Lucky

1.4 million San Diego customers are without power, and the outage has now spread to areas east of Palm Springs, where temperatures are 109. The cause is unknown, but the gridlock is massive. From mydesert.com: A massive power outage spread across Southern California, parts of Arizona and into Mexico today, leaving millions in the dark. The outage, which began at 3:30 p.m., has affected Imperial Irrigation District and San Diego Gas and Electric customers, which together span Imperial, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties. Most of the eastern Coachella Valley — including Bermuda Dunes, Coachella, Indio, La Quinta, Palm Desert and Thousand Palms — has also been affected. Neither utility has an estimate of when power will be restored. “We don’t know what happened to the line; all we know is that the line went out,” a San Diego Gas and Electric spokesman said during a press conference. "Prepare to stay home tonight without power," a SDGE spokesman tweeted. The outage appeared to be triggered in Arizona, where several consecutive hot days could have contributed. It looked to be a voltage instability in a transmission system. It was the first known time the entire system the entire system has lost power in a major event, the spokesman said. All 1.4 million SDGE customers across Orange and San Diego counties are still in the dark with no estimated time to restore power, the utility tweeted shortly after 5 p.m. At least 50,000 customers were in the dark in Yuma, Ariz., and the outage also spread into Mexico. The California Independent System Operator Corporation is helping to restore power, a SDGE spokesperson said. It warned “some areas” could be without power into Friday Stay tuned! Fantasy Springs Resort Casino near Indio still has air conditioning during the outage thanks to backup generators, the casino tweeted.

Is the huge power blackout in San Diego a harbinger of Sunday? 1.4 million people have lost power in an (so far) unexplained blackout...

Public nudity may be on the rise in San Francisco, but penises are not, as those who seem to want to flaunt it all are usually the ones we most want to cover up. At least that's how I see it in my gym locker room. But, the increasing willingness to bare all in SF has raised some concerns. It seems that the nude ones are not covering the seat upon which their bare derriere plops. Unsanitary, some say...me too. "Supervisor Scott Wiener introduced legislation Tuesday that would require nudists to put something under their bottoms if they take a seat in public and to cover up when they're in a restaurant.: Both the LA Times and the SF Chronicle website have discussed the issue. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0908-public-nudity-20110908,0,4290865.story http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/07/MNVK1L0TD9.DTL

So did the Politics forum get consolidated with the Pub after all?

Occasionally the bf and I go up to the In and Out Burger for a Saturday night meal. We try to avoid the others, although Chick Fil-A would suit me if one were in my area.

Droid X.

Sad as it is to learn for those of us who have made the pilgrimage to the grave of Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh, Scotland, the legend of his maintaining a vigil at the grave of his deceased owner for 14 years is poppycock. Apparently the story was made up to encourage pilgrims to his grave to visit the hostelry next to the graveyard. Yet the legend lasted some 150 years until now debunked by a Swedish historian,who says the dog did not stick it out through hail, snow, and frost. The historian claims that the story was made up by a pair of men interested in financial gain. They used a stray dog, trained him to stay near the cemetery, and replaced him when he died. This shattering story parallels the loss of the Santa Claus myth for some dog lovers. Children have left their favorite toys at the dog's grave. Gift shops nearby have made a fortune selling images of Bobby and other bric a brac. There are Bobby mouse pads and Bobby bottle openers. The Wall Street Journal revealed the news of the deceit in today's issue. Even beloved Internet legend Lucky has visited the graveyard where Bobby is memorialized, and is shattered to hear that the legend is not so. Condolence cards may be added to this thread. The Legend, from rampantscotland.com: Did You Know? - Greyfriar's Bobby According to the commonly accepted story, Bobby was a Skye Terrier dog belonging to a Jock Gray, a farmer from the Pentland Hills, who regularly dined at an inn in Grassmarket, not far from Greyfriar's Churchyard. When Jock Gray, died in 1858, the dog refused to leave his master's grave. He turned up regularly for 14 years at the inn at Grassmarket which had been frequented by his master and was fed there by locals who were taken by the dog's devotion. The story may have been embellished by John Traill, the owner of the restaurant. Other versions suggest that the dog belonged to a local policeman and that while the dog was frequently found in the churchyard, it was also looked after by residents in the houses in nearby Candlemaker's Row. Greyfriar's Bobby died on 14 January 1872. The story first came to prominence in the 1890s when Eleanor Atkinson, an American, first wrote the story which became a first reading book for a generation of many Americans who now love the story so much. The cute life-size statue to Bobby (undoubtedly the most photographed dog in Edinburgh) was erected on top of a drinking fountain outside Greyfriar's Churchyard shortly after the dog's death and in more recent times Walt Disney made a film about the dog's devotion.

