Lucky

NeedSome, welcome to the forums. I look forward to reading your posts. I think we agree that many people who followed the rules were left holding the bag when the economy collapsed. You could put down 20%, invest more in improvements, make your payments, and then see it all lost when home values plummeted. That's my neighborhood. Hundreds if not thousands of people who bought at the wrong time, in retrospect. Sure, there were plenty that bought too much, and they seem to be really knowledgeable about how to avoid responsibility, but something has to be done for those who did follow all the rules. Many now are foreclosed, and foreclosed by companies that did not follow the rules: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/your-money/mortgages/09money.html?hpw What a mess this is going to make, and what happens to the housing market in the interim? And what's the value of following the rules anymore if you just end up the sucker who pays off for the rest?

The actual burger:

Seriously, Oz, sometimes you can give me the best laugh. If this is the consideration, then wait. Go to Rio as rested as you can. Get there on a Tuesday. The boys from 117 will also likely be rested too, and then the marathon can begin. PS- Charity might require you to take along a poor friend. I don't need first class, but economy plus would be nice. PPSS_ How do you go from Thailand to Brazil? Take a month in LA first? I find Brazil so intensely different from Thailand that it would take some adjustment to go from one to the other, at least right away.

From the San Diego Tribune: Taste is the main reason why his discriminating shoppers buy Mexican Coke – they say the cane sugar sweetener used in Mexican Coke has a sweeter, cleaner flavor than the high-fructose corn syrup in the American version. Many are willing to pay $1.10 per 12-ounce bottle for the imports, even with cans of American Coke sitting nearby for 49 cents each. "You drink it and taste it – it's something you tasted all your life," said Carvallo, referring to the many immigrants who prefer Mexican Coke. While the flavor of Mexican Coke provides a taste of nostalgia for immigrants hundreds of miles from home, its retro green-tinted contour glass bottles have also caught on among some baby boomers, who can recall a time when their cola was made with sugar – before rising costs drove U.S. bottlers to switch to corn syrup in the 1980s. With a niche market for Mexican Coke taking root in the United States, The Coca-Cola Co. and its bottlers are quietly looking to block its passage across the border. One reason the company wants to lower the profile of the drink in the United States is that bottlers here don't profit from sales of the import, which are produced by independent Mexican bottlers. Mexican Coke, brought in by third-party distributors and retailers, infringes on franchise territory rights of the U.S. plants. "We believe that those territory rights belong to the rightful bottlers," said Coke spokesman Mart Martin. The Coca-Cola bottled in Tijuana is made with sugar, and limited quantities of it show up north of the border from time to time at small neighborhood grocery stores, said Bob Phillips, spokesman for Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Southern California.

Good luck to all the dieters. I know it is hard because I can't do it either. When I stopped weightlifting a couple of years ago the pounds started going to the wrong places. I gained and lost 20, gained 15, and there I am. I love ice cream. It is my comfort food, and I could not go a day without a Mexican Coke. Last week on one of those tiny regional jets I made the mistake, or had no choice, but to take the window seat. Such small seats, and sure enough a 300 pound man sits next to me. He makes no concessions whatsoever for me. I am almost leaning out of the plane to make room for him. I think: it's a short flight. I have friends who weigh that much; how would I want them treated? So I shut up and take it, trying to read my book and hope the time passes. Then he reaches up to his light switch, with his elbow a half-inch from my nose. I say nothing. He does it again, and then I could no longer shut up. I told him that he had done nothing to accommodate me in this situation and perhaps next flight he should get two seats for himself. His response: "Well, alright then."

Zipperzone, I, for one, tried to let you know how much I liked your pics. My concern is for the conversation in the forum. Please do not go all EXPAT on us and quit because someone said something you didn't like. I like you too. For me, it's just a question of moderation. Nude guy pix are all over the internet. One can find them with ease. I never get tired of looking at them, but I do get tired of dead threads that go nowhere. The Gallery at the other site has been a huge hit, and we can make this too a win-win situation for our members.

