What about our observations make them not real in the way that 'illusion' implies?

My last name, 'Stark' is just about the manliest name I can think of. I mean, it refers to plainness, strength, and nudity. Hell yes.

Thanks to standardized road signs pretty much universally, text doesn't even need to be printed in order to understand most signs. Red means 'no' or 'be extremely cautious', interstate badges are easy to recognize, services (on American highways anyway) are in blue, yellow means 'hazard', etc.

There is also a standardized text size called for in the printing of most signs (depending on the speed of the roadway). Highways have the largest font in order to be read most easily from the largest distance.

Best thing since sliced bread.

... ok that was bad.

I'd definitely buy one of those if I needed a toaster and they were for sale. Impractical is a poor argument to make against a functional toaster, unnecessary is a case I'd buy, though.

At 11/8/09 07:47 PM, ZeldaFreak701 wrote: Didn't think much of it at the time, but now today I'm actually pretty fucking pissed at him for saying that. NG, do you think I'm justified in my anger?

Well, what's the difference now from then? Why do think much of it now?

I mean, I'd say the resentment is justified, but to now hold a grudge without having initially taken offense is just baffling. So... did you have it coming or not? You say you were complaining about not getting enough hours and admit freely to us this fact, were you equally open with the co-worker about that?

I dunno. Shrug it off.

An idea.

Not so much a horrible person as spineless vermin. You'd have no trouble doing such a horrible prank to me, but lemme assure you that you'd never enjoy the gleeful revelation. If I knew you'd done something like that to me we'd have fisticuffs.

Next time she's friendly be a snarky douchebag. I had some girl that wouldn't leave me alone some semesters back. A response of "I said that?!" and an incredulous look to "I thought you said we were going to hang out this past weekend?" after purposely avoiding sitting remotely near her in the lecture for a full week solidly gave the message.

I'm not the bad guy here either. She'd toss out bitch comments every other minute of conversation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester,
_MA#Demographics

My hometown of 30k+. Blue Collar, traditional fishing port (oldest in the nation, in fact): 92% white. It's not that special, really.

At 11/6/09 09:42 AM, SteveGuzzi wrote: just trying to make your boring topic marginally less boring

A valiant effort.

Anyway, keep us updated on whether or not the King of Town hires you in your userpage.

I guess you forgot to notice 'remake' in the ad, thereby making it so 'original' simply refers to the version that inspired the remake.

Stupidity, or convenience? You decide.

At 11/5/09 12:08 AM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: Sagittarius: You will be surprised to realise how much of a fucking failure you are. Remember, down the road and not across the street.

Wow, I just had an epiphany. Time for a walk around the block.

This is why one of the major arguments for our style of government was that it divides the public necessarily into factions so that no one group would ever be more than its share powerful. If these factions weren't conveniently sidestepped by democrats and republicans, but instead our government was truly representative of the diversity of political thinking in the population, things would work a lot better; IMO.

What seems more reasonable, that you're going to influence all the potential women you've yet to date into not doing these things on your future dates? Or that these actions are somehow reflective of mistakes you've made on the dates that you didn't catch right away? If a girl isn't engaging in conversation it's because you haven't made her interested yet. If a girl is texting others it's because there's a lull in the conversation and she's got nothing to do. If a girl is leaving you in the middle of the date it's because you're being an awkward weirdo. If a girl is hooking up with some other douche it's because you didn't own all over him with your wit as soon as he appeared. And paying for the chick's shit? Fuck that. Women should be paying for themselves until they've proven to you that they're worth treating every once in a while.

Honestly though, it just seems like common sense that women know these things piss off the dude, or irk him. Just because a person isn't conscious of the signals they're sending doesn't mean they're any less legitimate or important.

So you support wiretapping because you trust someone you've never met with the intimate details and contact habits of your life? Why are you so anonymous here? Why isn't your handle your real name, why don't you have your location in your profile? Why no age? Why no picture of yourself? Do you really think YOUR FELLOW INTERNETEERS give a shit about the minute details of your personal life?

