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I just searched for Gaga doing an acoustic set. Okay, she can play a tune on a piano and sing at the same time - not as easy as it sounds.
That is the limit I will accept. She has some musical ability, but her only real talent is being 'her'.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H
OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre
I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer
Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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BillWoodruff wrote: my first views of Lady Gaga's songs on YouTube left me as nauseated
I am a big fan. I love the way she marketed herself. I love her way to provoke, and I am fascinated by the way she manipulates all these people. I went to see her show when she was in France, and really enjoyed it. It was a complete crazy thing, and that's precisely what people need today, crazy things.
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More power to ya bro:' if you dig her thang !
I'm just a cranky old fart who can never get over seeing live:
1. The Grateful Dead at the Trips Festival, Longshoreman's Hall, 1966. I vaguely remember being part of a large group of people dancing, all of us holding up a twenty or thirty foot long cloth-stuffed python-snake like thing.
2. Jimi Hendrix at Winterland in SF, maybe 1968 or so, on a basically bare set flanked by two scrawny Englishmen on bass and drums, and behind him the famous "wall of Marshall amps." When he did Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," I, and many other people in the crowd around were crying.
3. Janis Joplin live at the Hell's Angels' anniversary bash at Fillmore (1967 ?). Also at the Tim Leary "event" in Berkeley (Janis and Big Brother and the Holding Company made a very strange follow-up to Leary's psychedelic ravings under a light show: 1966 ?).
4. The Who performing "Tommy" at (I think it was the Avalon Ballroom, but I'm not sure, might have been Fillmore West): that's where I am pretty sure I damaged my hearing since I was trance-dancing near a giant loud-speaker.
5. Other bands like Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, It's a Beautiful Day, Kaleidoscope, Captain Beefhart, Neil Young, Bob Dylan live, in the early days (1963) at Gerde's folk city in NY. Captain Hook and the Medicine Show.
6. Dylan on his first tour after he went electric, in Knoxville, Tennessee (date hazy, maybe 1964 ?).
Yeah, I'm a fossil, and I'll never get over those memories 
I do think Gaga's brand/icon/persona "total whatever" is much more "fun" than Madonna's schtick which I never related to, at all. But, then I think Cyndi Lauper was also a much more upbeat phenom.
But, each generation should have their own idols. And, the great music continues, because rock-and-roll is forever.
best, Bill
"Humans are amphibians ... half spirit and half animal ... as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation: the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” C.S. Lewis
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BillWoodruff wrote: I was delighted by it: my sense is that behind the vast marketing machinery that created and sustains the LG brand/icon,
It was my understanding that much of the public face of Gaga was approved by her.
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India is facing yet another increase in fuel price. It got doubled in almost 2 years of time. The best way the impact of that can be visualized by this picture
Batman's Commute[^]
I don't know who made this picture but it sure looks true as per our condition right now. I now feel so good that I sold my car and got myself a bike.
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Superman can't even do that any more, apparently. Scroll down a few folds[^].
... But there's something not quite convincing about a Superman with Asian features and a costume in the the wrong colours.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Rahul Rajat Singh wrote: India is facing yet another increase in fuel price.
Sounds a lot like here.
Signature construction in progress. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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You probably weren't born yet when the Arab oil embargo of 1973 occurred, but it was ugly. Overnight, gasoline prices went from $0.35 to $0.70 per US gallon, and we had to stand in line for hours to days to buy a tank of fuel. Gas stations couldn't get fuel to sell to us at any price, and I spent several nights sleeping in my car at school because there were no gas stations open in the entire county for me to buy enough fuel to get home. The excuse they used for raising the price was that we have to conserve because in 20 years, there will be no oil left in the world. Well, 1993 came and went, and we're still finding new sources of petroleum. What's the excuse for these prices now? And who's going to believe the lie du'jure? Today I filled the tank at $3.61 per gallon, and I'm glad that I found that bargain. But I question why I should consider that a bargain. Labor costs have doubled since then, and materials have also become more expensive; that I can deal with. But they haven't gone up enough to justify the prices we're paying today.
Still, we survived the attack, and so will India. It will take some time, and some adjustments in the quality of life, but you'll adapt to the new reality. Hang on; you'll make it, as we did and continue to do...
Will Rogers never met me.
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Last time I filled up (last week) I paid £1.349 per litre: that works out around $9.60 per gallon, most of which is UK taxes. So yes, I think you got a Elephanting bargain indeed!
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
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Until recently it was subsidised here, and Jordan barely has any oil.
Back in the day Saddam Hussein used to give Jordan petrol as a "gift".
