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Thread: Pissed and Annoyed

  1. #166
    Senior Member Aianawa's Avatar
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    Tis getting PaHthetic

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  3. #167
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    Their karma rode over their dogma.

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  5. #168
    Administrator Aragorn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Aianawa View Post
    Tis getting PaHthetic
    Just for your information, "pah" is the Bajoran word for soul.

    For those who absolutely don't understand the reference, the Bajorans were a civilization from within the Star Trek franchise, and were most prominently featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, although they also briefly made their appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation — Ensign Ro Laren (played by Michelle Forbes) of the USS Enterprise-D was Bajoran.

    Bajorans look almost identical to humans, with the exception of a few small ridges on their nose, between the eyes. There are however a few biological differences between Bajorans and humans, e.g. the chambers of their heart are separated horizontally, and Bajoran pregnancy lasts only five months, during which the would-be mother experiences uncontrollable sneezing bouts. On Bajor, it is also custom to put one's first name last, so in the case of Ro Laren, her first name was Laren, not Ro.

    Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) was a series which took place in the same era as Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), shortly before and after the events of the crossover movie "Star Trek: Generations", which starts out with the crew of the original series and then continues with the TNG crew. The time frame is confirmed by the fact that the movie "Star Trek: Generations" marked the promotion of Lt. Worf (played by Michael Dorn) to Lt. Commander, and while holding that rank, Worf later on becomes a regular crew member of Deep Space Nine, where he is then further promoted to Commander later in the series. Another TNG crew member who transfers from the Enterprise to Deep Space Nine is Chief Miles O'Brien (played by Colm Meaney).

    In the first episode of DS9, the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D is docked at Deep Space Nine, and it is during the movie "Star Trek: Generations" that this ship is destroyed as a result of a warp core breach in the aftermath of an attack from a Klingon D-12-class bird-of-prey commanded by the Duras sisters. The next movie in the line was "Star Trek: First Contact", in which Captain Picard and his crew are given command of the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E. In that movie, Lt. Commander Worf is acting as the commanding officer of the NX-74205 Defiant during the defense of Earth against the Borg.

    Unlike TNG and the later series Star Trek: Voyager (VOY), most of the DS9 series does not take place on board of a starship, but rather on a space station called Deep Space Nine. This space station is located in orbit around the planet Bajor. The station does possess a number of Danube-class runabouts — small ships that can hold about four people and are only ever so slightly larger than a typical shuttle craft — and later on in the series, an experimental but very potent warship, the NX-74205 Defiant, is added to Deep Space Nine to allow exploration of the Gamma Quadrant and to provide a defense against the threat posed by the Dominion. Also unlike any of the other Star Trek series, most of DS9's episodes revolved around a single main story arc — there were a few standalone episodes, but even those would still take place against the backdrop of the larger story arc.

    At the start of the series, Commander (later Captain) Benjamin Sisko — who lost his wife during a battle against the Borg — and his still very young son Jake move to Deep Space Nine, a space station in orbit around Bajor that Sisko is offered the command of. The space station itself used to be called Terok Nor and was built by the Cardassians as an ore refinery during the brutal occupation of Bajor by the militaristic Cardassian Union — an occupation which came to an end around the same time as the Federation signed the peace treaty with the Cardassians.

    Bajor itself is not a member of the Federation yet — even though they aspire to be, and the Federation is certainly interested in their membership — but as the Cardassian occupation of Bajor has only just ended, Bajor is being ruled by a provisional government for secular matters. The Bajorans are however a very spiritual people, with a single religion known as the Way of the Prophets. These Prophets, as it turns out, are alien entities who exist all over time but choose to remain in a single location of space: a wormhole created by themselves, which connects the Alpha Quadrant with the very distant Gamma Quadrant, and which is discovered shortly after Benjamin Sisko's arrival at Deep Space Nine. As a result of the discovery, Sisko orders the space station placed closer to the wormhole for strategic purposes, so as to prevent the Cardassians from laying claim to it.

    Upon one of his first travels through the wormhole, Sisko is pulled out of his reality by the Prophets, with whom he then has a very profound exchange. After the Prophets return Sisko back to his own reality, the Bajoran people begin seeing him as the Emissary, a chosen one. Although Sisko himself initially dismisses the spiritual aspects of his encounter with the wormhole aliens, he does acknowledge that it throws more weight into the scale with the Bajorans on account of his decisions and authority. Later on however, he begins to embrace his relationship with the Prophets, with whom he will have several more encounters as the series progresses. As such, Sisko learns that apart from the Prophets, there are also demonic entities, which are said to have been banned from the Celestial Temple — i.e. the wormhole — by the Prophets, and these entities are called Pah-Wraiths. These Pah-Wraiths will also make their appearance in the series on a few occasions.

