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I didn't really plan it, but I guess I'm here another month.
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Mar 1, 2012 2:28 pm
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As I'm still here, I decided to browse the people in my state. There aren't many I'm "compatible" with, I guess. No surprise there. Most of those who I am "compatible" with haven't been here in more than three months.
What kinda' boggles my mind is the number of people here for flings. Sure, flings can be fun, but you might as well go to Craigslist for those. And you get more and faster replies on Craigslist.
I suppose it could be argued one would have a hard time finding a D/s thing on Craigslist, but who knows? I've never personally tried it.
The thing is, I don't understand why people aren't looking for long term relationships here. Forty bucks a month is an awful lot to pay "just to find flings."
Hell, I've heard it said if I really wanted flings, I'd be better off putting my forty bucks a month in to weekly visits at adult theaters. I'd show up, lift up my skirt, and my naked ass would get so many flings in an evening I'd have to crawl home!
I've never tried that, but I'm sorely tempted to. It's just that I don't like going out alone. Too many scary things can happen to a person when they're away from their loved ones.
Not that having a loved one there is any protection against scary things, but if they survive the event, at least they know what happened to you. Even if it may give them nightmares for life.
That goes in the other direction, too. If I know what happened to a loved one, I feel better about it. I don't worry so much. It's not knowing that's the hard part.
In any event, getting flings on Craigslist is too much work. Getting flings here would be too much work, too. Getting flings in general is too much work.
Paying $40.00 a month to get flings? Not only is it too much work, it's also ungodly expensive, too! The money can be put to much better use, and there are no-cost ways to get flings that don't involve some kind of fancy dating logarithm.
It would seem to me one would only pay $40.00 a month to try to find a long term relationship.
And let's face it: We all pay who are really looking on this site. There's no point in advertising ourselves here if we don't expect to communicate and meet up with someone. Those other people? They're not really looking.
And those people who haven't visited in three months or more? They should either close or hide their accounts.
There should be some thing the people who operate this site can do to make it easier for us who are actively looking to find each other, too.
A few things come to mind.
Let us only look for people who have visited in, say, the last week or so.
Let us look for people who match our "compatibility" thing more.
Allow us to use a crude search first, then refine it, eliminating more and more people until we reach a point where there's only a few left.
I doubt any of these changes will occur. I would not be surprised if this is essentially the same Alt.Com I visited way back in 2007.
The curse of trying to find someone ...
I only managed to find my spouse by shear luck. We were both list operators on a now defunct "mailing list" (Yahoo! Group) service, and we were both bitching about their poor service (this was during the "shutting down" phase of their operations).
I am very fortunate and blessed to have met her that way. But meeting people online now ... it's a very real challenge.
Perhaps the internet's too vast these days. Like Second Life, you can explore the internet for months or years and hardly see another soul.
Or you can go to places that are wildly popular, but where most people there are only interested in one tiny little part of you. World of Warcraft comes to mind.
Where did all the good places to meet dirty kinky people who are willing to try to build long term relationships go internet?
I know these days, people claim meeting people on the internet is dangerous. They worry that some anonymous person who does not even know their name is going to come to their house with a giant meat cleaver, hack them to pieces, and disappear in to the night with the police scratching their heads with no clue on who did it.
But that's not what I was warned against growing up.
I was warned against meeting someone in a bar while I was so drunk I couldn't tell which way was up, making the bad decision to go home with him because I heard he had a really big meat cleaver to show me, getting hacked to pieces and buried in the back yard, with the police scratching their heads with no clue as to what even happened to me.
At least on the internet, we can talk, get to know each other, and decide if we like each other before giving someone else even our real names.
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Modding 18 WoS:AML Map
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Feb 26, 2012 8:26 am
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I've always loved the truck driving simulations. This might be because I really really really really would love driving the trucks in real life. In spite of my many limitations, I believe this is one field I could excel in.
Of course, given my mistakes, it would be at least five years before I could even give it a go, but to be honest, I'd prefer to do it with my own truck. While the past two years have shown I could get started in as few as fifteen years, the fact remains in fifteen years, I believe I'd be really too old to enjoy it. This estimate includes the bare minimum it would take to save enough money to go to school, buy a decent, old truck, and save enough money for at least a few months operation.
