JamesSavik

Clumber is coming through loud and clear.

I think I would rather be str8 next time around. Maybe get a taste of life as a non-abomination and be a little less hated.

In the rush to a simple answer for one of life's most complex questions, a journalist becomes a pimp, a child becomes a lab rat and generalizations and stereotypes become the evidentary re-bar upon which preconceived ideas and superstitions solidify. If this article was a joke, it might be funny. Instead it is a serious article so full of blatant ignorance and egregious bovine excreta that it is tragic. Where is the smilie for the rude finger? :rude_finger:

I'm not convinced that its a good idea to futher catagorize gay people. There are already too many divisions: tops, bottoms, daddies, twinks, leather pigs... Maybe we should focus more on what makes us similar than what makes us different.

After an uninspired version of the Fantastic 4, Hollywood is about to spew its vile wretchedness on yet another comic book icon: the Silver Surfer. Even if you aren't a fan of comic books, you can tell a good story from a bad one. A well done movie from a crappy, production done on the cheap. Compair Spiderman to oh say... Steel. Never heard of it? Of course not. You have Post Traumatic Crappy Movie Syndrom and its repressing your memory. In this thread nominate your worst (or favorite) comic book/movie adaptations! ___________________________________________________________ Batman & Robin(1997) was pretty much roach-bait. Clooney & O'Donnell and Schwarzenegger were probably the worst possible picks for those particular roles that could have been found even if you tried. My rating: 4 barf-buckets As bad as it was, remember an old 80's version of the Flash? Oh my God, it was horrible. I tremble at the memory of seeing one of my favorite superheros raped to make a cheaper than average movie of the week. My rating: it made me cry and not in a good way (I was what? 30?) I've always been a fan of the Punisher but the big screen hasn't been kind to Frank Castle. All in all, Punisher(2005) could have been a whole lot worse. It is MUCH better than the two previous pseudo-attempts at making a Punisher movie. That being said, it could have been a whole lot better. John Travolta was awful as Howard Saint portraying a sophisticated sociopathic mob king-pin as a middle-aged Vinny Barberino. My rating: 2 stars and a sigh. It had potential. :sniper:

Advice is what it is: cheap, easy and probably OK given Camy, Conner and Krista are all good blokes (and bloke-ettes). As you get older and into college, you'll come across a method of instruction called the Socratic Method. This is a method of arriving at the truth by asking a few pointed questions. This allows you to arrive at the truth on your own. I ask: if you have what may be a deadly infection do you treat it or let it fester? The answer is obvious.

I liked your first one, it was cute. Think young lion or tiger. Just between us Beasties, primates are soooo annoying.

I like the other one better Beastie. That one looks too much like an annoying 90 year old I have to take care some weekends.

There is a fem vs butch divide and it cuts both ways. I was new in a small southern university town and didn't know anybody. I heard about a gay bar and decided to check it out. No one there knew me and I didn't look like usual clientel. I was refused admission and told by the bouncer to come back when I knew somebody. A big butch jock like yourself makes some of these girls nervous. Bluntness Alert: if you don't want to hear something frank, leave the spoiler alone. You have been warned. Please note that the media only portrays fem guys. Butch roles are few and far between. That's because fems are non-threatening and are easy fodder for stereotypical humor. I'm waiting for a Butch character that demands respect and will plant your ass in traction if he doesn't get it.

OK- now how could you guys forget to mention: L.I.E.

I've had two problems with ebay: people selling pirated software and people selling upgrade editions of software as "full editions". In both cases PayPal refunded my money and the sellers were banned. Otherwise I've had no difficulties and my feedback rating is 100%. Many people talk smack about PayPal but I've had nothing but good experiences with it. Always buy ebay stuff with PayPal. They are closely integrated to ebay and add a layer of online protection to your credit cards. Whenever you buy from an e-bay seller look at three things: his feedback rating, how long he has been on ebay and the amount of feedback received. If a person is an ebay powerseller, he's been around quite a while and ebay is his business. Someone like that probably isn't going to rip you off. If you buy from someone with little or no feedback- an ebay rookie, then you take your chances. Just remember- if it looks too good to be true, it probably isn't. You CAN find some excellent values on ebay- just keep your wits about you and trust your instincts. I especially love ebay for books. You can find all sorts of computer and technical books, which usually cost a pretty penny, for a mere fraction of their list price. I've found books on ebay that you just plain can't find anywhere else. JS

Kindness is one of several behaviors that people often confuse. In its most basic definition, kindness is a tendency toward gentle behavior in dealing with others. People who display this behavior are said to be thoughtful, considerate, warmhearted, agreeable, tolerant and forgiving. Kindness is often mistaken for common courtesy as people that practice one are usually more apt to practice the other. They are not exactly the same but are both rare and exceptional to find. Kindness does NOT automatically equal charity. While a kind person may be chairitable, the definition and motives for chairity can be quite different given the situation. For instance, a person who would never be considered kind may give to chairity for tax purposes, recognition or entirely pragmatic reasons. example: People were surprised to discover that Mr. LeGree, a notorious misanthrope, had donated 100,000 a year to the Beat Cancer Now Foundation for decades. The act only made sense when his papers were published and we find out that his mother died of breast cancer and how deeply it affected him.

