Hi everyone.

Mind if i join in the chat? :]

Of course not! Feel free!

I'm roaming around the threads, so I might be slow to reply.

Originally Posted by Melancholy

Hi everyone.

Mind if i join in the chat? :]

Hi Melancholy! Welcome xD


Siz ~ Ya go figure. She only took a couple of days to complete mine though. So she should have another bribe slot open soon *nodnod*

More on the Wizard of Oz

Dorothy Gale is a young girl who lives on a Kansas farm with her Uncle Henry and Aunt Emily ("Auntie Em"), and her little dog Toto. (Her last name is only revealed in later books in the Oz series.) One day a tornado appears outside and before Dorothy can reach the storm cellar, the farmhouse is caught up in the cyclone and deposited in a grassy field in the country of the Munchkins. The falling house kills the Wicked Witch of the East, who had established a reign of terror over the Munchkins.

The Good Witch of the North comes with the Munchkins to greet Dorothy, and gives her the Silver Slippers (changed to ruby in the famous film due to camera difficulties with silver) the Wicked Witch of the East had been wearing when she was killed (her death is explained in The Tin Woodsman of Oz as due to her being old and dried up before Oz became a fairyland). In order to return to Kansas, the Good Witch of the North consults a magical blackboard which recommends: "Let Dorothy go to the City of Emeralds" and ask the Wizard of Oz to help her. The Good Witch of the North also kisses Dorothy on the forehead, stating that no one will harm a person who has been kissed by her.

On her way down the Yellow Brick Road, Dorothy meets some remarkable characters: she liberates the Scarecrow from the pole he's hanging on, restores the mobility of the rusted Tin Woodsman, and encourages the Cowardly Lion to journey with her and Toto to the Emerald City. The Scarecrow wants to get a brain, the Tin Woodsman a heart, and the Cowardly Lion courage; and they are convinced by Dorothy that the Wizard can help them too. Together they overcome a pair of ravening Kalidahs (Giant creatures with the heads of tigers and the bodies of bears) and escape from a field of sleep-inducing poppies.

When they arrive at the Emerald City, the companions must wear special spectacles to keep the brilliance of the Emerald City from blinding them; wearing them, everything appears in different shades of green. They are told that the Wizard will only see one of them a day, and that the guard himself has never seen him. When each traveler meets the Wizard, he appears each time as someone or something different. To Dorothy, the Wizard is a giant head; the Scarecrow sees a beautiful woman; the Tin Woodsman sees a ravenous beast; the Cowardly Lion sees a ball of fire. The Wizard agrees to help each of them, but his help is conditional; one of them must kill the Wicked Witch of the West, who rules over the Winkie Country.

As Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion travel across the Winkie Country, the Wicked Witch sends wolves, crows, bees, and then her Winkie soldiers to attack them; but each threat is dispatched by the travelers. Then, using the power of the Golden Cap, the Witch summons the Winged Monkeys to destroy all the travelers except for the Cowardly Lion. The Winged Monkeys dare not attack Dorothy due to the mark of the Good Witch's kiss upon her forehead and decide to carry her and Toto back to the castle of the Wicked Witch. This was the third and final time that the Wicked Witch could command the Winged Monkeys due to the Cap's enchantment.

Dorothy is forced to work as a maid to the Wicked Witch, while the Lion is starved in an effort to make him agree to pull the witch's chariot. But the Lion refuses to do so, because Dorothy sneaks him food every night. Dorothy is also left unharmed because of the Good Witch of the North's mark and the Silver Shoes. When the Wicked Witch gains one of the shoes by trickery, Dorothy in anger grabs a bucket of water and throws it on the Wicked Witch, who begins to melt. The Winkies rejoice at being freed of her tyranny, and they help to reassemble the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman. So enamored are the Winkies of the Tin Woodsman that they ask him to become their ruler, which he agrees to do after helping Dorothy return to Kansas.

The long walk from the Wicked Witch's former palace to the Emerald City is alleviated by Dorothy's use of the Golden Cap, which summons the Winged Monkeys to carry her and her companions to the Emerald City. The King of the Monkeys relates how he and his mischievous people were forced by a powerful sorceress to choose between submission or annihilation; through the Cap, they obeyed first a man named Quelala, then the Wicked Witch, and now Dorothy herself.

When Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz again, he tries to put them off. Only under threat of seeing the Winged Monkeys again (who under the Wicked Witch's command attacked him in the past) is the Wizard convinced to allow the travelers in to his throne room. Toto accidentally tips over a screen in a corner of the throne room, revealing a wizened old man who had journeyed here himself long ago from Omaha. He once rose high in a hot air balloon, was swept away in an accident and finally landed in Oz; when the people saw the letters "OZ" on the balloon (in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, we find they are his initials), they presumed he was their ruler and at his direction began building the Emerald City. Finding himself in a country of witches, the soon-to-be-designated Wizard saw the need to maintain anonymity—hence his appearances to Dorothy and the others, which are revealed as clever (for the dawn of the 20th century) special effects.

(and finally)

The Wizard tries to persuade the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion that what they lack are not brains or a heart or courage, but faith in themselves. But he still agrees to meet each of them and to give them (without their knowledge) a placebo which brings out the qualities they had all along. In order to help Dorothy and Toto get home, the Wizard realizes that he will have to take them home with him in a new balloon which he and Dorothy fashion from green silk. Revealing himself to the people of the Emerald City one last time, the Wizard appoints the Scarecrow, by virtue of his brains, to rule in his stead. Dorothy chases Toto after he runs after a kitten in the crowd, and before she can make it back to the balloon the ropes break, leaving the Wizard to rise and float away alone.

Dorothy turns to the Winged Monkeys to carry her and Toto home, but they cannot cross the desert surrounding Oz. The citizens of the Emerald City advise that Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, may be able to send Dorothy and Toto home. They, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion journey to Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country. Together they escape the Fighting Trees, dodge the Hammerheads, and tread carefully through the China Country. The Cowardly Lion kills a giant spider which is terrorizing the animals in a forest, and he agrees to return there to rule them after Dorothy returns to Kansas.

At Glinda's palace, the travelers are greeted warmly, and it is revealed by Glinda that Dorothy had the power to go home all along. The Silver Shoes she wears can take her anywhere she wishes to go. She tearfully embraces her friends—all of whom will be returned, through Glinda's use of the Golden Cap, to their respective sovereignties: the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, the Tin Woodsman to the Winkie Country, and the Cowardly Lion to the forest. Then she will give the Cap to the king of the Winged Monkeys, so they will never be under its spell again. Dorothy and Toto return to Kansas and a joyful family reunion. The Silver Shoes are lost during Dorothy's flight and never seen again.

Oh yeah? You think you guys are so smart? Take this:

The Dog Days or the dog days of summer are typically the hottest and most humid times of the year. They are a phenomenon of the northern hemisphere where they usually fall between July and early September but the actual days vary greatly from region to region, depending on latitude and climate. Dog days can also define a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant.

The dog days get their name because they occur during the time the star Sirius, known as the Dog Star (and the brightest star of all as seen from Earth, except the Sun), rises before the Sun after being lost in the sun's glare during the spring and early summer. This is also attested to by the fact that the dog days are called la canícula in Spanish, from the Latin canis. The ancient Egyptians observed that the annual flooding of the Nile Delta would typically occur shortly after the star returned to view immediately before sunrise, taken to be around mid-August in the current calendar.

The term "Dog Days" itself was coined by the ancient Romans, who called these days caniculares dies (days of the dogs) after the constellation of Canis Major, (bigger dog) within which Sirius is found. As the hottest and most humid days of summer generally coincided with the period where Sirius rose/set with the sun, they believed that heat from Sirius was increasing the heat of the sun.

Plus, I know from my own studies in literature that the dogs days are associted with some bad "juju" so to speak. They apparently makes people do crazy things.

heheeeee.

Hey how does the easter event work around here? I~m really not getting it.

You just have to find all the eggs.

Umm I see you found the first one. The second one is in your 'My avatar' under the hair section.

The third one you have to go the card game and type 'Easter' in the part that you would normally enter the amount of gold that you want to bet.

The 4th is in the flower shop.

What's goin on in the midwest?

Did you know...

Jayhawkers were guerrilla fighters during the American Civil War in Kansas who often clashed with States' Rights and pro-slavery partisans, as well as Missouri militia units.