A litre of unleaded is currently about 55p here. If it goes up it will be a disaster as everything is moved by car/van and there is proper third-world poverty.
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from one of my students. *ahhhhh*
--
It was a cool Tuesday evening in Brisbane - not by New Zealand
standards, but cold enough that there was no need for air-conditioning
at Hapkido. After a particularly informative Hapkido class, with an
ever increasing number of students, I left quickly (still in uniform) to
go pick up my wife. (and I have become bored of regaling about here...)
There are a couple of martial arts halls beside where I pick my wife up
so I decided to have a bit of a look at what one was doing while I
waited. I think it was some sort of kung-fu, but not entirely sure.
The instructor saw me and invited me it to see what they do in class.
He asked if I would like to join in for a bit, and I said that would be
good but I have to take it a bit easy as I have lung issues. He went
and got what seemed to be one of his senior students and told him to
show me what they do.
The next thing I know, punches were flying at my head. I managed to not
get hit but from the roundhouse punch I blocked along the side of my
head, they were not being pulled.
I stepped back a bit and looked at the instructor to see what was going
on and saw him nod at the student to continue. So the next punch I
parried while stepping to the side and followed up with an elbow to the
nose. The guy crumpled on the ground, so I turned and bowed to the
instructor and walked out.
--
hurray
Bryce
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Reminds me of the marketplace scene in "Raiders of the Lost Arc" where Indiana Jones is confronted with a warrior with a huge simitar. His opponent flips the simitar from hand to hand a few times, and Indy just shakes his head in disgust, and pulls out his revolver and blows him away.
I read somewhere that this was not in the script, but after 4 or 5 retakes, Indy did this and the other guy just immediately dropped dead (unrehearsed, must have been tired of the retakes himself). The producer looked at he result and decided to just leave it in. Don't know if this was true, but makes a good story.
Dave.
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The version I've heard was that Ford was really sick that day, and shooting him was the easiest way to get back to bed early.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Good on ya, lad! 
A couple of times, though I know it was discouraged by the instructor, I stopped by a local bar after class with a student or two for a cold one. It was, shall we say, interesting? The sight of a little guy wearing bright red pajamas tied by a black belt with two shiny gold stripes on each end is not something one expects to see in a bar, after all. But rather than the anticipated challenges I was leery of dealing with, it generated a lot of interesting conversation, especially when others learned my age. I even got a few interested enough to try out our classes!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Roger Wright wrote: it generated a lot of interesting conversation, especially when others learned my age
You really should try to avoid that kind of bar.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Martial Arts is full of morons who think Martial Art is all about acting though and the amount of damage they can inflict on others... 
... and then someone better and stronger comes along 
V.
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That may be true, but it wasn't my experience during 8 years of training in Taekwondo and Hapkido. We were taught to fight, to kill and maim if necessary to restore peace in a violent situation, but never to initiate violence. It's not for show, it's serious business. Yes, there are some schools that teach the wrong principles, but there are as many, or more, teaching correct moral philosophy. Taekwondo is considered one of the more vicious arts, yet its underlying principle is to stop violence by overwhelming force immediately applied, in order to keep the peace. Despite having earned 2nd degree black belts in both styles, I still have no idea how to start a fight; I only know how to stop one, rather decisively, if a fight happens to break out in my neighborhood.
I find that rather interesting, now that I think about it. Everything I was taught was defensive, countering and subduing an attack. No one ever taught me how to initiate an attack; I haven't a clue...
Will Rogers never met me.
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Roger Wright wrote: Despite having earned 2nd degree black belts in both styles, I still have no idea how to start a fight
Bollocks.
See? It's easy!
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Roger Wright wrote: No one ever taught me how to initiate an attack
It starts by you walking up to a stranger and informing them of the level of their mother's obesity.
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Roger Wright wrote: I still have no idea how to start a fight
It's quite easy actually;
- walk into a bar
- make a fist with 4 fingers, except the middle one
- wave the lonely finger around at everyone, and in a raised voice say: "to the lot of you!!"
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza
CP article: SmartPager - a Flickr-style pager control with go-to-page popup layer.
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Same here. I do Jiu-Jistsu for over 6 years now. The reason why we chose this club is due to its realistic nature and also the principles behind it. We learn to only use our knowledge if it cannot be avoided, else we just leave it. Eg. We train ourselves mentally to not get carried away over a "parking spot" issue. Being assertive is not the same as being aggressive.
V.
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Roger Wright wrote: I still have no idea how to start a fight;
This[^] might give you some ideas 
V.
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The Exorcist mini-series is coming [^] 
Steve
_________________
I C(++) therefore I am
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