Here, lemme answer for you: you don't provide any of these things because you can't trust that out of the unknown and presumed limitless supply of people who may potentially see that infomation there isn't one that may exploit it to cause you personal grief offline. Why you apparently distrust those who are peers to you in terms of societal power and yet completely trust those who have the ability to detain you indefinitely on whimsical suspicion they garnered from a conversation absent of personal context is entirely beyond me.

Did you sign into your profile only to write this post?

If you weren't signed in, I don't believe medals show up, since they're only for those who have a user account and you need to be signed in to earn them.

I've grown apart from a bunch of my friends, but definitely never on negative terms with any of them. I'd say there's probably a solid dozen people who I'd feel confident entrusting my life to in any situation, and another 4 or 5 that could be trusted in many situations but not all.

I dunno. You could say I trust people too easily, but I would contend that I'm just a solid judge of character. I'm not one to make up my mind about people, either so these people have continually proved to be 100% trustworthy in my book.

Taboo itself should become as reviled as all things falling under its classification. To attach a social stigma to something that any individual finds rewarding is cruelty. To bombard youth with pejorative 'fact' such as "Don't give in to peer pressure: don't do drugs," as if to insist that the message they take from that is the only reason to do drugs is because peers are supposed to regard it as 'cool' is absolute bullshit.

Heath class is symptomatic of the diseased zeal with which children are educated in this world. Taught to ask questions only up to the point where someone becomes emotionally distraught over the discussion. Taught from the subjective standpoint of 'drugs are bad, here's how you avoid ALL OF THEM' instead of 'drugs affect the psyche to varying degrees, these are the symptoms of 'being high' on [drug], here're the long term effects, there is much debate about the ill-effect of simpler hallucinogens such as marijuana etc.'

Kids should be taught from the objective and REALISTIC choice that not only is it up to them to say no to drugs, but it's also up to them to say YES only to the drugs that interest them. If a person is interested in smoking weed, but doesn't want it laced with something else, they should be taught how to tell the difference. NOT lectured on the negatives of what they've already decided is acceptable to put in their body. Nor discouraged from even asking such a question in the first place because of bureaucratic consequences from a school administration.

Independent thought is the hallmark of education. To marginalize the fact that grade schools are government agencies and thusly tied by federal law to foolish anti-individualistic curricula (ie: standardized tests) is a travesty.

In short: drug use should be accepted enough that the sense of responsibility can be instilled in those interested before they've tried them. There shouldn't be a divide between 'right' and 'wrong' so large that once one has tried drugs the only way for them to learn responsibility with drugs in their life is through trial and error. Legalize and disallow use until an acceptable age of responsibility. Instruct as to proper decision making. Blah, rant over.

Naturally, everyone cool was born in November. Fact. I'm surprised I didn't know Sensationalism's cool yet.

:: puff ::
:: puff ::

The effect of the stitching on the shirt fools my eye into believing that there's green present, when I can clearly see that it's actually a rust-flecked gray with a lighter gray for the stitching. Doesn't help that there's these really dark green horn things on the drawing centered on the shirt.

Why do you think they call it 'coming'?

Fuck pancakes, organic or otherwise. French toast FTW.

I started shaving when I was a freshman in High School, because I was in MCJROTC and hair's basically a no-no. Junior year I was rocking the immature idiot chin-beard look that I didn't trim until it got too long to stand, at which point I'd shave it off entirely and start again.

Now-a-days, I can actually look reasonable with two or three days stubble, but before I was shaving once a week simply because the stuff wouldn't grow back fast enough to look terrible.

So I guess I'd say: 14/15 whether you think you need to or not. I didn't think I needed to until I started shaving and noticed that hairs were growing back where I hadn't. I STILL remember how weird a clean-shaven upper-lip felt.

Are you having trouble fingering the chords they're asking for correctly? The only way to get better at that, I'm afraid, is to practice fingering those chords. Take the first two finger positions of the song you're trying to learn, and practice shifting between those two chords. After each shift, you should strike the strings to make sure each one is ringing clearly. Correct any mistakes. Then shift to the other chord (even if it's easy). Keep practicing that transition.

