archer

I really liked Wil Wheaton's Aeofel character in the Aquisitions Incorporated tabletop game. I know not everyone did. http://www.acq-inc.com/our-company/staff

Yikes, we missed V-J Day yesterday.

Cecil the Sea Serpent Appears as a sock-puppet version of a giant sea serpent. Usually commits hijackings and robberies at sea and various mischief in port cities. Very well connected and oddly popular to the public, particularly little kids. Plays to the crowds whenever there's an audience to his crimes. Little is known of Cecil's past. He made his first impact on public awareness by hijacking the RMS Queen Mary during a Magic the Gathering Pro Tour event in Long Beach, California. Cecil's plan was to seize the ship and sail it to Tahiti while taking all those sweet, sweet Magic cards and ransoming the famous players back to their respective governments. Unfortunately for him, his first problem turned out to be that the Queen May's engines have been removed and the ship is permanently in dock. Even more unfortunately for him, the Protectors arrived on the scene much more quickly than anyone could have anticipated. Needless to say, neither being bright nor being lucky are among Cecil's skill set. But over time he has become a better planner, coming up with scheme after scheme to keep he and his companions in the public spotlight. +3d6 Striking Appearance Life Support (water breathing, high pressure, intense cold) Regeneration (including "limbs" and resurrection) The Ancient Serpent-Fu Martial Arts Choke Hold Defensive Strike Martial Dodge Martial Grab Martial Disarm Martial Throw Martial Strike weapons element sword (for that piratey feel) Breakfall Bribery Concealment Contortionist Conversation Defense maneuver (1, 2, and 3) Disguise (so that you don't notice that he's a giant sock puppet sea serpent when he wants to go incognito) Persuasion Riding: Sea serpents (learned while a little fellow) Seduction Sleight of Hand (Sleight of Mouth?) Stealth Teamwork Trading Ventriloquism (most often used for speaking clearly while holding something with his mouth) Reputation: Wildly popular scoundrel (large group 8-) Vehicle: Leakin' Lena (a small ocean-going vessel) Bump of Direction Environmental Movement: water Double-Jointed Well-Connected Traveler (except in outer space where it is "Traveller") Contact: Davey Cricket (survivalist) Contact: Go Man Van Gogh (artist) Contact: Harecules (low-power super-genius who owns a rocket ship, the Guided Muscle) Contact: Jacques the Knife (fence, former gang banger) Contact: Shlepalong Catskill (waiter, usually in seedy bars) Contact: Stogie Bear (crooked cop) Contact: Peking Tom (homeless busker who hears everything in the city) Most of his contacts also owe him favors. DNPC Beany (Cecil's flying sidekick/lookout as powerful 14) DNPC Captain Horatio Huffenpuff and Crowy the navigator (less powerful 8 ) Physical limitation: Seasickness Physical limitation: Serpent body has no hands, uses his mouth or body for manipulating items Rival: Honest John (as powerful)

Think about whatever Han Solo would do or say. Don't necessarily do that. But it's usually a good starting point for thinking about a plan.

That sums up my feelings pretty well. When all these different companies each start offering their own service, I'm going to be forced to deal with the hassle of keeping track of my subscriptions to a dozen companies or more. It'll be like dealing with a dozen cable companies and having to hassle with one or another of them every month. Frankly, I'm not interested at all in doing that. I'm opting out of all of them. My best option is to hope that they all fail miserably in order to keep my entertainment from fragmenting into so many different pieces that it is difficult (and much more expensive) to consume. If they want me to watch Star Trek, for example, they need to put it on TV where it belongs or they need to spend $200 million to make a movie. I'm not going to pay to watch services regardless of whether it is CBS All Access, DC Universe, Disney, etc.

Not that I disagree with you about Trump but having "no deal" is itself a trade position because every country has rules for how to conduct business with other countries with which they have no special deal. Countries start off with a baseline on how they treat trade with foreign countries then build bilateral trade deals to alter that baseline. It isn't the case that "this trade deal has to come together or trade between the two countries completely ends". If the new deal doesn't come together and NAFTA is scrapped, the US and Canada will each treat each other in trade like they do all the other countries of the world with whom they have no particular special deals.

Maybe it would help if the heroes traveled back in time to stop Sarah Connors.

Other than figuring centaurs have two hearts and maybe a secondary "brain" in its hindquarters like some dinosaurs supposedly had, I've not given their anatomy much thought at all. But I'll admit that might change if I were to see a topless filly in real life.

https://xkcd.com/1583/

Well, they could have fixed it with literally any old crap....