As I can not enjoy this career in real life, I turn to simulations. And the best game I've found for it is 18 Wheels of Steel: American Long Haul.
The graphics are a bit dated, but the game still looks pretty good. What's more, the game comes with a built-in map editor, although there are a few caveats to using it.
The game has a few minor flaws. For example, it does not take in to account the full expenses of driving truck, and it's pay rates for various cargos is a bit odd. The game is, if you do some research on it, pretty easy to play and "win," as it is. But I suspect if you're playing the game, the easy "win" only enables the real pleasure of the game: Simply driving the trucks.
While some of the game's flaws are code-based, some are map based, and others are a combination of the two.
A code based bug that occurs from time to time include watching other truck trailers flying all over the place as the AI trucks make turns entirely too quickly. Another is the tendency of AI vehicles to run smack in to you at random when you're driving in traffic.
I can not effect those bugs.
A map based bug I found, and which you'll find many people complaining about, is getting flagged for not making a required stop while driving through El Paso. Through the map editor, I figured out the problem was the highway went too close to a border crossing, triggering the requirement to stop there. And this is where my modifications come in.
I moved the errant highway away from the border crossing. Problem solved.
Of course, moving a highway in the game is only marginally easier than doing it in real life. I ended up changing a very long bridge in to a highway built on a fill, with a short span over a single road. The span required bridge piers and other various items.
Moving the road also required changing the landscape around the new right of way, and I had to do something with the area the road previously ran through as there was now this big gaping hole in the scenery where it used to be.
18 Wheels of Steel: American Long Haul is setup to operate like a model railroad. While there is a certain amount of "scale modeling," much of the landscape is "selectively compressed," and what is left is constructed to give the feel of an area, rather than as a brick-for-brick representation of it.
The selective compression yields a time-compression ratio of about 1:60, or one minute equals one hour. This is very important in the way the game plays, but more on that later.
Also, like a model railroad, the selective compression is partially achieved by "scene modeling," that is, by designing the map so you are driving through a series of scenes instead of a long, accurately modeled right-of-way. This has two effects on the map, commonly seen in models.
The map was built with a certain perspective in mind. So there are vast expanses of the map that simply aren't there. This isn't a problem since you are only intended to drive through the finished parts of the map.
The map that is there, when you look at it with the editor, appears to have items strewn all over the place. Again, this is not a problem, as much of the model in this case relies on another technique called "forced perspective."
Forced perspective is where you use different scale-sized items to to give the illusion of depth. This is done by starting with a large scale object in the front, then going progressively through the scales, down, to the back. So the biggest scale is in front, the smallest in back. The idea is to make a one foot space look like it's six feet deep, and it usually works.
One thing they do in the game map is use "cut planes," which are essentially "blinds" between scenes. It allows you to build scenes close together that, if you could see from one to the other, it would ruin the immersion in the scene. The cut plane blocks the other scene from being visible. Real life modelers use boards painted as sky or backdrop to achieve the same end.
So after moving the highway, which involved moving and editing all of these elements, I decided to take on an ambitious project.
I really like the game, and it has a "hard" mode. Which, given the aforementioned advantages the game gives you (odd payments for cargo delivery and low operating costs), I've found I really like the added challenge.
However, "hard" mode has a serious problem that is both code and mapped base.
As I mentioned above, there is a clock in the game. It's a pretty basic clock that runs through twenty four hours, and the only other thing that changes is the day of the week. I think it counts four weeks as a "month," which is slightly inaccurate, but I'm not going to complain. After all, there are no proper "dates" per say.
The clock runs at a rate of one second of game time equals one minute of real time. This only works because the model is so finely tuned to match up pretty well with the truck, although it can cause some absurdities in parking the trailers.
You sometimes have to park the trailers. In some cases, it can take half an hour to do so. As the game counts that as thirty minutes, it can account for two to four days game time. And that's assuming you have a sleeper on your cab. It can be considerably longer without one.
But this is not why I bring this up.
