Jingus

Humans can't destroy the environment. Seriously. Short of worldwide nuclear armageddon, there's nothing that humanity can physically do that has a permanent effect on the worldwide ecosystem. A bunch of factories can fuck up the air quality of a geographical region for a few years, sure. Slash-n-burn clearcutting of the rain forest makes an infintesimal difference in the ratios of 02/CO2 in our atmosphere. But the cold truth is that a single major volcanic eruption releases more air pollution than all the pollutants mankind has manufactured combined. For a great destruction of the Global Warming theory, read Michael Crichton's new book State of Fear, in which he slowly & painstakingly refutes all the "evidence" for environmental disasters one by one.

Further proving that Saddam was a fucking idiot when it came to dealing with other countries, or really anyone who had the power to disagree with him. A dictator falsely implying that he has WMDs is a lot like a guy who's been pulled over for speeding suddenly lunging for the glovebox. You're a goddamn moron if you're surprised that you got shot in either situation.

I got a perfect score on my SAT Verbal, but you guys are just making my head hurt reading this thread. Ow.

Don't forget merchandising. All those Hulkamania t-shirts, bandanas, and action figures were a fucking gold mine for Bollea. Plus he was one of the few guys to whom Vince actually paid home video sales royalties.

I think the definition of a great rivalry is that is inspires both guys to put on matches that are much better than either one's usual work. With that in mind, I've got two modern ones I wanna mention: Rikishi vs. Val Venis. Holy shit, but these two just beat the fuck out of each other for like two months straight, doing spots & taking bumps that I didn't know was possible for them, while providing a feeling of real hate that is so necessary for a great feud. Plus, I doubt anyone will beat Rikishi's record for Most Weight On A Cage Dive. Kane vs. Albert. No, I'm serious, did you see their matches together? These two hosses put on some of the best big-man matches since Vader's heyday, absolutely murdering their giant bodies in bouts that were better than they had any right to be.

The first Nitro. Liger/Pillman, Luger appearing a mere two weeks after he'd been on WWF tv, Mongo... well, two out of three ain't bad.

I wouldn't mind watching this, sounds interesting, but I seriously doubt it can do anything but bomb financially.

Eh, I don't know how I feel about this one. On one hand, it's always bad for any business when a married employee is having an "office affair", plus cheating is just a vile thing to do in general; on the other, I don't know that it was Ace's place to interfere in the matter.

I have digital cable & On Demand down here in GA, but no sign of WWE 24/7 anytime soon. Same situation in TN.

Holy shit, that read like a neat card. Why have I never heard of this fed before? Where's their website?

Really? Hmm. I always thought she seemed like she had a smidgen of artistic talent in there somewhere, but it usually got lost in her songs' stupid messages of "I'm so hot" or "grrrl power!".

The only good reason I've heard for refusing to give autographs (unless you've got carpal tunnel syndrome, or are asked for one while you're eating dinner with your family/on the toilet/whatever) is a story Roger Ebert told about Alan Alda. When approached for by fans autographs, apparently Alan would explain to them that he didn't believe in giving them because he thought they set up an artificial barrier between the actors and the audience, as if the stars were "better" than "ordinary people". That sounded pretty cool. But just running away from fans or cussing them out is stupid.

If she can put out more stuff like "Every Time" I wouldn't call to ban her from ever singing again. I was surprised that a pop diva like her would make a song/video that dark & depressing (and not just whiny and oh-poor-me like "Lucky").

I'm not sure if I would've driven across town to the Asylum to see this card for free. There are only two matches that look any good: Styles/Daniels (which I've seen a hundred times already) and Hardy/Abyss (which I can close my eyes right now and pretty much predict how it will go). And Nash/Jarrett is a main event that I would've changed the channel away from if it had come on Thunder.