    Later in the series, Sisko discovers that he was, indeed, "chosen", as his biological mother was "possessed" by one of the Prophets at the time of his conception and birth. In other words, his existence and his role both as a Starfleet officer and as the Emissary at Deep Space Nine were carefully planned from the start by the Prophets. They help him win the war against the ruthless Dominion, but at a price: after the war, the Prophets demand that Sisko join them in the Celestial Temple and become one of them. He leaves behind a new (and pregnant) wife, a now young adult son, and the space station, now commanded by his first officer, Bajoran Colonel (earlier Major) Kira Nerys, who will later on receive the official Starfleet rank of Captain after Bajor has joined the Federation.

    The most important story arc of DS9 centers around the discovery of the wormhole and the confrontation — and later on, an open war — with the Dominion, who make up for the ruling power in the Gamma Quadrant. Throughout the series, the role of the Cardassians often sways from being allies of the Federation to being adversaries, when they ally themselves with the Dominion and provide them with a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant. However, near the end of the war, a Cardassian rebellion arises, and the Dominion punishes Cardassia for this by obliterating a Cardassian city and murdering over one million Cardassians just as the Dominion fleet — assisted by the Cardassian fleet and the Breen — engages the alliance of the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans. When the news of the massacre reaches the Cardassian fleet, they immediately switch sides and turn on their former allies, securing a victory for the Federation-Klingon-Romulan alliance.

    DS9 was notably dark in tone compared to the other Star Trek series. The backdrop of the war with the Dominion opened up the door to a lot of morally grey areas, which many consider one of the strongest points of the series. The other aspect was of course the fact that the series revolved around a single, prolonged story arc, which allowed for a very profoundly portrayed evolution of the various characters and their relationships.




    My apologies for this off-topic digression in an off-topic thread, but, well, I'm not really sorry. And given the nature of this thread, I don't have to be, either — um, I think.

    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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  7. #169
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    I liked that spiritual aspect of DS9 and quite often wished they would do more with it.

    Same thing with Troy's empathic abilities on TNG. They were quite powerful but only sometimes in play.

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  9. #170
    Senior Member Aianawa's Avatar
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    There was once a couple of hearty souls who plodded on about life off topic blah blah things until this small planet far far a fn away exploded, sending large ripples out in the direction of a little race of people called OTP's ( off topic persons ), as they farted on about made up bollcks and stir fried nothingness, the ripples caused them to quieten, whats that they thought, must be a supernova evolving they mused, well sure hope it has safety guidelines attached to it as last time, a whole new thread had to be opened, you know, those PAH ones that actually never died, went life time after life time, just one topic after another until someone said, lets just be fn happy and KAPOW, they only annoyed unhappy people due to fn happy vibes having cudly fn smiley back chatting features.

    AHHHHH that's better.

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  11. #171
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    That was pretty epic, Aianawa.

    I find it quite annoying that you've written so many words all at once.
    Last edited by Dreamtimer, 28th December 2016 at 06:32.

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  13. #172
    Senior Member Aianawa's Avatar
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    Oh great lets moan at the messenger for being to unusually wordy lol I do find it very difficult to be grumpy but love a good chuckling rant every so often.

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  15. #173
    Administrator Aragorn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    I liked that spiritual aspect of DS9 and quite often wished they would do more with it.
    Well, I personally feel that they did do quite a lot with it. The spiritual aspect is already clearly there from the beginning, and it also marks the end of the series, when Sisko "disappears" and has to go and spend the rest of his existence with the Prophets. And throughout the series, there are the various Orbs of the Prophets, there is the possession of the series' primary villain Dukat by a Pah-Wraith — causing him to mortally wound Jadzia Dax, who was maried to Worf — and then there is the fall and ultimately also the death of Winn Adami after she converts from serving the Prophets to serving the Pah-Wraiths, and so on.

    Of course, the series itself had so much more to offer in terms of intellectual ideas, and all because it was part of the main story arc. That made virtually all events of the series into a continuous concept, as opposed to having standalone episodes which address a certain concept and where next week's episode focuses on an entirely different topic.

    Even though I had to get used to the formula of DS9 taking place aboard a space station rather than on a starship, I did very much appreciate the continuity of the series — at least, for what I've seen of it, because it was broadcast by a commercial TV network over here, and their programming was highly erratic and inconsistent, so I didn't get to see all episodes.

