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I have amazon prime pkgs arriving every week at my home! I love amazon but I need to not click on every Gadget I think I have to have! :-)

Would it had been much more appropriate for one to have generated a SEPARATE thread about one's making advance plans for his final arrangements? I think so! Lurker's death has affected us all in some way or another; thus this thread should only have related to him NO responses need to be made here; leave my comments as they are and begin a separate thread from this spot on. This would be most appreciated. I WROTE this for ALL to lend some thought to what I wrote regarding the placement of your comments!

The main things to ease this situation would be 1) have a well documented contact person who knows your plans and your wishes regarding health emergencies or death. Best to have those plans in writing. 2) Transportation of a dead body is a PIA and is very expensive. If you cannot have money put aside to handle these expenses then you might be disposed in the place you died. You should document that you are ok with this to relive your friends/family of any feeling of responsibility or feelings of guilt. 3) Travel insurance is great- but good policies that would cover the cost of the return of a body to another country are pricey. If you buy travel insurance make sure you know what is covered and also make sure that both your emergency contact and the person responsible for making decisions about such things have a copy of the policy. 4) Stay in contact with friends / family and let them know where you are traveling and where you are staying.. I tend to "overshare" especially when traveling on Facebook but my family and friends know where I am. 5) Finally, although it is not always possible or desirable to travel with friends it has it's good points. Especially when traveling to new destinations. If you die - well you will be dead and won't have to worry about any of this! But there are almost always survivors who will have the unwelcome (and usually unwanted) responsibility of taking care of the matters that follow a death.

He has a $40million house down the street from me (actually two he combined). I don't think he's ever been there.

Jeff Bezos just passed the 100 Billion dollar mark thanks to good reports from Black Friday. In one day, his net worth increased 2.8 billion. Must be nice. I am an avid Amazon fan. How many others use this on a regular basis?

I live about 1 hour from the Ark Amusement Park and all is well, NO Flood. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble. The screen shot in the original post is from pre-opening construction of the Ark from a few years ago. We haven't had enough rain to create a Flood anywhere near here for sometime. 1-2 inch of rain here does not a flood create. I would say Fake News.... even though i cringe when i use that term. Sorry, the place is open and drawing big crowds from all over the USA, foreign visitors, and bus tours from Canada are almost daily visitors. The biggest problem seems to be since the area is so rural, there are few hotel rooms in the area forcing visitors to stay in the Northern KY/Cincinnati area. As for Kentucky just a few facts for you. The University of Louisville and the City of Louisville is considered one of the Country's Gay friendliest University's and Gay friendliest Cities in the country. Louisville has a large Gay population that is fueled from the many rural areas of Southern Indiana and Ky. Kentucky's second largest City, Lexington, has an openly Gay Mayor who is in his second term. I notice much more gay bashing in larger Northern Cities and states than you ever hear around here. I love living in Kentucky and know many very good religious people. So please do not Judge All religious people from the negative examples you can can easily find.

Brilliant....

Hilarious... "you know what they say about the average common market official, he has the organizing ability of the Italians, the flexibility of Germans, and the modesty of the French, and that's topped off by the imaginations of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch, and the intelligence of the Irish. Gravy train, it's a gravy train. They live on champagne and caviar, and chauffeur driven Mercedes, private airplanes. Everyone of those officials has their snout in trough..." Having had a cousin who was the ambassador to the EU, my visits to Brussels were red carpet affairs, complete with champagne, caviar and chauffeur driven Mercedes...

My name is already engraved on the stone, which is really weird. The only thing missing is the death date. I thought about taking a selfie in front of it, for fun, but then I questioned who might enjoy the share. Turns out I couldn't think of anyone, so I never did it. The truth is, I haven't visited the cemetery since I purchased everything, which was about a decade ago. Getting back to my hometown is no longer a priority, so it may just have to wait until my death. Too late to take a selfie then.

When I joined Hooville to defend and protect the super talented and sexy Benjamin Nicholas, I had not imagined how dedicated my involvement could become. When Daddy once wrote me privately asking for improvement suggestions, I naively became more involved than I needed to be. Looking back, I would never make the same mistake. My life is too precious to be spending too much time on the internet. Moderation is the best formula for me.