I second that. They are cute as two speckled puppies.

I remember seeing a cartoon in an old Penthouse: it had 2 panals panal 1: 18 year old muscle head with the tattoo on chest: STUD panal 2: old, wrinkled 90 year old with teeth in glass beside chair. The tat is faded and wrinkles cause it to read: DUD

Vance- That's not an excuse. It's a reason. Since I can't help in either case, other than to wish you and your feline friend a speedy recovery, I'll just say take care, your friends here at GA will be here when you are ready. James

Nick- With blue eyes like that, I mean like wow. Cooky = Andy? I agree Nate- he is pretty cute. I bet you're even cuter when you smile Andy! OH and isn't Birdie a hunk in the making!?

>>melancholia If melancholia were good for you, there wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar market for anti-depressants.

The guys with guns are usually wrong. So much about our system is back-assward at the moment. Our laws have gone far afield from their original purpose, to protect the public and maintain order. Now they infringe on everyones private lives, constutional liberties that were once sacrosanct now just plain don't exist. I won't tell you NOT to fight this state of affairs. Just pick your battles carefully.

Actually- the Constitution does NOT read that way. You are required to follow any law, local, state or federal, no matter how bogus, until it is overturned by a superior court or appealed by the legislature. You don't have the right to do anything to stop it other than lobby local, state or federal officials or sue and bring the law to court. Even if the law is bad, you do have to follow it or they will send little men with guns to take you away. I do however agree with you on this particular law. It goes too far. The purpose of law is to protect the public and maintain order. It is NOT meant to regulate a fashion trend that some people might find objectionable. If the statute of limitations on baggy britches is the one big problem that lawmakers must address in this town, apparently they don't have a whole lot to do.

Our tomato plants are in full production mode so we've got fresh tomatoes on the counter, in the window, over the sink... I made fresh tomato sauce tonight: man did it smell good. Spaghetti tomorrow. Tonight: home made pizza. Made flower with yeast crust- let it rise for 20 minutes. Toast in oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Fresh tomato sauce, garlic, Italian seasoning. Top with cooked sausage, onions, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. Stick in the oven at 400 for 10 minutes. Done.

No need to be ashamed. Ben's cute. He just got cooties from hanging with Jennifer Lopez. yeah, there's no bigger turn off than a killing spree

The sad thing about a lot of cops is that they are too dumb to do anything else and they get off on having power and enjoy throwing their weight around. This sort is pretty good at giving crackheads and drunk drivers the hook but they can't even spell mastermind.

Anxiety is the state of fear or dread that something bad is going to happen. In that state, powerful things are going on with your body chemistry. In that state of fear and dread, the body reacts with the "fight or flight" response in which the body makes itself ready to or do battle or run away. From wiki: These catecholamine hormones facilitate immediate physical reactions associated with a preparation for violent muscular action. (Gleitman, et al, 2004) These include the following: Acceleration of heart and lung action Inhibition of stomach and intestinal action Constriction of blood vessels in many parts of the body Liberation of nutrients for muscular action Dilation of blood vessels for muscles Inhibition of lacrimal glands (responsible for tear production) and salivation Dilation of pupil In people with anxiety disorders, they get stuck in this state for days, weeks, even years at a time.

You are absolutely right about prozac. It sometimes causes strange reactions in teens. There is quite a squabble in medical circles about prescribing anti-depressants to adolescents. Some doctors want to ban the use of anti-depressants in teens except in in-patient situations where patients can be carefully monitored. Adolescent brains are wired differently from adult brains and it is only logical to conclude when you toss a powerful, mood altering chemical into the hormone soup that teens use for blood that odd things may likely occur. There have been far too many suicides and psychotic episodes associated with Prozac in teens to simply be a coincidence. I am not against anti-depressants per see but I am against the rather haphazard way in which they are prescribed. Often the medication that you are prescribed is determined more by what your insurance will pay for than your medical condition. There is a very good reason that there are dozens of anti-depressants: ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. They are all different compounds and act in different ways. I don't think that doctors should automatically write a script for Prozac or Zoloft. MDs (Medical Doctors) should never just write a prescription for an anti-depressant without referring the patient to a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are better suited to following how a patient is coping and is much more familiar with psychiatric medications that a general practitioner or M.D. We are in complete agreement.

