There are raging debates going on nationwide about legislation to control who can practice interior design, and indeed, even who can call themselves an interior designer.

As background for those who are unaware, there are two primary types of design legislation. One is called a "practice act" and legislates that only approved designers can practice interior design (however each state defines that), and the other is called a "title act", which mandates that only people who have completed whatever the required credentialling process is can call themselves either a "certified interior designer" (as in here in CA) or even an "interior designer" at all in some states. Some states have both. Some of the states that have such legislation have also prohibited designers from even saying they *do* interior design - or even advertising under the interior design section in the Yellow Pages or anywhere else, even if they don't even use that specific term in their own business name or literature! Needless to say, the holy grail of the pro-legislation element is very stringent practice acts in every state in the nation.

ASID and IIDA are, of course, in the forefront of the drive to create legislation everywhere, one of their primary premises being that what we do as designers have such a big health and safety impact on the built environment that special education and testing are required to ensure consumer safety.

The problem with this is that there has *never* been a *single* complaint by the public against an interior designer for any such thing! At least not according to a study by the Institute For Justice, a legal thinktank that ought to have been able to easily unearth any such lawsuits, if they actually existed. There has also been *no* public outcry *anywhere* calling for legislation of interior designers. What's more, no designer the IJ asked to provide an example of when people were harmed or injured by bad interior design was able to. Yet the ASID/IIDA cabal still wants to persist in arguing that this is a major problem.

On top of it, the NCIDQ exam, which they are also trying to have mandated as the *only* recognized exam for credentialing designers, not only reportedly does not test on health and safety issues at all, but also doesn't even cover anywhere near the full scope of interior design practice, so it's questionable at best whether it is actually testing the very knowledge that is claimed to be necessary in the first place!

In point of fact, since there is *no* consumer-driven demand to legislate interior designers, this drive is obviously coming only from ASID and IIDA - who also happen to stand to profit directly from the absolutely exhorbitant fees required to take the NCIDQ and to maintain any kind of certification or licensure.

It is only ASID and IIDA and their full professional members who stand to benefit from any legislation of the practice of interior design, and that mainly by simply driving any competition out of business.

I should add that ASID/IIDA members represent only a very small percentage of the actual number of practicing designers. Here in northern CA, I see the ASID membership directory get thinner every year, too.

The reality is that if such legislation is passed, many, many designers will be put out of business entirely unless they want to go work for someone else at slave wages again, anyone new and coming into the field will not be able to practice on their own - and prices will be driven up for both products and design services, which will not be beneficial to either the companies that make the things we buy or to the general public. NKBA is violently opposed to legislation - and so are plenty of manufacturers who themselves stand to be driven out of business if the number of people who can specify their products decreases as dramatically as any kind of practice act legislation stands to do.

Those of you who are Allied ASID or Associate IIDA and think you are covered, think again. They're after you, too, not just the designers who are completely unaffiliated, or the kitchen and bath designers. You, too, will have to go back to working at slave wages for a "qualified" designer (if you don't already) if these kinds of laws are passed, until you also pass the NCIDQ. Or you'll simply have to change careers, end of story.

Basically, interior design legislation is nothing more than restraint of trade, no matter what anyone else tells you to the contrary - and in a couple of states, existing legislation has actually been struck down as unconstitutional, either because of this or because it illegally restricts freedom of speech. *UNCONSTITUTIONAL*, mind you.

The sad part is that up until now, information about the opposition, and the reasons we should oppose such legislation instead of support it, has been virtually impossible to find. Students are being fed the pro-legislation line wholesale in school, along with the myth that we are *so* important in the protection of the health and welfare of the public that we actually *need* to be legislated, to ensure that "unqualified" designers do not endanger the public. It's appalling to hear so many of them spouting this party line without even knowing what the opposing arguments are.

I was a paramedic for many years in the past, and have a lot of training and experience in determining what is called the "mechanism of injury" - namely figuring out how an injury could have occurred, as well as being aware of what situations can cause further injury. My very life depended daily upon being able to accurately and quickly assess a wide variety of risks of this nature. With this background, I have wracked my brains throughout design school to try to figure out just what we do that is *that* essential to the health and safety of the public that it warrants the kind of legislation that is being proposed - and for the life of me, I've never been able to figure it out.

