C'mon -- I hope everyone gets to know the joys of MRE Chicken a la King or Tuna Noodle Casserole mixed with that tiny little bottle of Tabasco (the empties of which, by the way, make excellent empty beer can Christmas tree ornaments). Also, the new "Ham Slice" with "Potatoes, Au Gratin" beats the hell out of the old "Pork, Processed, with Juices" pack. And I'll still trade my crackers and peanut butter for anyone with a pound cake.
Along the same lines, there are a few Omaha bands that I'd recommend to folks who like good guitar-driven rock mixed with a little ska flavor: Pomeroy, Clever, Cursive, Anchondo, and Mandown (also check out Factor 8 from Wichita). For emo there's Bright Eyes. If you're into post-altrock altrock, I like Five Story Fall and Grasshopper Takeover.
The Faint are a great new wave band, and Eighth Wave from Lincoln do a kick-ass ska/punk cover of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" -- anyone can take a good song and make it bad; it's a rare artist who can make a bad song good. For blues, we've got Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise (although I'm not sure they're actually from Omaha, they do play the Music Box a lot). And if you're really into Grateful Dead tribute bands -- to each his own -- there's Darkstar Orchestra.
If you're an EVIL CONTENT PIRATE like I am, you can find all of these bands on KaZaA (or KAZAA or perhaps kAZaa or whatever); I'm sharing tracks from most of them.
Oh, and almost forgot -- the late and much-lamented Blue Moon Ghetto did some damned fine genre-hopping music. "Tendency" is a great late-night depressed driving song.
Don't forget Burning Chrome, which had one of the best stories in it ("Johnny Mnemonic") bastardized into a terrible sci-fi film. It also had "New Rose Hotel," which was, for my money, the finest example of second-person narration I've ever read.
I just re-read All Tomorrow's Parties last week, and I was thinking to myself: "Boy, I hope that he comes out with another one soon." I think Neal Stephenson writes punchier prose, but Gibson just feels like a tighter storyline to me. I'll be clamoring for a copy in hardcover when it ships.
Or in other words it is based on the idea that non-Americans aren't people.
Actually, it's based on the idea that a nation's first duty ought to be the enrichment of its citizenry first, before dispensing its benefice upon the citizens of other nations[1]. I don't see a Bangladeshi, a Nigerian, or a Swede as a non-human. However, that said, I would choose to improve an American's quality of life before I'd improve theirs. I'd also hope that the Bangladeshi, the Nigerian, and the Swede would look to their fellow countrymen first were they in the same hypothetical position in which I just put myself. It's one of the responsibilities of being a citizen of a nation-state that you work to raise your fellow citizens to a higher quality of life.
It seems to be en vogue of late to trounce every American for being racist, isolationist (if we don't get involved in a Third World pissing contest), or imperialist (if we do). Fact is, though, we're just a powerhouse nation[2] -- vid. all the H1B and other immigrants who are looking to come here -- and we try to do the best we can. We screw up sometimes, but people seem to be more willing to attribute the screw-ups to malice than incompetence (to steal the oft-repeated quote).
I don't have anything against H1B workers; I do have something against a hiring system that gives them preferential treatment over equally-qualified Americans. To be sure, if Americans were to enter another country's labor pool en masse, I get the feeling that many of the readers on this website would say, "This is nothing less than an invasion! You bad old Americans should just go home -- Paraguayan jobs are for Paraguayan workers!"
--||--
[1]. Please note that I'm not saying that government should be handing out livelihoods to the people. I'm speaking in the ever-popular vague generalization mode.
[2]. I said a powerhouse, not the powerhouse. Take a deep breath and relax -- you're a powerhouse too, Upper Revolta.
Sorry about that -- meant to say Keesler and it came out Lackland. New dorms in the Triangle? That's terrible. I personally think every airman should be required to live in 1950's-relic housing at least once. Builds character. You probably never even saw a roach in your barracks; some of the "palmetto bugs" in mine were big enough that they wore their own blue ropes.:-) You haven't lived until you've had to give up a 341 to a bug.
BTW, what's your AFSC? And do they still warn you about Dumpster Lovin' and Golf Course Lovin' down there?
