First post to this community, as well as my first time posting my original fiction. This was written for National Novel Writing Month in November, and I plan on posting the chapters after I go back and edit them. I'd love to know what you all think about this! :)

Warnings: Some language, eventual violence and implied rape (no real descriptions, I promise), eventual yuri (F/F) Individual chapters will have their own warnings.

Current rating: PG-13, will become NC-17

Chapter: 1 / 33

**All names are meant to be fictional! If I used the name of an actual person, I would be shocked and amazed


Summary: While in Rome, haunted by her desire for her best friend Delaney, Luciana encounters a mysterious woman one night. This woman tells Luciana she 'must learn', and Luciana collapses to the ground, unconscious. When she wakes, she finds herself in Ancient Rome, the wife of a Senator. With a servant identical to her best friend, an uncaring husband, and an charming family friend, Luciana finds herself in the middle of an affair worthy of Aphrodite and Ares. Luciana must find a way to return home, while also preparing for the homecoming of the revered emperor Constantine the Great, who has an announcement of his own that will shake the Rome to its very core.

A Curse of Ancient, Chapter One

Source: The Advocate

A Website attempting to stop the release of James Cameron’s Avatar argues that the film is offensive because in the future, human beings will evolve and transition to transgenderism.

“Heterosexual arrogance, assumptions or exclusions of alternative sexualities in movies is no longer acceptable,” reads the site StopAvatarMovie.Blogspot.com. “Diversity and tolerance are human rights.”

The website is sprinkled with arguments suggesting that given the current course of evolution, it would be far more likely for the film’s hero, Jake, to be gay, bi, or trans than it would for him to be straight.

“The film also makes a gross assumption that the old hetrosexual ways on Earth would somehow be occurring with another race of being on a totally different world with its own unique culture.”

The boycott calls on people to sand outside theatres with pamphlets upon Avatar’s release on Friday. It also suggests people buy tickets in bulk to see the film but not attend, because “an empty theatre sends a message.”

Comments on the site suggest most people find the argument in support of protesting Avatar to be weak.

“This is the dumbest thing I've ever read,” one commenter writes. “I'm all about being equal and breaking down the lines between the straight & LGBT community but seriously? You mean to tell me that you actually wanna start going after EVERY SINGLE MOVIE in hollywood from here on out that doesn't have some sort of LGBT relationship in it for that sole reason alone?”

The site's creator, who is described on the blog as a young transgender person living in the Bay Area, counters by saying going after Avatar will send a message to Hollywood because it is likely to be the top grossing film of the year.

Interestingly, the language of the Na’vi, the fictional race of people portrayed in Avatar, was created by University of Southern California linguistics professor Paul Frommer, who himself is gay.

Avatar opens Friday and is reportedly the most expensive movie ever made. It is Cameron’s first film as director since Titanic.


-------------------------

I'm a straight supporter of equal rights for all sexual identities, however, I'm finding this extremely ridiculous. I feel sorry for James Cameron, who spent 14 years writing, and after $500 million dollars has been sunk into this project, thinks everything is okay. He wakes up one morning, thinks its go time, is all right and nervous yet happy...

and then sees after all the blood sweat and tears, someone is calling to boycott because he dared make the main characters hetero.

Poor man.

Does anyone agree with the blogger? I'd like to hear more thoughts.

Twitter is back up! Hope the withdrawl wasn't too bad for you guys ;)

We’ve received multiple tips right around 10 pm that Twitter was hacked and defaced with the message below. The site is currently offline. We’re looking into this and waiting on a response from Twitter.


( ummm... what? )

I saw this on ONTD and thought you should all know. I know a lot of you were tweeting during the Iranian elections. It may just be a huge hoax. Who knows? Better to be safe.

source: mothership and http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/17/twitter-reportedly-hacked-by-iranian-cyber-army/?utm_source=feedburner

EurekAlert! is an online, global news service operated by AAAS, the science society. EurekAlert! provides a central place through which universities, medical centers, journals, government agencies, corporations and other organizations engaged in research can bring their news to the media and the public. EurekAlert! features news and resources focused on all areas of science, medicine and technology.

What three-letter Internet acronym best fits the bizarre news out of Iraq and Afghanistan that militants there have been intercepting US Predator drone video feeds using laptops and a $30 piece of Russian software: LOL, WTF, or OMG?

Actually, all three are appropriate for something this farcical, horrible, and brain-numbing. The reason that the transmissions could be picked up easily by a cheap satellite recording program? They were broadcast in the clear between the drone and ground control. That's right—no encryption was used.

Perhaps, you might be thinking to yourself in a mental bid to make the military seem competent here, no one could have suspected this would happen. But they did suspect it, because it had been happening for a decade already. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, included this tidbit in its report: "The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The US government has known about the flaw since the US campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said."