On top of it all, the very nature of building codes and the permitting process to get something built provide a ready backup to ensure that safety and other building code standards are met, so there already is legislation in existence that controls these things, as well as contractors and architects' practices being legislated because these people *do* impact health and safety much more extensively and directly. An interior designer who does *not* understand building codes, however he/she learns them, is not going to be able to stay in business long just because of market pressures and hiring practices by the big firms, who are the ones who do most of the larger projects where health and safety really might be a bigger issue.

It is also a fallacy that any particular type of training is essential to create a good, safe designer. The reality is that some of the top interior designers in the world throughout history right up until the present had *no* formal training - and neither did some of the most highly-respected architects! Names like Paul Vincent Wiseman springs readily to mind for the living, and of course, the history of design and architecture is full of others, including the likes of Sister Parrish, Elsie de Wolfe, Syrie Maughm, and many others who were the foundation of this entire profession. There are many paths to learning what is necessary to know, and only a certain amount of creativity can actually be taught at all.

Tadao Ando, who is probably the world's greatest living architect, having garnered more prizes in more countries than any other architect in history, is entirely self-taught. He apparently doesn't even have a college degree in anything else, let alone architecture. Robert Adam, one of the most important architects of all time, also had no formal training, but learned on the job. The list goes on. And yet architects today will fight tooth and nail to have you believe that the only way to learn architecture is through a rigorous academic program and internship.

The reality is that architects do impact health and safety far more than interior designers do, so it makes much more sense to require them to have licensing, and with licensing, it is common and not at all unreasonable to mandate the academic and training path.

But legislation of a profession should be reserved for those occupations in which a truly demonstrable threat to public health and other well-being can be widely demonstrated. This clearly exists for architecture, construction, engineering, medicine, law, and a few others - but it simply does *not* for interior design.

It is also, IMO, an unconscionable waste of taxpayers' money to create yet more bureaucracy like this, for a problem that doesn't even exist, particularly when we have so many people not able to afford health insurance or housing or food. The state of Pennsylvania recently had to shut down some of its most basic services for a while, including the driver's license administration, because of major budgetary shortfalls - and yet they are actually entertaining the idea of what would be a very restrictive practice act for interior designers. If the state can't even keep basic services going, why should the taxpayers have to pay for things like interior design legislation?

The reality is that interior design legislation is a solution in search of a problem, and should be vigorously opposed.

There are now some really excellent websites springing up that detail why this kind of legislation is *not* a good idea - and exposing the fraud of the whole concept for what it really is.

One of the best and most comprehensive is www.interiordesignfreedom.org/ , put up by the Interior Design Freedom Coalition, which includes links to information about what's going on in all states.

You should also particularly check out http://www.ij.org/pdf_folder/economic_liberty/Interior-Design-Study.pdf , which is a link to a paper entitled "Designing Cartels: How Industry Insiders Cut Out Competition", based upon extensive studies undertaken by the Institute For Justice, documenting all of the above.

Even if you are in favor of legislation, you owe it to yourself to look carefully over these sites and many of the links provided, because you will find a lot of inconsistencies in the stories you've been fed. If you still feel that you are in favor of legislation, so be it - but at least find out what the other side of the story actually is so that you can make a truly informed decision.

And for those who are wondering, I am already qualified by education at one of the top-ranked design schools in the country to take the NCIDQ (although not yet by experience), so I'm not coming to this from any position of sour grapes or knowing I'll be left out of the party myself. I just think that legislating this occupation is wrong on the face of it.

(Copyright 2007 by Dznr (pseudonym). All rights reserved. This article may be distributed freely anywhere as long as this copyright notice is attached, and it is reprinted in its entirety with no alterations.)

Well, I've been invited back for the coveted second interview - the one they told me there wouldn't be when I inquired. So, OK, I get that this is a Good Thing. But what in the name of heck are they likely to ask me about this time around? I already interviewed with four separate people and asked every question *I* could think of. I'll apparently be meeting again with the head honcho.

URGENT CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT THE EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS IN PERÚ

Due to the 7.9 Richter-scale earthquake that hit Peru on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007, the Consulate General of Peru in San Francisco has initiated an urgent campaign within the Bay Area to support the Peruvian citizens affected by this tragedy.

If you wish to collaborate in this campaign, you can make donations by contacting the following individuals to find the collection site closest to your home. Please call to determine collection site hours and dates of collection.

