FlaSoxxJim

Yeah, but it will be someone else's mess by then... Convenient.

I had been waiting for news on this, but seeing there has been a directorial switch mid-project (never a good sign), I'm sure it's not all smooth sailing. Jay Roach had been tagged for the director spot and had sunk a lot of time into pre-production planning. Then he all of a sudden dropped the project to get working on Meet the Fokkers (which has also had its share of delays). I don't know anything about Garth Jennings, the new director. I have been waiting for the movie adaptation of Gaimen and Pratchet's hilarious "Good Omens" to get off the ground for ever, and was stoked to see Terry Giliam at the helm. But that seems to have died somewhere along the way too.

Are your relatives avid fans of gay porn? Oh, yeah, keep away from my Mexican wrestling mask and get your own gimmick.

As an out-of-towner, I have to listen to 90% of the games on mlbRadio with Farmer and Rooney. I think they do a fine job until Farmer goes off on some stupid golf story for 10 minutes at a time.

How come everyone was famous or powerful in their past lives. Why don't the seers ever see a past life where a guy was a bald shoe salesman with bad breath?

Possibly would be, if not for the occasional chicken plookery. Hey, nobody's perfect.

Then I read you right, PA, and I added the other paragraphs by way of explanation that I think morality and spirituality can be separated, and one can be pursued without the other.

Re, the word 'gay': It certainly seems an easy transition (and yes, living languages are evolving all the time) from exuberant and happy to the stereotypical image we have of a gay man. It was probably used as a thinly veiled reference to give a recognizable nod to the "love that dared not speak its name." It ruins references like the "Gay (18)90s" (no 5th grader can keep a straight face I'm sure), and Hanna-Barberra actually changed the last line of the Flinstone's theme song from "We'll have a gay old time" to "We'll have a grea-a-at time" in rerecording the song. As for not being a "brother" I assume you are referring to my secular grounding as opposed to a spiritual leaning. If that's the case, then yes I am pretty much that way intrinsically and purposefully. The tired argument of the religiosos that you have to believe in a divine higher authority because otherwise you will be a lost, morally barren person stuck in a life of hopelessness is a crock. Really, who better to try to make this world the best place it can be than those of us who are not banking on any next world? Christians who indoctrinate their children to behave as God intended for extrinsic reasons (the divine carrot and stick of salvation/damnation) cheat them out of learning how to find their own internal motivation for being good and loving people – because a life spent otherwise truly would be hopelessness. I have no fear of 'putting the souls of myself or my children in jeopardy' because if there is a God, I can guarantee you God is NOT the flawed caricature that fundamentalists molded him to be (as Ian Anderson said: "He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays", right?). How can someone truly believe that a person who leads a good and loving life at the end is going to be damned because they didn't fawn over God and offer their life and works up to His Glory? Pettiness and the jealousy are human contrivances that only lazy-thinking fundamentalist Christians would ascribe to an omnipotent savior. If one can be eternally saved, I believe (much as cw has suggested in threads here and elsewhere) it is by grace, through the things you do and the way you treat each other in life, not by drooling and fawning over God and publicly offering it up to Him so your neighbors can hear it every 90 seconds. That is not to say I think there's anyone up there running the show, just that if there is, He/She/It would have better things to do than throw my arse in the fire like a petty child.

The 'hate' (maybe it is too strong a word) in these cases is not directed at the friend you casually insult, but toward the group from which or for which the derogatory term was coined. Yes, terms like that are used casually, in much the same way you would call someone a douchebag or an a$$hole. But the difference is that there is not a real, thinking and feeling and discriminated against group of Douchebag People or A$$holians, etc., that continue to be derided by the nonchalant tossing about of the words. Like a lot of you, I grew up on the south side with an extended family that, while very loving and generally decent people, were by and large quick to offer up the latest ethnic jokes or racial epithets at holiday gatherings, family celebrations etc. They were very casual about it and might insist that they meant no harm in it. But it is still damaging because they facilitate passing the prejudices (however large or small) and preconceived/caricaturized notions about various ethnic groups from generation to generation. From the earliest time I could remember, I would quietly grit my teeth through each year's round of ni**er jokes told by cousins, uncles, grandmothers (!), etc. Now that I have my own kids, though, enough is enough, and if family starts to go down that path on our all-too rare visits back home, I get in their face about it. This stuff is intergenerational, and until vertical transmission of "harmless" bigoted viewpoints is aggressively cut off, the cycle continues. And I don't necessarily think much of what is passed off as "harmless" joking around really is. In my experience growing up, working high school jobs, etc., closet bigots would sort of test the water with a casual joke or two. If I raised some protest, he discovered I wasn't in the club and the conversation would turn elsewhere. But if I'd let remarks or slurs ride (which happened because I was a pretty soft-spoken kid), it was often taken as an implied acceptance of the stereotypes as truth or valid viewpoint, and then some of the less veiled or "less harmless" poison would spew forth until I objected.

He's here through thursday, folks. Don't forget to try the veal.

As a "normal person," I deeply resent the suggestion that gay-bashing is acceptable "normal people" behavior.

Yes, that is true, but I doubt that is the 'alternate' non-hatful use of the term as alluded to above. Similarly,'f*gged out' is used to mean weary or tired but I doubt that is how it is used today when tossed about as an insult.

