JKane

I'm curious whether the merger will mean I can use my AA miles and otherwise fly on them out of BUR again.

I have very little use for straight guys: They don't give head worth shit, they don't know how to prepare/clean up for the fucking they beg for, and then they can't actually take it.

If you missed it on SyFy it's on sale 2/19.

I suppose, reluctantly, I'm a fan of his budding port career...

Meanwhile the VFX house that created the winning effects for Life of Pi has declared bankruptcy and seems unable to pay the final paychecks for their employees.

Because it is way too coincidental that the guy in charge of the fucking INQUISITION, who collected (and failed to act on) ALL of the documents about abuse for what, 10-20 years, *just happens* to resign RIGHT as a shit-ton of those documents are being forced into the open.

Wow, really? Is this unprecedented in living memory? Maybe they'll get another progressive reformer like John Paul the FIRST and maybe he'll last more than a couple weeks before dying under mysterious circumstances and getting replaced with an arch conservative... ...nah, I'm way too much of an optimist.

This animation bugs me because they didn't put any effort into creating the mechanisms that drive the things that touch the strings. But the music and the precision of the stringwork is cool, as usual for Animusic's stuff.

Happy belated!

Too bad about the shortcomings...

Anybody watch yet? Just qued for download--looks like the first 4 episodes have already been broadcast across the pond!

Please YES!

Opening cards is fine, as long as you don't do too many too often. It's closing cards (especially older ones) that can lower your rating. I just haven't seen any great miles offers in a while. There was a time you could get 75k AA miles per card and Citi/AA HAD THREE CARDS. Still, I try to keep an eye on the flyertalk forums for similar deals. Chip's Money Tips has some interesting ones that'll give you $500 or more in cash though, and ways to help hit the minimum spend.

That's a good point, it was the typical Hollywood syndrome of not being able to tell any story except from the perspective of a white male. But on the other hand, Lincoln isn't really a movie about slavery, it isn't even really a movie about Lincoln. It's a movie about the 13th amendment. From *that* perspective it's pretty good.

I was initially very disappointed by the movie because I feel it portrays our systematic, brutal torture as having been an important tool in finding and killing Bin Laden--despite all accounts to the contrary. But I've had some pretty heated arguments about it with friends. The movie's actually something of a masterpiece of not saying anything. It can be taken either way, depending on your mindset and political bent going in. Which is fascinating, that good friends of very similar biases as mine had the opposite experience of the movie. Yet a part of me still screams that the mouthbreathers who cheered going into Iraq and everything else W did will use it as justification--much like they used the fucking (bad) TV series 24 in the past--to justify our government's torture of people. It did nothing to address the repercussions for our own people who're captured, and only made passing reference to the unreliability of information gained through torture--a minute before that same brutally broken individual was shown to give the key information as the start of the agent's investigation. The movie does that a lot--shows something critical in passing without comment. The CIA's operations in dozens of countries as a way to subvert US law, treaties and the constitution itself. The militarization of the CIA, accountable to no one. And it gives them a glowing gold star for the one thing they're known to have done right in about 15 years (even though it took them TEN!) while passing by all the massive failures (except for WMD which is at least mentioned). The "60 minutes" piece about it was more informative on the incident itself in what, 30-40 minutes? And while the acting was better, the fighting wasn't nearly as good as "Act of Valor"'s. The actual compound assault was fairly forgettable. But it's still interesting how open to interpretation it can be and it is surprisingly apolitical. I just think it's a narrative filmmakers' job to have/express a viewpoint/opinion. Instead of pretending to make a documentary but getting key facts wrong while leaving others out... that is a disservice to everybody. Also, I found Scott's (few) words about it interesting...

It could, "Pirates" was a long time ago, if I recall. Back when a lot of things could make money because people bought DVDs.

I'd heard something about that too, but don't believe it's medically approved yet. Maybe like all the other weight loss miracles that never actually became available... But I also heard that your fecal flora changes on it's own over time, if you work to get healthy you'll develop the flora of a skinny guy. Meanwhile:

I haven't seen the warning in a couple days, also FF on Win.

