firezz's blog: "Smoke and firezz"

I've been gone for a little over a week. Returning tonight I see the mumms are still NOT mumms but everyones getting away with it. SO I have to ask myself this....are the haters gone or lurking? Are the Bouncers gone or lurking? Does Fubar really care even? I think they need to rename that section of the Fu features to fubar free for all. I have read 10 mumms and not one was actually making up any ones mind...most were whats your opinion questions and wastes of time to even bother reading.

Drinking sweet tea is one of the oldest and most exceptional Southern traditions. As Dolly Parton's character in Steel Magnolias puts it, it's the "house wine of the South"—a clear, orange-to-red tinted tea brewed from six or seven Lipton or Luzianne tea bags, poured hot onto a cup or more of sugar or a pool of simple syrup, and then diluted into a gallon pitcher in the fridge. It's served over a mound of ice in a huge glass—so cold that you can watch your napkin drown in a puddle of condensation. read more..... http://www.slate.com/id/2171917/?gt1=10346

Where are they all? I don't have alot of time to spend on Fubar but I wonder, all ive ever seen is about the 50,000 or so online and where are they at? The lounges are usually always mostly empty , the mummers are almost all new Fus or well new to me...alot of the mummers I enjoyed seem to have vanished. The scroll of member across the top of the page seems to scroll the same members all the time. Am I just always in the wrong place or on at the wrong time?

I've been in and out all day....I come read some mumms, comment/vote or both only to return or hit send to post and find the mumm has been deleted. What is going on? Is there a secret mumm fairy we are unaware of or a new mumm mafia? Fubar is becoming less fun and less interesting by the moment!!!

TODAY Updated: 5:56 p.m. ET July 12, 2007 Love the challenge of dating a bad boy but wish you could see through his mind-games and hidden agendas? Steve Santagati, former model, bad boy and author of "The Manual: A True Bad Boy Explains How Men Think, Date, and Mate — and What Women Can Do to Come Out on Top," reveals what's going on inside the male mind. Here's an excerpt: Chapter One Who Is A Bad Boy? http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/19734488/

ELM MOTT, Texas - A Navy man who got mad when someone mocked him as a "nerd" over the Internet climbed into his car and drove 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson. As he made his way toward Texas, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares posted photos online showing the welcome signs at several states' borders, as if to prove to his Internet friends that he meant business. When he finally arrived, Tavares burned the guy's trailer down. This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading no contest to arson and admitting he set the blaze. "I didn't think anybody was stupid enough to try to kill anybody over an Internet fight," said John G. Anderson, 59, who suffered smoke inhalation while trying to put out the 2005 blaze that caused $50,000 in damage to his trailer and computer equipment. The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture-sharing Web site and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said. Anderson, who went by the screen name "Johnny Darkness," traded barbs with Tavares, aka "PyroDice." Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a "Revenge of the Nerds" sign. Tavares obtained Anderson's real name and hometown from Anderson's Web page about his Museum of Horrors Haunted House. Tavares took leave from his post as a weapons systems operator at the AEGIS Training and Readiness Center in Dahlgren, Va., and started driving. Investigators say he told them he planned to point a shotgun at Anderson and shoot his computer. Jerry Larson / AP John Anderson looks out from the bedroom of his mobile home in Elm Mott, Texas, which was set on fire by Russell Tavares after an Internet dust-up in 2005. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Instead, when he got to Elm Mott — after posting one last photo of a "Welcome to Texas" sign — Tavares threw a piece of gasoline-soaked plastic foam into the back of Anderson's mobile home and lit a flare, authorities say. Tavares' attorney, Susan Kelly Johnston, said his trip to the Waco area was a last-minute decision during a cross-country trip to visit his parents in Arizona. She said he never intended to hurt Anderson and did not think he was in the trailer when he set the fire. James Pack, an investigator with the McLennan County Sheriff's Office, caught up with Tavares after talking to people in several states and Spain who had been involved in the online feud. Tavares' cell phone records showed he was in the Waco area at the time of the fire, Pack said. Tavares told investigators that Anderson had spread computer viruses and insulted his online friends for too long, Pack said. "He lost everything — all over an Internet squabble," the investigator said. Tavares was discharged last year from the Navy, where he earned several medals — including the pistol expert and rifle expert medals — in his nine-year career, said Navy spokesman Mike McLellan. Tavares would not let the feud go even at his sentencing. According to Pack, Tavares took cell-phone photos of Anderson in the courtroom while the judge was hearing another case. Authorities ordered the photos erased. Anderson, an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam, said he continues to be harassed online, has been startled by people knocking on his window late at night and found bullet holes in a door to his business. He said he is convinced the harassment is related to the Internet feud and plans to spend $30,000 on more fencing topped with barbed wire. "Before this happened, the rule was: Nobody messes with the haunted house guy," Anderson said.

