'In the future I plan on taking more of an active role in the decisions I make'.

Well said, Paris.

I love Paris Hilton.
There, right before my eyes is a woman living the kind of life the nuns warned us about, and who has not yet been struck down by God in His anger.

Who knows, if I had her money, and her looks, and her empty brain cells,that I might not be doing the same thing myself.

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If you read argosfalcon's last blog you will see why.
Any assistance would be gratefully received.
I think you have my email address if you wish to discuss this.
Thanks.

shadows

This diet is good for all you folk out there who are big-boned like I am.
I am rather good at making up diets and had a lot of success with a particular diet many years ago.
It was the big red apple,cashew nut and chocolate mint biscuit diet.The biscuits are the ones dipped in chocolate.
I think it covered all the basic food groups and it made me happy.What more can you ask from a diet.
Unfortunatly the diet came to rather a sticky end.
It was the year 1985 and we were having the coldest winter in Brisbane for 100 years or something.
We even had sleet where I lived near South Brisbane.
On this particular night I went to bed with my packet of chocolate mint biscuits and turned down the electric blanket while I settled in for a nice treat and a good book.
I went to sleep and the packet of chocolate biscuits somehow moved down to my chest.
I awoke many hours later with melted chocolate all over me.I thought it was something else and panicked.
As you would.

The pizza diet is thus....

Take a flat bread,whatever you call it.
Cover liberally with a salsa of tomato, onion and garlic.
Sprinkle heavily with mozarella cheese.
Slice capsicum finely over it.
Grate a heap of feta over it.
Slice up a big heap of black olives and sprinkle on top.
Then you can slice very thinly a shallot if you like.
My shallots are about as big as a leek so I didn't.

Bake for as long as it takes, about half an hour in a hot oven,not fan-forced but convection.

Delicious!

Now on Saturdays I can make 5 or 6 of these, whatever number of flat breads there are in the packet.
That's nearly one for every day.
And I might mention that with the salsa,fry it lightly before you put it on the flat bread.
You can add basil to this mix or whatever you like.

This is my vegetarian pizza.I tend to lean to vegetarian pizzas because I don't eat the processed meat that comes on meat pizzas.

I haven't made up any more pizza recipes yet but when I do I will let you know.

Questions.....

Do you lose weight on it, and are there naked people involved?
The answers are no for the first one.
And no for the second one.

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I am stunned!

I don't care about his sexuality.Heck I don't care about anyone's sexuality.I mean look at what's been written about Hugh Hefner.
He can take it though, he's an adult.

Eric Cartman is 8 years old and already a video has been shown on the net of him dressed in Britney Spears' type clothes and dancing to one of her songs.

The kid is 8 years old.

Give him a break already, he probably doesn't even know his sexuality yet.He is probably just experimenting with girl's clothes like all you boys out there dressed in your mama's clothes when you were kids.

You didn't?

Well I did.

And I finally arrived at my own sexuality.

Leave the Cartman kid alone.

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This is for Colette.

Colette mentioned in a comment that she had felt the mattress on her bed depress as if someone sat on it.
Yes, I know this sensation.
I have been woken in the night when sleeping alone because I felt that a heavy person had sat on the bed beside me.A few minutes later I experienced the sensation of a person rising from the bed and the mattress returning to its normal position.
I can't say I have seen it but I have felt it.

Right from the start I want to make it clear that I am not talking evil beings here.
I don't believe in evil beings except for those who deliberately set out to harm others.
So this is not about devils or possession, it is about sensations the body or the mind becomes aware of.

I have also had the strong feeling of someone touching me on the arm or the neck.This has happened a few times and is so convincing that I have looked for the person who did it but could not find anyone.Sometimes I have felt that I was slapped and it is quite a shock.
Along with this I have also heard voices.Hearing voices is not always a sign of a delusional mind, or so say the scientists now.They say it can happen to anyone.
This has been rare for me but it has happened.I have never been able to understand what the voice is saying, just that a quick statement in English was yelled in my ear.And this was when I was totally alone.

