music, I would go with "Unopened letter to the world" by the Ataris. Here's my tagline: "Through defeat we learn, Through death we enjoy life, Through destruction we rebuild, but Through it all we are human"