    For instance, the structure of the Dominion was very interesting. The Changelings, once persecuted and now ruling the Gamma Quadrant with an iron fist. The treacherous Vorta, a genetically modified species — they originated as a kind of tree-dwelling primates — who are then cloned and used as diplomats, negotiators, scientists, engineers and military commanders. The Jem'Hadar as the genetically created and brutal but honorable warrior caste, who are specifically engineered with a dependency on the substance "ketracel white" — which their bodies themselves cannot manufacture and which only the Vorta can provide for — so as to ensure the loyalty of the Jem'Hadar to the Dominion.

    Then there were the various other civilizations and their conflicts with the Federation. There were the Cardassians, who, if Gene Roddenberry used the Klingons as a metaphor for the USSR and the Romulans as a metaphor for communist China, would have been a good metaphor for Nazi Germany, even though the Dominion certainly was more than a match for them in terms of cruelty.

    There were the Klingons, who under Gowron briefly broke the peace treaty with the Federation established in the Khitomer Accords. There were the Romulans, who, through deception by Sisko and Garak — in which Garak even went so far as to assassinate the Romulan senator Vreenak, who had discovered the deception — were lured into the war on the side of the Federation and the Klingons, but who still appeared to have an agenda of their own. There was Section 31, the autocratic and secret division of Starfleet Intelligence, and all of their scheming and plotting.

    Part of the series' story arc also revolved around the Maquis — a group of Federation settlers who refused to "give back" their respective colonies to the Cardassians as part of the Federation-Cardassian peace treaty and who became a resistance movement that specifically targeted the Cardassians. The way the Federation (by way of Benjamin Sisko) dealt with the Maquis, as well as the way the Romulans were lured into the war, all falls within that morally grey zone of which I spoke earlier.

    It was also interesting to see certain characters evolve. Benjamin Sisko was of course the main protagonist, but there was also a strong evolution in Quark, who went from being the archetypal greedy Ferengi businessman to being an undercover operative and who on more than one occasion showed that he too had a heart and a conscience. There was Odo, who first embraced the Changelings and then rejected them when he learned that they were the Founders of the Dominion. There were the two on-screen incarnations of the Dax symbiont — first in Jadzia, later in Ezri.

    There was the ever-intriguing and ever-Machiavellian Elim Garak as a former operative of the Cardassian Obsidian Order who was living in exile aboard Deep Space Nine as a tailor, who in spite of his cynicism was more altruistic than he wanted people to believe he'd be. There were also the growing pains of Jake Sisko and his Ferengi friend Nog, the first Ferengi to join Starfleet Academy, and Nog's courage in battle, which ultimately cost him a leg and drove him into a deep depression, causing him to hide inside a holosuite program.

    The series also had many dramatic twists, such as one of Sisko's friends and another fellow Starfleet officer turning Maquis, with a special guest appearance even by Jonathan Frakes as "Thomas" Riker — William Riker's double who had accidentally been created in a transporter accident — who had also joined the Maquis and who appeared on Deep Space Nine in order to steal the Defiant. And he did, but he was ultimately forced to surrender to the Cardassians, and then later on rescued from his prison by Worf and Data.

    Another dramatic twist was the brutal destruction of the NX-74205 Defiant when the Breen first started using their energy dissipator weapon. The Defiant had been a staple of the series for a long time. It was an epic ship — like I said earlier, it was even briefly featured in the movie ""Star Trek: First Contact" — and the scenes of its destruction were deliberately made very intense, as if it were a heroic character who was brutally murdered on screen. It was later in the series replaced by the NCC-75633 São Paulo, a newer ship of the same class, and the São Paulo was renamed to Defiant by special Starfleet dispensation, but the new ship didn't have a cloaking device like the original Defiant did. Its shields did however offer protection against the Breen weapon, which had in the meantime also been retrofitted to several Jem'Hadar attack ships.




    So all in all, to myself the DS9 series had a lot of emotional, spiritual and intellectual content, which I think would have been impossible to bring to the screen if the series had adhered to the standard format of standalone episodes.

    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Same thing with Troy's empathic abilities on TNG. They were quite powerful but only sometimes in play.
    Well, the producers did at least make Troi's empathic nature part of the story of the movie "Star Trek: Nemesis". First of all through the "telepathic rape" by Shinzon and his viceroy, and then, when she overcomes her trauma, by using the telepathic bond that this rape had created for helping Worf locate the cloaked Scimitar, so that the Enterprise can fire its torpedoes at it.

