What The Hell's Wrong With Me?

Don't worry, it's legit.

http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/excise.asp

"It's easier to grow to love someone you like than to keep loving someone you don't like."

Anonymous

The truth in this makes me a little sad and a little bitter. Some days it's harder than others and some nights make me wonder if it's still worth it. So much time invested in something that may be for nothing in the end.

It's amazing what can be done with a single sheet of paper.

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=ba1f23a395748b6b08304eaeacf5bd2d.987093&cache=1

"As far as I can see, love is a combination of admiration, respect, and passion. If you have one of those going, that's about par for the course. If you have two, you aren't quite world class, but you're close. If you have all three, then you don't need to die; you're already in heaven."

William Wharton

I bought myself a guitar from a pawn shop. I got home and 2 seconds after I walked in the door I broke the skinniest string. Omen? Perhaps. Some people have been known to find themselves strangled to death with guitar strings. (and the occasional piano string. fortunately I have a keyboard.) Next up: a violin. At some point I intend to learn to play these instruments although in all fairness I have been slowly learning to play my keyboard off and on for the past several years. No lessons; just Piano For Dummies. It's working, too. I now know what the black keys are for.  What? I'm pretty proud of myself. So hopefully tomorrow I'll remember to pick up some new strings and then get started on murdering the poor instrument.

Things long since forgotten I desire once more. Eyes that entice. Lips that beckon. The whisper of a kiss that shivers my body. An embrace that comforts. Hands that caress with a gentle roughness only he can control. Things long since forgotten that I vaguely recall. Where are you tonight? Working? Romancing? Dreaming? I think of you often and I wonder whos image is reflected in your dark eyes. Is she worthy? Probably not. You're too good of a person for most. Your spirit is whole and your honor strong-all that I desire is within you. Where are you and do you think of me? Do you dream of what never was? What was never meant to be? Reliving false memories can be fatal but sometimes it's far better than reality. Such pain born of a hollow core. Coldness that seeps into the bones and makes me ache. Things long since forgotten I desire once more. The whisper of a kiss....

LOS ANGELES - Jack Palance, the craggy-faced menace in "Shane," "Sudden Fear" and other films who turned successfully to comedy at 70 with his Oscar-winning self-parody in "City Slickers," died Friday. Palance died of natural causes at his home in Montecito, Calif., surrounded by family, said spokesman Dick Guttman. He was 87.

When Palance accepted his Oscar for best supporting actor he delighted viewers of the 1992 Academy Awards by dropping to the stage and performing one-armed push-ups to demonstrate his physical prowess.

"That's nothing, really," he said slyly. "As far as two-handed push-ups, you can do that all night, and it doesn't make a difference whether she's there or not."

That year's Oscar host,  Billy Crystal, turned the moment into a running joke, making increasingly outlandish remarks about Palance's accomplishments throughout the show.

It was a magic moment that epitomized the actor's 40 years in films. Always the iconoclast, Palance had scorned most of his movie roles.

"Most of the stuff I do is garbage," he once told a reporter, adding that most of the directors he worked with were incompetent, too.

"Most of them shouldn't even be directing traffic," he said.

Movie audiences, though, were electrified by the actor's chiseled face, hulking presence and the calm, low voice that made his screen presence all the more intimidating.

His film debut came in 1950, playing a murderer named Blackie in "Panic in the Streets."

After a war picture, "Halls of Montezuma," he portrayed the ardent lover who stalks the terrified Joan Crawford in 1952's "Sudden Fear." The role earned him his first Academy Award nomination for supporting actor.

The following year brought his second nomination when he portrayed Jack Wilson, the swaggering gunslinger who bullies peace-loving Alan Ladd into a barroom duel in the Western classic "Shane."

That role cemented Palance's reputation as Hollywood's favorite menace, and he went on to appear in such films as "Arrowhead" (as a renegade Apache), "Man in the Attic" (as Jack the Ripper), "Sign of the Pagan" (as Attila the Hun) and "The Silver Chalice" (as a fictional challenger to Jesus).

Other prominent films included "Kiss of Fire," "The Big Knife," "I Died a Thousand Deaths," "Attack!" "The Lonely Man" and "House of Numbers."

