Phaedrus

Ah, yes. The good old "lying by telling the truth" trick. So they make a fake booking, and... yes, that's a meeting, and it was prearranged! They just neglect to mention that they were utterly deceitful about the purpose of it...

Legalize, and tax. I'd be quite happy to see a revenue stream for the government from weed, and that could then be used to reduce taxes elsewhere, or provide more services. Remember also to account for the time and money that would be saved on law enforcement, prosecutions and imprisonment (far less than in some other countries, but still, not negligible). Legalization will also allow businesses to grow and thrive, and the end of prohibition will mean the profit margins will become unacceptably low for the criminal elements, so they'll move onto something else. We'd certainly end up with a lot of low-quality stuff grown with a lot of chemicals... but I'm sure we'd also get smaller growers selling a high-quality product, and enthusiastic amateurs growing their own. It'll end up like food and booze and other consumables; there'll be something to suit all budgets and tastes.

+1 on Kathryn. You might also want to have a look at the ads to see if any travelling ladies are visiting while you're here - there's a good chance that they'll be at a downtown hotel too, which will probably be fairly close to you.

Okay, a couple of things to say here. First... I've found that massage rates tend to be reasonably consistent between the major spas (including P/AT) and independent providers. You're usually looking at 180-ish for an hour; it may be a bit more or less depending on where you go and what options you want (or don't want) where those exist. For the spas that only publish a door fee rather than an all-in rate, you can do the math yourselves. Don't ask me about other lengths of appointment because I tend not to go for those :) Second, a word to those people making snarky comments about people with long-standing accounts asking questions like this: it's perfectly possible to have been involved in this industry for a long time without ever going to a spa. Maybe those folks have only seen escorts in the past. Maybe they've stuck to indy providers, where it's much easier to ask questions directly of the person who you'll be with. Or maybe they haven't been involved with this industry for a while; people do end up doing things like having monogamous relationships, sometimes for years at a time, without playing away from home while they do. An account with few posts that's been around for a long time and hasn't been to a spa is not inherently suspicious. None of that means that anyone should feel obliged to answer PM'd questions from people with no posting record - hell, I quite often don't myself, and I'm far more likely to help out other members who do things like post recommendations - but if we could hold back on the open scorn and hostility, it'd be nice.

Fuck yeah!!!!!!

+1 on Mandy Also Kourtney (just gone indy)

It's a good - and fair - question. I've always worked on the basis that anyone at one of the spas with a good reputation is almost certainly there because she applied for the job, and is free to leave if she wishes; the frequency with which MAs tend to come and go (and come back again, sometimes at the same spa and sometimes at a different one) tends to make me think there's no coercion going on. I also think well-established and recommended indies are OK - anyone who's running a business herself is, again, probably doing so because she's chosen to. But in this case I'm thinking of the MAs that have been around for a while, who are active on the boards, and who may have their own website; not all of that is required by any means, but I look for more than just the occasional post on BP or wherever. As for whether any given person is really doing what she wants, or just doing what pays the bills... that's another matter entirely, and to some extent I think that's unknowable for us clients. But let's face it, there's a lot of people out there doing a job they'd perhaps not have chosen, but keep at it because it's better than the alternatives. I suspect most people in call centers, for example, would rather be elsewhere...

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

I think someone can add this when they start a thread (if you click the 'create new recommendation' link in the reco forum you'll see the option at the top), but I suspect most people don't do it. I didn't know it was there. The option doesn't appear to exist if you're posting to an existing reco thread. Putting a pic in a recommendation might work too, if there's no pic already; I'm not sure. And I have no idea if there's any approved way for a provider to get her pic attached to her reco thread

You can't tell much from that. A lot of ridings are so geographically small that you can't see them at all on that map.

Well, this election's over for me. Too late to change my mind now! :)

So the government wanted the report buried rather than do anything to address it? Sad, but why am I not surprised?

Something that the article completely missed is that a lot of clients want to see someone that they'll connect with on some level... and that often means seeing someone round about your own age. Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with having a lot of fun with a younger provider, and sometimes that's exactly what the doctor ordered.... but much as I hate to admit it, I really don't have much in common with 20-year-olds any more, no matter how pert their boobs are.