In "hard" mode, the truck you start with does not have a sleeper. This means you have to sleep in hotels, raising your expenses and making the run a little bit more exciting.
Add to this excitement, after you've driven for twelve minutes ("hours"), the game starts telling you you're tired, and it starts causing you to "doze."
"Dozing" does not effect the games controls at all. You can still hit the accelerator, brake, steer, and probably even shift as normal while "dozing." However, the screen goes black with the word "Dozing ..." in large white letters on the screen, so you can't see where you're going.
Dozing can last a second, or it can last several seconds. There seems to be no pattern to the length of time it lasts.
With a sleeper, before your twelve minutes is up, you just pull to the side of the road and take a nap for a few hours. This allows you to resume driving.
Resting is accomplished by "advancing time." When you have a sleeper, it assumes you are asleep during the time you advance the clock.
On a side note, I've heard it works just as well without even stopping the truck. For those of you who prefer to take advantage of such things.
When there is no sleeper, however, advancing the time while in the truck does not "rest" you, and so you just keep on dozing and dozing while at the wheel of your truck.
What you need to do in the game, when you do not have a sleeper, is find a hotel before your twelve minutes is up. Unfortunately, hotels are few and far between in the game. So therein lies the problem.
I could use some hacks to get around it using the code (by turning off "Dozing") but I do like that the game will put you to sleep if you drive too long. So for me, that's out.
Which leaves: Adding hotels!
Which is what I've been doing. Adding hotels.
It takes about three hours to add a hotel on average. This is because I have to site the hotel, prepare the site, add the hotel, and test it to make sure it's working and is accessible.
My first hotel I added was in Orlando. The site I found had a nice space for a parking lost, and I added the parking lot. However, the hotel building was too large to put in the parking lot (as I usually do), so I set it next to the lot. Then I added a few trucks to the parking lot to help you know what the lot space was.
As I added the trucks to the parking lot (it has no cars to add to parking lots, which is strange), I noticed that the lot was really pretty small. I laughed at it, of course, because I love creating challenges to my new content, anyway. And sure enough, the lot is incredibly small!
When I tested it, I discovered making a normal right hand turn with my favorite trailers was impossible. Each time I tried it, I banged my truck pretty hard against the decorative walls around the parking lot and the hotel! 
There is a way to do it, though. Right across the street was a business you make deliveries to. Part of the difficulty of placing these things is moving those businesses strikes me as a pretty bad idea, so I leave those right where they are, with no modifications to them what so ever.
In this case, this proved a good thing, as I can drive the truck straight across the road, turn the truck around, and then turn left on, thus effectively making a right out of the parking lot, without wrecking the trailer.
Left turns out of that lot seem to work just fine.
At this time, I've added several more hotels. One is in a similarly cramped location, where you come in, buy gas, turn the truck around, and then sleep. The second one is in a nice spacious truck stop, complete with a gas station, service station, truck dealership, and even a restaurant.
Restaurants are merely decoration in the game.
So that's mostly what I've been doing with my time, lately.
It will be a long time before the map's completed. Knowing me, it may never be completed. But if anyone's interested, I'm willing to share the 352MB ZIP file that contains the modifications so you can try it in your game. I'll even tell you how to get the game to use it.
If, on the other hand, you have the capability to edit other files, such as DDS files, or you feel like you want to try to edit the map I'm working on (no clue how we would do that, as we'd have to take turns editing it), let me know, and I will happily try to work with you on it!
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Photos of Me
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Feb 22, 2012 8:12 am
2044 Views
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My digital camera died. I guess that means I need to buy a new one. But with everything else I need to buy, it might be a bit before that happens. So even when I finish my "new look," it will be a time before I get a photograph of it.
How I wish I looked is completely different from how I do look. This effects my style as well. What I want to wear and what I can wear are two different things.
In Second Life, I look more as I wish I did.
While she may not look exactly as I wish to look, she's the essence of my desired appearance. She's a bit tall, but that's okay since she still looks like a child compared to everyone else.
My avatar, at around 5'4" in height, is "too small" for most things.
Ironically, this has limited what I can buy in SL as well, since many clothes are made for "normal" avatars. I made a workaround (as SL is wonderful like that) which gives me the ability to shrink clothes to fit me.