- Rosario Zavaleta: (408) 636-3597 (San Mateo)
- Fortuna Clark: (916) 919-7605 (Sacramento)
- César Brush: (408) 313-7714 (Santa Clara)
- Jorge Salazar: (925) 603-1363 (Contra Costa)
- Darío Darrigo: (415) 410-7538 (Marin y Sonoma)
- Consulate General of Perú in San Francisco: 1-877-490-7378

Donations may consist of:
- Nonperishable canned or bottled foods
- Tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, and air mattresses
- Financial contributions: please make a transfer out to “Pro Infancia Peruana” at Wells Fargo 3979519943

We thank you for your support of these humanitarian efforts to assist the earthquake victims. Your donations will reach Peru speedily though the gracious support of Arturo Peña and Arturo Nieto.


San Francisco, August 16, 2007

A writer's view of Germany today -

William E. Grim is a writer who lives in Germany and is a native of Columbus, Ohio .

" I'm not Jewish. No one in my family died in the Holocaust. For me, anti-Semitism has always been one of those phenomena that doesn't really register on my radar, like tribal genocide in Rwanda, a horrible thing that happens to someone else.

But I live in a small town outside of Munich on a street that until May of 1945 was named Adolf Hitler Strasse. I work in Munich, a pleasant metropolitan city of a little over a million inhabitants whose Bavarian charm tends to obscure the fact that this city was the birthplace and capital of the Nazi movement.

Every day when I go to work I pass by the sites of apartments Hitler lived in, extant buildings in which decisions were made to murder
millions of innocent people, and plazas in which book burnings took place, SS troops paraded and people were executed. The proximity to evil has a way of concentrating one's attention, of putting a physical reality to the textbook narratives of the horrors perpetrated by the Germans.

Then the little things start to happen that over a period of time add up to something very sinister. I'm on a bus and a high school boy passes around Grandpa's red leather-bound copy of Mein Kampf to his friends who respond by saying "coooool!" He then takes out a VCR tape (produced in Switzerland ) of The Great Speeches of Joseph Goebbels."

A few weeks later I'm at a business meeting with four young highly educated Germans who are polite, charming and soft-spoken to say the
least. When the subject matter changes to a business deal with a man in New York named Rubinstein, their nostrils flair, their demeanor attain a threatening mien and one of them actually says, and I'm quoting verbatim here: "The problem with America is that the Jews have all the money."  They start laughing and another one says, "Yeah, all the Jews care about is money."

I found that this type of anti-Semitic reference in my professional dealings with Germans soon became a leitmotif (to borrow a term made
famous by Richard Wagner, another notorious German anti-Semite). In my private meetings with Germans it often happens that they will loosen up after a while and reveal personal opinions and political leanings that were thought to have ceased to exist in a Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945. Maybe it's because I have blond hair and my last name is of German origin that the Germans feel that I am, or could potentially be, "one of them." It shows how much they understand what it means to be an American.

Whatever the reason, the conversations generally have one or more of these components:
    (1) It was unfortunate that America and Germany fought each other in World War II because the real enemy was Russia.
    (2) Yes, the Nazis were excessive, but terrible things happen during wars, and anyway, the scope of the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated by the American media, which is dominated by Jews.
    (3) CNN is controlled by American Jews and is anti-Palestinian. (Yes, I know it sounds incredible, but even among the most highly intelligent Germans, even those with a near-native fluency in English, there is the widespread belief that the news network founded by Fidel Castro's friend Ted Turner, who was married to Hanoi Jane Fonda, is a hotbed of pro-Israeli propaganda.)
    (4) Almost all Germans were opposed to the Third Reich and nobody in Germany knew anything about the murder of the Jews, but the Jews themselves were really responsible for the Holocaust.
    (5) Ariel Sharon was worse than Hitler and the Israelis are Nazis.  America supports Israel only because Jews control the American government and media.

For the first time in my life, then, I became conscious of anti-Semitism.  Sure, anti-Semitism exists elsewhere in the world, but nowhere have the consequences been as devastating as in Germany. Looking at it as objectively as possible, 2002 was a banner year for anti-Semitism in Germany. Synagogues were firebombed, Jewish cemeteries desecrated, the No. 1 best-selling novel, Martin Walser's Death of a Critic, was a thinly-veiled roman a clef containing a vicious anti-Semitic attack on Germany 's best-known literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki (who was a survivor of both the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz ); the Free Democrat Party unofficially adopted anti-Semitism as a campaign tactic to attract Germany 's sizeable Muslim minority; and German revisionist historians began to define German perpetration of World War II and the Holocaust not as crimes against humanity, but as early battles (with regrettable but understandable excesses) in the Cold War against communism.