Canada's space telescope cracks open a massive star UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL NEWS RELEASE Source Link Posted: May 18, 2005 The MOST space telescope has given astronomers new clues about an exotic star, at least ten times more massive than our Sun, spewing gas into space at a rate of more than 100 trillion tonnes per second. And according to results presented at the Canadian Astronomical Society meeting in Montreal, Canada, the star - with the misleadingly bland name of WR123(*) - is even weirder than astronomers ever suspected. The new findings, by Laure Lefevre and Anthony Moffat (Universite de Montreal), Sergey Marchenko (Western Kentucky University) and the international MOST science team, are based on over five weeks of non-stop monitoring of the light variations of WR123. WR123 is a member of the relatively rare class of Wolf-Rayet stars (named after two French astronomers who discovered their telltale strong plasma winds using a simple spectroscope in the Paris suburbs in 1867, ironically the same year Canada became a nation). Wolf-Rayet stars like WR 123 have long been known to exhibit complex - seemingly chaotic - brightness variations associated with the turbulent high-speed winds they eject into space. But the nearly continuous coverage possible with the MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) satellite has revealed a clock in the chaos - a stable variation repeating every 10 hours (see figure illustrating WR123 variations). "Finding a clock in a star like WR123 is like finding the Rosetta stone for astronomers studying massive stars," explained Ms. Lefevre, a PhD student at the Universite de Montreal. "However, although WR123 may vary like clockwork, it must be a very strange mechanism indeed." The only theories to explain the 10-hour clock in WR123 would be: (1) the rotation of the star itself, (2) the orbit of another small star around WR123, or (3) vibrations in the structure of WR123 that are transmitted to its dense enveloping wind. All of these ideas are equally strange. If WR123 is spinning at that rate, the surface would be moving so fast (about 2000 kilometres per *second*, or over 7 million kph) that the star should throw itself apart, unless that is the actual source of the wind! If the star is in a tight binary system, it's so tight that its companion would be orbiting *inside* the star itself. If pulsations are the right answer, theoreticians will have to completely revise their current understanding of this class of massive stars. The same period was hinted at in spectroscopic data obtained from an Earthbound observatory a year earlier, but the MOST results leave little doubt as to the bizarre timing of this stellar clock. One hundred times fainter than what the unaided eye can see, WR123 is located about 19,000 light-years from Earth, in the direction of the constellation Aquila ("the Eagle"). WR123 and other similar Wolf-Rayets (see the Hubble image of WR124) are believed to have had very violent births, ejected by a supernova explosion in a binary system, or by a gravitational slingshot from a dense star cluster. "Either way, WR123 was probably kicked out from the nest rather abruptly," jokes Dr. Moffat, who helped develop these formation theories in the late 1970's. Stars that start off their lives with ten or more times the Sun's mass are capable of "burning" hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, and so on up to the final nuclear ash, iron, before the iron-rich core collapses on itself in less than a second and produces the greatest of all stellar explosions, a supernova. Since H-burning lasts by far the longest, some 90% of stars that shine are actually consuming hydrogen in their cores at a prodigious rate. Then, somewhat under 10% of stars are in the next stage, that of He-burning, while only a miniscule fraction occurs in the subsequent, ever-faster evolving stages. WR123 represents the fleeting final stages of helium-burning, before the rapid death-spiral to supernova. The gases ejected from stars like WR123 will enrich the interstellar medium, and contribute to future generations of stars. Understanding such stars is vital if we are to properly understand the evolution of the Milky Way and other galaxies. "We may be seeing an example of one of the key stages in the stellar lifecycle that led to the Sun, Earth, and us, being here," noted Ms. Lefevre. The MOST mission was financed by the Canadian Space Agency and supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. __________________________________ *- WR stars are so rare that less than 200 of them have been cataloged. The current theory is that WR stars are not a specific class of star as much as they are a later stage in the evolution of the hot, massive O and B class stars. In fact, WR stars are only found in clusters called OB associations. WR stars are so powerful (luminious) that a mere sprinkling of them can influence the spectra of an entire galaxy. In fact the phenemenon that astronomers called Wolf-Rayet galaxies are spiral galaxies which show emission spectra. This is interperted as active star formation since O and B class stars from which WR stars evolve have relatively short lifespans- between 10-60 million years. WR123 indicates that this star is listed in van der Hutch's 7th General Catalog of Wolf Rayet Stars.