Zixar

Fall Creek Falls State Park, Tennessee, weekend of October 9-10, 2004.

How many women does a preacher get to rape before you start calling him a rapist?

Oddly, no. Strange, since Jesus had to know it was all HER fault... -->

dmiller: Um, well, chemistry is kind of fun, to me anyway. I built a still as an 8th-grade science project. The proper way to store a banjo is with a trash compactor. :D--> Oh, you said you were serious... Okay, detune all the strings a half-step lower. You want to maintain close to the original playing pressure on the neck and bridge, but leave a little room for temperature expansion. Use a case humidifier to keep the head from cracking and the wood from drying out. Store the case flat on its back, never on its side or standing up. :)-->

Leviticus and Numbers both differentiate between sins committed through ignorance and sins deliberately committed. The first 3 gospels also tell of those leading others astray--notably the "millstone" verses.But there's another huge flaw with your argument. What happens if you're a good and faithful Wierwillite, and Jesus turns out to be God after all? Is it your fault you were taught wrong? Do you get a one-way nonrefundable ticket to Hell for unitarian idolatry? Wierwille sure seemed to think the Catholics were in for it for trinitarianism, but if they happen to be right... Romans 10:13ff shows that people can't believe unless they hear, and if what they are told is wrong, how can it be THEIR fault? The teacher gets the millstone, not the child. Now, there are some women who allegedly aided in the abuses of leadership, knowing full well of their actions. One name I've heard put forth who was supposedly pimping for Wierwille was a C***y O****d. There's a big difference in sinning through ignorance and willfully enticing another to sin.

Columbus Day isn't all THAT far away, folks... Maybe we should start a new thread for the Third ASCRnWR?

Tom: You might want to check out Risk: 2210AD, then. There's a lot of new rules to spice up the old game. You might also like Axis & Allies, too.

oldiesman: Imbus did take personal responsibility for her actions. She never claimed she was forced or coerced, she did it of her own free will, and she courageously admits it. The mitigating circumstance was the free-sex mindset fostered by the leadership. When the same clergyman you think has told you a hundred truths slips one lie in, your trust pushes you to accepting the lie as truth. These despicable people betrayed her trust, and that is where the true blame lies. No, she wasn't forced to submit to that pervert's depredations. She was fooled into believing it was the right thing to do. We were all fooled, in one way or another, into doing the wrong things because of the trust we placed in the leadership, which they subsequently betrayed in the name of power, sex, money, etc. It's obvious in hindsight, but it wasn't when we were in the midst of it. Did PFAL teach sexual promiscuity? Not as such, no. It was, however, a misused tool. Just like a hammer can pound someone's skull in just as easily as it will pound in a nail, these "leaders" used PFAL to pound their ****s into any orifice that suited them. Imbus is innocent. In order to sin, there must be the intent to commit the transgression knowingly. Since her "spiritual leaders" had erased adultery as a transgression, she was acting in what she had been led to believe was a godly manner. The only ones God is going to punish for the incident will be the b*stards who misspoke in His name to take sexual advantage of their sister in Christ... ...and those who stand up for them.

In a bizarre way, D&D is directly responsible for my being at Waydale and later, GreaseSpot.

High-proof moonshine will not freeze in an ordinary freezer. The freezing point of pure ethanol is -175 degrees Fahrenheit. A 50% water/ethanol mix (i.e., 100 proof liquors) freezes at -25 degrees F, and 80 proof liquors (40% ethanol) freeze at -10. The remaining compounds in moonshine (assuming a corn mash base) will not be adversely affected by prolonged exposure to cold. It all depends on how "smooth" the moonshine tastes before it goes in the freezer. If it's at all harsh going down, storing it at room temperature for long periods will give some of the heavier fusel oils and higher alcohols (all nasty-tasting) time to decompose, mellowing the 'shine. If the distiller knew his stuff, and properly discarded the "heads" and "tails" of the distillate before they contaminated the product, the moonshine should be as smooth as any store-bought vodka. A quick method for detecting/removing the majority of toxic fusel oils is to pour a glass of the shine, then shake a good dose of black pepper onto the top of it. Wait five minutes or so, then if the pepper flecks have sunk to the bottom of the glass, the fusel oil content is high. You can drink it now, but make sure you discard the bit at the bottom with the pepper--don't drink it! (The pepper grains act like activated charcoal and soak the heavier/less dense fusel oils into themselves. This makes them heavier than the surrounding alcohol, and they sink.) If it tastes like gasoline smells, throw it away. The only other real danger to moonshine is if the distiller took a common shortcut with his still and used a car radiator as a flake stand (condensing column). Radiators work great in stills, and beat the old coiled-copper tube all to heck, but since the pipes are soldered together with lead solder, the lead leaches out of the solder under the heat of the ethanol vapor and contaminates the batch. There's no way to tell the lead content of moonshine without a lab, so let the imbiber beware! Now I have to go practice my banjo... ;)-->