The workaround is a bit technical to describe here. It involved dismantling a script that sort-of did what I wanted, and rewriting it to do exactly what I wanted.
In any event, the pics I have uploaded to my profile of her shows how I wish I could look, epitomized in her general appearance and her outfit.
She is wearing a "fae" outfit. This outfit was very expensive, around US$20.00 or so. This is okay because it was an extreme limited edition in Second Life and offered by a favorite creator. It means I am very unique while wearing the outfit.
To be fair, the outfit came with a complete avatar with various options. As I really only wanted the outfit, I adopted it to my needs, at least in part using the aforementioned script.
The fae is purple, and very dark. She has very pale ... okay, almost "marble" white ... skin, and she has purple eyes and purple and black hair.
She is very beautiful, as I wish I was.
I'm not sure what else I can say about her. If I had my choice, I'd be very similar to her in appearance.
Strangely, when I go to clubs, I don't get many people talking to me. My guess is she's too expressive.
In Second Life, as in real life, most people run around looking very much alike. You're wearing all black, or you're wearing clothes that look like something from "The Brady Bunch," only in modern styles.
No matter to me. She expresses who I believe I am inside.
Maybe later, I will add more photos of her. They're not hard to make. I just take screenshots using Phoenix, and crop them using Paint Shop Pro. The hardest part is getting the pose and camera angles just right.
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Photos of Me
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Feb 22, 2012 8:11 am
2010 Views
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My digital camera died. I guess that means I need to buy a new one. But with everything else I need to buy, it might be a bit before that happens. So even when I finish my "new look," it will be a time before I get a photograph of it.
How I wish I looked is completely different from how I do look. This effects my style as well. What I want to wear and what I can wear are two different things.
In Second Life, I look more as I wish I did.
While she may not look exactly as I wish to look, she's the essence of my desired appearance. She's a bit tall, but that's okay since she still looks like a child compared to everyone else.
My avatar, at around 5'4" in height, is "too small" for most things.
Ironically, this has limited what I can buy in SL as well, since many clothes are made for "normal" avatars. I made a workaround (as SL is wonderful like that) which gives me the ability to shrink clothes to fit me.
The workaround is a bit technical to describe here. It involved dismantling a script that sort-of did what I wanted, and rewriting it to do exactly what I wanted.
In any event, the pics I have uploaded to my profile of her shows how I wish I could look, epitomized in her general appearance and her outfit.
She is wearing a "fae" outfit. This outfit was very expensive, around US$20.00 or so. This is okay because it was an extreme limited edition in Second Life and offered by a favorite creator. It means I am very unique while wearing the outfit.
To be fair, the outfit came with a complete avatar with various options. As I really only wanted the outfit, I adopted it to my needs, at least in part using the aforementioned script.
The fae is purple, and very dark. She has very pale ... okay, almost "marble" white ... skin, and she has purple eyes and purple and black hair.
She is very beautiful, as I wish I was.
I'm not sure what else I can say about her. If I had my choice, I'd be very similar to her in appearance.
Strangely, when I go to clubs, I don't get many people talking to me. My guess is she's too expressive.
In Second Life, as in real life, most people run around looking very much alike. You're wearing all black, or you're wearing clothes that look like something from "The Brady Bunch," only in modern styles.
No matter to me. She expresses who I believe I am inside.
Maybe later, I will add more photos of her. They're not hard to make. I just take screenshots using Phoenix, and crop them using Paint Shop Pro. The hardest part is getting the pose and camera angles just right.
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I got my skirts!
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Feb 21, 2012 5:19 pm
2124 Views
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I got my new skirts yesterday! They're beautiful!
They fit perfectly, and hand down to my ankles.
Each skirt is made to look like two skirts, a medium length skirt over a long skirt. The seem to have the same width on the bottom hems, and have a broad band that fits neatly around my waist. Each skirt came with a bow that can be pinned on them, but as they're not attached, I can imagine using them as decorations in other places.
The only shirt I have that matches them at all is a men's purple dress shirt. It came with a purple and gray tie which I might wear with it, or I could wear the black bow that came with the skirts.