People also see people who are not there, who are dead or are in another country.I know someone who twice had the experience of having someone who is dead come to him with information he could not possibly have received.In the first case because he had no contact with his own country for many years before or after, due to political circumstances.In the second it was affirmed within 3
weeks.
His third experience was of someone who was alive and in need of help.
I actually witnessed this one happen.
He had been lightly dozing in a chair, and had woken and looked around.Suddenly his gaze stopped in a direction in front of him and he recoiled as if he couldn't believe his eyes.Then he looked at me, and looked back at the image in front of him.
About 30 seconds later he said to me 'Where is she? Where did she go?'.
Then he told me whom he had seen standing in front of him.

I have my own theory about these particular visits he receives.They have all occurred after he has woken from a nap, In the case of the first two when he has woken at 5am and being unable to sleep properly he has fallen maybe into a meditational state.In the last one, after he had been napping in the day.

Maybe it is possible that we enter parallel universes when these events occur.Maybe that's why people see ghosts.
I saw twice an old man with long hair who walked around my old house in the country and my daughter regularly saw him by the old-fashioned wood-burning stove.
All my children saw a little girl in a blue dress so regularly that it bacame a family joke that when something was missing it had been taken by the little girl.
A little girl had been scalded to death in that house by boiling water from a stove like our's.Her mother then had the stove removed and we replaced it with another when we bought the house.

Strange things happened in that house but I lived there for a couple of years alone and was afraid of nothing.Nothing inside the house that is, outside the house was another matter.

When we first bought the house here,I experienced the sense of someone walking through the front door at night and walking up to me where I was sitting at the computer and stopping behind me.It was so real that I would put my hand up to take the hand of my partner whom I thought had walked in and stood behind me.It became a case of sometimes he would be there and sometimes he wouldn't, and I would just marvel.This stopped after about 2 years.
(I have always had poor peripheral vision folks).

Terry White, the gentleman who wrote a book on ghosts that I mentioned here previously told me that whatever these things are, they often copy the actions and sounds of the people living in the house.He is so right.That's what was happening.

The thing that really does get me interested though,and I wouldn't say scared as I tend not to be the scared type, is when the animals react to something I cannot see.
I would be interested to hear if any of you TDG people have had the experience of having your dogs suddenly go to a part of the room and,in opposite positions growl fierce and low,their shackles rising on their backs.
It does not happen here in this house very often but it happened just now, which made me remember.
Sometimes they stay that way for minutes, and act like they are trying to prevent something entering their space, which is the room.
The parrot also does it, but not as much as another parrot did years ago in the old house.Most nights at a certain time he would look at the corner of the living room and start screaming, raising his feathers on his head in anger.
If we moved him away he would look over his shoulder and continue screaming until whatever threatened him had gone.I wondered if he heard birds far away, but he seemed to be focusing on an area over my head in the room near the doorway.

When I lost Captain a few months back,the people who found him were returning him to me, and before their car pulled up in front of my house, the dogs went crazy.They knew he was back.I kept telling them to be quiet, and I looked out the front door and there was a car just slowing down.

I have never seen anything that looks like a ghost is supposed to look.The only thing I have seen is the old man and he looked normal to me, but long-haired and wearing a white night-gown.My mother and brother used to see an old Chinese man wearing a coolie hat walk past the window at night.Her house was built on a former Chinese market garden.It was funny to watch them as they would both suddenly say,'There he goes'.I always felt that they could see into other dimensions I knew nothing of, and I believe they did.
Sometimes I think we are very lucky when there happens a little glitch in the matrix and we are allowed a brief glimpse of what else there is in the universe.I can understand why the ancient people believed that these were gods they saw when that glitch happened in their presence.
But I can't be afraid of it,it all feels perfectly normal to me.
Has anyone ever heard of a ghost coming to harm a livng person? I would be very interested in your stories.

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Do you know of anyone in particular who has been doing naked rain dances almost nightly in your area?
No of course you don't.
So please send your dollar by PayPal to this website or to me care of Greg.
(Preferably to me because I can't count).
I just can't help it, I dance naked and it rains.
And sorry folks who want me to travel to exotic places to dance naked for them.
I'm a PATRIOT, and I only dance here.
(Where I can't be seen).

shadows

goes a long way.