    The telepathy factor has always been present in Star Trek. In the original series (and the movies based upon that), there was Spock. In TNG, it was Deanna Troi, and in VOY, there was Kes, and to a more limited extent also Seven Of Nine through her various Borg implants — something which Jean-Luc Picard also still regularly experienced after his assimilation by the Borg in the two-part episode "The Best Of Both Worlds". In DS9, the telepathy aspect is weaker but is nevertheless present in Sisko on account of his relationship with the Prophets.

    I do think that Troi's empathic abilities were brought to the forefront quite a lot in TNG, but of course, they couldn't make every episode revolve around her. The writers did probably use it as much as possible, but they also had to leave enough room for other topics and other characters. The character of Guinan also had a kind of paranormal abilities.

    In the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", Guinan is the only one on board the Enterprise who notices that there is something wrong with the timeline and who feels that Tasha Yar was not supposed to be there. She even tells Tasha to her face that she's supposed to be dead — on the original timeline, Tasha was gratuitously killed by the malevolent entity Armus on Vagra II (in "The Skin Of Evil"), but because the Enterprise-C had crossed over into the future through a rift in subspace, the timeline was altered, and the Federation was now suddenly still at war with the Klingons. It is only when the Enterprise-C returns to its own time through the rift that the timeline is restored. Realizing that she didn't belong on the Enterprise-D anymore and that she died a senseless death on the original timeline, Tasha chose to transfer to the Enterprise-C before they went back through the rift, and this is how she came to be captured by the Romulans, and how she became the mother of the scheming Romulan Commander Sela (also played by Denise Crosby).

    In the movie "Star Trek: Generations", Guinan — who is an El Aurian, a species with a lifespan of several hundreds of years — had also briefly been in contact with the spatial phenomenon called the Nexus during the 23rd century, and when Picard finds himself in the Nexus in the 24th century, he encounters a part of Guinan which has stayed behind there. It is therefore possible that Guinan's abilities stem from her encounter with the Nexus roughly one century before she joins the Enterprise while it's under Picard's command. On the other hand, Tolian Soran, the villain in "Star Trek: Generations", was also El Aurian, but he never exhibited any paranormal abilities, even though he too had been in contact with the Nexus, and at the same time as Guinan.

    The only Star Trek I've seen in which there was no actual telepathy (that I recall) was the Enterprise prequel series. But that one too had a story arc which spanned multiple episodes, and a continuous backdrop of the Temporal Cold War. In that, it was somewhat similar to the impact of Q on the TNG series — TNG starts with Picard and his crew being put on trial by Q as representatives of the human species (in "Encounter At Farpoint"), and ends with that very same trial in "All Good Things..."

    All things considered, there were many similarities between DS9 and Babylon 5, which was seen as DS9's biggest competitor. Personally, I liked both series — again, Babylon 5 was broadcast by a commercial network over here, and the inconsistencies in programming did not allow me to watch every episode, not to mention that they also didn't broadcast the entire series. But from what I've seen of it, Babylon 5 was definitely also an epic series.

    Hmm... I think Aianawa's going to be ranting at us now because we're not ranting enough on his rant thread.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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  17. #174
    Senior Member Aianawa's Avatar
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    Yawn, gently drags himself out of bed and to the computer, turns it on to the fav happy and informative forum, yawnnnnnnnn

    WHAT FFS

    it must be new year already as huge liberties have been taken, complete ignoring of the status quo, basic rules a crumbling

    I love 2017 so much already

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  19. #175
    Administrator Aragorn's Avatar
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    Copied over from the Forum approaches 100 K thread...





    Quote Originally posted by modwiz View Post
    Active members down to 98.
    Actually, it's up again. It was at 96 during the past week. But then again, we've had two new registrations yesterday, so maybe that's why it went up to 98.

    Quote Originally posted by modwiz View Post
    [...] I'd rather see more active members.
    So would I, but here are some cold and hard facts...

    • We've got 1'291 members with an active account as I'm writing this. An active account means "registered and neither retired nor banned", so the term "active account" doesn't say anything about the frequency of these members' visits, nor of their activity as posters.

    • Of those 1'291 members, 48 have visited the forum in the last 24 hours. This includes the two new members who have registered yesterday, on the 1st of January 2017.

    • Of the 48 members who have visited the forum in the last 24 hours, 17 have bothered to visit my Happy New Year thread, myself not included.

    • Of the 17 members who have bothered to visit my thread, only 14 were kind enough to thank my opening post, and only 10 — myself included — have thanked Malc's post on the same thread.