Christopher Saikua Chambers RS Tower, 24 Fl., Ratchadapisek, Dindeang, Bangkok 10310 Thailand. Dear Sir/Madam, I am sending you this email and I believe you must have been getting something similar but still seems this is the only best way of communication apart from telephone conversation, but we cannot because there are Bad people in the world and will not recognize the good ones, so I advice you to settle down and read this mail comprehensively and you will know I am for REAL. Well, Barrister Christopher Saikua is my name, I was born in the City of Bangkok but I traveled sometime and I studied in UK , I am a Solicitor. I am the Personal legal representative to Late Mr. Steve Anderson, who used to work with SIAMRAK Company Limited in Bangkok Thailand. Something painful happened on the 21st September 2008, as Mr. Steve Anderson, was traveling from Phuket for a New Year holiday with his Wife and only Son Jerry, Unfortunately, while they were at along Ratchaburi Express Road, they had an accident and they all lost their lives in the event of the Accident. Since then, I have made several enquiries to your Embassy to locate any of my client's relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful. Subsequent to these several failed efforts, I strong-willed to unearth his associations over the Internet to locate any member of his family but for no avail, hence, I wanted to put the announcement on television or news paper but that will alert the bank knows that I don’t know any of his family member and then, they will have the chance to confiscate the fund just like that. Right now, I contacted you to assist in repatriating the Fund. This Bank has waited for me for more than one year now, So they issued me another notice to provide the Next of Kin to late Mr. Steve Anderson, who will claim the US$15 (Fifteen Million United States Dollars Only) in their custody within the next Fourteen official working days as the bank knows me very well, I do visit their office with Late Mr. Steve Anderson, so they all knows I and Mr. Steve Anderson, and they all know that I am his only Attorney and they believe I should know everything about him. Since, I have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for over more than one year now, I seek your consent to present you to claim the fund as the Next of Kin, to the deceased, so as to enable the Bank transfer the fund into your Account. Upon receipt of the fund, I will either give you an account from another bank where you will transfer my share to me or I will come over to your country to meet with you for the disbursement of the fund, and then you and I will share the money in this order: 60% will be for me, 40% will be for you. I have all the necessary legal documents that can back our claim we may make with the Bank. All I require is your honest co-operation to enable us seeing this deal through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a justified arrangement that will protect you from any Breach of the Law. Thanks, as I hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely Yours, Barrister Christopher Saikua.

Well, here is where the multitude of pictures posted on the site have some more practical value. These are pictures of young men, young men with hot bodies. Clearly, if you accept the above, these young men did not grow up on healthy Entemann products brought by horse to the Brooklyn bakeries. No, they eat foods made today with guar gum, and xantham gum and high fructose corn syrup, tons of sugar, Propylene Glycol Monoesters, Oat Fiber, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate...AND THEY STILL LOOK GOOD! So every time you see one of those hot young 'uns in a photo shoot, pop a pop'em or whatever they are called, and soon enough you too will look like photo material for Lurker and Zipper!

You know, I realize that the assumption in my thread is that it is the pix that are intruding on the conversations, and that may not be true. It does seem to be more of a gallery forum, but is that because those of us who like to talk are not doing so much of it nowadays? I don't know. The photos are secondary for me, but I know they are not to Zipperzone and Lurker Speaks. And they do find some hot shots. So how about those who like to gab doing more of it?

Would it not be cheaper to keep a dildo collection in each of your favorite ports, rather than lug them from one place to the next?

I guess I shouldn't revive this thread, but, as much as I like pix of hot guys, and as much as I think zipperzone has great taste (Lurker too), moderation isn't always bad. Would the photos hold more value to the viewer if there were less of them? Could we get more discussions going if that again became the focus of the forum? Let's face it, the conversations we were having in August that went to two pages aren't happening any more.

The song billionaire is also featured on the new album by Bruno Mars, mentioned here yesterday to a resounding thud.

