RKMBs Forums .::Important::. off topic and offensive posts This post reserved for wonder tards long winded post about me being a democrat

see topic

This post reserved for g-man fellating wonder tard for doing a job good of insulting me for being a democrat.

This post reserved for wbam joining the circle jerk and misspelling most of his words.

Mopius is wbam?

Don't you believe it!

History of Paris

Early beginnings
The earliest signs of permanent habitation in the Paris area date from around 4200 BC.
Known boatsmen and traders, a sub-tribe of the celtic Senones, the Parisii, settled
the area near the river Seine from around 250 BC.

The Roman westward campaigns had conquered the Paris basin in 52 BC. A permanent
Roman settlement began towards the end of the same century on Paris' Left Bank Sainte
Geneviève Hill and Île de la Cité island, in a town first called Lutetia, but later
becoming Gallicised Lutèce. The Gallo-Roman town expanded greatly over the following
centuries, becoming a prosperous city with palaces, a forum, baths, temples, theatres and
an amphitheatre.

The collapse of the Roman empire and third-century Germanic invasions sent the city into
a period of decline: by 400 AD Lutèce, largely abandoned by its inhabitants, was little
more than a garrison town entrenched into its hastily fortified central island. The
city would reclaim its original "Paris" appellation towards the end of the Roman
occupation.

Aries
Ah! Some love Paris & some Purdue. But love is an archer with a low IQ.
A bold bad bowman & innocent of pity. So I'm in love with New York City. - Phyllis McGinley

Taurus
When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold. - Metternich


Gemini
You can't escape the past in Paris, and yet what's so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn't seem to burden. - Allen Ginsberg


Cancer
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. - Ernest Hemingway


Leo
I don't know exactly what I expected to get from Paris, but whatever it was I didn't get it. I don't think that is due entirely to the city. It seems now, looking back, that Dick Wright might have been blocking me off from meeting people or getting to know the city; he spent a great deal of time with me, but it was all quite pointless... - Chester Himes


Virgo
The house sings with a feeling of abandon, throws its arms around you, hugs you, and whoever comes to it as a guest never wants to leave it. - Elsa Schiaparelli on the 18-room mansion on Paris


Libra
As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris. - Friedrich Nietzsche


Scorpio
I think Paris is much more conducive to writing or painting than New York is... There is a feeling in Paris that promulgates art in any of its forms, which you don't really get in New York. When you get up here in the morning, you have the feeling that everywhere in this city there are people with the same problems and the same miseries who are getting up to create something. You're one of them. In New York, even a successful writer, if he's serious about writing, always has the feeling of being a little bit on the outside of everything. - James Jones


Sagittarius
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language. - Mark Twain


Capricorn
With an apple, I will astonish Paris. - Paul Cezanne


Aquarius
America is my country and Paris is my hometown. - Gertrude Stein

112

Heh, democrats.

Good job fucking up the flow of the board, I love it.

"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"

*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!

"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed, and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna, who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, "has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to know the real state of French public opinion.

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'" Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero, after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that... But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the 18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled, his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor. So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to go.

Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia. Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when and where.

Flow?

and space!

IN THE ASS!!

The light reflected with a white sheen off the pristine metal hull of the chartered Concorde, the jet screaming five-thousand miles above the Atlantic, at something near Mach 4. Inside the cockpit, veteran pilot James Hoffman clicked a few switches, checking the altitude, while his co-pilot, Allan Crowley, adjusted the autopilot setting.

"...one hour, twenty minutes..." Hoffman commented, leaning back a bit in his seat.

"...I hate these private hops we have to take..." Crowley replied, glancing in his direction.

"You're in the wrong business, Al...." Hoffman nodded. "You should be flying commercial."

"Only if I can have a gun.......fucking commitee....." he breathed with annoyance.

"That's why I do this......" James said. "No suprises. No events. Just pleasant, short flights, with rich, boring passengers."

