I read a very sad story today. A young man died following an accident, because he refused the blood he needed to survive . . .

I hardly know what to say about this. One’s initial reaction is to seek a remedy, to prevent lives being wasted like this ever again. But we can’t police everyone, or everything. Perhaps we should congratulate ourselves for having a society that allows us to die, so long as we claim it’s what our god wants.

But this boy, Joshua McAuley, was just 15. He could not vote, or drink, or smoke or have sex. But he could die for a fiction. Should we allow children – no doubt infected with the lies of their parents – to die in this manner?

- Wordsbyme

When it comes down to it, most of the concepts we are familiar with are fictions. This in no way diminishes our willingness to kill or be killed for them.

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Anyone you have to beg or threaten to respect you cannot be relied upon to respect you.

Just fuck you for making me fall hard and believing it will work out.
Fuck you for making me do things I would never do without knowing you.
Fuck you for never calling, and for me getting pissed off every time my phone rings and it isn't you.
Fuck you for holding onto me, and keeping me from liking assholes that would just use me.
Fuck you for never saying "I like you" every time I told you how wonderful you are.
Fuck you for not putting an effort into "us" but saying we're an "us". We're still the same before we were an "us."
Fuck you for never giving me reassurance of my emotions.
Fuck you for telling me I let things get to me too much. Just talk to me.
Fuck you for making me clingy and needy as hell, but not doing a damn thing about it.

I'm worth it, damnit, and it's time you straighten your act up before I leave. - justme234

Just leave. I was in this situation, and I wound up sticking around substantially longer than I should have before leaving. The extra months amounted to sheer misery, and the only thing I got out of them was a growing certainty that I should have broken it off earlier.

Joking aside, you can’t change people. It sucks, but you have to think about how people really are in the relationship, not how they might be if they magically cleaned up their act.

I have 16,000 credits.

This is enough, I believe, to bestow 1 year of Premium on a worthy soul.

Who among you is worthy?

In case it wasn't clear, I do actually want you to compete for it.

Come on guys . . . at the very least, you need to rec this to have a shot at it. If it doesn't get any attention, that isn't going to up your chances. I'm just not going to give it out - the point of saying "worthy" is you have to show that you deserve it somehow: If I don't know you, you'd better drive a ton of traffic to me, write a song, make a difference somehow - do something.

Because I am not DearRicky, I will make only one apology to Xanga.

Xanga, I apologize for being too awesome.

That will be all.

People don't tend to think things through.

I used to get so much flak for my anime-based profile pics. People would say, "You're smart; you know people will judge you and associate an anime pic with an immature, shallow kid. Why do you do it?"

And I would reply, "I don't want to talk to anyone who would look at that picture and make that assumption."

Beware: I hunger.
- Sinistar

On the theme of consuming:

Apparently in spongiform encephalopathy, your immune system literally eats your brain. It's not enough that prions act as zombie proteins; your immune system gets into the act and goes haywire. I'd liken it to a zombie movie where instead of the zombies being the sole threat, there are also people firing nukes at every city with a zombie sighting - and yet failing to eradicate the disease.

I learned that spilled fluorine will literally eat your face. It rips the calcium right out of your bones, and sufficient quantities will dissolve your bone structure, leaving you jellylike and writhing in agony for the (short) remainder of your life. One female researcher who got a bit on her finger and lost the tip said the agony was the worst thing imaginable (beyond that of childbirth.)

I literally have hundreds of hours of anime piled up to watch, and I could even argue that it is my duty to watch it, but I can't watch it because of more important things. I have people waiting to go drinking with me, expensive clothes to buy, someone waiting to go and paint the town red with me, and I refrain. I can't, yet.

When did I turn into a masochist?

It's not that I enjoy this series of decisions. They were only the consequences of a rational line of thought.

What a crazy, fucked up world.

Members of Iran's feared Basij militia forcibly marry female virgin prisoners the night before scheduled executions, raping their new "wives" and making it religiously acceptable to execute them, a self-professed member of the paramilitary group says.

The Iranian embassy in Australia rejected the claims, saying the source of the news - The Jerusalem Post - was "a Zionist publication, the bitter enemy of the Islamic Republic of Iran".

"According to the Islamic Law, female virgin marriage is only possible with the consent of parents or guardians as well as the virgin females," the embassy said.

- news.com.au

Because Iran governs with the consent of its people, right?

Still, something's fishy about this. Why are the only two sources The Jerusalem Post and Fox News?

[02:13] moritheil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warrior_and_the_Sorceress
[02:15] Gakar: the female lead spends all of her screen time topless. cinematic genius!
[02:15] Gakar: only in the 80s could such a thing have come to pass