A poster on another site, BgMstr4U, posted this link to an article claiming that Rick Perry is likely to be the GOP nominee: BgMstr's Link

You are going to stick with MER? Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MER.

There is a related thread on this that may interest you: http://www.maleescortreview.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6000-skins-the-american-version/page__p__32181__hl__skins__fromsearch__1#entry32181

I thought about heading this: "Obama Is Toast", but you never know. How is he going to manufacture new jobs when consumers have cut spending, manufacturers have adjusted to lower levels of employees, and Republicans are out to stop him at any cost to the nation? Our president has been outmaneuvered by the Republicans to his great embarrassment. He looks like a junior president, and the nation has picked up on it. Sure enough, he gives a great speech, but what can he say next week that will make a difference? Not much, in my opinion.

"All in all, I think it is a great place to stay if you want to be out of the gay area of Bangkok." Then why go at all?

As inflation takes hold in the Land of Smiles, government workers might be smiling to learn that their minimum wage has been raised to 15,000 baht. That's about $500 a month. So that bar boy making 1500 baht a night might be happy to know that he need only work ten days a month to keep up with the local clerk at the visa office! Thailand's consumer price index is up 4.29%, compared with 4.08% a year earlier. Source: WSJ

Well, now that I have learned you are a beer bellied bear, my whole image must shift. Here I had you pictured as a suave, chain-smoking Frenchman, sitting in cafes whistling at the women while casting discreet glances at the young men passing by. But now I picture you driving a truck and swearing out the window at women who move too slowly to cross the street. Then, after work, you gather with your truck driving buddies at the local beer hall to swig away for hours until the overly made up mistress of the place kicks your ass out the door! You head off to home with one of your top buddies, who'll make do until your day off on Sunday, when you get your act together, go to the local church on the tram, and meet up with single ladies at the church social! How's that for an imagination? Just kidding, of course. At least we know you are not the guy in Oz's picture!

If that's Bibottomboy, he can grab my horn!

Hunky stud Jesus Montero, a catcher from Venezuela, made his major league debut tonight for the Yankees. If he does well, New York will love the handsome player.

It looks like my plan to stop starting threads for awhile is working. The idea was that I had started ten of the threads on the opening page, and thought I should stand back and let others have the space. Bibottomboy has stepped right up with 14 threads on the opening page, and is the last responder on 15 threads. hitoallusa is giving him a run for his money though, but my bet is on the bibottom. I still wonder how a bottom can be bi, but life is full of questions that I don't have answers to! Unless bibottom boy wants to start another thread...!!!

The library should be able to tell the needs for, say, gay books, from the demographics of the neighborhood. But somehow those demographics were collected by asking folks about these same questions. So, who should do the asking?

Let me know when and where and I will definitely try to be there.

I missed this thread, or rather, I ignored it because I don't watch much TV. But, the bf likes to flip channels,so when we saw Hunter we got more interested. Not that I have watched more than a few minutes when he is on.

I hope for the best for them as well.

lookin, I don't mean to be an asshole about it, but shouldn't the asshole be given a thread on its own? Buried deep in here and hidden by our cheekiness, it might not get the attention it deserves.

I can see that the lawyer in me came out in that last post. You don't have to feel cross-examined, I just would like you to respond to the points I raised.

No, that's not your point. That's your revisionism. It may be a good point, but it isn't what you have been saying. You didn't respond to a single point I made about this guy's wife and kid, who you think should just 'get over it." You didn't respond to the gap between your call for compassion and your lack of compassion for his family. You still can!

"In retrospect, the most consequential event of the past ten years may not have been 9/11 or the Iraq War but the looting of the American economy by those in power in Washington and on Wall Street. This was happening in plain sight—or so we can now see from a distance. At the time, we were so caught up in Al ­Qaeda’s external threat to America that we didn’t pay proper attention to the more prosaic threats within." "By portraying Afghanistan and Iraq as utterly cost-free to a credulous public, the Bush administration injected the cancer into the American body politic that threatens it today: If we don’t need new taxes to fight two wars, why do we need them for anything? But that’s only half the story in this alternative chronicle of the decade’s history. Even as the middle class was promised a free ride, those at the top were awarded a free pass—not just with historically low tax rates that compounded America’s rampant economic inequality but with lax supervision of their own fiscal misbehavior." http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/frank-rich/