Edwin MacPhisto

I still will always envision everything kkk says as coming out of Mumia's mouth on account of that avatar.

As much as I hate it, I keep coming back to an ACC and 1-seed heavy bracket. Not a lot of the 3-6 teams that might usually be expected to make a run really give me that intangible vibe. Provisionally, I'm saying Illinois over Georgia Tech (as an ACC guy, I'm with iggy on this one), UNC over Duke, and Illinois over UNC (derrr, boring) for the final, but I'll probably drop at least UNC or Duke before Thursday. Duke's bracket looks so weak that I'm actually thinking Oklahoma has as good a chance as anyone in there, and I'm really not that high on their abilities. Additionally, if Oklahoma State were in any region but Illinois', I'd have them in the final.

Now that you're not a stupid high schooler, you should really give it another shot. I was bored to tears by the same aspects of it in 10th grade, but I re-read it earlier this year for the last part of my lit survey and it's really quite fantastic. Hurston's prose is far from need-a-dictionary levels, and the dialogue is much easier to read (and more charming) than a dopey 15 year-old like myself was willing to give credit. It's a really fast read too, and a remarkably well-arranged character study. And it's got a hurricane with 200 mile per hour winds! Here's the best books I've read in recent memory that I guarantee very few people on here will want to read but really should. Each of these is a really quick read, very approachable, and entirely enchanting. -Junot Diaz's collection of short stories,Drown, largely about people living in shitty neighborhoods in New Jersey and the crises of abridged adolescence. Darkly hilarious and weird. -Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, again, because it really is one of the most heartbreaking and subtle books ever written. Great bullfighting scenes for anyone who needs a little action with their pathos. -Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, another seminal and subtle work by a dead white guy that remains a fantastic exercise in shifting narrators. The mother of a poor-as-dirt southern family dies, and her surviving family members trek across the county with her body in tow. Assorted tribulations ensue. -Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange, which is the best piece of magical realism I've read since Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Tropic of Cancer starts to migrate north, bringing social revolution and monstrous fucking oranges along with it. Insane and great and non-linear, and hey, there's some wrestling for all you people who like that.

That's a really funny torture scene.

Going big places! I echo the sentiments and say send out applications to actual areas of civilization. Nothing's going to happen right away, but nothing's going to happen period if you don't start. Think on the fact that you could be doing this crap for another 10 years very easily, and that should be enough motivation to bust your ass.

Maybe the people that enjoyed a shitty college. Fuck, I love learning. Drinking too, but learning fantastic stuff is top-notch. My thought is that you should finish school but not particularly worry about doing it for a specific career option. Take courses that interest you; if you don't want to be a teacher, don't train to be a teacher. Your parents are paying for it and want you to go, so you're not abusing their money (and certainly less so than training for something you don't want). College is not a purely vocational school unless you're specifically focusing on hard science. You'll learn how to write, think, and communicate better no matter what courses you're taking, and ultimately that's what you're going to need to get a job. Also, possibly heavy lifting depending on the labor market, but you can work on that on your own.

Just saw this tonight, finally. Fantastic movie. Anyone complaining about sports details is missing the point, I think. I've seen this and Sideways in the past 5 days, and I'm really glad to have done so. gtd's comments on lighting are particularly sound. Complex use of a simple thing like shadow does it for me. As for all the business with the paralysis and its aftermath: it should be pretty clear that all the nuts harping on this film as a bold endorsement of assisted suicide really, really missed the point. Moreso than the people complaining about sports details, even.

This season has been written ahead moreso than past seasons, I believe, because of the quick turnaround time and the straight-through season. I imagine the writers went in with the expectation that they'd bring back a lot of old faces. I'm surprised Tony has stuck around so long, as I know there were big concerns right at the end of last season about budget, which was the given reason as to why none of the regulars returned.

Kennedy's wage hike is excessive, but the real thing that's bad here is in Santorum's bill. I don't like that hour-flexing and tip counting at all. Not that surprising that that sort of rider has never passed.

Seeing as how most of modern law is actually BASED on the 10 Commandments --- no, it really is not. -=Mike The rest of the stuff you've responded with has already been covered in-depth, so I'll pass it up for this one. We already did this too, but I'll do it again since it's just so fun and easy. I'll use the Catholic since they're the most familiar. Not a law. Not a law. Not a law. Not a law. Generally a good idea, though. That's a law. Sorta. I believe adultery statutes are only state law, and adultery is only material in divorce proceedings. I'll be generous and say yes. That's a law. That's a law. Basically the same, and definitely not laws. 3 or 4 out of 10 depending on your interpretation of adultery statutes, and the ones that don't qualify rarely even inform American legal policy. The statement "Seeing as how most of modern law is actually BASED on the 10 Commandments" does not hold up unless you make some really big leaps.