I think the host was talking about Auntie Gravity, the Navy's newest superhero.

Trump faces 7 years in prison if he visits China. http://news.trust.org/item/20180830063018-6rju6

< sigh > I lost a massive response post I'd worked on for a couple of hours and don't really feel up to re-writing it all. Speaking as someone who was part of the small conservative minority section of the Republican party for over four decades, Fox News is a cheerleading organization rather than a news organization. They pick a winner and a loser on each issue then slant all their coverage toward that bias. They'll go after a Ted Cruz in the 2016 election (or Newt Gingrich in 2012) with much the same glee as they go against Democrats. They have a business model where they jump on or create a bandwagon then use the effect of that to attract or keep viewers. When I spent 15 years doing massive amounts of political blogging, I actively avoided reading the Fox News website and never linked to it. I was much better served by reading articles on a particular story on several liberal-slanting websites (and British websites when those were available) then comparing those articles against each other to filter out the bias to figure out exactly what's happening. The Atlantic, in my experience, doesn't do a good job of presenting the news or commentary in an unbiased manner. But when you're comparing it to Fox News, sure it's going to be better most of the time due to Fox's business model of "promote or denigrate" everything. When I have some time, I'm hoping to read and comment on that particular Atlantic article link. But if I don't get around to it, well, it's the Atlantic.

For those who aren't familiar with the product https://www.dcuniverse.com/coming-soon/ Basically it is anytime access to DC movies and old TV series plus access to a limited selection of their back issue comic books (their choice of which ones). In addition, they're starting up 4-5 new TV series which are only available on their service (for now). The cost is $75.99 for 12 months. But if you sign up now before the service goes live, you get an extra 3 months free. Personally I think the Superman movies stank and the couple of good Batman movies I've seen a dozen times. I've got Green Lantern and the new DCU movies on my DVR. So getting movie access is meaningless for me. I don't really have any use for their old TV series. The ones which weren't animated weren't very good. I'm not sure if the service has the DC series from the WB network since none of them were shown in the advertisement trailer. But I would assume that WB has the resale rights to those at least for a few more years. I'd like to see the Justice League and Young Justice series again. But honestly, those are available (stolen) online anytime I feel like helping some website break the law. A limited number of back issue comics would be interesting except that most of those series are available (stolen) online already. And available as the complete series rather than whatever few that DC might want to let me see. I would assume that their intent is to get you hooked on a storyline then cut you off at the end and show you instructions on how you can pay more money to purchase the additional issues online. The new content series is vaguely interesting. The third season of Young Justice is something which should have happened long ago. The Titans series (a renamed Teen Titans) looks terrible at first glance of the trailers which DC has released in various places. Starfire in particular looks badly done both in makeup and character. Other series are Doom Patrol (which has intriguing possibilities but I haven't seen any trailers), Harley Quinn (maybe okay), and Swamp Thing (very little interest on my part). So basically it's $7 a month (minimum) for not very much that interests me. And the price goes up from there if I don't buy the service a year at a time. If I still had a steady income, I'd be more interested. But I could pay not very much more per month, get into World of Warcraft again, and have hours of original entertainment every day. If you are the kind of person who already goes to the movies a couple of times a month and who already buys a lot of premium cable channels, the additional cost to get the DC Universe package as well isn't all that much extra.

My public library has refused for nearly 20 years to forgive an overdue fee which came about because their after hours book return was stuffed to overflowing and I refused to leave their books, which I had signed for, sitting on the sidewalk for anyone to take. If I'd been dishonest, I could have stolen 20 books to make room for my books in the return slot and have saved all this hassle. I don't have any idea what level of evil library that counts as. But the libraries of the surrounding communities have an "overdue forgiveness" which eventually kicks in after some number of years. < grumble, grumble >

I came close to voting for Deadpool but I came to the conclusion thatThanos was the only one on the list who really deserved a vote.

No, that was Scott Pruitt, former head of the EPA.

Sharknado #5...this time it's personal.

