Raiha

[center][IMG]http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20090830/capt.photo_1251616737693-1-0.jpg?x=400&y=281&q=85&sig=CzFpzSuq84UrpHGphFfQVw--[/IMG][/center] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]In another bold plan to combat the swine flu, teachers are asking students and such to not high five, chest bump, hug, cuddle, smooch, or in fact... ...get near each other ever. At all. Now I'm not against preventing disease spreading, but this is the swine flu. It's as innocuous as a regular flu, without the added statistics from drunk drivers, teenage drivers, and shark attacks. Do they honestly think this would help? I'm of the mind that you should probably keep trying that cough into your elbow not your hand trick before you decide that avoiding ALL SKIN CONTACT is the next best thing. Thoughts? Oh right, points for anyone who can repost the picture at the top with their own witty caption. [URL="http://wcbstv.com/health/h1n1.swine.flu.2.1155084.html"]Here's the link to the story that literally made me shout [in a library no less] "WHAT THE F____ IS THIS S___?!?!?!?[/URL][/FONT][/COLOR]

[quote name='Kimmeh'][COLOR="Green"][SIZE="2"][FONT="Tahoma"]Parts of me wanted to honk my horn to scare the crap out of him, but then I probably would've gotten hit too. ^^;[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR][/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Oh no, see this is where you get Fast and the Furiousy on him. You get behind him going his speed and a little under, then you speed up quickly, honk the horn, and then ease off the brakes. His momentum should carry him forward and not backwards onto your car hood. Although that would probably mean you survive as long as you don't panic. [/FONT][/COLOR]

[quote name='Aaryanna'][FONT="Tahoma"][COLOR="DarkGreen"]We have it, but we pretty much never use it. My mom rarely cooks anything that calls for it. Though that could be on account of my mom watching her sodium intake. So she tends to avoid anything that has a high percentage of it. [/COLOR][/FONT][/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Well the soy sauce 'lite' is kind of... misleading, considering it's still packed with sodium. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try to use it at every opportunity. That way you'll be one of us! [size=1][yellow people][/size][/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Personally I've always felt that butter on rice is a white person thing... Like a WAY white person thing. And I usually put soy sauce on plain white rice when the house is empty of other foods, sauces, or anything. If given the choice I'll smother the rice with whatever dish is available. But yeah, last resort: soy sauce.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Show of hands, how many peopl here love soy sauce? How many of you use it in daily cooking? Do you even know what's inside it? Do you have a favorite brand? Our family generally uses the slightly less sodium filled Kikkoman, which as soy sauce's go is good for marinating, good for dousing your rice with, and good for drizzling on salads, dumplings, and stir fry dishes. On the other hand, my mom gets mad if you put soy sauce on her fried rice. She claims that it has enough flavor to stand on its own. I draw your attention to that one scene from the "Joy Luck Club" wherein a Caucasian male dating a Chinese girl has a family dinner. And when the mother uses her usual Asian self effacement, and calls one of her dishes "bland, no flavor" he dumps soysauce all over it saying "here this will help." Thoughts anyone?[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"][URL="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul"]This Just In: White House Buckles Under Pressure[/URL] I wonder exactly what it was that made Obama suddenly decide to change his rhetoric from "We are going to have a public option and you are going to LIKE it" to [indent]"All I'm saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform[...]"[/indent] Perhaps it's the number of e-mails that nearly overloaded the servers, or perhaps it's the representatives coming home to a bunch of jumping ugly constituents who were extremely irritated at one Senator's assertion that reading the bill before passing it was crazytalk. Either way I find myself somewhat amused at this turn of events, because when it all began, everyone was convinced that Obama's proposed bill was a slam dunk. However there is the problem that I was reading a great deal in past news articles. Obama would say to Congress that he wanted A B and C in his bill, but he wouldn't go into the specifics of how it would work, or give them somewhat more clarified directions when they asked. Because the article had to be vague, I don't have any really really good specifics to cite here, but as I understand it Obama had a good big picture idea [to him] and no real plans for the explaining the execution bit. I agree, reform is needed, just not the reform Obama was sure we needed. Now that he, and all of Congress that was behind this thing, being pushed backwards by a public they did very little to reassure. Instead they told the public to report anything "fishy" being said about their proposed health care reforms and decided the best way to get back at the latest version of community organization [town hall meetings] was to insult the intelligence and arguments of the people attending. Calling them the 'teabaggers' from the Tea Parties for Tax Reform. [/FONT][/COLOR]

