Stack and Shack

This Dan Fox. He at THREE let me repeat this THREE Triple Steakburgers at Steak and Shake on Friday night. That is ridiculous.

The Lobby

The lobby of the Continental Life Building

Lobby Ceiling

Ceiling of The Continental's Lobby

The Continental

The Continental Life Building

The Continental Life Building

$1200/per month. We're responsible for about $140 in utilities per month. This building is beautiful and one of the oldest skyscrapers in St. Louis. It's really close to the Saint Louis University campus. It's two bedrooms, 1.5 baths and has a hell of a layout. Beautiful new cabinets. It's really beautiful. Definitely moved to number 1 on my list/

Fat Bastards

NEW YORK (AP) -- An appeals court Tuesday revived part of a class-action lawsuit blaming McDonald's for making people fat, reinstating claims pertaining to deceptive advertising.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred when he dismissed parts of the lawsuit brought on behalf of two New York children.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet dismissed the lawsuit in 2003 because he said it failed to link the children's alleged health problems directly to McDonald's products.

But the appeals judges said New York's general business law requires a plaintiff to show only that deceptive advertising was misleading and that the plaintiff was injured as a result. The panel upheld other parts of the dismissal.

In a statement, Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's Corp. said "common sense tells you this particular case makes no sense," adding the ruling "simply delays the inevitable conclusion that this case is without merit."

A message left for the lawyer representing two children named in the lawsuit was not immediately returned.

The lawsuit alleges that tens of thousands of children have suffered obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol and other health problems after being misled about McDonald's products.

Sweet ruled that consumers cannot blame McDonald's if they choose to eat at its fast-food restaurants.

"If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain," Sweet had written, "it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses."

I just have one question for every single person that truly believes that it is the fault of McDonald's and their restaurants that cause their obesity...At what point did you realise "Holy shit I'm fat and maybe I shouldn't be eating this?" I don't EVER remember McDonald's saying "you should supersize because eating this much food, which is already bad for you anyway, in exess isn't going to kill you, it's going to give you a wonderful figure." What a frivilous lawsuit, people like you should be pulled into the streets and shot, you and Jerry Fallwell.

Shut up and sit down...

SpongeBob's Recruitment Drive?
by Joal Ryan
Jan 21, 2005, 1:15 PM PT


Barney, Big Bird and Clifford the Big Red Dog are in cahoots with reputedly flamboyant sea-creature SpongeBob SquarePants to promote the "pro-homosexual" agenda to children.

So goes the accusation by James C. Dobson, the popular radio commentator and founder of the conservative Christian group, Focus on the Family.

Addressing members of Congress at the "Values Victory Dinner" in Washington, D.C., Tuesday night, Dobson asked the power brokers, "Does anybody here know SpongeBob?"

Dobson went onto decry a toon-town remake of the 1979 Sister Sledge disco hit, "We Are Family," in which the frolicsome Bikini Bottom dweller appears alongside Barney, Big Bird, Clifford and other fictional stars of children's TV.

The music video, produced by the non-profit We Are Family Foundation, is to be distributed on DVD to 61,000 public and private elementary schools on March 11. Its stated aim is to promote diversity; its stated agenda is to have future March 11s declared National We Are Family Day.

But according to the New York Times' accounting of Dobson's remarks, what's unsaid is that the "We Are Family" project is a "pro-homosexual video."

Dobson based his charge on a "tolerance pledge" found on the We Are Family Foundation Website. The two-paragraph statement seeks "respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own."

"...Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity' within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line," a statement from Focus on the Family says.

To the Times, Paul Batura, an assistant to Dobson, was even more scathing: "We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids. It is a classic bait and switch."

An attorney for the We Are Family Foundation, Mark Barondess, labeled its critics "insane," per the New York Post.

The group, founded by music-industry veteran Nile Rodgers, who wrote "We Are Family" onto the charts, said the offending "tolerance pledge," which it stands behind, won't even be included in the DVD package mailed to schools.

Actor Tom Kenny, who gives high-pitched voice to SpongeBob, told his hometown newspaper, New York's Syracuse Post-Standard, that producers merely wanted to "make a video that [says] it's a positive, good thing to be respectful of people different from you."

"I could maybe see it their [critics'] way if this was a video with Barbra Streisand and Madonna and Judy Garland," Kenny told the Post-Standard.

While Focus on the Family insists it's not picking on SpongeBob ("...This issue is not about objections to any specific cartoon characters..."), it was SpongeBob, not Dora the Explorer, who was singled out by Dobson's speech.

"By picking SpongeBob, [Dobson's] going for the biggest name, the most recognizable one," says Alonso Duralde, deputy arts and entertainment editor of The Advocate, the gay and lesbian newsmagazine. "...It goes along with the religious rights' ongoing task of trying to make gay rights look awful by somehow suggesting that we're out to get the children."

In 1999, the Rev. Jerry Falwell warned followers that The Teletubbies' Tinky Winky was the same shade (purple) as "the gay pride color."

SpongeBob was outed by friendlier fire in a 2002 Wall Street Journal profile on the toon star's supposed status as a gay icon. At the time, Stephen Hillenburg, creator of the Nickelodeon series, said he thought of his characters as "being somewhat asexual." And rather than gay, Hillenburg described SpongeBob as "an oddball."

Mr. SquarePants also has been defined as "infectiously optimistic and carefree," interestingly enough in a largely positive review of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie on the Focus on the Family Website.

SpongeBob controversy or no, Pamela Roberson, a spokeswoman for FedEx, one of the corporate partners on the "We Are Family" video, said Friday there had been no change in plans to take the DVD to schools.

