Meanwhile in Washington state another man has died after having sex with a horse.
Call me old-fashioned, but when my time comes I want to go out standing up, with a gun in my hand and loud 'splosions going off.
Maybe I'm doing something right? :-)
Will have a full report later this evening on something really cool that I did last night. Here's a tip in the meantime: if you're in the Atlanta area you might wanna check out the Fox Theatre tonight around 8 or so.
Some of the very people who vehemently oppose and criticize homosexual marriage are basking in the hypocritical light of a double standard. Their mantra is "save marriage" – from homosexuals presumably – but the practices of the average American have nothing to do with a devotion to chastity. In other words, what is marriage being saved from when Britney Spears, while in a drunken stupor, gets married in Vegas for 55 hours? And aside from social repercussions, there's very little encouragement from our nation for couples to stay married.Mash here for the rest of his article over at WorldNetDaily.
EDIT: I went to the TheForce.net forums to see if this movie had been mentioned in the Fan Films section. Sure enough it has been. For too many reasons to go into I thought THIS one would merit hosting by them (yeah even if Forcery didn't) but...
Yes, we submitted it to TF.N, but we were denied the hosting: film's not good enough. But, actually, it doesn't matter at all, 'cause we have a good hosting for our files already, we just wanted to get in TF.N news... And looks like we won't make it. Happens.This film's "not good enough"?!? &%@$!!! WHAT the heck are they SMOKING over at TFN Fan Films these days?!? I saw where the filmmaker noted on the thread that this is indeed the first fanfilm to come from Russia. It should warrant good TFN hosting on that mark alone. It's a gutsy movie, to not rely on "action, faster, more intense!" to drive the story. It has EXCELLENT special effects. Look, Jeff, John, Kurt, whoever's at the controls over there: I don't care what you thought of my own movie at this point. But you are positively NUTS to turn Alien War down and deny it some good recognition.
Once again - but NOT thinking of my own movie at all here - I have to wonder what kind of criteria they're going by in judging which movies make the cut and which don't. TFN Fan Films prides itself on being "a leader" in fan-made productions. Well, it won't be a leader much longer if it keeps denying rich content like Alien War. This is a work of genius that should be accoladed, not absconded from.
This is one example that I found a few minutes ago, from a thread about Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist returning to the hospital:
2. To: out damned spot (#0)Gloating over the ill health of two or three Supreme Court justices out of bitter partisanship... that's just too cold.Rehnquist is next, then Stevens and finally Cancer-girl Ginsberg.
Man would I hate to be a liberal, even if they were to win in 2008, the Dem will have to face a 7-2 Republican SC.
LOSERS.
GENANDREY VLASOV posted on 2005-08-04 21:41:55 ET Reply Trace
That is why I gave this up: I didn't want to be tempted to become this way myself. And I was getting too close to it as it was anyway.
Ooh-boy...
The northeast side of Greensboro has seen a lot better days. I feel old now just after coming back from it. It's nothing like it was fifteen-some years ago, when that entire part of town bustled with activity. I mean, there were several restaurants, a K-Mart, a big Toys R Us that I remember seeing open in '85, a lot of other stores. And at the hub of it all, one of the best shopping malls in the region: Carolina Circle Mall.
I can't begin to describe how wonderful a place this was. It was a two-story complex sprawled across a few city blocks' worth of space. In its heyday it was home to a Belk's store, a JC Penney, an Ivey's (some of these won't ring a bell with most reader's but trust me Ivey's was big and Belk's is still a clothing giant in these parts), a Montgomery Ward, and dozens of smaller stores. The Waldenbooks at Carolina Circle was my absolute favorite place in any mall anywhere to look for new books: I'll never forget that joyous day there in 1991 when I spotted the very first Star Wars "expansion" novel Heir to the Empire, which I quickly snatched up and took to the register. I've no idea how many books on my shelves came out of the Waldenbooks at Carolina Circle.
There were other stores too, like K&K Toys: I got everything from Star Wars toys to G.I. Joe figures to model rocket equipment from that place over the years. There was DoctorX Pet Store (I kid you not that's what it was called): I got a lovebird for my sixth birthday that came from that store, we named him "Pete". Had a couple of hamsters from that place too.
There was a music store that Mom bought her organ from. She even took lessons there once a week for a while. This friend of our family would take my sister and me all over the mall while Mom was having her lesson. There was a Baskin-Robbins that most times in summer our family would walk out with ice cream cones. Another store, I remember buying my first compact discs from. A candy store. Everything else you could think of, Carolina Circle had.
This is where our parents took us every December to sit on Santa Claus's lap. Carolina Circle Mall was the very first place that I drove my car to on my first solo drive out of town.
That mall had the movie theater that, to this day it's what first comes to mind whenever I think about going to see a movie, the AMC Carolina Circle 6. Six screens, reddish-colored walls and carpeting. I can still smell the popcorn with that butter, the way movie theater popcorn butter used to be before the Food Police(tm) wrecked it years ago. I never saw it there but this was one of those theaters that used to show The Rocky Horror Picture Show every Saturday night. That was the theater that I saw Return of the Jedi at in 1983: as long as I live, I will never forget the wild cheering and applause that broke out when Darth Vader lifted the Emperor and threw him down that shaft. There's never been a cinematic moment like that since then at all. The last movie I ever saw there was Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country on December 7th, 1991... the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, it so happened.
