Madame Butterfly

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Posts posted by Madame Butterfly


  1. Ok, here's something my friends and I have been having heated discussions about.

     

    Mommy.

     

    Should any spouse EXPECT at some time that when they get married it's them and the mother.

     

    That in marrying, they also marry the mother.

     

     

    Now, I don't mean that families merge. That's an obvious.

     

    What I mean is that Mom is expected right from the start to move in with you and live with you.

     

    The women seem to be of the mind "NEVER", while the men seem to vary.

     

    So I thought I'd like to see what you all think.

     

    BTW- in this scenerio, the Mom isn't old.

     

    She's lively, vivacious, and works. She can support herself, and has her own interests.

     

    She isn't elderly. She isn't poor. She isn't anything that would make it necessary to determine if she goes into a nursing home, or move in with family.


  2. I think the guys a freak.

     

    That's the last possible thing to do in a situation.

     

    Yeah, I do think Prom has gotten out of hand, but it's the parents who play the keeping up with the Joneses, so therefore, something needed to be done at a different level.

     

    LOL, someone at another board asked if this guy had ever seen Footloose.


  3. I apolgize in advance for this rant, but based on MB's story I MUST rant.

    Click For Spoiler
    First I am a Cardinals fan.  And a White Sox fan.  Orginially from downstate (western) Illinois.

     

    In my callow college youth I forsook the Cardinals one year to root on the Cubs. It was 1969!  Year of the Miracle Mets, but also the incredible choking Cubs.  I learned my lesson!  While it is admirable to be loyal to a team, I've had it with the Cubs.  They draw huge crowds every year and make millions for the owners, both from the loyalty of their fans and from the fact that Wrigley Field is a destination ballpark and tourist highlight of Chicago.

     

    If the Cubs were on a level playing field with other teams - modern ballpark, etc., people would be forced to judge them by their performance.  While they've had some good years,  the last couple have been embarrassing imo.  Corky Sosa, ballplayers and management running announcers out of town because their brand of honesty didn't sit well with some players (most of which are no longer with the team), management unloading on Sosa when he left the ballpark early instead of handling it in-house, poor execution on the field, etc....  IMO, if this ballclub were anywhere else they would not be the darlings of their city but the goats.

     

    Again I apologize to Cub fans and others if I've insulted them.  I do appreciate team loyalty, but I also appreciate good baseball and the Cubs are just not producing that right now, so it angers me when the Cubs continue to prosper with bad baseball.  It also makes me MAD when "FANS" put down a good ballclub who is having a great year and who are giving their city some much needed positive exposure!

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    Doesn't bother me Trekz.

     

    You see I grew up in Michigan, home of the incredible choking University of Michigan Wolverine Football team. No matter what their ranking, they always muck it up.

     

    Yet, I love the school and the team. I will always be a fan.

     

    The same is said for the Cubs.

     

    Just as there are different teams, there are different fans.

     

    Neither one of us is more right than the other, it's just a reflection of who we are. :P :P


  4. I live outside Chicago.

     

    I'm a Cubs fan.

     

    When the Sox were playing the Angels the other night, apparently some people thought the Sox had made a good play while eating at a bar from the roar of the noise of "fans' in the other room.

     

    They got up from their chairs, walked into see the replay, and it was actually the Angels who had made the play.

     

    The bar was full of Cubs fans, cheering on the Angels. :P


  5. Well I don't think it's a dying holiday, because the retailers know that Halloween decorations are closing in on Christmas decorations here in the states.

     

    I live on a street that was mostly seniors when I moved in, and now that they are heading to warmer climates or passing away, younger families are moving in.

     

    It's definitely busier on Halloween now, but in our town trick or treating begins at 4pm, which means alot of people who work don't get to see the littles if they go out early.

     

    I generally turn off the porch light about 7 pm, because that's when the kids who just want the candy and put no effort into their costume come about.


  6. Wondering what kind of naughtyness.. Wonders if its about Sawyer

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    Sawyer? :frusty: Who is Sawyer? B)

     

    Someone had started a thread on our website that had pictures of what this individual thought we all looked like.