[quote name='ChibiHorsewoman'][color=#9933ff][font=monotype corsiva][size=4] The only problem I will point out with National Health Care is that you HAVE to have it. Of course you have it because you pay taxes to have it, but there is no getting out of having health care. But hey, this means that as long as you pay your state taxes you have health care and can't suddenly be dropped for pre-existing conditions. [/color][/font][/size][/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]No, but there is no guarantee that the government is going to have the resources, or the interest in signing off on the bills to pay to fix your pre existing conditions. A guarantee of service is nice, but that doesn't mean it'll be good service. Or timely service. So it's like having a car that runs one day out of the week. I'm sure the health care will be good for yearly checkups, I'm not so sure I want the health care for when I have a ruptured appendix. Or a rare form of cancer whose treatments are still in the experimental stage. Although on the plus side, it will be easier to abuse pain medication now... I can't imagine this not going to the post office. Or the DMV. Unless you saw a health problem coming two months in advance, you didn't make an appointment and you wait half the day, week, month? to see the doctor. Doctors I see are overloaded with patients now, and I've seen everything from the rich doctors in Orange County to the extremely poor ones in rural San Bernardino county. I'm not sure the government has figured out the answer to how to come up enough doctors to treat everyone under their plan.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Why do people want the government to do things for them? Where does personal responsibility begin and end? Why do we want a nanny state? When did human beings become so helpless and shiftless and pointless? Everyone here appears to believe that the welfare of an individual is dependent on the actions of the state. Why? And what makes you believe that the government can spend money that isn't actually in the bank to benefit everyone? Will it truly benefit everyone? Or just the people who have access? What incentive will doctors have to stay here?[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Are you positive she's staring at you? I mean if her hair's covering part of her face you could be wrong.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]She's probably friendly and if you're lonely or feeling like you'd want to be in love with someone, any kindness a pretty girl shows you can be misinterpreted as love or interest. She's in all likelihood happier being just your friend, or worse she's just humoring you by laughing at your jokes.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Because it turns out to be the same thing as a parent who has the funds or the voucher to send their child to a private school. They're still paying taxes to the public school system, even when they're not using it. Before you ridicule people who have a problem with nationalized health care, perhaps you would do well to read Obama's plan before assuming that everyone opposed to it is completely insane, a die hard Republican, or more or less just being stubborn.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[quote name='spy46'] i would be VERY surprised if they could, so why should they suffer because your loaded with moeny?[/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Why should I pay for Joe's health care with my taxes? Or his welfare for that matter. We already have a nationalized form of health care for low income people in my state. And guess what, it's paid for by our taxes. And here's another surprise. The system has no money left. It's borrowing from other branches of the state budget.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]I don't believe that the town hall meetings are any crazier than the protests and marches people have every day for causes they believe in. The media's treatment of the town hall meetings shows the ignorance on both sides. I believe nationalized healthcare needs to be a choice for people. Making it built into taxes is bad for people who want other options and don't want the government's version of health 'care.' I don't know if you've heard what Obama's said about end of life care but I do know that that few thousand page behemoth of a bill doesn't do much good for old people. It's easier to take pain pills than arrange and pay for a pacemaker.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[quote name='Allamorph'][FONT=Arial]Some do . . . or are at least capable of acting in a manner so we ascribe emotions to them. But only Koreans eat cats and dogs. [CENTER][COLOR="Red"][SIZE="4"][FONT="Century Gothic"][B]CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR][/CENTER][/font][/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Actually we Chinese eat dogs in the winter time.