Blipo

Until March or April of this year, I was totally against all drugs. I even looked down on a good friend who used cannabis. One day, we were taking a walk, and she was smoking a joint. We were talking, and I noticed that she wasn't acting anything like she 'should' act, according to the drug info we'd been given in health class. I did some reading of my own, and ended up blazing with her a week later. In July I smoked a bit on my own, and in August I smoked through two ounces of cannabis. I stopped on the 22nd or 23rd, because my dealer was out. I haven't smoked at all since then, and I feel fine. I'd love to get high, but I'm fine going without - although I'm looking forward to Friday, when I can get more. =D I'm not addicted, I'm not craving, I feel great. I've been in school a week, and I've been doing better than any other school week before I started smoking. So, weed isn't dangerous. ...Why should I believe any of this other stuff they tell me in health class?

Dude, you got owned. Next time, hit him back with a Falcon Punch, or barrel roll him until his woffle roffles.

This is serious. My ex-girlfriend is on the Canadian gymnastics team.

As a resident of Vancouver, I was quite excited to read this release. I'm glad to see they're adding some genuinely Vancouver touches to the 2010 Olympic Games. PRESS RELEASE Tentative Program for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics The Opening Ceremony will feature a re-enactment of the history of the government of British Columbia, performed by a professional clown troupe and a used car salesman. A flock of peace doves will then be released to celebrate Canada's freedoms. The doves will be available in local Chinese dining establishments shortly after the ceremony. Next will be an exciting display of synchronized SUV parking. The SUVs will then be stolen. This will be followed by a large variety of performances celebrating the diversity of Canada's culture. Riot police will be in attendance to keep the performers apart. There will be no original music, dance, visual art or anything else remotely artsy-fartsy about the opening and closing ceremonies as the Fraser Institute has determined that there are no corporate benefits to such pansy things. A separate, simultaneous Opening Ceremony will be held in French. This event will be lavishly funded by the federal government and will receive extensive coverage on CBC. It is expected to have a total of 7 attendees. Biathlon Venue: Gastown Description: Competitors must shoot as many spectators as possible within the permitted time. Fencing Venue: Surrey Description: Matches will be between national teams of 6 or more individuals, each issued with a combination of machetes, knives and lengths of steel pipe. Points will be awarded for the most creative ethnic slurs. 100m Hurdles Venue: Commercial Drive Description: Competitors must complete the race while carrying a DVD player and a 32" television. The competitors are free to perform the event as many times as they wish. The original plans to include a police dog chasing the competitors were dropped due to concerns about the lack of realism. Vancouver Modern Pentathlon Venue: Downtown Eastside Description: The event has been amended to include Panhandling, Squeegeeing, Beer Bottle Collecting, Shopping Cart Racing and Cardboard Shelter Building. All events are to be performed while under the influence of crystal meth. Volleyball Venue: Kitsilano Description: Competitors will be judged by the quality of their physical appearance and the brands of clothes they are wearing. Additional points will be added for their skill in selecting the most appropriate wine to accompany dishes consisting of organic pesticide-free artichoke hearts, imported aged goat cheese, and raw seaweed. Freestyle Gymnastics Venue: Kingsway at Joyce St, (1 am) Description: The events will be performed in the back seat of a Honda Civic. The competitor who earns the most wins. Bobsled Venue: None Description: This event has been canceled because the provincial government has deemed bobsleds to be vehicles and none of the competitors were able to afford the compulsory ICBC insurance premiums. Police are issuing tickets to all Bobsledders for being too low to the ground. Obstacle Course Venue: West Vancouver The contestants, mounted on Harleys, will race up and down the winding, excessively steep, fog-shrouded Eagleridge diversion of the Sea to Sky Highway, especially constructed for the 2010 Games. Patches of black ice will add drama to the competition and bonus points will be awarded for squished red-legged frogs. Since the frogs are rare and endangered, they will be augmented by featherless bald eagle carcasses donated by the Squamish Band Council. Double bonus points for picking off any West Van NIMBYs, the silver spoon in mouth, Jaguar-driving snivellers who were more than happy to clear-cut the entire Caulfield plateau to improve the views from their million-dollar homes, but don't want an expanded highway nearby. Closing Ceremony The closing ceremony will begin with a fly-over of the entire Canadian Forces helicopter fleet. Please stay well clear of the aircraft's flight path. In an exciting event without precedent, the ceremony will feature the athletes being evicted from the Athlete's Village, an illegal squat in Stanley Park. The ceremony will then conclude with a gay Mardi Gras parade down Davie St. The B.C. government will invoke legislation for mandatory attendance, additional gas tax indexed to inflation and a 2010 surcharge of 7% calculated on family income when the 2010 Olympics occurs - payable in advance. Discuss.

