I once thought about abandoning everything and becoming an Eskimo, but I changed my mind because my heart wasn't that Inuit.
If you were to smash an imitation chocolate bar with a hammer, would that be Parts of the Carob Bean?
(Thank you! You've been a great audience. Don't forget to tip your waitresses...)
Yes, it's a bit old, but I still can't keep myself from saying "awww!" at this article about baby hedgehogs adopting a cleaning brush as their surrogate mother.
Say it with me now...awww!!! =)
My good friend Patrick just wrote a review of my all-time favorite movie, Noises Off!, to which I immediately introduced him upon learning he had never before seen it.
"To describe too much of this movie would absolutely ruin it. If you like comedy that is based on dialogue as well with as a hint of physical comedy, this movie is for you. All the actors in this are great, but what really shines is the script. I swear, the person who thought of this was high or tripping on acid or both. It had to be amazingly complicated to write this but an absolute joy to see it turn out. The best part about the movie is that even though you are seeing the same play pretty much three times, each time is absolutely hilarious. I would also suggest multiple viewings of this film because each time you watch it you catch something you missed the first time. The movie is fast paced and you can find yourself laughing at three comedic elements at the same time during certain parts. This is one of the smartest comedies I have had the pleasure to see. Just don't forget the sardines."
You can read the entire thing, along with reviews of many other movies, on the Film Geeks website.
I was able to walk around my dad's office during Take Your Daughter to Work Day. When somebody asked what I was doing, I told him "I am going about my father's business".
When my favorite waitress at the restaurant I frequent asked how I would like my steak cooked, I told her, "Well done, my good and faithful server".
So I thought last Monday was going to be an ordinary day...laundry, homework, perhaps a phone call or two. I did do all of that stuff, but I also met Ted Nugent, which, though it wasn't on my to do list, was a pleasant surprise.
He gave a talk on campus, but a friend of mine invited me to be an unofficial member of his chapter of the College Republicans for the evening, and we were all invited to a meet & greet reception before the talk, where we were able to talk to "The Motor City Madman", take pictures, and get autographs.
We weren't looking at the same camera, but oh well.
Oh, and here's him playing guitar afterwards:
Thanks to Lifehacker, my day is complete.
I could explain it and ruin the surprise for you all, or I could just urge you to dust off and fire up your Telnet client and connect to towel.blinkenlights.nl.
It's probably best to do this when you have some time to spare, and let it run while you eat a sandwich or something. Enjoy!
(I tried, but I just can't let you go without clues, so here they are: ASCII animation & Star Wars. Need I say more?)
I've taken the liberty of keeping a running collection of links that are meant to aid all of you wonderful people in the alleviation of boredom. Let me know if it works.
Somewhere in the midst of our vast music collections, we all have CDs that we can listen to over and over (and over) again without getting tired of them. In very rare instances, these albums are devoid of any songs we would skip over.
What follows is a list, in no specific order, of the albums in my collection that I have owned for years, still enjoy, and whose every track I love:
After introducing my friends to the awesomeness that is College Saga, I realized that they might also appreciate this (incredibly old but still fresh and amazing) article from Something Awful's Comedy Gold Mine. The title is self-explanatory. Your level of appreciation, of course, will be directly proportional to your familiarity with RPGS (role playing games), especially games from older consoles (e.g. Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, etc.) At any rate, enjoy!
(There is also a bit of off-color humor, just so you know.)
An Overview / Introduction
If it's a console title, the main character WILL ALWAYS have spiky hair of some odd, unnatural color and lug around a humongous, penis-size-compensating sword. The spiky hair helps express how different your character is from everyone else in the game world, without actually being different or making the developers create an interesting character. If the main character is a female, she will limit her wardrobe to clothing which is so tight that it suffocates every single skin pore and melds into her epidermal layer.
If you're playing a pc game, then your main character will be some utterly generic, homogenized boring guy voiced by the same jackass who reads out movie previews:
"In a world gone mad... where the hunted has become the hunted... one man stands alone... a rogue adventurer, setting out to participate in particularly rogue things... he must avenge his father's death while saving the world from the dreaded evil wizard Latrino of the Blue Disk Clan... can he save the world... before he destroys himself?"
It's also noteworthy that when a pc RPG employs voice acting, even the biggest and most capable stars lose all talent the moment they step into the recording room. When you hear your character being voiced by Mark Hamill halfheartedly mutter "I can't take any chances, I must track Dorfgannon down before more innocent lives are lost," the sense that he's really thinking "I was Luke fucking Skywalker, I used to bang Harrison Ford and now I'm doing this shit" is frighteningly palpable. If the game is a port from a Japanese title, there's a chance that the English dub may be fatal.
