bigbywolfe

Not to interrupt, saw this today. 
 
On the one hand, we have a problem in this country with...well just about everyone.
On the other, it's not easy to be a cop. 
 
Here we see an officer comparing  his gun to a bbgun he took from a school yard fight. 
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVO3sNcJ7A8

Is that the mythical Seal Of Approval?

*Puts torch away* Yes yes... because we were superstitious back then...
heh
 
creepy ass spider-devil goat

Five hundred years ago, the owner of this animal would have been burned at the stake.

seems dead on to me.  

Heard an interesting and cogent explanation of Transformers last night, related by a friend whose son formulated it:
 
Transformers are were-cars.

Was that a no knock warrant? Was it on the wrong address? The Young Derps don't say in the first two or three minutes and I can't get through the rest of it.
 
No knock warrants either need serious accountability or to be completely eliminated in any case.

I think you have to keep in mind the difference between simulating a superhero world and simulating comics as a medium. They are related, but how closely you want to tie them is a matter of taste.
 
One effect of the comic-book medium is that not much stays permanent: Years later, a writer or editor can undo what another writer did, and probably will. Somebody wants to tell a story about the character who was killed off umpteen years before; or somebody just wants to pull some cheap melodrama by shaking up a character's life... again.
 
Which is why heroes' marriages rarely last. A wedding makes a dramatic turning point in a hero's life, but so does a divorce or a spouse's death. Or for lesser impact, hook ups and break ups. It's an easy way for writers to add soap-opera excitement. Like I said, cheap melodrama. After years or decades of publication, though, the resulting churn can look frantic and silly.
 
The Scarlet Witch offers an example. For years, our time, she was married to the Vision. Then -- improbably, but she makes the improbably happen -- they had kids. And the churn begins... Oops, no they don't have kids: They were magical constructs that were actually shards of a supervillain's soul! (Huh?) The Vision loses his emotions, turns white, and their marriage breaks up. Which was about the time I stopped reading Marvel, but Wikipedia tells me she's had various hook-ups, at least one nervous breakdown, and I don't know what all. Maybe it didn't seem so frantic and silly spread over 20 years, but it sure seemed ridiculous as I read the summary.
 
Resurrection retcons are particularly tacky when they unmake character choices, such as Jean Grey's first resurrection. As the Phoenix, she chose to die to protect the universe from herself. Oops, no, she didn't: The Phoenix wasn't really Jean Grey, the real Jean Grey was regenerating in a pod on the bottom of a lake! And the Phoenix Force is eternal, so no one really died! From one of the most dramatic events in X-Men continuity, it became a meaningless puppet show. All in all, some of the worst writing comics have ever seen.
 
I would hope the CU, as published, could avoid *that* sort of character resurrection. (AFAIK, it has.)
 
Dean Shomshak

I want to punch an anti-vaxxer in the face.
 
With a baseball bat.

If you can use the term "realism" in relation to comic-book-superhero storytelling, that actually seems more realistic to me than what we see in comics. Superheroes are supposed to be in a life-or-death struggle with supervillains, aliens, etc. for the fate of the world (or various fractions of it, or the universe...). This has been going on for 75 years in the CU. In all that time it would be bizarre for no one to have died.

No, lots of them stay dead. They're just fringe heroes and villains.  Much like the NPC's killed in RPG's

Are you kidding? Marvel and DC seemingly kill six or seven heroes before breakfast these days, they invent them to kill them off. 
The guys who don't get killed off are the cash cows. In an RPG that's the PC's. 
 
...who get killed and brought back. 
 
Hi Jean. 
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deceased_American_comic_book_characters#Marvel_Comics

Q - What's the difference between doctors and chiropractors?
 
A - Doctors don't go around telling people they're chiropractors.
 
(Told to me by a chiropractor, incidentally.)

Or play Champions.

Can't remember if I've told this one here, and with the Search disabled I can't check, so I'll assume not.
 
A man walks into a bar, walks up to the bartender, and says, "I'll bet you a beer I can bite my left eye."
 
It's a slow day and the bartender's bored, so he shrugs and says, "Sure, why not?" 
 