     

    So we began returning the favor, with slight extreme honesty to it, because we played up one anothers faults.

     

    Then we got a tad out of control mocking those on the site we'd orginally came from that just got on our nerves.

     

    One photo still makes me laugh everytime I look at it. B)


  7. I don't know him from "The Wiz" at all. I never watched it. I remember Nipsey Russell mainly from the Dean Martin show and numerous game shows that he used to appear on.

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    I don't remember the Dean Martin show but I do remember him from the old Hollywood Squares


  8. Well I was wrong, he was born here, was raised in Canada. :frusty: That's what I get for being a know it all. B)

     

    Born in Massachusetts, the son of actor John Bennett Perry, his parents divorced when he was still a baby. His mother got full custody and moved Perry to Ottawa, Canada, where she worked as a political assistant (years later, Perry's mother would work as a press secretary for prime minister Pierre Trudeau). As a youth, Perry was an extremely talented tennis player and was once ranked third in Canada's doubles competition. At the same time, the teenaged Perry was interested in acting and had been appearing in school productions since he was 13. At age 15, he relocated to L.A. to join his father, in hopes of becoming both a tennis pro and a working actor. However, in 1984, Perry suffered a devastating loss during a major tennis event and decided that he would have more success as an actor. Shortly after the fateful sporting match, he debuted on an episode of the sitcom Charles in Charge


  9. Sep. 27, 2005 23:01 | Updated Sep. 28, 2005 1:31

    First Temple-era seal discovered

    By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

     

     

    A First-Temple period seal has been discovered amidst piles of rubble from Jerusalem's Temple Mount, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday, in what could prove to be an historic find.

     

    The small - less than 1 cm - seal impression, or bulla, discovered Tuesday by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay amidst piles of rubble from the Temple Mount would mark the first time that an written artifact was found from the Temple Mount dating back to the First Temple period.

     

    The 2,600 year old artifact, with three lines in ancient Hebrew, was discovered amidst piles of rubble discarded by the Islamic Wakf that Barkay and a team of young archaeologists and volunteers are sifting

    through on the grounds of a Jerusalem national park.

     

    The seal, which predates the destruction of the First Jewish temple in 586 BCE, was presented Tuesday night to the press at an archaeological conference at the City of David sponsored by the right-wing Elad organization.

     

    Barkay said that the find was the first of its kind from the time of King David.

     

    He has not yet determined what the writing is on the seal, although three Hebrew letters -- thought to be the name of its owner -- are visible on one of its line.

     

    The seal was found amidst thousands of tons of rubble discarded by Wakf officials at city garbage dumps six years ago, following the Islamic Trust's unilateral construction of an mosque at an underground compound of the Temple Mount known as the Solomon's

    Stables.

     

    After the Antiquities Authority voiced disinterest in thoroughly sifting through the rubble discarded by the Wakf, Barkay applied -- and eventually received –a license from the Antiquities Authority to sort through the piles of earth thrown into the garbage dump in search of antiquities, and has since found scores of history-rich artifacts, from the First Temple Period until today amidst the rubble, including a large amount of pottery dating from the Bronze Ages through modern times, a large segment of a marble pillar's shaft, and over 100 ancient coins, among them several from the Hasmonean Dynasty.

     

    While inexact, the ongoing sifting project, which is now being sponsored by Elad, has being called virtually unprecedented since archaeological excavation has never been permitted on the Temple Mount itself.

     

    Meanwhile, in a separate major archaeological development in Jerusalem, a Jewish ritual bath, or mikva, dating back to the Second Temple period, and a First Temple Wall have been found in an underground chamber adjacent to the Western Wall tunnels, the Antiquities Authority's Jerusalem regional archaeologist Jon Seligman said during a tour.

     

    The site is part of a new state-of-the-art tourist center at the Western Wall tunnels, which will be open to the public in two months' time.

     

    The impressive site, which incorporates ancient and modern Jewish history in an attempt to reach out to Israeli youth, includes an elaborate audiovisual show, and nine magnificent glass sculptures, which serve to highlight both recent discoveries of artifacts and infrastructure dating back thousands of years, including one of the world's oldest aqueducts, as well as modern day Jewish history, such as the Holocaust and Israel's fallen soldiers.


