birdlike

Whatever you do, keep the cats away from it! My girlfriend and I had a good air mattress that got ruined by our two playful kitties. We woke up one morning with the bed so deflated that our hips were touching the floor through the bed, and I ended up with some lasting lower back pain from sleeping that way for a while. Sucked big-time. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Usually there's nothing good on t.v. at this time of night, if you don't have cable or satellite or something. But it just happens that a show called "Maximum Exposure" is on right now. OMFG this show is the best thing on t.v., even when you DO have cable or satellite or something!! They collect all these real videos of people wiping out on skateboards, ATVs, bikes, rollerblades, etc. etc. The voice-over says some really funny shit, too. This one dude is trying to do a small-ish jump on a skateboard, essentially just trying to ollie over a narrow median strip of grass. They pause the video before the jump, showing the lanky, skinny kid. The announcer says something like, "Now, notice that Jonny has arms that are long and skinny and, maybe, kinda brittle." He wipes out on the far side of the median, landing wrong, and slams down onto his hands/arms. When I saw what happened, I cringed and was literally SHOUTING, "OH MY GOD!" This dude's left arm went from normal to suddenly looking like a piece of spaghetti! OMFG it was soooo gross! This show is addictive. Good thing it's in reruns, because their website says that it's no longer in production. You gotta try to catch it! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Someone always has to turn stuff into a diatribe on that evil Bush administration. Haven't we determined that to be really pathetic by now? Weren't we talking about Michael Moore, not GWBush? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

QuoteI agree with you on one point. He should not have left the first one that he handcuffed. I'm sure that's the largest part of why he is on admin duty after then incident. I read in the newspaper that that's exactly what the cop caught shit for. Once he has a suspect in custody, doesn't it stand to reason that the cop is responsible for the suspect's well-being? I mean, what if someone came up and did something to a handcuffed suspect, because the cop left him standing there totally vulnerable? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Well, now that you mention hand-me-downs; technically, my first bike was this girlie-thing that had belonged to both of my sisters. That's what my dad taught me to ride on. It had a long banana seat and a huge sissy-bar on the back. That made it easy for Dad to hold on and stabilize me. We went to the sidewalk across the street from our house, and he jogged alongside me holding the bike up, until I got the feel of pedaling and balancing. (It's gotta be pretty easy for an adult to run alongside a kid on a bike that small who's just learning.) I never had training wheels. I don't believe in them. I think they're stupid. We spent I dunno how long out there, probably under an hour. I came away from it knowing how to ride a bike. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I think Dateline should have to apologize for that lie at the beginning and end of every Dateline show. Yeah, either that or the piece of garbage show should have gone off the air permanently. But failing that, yeah, they should have to mention their deceit at the start and end of every show, and remind the audience that it might not be wise to accept everything said on the show. Just like Michael Moore. I saw the bullshit he laid on in B.F.C. and I know that the man has no problem playing fast and loose with "truth," so I don't count on there being much that is not deliberately distorted in any of his subsequent movies. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

The FACTS are that America is not in Iraq to take the country for its own. That is clear. We are not colonizing the country; not sending our people to settle there. We are trying to set them up with a government that won't be a totalitarian islamic (read: dangerous and belligerent) regime. Big-ass difference between our action there and those of the Russians/Cubans in Red Dawn. You can mischaracterize this as "the Americans tried to take" all you want, but that doesn't change the facts. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

OHHHHHH, the old, "If it saves just one life, even the most radical sacrifice is worth it" argument. That's why you're giving up your automobile, right? Just to prevent the possibility that you might lose control and run down some lady and her children as they cross the street, right? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

So it sounds like you're about ready to give up on the idea of tight gun restrictions. About the only statement left to make is, "Well, yes, in a world without guns, no one would be hurt or killed with guns." Beyond that, any talk of trying to keep them away from the wrong people (without condemning honest people to not being allowed to have them) is nothing more than mental masturbation. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Gee, you'd think that an ALL OUT BAN would do a good job at it, right? And yet, in the places with all out bans, they still get them. Why do you keep banging your head against the reality and still pretending it's not there? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

So you are admitting that the tightest "vetting" system was powerless to prevent Dunblane. So if that's the case, how is it that you could be arguing for anything other than simply removing all guns from the public? I'm not sure which "high school" massacre you're referring to. Perhaps the Virginia Tech shooting? How would better vetting have helped? It's easy to demonstrate that if a person is denied the ability to buy a legal handgun, he'll just buy an illegal one. (I mean, all the guns used in crimes in britain are just that.) Every so often I read about guns being stolen from cops. Happened recently, where a kid in Florida and his buddy broke into an off-duty cop's car, stole his backup handgun; and then one of the kids "accidentally" killed his friend while "playing" with the gun. This points to the fact that even if no civilians had guns, criminals and idiots would still get them. It also points to the fact that trying to shelter kids' minds from the realities of guns (leaving them to "learn" all they know about them from the movies) is a recipe for disaster. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

