clnicholsusa

My first experience of Aretha was hearing 'I Say A Little Prayer' coming from the speakers on a Longine's eight track player. I think I was eight, but I remember. We'll all move on, and, hopefully, there will be something else to replace the beauty we're now without.

Q: I missed the last state of the union address. What was it he said? A: According to my notes, the average IQ of any given nation is inversely proportional to the wealth gap of that nation.

The DNPC could go through the furnace and NOT come out with extensive power. If it burns away weakness and imperfection, the DNPC might step out the other side with perfect beauty, grace, and greater mental capacity than any other human in the galaxy (burning away weakness) but also be perfectly insubstantial and no more solid than the light from a nearby star. That would bring a whole new sort of plot to the story arc.

"Following in Father's footsteps. He spent his life depositing money; I spend mine withdrawing it."

GURPS was, originally, intended to be Generic and Universal. In other words, game mechanics did not need genre specific modifications. Hero manages genres by varying the build mechanics while execution mechanics are (mostly) the same. GURPS retains the same build and execution mechanics, expecting the genre to be imposed by the GM and players. My experience with GURPS is that while you can use it for almost any genre, it doesn't do ANY genre as well as the gaming system that would be it's competition within that genre, but that's JUST my experience.

It's America. Anything scary, different, or somewhat annoying gets to eat lead. So we give the wasps cute names to make it less likely that we'll destroy our personal property trying to blow the little suckers away.

Final picks (I think) Anything: Plastic Man Anything: Dex-Starr Anything: Black Hornet Now to fill out a few more titles.

Support: The Foundation for Oceanic Research Anything: Mark Harris (The Man from Atlantis) Anything: Codpiece

The Sniffer On Netflix, of course. Yes, I have to turn on the subtitles and read what they're saying, but it's STILL the best new-to-me show around.

Q: What part of 'all your base are belong to us' did you not understand? A: I've been applying differential calculus to the chemical formula for mustard gas, it makes a great muffin.

Support : Jaclyn Stone Support : Julia (Mister Carrion's pet vulture) Anything : Primates Really Into Crime and Killing Sprees (The P.R.I.C.K.S.) title 3 - Time Capsules Capsule Corporation is always opening new vistas of research and development, and with their acquisition of The Time Machine the future is limitless, but only if they can protect the past! Someone has infiltrated corporate headquarters and stolen the prototype 'time capsule'. Outfitting the original machine with a positronic brain, the corporation begins to send specially trained men and women to find the culprit and return with the prototype. As long as they prevent the past from changing (the positronic brain has complete knowledge of history and can tell where changes are occurring), they have all the time in the world.

"I shall enter the house and attempt to remove the joke ... I shall be aided by the sound of sombre music, played on gramophone records, and also by the chanting of laments by the men of Q Division ... The atmosphere thus created should protect me in the eventuality of me reading the joke."

Support: The League of Assassins Anything: The Phantom Anything : Moloch the Mystic title number two - ORION Hunts! The ghost who walks has been fighting evil alone for generations, but in the modern world alone isn't good enough. After a chance meeting with agents of the clandestine ORION (a black book United Nations anti-terrorist organization), The Phanton begins to work with ORION's top agents Enforcer (a highly skilled clandestine operative accidentally granted the ability to manifest his will as an energy field) and Manta Man (a prominent marine biologist and inventor who developed the manta suit to eliminate the modern pirates that killed his family). It was a perfectly timed corroboration, as Moloch the Mystic had approached the nefarious Ra's Al Ghul and informed him the signs suggested the world was ripe for the pickings. The League of Assassins has mobilized, and all that stands between them and a world remade to their liking are the agents of ORION!

Q: What do the free hermit crabs in the mall kiosks think about all day? A: Being still and doing nothing are two very different things.

Q: Did you know there are pools of mercury on the surface of Venus as smooth as glass? A: Doesn't look that good to me, but I've an arm fetish.

Anything: Manta Man Anything: Enforcer Anything: Evergreen All three from limited series Villains and Vigilantes comic. Yes, I dared.

"You bet your sweet bippy I'm sure."

Q: What's wrong with lighting the whole string of crackers at once? A: You'll need a lot of milk for those.

"Answer in the form of a question, please."