Wait, hold on. 100 Kb or 100 KB? Kilobits or kilobytes? 100 Kb isn't that much...

Well, it's almost Saturday. Almost time for submissions to be turned in. I'm looking forward to some interesting stuff.

TYPICAL AMERICAN. *cough* That'd be Georgia the country, not Georgia the state.

ENTP. 11% Extroverted. 25% Intuitive. 1% Thinking. 22% Perceiving.

Bump for awesomeness. We're 2/3 through - just under ten days to go. Meanwhile, I need judges. To apply to be a judge, please see the first post.

Fan fiction, where you write a story that uses the characters and locations of a book or movie that has already been published. For example if you wrote a story that was set in the star wars universe and talked about the jedi it would be fanfic. Anything to do with runescape, or warhammer etc etc. Basically Blipo wants an entirely original story arc and characters. You could, of course, to a sci fi novel where the characters have telekinetic powers, or you could set it in the medieval times, as long as it makes no specific reference to someone else's work. Btw, nice to see you around again Blipo. Nice to see people who remember me. : P

As long as it's fiction. You can have historical figures, but they can't be doing what they're historical for. So basically it can be for a war that is very obscure?For example Freddy Barbarossa participating in the Crusades,though he is famous for uniting Germany? No. That's still historical. Edit: However, you can use this idea as a backdrop for your story, as long as the actual content of the story is fictional.

Why are you typing like this? Dutty's just like that.

As long as it's fiction. You can have historical figures, but they can't be doing what they're historical for.

Sorry. I'm not sure what War of Souls is, but as long as it's not a fan fiction, it's fine. I mean as in being a diary.Like Anne Frank's or something... Go for it.

Answer please?Going to start soon but I need to know if this is fine. Sorry. I'm not sure what War of Souls is, but as long as it's not a fan fiction, it's fine.

Additionally, of all the fiction ever written, most of it is absolute crap, done by small children and fanfic writers.

To all those baaaawwwing about the exactly 30k words thing: Shoot for 30 000. If you go over 30k it's fine, just... try not to. I do have to read all these submissions, after all.

So... How does the script calculate it? Take out the symbols, every block of letters separated by a space is a word. Yeah. Join a forum, be a noob, shape up, become a demi-troll, leave, come back with $50 up for grabs. Speaking of which, the prize will go out via PayPal, so set up an account if you're entering.

I guess I mean 'traditional book'. : P I'll add that to the top post. This page gives 25k-150k words as 100 - 600 pages. You can expect that in MS Word you'll get a considerable number more words per page than an average hardcover book, so maybe 80-90 pages is more accurate. Word counting will be done with a program written in Python.

I randomly write down ideas/beginnings of stories when they pop into my head, so I already have about 600 words written down somewhere that I was going to work with. Would that be enough to conflict with your rule? I'll let those kind of things slide. Majority new content, let's say. >90%.

No, I'm saying if you're awake an average length of time, you need to write one word a minute. Practically, you can write 1000 words in under an hour. Well yeah but lol people are lazy (including me. I'm not writing 16 hours a day, and I'm spending 2 weeks in a different country this month...) It's all very well saying 'you can write 1000 words an hour' but there's alot of planning and thinking involved, they have to be the right words. All I'm saying is if you want a people to enter, you need to make it a smaller task. Edit - sorry, that sounded horrible. :oops: I'm not trying to criticise just being practical I guess some people are going to miss out, then. This is $50 we're talking about here, I want some decent, lengthy fiction. Go look up NaNoWriMo.

ya im sure people will work 16 hours a day a whole month No, I'm saying if you're awake an average length of time, you need to write one word a minute. Practically, you can write 1000 words in under an hour.