And the man takes his glass eye out and bites it, then wipes it and puts it back in.  The bartender laughs and pours him a beer.  The man takes a drink and says,  "Okay, now I'll bet you $50 I can bit my right eye."
 
The bartender pauses before answering.  The man walked in on his own, didn't seem blind, and looking close it certainly looks like a real eye.  Finally, he says, "Okay, fine.  Let's see you try."    And the guy takes out his false teeth and uses them to "bite" his right eye.
 
"Okay, fine, you tricked me," says the bartender as he hands the guy the money.  The man thanks him, takes his beer, and has a seat.  He uses some of the money to buy a round of drinks for the few people there, then strikes up a conversation with the four guys at the table next to his.
 
After about a half hour, the man walks back up to the bartender.  "How'd you like a chance to win back your money, and then some?"
 
The bartender cautiously asks, "How?"
 
"Well, I have incredible control of my ability to pee.  In fact, I'll bet you $100 I can stand on that end of the bar, and you could stand on the other end with a shot glass, and I can pee and get every drop in the glass." 
 
The bartender looks incredulous.  The bar is over 20 feet long, and he's sure nobody's ever pissed that far, let alone with any accuracy.  But he'd been burned by this guy before, so he figures there's some trick to it.  "No deal.  You've got some trick up your sleeve."
 
The guy chuckles.  "It's not my sleeve the trick's up, believe me.  Tell you what, we'll up it to $200 and you can move the glass any way you like to try keeping me from getting any in it."
 
The bartender thinks long and hard about it, but he can't see any way the guy can trick him.  So finally he says, "All right, you've got a bet."
 
So the man climbs onto the bar, and the bartender moves to the other end with a shot glass.  The man unzips his fly and begins to pee.  At first, the bartender starts moving the glass, but the guy isn't even coming close.  After a moment, the man say, "Okay, fine, you win," zips up his fly, and climbs down. 
 
He hands the bartender $200, which gets tucked into a pocket before the bartender grabs a towel and begins cleaning off the bar.  Chuckling and shaking his head, the bartender says, "You had to know you couldn't do it.  Why'd you make that bet?"
 
 
 

"Old Man, as a potential juror, you will need to be fair and not prejudiced during the proceedings. Since you work in IT, have you experienced any instances of people having preconceptions about you based on your occupation?"
 
"Sure. I think that's true of any occupation. Like for lawyers. "
 
(laughter)
 
"Okay, but have you found those preconceptions to be fair?"
 
"You know, to be blunt, a lot of the time they're spot on. "

At first I wondered which of the Romanovs was severely disabled.  Evidently, that is anastasia, goofing off and putting somebody else's dentures in her mouth.

...This thread hurts my soul.

Seems like a really weird thing to say if you know anything at all about comics.  Couldn't what you just said about the movie apply to the character in general?  You know he doesn't just fight spiders in the comics, right?

I'm guessing you haven't looked at the case in any detail - nor read what I wrote, from this response.
 
Brown was shot once while allegedly wrestling with the cop - I mentioned that and noted that if true (and it is supported by the autopsy evidence), that was easily justifiable. However, that isn't what killed him - he then fled the scene, apparently lightly injured. The cop pursued him some distance (about a block) and fired another 10 shots (none of them at close range, according to the autopsy), killing him. That - again, if true: it meshes with both physical site and autopsy evidence - does not seem to comply with either the local PD's rules, nor federal law on the use of lethal force, both of which require a suspect to be considered an immediate threat to the community or officer in question. A priori, then, there seems to be grounds for a trial. Now maybe there's more evidence that argued against that - but so far none has been been presented. Maybe he was charging - maybe not. Without a trial, we'll never know .... which is kind of the point, no?
 
All the palaver about "show trials" is just you inventing things you thought I might have said, which you think might sound bad: I'm not in favour of show trials, and have never claimed to be. Nor am I "fixated" on the public order aspect of trials. But that is an important aspect of this case - as the riots so eloquently prove - and it's pure foolishness to ignore that aspect: as the riots also demonstrate. 
 
cheers, Mark

Okay saw Blazing Saddles this arvo. 
 
The breast thing was Robyn Hilton's and the one gag that worked for me was the toll booth. The storyline was good and kept me watching. 

The first is an example of why I didn't comment on the second to Frank.