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]I believe the town hall meetings are democracy in action and the feelings that people have over this are well within their rights. I don't support nationlized health care, nor believe that it is the solution to our current crisis. This may be because the government can't run cash for clunkers, Medicare, Medicaid, or the post office. Or the DMV. Are you sensing a theme here? I go to a university, so I have health care payments built into my tuition. I don't buy that there are 45 million uninsured people in the country. Some people choose to not be insured because they can't afford it, or don't feel they need it. Some get catastrophic health care for when they break a limb in a household misshap. And then there are the 15 million or so illegal immigrants in my own state who use the hospital ER like it's their own private practitioner. I have trouble believing that a national program will not try to choke out private health care. What's Washingtonese for 'Monopoly'?[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]So there I am at Comic Con on two separate days. One is of me in my customized White Mage robes from FF Tactics with my friend as a quest giver from World of Warcraft. And the other is of me with my favorite assassins and bounty hunters. Sadly there were no good Fett people to take pictures with at the actual convention, otherwise there would be pictures of me with them too. Probably being ravaged. Or is it ravished?[/FONT][/COLOR] [IMG]http://otakuboards.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=26662&d=1217614424[/IMG]

[quote name='Miss Anonymous']Was PETA ever a respectable organization? I can't remember anymore.[/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]I think, like many organizations and religions, they started out normal with good intentions, and then immediately began to steamroll downhill. I think they began to be horribly discredited when they were lauded for rescuing a few thousand dogs and cats. And then those dogs and cats were found dead in the refrigerators of several of there warehouses.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/FSM_Logo_on_bumper.JPG[/IMG] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]While the majority of my family is comprised of ordained ministers in the Lutheran church, I have broken away from them and fallen into Pastafarianism. That is to say, the worship of the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster. This is mostly to irritate other people.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Etc etc seen it, hasn't anybody heard of their evil marketing by perverting images of Cooking Mama? Cause I remember that crap.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"][i]The youngest daughter of Akanessler quietly walked through the carved stone walls that had encompassed her life up to this point. She'd been raised in her father's dun, trained there, and now, leaving to work for him and further the glory of her clan. Lyfe didn't mind much, the life of the Lord's daughter had been all she knew. Her mother was standing at the window, the servant placing a tray of lunch for the two of them down at the carved wooden table that had been placed to one side of the room that marked the middle point between mother and daughter's chambers. They tended to use it for their meals and receiving guests. Berwyna smiled graciously at her daughter, who was at the moment untying the intricate knot in her kirtle.[/i] "How was your first mission?" "It went as well as I thought it would. I wish the condemned would just accept their fates instead of making me burn down entire buildings though." "Well not everyone is as wise as our Lord. Otherwise they wouldn't be criminals in the first place." "Yes mother." [i]Lyfe sat opposite her mother and immediately ripped into the crusty loaf that had been set out for her and slathered on the honey butter. She took a slice of cheese from the platter on the table and a cluster of grapes and dug in without much ceremony. Berwyna watched her daughter eat as quickly as decorum would allow. She poured her another glass of wine and watched as she consumed the strips of beef that had been laid out for her pleasure. Red meat eaten very close to raw was a necessary component to supplementing the energy she expended by using her tattoo's energy to subvert someone's psyche. The natural fire was replaced by food, but to lay into someone's mind with the white light caused her a great deal of strain.