The door opened a bit, the lone flight attendant sticking her head in.

"Anything to drink, guys?" Dana asked, her blonde locks complimenting the turquoise outfit.

"No thanks...." Hoffman nodded.

"Coke, please, Dana...." Al smiled.

"Sure, Al...." she smiled back.

As she left, Hoffman glanced over at Crowley.

"Not in a million years are you going to get here....." he smirked.

"Who says I haven't already?" Al asked, a wide smile adorning.

James just shook his head.

"Man, your wife would KILL you if she knew---"

He suddenly cut off, the door opening again. Dana handed Al his drink, their eyes meeting with a hidden familiarity.

"Thanks Dana...." he replied, as she turned to leave.

"How's our passengers?" Hoffman asked, gazing out over the beautiful cloud-cover.

Dana stood for a moment, contemplating her response.

"Ummmm....odd....." she finally admitted.

Back in the spacious passenger cabin, Tobias wrestled with his new outfit, tightening the black straps along specially-made boots.

".....nice tread...." he commented to himself, admiring the off-metal, half-rubber tread along the bottom heels.

Pete Glover studied his outfit, still in his lap, with a quizical eye.

"Ah don't know....." he said to Tobias, "...this isn't feelin' likes me at all, heh?"

Tobias winced.

"Smells like a bath isn't feelin' likes ya' either!" he waved at his nose.

"Aehhhh....." Pete cocked an eyebrow, never losing that jolly look in his eye. "I'll haves ya' know I tooks a bath no moren' three days ago, I did..."

"Where? A mud puddle?" Tobias replied drolly.

"Tobias." Danny said curtly. "Cut it out."

Pete waved his hand dismissively at Danny, with a wide smile.

"Don'tcha be goin' and worrin' over me's and Tobias, now Danny...." he laughed, slapping TC on the back. "....tha' kid gots tha' streets in 'em, is all. Same as me. Nuthin' wrong with that, heh?"

Tobias just stared at Danny, a low-yield hostile gleam in his eye.

"What's wrong, Hearn? Am I kicking your favorite puppy?" he asked, a hint of challenge to his tone.

Danny just scowled, staring back at him.

"Don't run that 'tough guy' act with me, Christopher." he replied very evenly. "I won't tolerate your assinine whining and melodrama."

"Yeah?!" TC asked, getting a bit agitated. "How about I shove it up your ass and make you like it?!"

Pete grabbed TC by the shoulder, restraining him as he was leaning closer and closer, with every word, towards Danny. Danny didn't flinch or change expressions in the least, staring him down like a statue.

"Naw, naw...." Pete shook his head calmly. "We's all on the same team, heh, TC? No needs to be getting miffed and popped over nuttin'..."

Tobias finally sat back in a huff, folding his arms. He stared purposefully out the window.

"....I could have run there by now...." he commented to no one.

Pete just gave Danny a wink and a smile, turning to engross TC in conversation.

The soul of an angel. The body of a vagrant. Dan thought kindly, admiring Pete's nature.

He casually got up, his new leather outfit squeaking with every step towards the back cabin.

"Dammit, Kit...." he breathed with annoyance, the words 'Animal Man' still burning into his soul with indignity.

Naecken sat perfectly still, eyes glazed open, and ahead. His breath came at staggered intervals, as he seemed oblivious to his surroundings. Sitting quietly, in one of the back seats, as he had for awhile now.

"Meditating?" Danny asked, pausing by his spot.

Naecken said nothing, frozen like a statue.

"Naecken?" Danny asked, raising his eyebrows. "You alive in there?"

A low, rasp of breath slowly came forth, as if the man was just starting to breathe again. He didn't move,nor change his expression a bit. But, his lips parted ever-so-slightly.

"......Naecken....is...not....here.....right....now......please....leave...a...message......beep...."

Danny just stared at him for a minute, then, turning towards the secondary cabin, just decided to play like that had never happened.