Quote by techgoddess

I have a garage...with a door...that opens automatically. I would love to open it!

I have a garage...with a working side-by-side fridge and freezer. By my side you would never be a freezer!

I have a garage...with shelves and hooks and a place for all our stuff. We have a place to stuff my stuff!

I have a garage...with an electronic bike lift to keep our bikes up off the ground. With you I am never on the ground!

I have...normalcy back in my life for the first time since September 26, 2024. (16 MONTHS AND ONE DAY) Normalcy is overrated! : j

ALL DRINKS ON MY TAB FOR THE REST OF THE DAY! 🍷🍺☕️😎😊❤️

You just inspired me…

Pleased to meet you David! I’m Matt. That guy with no arms and no legs laying on the floor as opposed to Art the guy with no arms and legs hanging on the wall…

Attended Catholic school in upstate New York USA complete with trying to look up the nuns’ skirts (more properly their habits).

The three ‘R’s were definitely a thing!

Voluptuousness caused writers to pause.

Thanks wxt. I am forewarned. Must go … kitchen beacons <<coffee>>. Caio for now!

Pappy was Jim Beam’s vice president of sales during USA prohibition. He kept the distillery going by selling to priests and monks of the Catholic Church who needed to buy alcohol in order to have wine to say Mass..

My favorite is bourbon

Thank you James for the warm welcome and lay of the land!

Quote from James
So – first drink's on the house. What's your poison, person?

Since you’re buying, and I can’t afford this anymore…

Quote by techgoddess

We are going fridge shopping after lunch. Need to find a good dented or scratched one for my garage.

I have a Sears Kenmore garage refrigerator that has lasted 30 years. I thought I would look them up to perhaps make a recommendation for you. Of course Sears is out of business. Probably because they made such a good product.. What shocked me is that at Home Depot garage refrigerators cost about $1000. Wow. I hope you are successful in finding one that is good and affordable.

Johnny Holmes. ; )

I love you. That is so well said!

Quote by noll
If there's anything we must accept then it is that we're a social species, that we're in it together, and that we need other organisms for our survival, and so we depend on their survival too.

Totally agree.

So why are people polarized if the underlying principals are agreed? I cannot say anything more because I may have had a whiskey or whisky. Love to you all. I may or may not explain further after I sober up. I am being beckoning to bed and cannot keep her waiting too long (I'm not that good after all!!)

For me there is: a) what you know and b) what you KNOW. When I hold you in my arms, that may be what I know - and it may be at an ice cream parlor, or at a dance, or wherever. When I am writing it is what you made me feel that causes the eroticism for me. That is what I know, from what you made me feel, not the ice cream parlor where I spilled coffee on your shorts. (I am a bit of a klutz by the way)

Everything everyone has said resonates, most especially Mandapanda’s quote from Mark Twain to write what we know. Our true experiences in life enable us to make characters who are believable and I think believable characters in hot situations are the most exciting. For me, imagination and reality woven together are the best.

Quote by RavenSinclair

I do a mix of both. My first few stories were based in fact and spun into fiction. And then I gave one a try that was pure fiction. But the majority of my stories I have in draft were all based on real experiences and then completely embellished.

Yes inspired by the folks on this website, tomorrow I will submit a story that follows Raven’s formula of real and completely embellished. Thanks to all for the inspiration. (even if my story sucks)

Quote by noll

Unfortunately Capitalism, and especially the US-version of it, has turned into some religion of egocentrism, greed and exploitation.

Agreed

Capitalism is a system for the allocation of goods and services, like Communism, or Socialism or Name-your-ism.

So … if we move it back one step - whatever created the reality in which we find ourselves - it is a place where we are all forced to be killers and/or takers.

With the exceptions of water and mother’s milk, in order to live, we must kill something to eat it or we will die. It was an evil entity that created our reality 😒. Even if we wait for fruit to fall from the tree before we eat it, we are depriving the seed of that fruit from becoming the next generation of that organism. We must accept that we are killers or takers and move on.

Will we be as polarized if we accept the reality to which we have been condemned, ignore the brainwashing our governments are subjecting us to, and listen to each other, recognizing that we all kill other life forms in order to survive?

No one can claim moral superiority. Let us all listen to each other and ignore the government’s and media’s attempts to divide us.

Quote by PrincessC

That’s all well and good but change is policy-led in a democracy so like, it does matter who it is. Obviously.

Ignoring political praxis and corporate interests for personality politics and lip-service is exactly how you got here.

You make a great observation!

I agree that change can be policy-led, and other factors can also lead to change.

I also agree that we should pay attention to the actions of political and corporate interests, lest we allow ourselves to be manipulated by them.

When you say “how you got here”, am I correct to assume that when you say “got here” you mean “here” to be our current polarized state (i.e. liberals and conservatives with rigid ideologies, with each not really interested in understanding the other side)?

Woodstock was a seminal moment and I wasn’t there. I did attend a regional Chicagoland wannabe festival. In our innocence, we believed that love would be stronger than anything else. We may have underestimated the power of greed and lots of government cash.

I watched as one-by-one of my Chicagoland manufacturing clients lost their businesses and livelihoods to their clients outsourcing their tasks to China. Welders, pattern-makers, and mold-makers, were outsourced to China. All that was left were immigrant assembly-line workers whose only skill was to put part A with part B for minimum wage. I don’t care who does it. The outsourcing of American jobs and wealth must stop. Someone has to support and promote American workers.

I want people to evaluate our leaders by their actions, not by what some newsreader tells them reality is. If Biden did something good that helped American workers, we should support it. Likewise, if Trump does something that helps American workers, we should support it. A political party should be irrelevant when evaluating outcomes of actions. We need to evaluate facts not regurgitate polemical rhetoric fed to us by others .

Critical thinking is a skill that seems to be disappearing.

Sorry for soapboxing🤓

When the British Empire was always in the sunshine somewhere in the world they were a small island with a tiny population compared to Queen Victoria’s Empire. How did they control the colonies with their tiny military?

Technology and polarization were key. Their navy was supreme. And they kept indigenous colonial peoples fighting amongst themselves. Keep us fighting ourselves and we won’t notice them taking our freedoms.

I hesitate to say anything due to the amount of name-calling (a form of bullying that squelches examination of alternative views), as opposed to analysis, I see in this Forum topic. I hope that I am not bullied and that alternate life views are listened to with tolerance.

Consider some facts as reported by The Wall Street Journal and MSN and consider if it is reasonable that Maria Machado may feel grateful to the people, and the Trump Administration, who helped her.

“The Trump administration reportedly aided Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado in her secret travel from Venezuela to Norway for the award ceremony in Oslo.…

“Leaving her location on Monday, she first managed to get through 10 military checkpoints undetected, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the operation.

“She next headed to Curaçao on Tuesday. Her path through the Caribbean Sea was flanked with danger in waters ripe with attacks from the Trump administration in recent weeks. The Journal reported that the group helping Machado reached out to the U.S. military so it would not strike her boat. In addition to Machado, two people were on board the fishing skiff that skipped across the sea after a two-month planning process….

“Using flight-tracking data, the Journal reported a pair of U.S. Navy F-18s flew into the Gulf of Venezuela and circled in the air for approximately 40 minutes, coinciding with Machado’s travel.  …

“In Curaçao, she joined a private contractor supplied by the Trump administration who specializes in extractions to get her to Oslo, the Journal reported.”

The present-day you has a wisdom, poise and grace that only years of living can bestow. Your photos of you as a young model show a beautiful heart-stopping girl. For my taste I find the woman she has become, as shown in this photo, to be an exquisite more heart-stopping beauty!

Ancient Astronaut Theory!