A-76 is biting you guys on the ass, isn't it? I swore up and down that A-76 would be the death of Comm Squadrons (Waterwalker here, former 3C2x1 from 75CS at Hill AFB). Besides, I'm willing to bet that the contractors who got brought in to man your helldesk are already telling the liaison office that they're going to need more money since they underbid the military audit statement.
Not all contractors are bad, though. The folks who picked up the bid for the Hill AFB dining hall beat the hell out of the 75th Services Squadron's cooks.
Oh, and how's Lackland? If you're an A1C, you were probably there pretty recently. I haven't been down there since '99, when I went through SNS at Jones Hall (and stayed in the Locker House...ugh).
Imagine how much fear a terrorist group could [instill] in US military personnel with that sort of [data]. Makes you think.
Yes, it certainly does make me think. For about ten seconds. I was in the USAF myself, and I have a pretty good idea exactly how much fear there will be. Very little.
The fact that TriWest is essentially an HMO for soldiers, sailors, and airmen doesn't really make them all that different in the broad strokes from any other HMO. If your health care data were stolen from your HMO, would you be afraid that some nefarious group of terrorists was planning to use it for some sort of bioweapon attack, or would you be more worried about the more pedestrian implications: identity theft and credit card abuse? That's what my father (who's still using Tricare's veterans' program) is concerned about.
I doubt that you'll hear from a lot of servicemen quaking in their combat boots about this. Now, if the terrorists could interrupt the beer deliveries to every NCO club in the world...that's frightening.
Even if... evolution is the answer, it doesn't answer other profound questions. It doesn't answer what was there before space, what is outside of space, and what is outside of time.
The theory of evolution -- that is, the theory of environmental conditions exerting a cumulative, non-random pressure on life-forms to adapt -- does not have anything to do with what was around before the universe or what is outside of space and time. The only question it seeks to answer is: given that life exists on this planet, how did that life come to exist in the present form in which we know it? "Evolution" as a pejorative used by those who argue for intelligent design may seek to answer the aforementioned questions (with, one assumes, an antagonistic assault on the god of the Bible), but that's a theoretical straw man used by those who are constantly sharpening lances and watching for windmills.
Even if you don't believe in the God of Abraham (I happen to), I fail to see how everything can be explained with no high power involved.
If you're looking for a good book to explain very clearly how a series of random events can over time add up to a non-random outcome, I'd recommend Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker (ISBN 0-393-31570-3). Although there are some portions of the book which are a bit heavy-handed (I thought Dawkins was a bit harsh on Stephen Jay Gould and other punctuationists, and that he made positive feedback loops sound much more difficult to understand than they are), it is all in all a cogent, literate, and witty (in a very British way) treatise on natural selection.
I honestly don't understand what atheists believe in this area. Nobody has ever been able to tell me what is outside of space and time.
Again, there's a straw man present here. "Atheists" are a diverse bunch, just as diverse a group as "religious believers." If I were to say, "Religious believers believe that a god named Yahweh or Elohim exists omnipotently, omnisciently, and omnipresently beyond all physical restrictions, and that this god came to earth in the incarnation of a man named Yeshua," I'd be doing every group but Christians a disservice. There's really no way to know what any given atheist thinks exists beyond the boundaries of reality (or even if there is anything beyond them) without asking him.
On further reflection, it seems to me that your original premise is a bit tautological. You believe in a god as described in the Bible or the Torah, so you can not explain existence without using Yahweh as a reference point. The very statements "before space," "outside of space," and "outside of time" beg the question: is there anything there? You assume that there is (an eternal, mystical being), but there's a problem there:
"What has been around before space, and exists outside of space/time?"
"God."
"Okay, but what is 'God?'"
"He's what exists beyond space and time. He's always been there."
To answer your final question, this particular atheist believes that nothing's out there beyond the borders, as it were. Even if there were, it's irrelevant because there's no way to observe or prove its existence.
Unfortunately, Anheuser-Busch gave Pulse Entertainment a whole lot of money to add that feature to their website -- money that could have been spent on research and development of a Budweiser-brand domestic beer that doesn't taste like month-old horse urine. The advertising for that sort of breakthrough would practically write itself:
Want a great-tasting beer, but don't want to send your money over to Fritz and his Nazi pals? Buy new Budweiser Good(TM), the revolutionary new brew from Anheuser-Busch! This is the first domestic beer that won't leave an aftertaste like the floor of a stable -- and because it's made in America by Americans, you know you're getting a quality product. Bud Good(TM): it's your new brew.
