I really like the muscular build of pitbulls, but it still does not change the fact that I am horribly afraid of dogs, especially the big ones without leashes and ultra trusting owners. I always clutch my jugular vein when I pass one on the street.

@lba- I crossed through your ENTIRE state of Iowa last Wednesday morning and there was this heavy rain storm that felt like a car wash. There were large spread out fields and fields of farms and lots of flat lands.
Moving? $2,000 bucks away? Just do some freelance work, odd jobs like mowing neighbors lawns or something! Also, if you decide on San Diego, CA, it would be totally awesome. I am currently moving back to that part of the world right now.

lba wrote:
I need to post more often, but I've been busy. I'm only $2,000 away from my estimated amount required for me to move out of the Midwest to somewhere a little more suitable to my tastes. Right now, it's even money between Austin, Texas and San Diego, California. Either way, I need about the same amount, and I'm so close I can taste that sweet, sweet victory.

Wow that is awesome! Gotta say not sure why austin since you wanna get out of the midwest. Austin just seems like that with fancy buildings and more heroin. San diego ive heard is great, all the cool stuff about cali with less of the weird people from LA. Well i am rooting for you!

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
I really like the muscular build of pitbulls, but it still does not change the fact that I am horribly afraid of dogs, especially the big ones without leashes and ultra trusting owners. I always clutch my jugular vein when I pass one on the street.
@lba- I crossed through your ENTIRE state of Iowa last Wednesday morning and there was this heavy rain storm that felt like a car wash. There were large spread out fields and fields of farms and lots of flat lands.
Moving? $2,000 bucks away? Just do some freelance work, odd jobs like mowing neighbors lawns or something! Also, if you decide on San Diego, CA, it would be totally awesome. I am currently moving back to that part of the world right now.


Most dogs require that you make sure they know who is boss. The old adage that they can smell fear is fairly true. Dogs can generally pick up on when you aren't acting like the alpha of their pack. My last dog was a retired patrol dog, and you literally had to smack him to put him in his place every so often and remind him you were bigger and tougher, or he'd try to challenge you for supremecy of the house.

I've barely lived in Iowa for the last 5 years. I've split my time between Milwaukee, Iowa, Detroit and Chicago as freelance work and the whole Army Reserve thing takes me wherever. That's part of why I want to move. I'm getting old enough that traveling across half the country and living in hotels all the time doesn't seem so glamorous as it did when I was a teenager and in college. I'm at that point where it might be nice to actually be able to go home to the same place for more than 6 months at a time and meet people outside work.

skullbie wrote:
Wow that is awesome! Gotta say not sure why austin since you wanna get out of the midwest. Austin just seems like that with fancy buildings and more heroin. San diego ive heard is great, all the cool stuff about cali with less of the weird people from LA. Well i am rooting for you!

Thanks. It's been a move in the making for the better part of about 2 years now. I kinda ran into my worst-case scenario of not finding a job before I move, and I just decided I'm going to move to whichever place I find a job first or just kinda do a coin-flip if I haven't had my mind made up for me by the end of the year.

I kind of thought Austin was going to be the Tex-mex version of the Midwest too until I visited. It's a little hipster-ish, but they've actually got a lot of really awesome stuff to do and a booming art market. It's supposed to be the fastest growing city in the country. Dunno much about the drug thing, but I know it offers enough that people's major pastimes there don't include “drink until liver turns black”, like they do up north. Ditto for San Diego. I'm just feeling like I'm more about finding a big, energetic urban place to put down roots that hanging around the Midwest.

That's so awesome, lba! I'm super excited for you.

My dad has finally been talking about moving. He's wanted to leave for ages, but never could for various reasons. My older sister's dad lived here, then my mom didn't want to move, and so on. Recently my little sister decided she'd like to move elsewhere, which was basically the last obstacle other than all the usual new-job-new-house stuff. I'll be really happy for him if he gets to live somewhere he actually likes for the first time ever. Lesson learned: move while you're young. It just gets harder and harder as you get older, it seems.

Good on you Lba, and congrats for you dad too Hippie! :D

——

I've been watching some good youtube channels about sword types and usuage, stuff like Skalligram, Schollargladiatora, and Lindybeige. (unsure of the spelling here)
They're all fairly interesting, Schollargladiatora is by far the best (more well read, knowlegeable, even handed). I find the only trouble is that aftera while it makes you think “Aw man, they're talking about the best swords and sword types here, that means I should save up and get a specially custom made ultra sharp replica sword, or an expensive genuine antique.”

-When all I really care about is having the right sword for my hussar gear. I don't need some expensive, dangerously sharp weapon… These vids make me think I DO though.
It's one of those silly things… We call it the power of advertising, but it's not about ads at all; if you're into something you just automatically crave “The ultimae best” tools at some stage.
That's why digital artists spend so much on cintiqs and photoshop etc… a sort of self status thing.

I wonder how useful those swords depicted in fantasy are. Like in Final Fantasy VII. That Buster Sword is as large as the character who wields it and he easily spins it in one hand. Or maybe it's because he's superhuman?

And there's this thing I'm trying to remember… a Japanese swordsman who was feared because his sword was very long. How was he defeated? By a swordsman with a sword an inch longer than his. Personally I think a person with skills in using daggers would've had an easier time…

The FFVII sword is useless. If it was fully steel it'd be so heavy that cloud would litterally have to be bolted onto the gorund in order to swing it (assuming he had magically hulk-like supernatural strength), because the centripidal force generated by the sword exceeds the friction of his feet in contact with the ground.
If the sword was lighter than it looks, then it'd just be a really awkard fan, swishing around and buffeted by air currents as you swung.

The only story I know about big Japanese swords is Kojiro's fight with Musashi. Yojimbo had his giant “clothes drying pole” nodashi. on the journey to the island where the duel would take place Musashi carved an old boat oar into a wooden bokken in order to match him. Musashi won by breaking Kojiro's head with it.
And although that sounds apocryphal, it makes perfect sense, in that reach wins.

Lonnehart wrote:
A Japanese swordsman who was feared because his sword was very long. How was he defeated? By a swordsman with a sword an inch longer than his.

It's not the length of the sword, it's the girth of the blade that matters.

But seriously, I studied fencing for two summers when I was younger and the worst opponents I have ever gone against are also the most dangerous. They do not see fencing as an art form and use the foil like a metal stabbing stick.

lba wrote:
I'm getting old enough that traveling across half the country and living in hotels all the time doesn't seem so glamorous as it did when I was a teenager and in college. I'm at that point where it might be nice to actually be able to go home to the same place for more than 6 months at a time and meet people outside work.

This. This. This. This. And this.

—
I am now back in Southern California, the golden coast, after living one year in Canada and a two week long road trip across the contiguous United States. I can not even describe the feeling of how nice it is to be back home where I do not need a passport or visa when I go outside. I had a good time in Canada, but all that stuff about snow was true. It was winter for nearly eight months!

Yesterday I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the backdrop of Breaking Bad. I went to the filming location of Gus Fring's Los Pollos Hermanos. In real life, it is a restaurant called “Twisters” that specializes in breakfast burritos. I had to order something with chicken, so I got the chicken nugget kid's meal.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
—
I am now back in Southern California, the golden coast, after living one year in Canada and a two week long road trip across the contiguous United States. I can not even describe the feeling of how nice it is to be back home where I do not need a passport or visa when I go outside. I had a good time in Canada, but all that stuff about snow was true. It was winter for nearly eight months!

Jelly! What did you need a passport for though? (besides flying and im guessing driving)
——-
Kitty is still here. He just lays on or under the porch all day, we feed him plenty obviously. I'm gonna go get him some worm stuff in a few days because his stomach seems a bit tight. Plan is to get him fixed and be an outside cat if he sticks around. No neighbors knew anything.
I had my birthday. It was pretty nice.I got cool presents like a new display for my ADULT COLLECTORS ITEMS (aka toys) and skull vodka:

Skullbie wrote:
Jelly! What did you need a passport for though? (besides flying and im guessing driving)

Generally speaking, most foreign countries require visitors to carry a passport around at all times. I have lived abroad in many different countries and I just got in the habit of having it on my person at all times when I am not on US soil.

Kawaii, Iba… your lives are interesting. Getting to travel everywhere and see lots of things. I wish I could travel sometimes. Nowadays I only fly from home if it's something important and family related. Even though my father has passed on, I may still fly back to California because my brothers and stepmother are there. I could also fly to the Philippines to visit relatives there, but if I do I'll have to travel alone. My family has sworn to get me married off. The last attempt was done by my father when I was in my early 20's. We were in a store when he made the attempt. I had ever been so embarrassed in my entire life…

Behind my back he asked every young woman in the store if I would be their ideal husband…

Yeah…. With what they say they want to do now, I'm not going back there with family for a LONG time… 0_0

Wow Skull! Those toys are so cool!

ozoneocean wrote:
Wow Skull! Those toys are so cool!

Coolest toys ever! Niiiice.

Finished a fifteen page comic script in four hours. And it reads better than the 30 page script I've been rewriting for the past month. Now I want to do another old story idea as a short quickie.

That's cool, bravo - sometimes a switching of gears is just what's needed!
It would be great to get your thoughts on ENDINGS for the upcoming Quackcast on ENDINGS. Since you've been working on scripts, maybe it's a good time for some insights, eh wot?

Other folks too, if you can, please scroll down and give any thoughts you have on ENDINGS!

ENDINGSSSSSSSS!!!

-end

Yes!Please contribute to Banes' Quackcast topic about story endings! It's a really interesting one.
You'll have your post read out in an AMAZING voice by either Banes or me.
May, just MAYBE, even an AWESOME AMAZING EFFING PIC like the ones in the latest Quizcast:
http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2014/jun/23/quackcast-172-the-quackquiz/
OMFG that is so cool!

——-

Ya know what? We were talking about Mad Magazine in Friday's newspost coments section and Bravo and I were discussing “The lighter side”… well I saw a real life version of Roger Kaputnik today on the train and he got out on my stop!
I couldn't beleive my eyes. He was stout man in his late 40s, early 50s, brown hound'stooth tweed sports coat, black rim glasses, dark slacks, stingray fedora, same white/grey hair colouring… he was only missing a pipe firmly clenched between his teeth!
Gawd I loved that character ^_^

I made the innocent mistake of going on an eight mile walk yesterday without applying sunscreen before leaving the house. I figured my skin could use some Vitamin D and I was working on healthy tan plus I love the tan lines.

Welp! I was so very wrong and now I am very red. I have been applying layers of body butter, witch hazel, and aloe vera to the painful parts of my skin. Wearing cotton is out of the question because I can feel the friction from every little fiber on the cloth.

Ow… I wish I had remedies for sunburn. My only solution is to ride it out… which is never very pleasant. And I'm more prone to them due to not going outdoors too much…

That's the perfect time to take some embarrasing selfies! :D
Calamine lotion was an old remedy that seemed to make the skin feel a lot better whenever there was any problems like that.

My daughter wanted to play a Rihanna tune on her piano so I googled said tune and could not believe the weight of material about how Rihanna is the illuminati demon princess and her records are all full of satanic backmasking.
Remember backmasking? That was when heavy metal bands allegedly put evil backwards messages on their albums because as we all know, listening backwards is the proper way to appreciate your music. I thought Judas Priest had put all of this bull out to pasture back in the eighties with that ridiculous court case?

Well, I ‘ve been building this evil sounding fuzz box and planned to use it for Britrock tunes, but now I’ll use it for Rihanna stuff because Umbrella turns out to be much scarier than Black Sabbath, as the following image clearly demonstrates.

I only listen to music “backwards” now, that way I can absorb the subliminal positive messages from the “forwards” agenda of the devious artiste.

Not that I'd know which way the music was facing these days, some of it is a bloody racket, sounds like a load car horns going off and errr looping over and over like the err records stuck and (insert other old man cliches here). Cough splutter hack hack.

Backmasking on records is just like Electronic Voice Phenomena with ghosts. You hear what you want to hear. The first person hears it and usually only when told does the next person hear what the first did. However it's all random noise. It's just the way our brain is wired to make patterns out of otherwise meaningless stuff.

All that great backmasking by the Beatles was revealed to be mere studio noise when the records were remastered. Didn't I tell you guys to keep it down over there? They'll think we're channeling Aleister Crowley here.

I once saw a subliminal advertising executive… but only for a second.

Yeah, so my house just about burnt down. It was about 8 at night when i went into the hallway, mom burst out of her room asking ‘whats that noise’. I follow her to the back porch and the backyard is just in FLAMES, 7 feet high, roaring, not even eight feet away from our porch. Dad was asleep somehow and we started screaming, he burst out of the couch to the backporch, i called 911 panicked, pretty much screamed at the poor opperator. Dad was spraying the fire with a hose as it started snaking up the old tree, i started filling a bucket, by the time i ran outside…the embers were flying towards the house and height of the flames just stopped me dead in my tracks. I screamed that we needed to leave. I rushed to grab my cat and threw her into the carrier. Upturned a crate and put anything valueble i could think of-anything i knew i could sell in the next few days.
Mom was ready to go and i couldn't find dad's cat. The house was smokey now and i started running through the house screaming for her. It was starting to get hard to see when i finally found her behind the couch….little bitch ran from me. I tried to sweet talk her and she ran away again, i finally raged and grabbed her hard, stuffed her in the carrier with my kitty. By now it seemed like an enternity had gone by and the firetrucks still weren't here…flames probably 20 feet in the air. Kind of sick but i assumed my dad was dead…he's fine thankfully, and if he hadn't fought the fire our house would be gone for sure. Me and mom moved the cars with the cats out of the yard.
An engine finally arrived and stopped at the house above us. By now i was pretty frazzled by the smoke and i screamed at them to hurry up pretty hard. -_- Don't judge, we honestly have nothing outside this house, no way to rebuild…nothing. Our livelihoods at stake and they seemed to take their sweet time unravling the hose, walking not running. Honestly it made me pretty mad…didnt help i was panicked.
They put the fire out finally and it seemed like the entire police force had arrived…three engines and five(!) cop cars. Thankfully the house was fine, we have a tin roof so that probably helped. No animals were hurt either, even stray kitty is still here and doing fine. Poor dad looked like a blackface charicature, i was black all up my arms and neck.
But yeah just…weird. A fire at night when none of us had been outside…not near any structures or power poles…so weird…at least we're okay and it didn't spread.

Whoa! I'm glad no one was hurt and your house is fine. Hopefully you can recover from having the porch burnt though… :(

Thank goodness you, your family, pets and house are ok SKull! Jebus that's fricken scary!

It wasn't some bad wiring or faulty appliance or loose power plug or something? Maybe a damaged bug zapper?
I'm always wary of things plugged in and turned on overnight or when I'm out of the house… anything that draws a lot of power or gets warm.

Whatever it was I really hope that never happens again.

Glad to hear you're ok and damage is minimal Skull' - must've been very scary for a while there.

Thank goodness you're all fine and the house wasn't damaged too severely. Been through a fire myself back in the day and we panicked over the cats too but they were waiting for us downstairs when we got out. Looking at us as if to say “What took you so long to get out dumb human?”

A lot of dogs and cats make it out of the fire just fine and the humans die while frantically looking for them. So sad but so true. Trust your animals' instincts they often work better in emergencies than human thinking.

Having been a secuirty guard in a senior residence for four years I've seen too many fires and smoke incidents to count. And scooped up fleeing animals in the hall while the humans stayed searching their apartments for them. People are surprised how good I am with animals considering how cold and distant I can be with humans.

And self-absorbed. You suffered a tragedy and all I can do is talk about me. Sorry for your losses and I hope all works out better than expected.

I hope the authorites do an investigation on your house, Skullbie. I find it kinda strange that a fire would start right there when there would be no reason for it…

Last night I nearly went to work early. Then I got hit with the Red Light Special. Y'know… EVERY SINGLE TRAFFIC LIGHT you run into turns red the moment you get there, or there's a string of cars in front when the light turns green, but turns red at the right time so the car directly in front of you has to stop. In the end my 30 minute lead time turned into 0 and I was five minutes late… T_T

I have just bought a whole lot of clothes on Ebay.
No, not antique, vintage, or ancient miliary uniforms… no, actual clothing to wear regulalry!
I know, astounding isn't it? :D

Mainly a bunch of tight stretchy tops of various kinds. They're not too expensive, but more importantly it's REALLLLLY hard to find stuff in that style and my size here, the locla shops only stock a very limited amount of styles.
These days I'm into tight fits since regular exersice has given me a good chest for that style.
NOT V-necks, I hate v-neck T-shirts.

Now I just hope they fit! I'm actually expereimenting with getting undies online too.
Oh the adventure!

In some countries (well, okay, maybe just Japan) you can get undies from vending machines. Of course they are used.

Good, I like my panties frilly…