jfields

Narcimund, So, what date should I pencil you in to cook for my family?

Ah. The power of advertising. Undoubtedly, a bunch of (Yankee) advertising executives are drooling right now about how their mind control techniques have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Coke. Pepsi. Soda. Pop. Cola. It doesn't make a difference what you call it. It all rots your teeth and makes you fat.

Jessica, I'm not in the "Lasik is great" or "Nobody cuts my eyeballs" camps. I wear glasses or contacts, and have since I flunked my driver's license eye exam in high school. No wonder I hadn't been able to read the blackboards in school. I asked my eye doctor about corrective surgery about 16 years ago. The answer? "Hell no. Don't do it." I ask again about 5 years later, then another 5 years later. The answers got progressively better, from something like "I wouldn't recommend it" to "If you really want to". The last time I went into his office, he was affilliated with a Lasik center, and referred some people to them. The bottom line is that the entire science of surgical vision correction is relatively new. The rate of problems with early surgeries was huge. It has gotten better, but the procedures haven't been around long enough for a good body of knowledge about the long-term effects. Does the surgery lead to a much higher incidence of blindness in late adulthood? Does it accelerate the natural vision detioration many people experience? In both cases, it is simply too soon to tell. Whether or not to get the surgery depends on your level of frustration/discomfort with glasses/contacts. The worse your current situation is, the less you have to lose. For me personally, the inconvenience of glasses/contacts isn't bad enough to get my eyes lasered. I'm not comfortable with the current chances of surgical failure and possibility of blindness. No major surgery is "foolproof". Don't let anyone tell you that it isn't major. When a slip, goof, or misalignment can leave you blind, that is major. Like a double-mal, sometimes shit just happens. Despite the barrage of TV and radio ads for Lasik, it is still a science in its infancy. While I don't wish them any ill repercussions, everyone getting it done today is essentially a guinea pig for the next generation of procedures. I'm choosing to wait awhile. If the science gets better, I get comfortable with the odds and the stability of vision afterwards improves, I may get Lasik (or its successor). But if you aren't comfortable doing the research about the procedure, including what can go wrong, I'd have to say you can't really make an informed decision. And it is your eyesight at risk. Just my $.02. And I wish you well, no matter what choice you make.

Are any of her really good female friends cute? Do 'em! Just kidding. Don't go there. I'd say cutaway. I'd also avoid any common friends that YOU (individually) don't have a really good relationship with. Leave the entire scene. When you get to the point of really being at peace with yourself, and being okay with being single, that is when things will start working out for the better. When you stop looking is when you are most likely to find someone good for you. Just my $.02.

Blind date. http://www.jennandjustin.com/aboutus-firstdate.asp

Are they anatomically correct voodoo dolls? I'm just glad I'm not the poor guy you are voodoo-doll-ing. Ouch! Stop that! No, not there!

Since, unfortunately, the chastising didn't involve getting naked and spanking each other, I suppose I should post a recent picture to avoid whatever other punishment Sunshine would hand out...

Here it is, folks. I don't have your snail-mail addresses, and couldn't send it out to everyone anyway. That would be a lot of jumps worth of postage! This is the next best thing....

These are work boxes. When I get home, I don't spend a lot of time on the computer any more. If I'm going to mess around with stuff, I do it at work. Besides, here I don't have to pay for the hardware.

Nope. I'm a skeptic. Atheist too.

It would have been even better if the car had been owned by the base CO.

I just did that repeatedly. On the machine that didn't have a CD, I installed via boot disk & FTP. Sweet!

The BBQ and bourbon sound good. Just skip that football crap.

Or Mrs. Garrison, or whatever her name was. Now that would be disturbing.