And all the while they could have the vaguely homoerotic American working-man images that seem to be so popular these days (which is bizarre because they always remind me of those old Soviet labor propaganda posters). But at least the lip-synching thing is pretty cool.
You don't see his type around because he actually practiced what he preached and went off to live in the hills.
...And is now just a gustatory memory in the mind of some bear. That gives one pause to consider, though: if a bear eats a hippie, does he soon get the urge to raid campsites for Chee-tos and cream soda?
If you're going to throw Birth of a Nation in there, don't forget to add Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. And
Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy (starring the inimitable Joe Don Baker, who gave us all the creeps in Mitchell), and Waco: A New Revelation, and anything you can find on the evil "Zionist Occupation Government." (Conspiracy wacko documentaries are always good for a laugh around my family's house over the holidays, so I usually try to bring my dad home at least one good propaganda film -- this year, I'm thinking of moon hoax. Any other suggestions from the lunatic fringe?)
The government apathy towards the commuter rail industry is too extreme to be accidental.
Just out of curiosity, how does one develop "extreme apathy?" Wouldn't that be like "record-breaking mediocrity?" Or is it an ESPN2 show for the lazy kids -- XTREME APATHY! This week: laying on the couch and not fucking moving! Also: highlights from the 2002 North American Shrugging Championship.
Two million Esperanto speakers on a planet of roughly seven billion means that it's something like.29% of the world's population. The word "small" seems perfectly fair when the competition is Hindi, Mandarin, French, English, or Spanish.
From everything I've read, Incubus is almost impossible to understand, because the actors have such thick Californian accents.
If Esperanto's goal was to be a supplementary language, shouldn't it have been designed in such a way that the speaker's accent doesn't confuse meaning? The Korean woman at the tailor shop where I used to get my uniforms worked on has an accent thicker than pitch when she speaks English, but I could still understand her. I'm not asking to be a jerk or anything; I'm really curious why a language that was supposed to be the "wave of the future" wouldn't have figured a way to route around accent issues.
Be honest, you were sending the person to goatse.cx, weren't you?:-)
Re:It's gonna be a corporate giveaway this session
on
HomeSec In the News
·
· Score: 2
Oh, and Bush jr will probably pack the Supreme Court with his cronies.
May I ask how? It's not like W is just going to wake up tomorrow and say, "You know what, I'll bet that since SCOTUS is pretty good with nine people, it'd be even better with...with...a hundred and nine!" (Assuming he can count that high.)
Appointments to the Supreme Court require the current benchwarmers (bada-bing!) to retire or dirt nap, and last I heard, the folks who lean to the left on the Court had no plans to retire during a Republican administration. Also, were I a Justice myself with an opposing party member in power, I'd find a way to hang on until the next election no matter how bad my health was -- kind of like the Pope drooling and dozing his way through Mass these days.
Thanks for playing, though; you get a copy of Slashdot: The Home Game.
Re:It's gonna be a corporate giveaway this session
on
HomeSec In the News
·
· Score: 2
Wonderful. Then when the One True Worker's Party in Total Support of Bob Smith and the Popular Plebiscite of April 17 (OTWPTSBSPPA17) decides that its party goals are incompatible with the Forward-Thinking Social Democrats under 5'9", we can watch the coalition President Bunghole cobbled together on the eve of the election fall apart. I think this one's a rerun...let's see, what was the name of the episode...oh, yeah: Italy!
I can't think clearly without all of the above[...]
Seems like you're doing a pretty piss-poor job of thinking clearly even with your standard-issue equipment. Although I do have to give you some credit; you're the first guy I've ever known who has (a) publicly admitted that his testicles do his thinking for him, yet somehow (b) believes that he's still "thinking clearly" when they do. Unfortunately, (a) is a violation of our Sacred Guy Code, which means that you'll have to hand over your copy of The Godfather and any beer you have in your fridge, and on your way home pick up Terms of Endearment and some wine coolers. Sorry, man.
Slashdot Mirror
"Tax freud" -- is that where you give your money to your mother?