Carolina Circle was the kind of mall where you could just go to sit and watch people and talk to just about any relative stranger and wind up with a friendly conversation. It was a family shopping mall. Partly because of charming choice of stores, and partly because of the great movie theater...
...but mostly because of its ice-skating rink.
On the lower level of the mall there was a pretty good-sized skating rink. Everything else in the mall centered on that. And there just ain't no telling how many families spent the evening skating around that rink, or how many first dates took place there, or how many kids had birthday parties next to the ice. The ice rink was the heart and soul of Carolina Circle Mall. No matter what other business brought you there, you always wound up taking in the wonder and free-spiritedness wafting from across that ice into the rest of the mall.
I guess you don't realize how much you miss something, until that thing is gone. I guess too that nobody realized just how dependent a lot of things were on the ice rink, until it was too late.
Like I said, the rink was the heart of Carolina Circle Mall. And the mall was the center of all the surrounding area's business.
So it was that in the early Nineties the mall's owners made the galactically horrible business decision of DESTROYING the ice-skating rink... and replaced it with a food court.
You could practically watch the mall wither and die after that, as one tenant after another vacated the premises. I think a lot of us kept coming though out of longstanding loyalty to such a family environment. But in the end, as more empty store fronts looked down onto a soulless food court (that never had that much to offer to begin with) we really had no more reason to keep coming. There were a lot of other malls around, and movie theaters that had ten and sixteen, and then twenty and twenty-four screens to offer us. And then, maybe four or five years ago, the mall locked its doors for good.
Every other business around it suffered, including the Toys R Us. I was in there last a few days after Christmas in 2000, and they were preparing to shut down then. That was my last real time anywhere in the old Carolina Circle Mall complex until tonight.
My heart darn near broke to see what's become of it: a vast parking lot rife with weeds, overlooked by a shell of a building in the process of being demolished. I could even see where Waldenbooks used to be. The Toys R Us building is gone completely.
There is no sign that a movie theater ever existed there. Mom and Dad took me, my sister and my best friend Chad to see A Christmas Story there in 1983. One beautiful memory of my childhood and they went and wrecked the joint.
You could really believe that this was one of those places that you'd always have to come back to. I've got so many wonderful memories tied to that mall... and now, memories are all I have - all I will ever have - about Carolina Circle Mall and the special place it had in a lot of people's hearts.
All because some IDIOTS managing the place thought it'd be more economically viable to wring a few more dollars out of a food court than an ice-skating rink was bringing in. They destroyed a wonderful family environment, just about the ENTIRE economy for one-fourth of the city, and a lot of cherished memories.
Darnnit... I know you can't stop time, that you can't stop progress but, seeing what's become of Carolina Circle Mall made me feel thirty years older than I really am. It had that kind of affect on me.
Maybe that part of town's luck is about to change though. After demolition is finished the location will then give rise to a Wal-Mart Supercenter. No doubt it'll attract a lot more business to that part of town. But it will be one more Wal-Mart Supercenter: just another big blue-and-white box like thousands of others in seemingly every town in North America, without any warmth and soul and charm, and personality to call its own. It will never occur to most people who shop there that once upon a time there was something far different - and far better, in my book - sitting at that same location.
But as for me, I will always see something else there: a beautiful edifice built not only to accommodate commerce, but friendships and families. Maybe memory and dreams are all that remain of Carolina Circle Mall... but as sweet as those memories are, it will be enough.
I'm not the biggest supporter of Bush by far (as has been well-documented here). But let's face it: partisan Democrats - and that's what they've been exactly - have been pretty silly to hold up a United Nations appointment without a simple yes/no vote.
I can see a rationale for stalling on something more important, if there's serious questions about a candidate's eligibility... but not on this one.
That said, I don't like how Bush is giving the United Nations some kind of special importance when it really has none. It was a brilliant idea in concept but in execution it's been one bungle after another ever since its inception. It would have been more ballsy to simply NOT appoint an ambassador on that basis alone, and hold out until Koffi Annan and the other powers-that-be at the U.N. got their act together. That would have been the far better thing to do over the long run.
But hey, I'm just a guy with a blog... what do I know?
I have very little hope for this nation. The bulk of the populace is still clueless as to the Executive Orders, Acts, and partnership bureaucracy system that have turned our Constitutional Republic into a new banana republic. The ongoing ignorance of the masses is beyond all comprehension and reason.She's right. I don't have much hope for this country either. Our "elected officials" no longer even pretend to be our representatives for the most part, our "government" is become an unholy melange of political and corporate interests, we are engaged in a dubious war overseas that is stretching our defense capability to the breaking point, the border situation is a humungous crisis that threatens just about everything, Congress and this President just voted to broaden the damage that NAFTA did a decade ago, and as Nancy is saying here: our education system is a joke this country's people couldn't care less. Believe you me, my wife and I will homeschool our children... but I shudder to think about what kind of world it is that our children are going to be inheriting.The Southwestern U.S and the West Coast have become a foreign and illegal nation. Every Constitutional right is under perpetrated and highly orchestrated attack, and still the masses watch TV, sports, drink beer, and do and say nothing. Most don’t even know that anything has changed. And why is that? Because public education has changed American people into silent, sacrilegious, non-reading, pleasure-seeking, group-thinking morons – that’s why.
It's times like this I gotta keep thinking of Gandalf's words from Fellowship of the Ring: "All we have to decide is what to do in the time that's given you." Just do our best and let God make everything else settle out as it's supposed to. I keep telling myself that, anyway...