The situation is so bad that German Jews are advised not to wear anything in public that would identify them as Jewish because their safety cannot be guaranteed.  How can this be? Isn't this the "New Germany" that's gone 60 years without a Holocaust or even a pogrom, where truth, justice and the German way prevail amidst economic wealth, a high standard of living that is the envy of their European neighbors, and a constitution guaranteeing freedom for everyone regardless of race, creed or national
origin?

What's changed? The answer is: absolutely nothing. My thesis is quite simple While Germany no longer has the military power to enforce the racist ideology of the Nazis and while all extreme manifestations of Nazism are officially outlawed, the internal conditions -- that is, the attitudes, world view and cultural assumptions - that led to the rise of Nazism in Germany are still present because they constitute the basic components of German identity.

Nazism was not an aberration; it was the distillation of the German psyche into its essential elements. External Nazism may have been utterly defeated in May of 1945; internal Nazism, however, remains, and will always remain, a potential threat as long as there exists a political and/or cultural entity known as Germany. 

Now hold on a second, I hear many people saying. You can't possibly claim that Germans are as anti-Semitic today as they were during the years 1933-1945.

It is true that Germany today is much different than during the Third Reich. What is different is that due to its total defeat by the allies Germany today is a client state of America and must do its bidding. That means repression of overt anti-Semitism. It's bad for business.

The other thing that has changed is that, even though Hitler lost World War II, he was phenomenally successful in carrying out his ideological agenda. Germany , indeed virtually all of Europe, is essentially Judenfrei (free of Jews) today due to the efficiency and zeal of the Germans as they perpetrated the Holocaust during the Third Reich.  In fact, a very convincing case can be made that Nazism is one of the most successful political programs of all time.  It accomplished more of its goals in a shorter amount of time than any other comparable political movement and permanently changed the face and political structure of several continents.

Germany is wealthy, stable, relentlessly bourgeois, and for all intents and purposes, free of Jews. Yes, there is a tiny minority of Jews, mostly centered in Berlin, and yes, there have been a number of Jews from the former Soviet Union who have emigrated to Germany, but most of the immigrants from Russia are not practicing Jews and do little if anything to promote a unique Jewish-German identity.

The result of all this is that Germans today are able to reap the benefits of Hitler's anti-Semitic policies while paying lip service to the "need to remember." Young Fritz doesn't have to be overtly anti-Semitic today because his grandfather's generation did such a bang-up job of the Holocaust. There just aren't that many Jews left to hate any more, and besides, the Germans have their old buddies, the Arabs, to do their hating for them.

You might call the overwhelming German support for the Palestinians to be a form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy. The German government has made cash payments to the State of Israel , as well as to individual Jews, to settle claims of murder, torture, false imprisonment, slave labor and genocide. Talk to most Germans and you'll soon discover that they think that the score has been settled between Germany and the Jews, that somehow the return of just a portion of what the Germans stole from the Jews is fair recompense for the deliberate murder of millions of people. 

If you think the Germans are truly sorry for what they did to the Jews, think again. There's never been an official "tut mir leid" offered by the Germans to the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants because that would admit culpability. Germany has paid off all claims against it without acknowledging responsibility in the same way that the Ford Motor Company engages in recalls of automobiles. It's all done to avoid liability.

I have previously mentioned that Germans overwhelmingly support the Palestinians as opposed to the Israelis, and that this overwhelming support represents a form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy. Germans may claim to be supporting the Palestinians because they think they are an "oppressed people " but let's be honest - they are supporting the Palestinians and their Arab handlers because the Palestinians and Arabs share the same ideals as the Nazis.

There's a long-standing history of German co-operation with the Arabs.  In 1942 Hitler personally assured the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem that as soon as German forces conquered Great Britain, the Jews in Palestine (which was then under control of the British Mandate) would be exterminated.

We should also keep in mind that the Arab terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 atrocities did their planning in Germany. There are  several reasons for this. The first is the well-known bungling and de-centralized chaos of the German federal bureaucracy where literally the "linke" hand doesn't know what the "rechte" hand is doing.  The second is that Arab terrorists can count on a substantial number of Germans who share their anti-American and anti-Semitic views. The former members of the SS and Hitler's praetorian guards, along with their neo-Nazi supporters, who gather weekly in Munich beer halls, made Osama bin Laden an "honorary Aryan" after the 9/11 attack.