Forty-one years after his auspicious film debut, Palance played against type, to a degree. His "City Slickers" character, Curly, was still a menacing figure to dude ranch visitors Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby, but with a comic twist. And Palance delivered his one-liners with surgeon-like precision.

Through most of his career, Palance maintained his distance from the Hollywood scene. In the late 1960s he bought a sprawling cattle and horse ranch north of Los Angeles. He also owned a bean farm near his home town of Lattimer, Pa.

Although most of his film portrayals were as primitives, Palance was well-spoken and college-educated. His favorite pastimes away from the movie world were painting and writing poetry and fiction.

A strapping 6-feet-4 and 210 pounds, Palance excelled at sports and won a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina. He left after two years, disgusted by commercialization of the sport.

He decided to use his size and strength as a prizefighter, but after two hapless years that resulted in little more than a broken nose that would serve him well as a screen villain, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1942.

A year later he was discharged after his B-24 lost power on takeoff and he was knocked unconscious.

The GI. Bill of Rights provided Palance's tuition at Stanford University, where he studied journalism. But the drama club lured him, and he appeared in 10 comedies. Just before graduation he left school to try acting professionally in New York.

"I had always wanted to express myself through words," he said in a 1957 interview. "But I always thought I was too big to be an actor. I could see myself knocking over tables. I thought acting was for little ... guys."

He made his Broadway debut in a comedy, "The Big Two," in which he had but one line, spoken in Russian, a language his parents spoke at home.

The play lasted only a few weeks, and he supported himself as a short-order cook, waiter, lifeguard and hot dog seller between other small roles in the theater.

His career breakthrough came when he was chosen as Anthony Quinn's understudy in the road company of "A Streetcar Named Desire," then replaced Marlon Brando in the Stanley Kowalski role on Broadway. The show's director, Elia Kazan, chose him in 1950 to play a murderer in "Panic in the Streets," which starred  Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas

LONDON - A 22-year-old man suffered internal injuries after lighting a small firecracker he had inserted into his buttocks, paramedics said Thursday.  

The incident took place Sunday, when Britain celebrated Bonfire Night, traditionally marked with fireworks to celebrate the Guy Fawkes' gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in the 17th century.

The man suffered burns and other unspecified internal injuries in the incident in Sunderland, 275 miles north of London.

Katherine Shenton, a spokeswoman for the North East Ambulance Service, said a caller had phoned in that the victim was bleeding after the firecracker exploded.

Several of the man's friends recorded the incident on a mobile phone. The blurry images show a man bent over with his pants down and a white flash as the firecracker explodes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061109/ap_on_fe_st/britain_fireworks_accident

*don't worry, it's a short article*

Two police officers in New Mexico have sued Burger King Corp., claiming they were served hamburgers that had been sprinkled with marijuana.

The lawsuit says Mark Landavazo and Henry Gabaldon, officers for the Isleta Pueblo tribal police, were in uniform and riding in a marked patrol car when they bought meals at the drive-through lane Oct. 8 of a Burger King restaurant in Los Lunas, N.M.

The officers ate about half of their burgers before discovering marijuana on the meat, the lawsuit said. They used a field test kit to confirm the substance was pot, then went to a hospital for medical evaluations.

"It gives a whole new meaning to the word 'Whopper,'" the officers' attorney, Sam Bregman, said Monday. "The idea that these hoodlums would put marijuana into a hamburger and therefore attempt to impair law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs is outrageous."

Three Burger King employees were arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and aggravated battery on an officer, a felony. They later were indicted.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in Bernalillo County, alleges personal injury, negligence, battery and violation of fair practices. It seeks unspecified damages along with legal costs.

Officials at Miami-based Burger King declined to comment, citing a company policy against discussing pending litigation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061105/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saddam_verdict

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

Jessamyn West

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony.

William Henry Channing

Such is how I aspire to live my life.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never judge beauty by the outside; the real treasure lies within. Simply because you are ignorant of something's true value doesn't make it worthless-it just means you haven't looked at it hard enough with true sincerity.