HuffPost lets us in on a joke: UPDATE: An Obama administration official tells HuffPost that the White House has 'concerns' about the bill. Challenging foreclosures could become more difficult for homeowners if the president signs a bill that passed through the Senate last week. The little-noticed bill comes at a time when the validity of foreclosure proceedings across the nation have been called into question. The House passed the bill in April, and its brisk journey through the Senate has drawn scant attention, Reuters reports. If signed into law, it would require courts to accept certain documents that have been notarized out of state, streamlining foreclosure proceedings and stripping homeowners of one legal method of challenging a foreclosure. The legislation would come just as a foreclosure validity crisis is mounting: GMAC, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have admitted to not properly reviewing some of their foreclosure documents. The foreclosure controversies that have emerged in recent weeks throw doubts on the larger foreclosure system. A non-bank entity, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, has been initiating foreclosures, the Washington Post reports, exercising an authority that judges have ruled it does not have. In response to the mounting scandal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on Tuesday for an investigation into foreclosure fraud. "This is a very big deal," she told HuffPost. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner told Reuters the timing of the bill's passage was "suspicious," implying that mortgage companies might have engaged in behind-the-scenes lobbying.

Remember back in the days when you could believe that people in business and government knew what they were doing? The mess in foreclosure documentation is just astounding: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100607227.html?hpid=topnews

...and you live where? Get a grip, if Trent Lott could fuck Benjamin Nicholas and no one cared, why would they care where Boehner gets his stick dipped?

Beck is a joke. The man is so paranoid he can't go anywhere for fear of getting shot. He wears a bullet proof vest in public. His viewership at FOX is down by almost one million people...every night!

The White House denies it, so it must be true. What would Hillary add as vice-president? Would she help get DADT abolished? Personaly I think that Biden is more liberal than she is.

It's not everyday, or even every year, that a singer comes along who interests me. My taste in music seems to have stopped growing when I was about 30. But yesterday, online, and today in the print edition, the NY Times features singer Bruno Mars, 24, and, of course, it was his cute face that got my attention. But then I watched and listened to the video on is website, with the song Just the Way You Are. the graphics are great, and his voice is like butter. Sure, he is singing to a girl, but one can imagine differently. I do it all the time! So, go to www.brunomars.com and take a look for yourself. (Sadly, like Paris Hilton, Bruno got picked up in Vegas recently for cocaine possession. Damn I hate that drug.)

Yes, I guess they did. With Brazil becoming a more affluent society, I hope that education also improves. That's always been good for gays...hasn't it?