Mein Kampf is also a best seller in the Arab world, especially in Saudi Arabia , America 's putative "friend." Indeed, there is very little difference between the anti-Semitic rantings of Hitler and those of the so-called "spiritual leaders" of al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Fatah. The Arabs also owe Hitler and the Germans big time. Hitler killed off the Jews, and Konrad Adenauer and his "democratic" descendants replaced them with the Turks.

Yes, the Turks aren't Arabs, but they are Muslim, and although Turkey is a member of NATO and has relations with Israel , many Turks identify and support their radical Arab co-religionists. Turkey remains as fragile a democracy as Weimar Germany during the 1920s. It wouldn't take much for Turkey to fall into the dark side of Muslim extremism.

The end result of Muslim immigration into Germany has been twofold:
    (1) It allows the Germans to feign liberalism and being open to freedom and diversity; and
    (2) By replacing the Jews they murdered with Muslims, who for the most part are as viciously anti-Semitic as were the Nazis, the Germans have cynically assured that those few Jews who remain in Germany will be unable to reassert political power even in a minority role.

A final point I would like to make concerning the reasons for the a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Germany is one that many will find at odds with the prima-facie evidence, or even appear to stretch the boundaries of common sense. Yet, I ask you to consider carefully my line of reasoning.

In many respects Germany got away with the Holocaust without paying much of a price. Yes, many Germans died as a result of German perpetration of World War II and the Holocaust, and yes, there was much physical destruction in the country, but the situation is like the little boy who steals a cookie from the tray when it is cooling on the kitchen table.  For his efforts he may have gotten his hand slapped by his mother, but the stolen cookie remains eaten nonetheless.

After having committed the worst crimes in the history of humankind, the Germans were allowed to regain their sovereignty after only ten years; their infrastructure was completely rebuilt thanks to the generosity of the American people; and relatively few Germans were brought to trial for their monstrous crimes. Even those who were tried and convicted received relatively short sentences or had those reduced or commuted in general amnesties.

For example, some members of the Einsatzkommandos, those Germans who, before the construction of the death camps, hunted and murdered Jews by the hundreds of thousands, received sentences of as little as five years imprisonment. If there were true justice in the world, Germany would no longer exist as a separate country, but would have long ago had its territory divided up and dispersed among the Allies.

It was an unfortunate historical coincidence that the Cold War began just as Germany was at last being brought to task for its many crimes and atrocities extending back to the First World War. The new threat of the Soviet Union took precedence over a just settling of accounts with Germany. The tragic result is that many of the countries raped and despoiled by Germany , such as the Czech Republic and Poland, are just now coming out of decades of economic decline, while Germany - fat, sassy, arrogant, self-satisfied, and essentially Judenfrei - has enjoyed four decades of undeserved economic prosperity.

We can't turn back the clock to redress all of the historical wrongs that have been committed by the Germans, but there are a number of  things that can be done to assure that Germany can never again be in a position to threaten the rest of the civilized world.

First and foremost is the realization that, while not all Germans are anti-Semitic, there is an anti-Semitic tendency within German culture that extends back to the time of Martin Luther. Germans are instinctively anti-Semitic in the same way that Americans are instinctively freedom loving. Anti-Semitism has been and unfortunately remains the default ideology of the German people.

All things being equal, Germans will instinctively support the enemies of the State of Israel. Therefore, America will need to monitor closely and be ready and politically willing to intervene at a moment's notice in German affairs when it appears that Germany is back-sliding into anti-Semitism.

Additionally, it should be a goal of American foreign policy to oppose and to accelerate the dismemberment of the European Union. We must not allow German domination of the EU to accomplish through parliamentary maneuvering and brokered deals what Hitler and the Germans were unable to accomplish during the Third Reich.

Given Germany's resurgent anti-Semitism (and that of France as well), a strong, German-dominated EU that tolerates and even benignly encourages anti-Semitism, and is diplomatically allied with the Arab world, is potentially the greatest threat to Judaism since Nazi Germany and a major threat to the United States as well.

The enemies of Israel are the enemies of the United States. Let all Jews and Americans stand united as we proclaim never again to both the Holocaust and 9/11.

The following appears to be a commentary on this article written by a Jewish man:
    * This is the very first post-Holocaust picture of Germany that I have ever seen published that depicted the post-Holocaust country of the Nazis with absolute accuracy in every detail. Over the years I have often written about the reunification of the two Germanys and described it as one of the greatest mistakes ever made in history, and wrote that instead Naziland should have been divided into the four historical parts that is its nature, never to rise to brutalize its neighbors or the world again! A crucial and horrible error!