C'mon -- I hope everyone gets to know the joys of MRE Chicken a la King or Tuna Noodle Casserole mixed with that tiny little bottle of Tabasco (the empties of which, by the way, make excellent empty beer can Christmas tree ornaments). Also, the new "Ham Slice" with "Potatoes, Au Gratin" beats the hell out of the old "Pork, Processed, with Juices" pack. And I'll still trade my crackers and peanut butter for anyone with a pound cake.
If you really loved his articles, you'd kill yourself right now.
Along the same lines, there are a few Omaha bands that I'd recommend to folks who like good guitar-driven rock mixed with a little ska flavor: Pomeroy, Clever, Cursive, Anchondo, and Mandown (also check out Factor 8 from Wichita). For emo there's Bright Eyes. If you're into post-altrock altrock, I like Five Story Fall and Grasshopper Takeover.
The Faint are a great new wave band, and Eighth Wave from Lincoln do a kick-ass ska/punk cover of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" -- anyone can take a good song and make it bad; it's a rare artist who can make a bad song good. For blues, we've got Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise (although I'm not sure they're actually from Omaha, they do play the Music Box a lot). And if you're really into Grateful Dead tribute bands -- to each his own -- there's Darkstar Orchestra.
If you're an EVIL CONTENT PIRATE like I am, you can find all of these bands on KaZaA (or KAZAA or perhaps kAZaa or whatever); I'm sharing tracks from most of them.
Oh, and almost forgot -- the late and much-lamented Blue Moon Ghetto did some damned fine genre-hopping music. "Tendency" is a great late-night depressed driving song.
Don't forget Burning Chrome, which had one of the best stories in it ("Johnny Mnemonic") bastardized into a terrible sci-fi film. It also had "New Rose Hotel," which was, for my money, the finest example of second-person narration I've ever read.
I just re-read All Tomorrow's Parties last week, and I was thinking to myself: "Boy, I hope that he comes out with another one soon." I think Neal Stephenson writes punchier prose, but Gibson just feels like a tighter storyline to me. I'll be clamoring for a copy in hardcover when it ships.
Or in other words it is based on the idea that non-Americans aren't people.
Actually, it's based on the idea that a nation's first duty ought to be the enrichment of its citizenry first, before dispensing its benefice upon the citizens of other nations[1]. I don't see a Bangladeshi, a Nigerian, or a Swede as a non-human. However, that said, I would choose to improve an American's quality of life before I'd improve theirs. I'd also hope that the Bangladeshi, the Nigerian, and the Swede would look to their fellow countrymen first were they in the same hypothetical position in which I just put myself. It's one of the responsibilities of being a citizen of a nation-state that you work to raise your fellow citizens to a higher quality of life.
It seems to be en vogue of late to trounce every American for being racist, isolationist (if we don't get involved in a Third World pissing contest), or imperialist (if we do). Fact is, though, we're just a powerhouse nation[2] -- vid. all the H1B and other immigrants who are looking to come here -- and we try to do the best we can. We screw up sometimes, but people seem to be more willing to attribute the screw-ups to malice than incompetence (to steal the oft-repeated quote).
I don't have anything against H1B workers; I do have something against a hiring system that gives them preferential treatment over equally-qualified Americans. To be sure, if Americans were to enter another country's labor pool en masse, I get the feeling that many of the readers on this website would say, "This is nothing less than an invasion! You bad old Americans should just go home -- Paraguayan jobs are for Paraguayan workers!"
--||--
[1]. Please note that I'm not saying that government should be handing out livelihoods to the people. I'm speaking in the ever-popular vague generalization mode.
[2]. I said a powerhouse, not the powerhouse. Take a deep breath and relax -- you're a powerhouse too, Upper Revolta.
Sorry about that -- meant to say Keesler and it came out Lackland. New dorms in the Triangle? That's terrible. I personally think every airman should be required to live in 1950's-relic housing at least once. Builds character. You probably never even saw a roach in your barracks; some of the "palmetto bugs" in mine were big enough that they wore their own blue ropes. :-) You haven't lived until you've had to give up a 341 to a bug.
BTW, what's your AFSC? And do they still warn you about Dumpster Lovin' and Golf Course Lovin' down there?
A-76 is biting you guys on the ass, isn't it? I swore up and down that A-76 would be the death of Comm Squadrons (Waterwalker here, former 3C2x1 from 75CS at Hill AFB). Besides, I'm willing to bet that the contractors who got brought in to man your helldesk are already telling the liaison office that they're going to need more money since they underbid the military audit statement.
