SCEPTRE 2.1 Channel w/Built In Subwoofer Soundbar
Model #SB301523
Price is currently $55, free S&H when purchased directly from from Amazon (as opposed to the "Amazon Marketplace")
Customer product reviews @ Amazon are mostly positive, with no doubt some crabs being underwhelmed after experiencing a vast array of other, probably more expensive, options.
Between my lack of experience with hifi audio and my lack of efficiency in the ear dept., I think a budget sound bar would work just fine, especially in my tiny room.
I ate apprx 4000 calories the day before yesterday. Last time I got weighed I came in at 250, but the person/nurse said she'd been told by several people that the scale used in that instance was not accurate. So I'm hoping as of *now* I weight no more than 240...I more or less assumed I didn't weight *more* than what the scale said...but based on that figure (240 lbs), American Heart Association suggest if I wanted to maintain my weight, my max. calorie intake should be 3300. If by chance I've lost more than 5 or 10 lbs, I'd imagine that max. intake just to keep the overage of weight I already have would go down to 3000 give or take ?... The more you weigh, the more you can consume without gaining weight. However, I'm not simply trying to avoid gaining weight, I'm trying (rather feebly) to LOSE weight. So...yesterday, I had closer to 3000 calories. I had about half a pound of deer meat, not sure how many calories are in that, but it's probably about 400 if deer meat has the calorie qty of beef (more or less).
Today I've already had 1800 calories, maybe a little more, possibly a little less...I'm hoping I can just have a salad at around 2pm and then have oatmeal or cream of wheat (300 calories total w/ margarine & salad dressing factored in). That w/ coffee (creamer) will up today's total to a more reasonable 2500 roughly. I still need to keep it under 2300. When I was only 25 lbs overweight as opposed to the whopping 50+..., I was told by someone who entered my info as I knew it to be in a smart phone and came up with a maintainance calorie intake of 2300. If I can succeed at that for 5 days or at least close to that, then there's hope for me after all. I'm not good with commitment.
Speaking of which, me and my fellow congregation members are now starting the New Testament of The Story, a 31 chapter breakdown of The Bible. I am finally caught up, I was once 4 or 5 chapters behind. On the downside, I haven't picked up The Bible itself in at least a week. And my prayers are still a struggle to get out. I keep forgetting to pray for forgiveness. My pastor says I should obey God, my mother says obedience is a sign of appreciation for God's mercy, and my sister said that to do the right thing without God's help is wrong b/c you need to be humble. So not only am I disobedient, I'm also an unappreciative little schit and even if I wanted to show my appreciation, I'd need some supernatural interference to aid me. I don't pride myself in my limitations. I just don't see any other way. The supernatural (i.e.: prayer) is not something I have experience in dealing with. I guess I just need practice. But I have to want practice. Or no? I can't be praying to God while looking at my clock waiting for a reasonable(?) qty of time to pass in prayer and then rush right into checking my email in hopes that some new and noteworthy information has come my way. Right or wrong, I would enjoy reading Elliot Perlman's SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY much more than reading The Bible. I'm on the part/chapter(s?) on EXODUS that details the mountain of detail required of the priests and the temple. The same thought runs circles through my head -- "Thank God these aren't on my to-do list". I don't understand half the words used in this instruction, I don't feel like there's any point in decoding the symbolism of it all...Yes, it all points to Jesus. So what? The USA flag will continue to represent freedom so long as people want freedom. The Antichrist will come into this world and take Obama's crimes and magnify them x1,000 and do to Christians what Hitler did to the Jewish people. Oh, but never mind
that! The Flag is waving high and victorious! The old and nearly did who were governing this country in 1965-1975 can defend its actions all it wants, but the fact is people cared more about the flag than freedom itself when they cheered on police beating and stomping on anyone with long hair or anyone who was identified as being a threat to this nation during that time. There is absolutely nothing positive about violence and hate. Yes, God commanded the Israelites to demolish some of the neighboring civilizations, but his hatred for rejection is no worse than the hatred a person feels when they are rejected or outcast or hated upon. To hate God is to hate yourself b/c God created everything. You can try denying it all you want, but there is no way around The Truth. Obviously, evolution is a truth and I don't recall The Bible saying specifically that it isn't, but the elaborate concept that mankind was born from organisms in the water that expanded and eventually became land dwelling organisms that got added onto and eventually formed at least one human etc. etc. etc., has no more evidence backing it up than The Bible has to back itself up -- the mathematical likelihood of such a meticulously woven story like The Bible being written over the course of 1000+ years makes about as much sense as the assumption that mankind originated from the ocean by total accident. BTW, I never subscribed the conventional Theory Of Evolution. So long as I was socially conscious enough to know about the controversy of TOE, I never did put faith in its validity. I don't have enough education to pick apart each and every field of science and say this is wrong and that is wrong or anything else for that matter. But common sense doesn't disappear just b/c some group of scientists don't want to be associated with the same group of people that penalized a fellow scientist for proclaiming what we all know as true today - that the Earth is not flat. And really, I believe that's what it all comes down to. Between the cultural shift from Catholics being spat on and the modern day popularity of Catholicism -- there was no Protestant Church in Gallelio'(SP?)s heyday -- and science's uneasiness of not being able to PROVE God's existence, not to mention all the ignorance from Christians themselves (chiefly all the stupid dialogues that occurred in the 1800s when dinosaur bones were re-discovered by mankind) scientists have felt the desire to make science a religion all its own. There's a slim possibility I'm wrong. But I'm not going to take anyone's word for it. This whole world is filled with distortions of the truth. And a lot of people grow comfortable with these distortions. Fans of Elvis Presley couldn't face the fact that he'd been using illegal drugs until over 10 years after his death. To this day, I still maintain just as Michael Jackson's management team introduced him as an 8 year old despite the fact that he was really a 10 year old so that people wouldn't hear his age and look at him and go "man, is he a dwarf?" but instead go "aw, what a cute little boy" (2 years may not seem like much, but for some reason it just clicks differently when that 2nd digit is added), I think when Jackson's vitaligo got to a certain point, if he had bleached his skin, and publically admitted it, the public's reaction would have been worse than it already was/is. Granted, lots of people would have been happy to spit on him due to the assumption that he did bleach his skin, compounded with all the extensive plastic surgery he undertook, but there were still many MJ fans that did not buy into the negative chatter surrounding him and his appearance. Most of them are not USA citizens, but he would have essentially had to go into exile and start a whole new identity in Japan or somewhere had he told everyone that he bleached his skin so he'd have a more even flesh tone. I mean, on the surface, it doesn't sound unreasonable to think someone would want a more even flesh tone and take action. But on the other hand, female models get tons of flack for doing what their paid to do which is to represent the model appearance of a woman. That's not to say some models don't go too far in it, but models in magazines etc. are no different than the apartment that the characters in the '90's sitcome FRIENDS lived in -- both are luxuriously unrealistic! Three people working as a waitress, a crappy songwriter and a chef are not going to pull in enough money to pay the rent on a Manhattan apartment, which is the only apartment that would be as spacious as the one depicted in FRIENDS (1994-2005). Now, a number-cruncher and a paleontologist and a soap actor are probably able to afford two apartments of the quality and size seen in FRIENDS...
Anyway.
There's a lot of buts and rebuttals but essentially, the average USA citizen (can't speak for France, Japan etc....their culture IS vastly different from ours...) there's a mixture of feeling like you're witnessing the first step in Frankenstein's monster, offended that he assumes that his fans are too shallow to accept him as he is, and shock that there was something wrong with his skin and nobody knew about it (It would probably seem to the average National Enquirer reader that he was impeding their ability to do their job right since there was no indication of this by way of any paparazzi photographs....)
Another thing is MJ was a private person. His whole family's very close knit and private. He learned to deal with seeing himself on TV long ago I'm sure, but I don't think he ever got used to all the mindless criticism and negativity directed toward him.
But my original point is people always say "why doesn't he come out and admit it?" and the answer is unflattering so people continue asking and, not surprisingly, no answers come to them.