The least qualified person to save the world will always be the only guy who can do it. This is offset by the fact that your evil arch-nemesis is located very, very far away from wherever you live, and the power of his evil minions increase with every step you take towards his goofy floating castle or invisible tralier park of doom. Sure he may have two spike-laced, fire spewing demon overlords guarding his palace doors with automatic plasma gun turrets, but 2,000 miles away and in your town, all he has is a handful of slightly aggressive wasps and a toad that shoots mossy rocks from its mouth.
Men are always stronger than women, but women are always more agile then men. Strangely enough, either sex can effortlessly lug around 100 healing potions and a sword the size of a city bus. At the end of any given fight, a man's first reaction is to place his hands on his hips somberly, while a woman will jump in the air like a cheerleader with her mouth open, clapping her hands or giving a peace sign depending on whether her mood is "ditzy" or "really fucking ditzy."
Upon beginning your quest, you'll likely find yourself in a quaint town full of people who love it when you casually saunter into their bedroom and start looking through their shelves for items you can steal. Sure they may have been saving up that healing potion to cure their dying son of the dreaded disease AIDSarion, but by all means, if somebody else like you might want it to heal himself after battling a winged elf fairy frog king (weaknesses: lightning, upholstery), it's all yours! Amazingly, their drawers and cupboards are entirely empty aside from potions, gold, and equipment ideal for warriors such as yourself.
You will soon learn that God hates you. That's right, the Almighty must have your eternal suffering in mind. Why else would almost every town have just one natural entrance and exit? Rivers on the world map block your access to a treasure chest no more than three feet away, mocking the lustful look in your eyes. Luckily, God doesn't completely hate you, and there's always ONE magic tree you can cut down to create a bridge or dam to safely cross the deadly six inch deep abyss full of deadly minnows. Speaking of trees, they often act as impenetrable force fields, somehow growing in perfectly straight lines to constantly block your way, thereby creating labyrinths alongside the highly important boulders and signposts. This explains why nobody except you ever bothers leaving towns in any RPG. If I had to fight off several hundred monsters while nearly braining myself against a magic tree every few feet, I'd stay in town with a shit-eating grin on my face too.
Know Your Enemies
The main villian will invariably have some quality which makes them more human and likeable in the player's mind. Damien might be slaughtering innocents by the thousands, but once we're shown a tearful moment from his past when he was learning to play the piano, we can't really hate him, can we? Giving good traits to bad guys and bad traits to good guys constitutes "depth" in RPGs, and you should be very impressed that the bad guy wants to commit genocide because his dog was run over by the king's wagon when he was a kid.
The villian described above will have several forms once engaged in battle. There's simply no way around it; the climactic showdown must be something the bad guy secretly waits and plans for months ahead of time. If he's able to turn into a being powerful beyond belief, why doesn't he just stay like that all the time? Perhaps he's evil because the 90 different demon and robot costumes he's wearing are really uncomfortable.
The population of RPG worlds have apparently pushed the local birds, rats, and wombats too far, and they now have no choice but to randomly retaliate against wandering adventurers. Nature absolutely, positively loathes you and only you. When was the last time anybody had to save other villagers or towns from rat attacks? Where the fuck is Animal Control? Don't towns have some kind of department which travels more than 10 feet outside of the town to make sure there aren't any fire owls waiting to attack?
For that matter, every animal in the same species looks identical but has a slightly different color scheme. For example, the poisonous rat is green, the rock rat is grey, and the lust rat is red - the color of HOT STEAMY LOVE.
Many insects and animals carry around money and other things such as healing potions or magic herbs. They choose to haul these items around with them because the banks in town refuse to open up accounts for "deadly moths" and "some kind of evil wombat-goose creature." These encumbered creatures lead you to believe that maybe some powerful wizard didn't really steal the planet-saving artifact you're after in the first place. Perhaps it was just one of those kleptomaniac chipmunks, and the world could be saved by laying some traps around town with a set of shiny keys or a duplicate artifact as bait. Well, unless it was one of those kleptomaniac POISON ROCK HELL WIZARD HORSE chipmunks.
As shown above, the more adjectives before an enemy's name, the more powerful and dangerous he is.
Some enemies have annoying skills which could be put to better use in some other way. You'd think a pirate with the magical ability to make your party fall asleep wouldn't waste his time on such a small target like you when he could be putting entire fleets to bed, boarding them and stealing all their precious gold, potions, and eggs which most people seem to have on hand for some reason. The enemies obviously know who's a threat and who isn't. Why would they bother attacking the defenseless idiots in the nearby village which has a bank containing infinite money and armory packed with infinite items when they can attack you, the guy with the glowing orange pitchfork and earrings that somehow make you more intelligent?
