DerickM

Welcome to Rants and Raves!! Everything you could want is right at your fingertips. But, before we continue, a word from our sponsors, with a special thanks to the LapBandTalk Forum Oldbies, and the new hugely delicious double third pound burger from Hardees™ with two 1/3 lb. patties and four strips of bacon on a toasted and buttered bun. The mere name of this burger will give you a heart attack, so, to protect the innocent....Probably doesn't matter here, but anywho… The almighty sage of newbie welcome! I, Grand-Lord-High-Poobah and Token Deist; DerickM, have laid down this list of suggestions NEWBIES: If you want to say hi, please post here. Please don't start a thread to say, "Hey look at me. I'm here." I'm not saying it's a rule, I'm just suggesting you do this as a courtesy. Besides, no one's really impressed when you post a newbie threat to flout the rules. It's been done before and it's usually a simple tale of sound and fury signifying stupid. Rants and Raves Rules: First, NO Super powers, God powers, Anime powers, et cetera (not even Austin Powers) or weapons of any sort past this point. CHECK THEM HERE. They will be returned to you in time. Not so much a big deal anymore, but still on the books. Please respect your elders. It's only polite. Violators will be persecuted, hunted down, killed, filleted, eaten and then treated rather shabbily. Repeat offenders will be stapled to a metal folding chair with your eyes nailed open and forced to watch Gigli. (Or if that movie has finally been burned from existence, Ishtar) And now . . . THE NOT-SO-MUCH-RULES-ANYMORE-AS-THEY-ARE-GUIDELINES-FOR-MAKING-YOUR-STAY-IN-THE-LAPBANDTALK-FORUM-AS PAINLESS (FOR US) -AS-POSSIBLE: 1. No puking on the Strippers. 2. No resurrecting dead threads. (A thread older than a week is dead.) 3. No posting replies to old threads in a new thread. 4. Newbies can't pick on Newbies. 5. No "I want to see DerickM naked" posts. 6. Sexual Innuendo is allowed (but will be graded on a scale of 1-10) 7. All females must be bisexual or at least bi-curious. 8. Take the newbie hazing like . . . well, a newbie Newbie - any person under an undetermined amount of posts, depending on whether or not we think you deserve not to be called a newbie. Not to be confused with Fleem, which is far worse. If you feel like you ABSOLUTELY MUST be hazed, just wait - we'll get to you. However, there is no hazing/fighting in the area outside of Rants And Raves. Regulars, please do the newbies a favor and give this thread a bump if it needs one. And please DON'T spam the Rants and Raves. Now, welcome!! And above all, HAVE FUN!!! :whoo: (Now lets see how much trouble I get into...)

once a month for me

Yes! :huytsao

well...based on the bikini photo I would stare also..I would do my best to not be creepy about it though

guy in my neighborhood killed a couple of my cats and other peoples cats. He had 4-5 purebred champion dachshunds, who also happened to just love fresh salmon soaked in antifreeze...he got the message

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college." - Kurt Vonnegut

yep, its great to live in the greatest country in the world! Me-->:mad:<--kelli

Universal Healthcare. You hear about all the time. It's coming, whether you are ready for it or not. Its become the new 'basic right' of the political talkers. Even this terminology is a lie. Healthcare, paid for by somebody else, is not a right. This is an entitlement. A right is free to all, to be guaranteed and safeguarded by The Power, and costs a third party nothing. Test this idea yourself. Does the right to free speech guarantee a taxpayer funded newspaper on every doorstep? Does the right to bear arms mean the government is obligated to provide guns and ammo? I'm not opposed to universal health care. Who could be against something like that, anyway. What I'm opposed to is government run health care dressed up in bullshit terminology. A pig by any other name is still a pig. And calling socialism "universal" is still socialism. What will be the effect of socializing the health care industry? What makes people think that the same government that couldn't keep a bridge from falling down can do medicine right? It sounds like a stretch to compare bridges to medicine, but in my view the stretch is in the other direction. Bridges, and their construction, are science. Exact. Precise. We know for sure what it takes to keep it in the air. There's not much guess work involved. It'll either work, or not. Medicine is not so simple. As much art as it is science, lots of educated guesswork is involved in getting a diagnosis right. And what cures most, wont cure all. Who ya gonna blame, who will be accountable, when a misdiagnoses is made? When talented, and gifted, professionals decide the govt isn't worth dealing with anymore, who will pay the costs in lost lives? New medicines not discovered? New techniques not tried? Will the government set pay scales for doctors? Most definitely. Part of government control involves price fixing. Strange ain't it? We like our baseball players to get paid monstrous salaries which leads to ever greater perfection of their craft, but haven't stopped to consider what price controls would do to the future of medicine. Will there be price controls on how much lawyers get paid suing doctors? Somehow, I doubt that, since it will be lawyers ultimately writing, and approving, the legislation. How many lives have lawyers saved? How many new cancer breakthroughs are discovered in a courtroom? Can you show me one person brought back from the brink of death by John Edwards? Given this,can you really justify his level of wealth compared to any doctor? Will the lawmakers be served under the same health care coverage? Or will there be one system for them, and one for us, like it is now? Can any senator rightfully, and morally, claim that he deserves better care than any one member of our military? Well, they currently do now. You really think this will change when we go to government medicine? For me, there is only one over riding principle when deciding health care policy: The most good, to the most people, for the longest length of time. And there ain't no way in hell I'm going to trust this to the same people who couldn't deliver Water to their own in the Superdome.

cleaning is womens work anyway

why can't I ever hook up with women like that...

anybody else notice he picks his nose with his pinkie and then puts his ring finger in his mouth?

you are a sick, sick person laura...to bad you are not single :heh:

Knowledge is Power. Power Corrupts. Study. Be Evil. . . . . . . . . *suspiciously looks at laurend*

[Homer Simpson] mmmmmmm....Lifeguards *drool* [/Homer Simpson]

everybody knows Garfield is only funny when his thought bubbles are edited out

Hand Me That Vodka Bottle. Now!!!

I demand that you all amuse me...somehow! or,..or I will amuse myself! (amuse NOT abuse get your minds out of the gutter!)

Dropkick Murphys - 10 years of service

:deadhorse: :eek:

BBC NEWS | England | Wear | Family wants plastic pen tops ban This is even more stupid than warning labels on hot coffee :tired Does anyone know where common sense was buried? I'd like to go visit and put some flowers on the grave. :rolleyes

Vicious Tongue is my name. Any truth to this? anybody?

cause...its a shiny club that can be used by democrats in political games...

Here is a short list of questions to answer regarding the role of government. Doesn't matter which country you live in, just answer however you believe. My answers will be tailored to the United States government. If you live somewhere else, tailor accordingly. 1) What specific role(s) should the government always play in society? 2) What specific role(s) should the government never fill in society? 3) What roles are you unsure of, or could depend in your mind on situational factors? 4) A corollary - given that set of roles, how should the government fund its efforts to fulfill those obligations?

well who was it?!