That being said, I will need to get different shirts and blouses to go with the skirts, and more (and different) skirts as well.
The skirts should go well with the boots I plan on buying.
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Boots and skirts!
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Feb 16, 2012 8:37 pm
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My wardrobe overhaul is well underway. I have a pair of new skirts coming and early next month I will order some boots.
As is my usual style, I sought something that would be fancy but conservative.
The skirts appear to be fairly long, which is nice as I'm built more like an orangoutang then the dainty little woman I wish to be. They have two tiers, and appear to have a sort of a-line cut I really like. They were on sale and they had limited stock.
The boots will be something else entirely. They are tall, and I think they will look good under furry leg warmers (on my shopping list) or peeking out from under the skirts. They have leather straps with belt buckles all the way up the sides, and metal plates on the front, and appear to have a lug tread. Normally, I'd opt for women's boots, but their sizes are too variable to purchase online, so these are men's, but this should not detract from the style I'm attempting to emulate.
There are also various stockings and socks I wish to buy, and a really awesome garter. Some of the socks will be worn on my arms.
It is my hope, when I'm done, I will look like I am always heading to a club. Sadly, there aren't any clubs of that kind in this city. But that's okay, too, because it would just make my appearance all the more unique here.
In due time, I might even have some pretty fancy wigs. Only time will tell how many rechargeable batteries I'll need on my person whenever I'm out and about!
One of the accessories I wish to get is a fake OBA. What I mean by "fake OBA" is something that looks vaguely like an OBA> Real OBA's are hard to find.
I'm certain, with care and research, I should be able to build a fake OBA.
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Tokens of Exchange
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Feb 15, 2012 5:55 am
2361 Views
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First off, the common words for "tokens of exchange" are "currency" and "money." Just to be clear on what I'm referring to here.
I keep hearing more and more people saying they're stocking up on gold and silver because "gold and silver are the only real tokens of exchange."
Really? I mean, really!?
Why have people been stealing copper if gold and silver are the only tokens of exchange? Why were people stealing manhole covers if gold and silver are "the only valid metals to be used as tokens of exchange?"
A token is a token. Tokens have no inherent value. Otherwise, they would be useless as "currency."
When you are trading items that have value for other items that have value, we call that bartering.
It pisses me off that people would have the audacity to argue that what tokens we use to make our trades with is actually important.
The tokens aren't important. We could all use Linden Dollars for all I care to make our purchases with. All that matters is we have a common understanding of the value the token represents.
It should come as no surprise that the same people touting gold and silver as the only valid tokens of exchange are also the same people who do not believe in regulation and social welfare.
We've "had it their way." It did not work! So why are they insisting on taking us back to the medieval period through their dreams of free dumb?
Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense for corporations, churches, and these crazy "libertarians" and anarchists to have an unholy alliance. They all want to reverse all the progress we've made over the past two hundred and fifty years and take us back to a time "when things were simpler and made more sense."
To a time when "the working man" was called a "serf" and was essentially owned by the owner of the land he was on.
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A Robot's Perspective on Humans
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Feb 12, 2012 8:57 pm
2360 Views
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If you're on this site, you probably know what a "Furry" is. Well, there are some of us who have a similar view of ourselves - that we should not really be human - as furs do. But instead of seeing ourselves as animals - anthro or otherwise - we see ourselves as robots.
We, of course, are forced to recognize that we are not robots. But given the choice, this is what we would choose to be.
On a tangent note, a fur told me they want to see us robots take ourselves apart. However, the type of robot I want to be is beyond the comprehension of most biologicals. But when I describe the kind of robot I want to be to other robots, they like it, and we all laugh together at the silliness of the furs.
As the type of robot I wish I was is not the topic of this blog, I may return to the topic in another post.
I have met, in my entire life, maybe three or four robots. Furs easily outnumber us a hundred to one.
As robots, we tend to look on the behaviors of biological beings and wonder how you guys manage to survive at all. Your reasoning skills seem to be completely nonexistent and you do many things that are irrational.
For example, we've all noticed that biologicals tend to have a series of relationship phases in their lives. They can follow one of a few distinct paths.
