caeron

I loved Kate Winslet. She played a great character that was kind of twisted, that didn't ask for sympathy, but earned some understanding as the story went on. I thought Ralph Fiennes' character a bit inexplicable though. I didn't get his motivations from the trial on.

I have no personal animosity towards the other site. I was a member there for years. I just got tired of what I view as the sniping that goes on. Maybe this place will end up that way and I"ll get tired of it too. As some posters have said here, they enjoy the witty repartee. I posted why I didn't enjoy it. Different strokes. I wasn't on the receiving end of much of it, so I'm not invested over it. Perhaps other posters here who got into it more are. I don't think you can have that kind of conversation though, and then complain when some people develop hard feelings about it. If that's what you want, suck it up when people call you mean girls and the like.

I'm one of the people who said the other site was rude. I used to participate there, I don't any longer. I don't think there's anything rude in stating such an opinion. But perhaps you were referring to several of the posts that laid the blame on the moderator(s)?

I don't think he wants any protectionism, but some congress critters are trying to stuff things in there that require "buy american". While there's a noble sentiment there, it's the first step down a extremely slippery slope.

I wish I'd had either of you two as a guide last time I was in Dallas. I missed all the fun apparently.

He really looks like a pretty fag, doesn't he?

On that, I have no idea, since you can just sign up with any email address. It is odd that they can identify them. Perhaps because of the attorney generals they were capable of tracking back all the email addresses to their registrations.

For another look at the willy nilly stigmatization of sex offender registries, read this. http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail..._offender/6726/ There's an academic paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1100663 to quote from their results, which match my bias against large scale notification laws: our findings imply that a state should always employ a registry (the optimal size of the registry depends on the shape of the relationship between sex offense frequency and registry size). On the other hand, our results also suggest that notification laws are only attractive when the size of the registry is relatively small. We estimate that putting a notification law in place deters -1.07 yearly sex offenses per 10,000 people, but a notification law that covers 14.79 sex offenders per 10,000 people (the sample mean) leads to 1.3 additional recidivist sex offenses per 10,000 people. Basically, they're saying that offenders should be required to register with the police who can watch them, but that public notification about sex offenders INCREASES their recidivism, which makes perfect sense to me. If you turn these people into total pariahs, their lives are already fucked up, there isn't much upside to behaving. Sorry if this is a sidebar for people, but I think we need to be careful in our stigmatization of sex offenders. Not all of them are serious crimes and even for the serious crimes, if we give them no way out, then they are going to keep offending. If you care about this much, I suggest you skim the results and conclusion section of their paper, it's more nuanced than my pull quote. For instance some level of notification, while it increases recidivism among registered offenders, decreases reports of first time offenders.

I tend to agree with you about the protectionism. We could do the global economy a lot of sustained damage by starting down that road. I think cleaning up the bad debt is the key to this problem. I don't mind real infrastructure spending either, since I think we've neglected a lot over the years, but much of the rest just strikes me as pork which drives me nuts.

Hhaha. The image of Eliot Spitzer being a weasel about using condoms strikes me as very funny for some reason. Thanks for the update.

I don't think I've ever heard of anybody being sexually assaulted on the internet. The idea that sex offenders on myspace are more dangerous than ones anywhere else seems ridiculous to me. Never mind that many registered sex offenders are tagged for consensual teen relationships that break ill-considered age of consent laws. So, no, I don't find it horrifying that myspace has a lot of registered sex offenders. What I would find horrifying (well maybe just sad), is if parents fail to properly supervise their kids and let them get into trouble.

Well, apparently Kellogg's dropped their sponsorship of the olympic team in December already, so this might just be an excuse for them to cut what they were going to cut anyway.

I liked her performance in The Reader better, though they were both good.

I'm with you. I hate ticketmaster. If they can regulate the usury of payday loans, why can't they regulate this usury. The fees they add are ridiculous.

I don't know if it's getting worse or not. I don't think it is, but it could be that with the growing sexual freedom elsewhere, closeted priests are doing more than they would once. But I think the answer to this is not more shame and the "good old days". The answer to this is less shame about sexuality. People need healthy, sane, legal ways to express a fundamental part of their identity.

Surprise. Human sexuality wins again. These stories will stop when the sexual phobia that drives people to try to deny themselves stops. I'm not holding my breath.

If you're having a large group there, wouldn't you want to eat there first and make sure it doesn't suck? I guess for me, I like my food enough that I don't think pink with my dining dollars. I want a good restaurant first. As a consequence, I have no idea which are the gay restaurants in portland OR, but I can tell you the good ones :-)

I think the whole idea of idolizing celebrities is silly, so no I don't think they should be held to a higher standard.

I tend to agree that being a doctor doesn't make you necessarily a good choice, and dean is perceived as partisan. Still, so was Hillary. I guess dean just doesn't have the clout the clintons have. Either way, I'm glad Daschle is gone. Obama should have pulled the plug sooner.

I saw Revolutionary Road yesterday, and I enjoyed it, but I guess I wasn't as impressed. The acting was brilliant, but relatively early it was clear to me more or less how this was going to end, so most of the time I was just watching the train wreck unfold. I do recommend it though.

Given where we are, it seems a bit strange to suggest that people should obey a law just because it is a law.

Personally, I'd move tip 5 to the top. It drives me nuts on the other site to see a review that has NO content. I personally assume most of these are done by the escorts themselves. The "My orgasm was so intense it ripped a hole in the space/time continuum... but the details shale remain private" reviews always makes me laugh. Come on, Mary, are you afraid to admit that he made you his bitch and you squealed for it?

From the cunt's wikipedia entry: The fallout from her political activism had a negative effect on her business and entertainment career. Her contract with the Florida Citrus Commission was allowed to lapse in 1979 because of the controversy and the negative publicity generated by her political campaigns and the resulting boycott of Florida orange juice. Her marriage to Bob Green failed at that time, and in 1980 she divorced him, although he reportedly has said that his fundamentalist religious beliefs do not recognize civil divorce and that she is still his wife in God's eyes. Kathie Lee Gifford, who worked as a live-in secretary/babysitter for the Greens in the early 1970s, said in her autobiography that Green had a ferocious temper and could be very possessive and emotionally abusive, and that Anita was not very happy. Some Christian audiences and venues shunned her after her divorce. No longer invited to appear at their events, she lost another major source of income. With her four children, she moved from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and later to Atlanta, Georgia. In a 1980 Ladies Home Journal article she said, "The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women's problems." In the same article, she said that she felt sorry for all of the anti-gay things she had said and done during her campaigns. She said that she had adopted a more "live and let live" attitude. She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they tried to reestablish her music career in a series of small venues, including Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Their plans failed, however, and Bryant and Dry left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. Her career decline is detailed in her book, A New Day (1992). They filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas (1997) and in Tennessee (2001). Bryant returned to Barnsdall, Oklahoma, in 2005 for the town's 100th anniversary celebration and to have a street renamed in her honor. She returned to her high school in Tulsa on April 21, 2007, to perform in the school's annual musical revue. She now lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, and says she does charity work for various youth organizations while heading Anita Bryant Ministries International. The ministry's web site features two articles championing her long-standing opposition to the "homosexual agenda".

I want the video that comes after this shot. The one that starts, "oh wow, I'm so stoned and horny..." Seriously, if it doesn't affect his ability to swim competitively, who cares? Now get me a picture of Obama burning one, and I'll be more interested. (Not upset, just more interested.)

I waiting to watch it at home. I's a sensitive fag, and I'm afraid I might cry.