[URL="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/serial-flasher-convicted-small-penis-defense-fails-article-1.2388771"][B]Serial flasher convicted after defense that heâ??d never expose his 'unusually small' penis fails, prostitute testifies it's 'normal'[/B][/URL] His limp defense didn't rise to the challenge. A British serial flasher who claimed he'd never expose his penis in public because it was too small was convicted after a prostitute he had sex with described the actual "normal size" of his manhood in court. Hinton Sheryn, 68, was sentenced to 17 years in jail after being found guilty of 18 perverted crimes during a bizarre five-day trial, The Telegraph reported Tuesday. He allegedly told police they had the wrong guy because he was too mortified of his "unusually small" penis to be the sought-after flasher, the Plymouth Crown Court heard. "One reason I would not expose myself in public is that I have such a small one that I would not want anyone to laugh at me," Sheryn said, according to authorities. "As far as doing it out on the street or a public place such as that, you have got to be joking." But 11th hour testimony from an escort he used for more than 20 years helped convict the author after she contested Sheryn's claims and said his penis was average-sized, according to The Telegraph. Sheryn was reportedly known as "the flasher" for exposing himself so often around his former home village near Plymouth, Devon. He had denied nine offenses of indecent assault against children and eight of committing acts of indecency against children between 1973 and 1986, The Telegraph reported. Sheryn was convicted on all counts this week.

So, to add to the answers above... I guess the main issue here is keeping your various online identities separate and not cross-pollinating them. This, alas, is tricky, because many services - especially free ones - are very much geared to hoovering up as much of your personal data as they possibly can. Cellphones are a real problem. All apps you install on your phone request some permissions; a lot of them request enough permissions to access things like your contacts and... make use of them. There isn't much you can do about this; either live with it, or don't use the apps in question. Given that most of us want to access things like email, FB, Twitter, etc from our phones, that really means you'll need to make sure you have separate phones for your separate lives... and you have to be very careful to ensure you NEVER access Meaghan's email from your real-life cellphone, or vice versa. As soon as you do that, another address-book gets pillaged by the wrong accounts, and before you know it you'll have sent all your clients FB friend requests from your real-life account, or something equally bad. On other devices... be careful of being tracked across sites. Many websites place cookies on your machine to track what you do online, mostly so that they can then target ads at you. So, using separate browsers for separate things is a good idea - as an example, I have one browser that I use for FB and nothing else. There are plenty of browsers out there (IE, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera - that should be enough for most people). Install a plugin in each browser to block known trackers - I use Ghostery (https://www.ghostery.com/), but others exist. Other plugins like Adblock and Flashblock are also useful. Configure your browser to remove all personal information when you close it (cookies, form data, history, etc) - yes, that means you'll have to log in every time, but I consider it worth the inconvenience. There's probably other stuff, but that's all that springs to mind right now...

As far as I can tell, the mails themselves are legit. It's just that they've been dumped into a queue, and got stuck... and something has just changed that's allowed them all to be sent. One thing I did notice (on gmail) - a lot of the mails made it to my inbox, but a lot of others ended up in the spam folder. It would REALLY help Mod and the board if folks could check your spam folders, and mark any mails from the board that ended up there as "not spam" - that kind of thing helps to teach your email provider that mails from here are legitimate. There have been issues in the past with mails being treated as spam, and I know Mod has put in a lot of work (and probably spent some of the board's limited coin) to get it fixed. It would be very helpful if people could do what they can to keep Lyla's sender reputation up so that we don't have the same problem again - and marking mis-categorized mails as being "not spam/junk" makes a difference, even if you then immediately delete them.

I met Kourtney at one of the socials, what seems a very long time ago now. I'd been meaning to go and get to know her better since then, but... well, scheduling these things is an issue sometimes! Anyway, I finally managed to put that right a couple of weeks ago. Booking was very quick and easy, and soon afterwards I walked though the door to be met by a redhead who's even more stunning than I'd remembered. A massage with Kourtney turned out to be everything I'd hoped it would be - good conversation, made increasingly tricky on my end by the increasing levels of distraction presented by what she was doing with her hands and the view in the mirrors. Eventually it was time to turn over and bring things to a conclusion... and after than, unfortunately, time to go. And now, I have a problem. How am I going to sneak out of work to see Kourtney again? It's going to have to happen...