    For a community of people who consider themselves "alternative" and/or "enlightened", that's pretty sad. Furthermore, I've personally also sent out a whole truckload of "Merry Christmas & Happy New Year" e-mails with a self-created digital image almost identical to the one I posted here at The One Truth on my Happy Festive Season - Merry Christmas 2016 & Happy New Year 2017 thread — which only 10 members have thanked, even though 16 members (myself not included) had visited that thread.

    There were several now retired members of The One Truth among the addressees, as well as a couple of members with a still active account, and none of these retired members and only a few of the still active members have actually bothered to reply to that e-mail, even if it's only with a single sentence.

    The response from non-members — i.e. real-world acquaintances — to that e-mail was equally dismal, especially considering that some of the addressees were people who have loudly and convincingly proclaimed themselves to be friends of mine.

    It all makes one put a few things in perspective. Most people are simply lying to themselves. They may believe that they're your friend, but when push comes to shove, it's all "easy come, easy go" and — as we say here in Belgium — "out of sight, out of heart".
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    We have "Out of sight, out of mind". Your version sounds sadder.

    The flip side is "familiarity breeds contempt". So a little time away can be good.

    Reunited and it feels so good...


    :fisty:

    Annoying little buggers...
    Last edited by Dreamtimer, 2nd January 2017 at 08:54.

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  23. #177
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    Seeing red?

    Tired of pretending?

    Let it out!


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  25. #178
    Administrator Aragorn's Avatar
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    I am more than just a little p*ssed and annoyed right now. Ever since the N-VA — a fairly far-right political party — won the elections and became part of the government coalition, this country has been sliding farther and farther to the right. Many people have already compared the current political climate in Belgium to Nazi Germany, and it seems to be spreading into the European Union as well — not that I am one bit surprised of that, given that the EU itself is also an expert at curtailing civil liberties.

    The most recent feat of our government — courtesy of the N-VA, of course — is that prepaid SIM cards must now be registered to somebody's name, "so as to combat terrorism". Now, I own two phones — one with a contract and one with a prepaid SIM card. I use the "contract phone" for official stuff — anything involving phone calls to official instances — and the "prepaid phone" for private stuff, i.e. mostly SMS text messages (and an occasional phone call) to my brother. Both phones use the same carrier network — Proximus, which is a subsidiary of the formerly state-owned telecom network here, Belgacom.

    Given that I am a longstanding Proximus customer for my phone with the contract — it'll be 20 years in May 2017 — I have a customer account at the Proximus website, where I can change settings with regard to billing notifications, apply for some of the customer bonuses, change my address (if I were to move), and so on.

    Now, one of the procedures by which one can register one's prepaid SIM card and associated telephone number for compliance with this new law is through my Proximus customer account. So I follow the procedure as described on their website, I log into my account, and I supply the number of the prepaid SIM card I wish to register in my name. And then the damn thing says that it is not a valid number, while it most certainly is.

    I've tried multiple times, and I've checked, double-checked and triple-checked that I had typed the number correctly in the registration field — you have to enter the number twice for confirmation anyway, and it doesn't even accept pasting from the clipboard. I've called their hell desk — spelling as intended, grrr — this morning with that particular phone to report on the problem, and they confirmed that the number is indeed active. Yeah, duh, I was using it to call them, and I had already verified that the number is active by using it to call my other phone yesterday evening.

    And I can understand that a hell desk operator would not be allowed to register that number for me anymore — I could after all have been a terrorist, you know — but instead of saying that they would look into the problem with their website, the woman simply told me that I have to go to one of their official retail points with my electronic identity card and its associated PIN code, and that I must have my phone registered there. The only problem is that there are no such official retail points here in town, and so I will have to go and find one in another town and go there. And if I don't, then my number will be deactivated by the end of March 2017. Hmpf!




    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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  27. #179
    Senior Member Aianawa's Avatar
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    Hi all, am a wee bit annoyed, unable to axcess site for this long, am at Kaula lumpar airport awaiting to get back to NZ and finally yah hello lol, see on the tv behind me that there be a countdown happening for trumpy to roar onto the usa scene, actually am probably on the wrong thread as happy as larry about returning to the big beautifull world we can all enjoy.

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  29. #180
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    Quote Originally posted by Aianawa View Post
    Hi all, am a wee bit annoyed, unable to axcess site for this long, am at Kaula lumpar airport awaiting to get back to NZ and finally yah hello lol, see on the tv behind me that there be a countdown happening for trumpy to roar onto the usa scene, actually am probably on the wrong thread as happy as larry about returning to the big beautifull world we can all enjoy.
    Welcome back, Brother. We were starting to get worried about you.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    Aianawa (20th January 2017)

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