While the term originated during the Bleeding Kansas Affair, Civil War jayhawkers are to be distinguished from Free State Jayhawkers who fought during Bleeding Kansas, which occurred in the decade leading up to the Civil War. Some Civil War jayhawkers had in fact supported Kansas' admission to the union as a slave state, and had fought on the opposite side from the Free-Staters during the earlier conflict. Rather than anti-slavery sentiment, which motivated the Free-Staters, jayhawker bands organized to prevent and repel possible invasions of Kansas by Missouri bushwhackers. Some of their organizers, such as James Henry Lane, were nonetheless prominent abolitionist politicians. As is often the case in insurgencies, the conflict between bushwhackers and jayhawkers rapidly escalated into a succession of atrocities committed by both sides.

Well-known jayhawkers include Lane and Charles "Doc" Jennison. Lane and his band of militants wore red gaiters, earning them the nickname "Redlegs." This moniker is often used interchagably with the term "jayhawkers," although it is sometimes used to refer specifically to jayhawkers who refused to join units officially sanctioned by the U.S. Army. Guerrillas on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border achieved some measure of legitimacy through sanction from the Federal and Confederate governments, and the bands who scorned such sanction were typically even more vicious and indiscriminate in their methods than their bureaucratically recognized counterparts. Even within Kansas, the jayhawkers were not always popular because, in the absence of federal support, they supplied themselves by stealing horses and supplies from farmers.

Jayhawker bands waged numerous invasions of Missouri and also committed some of the most notorious atrocities of the Civil War, including the Lane-led massacre at Osceola, Missouri, in which the entire town was set aflame and at least 9 of the male residents killed. The sacking of Osceola inspired the 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Jayhawkers also were accused of engineering the collapse of a jail in Kansas City in which female relatives of bushwhackers were incarcerated by Union sympathizers because of their connection to pro-Confederate guerrillas. These two incidents precipitated the Lawrence Massacre in Lawrence, Kansas, led by William Quantrill and his band of bushwhackers, who retaliated by setting the town on fire and killing an estimated 200 male residents.

Originally Posted by poet`s playground

What's goin on in the midwest?

Hey poet's! How's it going?

Pas mal, pas mal.
My friend came over my houes for the first time yesterday.
"To help with physics" XD.
We did get some done... but I was mostly showing her stuff on the compy and talking with my other friend (who this friend talks to as well) on IM XD.
And she "came out of the closet" xP.

LoL. Sounds like a busy day xD

sorry for the random posting.. just trying to earn some gold

* The sports teams at the University of Kansas in Lawrence are known as the Jayhawks. The Jayhawk is a mythical bird, a cross between a blue jay and a sparrow hawk.
* A cattle-drive being held up by Jayhawkers is depicted in The Tall Men.
* A minor character in the movie Glory was reffered to as a "real Jayhawker from Kansas"
* Abolitionists were referred to as "Jayhawkers" or "Red Legs" and both are still used as terms of derision towards those from Kansas.
* Items stolen in raids into Missouri were frequently referred to as having been "Jayhawked."

Originally Posted by Eroy

LoL. Sounds like a busy day xD

Yeah. Well... as for the closet thing, she's actually a lesbian and has yet to come out to her parents (though she's out to everyone else but her family) so it was semi-significant.
But, we also called our other friend in Tennessee where he was grumbling that it was too cold XD. He said he was looking forward to the warm weather xP.

Is that really allowed? >.<;;;.

well I'm sure she'll tell her parents when she feel ready for it.

I want warm weather too. It's supposed to be nice... not freezing cold Dx

I'm just bitter that it was rainy for Christmas, and snowy for easter.
That's a real WTF sort of thing >.< :x.

Mostly she's scared they wont approve. Especially since they're trying to push her to read the Bible >.<.

Lol. Ya it does seem kind of backwards.

Maybe they're trying to push her to read the bible because they have suspicions. It's something they'll learn to deal with.. and hopefully accept someday.

Yeah, hopefully. I think she'll do fine, though. She's pretty ambitious and independent.

Fucking weather... I wish it would make up its mind!

Haha I know. *dies*

*patpat*
It'll get warm...

Why is it snowing in April~~? D; <//3

To make up for the lack of it in the winter.