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You know what it [The Torah/Bible] also says? It says a rebellious child can be brought to the city gates and stoned to death. It says homosexuality is an abomination and punishable by death. It says men can be polygamous and slavery is acceptable. For all I know, that thinking reflected the best wisdom of its time, but it’s just plain wrong by any modern standard. Society has a right to protect itself, but it doesn’t have a right to be vengeful. It has a right to punish, but it doesn’t have to kill. - Rabbi Glassman, Take This Sabbath Day, Season 1, Episode 14, The West Wing

The Rasmus

Yeah so there's this new band that I'm getting into. Well, they're not that new, it's like their fifth album...they're just new to me. Anyways, I really like what I've been hearing. My irrationally biased roommate can't stand them but then again our music tastes for the most part are polar opposites. I must say however that if you do buy this album and you SHOULD, ''Time To Burn" is an awesome song. I posted the lyrics. Those lyrics are the way that I feel. So if you really want to, go out and buy the album. It's called Dead Letters and the band's name is The Rasmus.

Time To Burn

Come on
Fear of the dark tears me apart
Won't leave me alone and time keeps running out

Just one more life, I'm so sick and tired
Of singing the blues, I should turn my life around
Come on

Tell me why do I feel this way
All my life I've been standing on the borderline
Too many bridges burned
Too many lies I've heard
I had life but I can't go back
I can't do that, it will never be the same again
And I know I don't
Have any time to burn
Come on

They follow me home, disturbing my sleep
But I'll find a place, place where they cannot find me
Maybe I'm lost, and maybe I'm scared
But too many times I've closed the doors behind me

Tell me why do I feel this way
All my life I've been standing on the borderline
Too many bridges burned
Too many lies I've heard
I had life but I can't go back
I can't do that, it will never be the same again
And I know I don't
Have any time to burn

Leave it all behind
Cross the borderline
Face the truth, don't have any time to
Have any time to burn

Tell me why do I feel this way
All my life I've been standing on the borderline
Too many bridges burned
Too many lies I've heard
I had life but I can't go back
I can't do that, it will never be the same again
And I know I don't
Have any time to burn

Tell me why do I feel this way
All my life I've been standing on the borderline
Too many bridges burned
Too many lies I've heard
I had life but I can't go back
I can't do that, it will never be the same again
And I know I don't
Have any time to
Have any time to burn
Come on

I Love The Christian Right...Yeah Right

Christian Conservative groups have issued a gay alert warning over a children's video starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney and a host of other cartoon favorites.

The wacky square yellow SpongeBob is one of the stars of a music video due to be sent to 61,000 U.S. schools in March. The makers -- the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation -- say the video is designed to encourage tolerance and diversity.

But at least two Christian activist groups say the innocent cartoon characters are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.

"A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association.

The video is a remake of the 1979 hit song "We Are Family" using the voices and images of SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, the Rugrats and 100 TV cartoon stars. It was made by a foundation set up by songwriter Nile Rodgers after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks to promote the nation's healing process.

Christian groups however have taken exception to the tolerance pledge on the foundation's Web site which asks people to respect the sexual identity of others along with their abilities, beliefs, culture and race.

"Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity" within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary but it crosses a moral line," Dr James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said in a statement on Thursday.

Rodgers was astounded at the attack. "That is so myopic and harsh. You have really got to look hard to find anything in this that is offensive to anyone. The last thing I am going to do is taint these characters," he told Reuters.

Dobson was quoted by the New York Times on Thursday as having singled out the wildly popular SpongeBob during remarks about the video at a Washington D.C. dinner this week.

SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple under the sea, was "outed" by the U.S. media in 2002 after reports that the TV show and its merchandise was popular with gays. His creator, Stephen Hillenburg, said at the time that although SpongeBob was an oddball, he thought of all the characters as asexual.

It is not the first time that children's TV favorites have come under the critical spotlight of the U.S. Christian right. Tinky Winky, the purse-toting purple Teletubbie, was in 1999 declared a homosexual role model by Rev. Jerry Falwell.

By Jill Serjeant (Reuters)

I mean with everything else that's wrong in the world, people have to complain about SpongeBob? For Christ's sake there are people in third world countries that don't know where their next meals are coming from. On December 26, 2004, at least 220,000 people lost their lives and those people that are supposed to be the embodyment of Jesus Christ are more concerned with a goddamn cartoon character? Shame on you. Shame on you, you worthless pigs.

"Hurry Up And Wait"

Why does it feel like I've been here for almost two years of my life?

Speed Zone

So I called Cedar Point HR the other day and yeah I was hired back as
"104 - Speed Zone Sales Team Lead". I am still a tl for all of you out
there wondering.

My Winning Combination

So I thought I would let everyone know which programs I use online. I use Mozilla Firefox to surf the web and Mozilla Thunderbird to theck my email. I love both of these programs because they are small in size, are more reliable than any Microsoft Program and are less vulnerable to attack than Outlook, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. I would recommend everone look at them.



>

Dead Zone

Hi Kevin,

We have received your application for the 2005 season...thank you!

The dates that you specified on your application to work full time are 5/7/05 - 8/14/05.
I am writing you to confirm these dates.
Your previous work location was Speed Zone. Would you like to continue working there?

Since Jason Miller is no longer with us, I will assist in the hiring for the middle area until and new area manager is put into place. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at any time. If all of the information above is correct, please email or call me and I would send you your contract.
Sincerely,
Heather Boggs
Area Manager, Merchandise
Cedar Point


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Do I or don't I? I don't even know if I'm coming back as a TL or a Base rate employee I guess I'm gonna stick it out and see what happens. Thank you to all my friends who helped me out with my decision.

Google said it best. Happy New Year