Your opposition will usually employ questionable tactics in battle. Instead of concentrating on your character that's delivering the most damage, they either lunge randomly or team up on the female / pansy whose role is limited to "heal," "wait patiently," or "try to attack but miss 80% of the time." Occasionally the pansy enjoys healing a character who has 100% health. You know, just to be sure.
No enemy can stop you except, well, non-enemies. While traveling, some obstacles will invariably block your passage. Such intimidating objects as three foot high rocks, sleeping fat men, and pretty tall grass are sure to keep even the most valiant warriors (who are the world's last hope) at bay. Sure, you can cast a spell that sucks 50 enemies into a whirling vortex of hell, but if the bridge is out or there's a somewhat large rock in your path, you're screwed and might as well give up.
In your journeys, you might notice some eerie truths about the inhabitants of the towns you visit. Here's a few things to keep an eye out for when dealing with these backstabbing villians. There must be alot of inbreeding in the fantasy worlds we love so much because all townspeople look remarkably similar, even in faraway towns. Perhaps cloning has somehow been mastered in an age where the most essential advances in technology, like hula hoops or bread machines, haven't been discovered yet.
Towns in RPG games have a 98% jobless rate, as there are only four businesses per town (blacksmith, wizard, item store, bank), and the rest of the town consists of people who stand and stare at bushes, walk to a barn, walk back to the bushes, turn around, and walk back to the barn all day.
Short term memory loss is a widespread problem which affects all. In addition to your main character likely suffering from amnesia which prevents him from remembering he's the most powerful being in the world, every single person you converse with will repeat the last thing they said as if they hadn't said it before.
"Hello, adventurer! I hope someone saves us all from this horrible evil soon!"
*player presses A in an attempt to get more information which could be used to help this person*
"Hello, adventurer! I hope someone saves us all from this horrible evil soon!"
In addition to the widespread amnesia, villagers are additionally always on their "period." That is, all they can do is respond with a series of periods, such as in the following conversation:
TOWNSPERSON #1: "So what did you do today?"
TOWNSPERSON #2: "..."
TOWNSPERSON #1: "Oh really? It was that bad?"
TOWNSPERSON #2: "..."
TOWNSPERSON #1: "Jesus Christ, he got his entire fist up there?!?"
The "..." is a valid form of communication no matter where you go, and can denote anything from surprise to happiness to death.
Only important people have names. If there's somebody you need to speak to regarding your quest to find the Ice Ankle Bracelet of Compounding Interest Rates, you should speak to Huzariao Freemont. If you want to find out somebody's opinion of the weather today, you talk to the person named "TOWNSPERSON" wandering aimlessly around the courtyard, staring at the trees and houses.
The vital pieces of information you gain are usually HIGHLIGHTED and IN BOLD, which explains why most RPGs are afraid to include voice acting. Imagine walking into a crowded bar and asking the bartender if he knows where to find the Pantyhose of Dexterity +2, then actually hearing someone try to place emphasis on the key phrases.
Bartender: "If you want the... PANTYHOSE!!!..., I suggest you go... WEST!!!..., to a small ...CAVE!!!"
*player presses A*
Bartender: "Take a LEFT when you hit the SMALL GIRL who is standing in the MIDDLE OF THE FIELD talking about HOW MUCH SHE LIKES HER PET CAT."
*player presses A again*
Bartender: "My LIFE is a LIE. Did you get all that, or should I REPEAT it?"
*player decides going outside and playing baseball might be a good idea afterall*
Bartender: "..."
Beware the married people. If there is a married couple, they will never have any pertinent information to share but they'll be more than willing to talk about each other to you each time you speak to one of them, then the other, and then back to the first one over and over again.
HUSBAND: "Jeez, look at the tits on that barmaid!"
WIFE: "I think my husband has fallen in love with the barmaid!"
HUSBAND: "I think I have fallen in love with the barmaid! I hope my wife doesn't find out!"
WIFE: "I think I have found out my husband has fallen in love with the barmaid!"
Sometimes this couple will have a sidequest involving finding a questionable item that somehow matters a lot to one of them. In this case, finding the woman's missing rolling pin will somehow fix the couple's shaky marriage. In return for the hour of your life you'll spend finding it, you'll be awarded with either a piece of armor you already have, or a completely useless item such as the "Cracked Mirror" or "Stylish Feather." Examining these items will result in wildly insightful information such as "This mirror... it appears to be cracked," or "A feather of stylish origin. It reminds me of something..."
Combat and an Overview
The theme of "item collection" plays a pivotal role in your character's life. For evil to succeed, it must find all X pieces that make up item Y, which have been scattered around in diverse climates such as the desert, icelands, underwater, mountains, space, an unusually large goat's anus, and dimension Q. If you are somehow able to retrieve all X pieces of the item before the enemy does, he'll invariably find a way to take them all from you after you find the last piece, and will attempt to work his evil magic with whatever goofy device he hooked them together to assemble, like an earthquake-causing magic dildo.