Me, too. You'd think two decades would be long enough for Stockholm Syndrome, but she still thinks I'm the enemy. Dang, almost forgot: Support : Martians aka The Invaders (species, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) Support : ORION (agency, Top Secret/S.I.) Support : WEB (agency, Top Secret/S.I.)

Probably. Teenagers get hostile when you don't take them seriously.

First Title: Alley Allies Three vigilantes band together to be effective agains the likes of Tony P and The Disco Boys, Mister Carrion and Julia (pet vulture), and other criminals in the city. Their biggest challenge, however, is to pierce the secrets behind the WEB and it's numerous self-destructing minions. He was just a PI trying to make a living, before the WEB. Strange criminals dressed in black sneaking around the city and stealing everything in sight, for purposes no one could fathom. Michael Mauser was just the dumb schmuck hired to find out who was filching the pickles from Old Man Schnauzer's Deli (it didn't hurt that the place was run by Nova Kane, a dish and a half). He figured it was an easy coupla c-notes anyway (those pickles were EXPENSIVE). Then he found out the pickles were just another job being done by the shadowy thieves that had terrorized the city. Well, it's still just a job. Just as Mauser got the drop on the hooded crook, a bowling ball flew between the two of them and knocked down another of the black-clad thieves, but not before the knife thrown by the thief passed through Mauser's hat. The first thief attempts to take advantage of the distraction and make his escape only to be clotheslined by another masked man, this one wearing a suit with a dark blue fedora. As the bowling ball rolls back to Carmine's feet, Mauser waves his hands excitedly, exclaiming "whattaya doin! They're gettin' away!" Calmly pulling the knife from Mauser's fedora, and carrying both back to the PI, The Spirit extends the two towards Michael Mauser and explains "they're already gone, why don't we question these two instead... nice hat, by the way." Carmine shrugs, "that won't happen. Every time I knock these bozos down they go poof, just take a look," and as the three men look on the two be thieves evaporate... literally. Mike isn't buying it, "that's way too much to steal a few pickles. What the heck are these guys after." "You're right," says The Spirit. "I've heard of both of you, before. But I'm beginning to think this is too big for any one of us. I've been collecting data, and I've got an idea of their pattern. Perhaps if the three of us work together we can make some headway against these guys. Care to follow me." Michael and Carmine both shrug and nod. The Spirit goes running across the city, tightwalking on power lines, sprinting across rooftops, leaping from fire escape to fire escape. Carmine tosses a small bowling ball from rooftop to rooftop and swings along on a line attached to it. Mauser jogs along a bit, then hails a cab. As The Spirit and Carmine arrive at the graveyard, they find Mauser burning tobacco at the entrance. The PI asks, "what kept ya?" and the three walk along the graveyard path. The Spirit leads them to the grave of former DA Denny Colt. The grave opens and the three men descend through the exposed elevator. At the bottom, it opens into a large underground cave. Carmine shakes his head, "yo, Spirit? This is a bit much for me. I'm just a guy with a ball trying to keep the city safe for my kids." Mauser smiles, "that's all any of us got, Carmine. We sweep out the alleys to try and keep the dirt from folks we care about." The Spirit nods, "that's right, and there's no rule that says we have to do it alone. Tonight could be the start of taking back the city, but only if we can work together. Maybe not as friends, but as allies." Carmine chuckles, "yeah, that's us. The Alley Allies." The three men stare at each other a moment, and Michael Mauser nods. "Yes, yes it is."

Superlative Hero The Spirit Superlative Villain Mister Carrion Support Traveller's Aid Society I hope I've counted the days properly.

I've not seen my dice in a decade and a half. Most of them vanished as the children thought the bags were more suited to holding various pretty rocks and odd coins ("Dad, what's a lira?"), which they subsequently grew out of the desire to maintain. My most unusual 'dice' went to a yard sale. It consisted of five pennies in connected clear glass tubes. After a shake, the pennies settled randomly and were read as binaries. The first two pairs of pennies became zero through three and the last penny indicated odd or even. I don't recall the complete rules for reading the thing, but I do remember that it was skewed to the low end of the scale. Currently, my dice decry that I am a modernist who prefers pseudo-random number generation to the use of truly random hardware.

Superlative Hero Carmine the Bowler Superlative Villain Tony P Support The Disco Boys We were doing Saturday, weren't we?