One of the best writers to come out of Australia is Michael Leunig with his poignant yet funny outpourings of love and pain.
I have most of his books.

Rustle Crow

Rustle crow, rustle crow
How you make the cockles glow
As you rustle to and fro
In my lonely garden.

And I know,and I know
Its a blessing you bestow
As you rustle soft and low
In my lonely garden.

It is so, it is so,
All the world is full of woe,
Yet the angels come and go
In my lonely garden.

..............................................................

Ian Thorpe I am not
Yet there's something I have got
Which gives a man a better chance,
Ian Thorpe underpants!

They're navy blue.They're fantastic!
With Ian's name on the elastic.
I hitch them up to indicate
That Thorpie is my closest mate.

If I fall beneath a bus,
At least I know there'll be a fuss;
In Casualty they'll sing and dance.
'Ian Thorpe underpants'

.......................................................

Colin Powell has had it tough
And now he says he's had enough.
He's going back to private life
The house, the garden, and the wife.
The golden memories returning
Of Baghdad and its children burning.
How nice to see a man retire
And put his feet up by the fire.

.........................................................

In a Strange but True section.

The Invasion of Iraq was where....

The most memorable war cries were produced by the media,

And the most memorable photographs were produced by the soldiers.

.........................................................

You can fool some of the people all of the time,and you can fool all of the people some of the time.
But you only need to fool a majority of the people for one day every few years......

And you've got a democracy!!!!

.................................................................

Little boy...Father,what's the difference between a bad guy and a good guy?
Father...A bad guy cuts your head off and a good guy blows your head off.

....................................................................

I love him.There are heaps more so if anyone want any more I will put them in.

Thanks to Michael Leunig for use of the poems.

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The founder of America's Moral Majority has died.I have to wonder if he went to Heaven or Hell.

I betcha all the gays out there are celebrating.If you want to celebrate boys and girls come to my house and I will celebrate with you.

Just imagine someone setting out his morals for the country to follow.
And imagine the conservative Christians following them.
Makes you think.

Well bye Jerry.You took up more space than you were worth with your hate-filled declarations of moral standards for others.
I hope I see you on the other side.
Not!

shadows

This is the story of eight men and one women who attempted to smuggle cocaine into Indonesia and the price they are to pay for being caught.
Because as I think Anthony North wrote, it is only a sin if you are found out.

For those of you who don't know about it, that is if you are not Australian, it would pay to find out, because not only are Australians in custody in Indonesia and other Asian countries facing the death sentence and life in prison, but many people from the US and Britain and I am sure other countries are represented there as well.The sentences for carrying and smuggling drugs are much higher there than in European countries.

I had my own opinions on this story but after reading One Way Ticket by Cindy Wockner and Madonna King, my opinions are now shaded with the facts.

On 17th April 2005 police at Garuda Airport arrested a number of people with cocaine strapped to their bodies and later arrested others who were charged with master-minding the crime.
To everyone's amazement this occurred only about 6 months after Schapelle Corby was sentenced to life imprisonment for trying to bring marihuana into the country.
Had they not learnt a lesson?
How stupied were they to go ahead with such a flagrant case of civil disobedience?
No one will ever know of course why people do what they do, but one factor in the case that is pointed out in the book struck me as very confusing.

Every single member of the Bali 9 as they came to be called, had at least one parent who loved them dearly.
This strikes me as very odd.

We are led to believe that it is the unloved, the indigent, the shabbily treated who commit these sort of crimes.
But no-where did I see any evidence of this sort of treatment for these young criminals.
Some went to private schools,some didn't, some appeared to be getting on with their lives, some were obviously struggling, but all of them had someone in their lives who loved them and whom they could love.
This is a very important factor.I know this from personal experience.

So I will never understand why they all chose to follow this path and on the part of the drug mules, for what I consider chicken-feed.
It would take a hell of a lot more money than $5000 for me to even consider smuggling drugs and everyone knows I think drug taking should be de-criminalised.