It's also worth noting that almost every form of liquid is extremely helpful. In fact, any status or effect can be fixed by drinking a beverage of some kind! Most shops carry the "confusion-causing purple rattlesnake of upper west side Pittsburgh" antivenom, despite the fact that there is no Pittsburgh in the game. If there was, however, you'd be able to laugh that purple rattlesnake in the face as you shrugged off its only attack! Even death can be cured by a potion, so the only way a wizard could really fuck you up is by casting his "close mouth" spell on you. Luckily, in that case you'd be able to respond with the powerful "..." counterattack.
On your quest, you're likely to run into some tiny godlike creatures who have nothing better to do than hide in your pocket until you unleash them. Not surprisingly, once they're released into a battle, they take their sweet time and won't let you skip their cutscene which is twenty minutes long and ALWAYS shows the exact same attack. Your enemies understand the godlike creatures' slow, methodical way, and will willingly wait for them to finish their spectacular light show which invariably kills them. Hell, you're probably the first person they ever fought, so they don't know any better. Maybe they're exceptionally lonely after years of waiting to fight somebody who actually ventures outside of towns, and hope the gigantic flaming dragon will give them a hug instead of fatally incinerating them.
Don't bother about dying in combat. Somehow, being dead doesn't usually count as being dead unless it's your main character that bites it. Did the stupendous Human Shield character which you consistently neglect to equip with anything worthy fall from the vicious right jab of Mutated Frog Homophobic Butterfly #42? No problem, just get back to the nearest town; they've all got an old guy that can somehow revive the dead, yet lives in a rundown shack and isn't on Dr. Phil making millions. In the meantime, the biggest downfall to dying is not accruing experience points, which I'm sure characters kick themselves for while they're in the afterlife chilling out and waiting for their party members to find the right potion to revive them.
Original link
I like the word assuages because it looks like a sausage.
That is all.
"Dr. Richard Chopp is well known in the Austin community for performing Vasectomies."
Website
From a discussion thread on FARK.com:
Why does it even matter if Dumbledore was gay?
He's one of those sexless characters, where it really makes no difference to the story. Powerful wizards are above such things, no?
It's the same as revealing Yoda's sexuality. He existed to teach, to advise, and to reveal parts of the plot. Whether he enjoyed humping little green men or little green women played no part whatsoever.
Article
From the article "Health Problems Related to the Geek Lifestyle":
The brains of some people are just programmed to multi-task. These people likely excel in a computer-rich environment for this reason. The geek brain is just not trained to sit quietly and listen.
Link
(This grew out of a random conversation at the coffeehouse, and I decided to expand upon it for this post.)
How exactly does one go about hiring a professional assassin?
I mean, they obviously can't use conventional forms of advertising. You won't find a section for "hit men" in the Yellow Pages, nor will you encounter media ads or fliers plastered all over town.
The local police would probably be suspicious of anything sporting slogans like "Need an ex out of the way? Give Spousal Snipers a call today!" or "Too lazy to kill? Contact Hit Man Phil!"
I read once that word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertisement. Could you imagine how that would go? It's not like asking one of your girlfriends to recommend a hair stylist or plumber.
I recently contributed to a discussion thread listing pet peeves in human conversation. Here are a few phrases that I could very much do without.
I COULD CARE LESS: By all means, go right on ahead. Don't let me stop you.
SOMETHING FELL THROUGH: In my opinion it would make much more sense for it not to fall through. If something didn't work out, it seems to me that something else would be blocking the hypothetical falling.
ANYONE PLURALIZING STORES WITH SINGULAR NAMES: There is no 's on Meijer, Kroger, Barnes & Noble or KMart. Quit pretending there is because you sound like an idiot.
ANYONE QUOTING OVERQUOTED MOVIES: Yes, we've all seen Monty Python, Office Space, etc., but try working your right brain some time and make me laugh by actually making up a joke or funny quote of your own. Or at the very least, say something a little more obscure than "I'm not dead!" or "Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler".
ANYONE USING WORDS THAT AREN'T REALLY WORDS: Can't think of any examples other than "irregardless" right now.
WHAT WAS YOUR NAME AGAIN? It's Marie, and it still is. I haven't changed it in the last 30 seconds.
WE'LL SEE YOU LATER! Who is this "we" you keep referring to? I only see one of you.
WHAT ARE YOU? I'm a human being.
NO, I MEAN, WHAT'S YOUR NATIONALITY? I'm American.
NO YOU'RE NOT. WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?. Nationality refers to the country in which you were born. I think you're referring to ethnicity. Moron.
Read this article. It's pretty neat. You might even understand me a little bit better.
Caring For Your Introvert
