lookin

Is he slutty or demure? While most have wondered, no one's sure. Perhaps it's not how he may feel, But what it takes to close the deal.

Every time I find a brand of negativity I like, someone goes and fiddles with the formula. This year, I couldn't even chisel Tiny Tim out of his Christmas goose.

Only one bachelor so far, James Buchanan, who preceded Abraham Lincoln. Though it was probably little more than political backbiting, his alleged 'special friend' was Senator Rufus King, aka 'Aunt Fancy', who used to post over at Daddy's. While I don't personally see a compelling need for a 'gay President', if we were to have one, I'd prefer to wait a bit longer and see if we can draw a better hand than Nixon has given us. Though I do appreciate what he did with China.

Sounds like you did a lot of entertaining. Perhaps the hinges on your door were overheating and tripping the hallway smoke alarm.

Sir Hector Kvetchmore pledges that henceforth no lurker shall escape the sting of his whangee.

TY, you certainly have a big one by the tail. I don't think the full story of Washington/Wall Sreet 'collaberation' is out there yet, but the snippets that do make it over the wall give me the heebie-jeebies. I used to think of my government as the thing that kept the corporations somewhat at bay. I still think that's true to some extent, as the Dodd-Frank Act seemed to have a few teeth and the health-care reform act has already done some good and will do more. But the way that business joins hands with government when legislation is getting crafted seems almost impossible for ordinary citizens to replicate. The 60 Minutes interview with Jack Abramoff was no cause for comfort. It seems that these legislative clerks who actually write much of the legislation that gets signed into law are very likely going to go to work for the companies or lobbying firms that help them write it. How is an ordinary citizen going to get represented in that process? Well, the answer would have to be by electing representatives who know how to look through all of that stuff and retain a commitment to represent their constituents. They're definitely out there and they may even be in the majority. But not for long if these systemic abuses keep piling up. It does show the importance of having a President who represents the people directly. I'd be surprised if much banking reform would have got done without Obama and astounded if universal health care would have. Even he couldn't get a clean public option in the legislation, although I wonder if the 'insurance exchanges' might morph into that. Thanks very much for bringing this topic forward.

Ha! Ha!! Had to look up K. C. (learned it meant King's Counsel), although these days, the honorific would switch to Q. C., or Queen's Counsel. In an especially fitting touch, As members wear silk gowns of a particular design . . ., the award of Queen's or King's Counsel is known informally as taking silk. I'll just bet it is.

What a great catch, FourAces! Woe betide the card counter who sits down at your table. I just toggled back and forth between the Review site and the Forum site and the online number stayed the same. Further, the last on-line-at-once record was set at 8pm one evening, which is probably prime time for checking out escort reviews. This may well mean that we really don't have 80 folks lurking in the Forum right now waiting to see what erudite, witty, and occasionally catty post will drop from above for their edification and amusement. In fact, there may be nobody here but us chickens. That would certainly make sense, as some of the world's finest hectoring has taken place within this very forum, and on more than one occasion. For it to prove fruitless nearly beggars belief. Could it simply be that there's no one here to hear it? By the way, it's fine with me if the present Group stays as it is a while longer, some posting daily, some weekly, some as the spirit moves. As long as there's no one gathering up their wraps and storming out in the middle of one of my posts, I'm happy with the present Merry Little Band. I do wish Lucky would surprise us with a brief cameo or two before the New Year, but I think I heard him say he's fiddling with his Roku and I'm sure no one wants to get in the way of that.

Great! Thanks. I love Easter Eggs.

Ha! Ha! Both my legs were wet by the time my sentence finally rounded the bend and came to rest just west of the period I worried might never appear during my lifetime.

For some years, I've had North Korea's official English news website in my bookmarks folder. Just checked and it hasn't been updated since Wednesday, and I don't recall missed days in the past. Could be this happened a few days ago and the backroom boys took a few days to tee up the announcement. I hope his successor will put his people before his ego.

Indeed he did, inspiring this recollection from my own modest travels. "I settled down on a park bench next to the late-night riverwalk cafe near the Chain Bridge on the Pest side of the Danube gazing toward the nearly hidden benches where a dozen Romanian hustlers sat trying to look available but not too available, just a lubricious rather mature American tourist leering at the tight fit of their blue jeans and smelling the cheap Russian cigarette smoke wafting towards me, feeling below my belt the twin bulges of lust in the front and forints in the rear heralding the freedom that is sure to come from striking up a strange conversation in a strange land, looking forward to burying my face between sequential pairs of buttocks where yesterday's shower is but a distant memory and only a pink musky ripeness remains, where it taint nobody's business if I do, and where the lascivious wanderer finds himself temporarily relieved of the astronomical prices he paid for half the indulgence little more than a day ago, eager to fulfill the promise of an exceptionally salacious fortnight awaiting him amidst the outskirts of the former Soviet bloc and hopeful that the tour bus will manage to retain its headgasket climbing over the Carpathian Mountains toward the promised land."