With JJ Abrams the newly announced director of the movie, I would expect the Kang he uses to be the Klingon from the Kelvin timeline. And that he probably doesn't care about the difference. ? j/k

Cross Tie Hermann Haupt, once the chief engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad, became chief of construction and transportation in the Virginia theater of operations. President Lincoln was counting on him to keep the army supplied but despite his best efforts, the Union army kept losing battles and supply bottlenecks threatened to extend the war indefinitely. Hermann kept at his job, driving his men without mercy, but nothing worked. Growing alternately despondent and angry, he drunkenly swore that he would sell his soul to the Devil himself if it would keep the trains moving and bring about a lasting Union victory. But even Haupt isn't sure if it was the Devil himself or some other entity which appeared to him next. A deal was struck, a bargain made, and within hours the trains suddenly began running on time regardless of whatever obstacles appeared. Haupt's despondency disappeared but in its place he felt a darkness growing, threatening to consume him. At the very moment of the signing of the surrender at Appomattox, the last remnants of Haupt's soul shredded and he became a driven embodiment of destruction. In the years after the war, a circle of mystics managed to contain him but only at great cost to themselves. More recently, a dark ritual at a monument to the Union victory released Haupt to once against walk the Earth...this time as the villain Cross Tie. ------- Cross Tie appears as a giant of a man, close to seven feet tall. Inhumanly muscular, wild hair, flickering ebon eyes. massive amount of strength Multipower RKA conjured railroad spikes Entangle of conjured twisted rails (AoE one hex) flight (plus run, swim, leap) with train sound effects (especially noticeable) Deflection with the special effect of conjured cross ties or rails batting away the attacks. Stretching by swinging around a conjured rail (no fine manipulation) Regeneration with resurrection Life Support: immortal, heat/cold, radiation, no breathing, eating, or sleeping required tiny VPP for minor magic effects, just a few tricks he's learned because he's been around the block a few times Tactics WF Firearms WF Bayonettes TF Steam trains TF: Horse, wagon Perk: West Point alumni association (yeah, like you are seriously going to try to tell him he can't be a member just because he's a demon of some sort) Distinctive features: his build and eyes small vulnerability to holy objects (relics, not holy water) Unfamiliar with modern world (note he is unfamiliar because he didn't live through most of it. Unlike some demonic entities, he's perfectly willing to learn about light switches so after he's in the world a while, he will buy off this limitation or change it to just being unfamiliar with pop culture) His preferred tactics are to close with whichever ground-bound opponent it looks like he could crush easily. If opponents try to stay out of range, he will RKA or Entangle. He's also likely to pick up and use any mystic or modern weapons found in his path, especially if he isn't familiar with it, just to see what it will do. He's not very fond of automobiles or aircraft of any sort and will use his casual strength to walk right through one if its in his path. Or waste his phase to destroy one even if it isn't particularly in his path. He will monologue on both the deplorable forms of modern transportation (as opposed to trains) and the glories of which can be had by devoting your life (or afterlife) to destruction. He's not terribly concerned about taking damage and will endure a lot of punishment if that's what it takes to dish out some pain to a hero. He's also not very concerned about being captured because in his experience, someone will come along to release him...many times thinking he's a mindless beast and that they can control him. But while he is an engine of destruction, he is far from mindless and still has access to many of his human emotions and all of his memories. Even though he is destructive, his goal seems to be more geared toward generating terror and disruption in populated areas rather than deliberately running up a body count or destroying things in remote locations. That has caused various mystics to wonder whether the emotions of innocent bystanders are fueling his undying powers in some manner....

I'd rather see Thanos talking to Death as his idol and potential lover than any of this, "I'm killing all these people to bring about good" crap that the writers had him spouting in Infinity War. In the comics, he wanted to kill off half the population of the universe in order to court Death. Sure when I told my daughter that she pointed out that Thanos is like a boy in a Japanese dating sim game who is trying to impress the girl...but that's still better than what the MCU did.

I keep my IRA in mutual funds. I barely lost anything in 2008 and had made up those losses by 2010. Yeah, that was a flat couple of years but not an utter catastrophe. Considering I'd made 48% one year in fairly conservative growth funds and 32% the next year (earlier in the 2000's), going down 15% in a year a few years later after I'd shifted my money out of growth funds wasn't hugely worrisome.

No, it is not.

That's an excellent addition. I'll have to remember that next time I have this conversation.

Follow these diagnostic steps 1) Raise your hands in front of your eyes. 2) Extend one of your fingers on each hand. 3) Slowly and gently move each finger toward an eyeball. If you encounter a fleshy membrane before touching the eyeball, the problem is that your eyes are closed. 4) See this wiki for instructions on how to open your eyes: https://tinyurl.com/2fcpre6 (Dammit Jim, I'm a comedian not a computer geek.)