Good dog, Cujo! Also, you know that mutt drops a log the size of a baguette at least twice a day and it practically takes a snow shovel to fling it into the neighbor's yard.

I use to have a tragically retarded Cocker Spaniel (and, to note, there is no other variety of that breed) and it was like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, only with dogshit. At least three times a day, this golden-furred, floppy ear'd mongrel would scarf down a can of Alpo, a cup of kibble and whatever food was left lying on the table -- the same table the cat always got smacked for climbing on, but the dog ... ohhh, no! It's CUTE when the dog does it! -- then make a beeline to the back lawn where it'd crap Mt. Everest. I'd have to trudge out the the back yard, shovel in hand, while the guy next door shot me the stink-eye because he was tired of fishing dog turds out of his swimming pool every day during the summer. This task is odious enough, but it's a thousand times worse when you're stoned and it's a million degrees out and you'd much rather be floating on your waterbed listening to Dark Side of the Moon in headphones while blissful AC-cooled air wafts over your twice-weekly washed body and not fighting your way through a black fog of Horseflies to reach a 1:1 scale model of Mt. Doom made entirely of a too-quickly digested overpriced slurry of meat scraps and offal that the canners couldn't fob off on Mexico.

It might not have been as bad as all that, but in my hazy recollection, it was pretty darned close.

I'm not sure why I told you all this, to be perfectly honest, but I did. So there.

You're wrong.
@bobknight33 is not a Russian Troll.

Unless that troll has severe mood swings or something.

It seems more like multiple trolls are using the account. I remember a time when he could spell most words in English correctly, for instance. His arguments were much angrier then too. Now he's more laid back about it. He doesn't seem like he's angry, just that he's got a job to do, but at the same time the spelling and some of the grammar went down hill.

So much cynicism in these comments.

Has it dawned on anyone that maybe, just maybe there may have been a gentleman, such as myself, that happened to have a canoe and offered it to the woman so as to help keep her dry and safe during her report?

I'm sure visibility and unfamiliarity with the area could have made it difficult to navigate possible curbs, potholes, electric eels and alligators.

Offering a canoe to a woman would be the equivalent of throwing your coat over a puddle so the lady could cross the street and not soil her spike heels.

How do any of you ever expect to get laid!?

Chivalry is dead.

Squirrels are stupidly determined little fuckers when it comes to nuts.

I used to have a bar fridge out on my patio and one day, I threw a bag of peanuts into it because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, the next day I came out onto the patio and the fridge door was open and the nuts were gone. The little bastards actually chewed through the soft magnetic strip holding the door closed and managed to get the door open and abscond with my hard-earned nuts.

I got even, 'tho -- kinda.

On the corner of our block, we had this big green thing that was a cover for some pretty high voltage stuff underneath. I threw some peanuts under the gap between the cover and the ground and waited. Sure's shit, here comes one cocky fucking squirrel lookin' to score my nuts. Under the cover he goes then --FLASH!! -- BOOM!! -- victory over squirrels! Only he took the power out for the entire block and the surge fried my brand-new Pentium Pro computer. Oh, and one of my neighbors narced me off to PG&E who were none-too-happy with my brilliantly-laid trap and my erstwhile vengeance over genus Sciurus.

I know a lot of people would ask me, "Well, what did you learn from all this?", to which I'd reply, "Not a damned thing."

If it gets him laid, I'd say technically both.

Made me think of this.

Commander Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, M.D. : Spock, this "child" is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do? Spank it?

Commander Spock: It knows only that it needs, Commander. But, like so many of us... it does not know what.
---------------------

Commander Spock: V'Ger must evolve. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve. What it requires of its god, doctor, is the answer to its question, "Is there nothing more"?

Commander Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, M.D.: What more is there than the universe, Spock?

Commander Willard Decker: Other dimensions. Higher levels of being.

Commander Spock: The existence of which cannot be proven logically. Therefore, V'Ger is incapable of believing in them.

Captain James T. Kirk: What it needs in order to evolve... is a human quality. Our capacity to leap beyond logic.

Commander Willard Decker: And joining with its creator might accomplish that.

Commander Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, M.D.: You mean this machine wants to physically join with a human? Is that possible?

Commander Willard Decker: Let's find out.
----------------------------------

So, basically... V'ger needed to get laid?

I dig his style but I prefer a more laid back approach.
http://i.imgur.com/9rPi5I8.jpg

It's an offensive against Jewish people around the world that anti-Zionist somehow came to equal anti-Semitic. You can be against a political policies of a nation without being against the citizens who people her.

As a side note, it never ceases to amaze me that a literal century later, we're still paying for the sins of World War 1.

(I mention WW1 specifically because of the Balfour Declaration, which laid the seeds for the founding of modern-day Israel. It was signed during the Great War in order to influence Jews to rally to the Allies against the Central Powers, and other geopolitical reasons around the Suez Canal.)

Mostly the trouble depends on where you work and how publicly you make your statement. I'd mostly get called a racist, but working for a partially publicly funded place if I was vocal enough losing your job or being told to apologise and be quiet are real possibilities.

The not allowed to talk about it applies much more heavily to anyone in the media. A recent example would be an aboriginal man that was recently shot by a white farmer. The narrative on the national CBC media made a big deal about rampant racism in the region against aboriginals. In their coverage of local opinion it was even more one sided, as they described two sides, the grieving family of the deceased and their supporters, and then the racists who sided with the farmer because they hated aboriginal people. They very slowly, reluctantly and buried deep under a lot of disclaimers released more information on the case.