Sadly, I'm fairly sure there are no city fathers losing sleep at night over how to keep the porn industry. Maybe one or two city councilmen from the valley are indifferent at best, everybody else would prefer to never think about/deal with porn production again. Sure, *we* all know it's become a lot less seedy lately and employes a lot of people, but that doesn't change the perspective most have of it, and there are still people who regularly encourage that bad reputation. Maybe the writing's been on the wall for LA county since AIM Healthcare was driven out of business... And I can think of no place waiting with open arms for the industry to move in, either. With its porn convention(s), massive indigenous stripper and "more" population, and generally low prices/underemployment Vegas would seem the best fit. But tourists miss that the state is actually fairly conservative with a strong Mormon bent. So going big and on the books like mainstream production is in LA may quickly run into the same obstacles--or stronger. Of course many under the radar productions currently happen there, and have tainted the view of Vegas for industry workers. And while it is at least close to LA, there's little to no local production support/talent/spaces/equipment/etc. Almost everything else I've heard proposed is laughable because the city in question is far more expensive and probably already thinking they don't want porn in their town... the separately incorporated areas of LA like Pasadena, uber-conservative Orange or San Diego counties... That leaves San Fransisco or maybe West Hollywood. Both are much more expensive than the SFV (at a time porn makes less and less money the old fashioned ways). And both might have a substantial population that has a knee-jerk reaction to encourage condom use in all porn because of its importance in gay porn. There are some very poor counties around Los Angeles county where people desperately need work, Kern County, Riverside / Inland Empire, possibly parts of San Bernandino or Ventura... But most have conservative leanings and are likely to react poorly to a large above-board buildup by the adult industry in their community--if anybody in the industry wanted to live in the desolate desert. So a fractured mish-mash with different studios going different places, some trying to do it on the fly/cheap, destroying the safety and even (to us few at least) respectability that has been built up over the years seems most likely to me. Which would seem the inevitable trajectory anyway, because it's hard to imagine big-studio type porn ever being anywhere near as profitable as it once was. Who here has paid for porn in the last two years? Maybe some websites with their own content make some money, but they were never a part of the Vivid/big studio system we're wringing our hands about here... My $0.02.

I caught it in LA, the theater and acoustics left something to be desired, but overall I loved it. I'm sure those who've had closer experiences with Mormons get even more out of it.

Maybe not so much short memories, but people certainly do have limited frames of reference. Beta tests/guinea pigs? To pass ETOPS this plane has been through an enormous amount of testing. But that was all on slowly, painstakingly built early versions. Now in mass production there are likely to be some issues. Planes get grounded all the time for inspections. There is reason to be concerned that the new technology in the electrical suite is safe and reliable, but it will get worked out and clearly nobody is taking chances in the meantime. My recollection is that in the past it was common for there to be several fatal accidents around the time of an introduction of a new airframe. Certainly this was the worst of them and the company is no more, but that's a far cry from what is happening now. People wrung their hands (in here even) about early A380 issues (now entirely forgotten) too. Fucking "WILL YOU SURVIVE, WILL YOUR FAMILY SURVIVE, WHAT YOU *MUST* SEE BEFORE THE NEXT TIME YOU OR ANYBODY YOU KNOW DRIVES BY AN AIRPORT..." news these days...

Congrats!

I love that they do it, but it seems odd to me that HBO is both the only network I can think of to have addressed the crisis and they do it fairly regularly: And The Band Played On and Angles In America... It's like they feel it is their duty to remind each generation..?

Did you get to check out the gadgets at CES? I haven't seen much on the street in Vegas in years, but if there is it's probably downtown near Freemont Street / the run down several blocks across from the downtown casino area on the other side of the blvd. I'm sure you're well aware Rentboy is especially dicey in a town where guys don't need repeat business to be successful. But I've done pretty well on Craigslist there, especially non-paid encounters.