Chris, I do understand the context of your discussion with Wendy. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. While it may baffle me and leave me disagreeing, that isn't a problem. I just see the whole range as being legitimate. It doesn't really matter if you don't, as long as you don't try to infringe on their right to carry on as they see fit. There are plenty of heated threads, with lots more flaming (in the Internet sense) than in here. The gun control/gun rights ones tend to get particularly fired up. But eventually we get sick of explaining our views and trying to politely convince the other side how wrong they are in our opinions. Then we talk about something else, like RSLs or the pros and cons of Cypres'. Yeah, like those are calm... If you are thoughtful and civil, people shouldn't write you off, no matter how strange your views are. At least that is the way I see it. There are plenty of people that I post with and in response to a lot that have pretty fundamental differences on some issues, yet remarkable similarities in others. If someone forever disregards a another's opinion because of their take on one issue, they aren't much of a person to begin with, IMHO.

So you deploy from a sit, so you can get "jerked"?

Not opera, but I'll throw out... Beethoven's Pastorale (6th) Grieg's Peer Gynt Respighi's Pines & Fountains of Rome

I totally agree with Speed Racer. The B&W vs Grey issue is fundamental to the discussion. If you view sexuality as strictly homosexual and heterosexual, then a lot of people are going outside their defined roles. If you believe in a spectrum model, then most people are probably true to their desires. Some people are 100% straight, with no attraction whatsoever to the same sex. Some people are 100% homosexual, with no attraction to the opposite sex. Then there is a chunk in the middle, to varying degrees from either extreme. It could be that somebody is attracted more to one gender than the other, but sees something in each, without ever acting on it. It could be that they do act on it in certain circumstances. I think it is probably a bell-curve type of thing. If you think of heterosexually predisposed as the center of the curve, it is where the most people are. Then you move outwards to hetero people that have some minimal interest in their own sex. It is a smaller number of people. Then you have homesexuals, etc. And a million other variations. Out at the fringe, you have people like Clay. They generally like women, but get attracted to sheep when the moonlight hits them just right out by the barn on a crisp night. (Sorry. Humor break.) What I think happens is that societal pressure makes the curve uneven. If someone's urges are only very slight bit away from one fundamental leaning, they probably won't act on it because it may upset their tidy world. If the societal pressure would ease up, at lot more people would feel comfortable expressing their sexuality. We've only scratched the surface of possibilities in this thread so far. Straight, gay and bi are only a few major groups. The bell curve I mentioned would be more three-dimensional, with gender attraction as one axis. There are all sorts of other dispositions that would fall on the other. Things like S&M, polyamory, bondage, body part fetishes, exhibitionism, etc. The list is long and varied. Each person has some combination of traits. It isn't even necessarily fixed throughout a person's life. For some people, it may be, but for others, it can change substantially over the years. We aren't all the same, and we don't all live static lives. And that is a good thing. The interaction between groups lends both flavor and possibility that enhances both. For example, exhibitionist lesbians, and the guys that love to watch them. Need I say more? It's all good.

Are you saying it is biologically wrong, socially wrong, religiously wrong, or some combination thereof? If you are an authority on how other adults may act in their own homes, are you willing to accept my authority on how you may act in your own home? Somehow, I doubt it. As long as the participants are consenting adults, I don't see how you, I, or anyone else has the right to judge their behavior as "wrong". We may choose not to like it. We may choose not to participate in similar behavior. Those are our preferences, just as the desire to engage in them are theirs.

It is actually a pretty amazing amount. When I went through the Army "Chemical Weapons Confidence Course", or whatever the hell they call their gas chamber, there were literally streams of snot and stuff pouring out of my nose. Unbelievable!

Didn't you mean to say..

I don't think so. We don't live in a black & white world. There are a million shades of grey in the middle. That applies to just about everything, sexuality included. Even if we take your hypothesis as true, just for a minute, I still don't see why you object to the activities. If both people are consenting adults, why is it objectionable? Are they "Straight", "Gay" or "Experimenting"? Who cares? I don't understand where you are finding a problem.

Repo Man. Classic cult crap!

Somebody... ANYbody... make the bad man go away!