Prepare yourself for some brain numbing reading. The "contracts" are often 30+ pages long, written by lawyers. Usually by page 5, I'm ready to shoot myself in the head to end the misery and save time, money, and the trouble of dealing with one more insurance policy. I decided to do one better. After my parents died, I decided to purchase burial space next to them. I made specific arrangements with the family cemetery and prepaid the contract with written details of my wishes. All my executor has to do is get my ashes to the cemetery, and the cost of that is covered in my insurance policy. I had not thought about dying outside the U.S. before this thread. When I consider how much I travel, my son and I thought that was weird. We now have a revised plan, thanks to this thread.

Agree absolutely. Why I some time ago banished FB from my life. Not only a time-suck but, worse, a place whose rampant stupidity turned me into a frozen Lot's-wife pillar of salt (thanks to @WhippedGuy for that imagery!) unable to do anything mentally productive for rest of day, every time I looked at it. Ditto for a certain Other Site likewise.

I'm sure that's true. I should dig deeper, but there's only so much time in the day. Now that I'm nearing the last third of my life, I want to be more careful with whom I let enter my brain. Which kind of explains why there's no place for Zuckerberg, either.

I would have serviced every single fella in that number! Bobby Barras is one of my crushes!

When I drank I loved a Dubonet and Gin (aka Pink Gin) which I first learned of from a Noel Coward song! And yes, I was a pretentious little fuck when I was a twink!

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/joel-osteen-slammed-not-opening-megachurch-hurricane-victims-231631972.html Joel Osteen Slammed for Not Opening Megachurch to Hurricane Victims Ashley Boucher The WrapAugust 28, 2017

Pure evil perversion of the ultimate humane wisdom of Jeshua bar Joseph. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

Such irony. Mixing commercial commerce and the Bible are probably not great ideas. Many evangelicals and fundamentalists fail to remember Jesus' feelings about money. Kentucky is another state much like Alabama. Scary.

Umberto Eco, The Art of Fiction No. 197 Interviewed by Lila Azam Zanganeh Issue 185, Summer 2008 The first time I called Umberto Eco, he was sitting at his desk in his seventeenth-century manor in the hills outside Urbino, near the Adriatic coast of Italy. He sang the virtues of his bellissima swimming pool, but suspected I might have trouble negotiating the region’s tortuous mountain passes. So we agreed instead to meet at his apartment in Milan. I arrived there last August on ferragosto, the high point of summer and the day the Catholic Church celebrates the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Milan’s gray buildings gleamed with heat, and a thin layer of dust had settled on the pavement. Hardly an engine could be heard. As I stepped into Eco’s building, I took a turn-of-the-century lift and heard the creaking of a door on the top floor. Eco’s imposing figure appeared behind the lift’s wrought-iron grating. “Ahhh,” he said with a slight scowl. The apartment is a labyrinth of corridors lined with bookcases that reach all the way up to extraordinarily high ceilings—thirty thousand volumes, said Eco, with another twenty thousand at his manor. I saw scientific treatises by Ptolemy and novels by Calvino, critical studies of Saussure and Joyce, entire sections devoted to medieval history and arcane manuscripts. The library feels alive, as many of the books seem worn from heavy use; Eco reads at great speed and has a prodigious memory. In his study, a maze of shelves contains Eco’s own complete works in all their translations (Arabic, Finnish, Japanese . . . I lost count after more than thirty languages). Eco pointed at his books with amorous precision, attracting my attention to volume after volume, from his early landmark work of critical theory, The Open Work, to his most recent opus, On Ugliness. Eco began his career as a scholar of medieval studies and semiotics. Then, in 1980, at the age of forty-eight, he published a novel, The Name of the Rose. It became an international publishing sensation, selling more than ten million copies. The professor metamorphosed into a literary star. Chased by journalists, courted for his cultural commentaries, revered for his expansive erudition, Eco came to be considered the most important Italian writer alive. In the years since, he has continued to write fanciful essays, scholarly works, and four more best-selling novels, including Foucault’s Pendulum (1988) and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004). With Eco’s paunch leading the way, his feet shuffling along the floor, we walked into his living room. Through the windows, a medieval castle cut a gigantic silhouette against the Milanese sky. I had expected tapestries and Italian antiques, but instead found modern furnishings, several glass cases displaying seashells and rare comics, a lute, a collection of recorders, a collage of paintbrushes. “This one, you see, by Arman, is dedicated especially to me . . .” I sat on a large white couch; Eco sank into a low armchair, cigar in hand. He used to smoke up to sixty cigarettes a day, he told me, but now he has only his unlit cigar. As I asked my first questions, Eco’s eyes narrowed to dark slits, suddenly opening up when his turn came to speak. “I developed a passion for the Middle Ages,” he said, “the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.” In Italy, he is well known for his battute, his comedic sallies, which he drops at nearly every twist of his snaking sentences. His voice seemed to grow louder the longer he spoke. Soon he was outlining a series of points, as if speaking to a rapt classroom: “Number one: when I wrote The Name of the Rose I didn’t know, of course, since no one knows, what was written in the lost volume of Aristotle’s Poetics, the famous volume on comedy. But somehow, in the process of writing my novel, I discovered it. Number two: the detective novel asks the central question of philosophy—who dunnit?” When he deemed his interlocutor clever enough, he was quick to extend professorial appreciations: “Yes, good. But I would also add that . . .” After our initial two-hour interview session, Mario Andreose, the literary director of Bompiani, Eco’s Italian publisher, arrived to take us to dinner. Renate Ramge, Eco’s wife of forty-five years, sat up front with Andreose, and Eco and I took the backseat. Eco, who just minutes before had brimmed with wit and vitality, now appeared sullen and aloof. But his mood lightened soon after we entered the restaurant and a plate of bread was placed before us. He glanced at the menu, dithered, and as the waiter arrived, hastily ordered a calzone and a glass of Scotch. “Yes, yes, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t . . .” A beaming reader approached the table, “Are you Umberto Eco?” The professore lifted an eyebrow, grinned, and shook hands. Then, at last, the conversation resumed, as Eco launched into excited riffs about Pope Benedict XVI, the fall of the Persian Empire, and the latest James Bond movie. “Did you know,” he said while planting a fork in his calzone, “that I once published a structural analysis of the archetypal Ian Fleming plot?” ... https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5856/umberto-eco-the-art-of-fiction-no-197-umberto-eco