In this one case, I'm fine with it. I think the Barney Frank rule has it about right. Mind you, I'm sure Josh Duggar will survive this... it's pretty small beer compared to the prior revelation that he'd finger-banged his younger sisters. Yes, absolutely. I've always worked on the basis that everything Phaedrus does online will one day fall into the hands of my worst enemy, and so while I'm happy to talk about some pretty intimate stuff I try hard not to put any information online that's personally identifying. Whether I've succeeded in that is, of course, another matter entirely... The impression I've got from media reports (which may, of course, be utterly wrong) is that whoever's done this has some sort of grudge against ALM and is looking to put them out of business. Not that that's really any better. The one thing that does make me think that ALM deserved it is the fact that people who had paid for "complete deletion" of their account and personal data have been screwed over. Sucks for them, of course, but the fact that ALM took money for a service they then didn't bother to provide makes me happy to see them die. Yeah, that's just cruel... although I can't help but feel that anyone who's foolish enough to call into a show like that is, quite literally, asking for it. Good for you. I wish more people followed your example.

I have to say, I get the feeling that the most important things for anyone in this industry are boundless patience and a high tolerance for jackassery...

Generally it's part of the appointment, yes. Having said that... Showers for two are a lot of fun. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that the shower isn't supposed to be the entire appointment :) Even if you're just quickly cleaning up before the fun starts, the lady you're with will undoubtedly appreciate your concern for hygiene, which may result in you having more fun than you might otherwise, or perhaps she'll add a little bit on to the end for you. No promises, obviously, but it doesn't hurt.

I really don't like the online shame mob at all. The mob doesn't care that initial reports of something may be inaccurate, or misleading, or just plain wrong. The mob doesn't care that it may have no clue about the context of whatever happened, or be ignorant of nuance. The mob doesn't care if it gets the wrong person; it suffers no consequences for that. The mob doesn't care if the damage it inflicts on its victim is entirely out of proportion to the perceived or actual offence; it suffers no consequences for that, either. The mob doesn't care if some, any or all of its individual members are just as guilty of the perceived crime as whoever's having their life destroyed today. We've all said stupid things in the heat of the moment. We've all made jokes at the expense of another person or group, or said things that others might find offensive. That's just being human. Almost all of us get away with it almost all of the time. Public figures don't, but that's part of being a public figure. For the rest of us... we're immune and blessedly unnoticed, until suddenly we're not. There are people who are sufficiently evil to deserve what they get... but they are very few and far between, and the mob is an immensely bad judge of their identity.

Some people's tastes run to younger ladies, and I see nothing inherently wrong with that, any more than there would be a problem with picking someone based on her height, or body type, or whatever else. I'd have thought that for those people, making an effort to ensure everyone they see is a consenting adult would be a sensible and responsible thing to do, and how best to go about this is an entirely legitimate topic of conversation.

Yep. The interesting question is: how far can the oligarchy continue to push it before the pitchforks come out? We may end up living through interesting times.

A couple of things on this. First up: yep, this guy is clearly an asshole. I say this because he quite obviously wanted to kill a lion, and quite obviously didn't care very much about the legality of what he was doing. Second, on big game hunting in general: I don't think it's a bad thing, if properly managed. People pay a LOT of money for the license to kill something, and if that money goes back into National Parks and conservation and the prevention of poaching, then the transaction benefits the species as a whole. Of course, that makes a lot of assumptions about where the money goes, and the honesty of the people handling it, and the effectiveness of how it's spent... the point is that hunting isn't necessarily an unmitigated evil. And yes, I know that's not what happened in this case. Third, a side point: this story matters to the affluent West, but apparently not very much inside Zimbabwe. Most folks there had never heard of Cecil the Lion, and those who had were generally less than impressed by the fact that he shared a name with Cecil Rhodes... who is closely associated with Zimbabwe's colonial past and is not, therefore, a figure of universal adoration in that country these days.

Apparently not in federal elections: http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/declining-your-ballot-not-in-the-next-federal-election One idea I really like is "Re-Open Nominations". If RON wins the poll then nobody is elected and a fresh poll must be held. Absolutely standard politics, that is. Pretty much all governing parties in all democracies do it to a greater or lesser extent (depending on how desperate they are). And yes, it works. That's why they keep doing it.