[kenberg]

Conversation between a masochist and a sadist:

Masochist: Hit me, please hit me.
Sadist: No.

[Aberlour10]

Missing the obligatory Super-Bowl-Thread, nobody is ready to RUMBLEEEEEE????

[Cyberyeti]

Came across this, thought it deserved to go in here:

http://www.huffingto..._n_4743250.html

[Aberlour10]

CNN seems to loose completely the mind in his Sochi-Bashing-Fever.

A dude from Austria twittered this pic showing a place in Vienna under the title "Sochi -On the way to the media center. The street is not quite ready yet.

Few hours later CNN asked him several times for allowing to take this pic into their Sochi-Collections.

[Cyberyeti]

Aberlour10, on 2014-February-09, 02:24, said:

CNN seems to loose completely the mind in his Sochi-Bashing-Fever.

A lot of the Sochi bashing is well justified. The BBC which supports the winter olympics heavily and does the UK coverage did a documentary on new homes that were corruptly demolished on the grounds they were dangerous with the owners not notified of the hearings, their signatures forged on documents, no compensation etc

[Aberlour10]

Cyberyeti, on 2014-February-09, 03:16, said:

A lot of the Sochi bashing is well justified. The BBC which supports the winter olympics heavily and does the UK coverage did a documentary on new homes that were corruptly demolished on the grounds they were dangerous with the owners not notified of the hearings, their signatures forged on documents, no compensation etc

Each medal has two sides. Showing pics of desolate 10 hotel rooms for tourists and journalists says nothing about the other 23 990 in Sochi. The stories about horror in Sochi seems to sell better than a lot of athlets statements about "dreamin' conditions in their apartments and at the competition areas. Surely there are owners which have been aggrived by the authorities, but there are other which got up to 250 000 € for their houses.Nobody reports about ultra modern local transport for free etc etc. If the Russians would use the same desolate old school buses that were used during Olympics in Vancouver....this pics would be on the top of the #SochiProblems. In 2010 nobody complained or laughed about it.

[Winstonm]

15-Year-Old Figure Skating Sensation No Match For Zamboni

[Aberlour10]

Surprisng poll results. German customers voted for the regions with the most valuable cheese production. Wisconsin won high in general ranking:

Wisconsin 39 %

Normandy 21%

Reggio Emilia 18%

Franche Comte 12%

.....

[mike777]

https://www.facebook...&type=2





video of Eagle attack!

[Cyberyeti]

mike777, on 2014-April-06, 12:42, said:

https://www.facebook...&type=2

video of Eagle attack!

http://www.snopes.co...s/eaglegrab.asp

[y66]

The Best Medicine by Barry Blitt.

[jjbrr]

Unclosed HTML Tag

[y66]

Ann Beattie visited my local library last night. At lot of what she talked about is captured in this interview. Excerpt:

INTERVIEWER

How do you normally start your stories—with a phrase, a character?

BEATTIE

It usually starts with an image. “Hoodie in Xanadu,” for instance, was written about someone who was renting directly across the street from me in Key West last year. He would come out in his hoodie and look left and right, standing right in the middle of the street. Eventually I figured out that he was buying drugs. That wasn’t of interest, but what he might be as a character interested me. It’s usually something that has caught my attention like that—as opposed to my suddenly discovering some potential in, say, that palm tree over there.

INTERVIEWER

Does a story ever start with a piece of dialogue?

BEATTIE

Often hearing the characters talk clarifies something to me about who they are. That information doesn’t always have to be in the final version. A couple of times dialogue has brought a short story to an immediate stop. It was true in “The Burning House.” When the husband expressed his innermost thoughts at the end, I thought, Well, you just lost that story, Beattie. Then after a long time of sitting there defeated, staring stupidly at the typing ­paper, I gave him one final line that was exactly the point at which I had to end. I so much didn’t want to hear one more word from him that I almost didn’t play fair and let him end the story.

INTERVIEWER

That speech is remarkable:

“Everything you’ve done is commendable,” he says. “You did the right thing to go back to school. You tried to do the right thing by finding yourself a normal friend like Marilyn. But your whole life you’ve made one mistake—you’ve surrounded yourself with men. Let me tell you something. All men—if they’re crazy, like Tucker, if they’re gay as the Queen of the May, like Reddy Fox, even if they’re just six years old—I’m going to tell you something about them. Men think they’re Spider-Man and Buck Rogers and Superman. You know what we all feel inside that you don’t feel? That we’re going to the stars.”

He takes my hand. “I’m looking down on all of this from space,” he whispers. “I’m already gone.”

BEATTIE

“All your life you’ve surrounded yourself with men”—that was told to me point blank, by a friend who really meant to enlighten me. And I was enlightened. “Superman is part of the consciousness,” he also said. Roger Angell fine-tuned the analogies.

People commend me on that speech all the time. Women come up to me at readings and they have that speech cut out and it’s in their wallets where they used to have pictures of their husbands and children. I find myself saying, “But don’t you think that husband was rather disturbed?” I’ve had people write to me, “I read your story and suddenly it all came clear to me and I’ve left my husband and I’m in a downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming, motel and what do I do next?”

INTERVIEWER

What do you write back?

BEATTIE

“Best of luck with your future.”

[y66]

[Aberlour10]

Ben Affleck banned from blackjack at Vegas hotel for card counting

hmmm what a crime! He uses only his mind, nothing else,

If the casinos don't like it, they should ban blackjack from their program not the players, or?

[kenberg]

Aberlour10, on 2014-May-04, 02:45, said:

Ben Affleck banned from blackjack at Vegas hotel for card counting

hmmm what a crime! He uses only his mind, nothing else,

If the casinos don't like it, they should ban blackjack from their program not the players, or?

Of course you are right. But of course they will not allow it. Why anyone goes to these casinos escapes me.

When card counting was a new idea, in the early 60s I guess, it sounded to me like this would be approximately as interesting as the job I once had wiring computers by following the color codes. More profitable, of course, except they throw you out. Or shoot you.

[PhilKing]

Anyone else bet on the bearded lady?

[lamford]

kenberg, on 2014-May-04, 06:11, said:

Why anyone goes to these casinos escapes me.

To make money? Or to sue or be sued?

http://www.dailymail...-technique.html

http://www.lasvegass...6-million-alle/

I am on his side. But not on the side of the doctors.

[kenberg]

More power to him if he can pull it off. I know my limitations.

[y66]

If not quite Ali-Frazier or Williams-Sharapova, the duel was all the audience of about 100 could ask for. They had come to the first Extreme Memory Tournament, or XMT, to see a fast-paced, digitally enhanced memory contest, and that’s what they got.