Might as well have one of these, since arguing over the Iraqi invasion/occupation tends to clutter up way too many other threads. My views on the war, broken down for simplicity: 1. Saddam Hussein and his Bathist party were evil, evil men. They used poison gas, a real live 100% official Weapon of Mass Destruction, on his own people. He invaded Kuwait in a move that was nothing more than a blatant land-grab. He waged a decade-long war against Iran that devastated both countries. He brutally repressed all religions except for the ruling Sunni minority, and only really paid them lip service. He tried to assassinate Bush Sr. when the prez took a trip to Iraq. He committed all kinds of human rights atrocities on his own people; imprisoning, raping, torturing, and executing them at his own whims in a manner that would've made Stalin and Hitler proud. He squandered his entire country's resources on building up his military and constructing massive palaces for himself and his family. He held fake elections just so he could lie about being the people's choice for their leader. He was rumored to have held meetings with & given support to members of Al Quaeda and other terrorist organizations. He completely & consistently ignored the UN resolutions that he agreed to as part of his surrender after the Kuwaiti invasion, thus directly causing the embargos on his nation. He kept flying his military planes in the no-fly zones. He repeatedly obstructed and resisted efforts to inspect his country for WMDs. He let millions of his own people die due to lack of food & medicine that he could've easily provided at any time. None of this is "bad intelligence"; it's all established fact. In short, this was a government who was begging to be taken out. 2. Despite having their own rules broken time and time again, the UN did nothing to stop Hussein from committing these infractions. They seemed willing to just leave the embargos in place and keep writing "cease and desist" letters telling him what a naughty boy he was. 3. The US had been taking minor corrective actions against Iraq, things like surgical airstrikes & sending inspectors, for years. Nobody else seemed willing to do anything or to give a damn that Saddam was acting like a playground bully to his entire region of the world. And there was some evidence of WMDs and Iraqi complicity in the 9/11 attacks. A military invasion & occupation looked like a good idea, speaking from the relative success we'd had in Afghanistan. So, the troops were sent in. My problems with the war: 4. The "threat of WMDs" line was way too heavily leaned-upon as a reason for war. We did have some proof: captured documents, witness testimony, and satellite footage that seemed to suggest that Saddam was at least interested in gaining such weapons in the future. But WMDs were brought up over & over again in every speech calling for action, using deceptive language that made the threat seem bigger than it really was. 5. We did move awfully fast, too, not waiting for anyone else except the British to say they'd support us, or to firm up our shaky evidence about the WMDs. Also, we couldn't use the "he broke UN rules" line when we were breaking them by moving without UN approval. So, two years later, we have this: 6. Over a thousand US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens have been murdered as a direct result of terrorists operating within Iraq's borders. These criminals use suicide bombings, target civilians, and regularly kidnap & behead foreign workers and journalists. They do all this to fight against democratic elections for their own country. They are amoral fanatics by any definition. But, somehow, the US has been painted out to be the "bad guys" by many members of the media and other foreign countries. 7. Lots of people disagree with the war for the following reason: "Well, if Iraq was such a bad country and needed to be fixed, then why hasn't the US invaded North Korea/Rwanda/Cuba/shithole-of-the-month?" Truthfully, there is no good reason why Iraq should've been singled out alone as the #1 enemy against freedom. But that still doesn't mean that we shouldn't have done it. Saddam Hussein was bad. Removing him & instituting democracy was good.

If Sigourney Weaver had the Sigourney Weaver look from any of her movies ever, I'd load the torpedoes into the tube & fire away. (Yes, even Alien 3.)

Dammit Placebo, I was gonna say that.

You can be "legally" blind without being actually blind. Legally blind basically means you've just got really bad vision.

If the intelligence agencies knew, then why would they allow their own headquarters (Pentagon) be attacked, not to mention the thousands of lives and billions of dollars lost when the WTC went down? Nobody in the US goverment intentionally let this happen. It was just a massive series of fuckups on everyone's part.

Do you think Saddam Hussein was a good man and a kind leader? Would you rather he was still dictator-for-life of his country?

It's more than she made when she worked in public schools, even well-funded ones in wealthy counties.

So the black guy calling himself Lil Flip is about the same as if I became a rapper and dubbed myself Lil Wetback?

That crappy shark in Jaws: The Revenge sure as hell did. Nope, cuz if Johnny had that super laser from the first movie he'd turn Robocop into a pair of blackened feet above which is nothing but a mushroom cloud.

Personally, I think there's two different yet not completely exclusive reasons: 1. Writing for a comic is like writing for a soap opera or a wrestling show: really fucking hard, because you never get to take a break and must constantly deal with deadlines for producing new product. Writers lose sleep, get burned out, and generally are too stressed to put out the best quality writing. Plus, some of these comics have been around so long that it's almost impossible to make a new story; shit, how hard must it be to come up with a Batman story that hasn't already been done at some point in his 70 year history? So the writers compromise, copy earlier storylines, bring favorite characters back from the dead instead of creating new ones, fuck with the continuity (maybe without ever meaning to or realizing that they're doing so), and generally making a mess of things simply because of the demands and limitations of the medium. Or, 2. Comic book writers today tend to be lazy, overpriced babies who have no respect for the history or tradition of their artform. They wasted their youth reading X-Men instead of Watchmen and prefer to cruise thru their work rewriting their favorite old storylines instead of working up real skullsweat to create new ones. The editors at DC and Marvel could give a shit less, since they're controlled by the same money-hungry suits that dominate all big business. And with everyone from Kevin Smith to Scott Levy writing comics these days, it seems like paying your dues are no longer that important. It could be either one, or a mix of both.