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I wonder if the meal shown on the front of the tin has EVER happened in the actual world. A Spam burrito spilling over with fresh veggies?

I suppose it's less depressing than what people are really doing with Spam.

A surfer friend of mine told me that folks are MAD for Spam on Guam.

Dorky as it sounds, I love the empty fullness of silence.

And sadly, I am forced to miss it, because I have some pretty bad inner-ear damage from antibiotics, so I have tinnitus which has gotten steadily louder and [span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"]louder [/span]over the years.

You never get to a point where you can tune it out, unfortunately. And I remember very clearly the sound of nothingness, and miss it.

Some nights the only thing that keeps me from wishing I was deaf is that I wouldn't get to hear any of the good noises either, the ones about which I was speaking earlier.

Hissing sounds (like tap water), crowd mumbling, and music are nearly intolerable to me.

[Ever seen Bullshit?]

tenkani wrote:
[div style="font-style: italic;"]Ever seen Bullshit? [/div] Love that show. Loooooooove it. Sometimes painful to have one's Sacred Cows messed with, but the difference between science and faith is that science can go, "Ah. New evidence shows that we were wrong. Back to the drawing board, guys." and under the same circumstances, faith gets all indignant and crabby.

Proof. Proof, proof, proof!

[a target="_blank" title="http://cheekysquirrel.net/squirrelname/" href="http://cheekysquirrel.net/squirrelname/"]http://cheekysquirrel.net/squirrelname/[/a]

Discover your  true squirrel  name! Funny.

Rain hitting almost anything.
The wafer-thin pages of dictionaries being turned.
Train whistles far away.
Church bells far away. (Though I don't like churches, or organized religion in general. It's just one of those things, I guess...)
The click of various latches shutting all the way.
The cry that newborns have for the first few weeks.
Tire chains on a newly snowy street, that nice squeak/crunch/jingle.
And I know I SHOULD hate it, because it may eventually kill her, but the sound of my mother smoking has always been strangely comforting. I would never tell her this.

 Reading the posts on this thread made me strangely wistful. I guess because I wish I could say I was something other than American, wish I could feel like part of something as cool as Canada. I'm a little envious. The way things are in the world, the way things are in this country, it's damned embarrassing to say you're an American. I feel like even saying the words "I am an American" is like coming to the sandbox and pissing into it, laughing.

The whole image of Americans is arrogant, ignorant, fat consumers. As an introvert, I'm uncomfortable being part of the whole country. When I saw the headline of that European newspaper the day after the last election here, it said, "How can 53% of all Americans be so STUPID?" and I almost cried. When people here wanted to start calling French fries "Freedom Fries," I wrote a letter to the French embassy, apologizing. "We're not all morons, I swear!"

It's strange. I like people as individuals, and isn't a country just made up of individuals? Yet, as a united body, I loathe my fellow citizens. I'm not quite sure how to feel about this.

 Save the Naked Mole-Rats!
Um... anyone?

Just kidding, I don't think they're even endangered. Plus I feel they're one of those animals that are SO hideous that they go all the way around the block and back to cute. Like Boston Terriers. Or Reese Witherspoon.

Good Times wrote:
[span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]Definitions of [/span][b style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]lurid[/b][span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"] on the Web[/span][br style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]
I know, I know! I was as contrived in my artless "eccentricity" as only a 24-year-old can be.

I'm just lucky it wasn't even sillier. It would have been epiphany or palindrome or zephyr, for crying out loud! Ay yi yi...

[span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]Medical debt is no longer legal grounds to file bankruptcy in the United States.[/span]

I thought there was a special kind of bankruptcy just for medical stuff, Section-Something-or-Other. Did those bastard Republicans eliminate it? Jesus Jumping Christ on a Pogo Stick. No socialized medicine, prescription costs through the roof, and now this?

And just as an aside, because it gets on my nerves: My stupid medical insurance won't pay for sterilization for either my husband or myself, even though I have had heart surgery and another pregnancy might be outrageously complicated and expensive. They would rather pay for that than a $300 vasectomy.

Know why? Religion! Providence Health Plan is run by Catholics. Grrrr.

(No, I'm not down on anyone's religion. They just shouldn't mix it with my health care.)

 While I doubt he shot someone in the face as a red herring, all the focus on the incident may be a magician's misdirection. Sort of like when Bush decided to make the whole "partial-birth abortion" thing a giant to-do so he could sound like a decent guy when everyone was hating on him.

I mean, it's sort of like saying, "I firmly disapprove of stomping puppies to death..." because if anyone says, "Hey, why all the talk about puppies? Are you trying to evade the real issues at hand?" then everyone can point fingers and say, "Puppy-stomper! Puppy-stomper!"

 I have a poet friend who likes to ask people for 5 of their favorite words, then try to write a poem using them. It always makes something pretty neat.

I love the feel of certain words in my mouth the way I love the texture of certain foods. When I was a teenager, I loved the words maelstrom, whimsy, and vector.

Right now I really dig the word chrome. I don't choose them because of what they mean, just how they feel in the mouth.

I was so fond of the sound of the word lurid in my 20s that I legally changed my last name to it for about 18 months. I was kinda goofy.

 It's a pity that natural selection doesn't work faster. The biggest idiots generally manage to crank out a few kids long before they do something fatally stupid.

Then again, I suppose nature only cares whether or not we reproduce, not whether or not we're smart or kind. Dumb doesn't count against you in the same way when you're a species with an average lifespan of 76 years. And fertility is such a crapshoot.

 I have to wonder: Might it not be the case that rather than Americans having been more decent and fair back in the Good Old Days, we were simply more invested in that image, promoted it more rigorously, and still been a fresh and idealistic enough populace to buy it?

America is a VERY young country. Like any pioneering endeavor, we came out of the gate full of big dreams, firmly believing in our noble intentions, our moral high ground, the wind snapping in our sails and our caps at a jaunty angle, so to speak. But ultimately, the country is not run by ideals, it is run by people. And people do not always do the right thing.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not a misanthrope or a pessimist. Like Anne Frank, I believe that people are basically good. But right from the start, there were some people who fought dirty in order to win. Remember smallpox blankets? We're no different now. I think it may just be the case that in the "information age," it is harder to hide our bad behavior.

Sportsdude wrote:
[div style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"]Instead if they should have it as what your ancestory background is. [/div]
Why even bother? That's just another, more specific way of pigeonholing. And can most people even classify what they are, succinctly enough to fit it on one line? I would be Irish-Italian-Czech-English-Indian-German, plus probably a bunch of stuff I've forgotten. When will we finally start "classifying" people, if we MUST do it at all, by something for which they are responsible?

Being into your race, or even being into your ancestry (like guys I know who super-identify with their Scottish or Irish or whatever "heritage"), is just a cop-out for losers, a way of feeling special for something that is an accident of birth. If you have no notable qualities as a person, I suppose it's something to fall back on.

Mind you, I DON'T mean to say that it's a loser quality to be into and uphold your family's cultural traditions. If you come from a big Greek family or whatever, the food and the music and the language is part of your identity, and that's great.

I'm talking about acting like your genetic material is some sort of personal accomplishment of which to be "proud."

Attorney wrote:
[span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"]The law firm of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe stand ready to represent you against the mind-polluting actions of the recklessly negligent Band-Aid corporation. We will prove to the court that you, as our client, have clearly suffered irreversible emotional trauma[/span][br style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"][br style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"]Can you also represent me for the Syd & Marty Krofft-related nightmares? Since 1975 I have recurring nightmares about that talking flute running after me.

What would Freud say!

Seamonsters... brrrrrrrr.