So we are now defined by pink? I thought pink was for breast cancer. Here's another view. I am not saying that it is mine: Forget the Hype - Brazil Is No Gay Paradise Brazzil, Commentary, Luke McLeod-Roberts, Posted: Jun 25, 2005 Review it on NewsTrust Cramped in a tiny office above Rio de Janeiro's central train station, I am having trouble hearing Yone Lindgren amidst the ringing telephones, conversations between the staff, and the construction workers hammering away at the flimsy partition walls that enclose CERCONVIDH- Brazil's first ever referral center for victims of homophobic violence and discrimination. Lindgren is coordinator of this team of 10 dedicated people who give their time, energy and financial resources to make sure that Rio's gay men, women and transgender people are able to pursue their rights as citizens as fully as possible. "We do the work the government doesn't," she says. The program runs a helpline for victims of homophobic abuse, refers victims to psychological and medical specialists and follows through with the legal aspects of their cases. The volunteers also hold fundraising events to ensure that they can continue to provide this service. The service could not be more urgent. National and international human rights organizations such as the Gay Group of Bahia, Global Justice, Amnesty International and the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights' Commission consistently identify Brazil as a gross offender of homosexual rights, where hatred leads to torture and over 100 murders are reported in the national press each year. These figures may just be the tip of the iceberg of homophobic violence in Brazil. Many cases never come to light because families do not wish their dead relative's sexuality to be exposed; and the everyday violence LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people suffer is wider and more nuanced than those sensationalist accounts reported by the Brazilian press. According to a study released this week, based on a survey at last year's Rio gay pride march by a coalition of LGBT activists from the Arco Iris NGO, and academics at the Cândido Mendes (UCAM) and Rio State University (UERJ), 64 percent of LGBT people in Rio de Janeiro have suffered some form of discrimination because of their sexual identity. This includes acts as diverse as bullying at school or in the workplace, threats and name-calling from strangers and, as often occurs with trans (transgendered) people, denial of access to public or semi-public spaces such as shops and bars. Similar statistics are expected when the findings of a survey carried out in São Paulo are made public. Rio, and its larger neighbor, are home to some of Latin America's most vibrant LGBT cultures. Last month's gay pride parade in São Paulo brought together two million people, who chanted and danced for over 12 hours on the Avenida Paulista, the city's main thoroughfare, making it the largest gay pride event in the history of humanity. Today the march along the beachfront in Copacabana, Rio, expects some 600,000 participants. These cities, and other state capitals, such as Salvador and Curitiba, are the base of extremely well-organized movements. Anti-discrimination laws and equal work-related benefits for homosexual and heterosexual partners embedded in municipal and state codes, are the result of their campaigning. The proposal for same-sex civil union in the federal chamber in Brasília, the Brazilian capital, would not have reached that stage without the relentless activism of such groups. "There has been an explosion of acceptance here in Brazil recently," says Silvia Ramos of UCAM, pointing to mainstream media indicators such as the landslide victory of an openly gay man in the Brazilian version of Big Brother and gay characters in prime-time soap operas, such as Globo TV's America. "But we don't know whether the guy that beats up a gay is the same one that claims to "have gay friends," or if we are dealing with a society that is split between tolerance and intolerance." That intolerance jars with the popular image that Brazilians hold of themselves and export to other countries – a vibrant and happy country where anything goes, the land of what Brazilian anthropologist Roberto da Matta has referred to as "o homem cordial" (the cordial man). For Sandra Carvalho of the Rio office of Global Justice, this cordiality is a myth. "Brazil is a violent country in terms of interpersonal relations," she says. And the violence is often highly ambiguous: "The police that kill the poor and the black living in the favela (shanty-town) often come from poor, black families in the favela themselves." Any policy that seeks to deal with the crisis of homophobic violence in Brazil then, must not only confront multiple types of verbal and physical violence that scourge the lives of LGBT people, but also, as Ramos argues, take this contradiction or ambiguity around acceptance as its point of departure. But for some members of the LGBT communities, there may not be any ambiguity over societal tolerance in the first place. "We're a joke for the Brazilian society," says Hanah Suzart, President of ASTRA-Rio, the association of transgendered people, which concentrates on STD prevention and building self-esteem in the trans community. To highlight the point, she talks of the "elbow effect": the daily humiliation trans suffer in the shop, the bank or the doctor's surgery, when onlookers nudge each other and comment indiscreetly. The image of Rio as paradise, with the travesti as its ultimate symbol of carnavalesque transgression is a "utopia," according to Suzart. Instead it is "conservative, homophobic, prejudiced and elitist," with a (state) government that "will take us back to the era of the inquisition." Activists see the state government as representing "evangelicals" who don't prioritize LGBT concerns. They have a closer relationship with the federal and municipal governments, the latter of which is supporting the city's pride march. The federal government, for its part, has formed an alliance with LGBT NGOs nationwide by supporting the program Brasil sem Homofobia (BsH) (Brazil without Homophobia). Launched last year, the program aims to train LGBT activists, incorporate material on homosexuals into school curricula and support referral centers in order to overcome homophobia. But some people doubt whether the program, which may look good on paper, will ever become a reality. "The funds were supposed to have been coming for the last five years. The problem is that the federal government made a recommendation and said "faz quem quiser" (whoever wants to do it, go ahead). But local governments don't want to." Luke McLeod-Roberts is a journalist who is in Rio de Janeiro carrying out research for his MA dissertation on strategies to combat homophobic violence in Rio.

Any form of fudge packing should be safe, according to former Prez candidate Mitt Romney.

Who would dare put Lucky in his place?

Some chick is trying to get her 15 minutes of fame by saying she had sex with The Situation. Rather than a one-night stand, she calls it a few minute stand since he didn't last long. And when she talks about his size, well, pinky is the word that comes to her mind. Now it's true that for all his tight clothing one never sees a bulge, but so what? It's not like we will be invited over anyway. My guess is that this girl just got pissed because he didn't call her back! Yes, I read that here: http://poponthepop.com/2010/09/mike-sorrentino-the-situation-has-a-small-penis/

Maybe we could get a good NAMBLA fight going...