Guitar strap - what a fine present idea!

My favourite ever present was the fuzz box I got when I was about 14. It still sounds fantastic but now it's a rare vintage item so I never take it out.
Fortunately it only has six components inside so I can knock one up in an afternoon and cause more sonic destruction than anything a 3D printer can produce.

—

Cybermen are back on tonight - apparently Neil Gaiman has written it. Fingers crossed…

Gullas should get a pair of fuzzy handcuffs and a ballgag for his guitar too ^_^

ozoneocean wrote:
Gullas should get a pair of fuzzy handcuffs and a ballgag for his guitar too ^_^

I-uh… I can't be mand at you…

I'll make it up to you Gullas:
Page 2 of Bottomless Waitress is like a real thing now: http://www.drunkduck.com/Bottomless_Waitress/
Totally bra.
It's radical, tubular, and indeed, bitchen'

As the Americans say: “Oss-um”

Lite bites has finally updated. i even have the next page uploaded for a few days time.
So, my life… Marriage break up and stuff was hard but in an effort to get back on the horse I signed up to a dating website. All goes well enough, meet someone and went out on my first date in over eleven years. Went well enough but the mixed signals that followed… more than I care to be doing with at this point in time. So i think i'll avoid that stuff for now.

Well… enjoying Neverwinter's Foundry. Yep. Be a “Dungeon Master”! Make your own quests!!! Too bad while learning how to use the tools is easy, it also takes a bit of patience, creativity and common sense (for instance… try to explain why you unlock a door that's been locked for centuries only to find a squad of orcs waiting for you).

Also… I now know why women seem so terrifying. Because as little girls they played with toys like this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxACqE-puLYO_O

That guy ashen is great. I have a few smaller scale “creepy” children figures. They are caricatures of Westerners drawn by Asians. They're not aware what turns cute into creepy for us “round eyes” Just like they can't tell the difference between “superior” and “Sue Prior”

I also love the misspellings. In one set of instructions a machine gun is called “maching gun” And the frequent verb tense foul-ups but I know that it works both ways. Translations into most langauges from English on instructions are just as comical to foreign language speakers. Lots o'stuff is lost in translation.

Heck translating from American English to British English is hard enough at times. Thanks to the Dutch/German immigrants to America in the 17-18th Century. Cookie isfromkuchen. It first appears in an American cookbook in the 18th century. So yet again for a historical misunderstanding the Germans are to blame. I suppose it's vengeance for the French changing good OLD GERMAN Anglo-Saxon to Francophied Middle English. Ach! ve vill vait until der English move to anoter continent and denn ve vill infest der language with Deutche worts vunce more!

Up to a third of the colonists to the Middle Colonies (NY, NJ, Pennsylvania) in the 17-18th century before Independence were Dutch or German speakers. English speaking Americans were terrorified that these volks weren't assimilating and learning English. Franklin wrote about it back in the day. They were everywhere taking jobs from real English-speaking Americans and not learning English and forcing others to translate everythng into their evil-sounding foreign tongue! The government has to issue directions in another language? English is the official language of this colony d–n it!

I love it when I see English only rhetoric done by people with Italian and Polish names. Or rants against immigrants by people with Irish names. Know nothingism is alive and well.

God points about AmeriEnglish Bravo!
I think there were also some other influences- lots of weird throwbacks to proper French that'd been long absorbed and Anglified, the US pronunciation of “Herb” is a good example:
That had long been anglified to “huh-erb”, with a pronounced “h”, but in the US it became “erb”. There are many words like that…
And thins like “tap” are commonly “faucet”, “biscuit” in the US has some other strange origin etc.

And later you had Webster, as you know, killing “u” in words and changing “s” to “z”.

And later still words like “aeroplane” were changed to “airplane” - from what I've been able to see of usage, “aeroplane” existed for the concept of a powered aircraft before such aircraft came into being and it was the term most widely used to describe them in America before it was later changed to “airplane”.
That was a pretty interesting one because it's so modern.

Also, aluminium and aluminum turn out to be the same metal, not two completely different elements after all.

I still find it hard to get my head around that. I always thought aluminum was some kind of heat resistant coating for space shuttles - not the same stuff you glug your Tizer from, or wrap around your bacon butties.

That one always confused me too.

I just remembered a dream I had last night!
Hippie Van was in it!
I was visiting Canada and she was showing me their icy mountains. She showed me a trick where she could run up an 80 degree slope of packed snow extremely fast by digging her legs right in with each bound… then when she got to the top she threw a bunch of smashed up rock at a boulder really hard and it carved a perfect Greek statue type head.
She then kicked the head down the slope where it bounced and rolled down, causing massive destruction to all those bellow it. I even had to jump out of the way!

That HippieVan is some sort of dangerous superwoman… :/

ozoneocean wrote:
it carved a perfect Greek statue type head.
She then kicked the head down the slope where it bounced and rolled down, causing massive destruction to all those bellow it…

That HippieVan is some sort of dangerous superwoman… :/

Was the Grecian head a perfect protrait of Tantz Aerine?

I always thought that Hippie van was super this just clinches it. I have a lot of dreams about parking lots. There's always a multi-colored Volkswagen van lurking in there. I'm always having trouble trying to find my car.

Tantz is indeed a perfect Greek, but it was more like this:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/25/hudson-head/2113675/
…so maybe a bit Roman…

Does that suggest that Hippie Van is descended from artists and mountain goats?

Her family reunions must be bizarre…and awesome.

Banes wrote:
Does that suggest that Hippie Van is descended from artists and mountain goats?

Her family reunions must be bizarre…and awesome.

This is getting more Greek and mythological all the time…

ozoneocean wrote:
Banes wrote:
Does that suggest that Hippie Van is descended from artists and mountain goats?

Her family reunions must be bizarre…and awesome.
This is getting more Greek and mythological all the time…

Nymphs and satyrs? Dionysusians? Sounds exciting.

ozoneocean wrote:
I just remembered a dream I had last night!
Hippie Van was in it!
I was visiting Canada and she was showing me their icy mountains. She showed me a trick where she could run up an 80 degree slope of packed snow extremely fast by digging her legs right in with each bound… then when she got to the top she threw a bunch of smashed up rock at a boulder really hard and it carved a perfect Greek statue type head.
She then kicked the head down the slope where it bounced and rolled down, causing massive destruction to all those bellow it. I even had to jump out of the way!

That HippieVan is some sort of dangerous superwoman… :/

That was no dream. That just sounds like a good ol Canadian winter's day!
And while we're celebrating Canadian superpowers, here is a short film I grew up with.
http://youtu.be/upsZZ2s3xv8

Banes wrote:
Her family reunions must be bizarre

This is true.
Banes wrote:
Hippie Van is descended from artists and mountain goats

This is not. Just drunks and English bourgeois, unfortunately.
Although I do have some Finn in me, so there might be a reindeer or two in the family tree.

(I have completely given up on using quotes.)

Hippie Van wrote:

That was no dream. That just sounds like a good ol Canadian winter's day!
And while we're celebrating Canadian superpowers, here is a short film I grew up with.
http://youtu.be/upsZZ2s3xv8

Now I know what Banes does before every Quackcast! ! ^_^

The start of that reminds me a bit of Beachcombers, which I grew up with on TV :)
-the older episodes.
…I must get the themeson to that on my phone some time.

I was just thinking about one of the biggest weaknesses of Scifi as a genre:
In movies, TV shows and books they're always raising the stakes for some reason-
This terrible disaster will destroy everybody in the town… The whole city… the whole country… the entire planet… the whole galaxy… the entire universe… All of freaking time and space and all alternative universes!

Always freaking lazy dumb, moronic writers think that just because scifi gives them the freedom to paint big on a massive canvas that they always have to go the biggest hey can! But the very best scifi stories are usually the ones that play for smaller stakes.
The better episodes of Red Dwarf had the guys in the ship all arguing about something trivial. The best episodes of Farscape were the little ensemble ones with the crew trying to overcome some challenge to themselves alone rather than all the galactic war rubbish, the coolest Star Trek DS9 episodes were the ones where they had petty crimes on the station.

I think that's what also makes a lot of superhero stuff dull when they're all so powerful: the more humanly relatable the characters and situation the more interesting they can get, but the bigger and more powerful things get the more you alienate people from that story because those situations are no longer relatable and it means the writers have to work harder to find ways to make them so (which they don't always do).

/rant about SciFi

Superheroic stuff being dull… I guess that's why Batman is among the favorites (if not THE favorite). He's got no “super powers”. All he's got is his intelligence, peak physical conditioning and a huge wallet. And he's taken down villains more powerful than himself.

I“m beginning to appreciate the ”dungeon masters" of the Dungeon and Dragons game a lot more. Back then they must've spent hours upon hours getting their campaigns ready, designing all the maps, etc… The Neverwinter Foundry tool pales in comparison to them, but it's still pretty daunting for me at the moment. Currently working on a campaign involving ruins and a lot of exploration (and players will be frustrated that I'll be turning off that sparkly trail showing them where to go).

I'm trying to figure out… either PWE's Z-Store stuff really IS expensive ($40 for their most fancy, expensive mount claimable by every character on the owner's account… even new characters), or players in this day and age have a huge lack of patience and want things NOW (you can collect a certain ingame currency, change it to the Z-Store currency and use that to buy stuff there). Then again, I've seen situations where players are begging everyone around them to show them where to go when all you need do is check the map. I'm also guessing this is why all those World of Warcraft gold farmers in China make so much money… some players are so impatiant and don't want to play the game. Instead they buy their Warcraft gold with real $$$… which is what the Astral Diamond market in Neverwinter is averting (along with most currencies being nontransferable between characters).
Instant gratification. feh…

Lonnehart wrote:

Superheroic stuff being dull… I guess that's why Batman is among the favorites (if not THE favorite). He's got no “super powers”. All he's got is his intelligence, peak physical conditioning and a huge wallet. And he's taken down villains more powerful than himself

Not really. Batman stories are still oretty hhigh stakes and being a bajillionare is just as hard to relate to as superpowers.
You're probably right in some respects of course, but I think a big part of his apeal is the whole “dark” theme: he's a good guy with all the coolness of a villian.

Writers do tend to go big for the movies. It is a movie after all and a lot hinges on it, but series television and the actual comics are a lot more low key. It's never the whole world every day or all of Gotham City every night, just the limited series. Whenever there is a big event that comes to Gotham or Metropolis there'll be a threat just because there are high powered baddies who are in the busniess of creating big threats.

Once upon a time Batman was in the busness of fighting Tony Soprano type hoods. But Two-face and The Joker are extreme versions of staples of detective fiction :the turned DA and the psychotic crime boss with an image probelm (think Scarface) But now readers don't want that, and they certainly don't want that in a movie. Gotta be the big throw of the dice, the big show in the movies. One's gonna be done every few years so it has to be a blockbuster. Who's going to do the modestly budgeted indie family interest film with the huge payout to Marvel or DC for character rights?

Only if there's a series. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman even the Tick, TV series usually dealt with smaller scale stuff and not earth shattering, blockbuster events. To expect a big budget star laden SPFX spectacular not to have high stakes in the story line is a bit unrealistic. Bond's always out to save the Western World from Communism and SPECTRE and his movies got bigger and bigger (look at From Russia with Love to the Pierce Brosnan ones. They've pulled back a bit for Daniel Craig)
It would be nice to see a superhero in a modest caper movie, no explosions just Bats against a criminal. I guess that's what made that last trio of Batman films so good. But that's not what the genre is about when it gets to the BIG screen. On the BIG screen it gots to be blockbuster BIG! HUGE CANVAS! The world in peril! Not Superman vs Tony Soprano for the carting industry of NJ, but the Avengers versus an INVASION OF EARTH.

It's definitely not just movies though Bravo.
Most SciFi books always go for big stakes. There are brilliant exceptions, but that's what they are- exceptions.
Almost all modern scifi TV series are the same too: It's just that they do the Hero's Jouney arc spread across the whole season, so while the big stake stuff is building and is only fully addressed in episode 2 and 3 the middle episodes and the 2 final episodes they have to pad the rest out with the middle part of the hero's Journey (day to day or whatever it's called).
Movies simply compress the process.

Indie whatever stuff would of course be boring in a Scifi film, most likely, which is not the sort of thing I meant. Bladerunner, West World, or Fantastic Voyage, or even Forbidden Planet are great examples of SciFi that limits its scope nicely. Those are all well written pieces that don't go on for massive stakes.
-Futire world is a great example of the oposite.

The original Starwars films use a very big scope but they do it well because they humanise it so well through those characters and all the set pieces and little scenarios.

Most super TV series that I named did not compress the hero's journey into one season or even their entire run. Go watch the entire run of Lynda Carter Wonder Woman, Lois and Clark, the George Reeves Superman, Batman the original live action Spider Man and even the Tick not to mention Man from UNCLE, Secret Agent man, The Saint (I lump spy shows in with super heroes since the genres really overlap a lot. Same conventions, same gadgets, same villians. Stan Lee has admitted as much with Nick Fury, SHIELD and the Avengers)

Modern series like 24 do compress the whole journey into one season. It is a failing of modern writing as I think about it. So as far as modern shows go you are right. But most stories that I repeatedly watch aren't like that and they're usually at least 20 years old.

Star Trek all the series did it as “bottle shows” small scale stories to save money by using pre-existing sets. If you can go small, go small but in a movie all bets are off. Even Zontar the Thing From Venus and Plan 9 from Outer Space was out to conquer the whole world despite miniscule budgets.

I'd like to seeThe Avengers IIbe My Dinner with Andre in spandex as opposed to BLOW UP THE WHOLE WORLD!

You're not really addressing the original point though- Superhero TV shows and secret agent shows are different. I mentioned superheroes originally, but only in a general sense of the concept. The superhero TV shows you mentioned humanised those characters nicely because superhero fiction in TV in the 40s all the way to the 90s was really hard to do on a big scale because the effects required were very expensive.

Scifi is different, you're dealing with concepts and designer worlds there, you have way more freedom, even in a no-budget TV show. Because the genre is the way it is the audience gives it more leeway, so that even episodes of Dr Who from the ‘60s were way bigger in scope than anything in Louis and Clarke.

The original Star Trek had plenty of huge scope episodes, depending on the writers at the time. The movies didn’t top that, they just had better effects.
-Well, the first movie did (top the series in terms of scope), and that didn't work well at all so they reigned it right in for the second one and that worked amazingly.
The Season arc in the form of the decompressed Hero's Journey IS a modern thing, yes. I think the idea is that it encourage audiences to stay with the thing till the end a lot more than the old self contained style, as well as making the box set DVD versions more attractive.

I never tire of watching the original Star Trek series because it's character driven: you've got the relationship between the three leads, who play that brilliantly and then a short story designed to highlight some moral dilemma - essentially just extrapolated from the western series that came before it.

The fact that they're saving a planet or whatever is really just the backdrop for that and there's no ponderous series long story arc - if you don't like this weeks Greek god story then come back next week for some swingin' space hippies - I prefer old Dr Who for the same reason.

Or maybe I'm just really old! I do remember watching Tomb of the Cybermen with Patrick Troughton when it came out - from behind the sofa.

From the point of view of writing a script superhero and secret agent stories are identical. I've known a couple of script editors and with a few tweaks regarding the powers the scripts can be the same. It was similar with Star Trek and westerns. Then there was the fact that some of the Star Trek scripts migrated between series. Some that weren't done in TOS or the aborted 1970's reboot wound up done in Next Generation and so forth. Battlestar Galactica recycled the western Shane.

A lot of series script writing and story writing in general can be boiled down to building blocks. There are a certain type and size of block and you shuffle them up to build whatever you want. However certain things will always crop up. Recent superhero blockbusters have been getting too big. It's the same with action movies. There's more destruction in each one than the last until the point where the urban setting should look like Berlin in 1945. It's gotten to the point where a regular action film has as much destruction as a Godzilla movie. That's a great idea for a movie right there; Stallone and gang take on a giant monster in Tokyo.

Ironscarf wrote:
I never tire of watching the original Star Trek series because it's character driven: you've got the relationship between the three leads, who play that brilliantly and then a short story designed to highlight some moral dilemma - essentially just extrapolated from the western series that came before it.

The fact that they're saving a planet or whatever is really just the backdrop for that and there's no ponderous series long story arc - if you don't like this weeks Greek god story then come back next week for some swingin' space hippies - I prefer old Dr Who for the same reason.

Or maybe I'm just really old! I do remember watching Tomb of the Cybermen with Patrick Troughton when it came out - from behind the sofa.

Damn it, ironscarf. I read oz's post and was going to make EXACTLY this point…that in the best science fiction, the fact that they're in space or the future or wherever is almost incidental. It's just a tool so that the writer can explore human nature without the limitations of normal life.
You even mentioned my favourite episode (Who Mourns for Adonais), you crazy psychic.

If I remember reading correctly, there was a time when Dr. Who was not on the air. This was due to a BBC controller… he hated Dr. Who with a passion (apparently) and did what he could to keep it off the air. He's also one of the BBC controllers who was not knighted by the Queen of England.
Probably not a new thing. There was that one time when NBC did everything they could to destroy Star Trek's popularity and keep it off the air…

The BBC has had some funny moments. I don't think Dr Who was kept off because of one person though…? It used to be a complicated, expensive piece of production. In the end it fell out of fashion with the controllers and people found it too hard to get everything together to get the next season underway and it lost momentum… so probably a lot of negative factors working against it back then.

Know The Goodies never got repeats because some wanker controller or executive hated it. That had ended production years ago so one guy found that easier to mess up.

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BOTTOMLESS WAITRESS is up to page 3 now!!!
http://www.drunkduck.com/Bottomless_Waitress/
And searching for Bottomless Waitress on google now turns up results! It never used to… But now the spammers are getting in on the action and using it as a tag for search hits, hahahaha!
Banes, we have arived!

Here is a rant:

This week marked the last week of The Office (U.S. Version) and while many people may argue in favor for the original U.K. Version, I absolutely loved the show because I watched every season while living abroad and its absurdity made me laugh out loud. It also gave me something to look forward to every Thursday.

But that is not what this rant is mainly about–because while I was coming to terms with The Office ending, I just found out last night that Bill Hader and Fred Armisen will be leaving Saturday Night Live (with Seth Meyers and Jason Sudiekis following soon after) and I am seriously upset! Hader and Armisen were two cast members that reassured me that the skit would be hilarious as soon as I saw one of their faces and now that will never be the case. The one way to remedy this awful withdrawal other than lounging poolside or taking a walk would be if the amazingly charismatic John Mulaney filled one of the open cast member slots on SNL.