  10. Has ‘Odyssey’ hero’s land been found?

    Amateur archaeologist identifies site of ancient Ithaca

     

    Robert Bittlestone

     

     

    Updated: 1:03 p.m. ET Sept. 30, 2005

    LONDON - Homer’s legendary hero Odysseus wandered for 10 years in search of his island kingdom, Ithaca. Now, a British amateur archaeologist claims to have ended the ancient quest to locate the land described in “The Odyssey.”

     

    Although the western Greek island of Ithaki is generally accepted as the Homeric site, scholars have long been troubled by a mismatch between its location and geography and those of the Ithaca described by Ancient Greece’s greatest poet.

     

    Robert Bittlestone, a management consultant, said Thursday that the peninsula of Paliki on the Ionian island of Cephallonia, near Ithaki, was the most likely location for Odysseus’ homeland. He said geological and historic evidence suggested that Paliki used to form a separate island before earthquakes and landslides filled in a narrow sea channel dividing it from Cephallonia.

     

     

     

    “Other theories have assumed that the landscape today is the same as in the Bronze Age, and that Homer perhaps didn’t know the landscape very well,” Bittlestone told a central London news conference. “But what if the mismatch was because the geography has in fact changed?”

     

    Academics back theory

    Two eminent British academics said they backed Bittlestone’s theory. They have co-written his book, “Odysseus Unbound — The Search for Homer’s Ithaca.”

     

    James Diggle, a professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, said the hypothesis worked because it explained why in one passage Homer describes Ithaca as “low-lying” and “towards dusk” — that is, lying to the west of a group of islands including Cephallonia and Zakynthos.

     

    The Paliki peninsula is largely flat and connects to Cephallonia’s west coast, whereas Ithaki is mountainous and lies to the east. Bittlestone’s theory suggests that Ithaki corresponds to the island Homer calls Doulichion.

     

    “I have never for once doubted that the theory is right, because it explains all the details,” Diggle told The Associated Press.

     

    Truth or fiction?

    Diggle also said suggestions that Homer had invented the places he wrote about were largely discredited after 19th-century German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered what is widely believed to be the site of the ancient city of Troy — the location for Homer’s “Iliad.”

     

     

     

    John Underhill, an Edinburgh University professor of stratigraphy, or the science of studying the layers of rocks in the Earth’s crust, provided geological evidence supporting Bittlestone’s theory — up to a point.

     

    Underhill said it was certain earthquake activity had caused Paliki to rise some 19 feet (6 meters) out of the sea. There also was clear evidence that a canopy of rock debris resulting from landslides lay across the narrow strip of land connecting Paliki to Cephallonia.

     

    However, further research was needed to determine whether the layer of rock debris was deep enough to have filled in any sea channel, and whether the landslides would have occurred recently enough to support Bittlestone’s theory, Underhill said. He wanted to test sediments in a dried-up lake on the landfill area. If they were older than 3,000 years, that would suggest the area was not underwater at the Homeric period — thus disproving Bittlestone’s hypothesis.

     

    “Further work is needed, but from the geological fieldwork to date, nothing refutes this theory so far,” Underhill told the news conference.

     

    Other theories have been floated

    Although Ithaki has generally been accepted as the site of Homer’s Ithaca, other theories have proposed Cephallonia and another nearby island, Lefcada, as possible sites.

     

    Traces of small Mycenaean settlements have been located on Ithaki, but nothing big that could be associated with the palatial structure one would expect as the seat of a Mycenaean king such as Odysseus — known in Latin as Ulysses. However, a cave on Ithaki yielded a votive offering with the inscription “My vow to Odysseus.” This indicates the Homeric king was the object of a local hero-cult.

     

    Cephallonia also has traces of Mycenaean settlement, and the local museum displays a remarkable collection of finds from Mycenaean cemeteries.

     

    “Odysseus Unbound” is to be published in Britain on Oct. 6 by Cambridge University Press.