After finding various laptops containing hours of recorded drone footage, the military has at last moved to encrypt the downlink between the drone and ground control, but there are problems. Not with encryption technology, which is robust, but with the fact the military 1) did not use encryption at the beginning and retrofitting is hard, and 2) the Predator's maker uses some proprietary communications gear, so off-the-shelf encryption tools don't all work.

The sad but inevitable comparison has to be drawn here with consumer electronics. Blu-ray discs, which use the AACS control scheme, feature a new DRM scheme of bewildering complexity in an attempt to thwart pirates.

Operating system vendors have built entire "protected path" setups to guard audio and video all the way through the device chain. TVs and monitors now routinely use HDCP copy protection to secure their links over HDMI cables. Game consoles are packed with encryption schemes to prevent copied games from playing. Microsoft even goes out of its way to add encryption when Windows Media Center records unencrypted over-the-air TV content. Even the humble DVD, with its long-since-breached CSS encryption, offers more in the way of encryption.

But US drones, which spy on militants and rain down death from a distance, have none. The mind boggles, as it seems like the situation should be totally reversed: no encryption on legally-purchased content, more encryption on devices designed to watch and kill human beings.

Source: Ars Technica

Tea Party Movement Plans 2010 Caucus

The Tea Party movement hopes to calm dissension in its ranks in time for an April meeting of what is being called the Patriot Caucus. The conference will take place the weekend of April 16 in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania -- a site chosen to invoke the essence of George Washington, whose army held Valley Forge through the desolate winter of 1777-1778. Over that winter Washington lost over 2,000 men to such maladies as typhoid, jaundice, dysentery, pneumonia, and simple malnutrition. The Tea Party movement hopes for a more successful winter.

This is very possible. The Tea Party movement will use the next few months to develop and strengthen the bonds between its sometimes-warring factions, and, in fact, they have already begun. Four major groups have joined forces and pooled their resources, as evidenced by the top of the TaxDayTeaParty.com website. The result is the Patriot Caucus, a joint effort of American Liberty Alliance, FreedomWorks, the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition and Tea Party Patriots, the same groups working to plan a 2010 Tax Day Tea Party on April 15 -- one day before the Caucus. All four groups worked together this summer to support the Tax Day Tea Parties and the town hall protests but not in such a tight-knit coalition.

The Caucus identifies itself as not just another Tea Party organization but an "unbiased infrastructure" which will exist only to identify and facilitate communications between like-minded Tea Party groups. The Patriot Caucus Facebook group already boasts over 2,000 members. The group's oldest wall entry was posted December 4, but the Caucus itself did not "go live" for another four days, when their planning wiki went online. The founding conference will include "intense training, debate panels and general session special guests" as well as the first election of "the 155 delegation of the national Patriot Caucus." There's a [sic] in there somewhere.

Why start a non-organization to organize other organizations? Messaging, apparently. According to the overview published on the Caucus wiki,

"We believe a part of the problem is the fact that those who advocate in favor of one idea over another, or one effort over another, do so because of partisanship or bias for the group he/she is involved in. This, of course, is natural and expected. But it does us little good in the end.

As an example, there are constant emails floating around within the movement that say, "why is your group doing that when our group is doing the same thing?" These are perfectly legitimate emails and great questions. But the more important question is, why did the two groups not conference with each other before the plans were made? We can't fault a group for making plans. We can, however, fault the movement for not properly communicating about potential plans as they're brewing."

( Read more )

"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

American Gods, Neil Gaiman

Maybe the assassin wouldn't spend a plane ticket on him.
Maybe boredom would send the rascal back to livelier climes.
Maybe after a week of this splendid luxury he would hike to the train station and join the assassin in an escape himself.
Fancies, all.

(I don't know if I've posted this one before because I like to reread this book a lot - it's just so good!)
And his head began to feel light and strange. Is this dying? he wondered. Am I dying? Banichi's going to be mad if that's the case.

If you haven't read this book, let alone the series, you need to. She has an AMAZINGLY hilarious writing style, and the story is fun, and the characters are fun, and if you like political science and "aliens" it's fun, and if you like diversity theories, outer space, psychology... it's a fun series, all around :D.

Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/34372297#34455982

Oh, my young friends and fellow-sinners! beware of presuming to exercise your poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy! Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment's notice!

US Senate To Vote Early Friday Morning On Defense Spending Bill

By Corey Boles, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Senate is expected to cast a strong bipartisan vote to clear a key procedural hurdle on a bill to set the Pentagon's budget, but lawmakers won't do so until the early hours of Friday morning.

