What are you drinking in your pop?

Fast Food Soda Fountains

I think this sort of thing is going to continue unless the US can either pull back manufacturing into its borders or enforce strict safety standards on Chinese imports.

I worked as a temp many years ago as a dispatcher for a vending machine company. It was my job to log the service calls and send out the service techs.

Remember those soda machines that dropped down the cup, and then the syrup and seltzer would mix in your cup as you waited? The number one service call? Bugs in those machines.

Oliver Stone is no stranger to stirring things up, and his latest provocation -- saying that Hitler was a "scapegoat" and expressing empathy for Stalin -- is, unsurprisingly, making headlines.

Stone made the comments while speaking at a gathering of TV critics in California this weekend. At the conference Stone introduced his latest project, modestly titled "Oliver Stone's Secret History of America," a 10-hour series for Showtime that will serve as an antidote to the way recent U.S. history has been presented in schools and the media.

“We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'," Stone said.

"(Hitler) is the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect."

"People in America don't know the connection between World War I and World War II."

"Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply."

Stone compounded the controversy by claiming Stalin had "a complete other story".

"Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation - he fought the German war machine more than any person," he said.

"I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes, to understand their point of view."

"You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate."

So, you walked in Hitler's shoes, Ollie?? Did you smell the stench from the ovens in the concentration camps, too? A scapegoat for what? The mass murder of millions??

While I agree that MOST people can't be judged as purely good or purely bad, I would say that Hitler gets a pass on this one. He was bad.

I'd say pure evil.

I guess he'll be casting Mel Gibson to play the "hero" in the inevitable movie .

Stone is a fucking psycho. Talk about cause and effect? Here's a guy who, admittedly, did drugs and frequented sex clubs with his own mother. In fairness, in the interview I read (Vanity Fair?), he says that they never did anything sexual together. But they were in a "postion to watch each other." So yeah, cause = mother, effect = drug addled, paranoid, but at times brilliant filmmaker.

He's a talented guy, but you have to take everything he says with a grain of salt.

Apparently, Mark McGwire has admitted to using steroids and has apologized.

updated 2 hours, 39 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO - The first federal trial to determine if the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from outlawing same-sex marriage got under way Monday, but not before the Supreme Court blocked its broadcast — at least for the first few days.

The trial is considering whether the Proposition 8 gay marriage ban approved by California voters in November 2008 is legal, and the two gay couples on whose behalf the case was brought will be among the first witnesses

Can anyone answer this question please?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425210/board/thread/155097371

Sure, he's watching some of his contemporaries go into the Hall of Fame and he's probably getting a little desperate.

If I remember correctly that is from when the Bruce Willis character was telling a story about a fixed horse race that was thought to be a sure thing. But word got out because of how gamblers are -talkative- and then the race wasn't such a sure thing.

So my take would be that the line was referring either to folks who had inside information but couldn't keep their mouth shut or on the other hand, degenerate gamblers that were constantly pestering bookies or other people for information.

Makes sense, thank you very much.

by Laura Saunders Monday, January 11, 2010

How One Woman Went to Tax Court and Won Deduction

A Maryland nurse accomplished two rare feats in her battle with the Internal Revenue Service: She defended herself against the agency's lawyers and won, and she got a ruling that could help tens of thousands of students deduct the cost of an M.B.A. degree on their taxes.

The U.S. Tax Court handed Lori Singleton-Clarke her victory last month, saying the 47-year-old Bryantown, Md., woman had properly deducted nearly $15,000 in business school tuition. The Tax Court ruling should make it easier for many other professionals to deduct the expense of a Master in Business Administration degree.

That is just sick.

Never a Year Like '09-Jib Jab

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKYe1KiwywE

That was great. I likeJib Jab. 2009 in a nutshell.



TIS

Is this the interview you were referring to PB or was it another one?

1)
http://www.adherents.com/people/ps/Oliver_Stone.html

The sexual depravity that Oliver Stone witnessed his parents engaged in while he was a teenager further illustrates the degree to which his parents were not actively practicing Judaism, Catholicism, or any other religion. Oliver Stone's mother first took him to a nudist colony when he was nine years old (Riordan, page 12). When Oliver was eleven years old, his mother was thirty-one and his father was forty-seven. His father began to have an increasing number of extramarital affairs. Oliver was unaware of this at the time. When Oliver was fourteen or fifteen years old, his mother began taking him to nightclubs. While at Hill School, Oliver's father continued having extramarital affairs and the lifestyle of Oliver's mother's friends became increasingly decadent, as they imbibed in the sexual "revolution" of the 1960s. (Riordan, page 24).