Socks: You're thinking of DC Comics, not Dell. :)--> ALthough AOL Time Warner owns DC now.

Should have kept them, Tom. I paid a nickel for a copy of X-Men #101 I got out of a Salvation Army thrift store in 1977. Cover price: thirty cents. I sold it a few weeks ago for $75.00. :)-->

That's a common concern, but it's usually unfounded. In the first place, the way the copyright law now works is that a work is copyrighted as soon as the author writes it. It does not have to be registered first. In the second place, there's no incentive for an editor or producer to steal anyone's work--it's cheaper (and more ethical, of course) just to pay the original author, since they'll have to pay someone for it anyway. Paying the original author also eliminates a potential lawsuit, and since screenplay prices are set by the Writers' Guild of America anyway, it's the same cost to them whoever writes it. (Actually, it costs them MORE to have a WGA member write it, since they don't have to pay you Guild minimums if you aren't yet a WGA member.) In the second place, it's not possible to copyright an idea, only the execution of an idea. In fact, you can't even copyright a title, believe it or not. You can call your movie "The Matrix" if you want to, and the Wachowski brothers can't do squat--unless you use their characters' names or any of their dialogue. Then they can sue you. There are exceptions for certain titles-as-franchise, like "Gone With The Wind" or "Star Wars", perhaps, but they're the exception rather than the rule. Actually, I borrowed (er, swiped) the core idea for the screenplay from a well-known book, except that I changed the time period, characters, motivations, locations, scope of the plot, and the resolution. That's quite legal. Otherwise every single "boy loves girl, but parents keep them apart" story would be an illegal ripoff of Romeo and Juliet. I do appreciate the concern, though. I still don't know if it's worth showing anyone else yet--or at all. It's not even the complete first act, so there's probably not enough material for someone to judge it. Jury's still out...

They'd better get on the ball if they haven't even cast the FF movie yet. The SFX are going to be hard to complete for a 2005 release. Chiklis would make a good Ben Grimm. Don't know whom I'd cast for the other roles, though.

Vickles: The missing card trick looks great, but all you need is a piece of paper to figure it out... :)--> Write down all the cards before you pick one. Then when the second screen pops up, notice that NONE of those cards were in the first set! :D--> The trick works best with face cards because they're so "busy" illustration-wise. You're supposed to concentrate so hard on your card that you don't remember any of the others. That way, when a bunch of different face cards are displayed, of course you don't see your card, and you don't remember the others. Neat trick.

WW: I don't remember it being uttered a single time in any of the 70s comics I read, and I read Marvel exclusively back then. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, but of all the myriad Stan Lee catchphrases, GSBM doesn't ring a bell at all. I couldn't find any Google mention of it WRT Fantastic Four sites. The Hulk was too stupid to say it, and the only other hero I can think of who might have said it would be Luke Cage. There were a lot of stupid bricks in the Marvel world, like the villains Juggernaut and Rhino, but they weren't common enough to make GSBM a catchphrase. Again, it's not like I read every issue of every title, but that phrase wasn't used often enough to register, if it was. With Ben Grimm, you think of "It's Clobberin' Time!", or references to his Aunt Petunia, but not GSBM.