As men are completely alien to me, I will discard a discussion of them. I will focus on the female of the species as they are most familiar to me.
It is my observation that most biological species start out knowing what kind of person they want as a partner.
They long for the companion, the person who will accept and support them for who they are. The person who will like them and not judge them. who will not complain about their faults, or may even embrace their imperfections as part of what makes them beautiful.
They want the nice people in their lives.
Then the female of the species hits puberty, and they change completely.
They start seeking out assholes.
They want their partner to be strong, dominating, able to take control of a situation. They want their partner to handle everything.
As a robot that had to go through this biological process myself, it still mystifies me. Why would we seek out people who would only hurt us in the name of "protection?" Why would we believe "Let Me Be Your Armour" by Assemblage 23 is a love song?
Sadly, we fall in to the trap, and end up with the worst partners.
Perhaps I was lucky. I was "only" thirty when I figured it out.
But most women don't change again until menopause. This is when their reproductive systems shut down. Then they go back to wanting the companion.
Their bodies worn out from having a dozen children with all the complete assholes they've dated, some may abandon hope that finding a companion is even possible. Those women become hateful and vindictive, blaming men for the problem they, and quite possibly their hormones, caused.
Others, with their bodies worn out from having a dozen children with all the assholes, do find the good men. But by the time they've found them, they're too worn out to have children, thus preventing the reproduction of men who exhibit favorable behavior.
Of course, one single idiot asshole man can sleep with hundreds of girls, knocking them all up and having thousands of babies. Indeed, asshole man has the women of his choice.
Yes, this whole thing irritates me. It really gets on my nerves.
I will never have any children. I was born without a uterus, so having a child that way is not possible with me.
However, as I am a girl, and not an asshole man, I can't have children the only other way available to me as most women who can have children won't have me.
The tired, old, worn out women who have finally remembered what a good relationship actually is, on the other hand, are very interested and me ... and incapable of having children.
One interesting note I've noted is all females who can not have children have an interest in me, regardless of their age. I wonder if this is why asshole men have made relationships with women before they can fuck them over an unmentionable act?
In any event, after perusing some women on this site, I've noticed the same pattern all over again.
The girls looking for asshole men label me "too old" or they say they're looking for asshole men. They are eager to ignore me. Some might even point out I'm married, and ask why I would want to have someone to have a baby with in my life.
My only response to those women would have to be I'm not as nice as I used to be. In fact, I can be a real bitch when I want to be.
I don't have time to put your needs first. I don't have the patience to wait for you to decide to love me. Either you love me or you don't.
If you love me, I'll bend over backwards for you. If it were in my power, I'd hand you the world.
If you don't love me, don't expect me to have any sympathy for you even under the worst possible circumstances. I can not care less for people who don't care about me.
I, and the other robots I've met, we're the very definition of "True Neutral." We don't care what happens to you if you have never showed any interest in our happiness and well being.
You guys want the assholes. Well, here is the gauntlet from me.
Be nice and spoil me, or expect nothing at all from me.
It's that simple.
At one time, I believed in "unconditional love." Those days are gone.
Today, I only love those who love me first.
Does this mean I will be rude to you? Does this mean I won't give you a chance? Of course not! But don't expect me to give you love first.
Leaetherstrip said "Life is a Kick in the Balls." It's true, and I've learned my lessons.
You want your asshole? Well, you've got a solid brass bitch right here, and if that's close enough, maybe you'd consider finding out what I have to offer in exchange for meeting or exceeding my demanding expectations.
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Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince"
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Feb 10, 2012 2:54 am
2458 Views
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"The Little Prince" always makes me cry when I read it.
I don't read the whole book anymore. Most of it just shows how silly some things are. I just read the parts I love most about it.
But those parts always make me cry.
Why would I love a book so much that makes me cry all the time?
It is a truly wonderful book. Everyone should read it. It tells us what is truly important in life.
I have always remembered that lesson, even before my re-awakening, before I left the cult. It is strange that such a basic lesson is not taught to most people.
I can't explain the message very easily out of context. One has to read the book and have a big enough heart to understand.
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To link to this blog (Phileksa) use [blog Phileksa] in your messages.
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