13 hours ago, Christougher said:

 

You're killing me.  You lost half the joke.

 

That reminded me of a juggler/comedian I saw once (I think on Saturday Night Live).  He was juggling an axe, a machete, and a cleaver.  When he held up the axe, he said, "This is actually the axe George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree.  I've just had to replace the handle... and the blade..."

20 hours ago, Cancer said:

NT: Bizarre things that you might write into your will.

"I've said before that I'm giving a quarter of my $1 million estate to my estranged brother, another quarter to our drunk uncle, another quarter to the Republican party, and another quarter to the Democratic party.  As to the remaining $999,999..."

54 minutes ago, mattingly said:

"It was absolute heaven.  Can you believe it?"

8 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

Missouri Republican Candidate Torches LGBTQ-Inclusive Books In Viral Video

One wonders how she'd react if an atheist decided to torch a couple Bibles.

Voice acting by Mark Hamill

Penguins

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

UNICoRN I could swallow...

I dunno, you might have trouble getting the horn down.

7 hours ago, Bazza said:

Today I had the nastiest, slowest, rudest cashier I've ever had. I guess it's my fault for using the self checkout

5 hours ago, slikmar said:

I seem to get that person every time. Extremely sarcastic and annoying, then they follow me out and home. 

Only semi-related, but let me tell you about a race I ran in high school track.  True story.

I was running the mile relay, in the second position for our team, because I really wasn't all that good.  For those not familiar with the mile relay, the starting runners run once around the track each holding a baton.  When they get all the way around, they pass their batons to the next runners on their teams, who then run around the track to pass the batons to the third runners, who run around the track to pass the batons to the last runners, who make the final lap around the track. 

So after the first set of runners start out, I take my position and wait for my teammate to come back around and pass me our baton.  As they're coming up, I can see that our team's runner is just barely ahead of the other team's runner.  So as soon as I grab the baton, I take off at my fastest.  And I can hear the "crunch, crunch, crunch" of footsteps right behind me.  So I push harder, but dang it, I can hear he's still right there, on my tail.  I keep pushing myself faster than I'd ever run before, with that "crunch, crunch, crunch" of footsteps right behind me all the way.  I get back around, pass my baton to the next runner on our team, and stumble off the track, too wiped out to even watch the rest of the race.

Our coach comes up to me, puts his arm around my shoulders, and says, "That was incredible!  That's the fastest I've ever seen you run!"  He chuckles.  "Too bad you didn't need to run that hard."

Apparently, when the other team went to pass the baton, they dropped it.  By the time their runner picked it up and started running, he was waaaay behind me.

I was hearing my own footsteps and was trying to outrun... myself.

On 2/4/2024 at 5:22 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Mentioned that in my initial rant.  It bugs me because-- while all xomic acronyms are sone on purpose, "SHIELD" and "TEEHEE" both suffer from the problem of the abaokutely tortuous mangling of the language to force a specific acronym.  It rankles the writer in me.

For SHIELD, I had to appreciate what they did in the pilot for Agents of SHIELD:

Regarding villain secret IDs and capture, in past campaigns I've had some high-tech supervillains start a support company to manufacture near-perfect fake IDs (complete with hacked-in info inserted into official databases), "cleansing" the villain's actual fingerprints / other identifying info, etc.  All as justification for villains buying Deep Cover, plus it gives the heroes something to investigate.

Regarding hero secret IDs and sanctioning by the government, I've used Bob Greenwade's Oregon Hero Sanction before to good effect.  

16 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

I've long told new parents that an ounce of distraction is worth a pound of cure.

I have to wonder whether that guy in the first 20 seconds was hired for his ability to blow smoke rings.

6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Try having parents who grew up during the Great Depression. You can't get sympathy for squat.

I'll second Dean's "True dat."  My dad told me how some winters, the snow was so bad that they had to get out and push the school bus up hills.  (I was nice and didn't point out that at least they had a school bus.  But in rural Nebraska, with the only high school in the next town...)  