I am very sad that in the case of Scott Rush his life sentence was up-graded to a death sentence when he appealed which does happen in Indonesia.
Scott was a drug addict and had a number of convictions for theft.A warrant was issued for his arrest for his non-appearance in court on the day he left Australia.He had already decided the road he would follow.And it was his father who notified a friend who called the AFP that he was going to Bali.
The AFP already knew that there was a drug-smuggling ring operating out of Bali and even knew who some of them were, and I suppose it suited their purpose to allow Scott to continue to carry out the crime rather than stop him leaving the country as his father had asked.
I am not prepared to blame the AFP as others have,and as I did previously that they targeted Scott.Had Scott been stopped that time from leaving the country it appears with his record that he would have made another attempt another time.

My pity though is all for the parents.I abhor the death penalty and have worked for many years against it.I also abhor life imprisonment and believe in second chances.
I believe that with education these people could serve a useful purpose in the community.I am not advocating that they be released back into it, just that they be allowed to serve it.
I do not believe that the Indonesian Government will see fit to allow these Australians to work for society in payment for their crime,which means the death sentences will be carried out.
But I would ask them to re-consider on the grounds of the abject stupidity of the people concerned.

I would also like to beg the pardon of the Indonesian Government for the rudeness of the Australians in question when being dealt with in court.
When you are caught with pounds of powdered cocaine strapped to your body and photographs are taken and given to the media and you appear in court I think it is just too cute to say that you didn't know what you were carrying.
It is also rude and disparaging to the judges and court officials for you to say that you had no idea why you were in Bali.
If that were my child in that situation, I would be more ashamed of the attitude he had to the officials in Indonesia, implying that they had no idea of what a proper country was like, than I would have been of the crime itself.

I feel like saying....How dare you go to another country and embarrass me like that!
Yes I think Indonesian laws are harsh on drug traffickers but it isn't as if they don't let you know about them.Huge warnings are posted everywhere to tell tourists what awaits them if they are found with drugs or smuggling drugs.
Not only did these nine young people take the decision to smuggle drugs, their attitude to the court was one of contempt for those in whose country they had done the deed.
Asians are inherently polite, and these Australians showed them very plainly that Australians aren't.

Australians should appeal to their members of Parliament to force the Federal Government to ask for clemency for these young idiots.
Idiots who not only ruined their own lives, but took any chance of happiness away from their parents.

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I saw an interview on CNN the other day where a supposed expert on guns stated that the reason the person in question was able to murder so many people at Virgnia Tech was because none of his classmates were allowed to carry weapons.
Now there's a thought.
If students at the collegs had been allowed to attend lessons armed and Cho had come in and pointed a gun at someone, he would have been shot dead in an instant, saving many lives.
Well not all that many lives I suppose, when you realise that with all the flying bullets quite a few would have been killed by accident.
But then I guess it must be easier to grieve over someone shot by accident in a justified shoot-out than someone cold-bloodedly gunned down by a maniac.
You could then have called it Gunfight at the OK Campus.
I am heartily in favour of this idea of allowing, nay, insisting, that everyone carry guns.
We in Australia with the proud record, yet to be broken by a gun-happy USA, of the most deaths at any one time caused by a maniac with guns, should take comfort at the idea that there may be a solution to these shoot-em-ups.

The solution is arming the innocents.When you teach your toddler to throw a ball, give him also a plastic gun which he can learn to wear in his diaper.It will get him ready for the heavier more bulkier items he will need to get used to in later years.
Give him shooting lessons along with learning to ride his trike, and as he gets older teach him to draw and shoot on the run.
(Oh you already do? Well done!)
Get him used to a variety of weapons but I believe the weapon of choice should be a small pistol which can be secreted on his person.
As the child grows older the State would play its part in arming the citizins and provide competitions at Play Group and later, Kindergarten for these wee ones.
By the time the child is confronted with Big School he would be a crack shot, and able to handle his weapon with confidence.
By university,there would be no challenges to him and his armaments.

Maybe we cannot save the world, but we can save people from being gunned down in a work place or a campus, a primary school or a recreation park, a post office or doctor's surgery, just by arming the innocents.

I can see the day when the State will voluntarily arm everyone, from cradle to grave, which by then will probably be a very short run,but we will be the better for it.

Don't ban guns!
Make more guns!
Arm the innocents!
Heck, arm everyone!
But remember to be careful of the maniacs.

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