I may have taken an oversimplified view (and please set me straight if I have it wrong), but from what CW took the time to share with us, it seems to me that he is merely pointing out that there is a vast difference between historical accuracy/historicity and the resonant truth that the Scriptures offer up when he reads them. The bible is not a history book, and no true academic biblical scholar (not bible-thumper) will suggest that it is. Yet, for those of faith, the words contained in the scriptures can and should resonate with the certainty and truth of God, Jesus, and the Spirit. I'm not of the faith, but I can still see that the mere fact that the "facts" of the bible are, well, non-factual(!) doesn't diminish in any way the vastly more important Scriptural truths for members of the Church. Even as an outsider looking in, I can see that the central Christian belief - that God so loved the world that he gave us his Son, and the Son so loved the world that he gave us His life, and in doing so made a promise to always be with us even unto eternal life if we only accept Him and strive to be like Him - is not compromised by the lack of verifiable historicity in the bible. God's Truth is more important that the bible's "facts."

Other than 40s Brit slang for a cigarrete, what exactly is the alternate meaning of "f*g" that I am unaware of? I'm not saying there isn't one, I'm just not hip to the new lingo [but I'm willing to knock you my lobes while you wax true, as we old beatniks used to say].

Wow. Interesting indeed. No secret that France had large financial interests at stake, but accepting an outright bribe would not look good. Anxious to see how much truth there is to it.

I don't think it's a hate site per se, but I do think it makes some unflattering and unfair comparisons... Unfair to the chimps, that is!!

Do I hear an 'Oh.... Snap!' coming on?

Sounds like a plan unless your date happens to be a 300-pounder named Killa', who happens to have been there longer and has more friends than you.

Isn't 'UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE' a bit of a hyperbole? I'm sure most of the guys in prison don't willingly consent, but they get theirs popped nonetheless. What would be your magic trick for saying no to your dates in that circumstance? (Saying, "don't go to prison" won't cut it because prison falls under the broad 'any circumstance' category you have set forth.)

Yeah, everyone is clean. And the monetary transaction would be payment for you to "act" in the film, so you are not illegally accepting money for sex either.

12K is more than 50K?? And MY math is bad?!?

So what LEGAL work did you do in high school that let you take home 50K+? I sold hot dogs in Grant park through high school and made squat, while a kid I grew up with sold coke and made a whole lot more. Oh yeah, he's dead now and I'm still here.

Actually it does, and you're not far off. Men and women are wired differently - neither is better, just different - and have had different roles through the course of human evolution. The oversimplified generalization that women do not have as good a 'map-sense' as men, while not always true, is the result of a human evolutionary history that required the male protectors to be more spatially cognative... 'Where was that water hole again... what leaves made my ass sore last time... isn't this where that sabertooth cat usually... Yearghh!!.' The male attraction to young, child-bearing-caoable women is borne of instinct, as is the femal attraction to a protector. Some very smart people consider the higher incidence of promiscuity/infidelity in men versus women to also be partly instinctive - sperm is cheap, multiple pairings produce the most progeny, etc. And yes, our capacity for reason allows us to very successfully subjugate these instinctive urges. Or as Rosie (Kate Hepburn's character) says in African Queen, "Nature, Mr. Alnott, is what we were put on this earth to rise above."

First off, no one said I couldn't wear a la leche Mexican wrestling mask during the shoot! And for perspective, someone making $50K a year ahs to work for about 30 years (considering taxes) to even clear a million dollars total, let alone have a million dollars handed to them at one time. You could pay for your kid's kid's college education with that. All the "never never NEVER" folks are honestly going to tell me that a 1/2-hour or so of playing "The Dating Game - State Pen Style" wouldn't be worth the instantaneous equivalent of 30 years of labor? Okey dokey...

The point is the valid debate of whether something done off the field and in private life should get someone blackballed from the game in their home country and/or be seen as a scandal in this country. We all know the scandalous aspect of the story is not the appearance in a porn video, but the appearance in a gay porn video. Charlie Sheen, Pam Anderson, Paris Hilton, et al have either suffered minor negative consequences from their taped sexcapades, or (in the Hilton case) have actually propelled their careers through them. As a society, though, we generally see the taboo sexcapade as far more scandalous. For that matter, we (at least men) also see the two-guy scenario as somehow being much more unsettling than the two-girl scenario. How each of us reacts to something like this tells us, for better or worse, where the limits of our tolerance lie and where our prejudices begin. If the rules of the Japanese baseball league say that anyone appearing in ANY adult film will be excluded from baseball, then the decision to formally ban someone follows as logical. If blackballing the guy is a gut reaction by a homophobic institution to his participating in a homosexual act, then it is an act of prejudice and intolerance. Here, were letting him compete, which is good. But all of our different reactions to the incident reflect our positions on sexual orientation and the morality baggage that comes with it. Two different people can say "Why are we even talking about this?" and can mean two vastly different things. For some, it means, 'why is this even an issue and who the hell cares about the private goings-on of this person. For others, it means 'why are you even bringing this discussion into the light of day because I find it repulsive (or at the least, not my cup of tea).' To the people in the latter group, the contents of the video have not been described, the video is not being displayed, and no one in this thread is offering graphic portrayals of anything you might find objectionable. It's perfectly fine that this is not a pursuit of the straight population. But if this guy has been penalized based on a legal but non-normative sex act, it is discriminatory.