Not all contractors are bad, though. The folks who picked up the bid for the Hill AFB dining hall beat the hell out of the 75th Services Squadron's cooks.
Oh, and how's Lackland? If you're an A1C, you were probably there pretty recently. I haven't been down there since '99, when I went through SNS at Jones Hall (and stayed in the Locker House...ugh).
Imagine how much fear a terrorist group could [instill] in US military personnel with that sort of [data]. Makes you think.
Yes, it certainly does make me think. For about ten seconds. I was in the USAF myself, and I have a pretty good idea exactly how much fear there will be. Very little.
The fact that TriWest is essentially an HMO for soldiers, sailors, and airmen doesn't really make them all that different in the broad strokes from any other HMO. If your health care data were stolen from your HMO, would you be afraid that some nefarious group of terrorists was planning to use it for some sort of bioweapon attack, or would you be more worried about the more pedestrian implications: identity theft and credit card abuse? That's what my father (who's still using Tricare's veterans' program) is concerned about.
I doubt that you'll hear from a lot of servicemen quaking in their combat boots about this. Now, if the terrorists could interrupt the beer deliveries to every NCO club in the world...that's frightening.Even if ... evolution is the answer, it doesn't answer other profound questions. It doesn't answer what was there before space, what is outside of space, and what is outside of time.
The theory of evolution -- that is, the theory of environmental conditions exerting a cumulative, non-random pressure on life-forms to adapt -- does not have anything to do with what was around before the universe or what is outside of space and time. The only question it seeks to answer is: given that life exists on this planet, how did that life come to exist in the present form in which we know it? "Evolution" as a pejorative used by those who argue for intelligent design may seek to answer the aforementioned questions (with, one assumes, an antagonistic assault on the god of the Bible), but that's a theoretical straw man used by those who are constantly sharpening lances and watching for windmills.
Even if you don't believe in the God of Abraham (I happen to), I fail to see how everything can be explained with no high power involved.
If you're looking for a good book to explain very clearly how a series of random events can over time add up to a non-random outcome, I'd recommend Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker (ISBN 0-393-31570-3). Although there are some portions of the book which are a bit heavy-handed (I thought Dawkins was a bit harsh on Stephen Jay Gould and other punctuationists, and that he made positive feedback loops sound much more difficult to understand than they are), it is all in all a cogent, literate, and witty (in a very British way) treatise on natural selection.
I honestly don't understand what atheists believe in this area. Nobody has ever been able to tell me what is outside of space and time.
Again, there's a straw man present here. "Atheists" are a diverse bunch, just as diverse a group as "religious believers." If I were to say, "Religious believers believe that a god named Yahweh or Elohim exists omnipotently, omnisciently, and omnipresently beyond all physical restrictions, and that this god came to earth in the incarnation of a man named Yeshua," I'd be doing every group but Christians a disservice. There's really no way to know what any given atheist thinks exists beyond the boundaries of reality (or even if there is anything beyond them) without asking him.
On further reflection, it seems to me that your original premise is a bit tautological. You believe in a god as described in the Bible or the Torah, so you can not explain existence without using Yahweh as a reference point. The very statements "before space," "outside of space," and "outside of time" beg the question: is there anything there? You assume that there is (an eternal, mystical being), but there's a problem there:
To answer your final question, this particular atheist believes that nothing's out there beyond the borders, as it were. Even if there were, it's irrelevant because there's no way to observe or prove its existence.
Next time a waitress asks me how I want my eggs, I'm going to tell her, "Easter. I don't care what color they are, as long as you hide them well."
Unfortunately, Anheuser-Busch gave Pulse Entertainment a whole lot of money to add that feature to their website -- money that could have been spent on research and development of a Budweiser-brand domestic beer that doesn't taste like month-old horse urine. The advertising for that sort of breakthrough would practically write itself:
Want a great-tasting beer, but don't want to send your money over to Fritz and his Nazi pals? Buy new Budweiser Good(TM), the revolutionary new brew from Anheuser-Busch! This is the first domestic beer that won't leave an aftertaste like the floor of a stable -- and because it's made in America by Americans, you know you're getting a quality product. Bud Good(TM): it's your new brew.