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I [The quality of mercy is not strained] William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616 The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: ‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

Unfortunately I have had to arrange to bring a body back to the US. This was from Ireland. Different countries have different customs and different laws. The widow wanted the body returned. So through the department of state the US embassy in Ireland was contacted and made the arrangements. $5,000 dollars was transferred to the embassy to make sure the funeral home was paid, etc. The Irish custom seems to be burying ASAP. Few are embalmed or transported any distance. They did embalm the body and put it in a beautiful but simple wooden coffin for transport. Delta airlines transported from EiNN (Shannon) to KMEM (Memphis). Then a local funeral home took over. Through some local business contacts we got DL to waive their transport fee. I ended up giving the widow about $4500 of the original fee. This was some 18 years ago. Best regards, RA1

Bel Ami's Jack Harrer. One of my all-time favorite boy toys. Here he is with slight RH enhancement. A gift to all my size queen fans. Happy Holidays!

There are entire websites dedicated to escort reviews. There are hundreds of people who are writing reviews, thousands reading them, and several people actually maintaining the sites that displays reviews. So Obviously they are useful to many people. If YOU don’t find them useful, fine, don’t write any and don’t read them. But dissing people who are asking “where can I find reviews” like @moonwalkerseems either unhelpful, or clueless about how most advanced clients operate when choosing an escort.

It's Friday, November 24, 2017 at 11:05A.M. in California. I read the title in the forward and thought it was a joke regarding Lurkerspeak's passing. ...went to www.gaythailand.com to read his previous posts about his first visit to "The Land of Smiles" and discovered that the "RIP..." was indeed real. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting Lurker in person-- I felt akin based on his posts here regarding Brasil and other posts. I am saddened, especially after reading about his anticipated visit to Thailand and the preparations that he had made. His death is oh so, so, so friggin' sad. We never know when or how we are going to leave this earth. Death is a mystery; it's so damn scary, too! May this gentleman rest in eternal peace. He will be missed.