[/i] "Does the meat satisfy you daughter?" "It's not the way I would always have it, but the magnetism exuded by the blood is necessary for me." "I remember your father explaining that to me while I took notes for him once. It was all very interesting." "And your son, my brother is now his scribe as well." "I am quite pleased with both of my children's progress. You appear to have your father's favor these days." "I do try my best to please him." "As do we all." [i]Berwyna finished her meal almost at the same time as Lyfe did, then retired to her chambers to do some reading. Lyfe on the other hand summoned a page to clean up the remains of their meal and left for her own chamber to set out some of her clothes. Another linen dress, this one with a little more embroidery, her kirtle, which was still relatively clean, and a soft cotton underdress. Dinner would be held in the main hall tonight, and her father had requested her permission several days in advance. The full moon always warranted a special dinner. This one would have her father's bard in attendance, as well as several of their lesser noble lords and visiting guests Downstairs in the basement, an underground spring had been partially revealed and diverted to form a subterranean bathhouse. Fancy stonework and wrought iron decorations spiraled across the walls of the hall. The vanity of the Akanessler family meant that her bare feet encountered neither stone nor sand as she made her way to the small curve in the wall where she left her dress for another servant to pick up. Footsteps behind Lyfe made her turn slowly, her thick brown hair unbound and falling around her shoulders now. Her brother, Matteus was standing behind her, with just a hip wrap, giving her an impartial, almost distant stare. Lyfe inclined her head slightly to her elder brother.[/i] "Matteus, greetings. I hope you are well." "Yes. I believe I am." [i]He nodded slowly and Lyfe gave him a hesitant smile. Then she turned and stepped down to the walkway that led into the bath, which in some places was over six feet deep. The water, which was almost perfectly clear was also very warm, so warm that steam was rising from the surface. Lyfe immediately ducked her head under and pushed forward to move towards the center of the bath. A feeling of bliss slowly overtaking her senses, Lyfe leaned back and floated, her hair fanning out underneath her.[/i] [/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]I am a freak of nature. No matter the cost, I will always be in bed and get 7 hours of sleep at least or I will not function in any real sense and I will be an angry venom spewing monstrous demonic force of soul sucking horror. In short, 8 to 9 hours of sleep is normal and REQUIRED for me. I've gone 48 hours without sleep before, but that wasn't even school related. People ask me why I always have a B average when I don't appear to rip my hair out of my head every final or study really hard. Well the secret is that I actually am awake enough to pay attention during my classes themselves, so I learn more than the moron who doesn't sleep, but shows up to class, and sleeps halfway through and doesn't learn crap. It's a sinister world.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="darkorchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Well, unlike the majority of the population, I drive a stickshift car. That means that in traffic, if I have a phone in one hand and I need to downshift into a turn, I'm...out of hands. I'm too short to feasibly use my knee to steer like some people do. So in short, I only use my phone when I'm on long lonely stretches of highway that are relatively straight. I don't like using it while I'm doing city driving with a lot of turns. And I can't text for crap even when I'm not in motion so unless I'm stuck in completely stalled traffic on the highway or at a stoplight behind a few dozen cars... I usually don't touch my phone. And no, I don't have a bluetooth because I'm not made of money. I had one of those wire things for the headset, but my car's A/C broke down so there's no point because my friends can't hear me via the speaker because it sounds like I'm driving through a wind tunnel. Alas.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[quote name='Rachmaninoff']Apparently doesn't include American made beer. Honestly, people are just dumb. There doesn't need to be representation or some other crap in every single thing surrounding the President.[/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][LEFT][FONT="times new roman"]Well, it's the same thing as people making a flap over his wife [Most Angry Millionaire Woman In America] not wearing enough black fashion designers, or American made clothing. It's the theory that if the people involved are in an office that is meant to [theoretically] represent the American people, they should use American products. It's the theory that what the President does should benefit the people. So if you see Obama drinking a Sam Adams, the sheep that are the people of America will all mindlessly start drinking/buying/promoting Sam Adams beer. [/FONT][/LEFT][/COLOR]

[quote name='Delta'][COLOR=#35425e]Say, would Gates throw a fit if an African-American cop responded?[/COLOR][/QUOTE] [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Well we know that there was a Hispanic cop at the scene or involved with the reports, but most of the response to that was Blue is stronger than Black. Implying that cops are all cops before they'll be whatever race they are. I'm not sure precisely how much further this could possibly go, now that Obama has decided both of them need to come over to the White House for a beer. Personally, I'd just as soon not go if I were Crowley, because the real wrong that's been done to him is what was said by both Gates and the president.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Here's me on my trip to the Philippines. I'll let you decide what I was up to.[/FONT][/COLOR]