Saw Vol. 2 on Saturday afternoon, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It's definitely not "second verse, same as the first." Sure, there's a couple of violent fights, but the characterizations leap to the forefront instead of the chop-socky camp of Vol. 1. (Guess they blew 99.9% of the fake-blood budget on Vol. 1. Thank God.) Uma Thurman and David Carradine give outstanding performances, as does Michael Madsen, (surprisingly) and even Daryl Hannah. Gordon Liu does too, although you'll appreciate him more if you've ever seen one of the dozens of kung fu movies about Pai Mei (old white-haired guy) and the Shaolin massacre. (Look closely--Liu also played Johnny Mo, head of the Crazy 88s in Vol. 1, too.) Taken together, the two volumes of KB may arguably make a better film than Pulp Fiction. It wouldn't surprise me if Uma got an Oscar nomination for it.

How can anything fail on a matter of opinion? If I were of the opinion that space aliens really fought the Battle of San Jacinto, it might be in factual error, but it's certainly an opinion. Google turned up some historical sites, some military sites, some pix, some commentary--a little bit of everything about San Jacinto. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a multitude of sources is more illustrative than one author's book.

When all else fails, there's always Google... ;)-->

I dug out the 18 pages of the first script I started last night and reread them. The script still sucks, but I'm starting to think it might be salvageable. I'm tempted to put a link to it and ask for critiques, but there may not be enough to go on.

If you want an external one, it's cheaper to buy an internal drive and an external USB2/FireWire enclosure and put it together yourself. (It's easy. Two cables that can only be connected one way, close the top, and you're done.) If you want an internal one, you need to know if you have an open IDE channel inside the computer. Most of the time it's not a problem, unless you already have more than two hard drives. If you're just taking out an existing CD-ROM drive, you're all set. The two drives are identical cable-wise. How handy are you with a screwdriver? As far as brands go, there are only 3 to consider. You definitely want a dual-format burner. Don't get one that's DVD+R only or DVD-R only. You want a +/- type drive. Regardless of the different brands, there are really only 3 drives. One is made by LiteOn, and is the drive Sony repackages and sells, one is made by NEC, and is the one TDK repackages, and the third is made/sold by Pioneer. The good news is that you really can't go wrong with any of them. I have the NEC drive, I think John has the Sony/LiteOn drive. The LiteOn drives are a little more expensive because they have an 8MB buffer instead of a 2MB buffer, but it makes little difference performance-wise. The 8x speed drives (which I recommend) go for about $90-$120. The 4x drives are older, but go for about $10 less. Here's a link to the LiteOn and here's one to the NEC Mwave.com has fast service and excellent prices. I buy all my stuff from them.

Except that the typical hard drive runs about $100 on sale now, and the WinXP upgrade costs $90. Add another $40-$80 to install those if you're not a computer geek, and you're already in the $250 neighborhood. Most of the large electronics chain stores will offer a complete computer package nowadays for about $400 or so.It's getting to the point where it's almost more economical to buy another instead of update the CPU/motherboard/RAM in a computer. [EDIT: Ok, I went and checked. This week's Best Buy ad has a 2.7GHz Intel Celeron computer w/256MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, DVD-CD/RW drive, 17" monitor and color printer for $389.97 after MIR. For another $80, you can get a 2.8GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and separate DVD/CD drives.]

ex10: Please check PTs, ok? Thanks!

Let's see, cabbage, celery, green peppers, and cranberry juice. Apparently the diet consists of vegetable laxatives and diuretics. There's no miracle behind this. You might lose weight, but only if A) you haven't been on any sort of diet recently, and B) you're not expecting the weight to stay off once you're back on your normal diet. The first 5-10 lbs are easy to lose if you haven't been dieting because you're getting rid of stored glycogen and water instead of fat. As soon as you start back in with normal levels of proteins and carbohydrates, the glycogen will store up again, binding up some water with it. Boom--those 5 pounds will be back in 2-3 days. The only reason I can think of for hospitals to do this (if any actually practice it) is for immediate pre-surgery weight loss. The day after the patient can eat solid food, he's going to be gaining again. He might make the cut for reporting in, but going immediately to Basic training, he's going to be at a severe disadvantage with physical activity. The body depends on stored glycogen as on-demand muscle fuel. Fats cannot be utilized quickly enough to replace the glycogen depleted from that diet, so his *** is going to be dragging at a crucial juncture in his training. That won't make his drill sergeant too friendly to him, I'd wager. Gotta be careful with stuff like this.

Shell: You might want to follow the link in the column to writer/director Frank Darabont's (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) piece on the difference between a successful moviemaker and a wannabe. More good advice generally applicable to any field of endeavor.