Exactly what I was thinking of. I got the idea from an xkcd fora thread on summer boredom. 1000 words a day. If you're awake 16 hours a day, that's just over 60 words an hour. One word a minute. When you break it down it's not so bad.

Judges selected. Judges will be asked to rate stories on a 0-3 scale, in the categories of effort (the story idea itself), sucklacking (use of proper spelling, grammar, and basic formatting), unputdownableness (how interesting the story is), and epic (overall quality). 30k in 30 days Do you have imagination? Can you turn that imagination into literature? Can you create 30 000 words of literature? Can you do it in 30 days? Do you want $50 CAD? That's right. In a fit of foolishness, I am offering hard, cold cash for the best 30k-word original content the OoC & TIF can cough up. Submit your works by email to [email protected], formatted in .odt, .doc, .rtf, or .txt. Contest deadline is August 17, noon PST. (I'll be out when this time is reached, so you have until I check my emails, which could be 8-20 hours after the deadline. Submissions will be accepted if they're late, but before I checked.) Minimum 30 000 words. Maximum 30 001 words. Fiction only. Updated: Traditional book style - as opposed to poetry or a play. No fanfics. NO fanfics! Must be submitted as an email attachment - [email protected]. Email subject must be 30k in 30 days. Email body must contain TIF/OoC username. Entries will be confirmed by forum PM. Entries are disqualified if there is any belief they were created before the contest opening. Updated: Entrants must have joined the forum before this date. Winning entries will be announced by September 1. Winning entries will be decided by a to-be-selected panel of judges from the OoC and TIF. Winning entries will be displayed in this post. Prizes will be awarded by September 31. First prize is $50. Second prize is $10. ??? Profit! You have 30 days. Go.

A repost of a thread I started on my school's Planning 10 discussion forum. Most people would say their ideal life entails a large salary, a big house, and a loving family. Why? In my experience, a large salary demands hard work for long hours. A big house comes with a mortgage or rent, not to mention bills. A loving family generally has a large amount of dysfunction. All around me I see people with what modern western society defines as nice, enjoyable lives. And all around me I see people whose lives involve living to work and working to live. I don't want to live like that. I don't want to need an excess of stuff to be happy. I want to live for fun and enjoyment. Why bother with a high paying job? They're stressful. Why not a lower paying job? Living on $1000 a month isn't hard - you don't have to pay taxes on that little, I believe - if you don't mind getting roommates. You may wonder how one can enjoy life, when their annual income is $12k. In fact, those living in the $50k range wonder the same thing in regards to those in the $30k range. And those in the $100k range wonder the same thing about those in the $50k range. And those in the $250k range wonder the same thing about those in the $100k range. And so on. You just get less useless stuff. You find your fun elsewhere. Where can someone find that fun? It depends on the person. Allow me to be the guinea pig for this post. I could live happily with a comfortable bed, a decent computer, a fast Internet connection, and a gram of cannabis a week. I would require a cheap place to live, a mediocre job, and a nearby grocery store, computer hardware store, and dealer. Does that sound like an awful life? Me, a stoner in his small house with his mundane job, in another world when he isn't working to finance said elsewhere? And yet, I'd be enjoying myself, wouldn't I? I wouldn't stress over affording that new plasma TV, or that fancy car, or those ridiculous clothes. (Okay, well, that's not true: A plasma TV, The Matrix, The Wizard of Oz, and the Star Wars series in HD would be constant objects of desire. As would an insanely comfy fleece sweater. And a giant matriarchcarnalising beanbag. But I digress.) So why is my enjoyment inferior to yours? I don't mean to imply that psychosis-inducing drugs are the only way to live a simple life - they are simply one example of a way to do so. This, of course, leads to the entirely separate point of acceptable vs. unacceptable drug use. Please, save those comments for another time. This isn't a discussion about drug use, it's a discussion about lifestyles. tl;dr: What is your ideal life? Why? Do you really need all the stuff you want? Is there a way you can cut the stress and worrying and anxiety out of your life? Bonus points for picking up on 'matriarchcarnalising'.