Virginia is great right now. All sports are free for students. Football is obviously the biggest draw, and basketball would be too if the team was any good at all. Pete Gillen's gone after this year, though, so a new coach and the completion of the huge new arena (the current has 6,000 capacity) should get interest back up. We're really good in a lot of the other sports, especially lacrosse, field hockey, and soccer for both men and women. Late-season games draw a few thousand people, which is pretty cool. Ultimately it's a healthy set of programs, and it's always subservient to our academic and funding standards, which I think is really important. I love UVA football; I love my UVA education more.

Mike, the problem I see with this argument is that it assumes religion as a starting point for what should be a basis of secular, non-denominational law. It wouldn't be forcing atheism on anyone, because a non-statement is not the same as a disavowment, unless you're operating on the principal that a religious belief is and should be a standard in our country. We don't ask that of our citizens. The problem with the Commandments n' Courthouse connection is that it is a statement.

Read the rest of the thread; it's the issue of them being displayed somewhere particular. Private property, fine. Putting them on a courthouse--a government facility--is a different matter and, as RobotJerk has stated very simply throughout this thread, implies and endorsement of not only the values within the Commandments (many of which are not American law) but also the religious system that generated those specific words. No one in this thread is saying to ignore the "truth of history." Putting a display of the Ten Commandments in a museum as part of an exhibit explaining how Judeo-Christian values influenced some (but certainly not all) of the choices made in constructing our Constitution? Sounds good to me! Some people hate Christianity and religion in general because they're 14 year-old kids who just discovered Nine Inch Nails. I don't think RobotJerk, bigolsmitty, myself, or really any of the other people posting in this thread whose opinions I'd care to read hate religion in the least. "Faith in something I don't understand" isn't for me; big deal. Your pseudo-psychology about "feelings of inadequacy" completely ignore all the simple, basic reasons that I, among others, don't want the Ten Commandments on a court building. The government as a representative body of lawmakers should be entirely non-religious and take no stance at all on belief in God. That shouldn't bother anyone; unless you feel the need for your particular faith to have a political influence as a faith, you certainly don't need a government endorsement. And if you do believe you need or deserve a government endorsement, then you and I have different definitions of "faith."

Finished it. Unreal. #15 was better than advertised.

I wrote a paper about Dynamite Hack's "Boyz in the Hood" for a pop culture sociology course my first year in college. Between that and an exam question about "Fuck the Police," about 30% of my grade in that class was directly attributable to N.W.A.

Why on earth would something religious require any sort of validation beyond tolerance by the government?

Worth it to hear Ben Folds say "chin-check" and name-drop the D.O.C.

These are all horrible Florida cities. I'll be home for a week, and I'm not going north of Tampa once I get there.

No fuckin' doubt, everyone around here seems to dislike them, even though Aerosmith pretty much "stole" their entire image and sound (well, except for the cross dressing). Really? I've never heard anyone on this board regard the Dolls with anything but giddy pleasure. And deservedly so.

This thread is quickly turning into a right-left pissing contest (shock of shocks!) so I'm just going to requote Eric's concise assertion, because I think it's spot-on. I think I'll just make you secretary of Penis Wars so I don't have to come into this folder for my usual schtick. Additionally, I think missile defense systems are a bit silly, but they have never been as silly as Star Wars. Thank god whatever they're working on currently doesn't have a retarded name.

This thread is quickly turning into a right-left pissing contest (shock of shocks!) so I'm just going to requote Eric's concise assertion, because I think it's spot-on.

I demand that my DVD feature DVDA.

Maybe it was a prog review.

The Black Rider is pretty cool. I had the good fortune to see the theatrical performance of it while I was in London this summer. Shit's crazy, yo, and "Lucky Day" remains one of Waits' coolest numbers.

The Sublime intelligence from Morrison's run is a lot more complicated than it just having influence over Magneto; it pretty much permeates everything that goes on in the story in small ways, for better and worse (my vote tends towards "better"). Whatever you think of Morrison's run, the changes in the endgame really aren't that substantial. Magneto wrecks New York and gets killed (sure), Scott and Emma are a couple, and Jean is dead, again. The school gets destroyed, but Scott and Emma reopen it. Some stuff involving the Weapon projects, all the way up to XV. Here Comes Tomorrow, the last story arc of Morrison's run, was a bit dippy, but it did a good job of making sure most of the stuff within remained pretty well self-contained.