As your fingers become more used to that chord and how to get there quickly (when I first started, I had to fret each finger one at a time to make a chord, open C maj to open G maj would always cause my third finger to lag behind the others in finding the right fret. Took a couple months to even be able to shift between those two properly and at speed, but now I can play GCDC chords, or any other similarly easy open-position chords (Am, D, Dm, D7, E, E7, Em, A, A7, G, G7, etc.) with relative ease in quarter notes) you'll notice it gets easier to quickly shift between the two. Once you can move fast enough, try to finger the next note. You should only work on transitions that you can't perform quickly, if you come across a new fingering that you can get to relatively quickly, you need not practice it as much right away.

Another tip is to practice the Pentatonic scale in the key of A (google it), or the chromatic scale. In fact, you should practice the chromatic scale to warm up and cool down every practice or play session. Look 'em up on google.

Basically: it just takes practice. Your fingers aren't functionally unable, you've just never asked them to do these things before. So at first it's going to be awkward and sound pretty terrible. Think about the awful drawings and writing assignments you got A's on in elementary school that your parents hung on the fridge anyway. But after more practice, you'll start to get better and notice improvement.

The food and drug administration has deemed mass-produced consumer food items as safe to eat provided they have an acceptable percent of non-toxic contaminants in them. Insects, a worker's finger or hand, etc. are all considered acceptable ingredients if they constitute below a certain percentage in the overall batch.

Why? Because they don't pose any sort of realistic health risk to the general population. Food is processed to eliminate bacterial or viral contaminants before being shipped to stores.

I'm comfortable with it, especially since Reeses is the only candy worth eating. This one time though, I opened a fig newton and observed a live maggot on it writhing just in time to spare an untimely demise via incisor. My inability to eat another fig newton since is just an added bonus. Stupid youngness and susceptibility to trauma. >: (

Well, you're gonna have to help me out here a bit first: what's uncool like? How do you know when you're uncool?

Yep, we've just left "EDT" which stands for "Eastern Daylight Time" and now we're back in standard EST "Eastern Standard Time."

You can read up on Daylight savings on wikipedia, if you're so inclined.

At 11/1/09 09:37 PM, Im-A-Pirate wrote: Bro, hook me up with some video games or I'm not your friend anymore.

Good thing the friendship's over now. It wouldn't have lasted long anyway: I hate lame blackmail attempts.

Yea, unfortunately my facial hair hits hideous somewhere midway through week 2. By week three certain spots are MUCH longer than others.

At 11/1/09 09:10 PM, Sensationalism wrote:

At 11/1/09 08:55 PM, YouLostTheGame wrote: See, that is much better worded. I wouldn't have a problem if he had done that, but the way he did was not in a loving manner. If his girlfriend saw this thread, I don't think she'd feel very loved. That's all I'm saying.

I agree he could have said it in a much nicer way and calling a woman you "love" a bitch doesn't exactly show you respect her in any way. I doubt she'd ever see it, but I do agree she'd probably feel hurt if she did.

Everyone's so quick to jump on everyone else for being truly a huge asshole. It's an audience consideration. The same way you don't tell your boss "yo, I was so fucking drunk last night man I really don't want to talk to these fucking asshole customers right now ha ha, fuck that but I guess I will 'cause I'm getting paid, right yo?" is the same way you don't come on NG "Yo I really love my girlfriend more than life itself but I'm too timid to bring up the fact that she's gained some weight recently and it bothers me a little bit. I mean, she's my [pet name]. : ("

Anyway, I think you've just gotta bring it up, OP. Start taking charge. Tell her you've noticed that she's gained some weight recently, but don't be too harsh about it. In fact, I would even blame myself to help deflect some of the awkwardness. "We're getting too comfortable around each other. I feel like I'm not as healthy as I'd like to be, and you keep asking me if you look fat. Let's get in shape together." Step 2: go to the gym with each other 3-5 times a week. ESPECIALLY to get some running or swimming in. Step 3: start enjoying enthusiastic sex within the span of 2-3 weeks. By week 10 you guys should pretty much look totally different and you'll even have stamina for legit karma sutric love-making.

Good luck.