After his parents divorced, Oliver found that his father frequently had prostitutes and call girls visiting at the house when Oliver was there. Often they were visiting socially. Apparently some of these women, if it had been many years since Oliver's father had actually hired them, liked to visit socially because they thought Oliver's father was interesting and funny. When Oliver was fifteen year old, his father arranged for him to lose his virginity with a prostitute (Riordan, page 30). Riordan, page 30:

There is little doubt now that Lou's gesture, though made with good intentions, helped to cripple his son emotionally for quite some time. Part of a boarding school circle that rarely mingled with the opposite sex, Stone was an emotionally underdeveloped teenager, and the experience made a profound impact.

Oliver's mother returned to New York City, where she rented an apartment and Oliver began visiting her often. There was a constant parade of prostitutes and homosexuals in his mother's apartment. Men and women hit on him. He frequently found there was rampant drug use, nudity, and group sex at his mother's apartment. When Oliver first walked into his mother's apartment and found her half-dressed in bed with another man, he was shocked, but his mother was very casual about it. Oliver's friend Roger Kirby, who was with him a the time, recounted (from Riordan, page 31):

...his mother said, 'What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen someone in bed before?' The truth was that I hadn't. Not like that. Oliver's mother had a tendency to be more like a peer than a parent. After his father was gone, she was amazingly candid with him. There was no subject she wouldn't broach. Then, other times, she acted like she wasn't interested."

Oliver Stone's experiences with his parents and sexuality had a strong affect on him, and made it difficult for him to relate to women as peers. From: Riordan, page 32:

[During Oliver's senior year at Hill School, he] felt far too traumatized about sexual attraction to deal with women very well.

Roger Kirby comments: "I don't think Oliver ever dated anybody. He had this circle of people [many of them call girls] whom his mother would make available to him directly or otherwise. But I don't think he could relate to the female equivalent of a Hill person [i.e., somebody of similar social standing who had attended a high school similar to his own], and those were the kind of people he saw. I think the first real relationship he had was with his first wife several years later."

2)
Oliver's Mother Issues
Elizabeth Stone, Oliver's ex-wife, says it's no surprise that he would be angry at his mother, or that he would publish a novel that vents his rage. "The crying of a child who was never comforted," is how she interprets her ex-husband's autobiographical novel.

"Oliver as a boy was very isolated and very, very lonely," she says. "Very early in my marriage, I remember having a long conversation with his mom. She'd led a decadent life as a child of the '60s, very tolerant, and she was extremely blunt about her multiple sex partners. . . . She was sophisticated in the European way."

And here Elizabeth offers up a disturbing revelation of Stone's sexual initiation -- as a teenager -- by his mother...

I rather like it old bean

Time for a spot of tea and a scone methinks.....

Yeah, that's it, Lilo. I read an abridged version, similar to what you just posted, in Vanity Fair a few years ago.

Sick.

The first step to legalize marijuana in California could happen Tuesday.

Lawmakers will vote on Assembly Bill 390 -- legislation to tax and regulate marijuana. The assembly's Public Safety Committee is expected to vote after a hearing that begins at 9 a.m. hearing in Sacramento.

The bill, authored by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, would essentially treat pot the same way alcohol is treated under the law and would allow adults over 21 to possess, smoke and grow marijuana.

That.. is awesome.

I hope it's legalized as well.



TIS

Well, if it is, we will witness one hell of a Supreme Court case eventually. The very nature of Federalism will be called into question as will be national supremacy. I can't wait.

True; WWI was almost a direct cause of WWII, and World War I can be traced back to the times of the Roman historian Tacitus in the 2nd century AD, in the woods of the West Rhine between modern day France and Germany.

There were many philosophers and historians in the late middle ages who were able to deduce from the economic and political history of Europe that hundreds of years from then a great war of the world would insue with Germany at its epicenter, and were also able to predict that the war(s) would have resounding effects on the following generations and may very well be the war to end all wars.

Thus, philosophers like Nostradameus, who supposedly predicted the rise of Hitler and a great world war, were really nothing new. Historians and philosophers from all over Germany foresaw a world war centering in Germany centuries before it happened.

So to put the entire onnus on Hitler is to view the situation in a vacuum and not consider the historical effects that had accrued over thousands of years. The Holocaust, however, seems to be Hitler's own little obsession, though he certainly wasn't alone in carrying it out..

I thought I just heard it passed. Let me check.



TIS

Is this a sign of the Apocalypse?

1,500 Lose Jobs as Walmart Announces 10 Sam's Club Closures

Walmart announced Monday it is closing 10 Sam’s Club locations across the United States, causing approximately 1,500 people to lose their jobs.

The Sam’s Clubs to be closed are located in Nampa, ID; La Quinta, CA; Louisville, CO; Vista, CA; Rolling Meadows, IL; Clay, NY; Irvine, CA; and one Club in the Houston, TX, Phoenix, AZ, and Sacramento, CA markets.

According to the Walmart press release, despite the “outstanding efforts of our Associates, these Clubs continued to lose money” so the decision was made to close them.

damn...i guess 2012 is going to be the last year...hopefully the cubs can win it before then.

I had an Appetite for Destruction so I ate Mac N Cheese.