In a bid to delay the possibility of votes on sweeping health care legislation, the Republican minority is forcing all 30 hours of debate on the defense spending bill. That time expires at 1 a.m. EST Friday, when lawmakers will have to return to the Capitol to vote for the bill.

That will start another 30 hour clock ticking, with a final vote on the Pentagon budget bill then expected sometime early Saturday morning.

The delaying tactics are evidence of the poor state of relations between Republican and Democratic lawmakers as a potential vote on health care legislation inches closer.

Wednesday afternoon, Republicans invoked their right to hear any amendment read out in full by the clerk of the Senate.

The amendment they chose to invoke the right on was a more than 750 page measure introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).

As the clerk entered his third hour of reading, Sanders withdrew the amendment, bringing the reading to a close.

As for the defense bill itself, a near unanimous vote is expected. Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.), an ardent opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is expected to vote against the measure, but he won't likely be joined by many other senators.

It lays out $636 billion for the Pentagon for the remaining 10 months of fiscal 2010. Once it is approved on Saturday, it will complete Congress' must- pass spending duties, more than two months after the beginning of the fiscal year.

The bill also includes short-term extensions of a number of expiring federal programs, deferring decisions on whether to reauthorize them until the end of February. These include a two month extension of federal jobless benefits and subsidies to people who lost their medical insurance when they were laid off. The federal highway program is also extended for another two months.

The House voted Wednesday to approve the legislation, meaning it will go to President Barack Obama for his signature if the Senate, as expected, approves it on Saturday.

-By Corey Boles, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6601; corey.boles@dowjones.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires
12-17-091743ET
Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Watch it live at http://cspan.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
Vote to take place at 1am ET.

BALCH SPRINGS, Texas — Pre-kindergartner Taylor Pugh likes his floppy hair just how it is: long on the front and sides, covering his earlobes and shirt collar. But his long locks violate the dress code in his suburban Dallas school district. So Taylor again Wednesday found himself facing in-school suspension, sitting in a library with a teacher's aide while his friends played and learned together in a classroom. "They kicked me out that place," said Taylor, 4, who prefers the nickname Tater Tot. "I miss my friends." Taylor's parents say he plans to eventually cut his hair and donate it to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients. But they're not happy with the district's rules. It appears the school district "is more concerned about his hair than his education," said Taylor's father, Delton Pugh. "I don't think it's right to hold a child down and force him to do something ... when it's not hurting him or affecting his education."

( Read more... )

Awww..what a sweet little boy. Way to make a 4 YEAR OLD feel bad assholes!

source

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WTVC-TV) - A 4-year-old boy, beer in hand, is accused of stealing Christmas presents from his neighbors. It's a strange story, but also a sad one.

April Wright is 21 years old and is going through a divorce with her husband who is in jail. She says she is not sure how her 4-year-old managed to get out of the house, open a beer, and steal the neighbors presents from under their tree. Now she's just glad he's okay and says she won't let it happen again.

The child, Hayden Wright, was found around 1:45 am Tuesday, wandering the streets of his neighborhood. In a police reports, officers said he was wearing a little girl's dress and drinking a beer. The police report says the child had to be taken to the hospital to be treated for alcohol consumption.

April Wright said, "Biggest concern was him being out there, getting kidnapped, getting run over, the alcohol, having to have his stomach pumped."

Wright says she woke up that night at 1:45 am and panicked when she found Hayden was gone. She says she put safety devices on all the doors so her kids couldn't get out, but Hayden was able to break the safety device off the doorknob and get outside.

Once out, Wright says her four year old followed his father's footsteps and was found on Blue Spruce Road, drinking.

"He runs away trying to find his father," she said. "He wants to get in trouble so he can go to jail because that's where his daddy is."

The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office report says Hayden rang the doorbell a few houses down and the neighbor answered, finding the child holding a partially consumeed 12-ounce beer.

Wright said, "He got it out of my father's cooler in the back and how he got it open I don't understand because it was one of those tab beers."

But it doesn't stop there. The report said Hayden then snuck into a neighbor's house through an unlocked front door, and stole five wrapped Christmas gifts. One was a girl's brown dress which Hayden was wearing when police found him.

"Going to the neighbor's house and taking their presents, very embarrassing," said April.

She admits she was not just embarrassed, but scared, and rushed to the hospital that night with Hayden. She said she tries to be a good mother and loves her son, but now feels like a failure.

"Kids do things like this and it's out of your control, you can do the best you can as a mother, everyone makes mistakes, it was an honest mistake," she said.

Wright did meet with child protective services today who told her she will get to keep custody of Hayden.

stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

I was wondering if anyone knew really good friendship quotes, sayings,ect...?
Thank You in advance.