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  birthday
        rides | intolerable
        cruelty
 
 
   The Dark Knight :) 3 Kinds of Crazy --Order, Chaos, and Coin Flips --
 Collide in Gotham.
 
 Phoneheads
      - Roll That Stone
 
 
  Cool Things
      in Random Places
 
 
 "One of our students introduced us to Fluxx while on
      a mission trip - when we weren't working or eating, we were playing
      Fluxx!" -- Derek D of Stephenville, TX 
  Rash is currently
      traveling around the world -- read his special travel blog: RtW08
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                |  | Welcome, Nikki! |  |  
          |  This
            is Nikki, our newest employee. She's been working for Looney
            Labs for about 3 weeks now, and so far, she's proving to
            be a great addition to our team. She's joining us courtesy of
            a temp agency she works for, who put us together because she
            lives just a few blocks from us and has a flexible schedule well-suited
            to our part-time requirements. She's being supervised by Alison,
            working in the customer service and sales support departments,
            so if you're a store owner calling to get in on our newest Superstore
            Special, Nikki is the one who'll be entering your order.
 The best part about this for me is that Nikki is taking over
            the work I've been doing for almost a year now, ever since Alison
            became overloaded with Sales Support work and there was no one
            else on the team with any time to lend a hand. Yay for Nikki! Nikki was born and raised in College Park and recently graduated
            from the University of MD with a BA in Criminal Justice and double
            major in Sociology. Come fall, she will be attending Villa Julie
            College's Graduate School to obtain her Masters Degree in Forensic
            Studies. In her spare time, she enjoys playing Fluxx and Treehouse,
            bowling on a Duckpin Bowling League, going fishing, going out
            to eat, and spending time with her family and friends. Anyway, welcome aboard Nikki! Thanks for helping us sell games!
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          |  Thanks for reading, and have a great fortnight! |  
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                |  | This week, a PG County SWAT
                  team smashed up the house of the mayor of Berwyn Heights,
                  slaughtering their two dogs upon entry (chasing after the smaller
                  one to kill it as it tried to run away) and terrorizing the family
                  for several hours, all because someone in Arizona mailed them
                  a box containing 32 pounds of marijuana. Granted, that's a lot
                  of weed, but why did the dogs have to die? Did these armed and
                  armored soldiers actually feel threatened by a fleeing dog --
                  or is it just standard procedure now for the drug warriors to
                  murder your pets if they catch you holding a big box of drugs?
                  How many more incidents like this will it take to end
                  the madness of prohibition? (Remember, all it takes is a
                  mistake on a street address, and it could be YOUR beloved pets
                  the cops are brutally gunning down.) Our hearts go out to Mayor
                  Calvo and his family as they cope with this act of intolerable
                  cruelty. |  
                |  | Hippies come in many flavors but I've observed two main categories,
                  which I'm calling Green and Orange. Green Hippies are the crunchy-granola
                  vegan types, who care a lot about saving the earth, while the
                  Orange Hippies are the Burning Man hedonists who are into taking
                  drugs, making art, and exercising their right to personal freedom.
                  Green Hippies tend to be the New Age Pagans while the Orange
                  Hippies are the Freethinking Mind-Expansionists. But while the
                  Green and Orange Hippies may disagree about including meat on
                  the menu, we all get along well together under our big tie-dyed
                  flag. |  
                |  | I've become convinced that I'm a supertaster.
                  It's not like it's rare - odds are 1 in 4 for a person like me
                  -- and I certainly fit the profile. There's a list of "Problem
                  Foods" on the wikipedia page about supertasters, and I totally
                  hate absolutely everything on the list. (But there's other stuff
                  I hate the taste of too, so I'm also just a generally picky eater.)
                  Incidentally, I'm delighted to learn that there's a name for
                  the type of flavor my supertaster taste buds crave the most -
                  Umami, the recently-acknowledged
                  fifth type of taste. |  |  |