Well, Lucky, my bosom friend, it pains me to see you nipple-deep in such technical quicksand. Each time I see you inching closer to placing the final piece in the puzzle, along comes a Help Desk Wallah who turns over your card table. One trivial idea is to make sure you're not using the quote marks when you enter one of the three URL's for your router. And be sure to type the URL in your browser's address window, and not in a Google search box, for example. I'm no tech guy but frankly I don't see how you're going to find a router without an ethernet connection. I always thought that's how they hooked up to your cable modem. That's what mine does anyway, and then it communicates with everything else wirelessly. Didn't you have an ethernet cable between your modem and your old router? I admit, I'm getting out of my depth here, especially without knowing what various pieces of equipment are included in the Lucky Home Network, so the best I can do is offer you a few suggestions to, Inshallah, pull you out of the muck and send you on your way to some uplifting free home entertainment. 1. Plod along for another few days carting tech gear around the Desert and hope the right pieces end up at your house and talking to each other. A smidge of Hindi will come in handy if you want to get the most out of this experience. 2. As MsGuy has suggested, call in a pro. Just be sure to pick the right guy. 3. Consider accepting hitoallusa's kind offer to fix it up for you very fast. A first class plane ticket and a home-cooked meal might be all it takes. And the fact that he will not have to wonder where you are for a couple of days might be another valued enticement. 4. Forget about watching TV. You have recently learned the pleasure that comes from curling up with a good book and having no reason to put it down other than the fluttering of your eyelashes low down on your manly chest. and, certainly last, and with empathy for those who feel the suggestion to be beyond the pale, 5. Consider a - shudder - Mac router. The one I use is called the Airport Express. It connects to your modem with an ethernet cable, and it talks to everything else wirelessly. And, yes, it works with Windows. I checked out the Windows setup instructions and it looks like they're as simple as those for the Mac. You just plug it into a wall socket, copy the software onto your computer, open it, and answer some questions about how you want to use your network. When I first plugged it in and installed the software on my Mac, the computer found the Airport Express without any help from me. I considered it a thoughtful touch on Apple's part. Apple makes stuff like this so easy, I continue to be surprised by folks who consider their products overpriced. If you put any value at all on the time you spend getting a Windows setup to do things, I think you'd find the Mac to be cheap, cheap, cheap. PS: You can plug your stereo into the Airport Express and play any of your iTunes music through it. I burned all my CD's onto my laptop years ago, and listen to anything I want within a few seconds, even while posting on MER.

Lucky, assuming you can get things back to the way they were yesterday morning when your old router was working just fine, and assuming you have your network password, why not let Roku help you with the setup? Here is a link to their setup guide, and here is a link to the page telling you that you have 90 days of free support. It seems they should be able to help you get your password to 'take'. It will not be the first time they've had to walk somebody through the setup process.

I understand that the best bud is grown without soil. I've long heard of hydroponic systems in which the plant's roots are washed with water and nutrients, which then drain away. Now, I'm told, that has been improved upon by a new system in which the plants are suspended from a wire mesh. The roots hang down in the air and are sprayed with just the right amount of nutrients every few minutes. Lights are timed to give the plants the right amount of light and darkness to maximize resin production. The result is an excellent product with high yield and little impact on the environment. As good weed tends to make me loquacious, I think of them as the Hanging Gardens of Babble-on.

Enjoy it on location and you'll lose it within the hour. Quicker if you drink the water.

And when enjoying a doobie.

Sorry to intrude, but we may have a sales emergency here. If by 'how much' you mean 'how long', get just enough to go from your Roku box to your TV. Common lengths are 18 inches, 3 feet, 6 feet, 15 feet, and 25 feet. The shortest run that reaches will be the best. If by 'how much' you mean 'how expensive', you have clearly been talking to a Best Buy sales person. Their HDMI cables are outrageously expensive, and it's almost pure profit. Best Buy will gladly charge you more than a hundred dollars for a 6' cable, when you can buy a perfectly adequate cable from Amazon for ten dollars. I like Mediabridge cables, and they're highly rated. If you simply can't resist his sales pitch, at least insist he drop by your house for a free hookup.

Congratulations, Hi! Now that you're an official bandwidth hog, how about springing for a new avatar?

My Eggnog Surprise went through me like shit through a goose! Merry Christmas from your pal . ..

How about two out of three?

You're both Aces in my book, and I wouldn't dream of coming between you! Now that should give the other site something to talk about.

These stories are so heartbreaking. It's becoming quite clear that far too many schools and parents/caretakers don't have the knowledge, desire, and/or ability to take care of these kids. I think both the bullied kid and the bully need professional counselling. If the school has a psychologist on staff, fine. If not, both kids would be sent to an outside psychologist who could provide the necessary treatment to stop the cycle and avoid these tragic consequences. Why not make such counselling mandatory in every single case when it's reported to school authorities? The bill for psychological treatment would be paid by the school and forwarded on to the parents of the bullies. No pay, no extracurricular play, and no graduation day.

Ah! I should have thought of that, although I had always pictured your travelling toy collection as a bit more robust.

I flew out of SFO a couple of months ago, walking a few feet from where a friend dropped me off at the curb to the check-in counter. After a few minutes, I noticed a carry-on bag that didn't seem to belong to anyone waiting in line. As the line moved forward, the large rather worn bag soon stood all by itself, surrounded by nothing and no one. Other than the Hari Krishnas that used to solicit inside the airports, it was the first time I ever saw anything that made me nervous. I thought how easy it would have been for someone to drive to the curb, roll the bag into line, get back in his car, and blow it up from fifty yards away. We finally got an oblivious agent at the counter to call airport security, but I was well on the way to my gate and still no one had responded. Thirty yards away, however, were a half-dozen of TSA's finest getting ready to frisk any old lady sinister enough to look at them cross-eyed. And for this we're supposed to feel safer? Oi!