And all the while they could have the vaguely homoerotic American working-man images that seem to be so popular these days (which is bizarre because they always remind me of those old Soviet labor propaganda posters). But at least the lip-synching thing is pretty cool.
...but only if every mathematician who's ever worked out an orbital mechanics equation is dead wrong.
Shithead.
Mostly the dentistry (or lack thereof).
And brutal suppression of dissent.
Our three surviving legacies will be bureaucracy, corruption, and brutal suppression of dissent!
Let me start again...No one expects the Soviet Revolution!
You don't see his type around because he actually practiced what he preached and went off to live in the hills.
...And is now just a gustatory memory in the mind of some bear. That gives one pause to consider, though: if a bear eats a hippie, does he soon get the urge to raid campsites for Chee-tos and cream soda?
If you're going to throw Birth of a Nation in there, don't forget to add Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. And Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy (starring the inimitable Joe Don Baker, who gave us all the creeps in Mitchell ), and Waco: A New Revelation , and anything you can find on the evil "Zionist Occupation Government." (Conspiracy wacko documentaries are always good for a laugh around my family's house over the holidays, so I usually try to bring my dad home at least one good propaganda film -- this year, I'm thinking of moon hoax. Any other suggestions from the lunatic fringe?)
The government apathy towards the commuter rail industry is too extreme to be accidental.
Just out of curiosity, how does one develop "extreme apathy?" Wouldn't that be like "record-breaking mediocrity?" Or is it an ESPN2 show for the lazy kids -- XTREME APATHY! This week: laying on the couch and not fucking moving! Also: highlights from the 2002 North American Shrugging Championship.
License: ~$10 testing fee
Basic GPS: ~$100
APRS packet-capable radio: ~$300 (US)
A couple of cables: ~$20
Realizing you're never going to get laid again: Priceless.
s/hearts/pants
The word "small" seems unfair.
Two million Esperanto speakers on a planet of roughly seven billion means that it's something like .29% of the world's population. The word "small" seems perfectly fair when the competition is Hindi, Mandarin, French, English, or Spanish.
From everything I've read, Incubus is almost impossible to understand, because the actors have such thick Californian accents.
If Esperanto's goal was to be a supplementary language, shouldn't it have been designed in such a way that the speaker's accent doesn't confuse meaning? The Korean woman at the tailor shop where I used to get my uniforms worked on has an accent thicker than pitch when she speaks English, but I could still understand her. I'm not asking to be a jerk or anything; I'm really curious why a language that was supposed to be the "wave of the future" wouldn't have figured a way to route around accent issues.
Be honest, you were sending the person to goatse.cx, weren't you? :-)
Oh, and Bush jr will probably pack the Supreme Court with his cronies.
May I ask how? It's not like W is just going to wake up tomorrow and say, "You know what, I'll bet that since SCOTUS is pretty good with nine people, it'd be even better with...with...a hundred and nine!" (Assuming he can count that high.)
Appointments to the Supreme Court require the current benchwarmers (bada-bing!) to retire or dirt nap, and last I heard, the folks who lean to the left on the Court had no plans to retire during a Republican administration. Also, were I a Justice myself with an opposing party member in power, I'd find a way to hang on until the next election no matter how bad my health was -- kind of like the Pope drooling and dozing his way through Mass these days.
Thanks for playing, though; you get a copy of Slashdot: The Home Game.
Wonderful. Then when the One True Worker's Party in Total Support of Bob Smith and the Popular Plebiscite of April 17 (OTWPTSBSPPA17) decides that its party goals are incompatible with the Forward-Thinking Social Democrats under 5'9", we can watch the coalition President Bunghole cobbled together on the eve of the election fall apart. I think this one's a rerun...let's see, what was the name of the episode...oh, yeah: Italy!
I can't think clearly without all of the above[...]
Seems like you're doing a pretty piss-poor job of thinking clearly even with your standard-issue equipment. Although I do have to give you some credit; you're the first guy I've ever known who has (a) publicly admitted that his testicles do his thinking for him, yet somehow (b) believes that he's still "thinking clearly" when they do. Unfortunately, (a) is a violation of our Sacred Guy Code, which means that you'll have to hand over your copy of The Godfather and any beer you have in your fridge, and on your way home pick up Terms of Endearment and some wine coolers. Sorry, man.