Lawnmower Boy

Having given it all the deep and serious thought it deserves, I think "under a wharf" works better and gives you an "under the boardwalk" joke to pad the old word content.

Having a private conversation while standing hip deep in the water at a rocky beach is perhaps a scenario that works better in a Tennessean imagination than in real life. I mean, it would be private in the sense that no-one else could hear it over the surf, but . . .

Fake mustache? I have no words.

Second that. Actually, this whole team is fun

I'll start Trailblazer's playlist: Driver's License, Havana .... (The kids do listen to the radio at work.)

Nom nom!

I've never been in a place that displays this sign

....There's a free clinic for that now. No need to get so dramatic

No, no, I'm quite interested in the answer, too.

I see Paris, I see France, I see someone's underpants!

It seems like we live in a world where the things that people don't want to do, or have done, somehow just become unpossible. The house next the place where I rent went for $2.5 million three years ago, but there are two vacant lots (large commercial lots, not house lots) which have been vacant for twenty years now. Why haven't they been built over with "mixed commercial/residential" developments? Who knows? So, anyway, it sometimes seems like academics, particularly in the humanities treat the obligation to write and research as an unreasonable imposition. And in the first week of back to school, it has been discovered that the ASRS material handling system that replaced open shelves in the University of British Columbia's main research library some years ago is broken, and will take up to two months to fix. In the mean time, my alma mater basically doesn't have a research library.

Not to double down on my own facetious comment, but the primaries aren't over. I guess the problem is that in 2016 they never ended. It is still possible that the GOP will learn its lesson. Though at this point it seems more likely that the national party will collapse into irrelevance. I mean, the basic problem in 2016 was that a vast dragnet of candidates wasn't able to put a viably Presidential figure up against Trump, which is a bad sign for a national party that governs a majority of the states. By viable, I mean tall, handsome, charismatic, good hair, but without triggering gaydar; well-spoken, fast on his (yes, his) feet; a track record in national politics. I understand that people make it to the Oval Office without these properties, but they're mostly people for whom the fix is in. Starting with nothing --and at least so far the candidate with an institutional grip on the nomination is a thing of the past-- and you need to meet the requirements of central casting. The Democratic races very strongly suggest that getting a good candidate with the stereotypical CEO look just isn't hard for a national party with millions of candidates to draw on. Yet guys with obvious "presidentialness" flash through the GOP like comets and are gone, and we're left with the spectacle of men like Chris Christie and Scott Walker pretending to themselves that they can be President. I mean, did they even notice how some people are popular in high school and other people who happen to be overweight or have receding chins? This isn't rocket science, and I speak as a bald guy who will never be CEO of anything. Sorry for venting about my "Good Hair Theory of the Collapse of the Third Party System," but it's a sad spectacle to see at every level. It even makes me feel bad for Scott Walker!

This is devastating, and leaves so much of the "news" around this pandemic seeming even more facile than usual.

It's triangulating. First you move to the right for the primaries, then you move back far enough to get back the votes you lost. So, anyway, ready for Ron DeSantis, AOC's pal from the 'hood?

"Thanks to the fact that we have a union contract, this performance review has literally no effect whatsoever on your job, Lawnmower Boy. I have an average score to meet, and you're getting the average score." "Okay, boss, have a good week fighting with the narcissists!"

Bloodfeast to the rescue, almost exactly as predicted.

So hot.

Ryan Kemp is acknowledged by Ghostbusters 2016, which is the WORST MOVIE EVER, so he must be terrible. Mattingly is Kemp's buddy, so he must be terrible. Mattingly hangs out on the Hero Boards, and so do I, so I must be terrible. Wait, that can't be right. Man, this unhinged ranting is harder than it looks!

"The company's in trouble, and the only way it will survive is if we keep all the money. That way we can even afford the awesome bonus I'm going to get for thinking up this plan!"

I started writing CU fanfic with one about a retired villain who accidentally discovers the identity of his archnemesis and launches into his revenge before realising that he has the grandkids that day. Hilarity ensues.

Explaining your joke means that you did it wrong and also even more derailing (although I think this is an important enough thread to survive any derailing I can accomplish), but what I meant is that Gygax meant the game to be played with fudged die rolls. The psionics rules as written are pretty crap, although I think Dark Sun eventually did a pretty good job of making the case for why they might be a good thing to have in a fantasy campaign.

I always liked the First Edition psionics rules, and you had about a 2% chance of actually getting psionics. So when I DM'd, 2% was 100%. What? I'm morally certain that it was the way Gygax intended the game to be played.

Aquaman sucks!

Well, the X-Men are cool, so obviously they don't have any water breathers. I could have made the protagonist a water breather . . . "Well?" "He's wearing a psi shield." "Oh, a psi shield. A government-issue psi shield. That'll stop Bill cold." "No need to get sarcastic, Hank. Actually, cute trick. Layered on the chip on a credit card. So we shot it with a microwave laser. Kid obviously didn't know it was there, didn't even react when his wallet fot a half degree hotter." "Not to be a bore, but, well?" "Kid named Dylan Lee. Journalism grad. Thinks he's an intern at the CIA, but Lang is his report. Cover is that he's also an intern at The Bugle. They got a hot tip that Britney Spears is being treated here, so he's trying to get an interview. Actually, we're the latest place Lang is knocking off his list of possible X-Men hideouts. Obviously he doesn't consider us a hot possibility." "Spears. I wish. Journalism grad, intern. Money trouble?" "And how." "Lang is such an asshole. All he needed to do was pull some strings and get the kid on the payroll somewhere. Parker wouldn't take a SENTINEL boy, but there's always The Post. Okay, we'll do an operational mindwipe and . . . Wait. Have we established how he got superpowers?" "He doesn't show up on a detector. Is it relevant?" "He wouldn't necessarily. Actually, it's a bit more concerning that he doesn't have a CEREBRO profile. We'd probably get that even if he were a regular mutate. Unless --I want to check this kid out. Maybe turn him if he's a mutant." "What do you want me to do with him? He's going be in a classified area pretty quick." "Take him down and put him in an aquarium to cool off." "Okay. Wait. Did you say aquarium?" "Sure. One of the big ones. You know, with a castle and giant seahorses."