It took only a few minutes during my first visit back to the land of my birth for me to realize that the place was clearly no different than when my parents and I had the good fortune to be among the very last Jews to escape, literally "minutes before midnight", when the gates of that man-made hell slammed shut with a resounding clang for the final time, dooming those of my people left behind, including over 50 of my immediate family.

I recall the words of my beloved grandfather as we came to Breslau to say our final farewell, knowing that there was no likelihood of ever seeing each other again. He ran alongside the slowly rolling departing train we were on, knowing he was bidding a final farewell to his only son and his family. Even then he optimistically maintained that "no harm will come to us.  After all, I served my country and my Kaiser as an officer, and have always been a good citizen."

Dang, I meant to go out this evening, but had myself a glass of wine when I got home from gallivanting about all afternoon before I remembered this plan, so here I sit, because 'twould not be a good thing to drive now, especially the distance involved to go to the event I wanted to go to - over an hour's drive away...

Not the end of the world, I suppose.

'California Healthy Pets Act' Assures Unintended Consequences: Elimination of Healthy Pets!

If you care about having pets and the right to have them and determine their care yourself, rather than the government doing so - and preserving our personal liberties in the first place - please oppose this nasty bit of legislation. 

It is backed by People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which, despite its noble-sounding name, is actually an extremist group who has as a goal the elimination of *all* pets, and who also uses terrorist tactics to achieve their goals.

Even if you don't have pets and don't care about other people's rights to have them, this legislation should be opposed simply because it is hugely invasive into our fundamental liberties, and would be just another nail in the coffin that is closing on our freedom in this country.

http://tinyurl.com/2y7wr5

Yep, the damn dishwasher flooded the kitchen floor yet again.

I swear, this whole thing is the nightmare that just won't end <sigh>.

Budgie, you've got the right idea to just use the dishwashers at the end of your arms ;->

So, it turns out that not just one but two former boyfriends, including the only man I've ever been engaged to, have become ministers of one persuasion or the other since we were together.  I wonder what that means...?

I tried looking up my last boyfriend from my college days when I was at my last reunion, and found the Reverend and Mrs. So-and-So listed, so I didn't call.

I spotted the ex-fiance in a Web search a year or so ago, and see today that  he's moved on to a new post from where he was before, which now has his picture up, along with his family, and even a video of a sample sermon he gave.  He's filled out some since I last saw him, isn't wearing glasses any more, has gone grey, and become much more distinguished looking and sounding, but otherwise, this is clearly still the man I was once madly, passionately in love with, who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  I haven't really thought about him for years, and he's the one and only man I've ever been seriously involved with that I've had no further contact with since the breakup, so it was really kind of odd to see the picture and watch that video.  It started opening up some memories on a body level as well as consciously that I haven't thought about in years.  And it's gotten me thinking about how differently our lives have clearly evolved, what radically different paths we have followed...

He's obviously still with the bitch from hell he was separating from when I met and dated him, oddly enough, since she was *incredibly* abusive and violent, and ended up having or adopting no fewer than *four* children with her, but I guess that just goes to show there's no accounting for taste.  It's kind of weird to contemplate the idea of a minister who has an abusive wife, though.

What's even funnier is knowing how at least semi-kinked he is, since this is the same man who once literally trained me to cum, with whom there were no holds barred sexually, and who I once heard, some years after we broke up, had been caught in flagrante delicto in public somewhere with someone.  I can't help but wonder if he's gotten all stuffy since going to seminary <g>.

I'd love to give him a call to say hello, but this banshee harassed both me and my entire family for at least 5 years *after* he and I broke up; the harassing phone calls didn't even stop after I moved out of state, until I'd moved so many times that I think she probably wasn't able to find me again.  I obviously couldn't ever call him at home again, but now that he's clearly got an office where presumably she doesn't tread very much, perhaps there's no way she could get her hands on my contact information again...  Not that I want to start anything back up with him, but I just do *not* want to set her off and set those harassing wheels in motion again because it was just so horrible the first time around.

I wonder what the conversation would be like.

And I have to admit that it's a relief to find they've left the town we all lived in back then and moved far, far away, where I never have to worry about running into her ever again...

For those of you who don't know this, I'm Jewish, which lends a particularly bizarre flavor to these developments >g<

"Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments" on Google Video
What happens when you mix 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? The results are completely insane. Check out these guys multiple other Diet Coke and Mentos videos, too. They are uniformly hilarious.