What factors lead someone to a cyber-romance? Is it the exotic quality of it? The "exotic" quality of a cyber-romances might be one factor that attracts some people. Using computers is a relatively new way to have an intimate relationship with someone. Because it occurs through this seemingly powerful and mysterious thing call the "internet" or "cyberspace", it may feel exciting to some people. The lover's presence enters your home (or office) without the person physically being there, which feels very magical. On a more down-to-earth level, people are drawn to cyber-romances for the same reasons they are drawn to "face-to-face" romances - either they don't have a "real-life" love relationship, or there is something missing in their "real-life" love relationship. On the internet, they may indeed find what they are missing. Or, because of the partial anonymity of cyberspace, which allows lots of room for fantasy and imagination, they may THINK they have found what they are missing. http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/bvinterview.html

Have you ever noticed how conflict can get blown out of proportion online? What may begin as a small difference of opinion, or misunderstanding, becomes a major issue very quickly. Conflict can be difficult at the best of times, but what is it about online communication that seems to ignite ?flaming? and make conflicts more difficult to resolve? There are a number of reasons to explain why conflict may be heightened online. One is the absence of visual and auditory cues. When we talk to someone in person, we see their facial expressions, their body language, and hear their tone of voice. Someone can say the exact same thing in a number of different ways, and that usually effects how we respond. For example, someone could shout and shake their finger at you, or they could speak gently and with kindness. They could stand up and tower over you, or they could sit down beside you. How you feel, interpret, and respond to someone?s message often depends on how they speak to you, even when it?s a difficult message to hear. In online communications, we have no visual or auditory cues to help us to decipher the intent, meaning, and tone of the messenger. All we have are the words on a computer screen, and how we hear those words in our head. While people who know each other have a better chance at accurately understanding each others? meaning and intentions, even they can have arguments online that they would not have in-person. http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/conflict.html

Does online anonmity and freedom of access encourage antisocial personalities? Are they some of the hackers of cyberspace? Do narcissistic people use the access to a numerous relationships as a means to gain an admiring audience. Do people with dissociative personalities tend to isolate their cyberspace life from their f2f lives. Do they tend to engage in the creation of multiple and distinct online identities? Are schizoid people attracted to the reduced intimacy resulting from online anonymity. Are they lurkers? Do manic people take advantage of asynchronous communication as a means to send measured responses to others, or do they naturally prefer the terse, immediate, and spontaneous conversations of chat and IM? Are compulsives generally drawn to computers & cyberspace for the control it gives them over their relationships and environment. Do histrionic people enjoy the opportunities for theatrical displays that are possible in online groups, especially in environments that provide software tools for creative self-expresssion? http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/persontypes.html

You Don't Know Me (dissociative anonymity) You Can't See Me (invisibility) See You Later (asynchronicity) It's All in My Head (solipsistic introjection) It's Just a Game (dissociative imagination) We're Equals (minimizing authority)) Personality Variables True Self? Self Constellations Across Media Altering Self Boundary It's well known that people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn't ordinarily say or do in the face-to-face world. They loosen up, feel more uninhibited, express themselves more openly. Researchers call this the "disinhibition effect." It's a double-edged sword. Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves. They reveal secret emotions, fears, wishes. Or they show unusual acts of kindness and generosity. We may call this benign disinhibition. On the other hand, the disinhibition effect may not be so benign. Out spills rude language and harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats. Or people explore the dark underworld of the internet, places of pornography and violence, places they would never visit in the real world. We might call this toxic disinhibition. On the benign side, the disinhibition indicates an attempt to understand and explore oneself, to work through problems and find new ways of being. And sometimes, in toxic disinhibition, it is simply a blind catharsis, an acting out of unsavory needs and wishes without any personal growth at all. What causes this online disinhibition? What is it about cyberspace that loosens the psychological barriers that block the release of these inner feelings and needs? Several factors are at play. For some people, one or two of them produces the lion's share of the disinhibition effect. In most cases, though, these factors interact with each other, supplement each other, resulting in a more complex, amplified effect. http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html