Edit to add:  

Also, one of the few times I saw my dad lose his temper, was when a much younger guy told him, "Bill, you've never had to do without..."  I could hear him quite clearly from outside the building they were in.  "I'VE never had to do without?!  YOU didn't grow up during the Great Depression!  YOU didn't have to WORK YOUR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE during the end of the Depression! YOU didn't have to interrupt your education to fight A WAR!"  I ran inside, afraid he was going to have a stroke, he was so angry.

Speaking as a Michigander, I cherish our northern neighbors (even if some of them are actually south of some of us).  

11 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I hate the cliche of Canadians saying "eh" all the time, even more because many of us do.

11 hours ago, Cancer said:

At times, the justice system does live up to its name.

At other times, people pronounce it "just-us system" and try to treat it that way as well.

On 1/25/2024 at 3:29 PM, Cancer said:

One town I lived in had an extra car which they would leave parked in various places with a manikin in it.  The called him "Officer D. Coy".

A police officer used to park across the street from a local bar and would watch everybody leaving the bar.  Those that looked the least bit drunk, he would pull over as soon as they got out of the bar's parking lot.  

After a few weeks of this, he was sitting in his normal place when he saw a man come staggering out of the bar.  The officer watched as the man made his way to a car and tried repeatedly to unlock the door before realizing he was at the wrong car.  Staggering to the correct car, he finally got the door unlocked but fell into the back seat.  Unable to start the engine from there, he eventually laid down and appeared to pass out.

The police officer decided he was going to nail this guy, so he watched and waited as other bar patrons walked out, got into their cars, and drove off.  Finally, the man in the car sat up, climbed into the front seat, started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot.  Of course, the police officer hit the siren and lights, and pulled the man over.  

The officer gave the driver a breathalyzer test, and it came out 0.0 - completely sober.  Dumbfounded, the officer said "I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the police station. This breathalyzer equipment must be broken".

"I doubt it", said the man. "Tonight I'm the designated decoy."

On 1/25/2024 at 10:35 AM, Cygnia said:

Microsoft Lays Off 1,900 Staff From Its Video Game Workforce

23 hours ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

Wonder if they'll get jobs in whatever Microsoft division makes those calls I keep getting about viruses on my computer.

49 minutes ago, Asperion said:

 

I doubt it. Most likely those positions have already been replaced by some AI that will give the same stock reply to every query  - you need to purchase the latest product. 

Now I've got to wonder whether scammers are going to set up AI to make calls claiming they're from Microsoft warning you about "viruses", trying to get you to give them carte blanche access to your computer.  Or maybe they already have.

59 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

Microsoft Lays Off 1,900 Staff From Its Video Game Workforce

Wonder if they'll get jobs in whatever Microsoft division makes those calls I keep getting about viruses on my computer.

I finished the first two seasons of Hogan's Heroes (got the complete series on DVD for Christmas).  Lots of fun, and it's always great to see Schultz and Klink doing their clueless thing.  Especially enjoyed the episodes with Colonel Crittenden guest-starring.  There are a surprising number of episodes per season, so I still have quite a few more to go.  

I've also been watching Monk - am currently into Season 7.  (Never liked Sharona, so I started watching the seasons after Natalie replaced her.)

Here's the Media pages for my prior (Boston) campaign.  It includes two plucky female reporters, plus some male reporters (including the son of Jimmy "Gyro Jim" Dugan).

BostonMedia.pdf

13 hours ago, Pariah said:

My go-to response when someone's (justifiably) complaining about something major is, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

For  mooks / minions / agents, I combine groups of them into single meta-characters for combat purposes, with higher stats based on how many "doublings" they have.  So an 8-man group of agents has 3 Doublings (2 x 2 x 2) and gets +3 OCV, +30 STUN, and +3 DC on attacks, but only rolls once to attack and do damage.  As they lose STUN, their numbers are halved and their OCV and damage drop appropriately.   I have different rules for dealing with AoE attacks, odd attacks, and so on. It requires the GM to do a little work, but some of that can be figured out beforehand, and the work you have to do on the fly is more than balanced out by not having to track and roll for 8 different characters every time their Phase comes around.