No, what you want to pretend is that if we give up our guns, the idiots will also somehow be prevented from having them. That's absurd. Here's something I can't figure out: All of us honest people have agreed to not rob people -- why haven't the bad people followed suit, just the same way you seem to think they'll do if we honest people give up our guns. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Yeah, and nothing can prevent them from doing what they are gonna do. We can't engage prior restraint, we have to wait until they commit an offense. And nothing seems to be able to keep guns away from them. If they can't buy them legally, they steal them. If no civilians have them, the steal the cops' guns! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

A woman at work went to a bargain book sale and found a book that she left on my desk the other day. I've just leafed through it and started the introduction, but it seems like an EXCELLENT book, and some of you may have heard of it. (Not sure how widely available it is.) It's called "Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers: Wingsuits and the Pioneers Who Flew in Them, Fell in Them, and Perfected Them," by Michael Abrams. Really remarkable history in the book, and quite entertainingly written. I recommend it. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Um, I think he was the one who was saying "IMO" before? He's been offering his opinions about gun crime (by its nature, subjective) rather than facts or logic. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Yeah, good point, I know I wouldn't mind losing sentimental stuff I cared about, maybe was given by my parents or other loved ones, as long as I got a check for some of the value of it a few months later on. Boy oh boy, more and more you seem to come across as perfectly content to live in the grip of criminals in control. Am I wrong in that estimation? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

QuoteYour right cars are nasty if driven irresponsibly as for skydiving you're petty much in charge of your own destiny provided you dont jump with idiots. Can't always control whether you're surrounded by idiots. I feel I'm more in charge of my own destiny if I am capable of an adequate defense against an armed criminal than if I have to hope he'll leave me alone after he gets all my valuables off me. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that those two have "mixed" already... Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Make sure you don't own any jewelry, electronics, currency or anything else that those "fuckers" could nick. It sounds like you're so resigned to having the criminals rule the roost there that you simply have to be glad you didn't have something dangerous for them to acquire when they burglarized you. That's really sad. What a yoke to live under. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Well, what hasn't been tried, short of collecting them all up -- well, all the legal ones you know about, anyway? I mean, you keep arguing in favor of stuff that's been tried and has failed. The ultimate efforts to keep guns from criminals have been made in England, Washington D.C., Japan (where the mayor of Tokyo was murdered by a Yakuza boss recently, right on the street, over a traffic fine). We can see those efforts have failed. What do you recommend that would not include attempting to take everyone's guns away in the effort to keep them from criminals? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Well, I apologize that it's not a "household burglary," but I found a rather conspicuous MURDER in which a gun was used in the U.K. that was not "gang-related." It was the murder of television newscaster Jill Dando, on her doorstep Now, the story says: "Barry George, 41, shot Miss Dando through the head with a single bullet on the doorstep of her home in Fulham, west London, on 26 April 1999. George, a known sex offender, denied the killing, but a jury of six women and five men convicted him by a 10-1 majority after an Old Bailey trial lasting nearly two months." Scary, to me, is that in british jurisprudence, you can be convicted of murder by a jury that is not unanimous. Kind of dicey for civil liberty, no? Not such wonderful protection against the innocent being wrongly found guilty... I wonder, how did a known sex offender get a hold of an illegal gun two years after the ban took them away? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Well, there's always, "Check through the peephole in the door, and refuse to open it for anyone you don't recognize. And if they force the door, you can be around a corner in the house, firing at them coming through the bottleneck of the front door." See, the lunacy of your position seems to be, "Since the odds are against you with a gun against 10 (not 12), might as well give up the gun and have NOTHING," as though that'd make you better off. Here's the paradox: Are you saying that if we made a public spectacle of having all the good people give up the guns that you say make the criminals arm themselves, the criminals will then de-escalate their own weapons? Or would they just see it as a free-for-all, "Hey, those morons gave up their defensive guns thinking we'd make nice and give up our own -- but now we have even greater power against them comparatively!" Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

There's been ample time for us to see that happen, but the fact remains that it has not. The U.S. has seen more than 40 states pass laws allowing licensed concealed carry for people who meet objective licensing criteria, since Florida got the ball rolling in 1987. Can you explain why, with literally millions of people licensed to carry guns (and carrying them), we haven't seen your prediction come to be the norm? You are asserting that people who want to rob others are tantamount to cold-blooded killers, which is a specious claim you can't back up. Just because someone wants your wallet and cash, doesn't mean he necessarily wants to be a murderer, so he might carry a gun for the threat and the power of it but not necessarily desire to shoot you preemptively just because "so many Americans have guns." Fact is, though, if shooting someone who was robbing me presented itself as the viable way to end his threat to me, I'd do it without hesitation. I still don't see what alternative you're offering: - Don't resist, and they get to have everything that's yours - Do resist, and they'll just shoot you right away Yay. Cheery, ain't you? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Boy, it really begins to seem like all you advocate is rolling over for the criminals. If we don't fight them, they get to take what's ours with our cooperation. If we do fight them, they'll just kill us preemptively and take our stuff just the same. Okay. What do you think we should do? OH, I remember, "we need more police." Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

That's very humorous. In the U.S., every single year sees MILLIONS more guns sold, with very little attrition of the extant ones. And yet, despite your claim, we've had plenty of years with decreases in gun violence casualties. And then the U.K. makes guns all but disappear, and they have more gun violence than before. Your claims evaporate. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire