Random Thought Thread

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Justin Phillips, Apr 10, 2016.

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  1. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    I don’t know why...but I think I’m actually liking this strange new fantasy... I blame The Inheritance Cycle utterly for this!

    It has nothing to do with the fantasy about Mishu. It involves dragons, a goblin lead, her human and dwarf friend... It’s about as staple of a fantasy you can think of... Yet I like it?

    How’s this possible!?
     
  2. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Caught a little bit of Titanic on TV, and if there's a bigger douche than Billy Zane's character in the history of cinema I've yet to meet him. That fucking haircut is in serious need of some facial hair to proportion his douche dome.
     
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  3. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Man bun!

    ETA: Does he look less or more douchey here:

    [​IMG]
     
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  4. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    He looks like an 80s animotronic robot of himself... like the used to do with Arnold before they perfected CGI. It's not so much his looks as it is his dialogue. Every line he says manages to top the previous in douchedom. Even when he's trying to be nice to Kate Winslett his programming freezes his face and he turns back into douche.
     
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  5. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    In which they said what, Student Edition.

    Paraphrased because the usual reasons.

    "Suprisingly, some people are using not only smartphones to take pictures, but cameras such as SLRs."

    Suprisingly....

    Gods I feel old.
     
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  6. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Oh sweet baby Jupiter...

    "An article in the NYx says...."

    New York [times].

    I'll be in the corner crying, if anyone needs me.
     
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  7. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Oh, I couldn't agree more. What happens with all this extended hoo-ha (which, of course, is commercially driven) is Christmas Day itself feels like an anticlimax, and folks feel a tad let down when it comes and goes.

    I love Christmas (the pagan version) and look forward to it every year. I do preparing. What little shopping I do (I think the presents thing has got way out of hand, and I let it be known that I don't want any ...got enough STUFF now) I do early. I already have my Christmas cards addressed, and am going out to buy stamps today. I have my fruitcake baked, and am doing some preplanning about baking other foods. But I don't actually start DOING Christmas till around the 20-21st of December.

    I now have an artificial tree (two of them actually, for two rooms) because obtaining and handling real trees has become something I struggle to do any more. My trees are both very old-fashioned, with tons of traditional ornaments which I still collect. I will probably put them up around the 20th of December. BUT. I won't turn the lights on either one of them until Christmas Eve—and that's when I finally listen to Christmas music (the old fashioned carols, etc, NOT the pop music stuff.) That's when Christmas really begins for me. After our Christmas Eve meal of tourtierre meat pies and uncooked cranberry sauce, I sit in my living room chair with a tipple of choice, a few tidbits of cookies, etc. I turn the lights on the tree, turn the room lights off, turn on the music, and just chill out ...imagining all sorts of magic hidden within my beautiful floor-to-ceiling tree. Love that moment. I look forward to it all year.

    I like having all my housework and baking done by the 23rd. I bring in my greenery from outdoors on Christmas Eve day, and put the final touches on the evening meal. But that's it. That's when the holiday starts.

    I'm kind of on my own with this, as I live in Scotland where Christmas was not even a public holiday within living memory (due to the dour Protestant Reformation, which saw Christmas as a Popish holiday and to be either forbidden or ignored.) Since the Reformation, Christmas has always taken a back seat to New Year (and Hogmanay) in Scotland. Christmas does get celebrated here, but in what I would call a rather 'brassy' fashion. Pop music, flashing lights, new tree ornaments nearly every year that imitate what they've seen on shop-window decorated trees, going in debt for fairly token gifts like perfume, electrical goods, etc. And the obligatory turkey Christmas Dinner, which Must Include Brussels Sprouts even if the people eating them actually detest sprouts and never eat them any other time. In other words, folks here have picked up the modern commercial trappings, without having an underlying feel for the holiday time. The notion of dark greenery and cosying up at home with firelight and candles just doesn't quite resonate with many Scots. (It does with a few, but not many.)

    My love of an old-fashioned Christmas is not shared by most of the people I now hang out with. But I'm stubborn, because it means a lot to me. It gives a focus to the long, DARK winter. It's easy to see why celebrations this time of year have been taking place in northern climates for millenia ...long before Christianity appeared on the scene.

    I don't want to celebrate Christmas till the 24th, although I do recognise the solstice on the 21st ...most years. And not celebrating includes not visiting, hosting visitors, going to parties, etc. I like kicking out the jams during Christmas week ...the week between Christmas and New Year. Visiting, having people around for a meal, etc. That makes the holiday season for me. My trees come down on 12th night, and it's over for another year.

    I think that compressing the season makes it more special. Extending it and commercialising it has the opposite effect. It's just another jangly lap on the Rat Race.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2017
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  8. NoGoodNobu

    NoGoodNobu Contributor Contributor

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    So my new job gives a paycheck every two weeks.

    But of course I don't know which week I'll receive my first paycheck.

    So to be sure about my finances, I made up a budget calendar with all my bills and savings and potential rent costs, etc. And I simply input various potential first paydays.

    The crazy thing is: if I get my first paycheck this one week, I'll be super tight each month.

    But if it starts just one week earlier, somehow I'll have anywhere from $200-600 extra cushion money a month (predominantly in the $200~ range & only starting in February).

    This seems absurd. But I keep running the numbers & checking my math, and it seems like it's because that particular pay-schedule would on a few occasions pay me 3 paychecks in a month, verses the other pay-schedule only receiving two paychecks within a month.

    Granted, I only calculated till May, so maybe the previous pay schedule would eventually make-up the difference in future months.

    But damn.

    That is a very different budget.
     
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  9. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Over the year you get the same amount of money whichever schedule you're on, if i were you I'd budget to spend 1/12 of your salary per month regardless of the pay date - otherwise you'll spend the 'cushion' when it seems to be extra and then not have it when you need it.
     
  10. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I have the opposite problem, I'm paid monthly, on the same date each cycle, so I have four weekend months and five weekend months. Since one of our larger discretionary expenses is dining out together on Fridays, Mrs. A and I need to be careful to count each month out in advance.
     
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  11. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Well that was not the excitement I was looking for...
    Who else had their parent dropped off by the Sheriff,
    for wandering the wilderness with a rifle and going
    off about some random conspiracy theory. Then Wednesday
    they decide it is time to bail, and your car shits the bed
    on the road. Ditches you with said rifle, 3 mags, full box
    of ammo, and 8 rounds on 10 round clip.

    Happy Thanksgiving! :p

    (Fuck you holidays, fuck you.)
     
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  12. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Ideally equiped for hijacking a car and robbing a bank - the chinese symbol for Crisis is a combination of those for danger and opportunity
     
  13. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    "Is the Order a Rabbit? Dear My Sister"

    The translation of the words looks accurate, but I can't help but feeling that something has been lost somewhere.

    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Here you go, everything you'll ever need to know, courtesy of WikiHow!

    How to Survive Homelessness
     
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  15. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    If you're paid every two weeks, you have 26 pay periods in a year. That means there will be two months each year in which you get three cheques. So, yeah, maybe you won't have any until May with one schedule, but they'll come, sooner or later.
     
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  16. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    I can't get this out of my head and it's so calm and cheery that I hardly want to, but ... I'm supposed to be writing a tense, unhappy scene.

    Maybe I can trick myself into writing something more disturbing by imagining this song playing behind it, a la horror movie trailers accompanied by nursery rhymes.
     
  17. NoGoodNobu

    NoGoodNobu Contributor Contributor

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    You're the greatest.
     
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  18. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    It begins. :p
    Black Friday Zombie Film.jpe
     
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  19. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I read that in a flat, affectless voice and saw dead eyes....

    No sleep tonight for me :)
     
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  20. NoGoodNobu

    NoGoodNobu Contributor Contributor

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    That's odd. I meant it as an adoring sort of intense admiration.

    I can't speak to the dead eyes; that may actually be fairly accurate.

    I am rather thrashed.
     
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  21. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I'm relieved, hope you get some rest soon.
     
  22. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    watership down, you've read the book, you've seen the film, now eat the cast (as our local butcher had in his window a few years back)
     
  23. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    Jeez. That was a messed up cartoon. :/ WTF, man?
     
  24. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    Oh my god...

    After playing ‘Horizon: Zero Dawn’, I realized just how close my fantasy character, Geia Panono, is to Aloy.

    • Both are redheaded ladies.
    • Both grew up isolated from their peers, though Geia was more of a ’Mowgli’-type, being raised by Aquanis. She wasn’t FORCED into that life.
    • Both are badasses with the bow and weaponry (though Geia uses daggers)
    • Both are snarky, tough women who don’t need no man to make them feel complete.

    Really, the only chief difference is that Geia’s story is more about ‘rescuing a child’ and it’s in a 100% fantastical setting.
     
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  25. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    you need to read the book
     
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