The young man that was killed was in a truck with 4 of his friends, and their story was that they got a flat tire and pulled into the yard to seek help with repairs. The CBC ran that much right away. They were much more reluctant to include that the RCMP had been called BEFORE the truck got onto that farm because they had been trying to steal a truck from a neighbouring farm already beforehand. It wasn't until during the trial that even more came out, and CBC again reluctantly included details from the friends that where with the victim. All the occupants of the vehicle had been drinking very heavily all afternoon. They admitted to 'checking cars' at the earlier neighbouring farm. They admitted to using the butt end of a rifle to try and break the windows of the truck at the neighbouring farm, but the stock broke off the gun. It was found at the neighbouring farm by police. Upon arriving at the final farm, they admitted trying to start up an ATV and going through and unlocked vehicle there as well, but disagreed on who was doing which. The trial even included text messages from the night before wondering if one of the friends would be able to "go on missions" tomorrow because they were hiding from police after a liquor store robbery. The farmer also mentioned being scared about what could happen the day of the shooting because he thought back to a story he'd been told about 2 farmers being killed on their yards a few years before he'd moved into the area. Only 1 media outlet in the country, and in 1 article checked out that the identity of one of those killers back then turned out to be the victims uncle. I had to go back looking for the original article from when those murders took place to be sure that the current news article wasn't just sensationalising things.

Now of course none of that means you want to see somebody getting killed over property theft. None of that means racism in any way shape or form is justified. However, when there was a rampant run of rural crime across the area and farmers were getting more and more fed up and nervous about their safety something bad was eventually going to happen. It's a tragedy, but our media was absolutely terrified of covering the full story because listing the facts I just laid out is considered racist. Your blaming the victim. My listing of the above facts is not supposed to be done without including many times more explanations and reasons that this was the white man's fault.

Ultimately, the absolute failure to talk openly about things in Canada is getting people killed. We absolutely need to be clear that stealing doesn't deserve a death penalty. We ALSO need to tell a group of young adults that were going farm to farm, with a loaded rifle, raging drunk, stealing and breaking into vehicles that doing that was a BAD idea and one of the reasons is that doing so might get you shot by someone that doesn't know if your going to hurt them or not. I really believe if the kids had been white that would have been the narrative, but because of race it wasn't. It just makes things worse and inspires more risky and dangerous decisions from people in the future and more people will continue to get hurt.

You do understand that employment rates are fake numbers for real employment right?

"In general, anyone who reports working for pay — even just an hour — during the previous week is considered employed.
Anyone who was laid off or actively looked for work (sending out résumés, responding to help-wanted ads) during the previous four weeks, regardless of any government benefits received, is considered unemployed. People who are not looking — this includes millions of students enrolled in college, plenty of parents who are happy to stay home with young children and millions more retirees — are not counted in the labor force."

So people who manage to work for one hour in a pay period because they're desperate with mouths to feed, and even works below minimum wage, they're counted as employed. This includes all part-time workers who can't afford to even pay rent. Even if these people are actively looking for full time employment but can't get it because it doesn't exist.

These numbers don't tell us anything about what's really going on.

So if 100,000 people loose their jobs and they all are able to replace their 40/hours wk. living wage with 12 hours a week working at McDonalds, then they are not counted as lost jobs.

Anyone who has lost their job, and has had to go back for retraining of any kind, often putting themselves years in debt, are also not considered unemployed.

This is called lying with statistics. Learn some economics.

It's not a freeway (motorway), it's an A road; they're laid out differently. Laybys like that are really common.

Yeah Canadians, the most laid back, relaxed people on earth!

I think exurb1a got laid.

No, making the argument that one is not as bad as the other isn't the same as making excuses. It's exactly what he said, they're both unacceptable, and he's trying to define the spectrum.

I have a touch more time, so let me go back to your first example.
Yes, if some dude broke my leg, yes I would appreciate that they didn't murder me.

Obviously, I don't want either thing to happen, but justice is about assigning degrees of a spectrum to an infinite number of variables of what is decidedly wrong. Please admit, it's at least imprecise to have a one-size-fits-all justice system.

I won't repeat the examples already given that should have laid bare the problems equating what should be corrected gingerly vs using a heavy hand, but I want to reiterate that they ring true for me.

NSFW warning:

I've had bad dates where I've been made to feel awkward. Believe it or not, I've been in a sexual encounter where I've been forced to hmmm... finish... inside a girl when I didn't want to. We had been together a short time and she was ENAMORED with me, and I felt 'meh' about her. (don't put your dick in crazy)

Long story short, I'm strict about using birth control so I'm not making kids when I don't want to. Although, in the heat of the moment, I'm not above a tried and true pulling out for lack of a better option. This had been the plan going into the sexual encounter, but when I let out a warning about a climax, instead of helping me push her off, she pushed her hands against my shoulders and clamped her thighs onto me. I objected "wait!!! no!!!" but not being a fucking Buddhist monk with complete control over every muscle in my body, well, you can imagine where it went from there.


Shortly thereafter, she started asking me what I thought about this or that baby name and it became clearer what she was really after. (yes really)

I waited for confirmation that she wasn't pregnant and we broke up immediately after, because of that and a general disinterest that I had towards her as a person.

That was when I was ehh? 19? idk, somewhere around there. More than 10 years ago at least.

But I digress, did what she did feel a little 'rape-y' to me? I said no, It was something we talked about beforehand, setting up parameters, etc. but it ended up just being a bad experience. Because of that bad experience I never really talked to her again. She does some kind of work in 3d printing now last I checked.

I don't think it's crazy to not want her to lose her job, and not want to file criminal charges against her, --- and this is key --- because even though something happened that was non consensual, I don't consider what happened rape, and I would NEVER equate what happened to me to what happened to all of Weinstein's victims because they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Neither one was okay, and one is worse than the other.