J_Scarbrough wrote:
Here's a little something just to tease my fellow Ducks. . . .

I know some of you have expressed an interest in seeing a continuation of Levana's chronicles post-VAMPIRE GIRL. Ever since VG wrapped up, I will admit that I've flirted with that very idea, and have even had some plot scenarios come to mind about what sorts of things we might could see in such a comic, such as Levana and Laura pooling their resources to move into a new apartment together, maybe Laura deciding to search for a new job while Levana continues to immerse herself in hers - I even had in mind pair of new neighbors Laura and Levana could meet and mingle with. I also feel like instead of one continuous story told over several strips/pages, the format would be a collection of various and sundry stories, maybe told over five or six strips/pages at a time.

Obviously, nothing is set in stone, it probably isn't very likely I would be able to even do this any time soon, but just the same, I thought I would give Levana's fans this little teaser to let them know I have listened, I have seen you express your interest, and it is something that I do think about.

It sounds like Vampire Girl meets The Hills. Will Levana get an internship with Teen Vampgirl Vogue? Who is going to be the “Justin Bobby” of the series?

Haha, nothing like that! If anything, I would say it would be more like if Laura and Levana stepped into their own Laverne and Shirley world . . . though I do guarantee the pair of neighbors I have in mind would not be just a pair of knuckleheads like Lenny and Squiggy.

Am I the only one that reads your name as “J_Sourdough”?

My 8th grade Math teacher thought my name was pronounced “Scar-BROW”, which he thought sounded like a pirate name (like if a pirate had a scar across his brow). When he signed my year book at the end of the school year, he addressed it to, “The wildest pirate on the Seven Seas!”

J_Scarbrough wrote:
My 8th grade Math teacher thought my name was pronounced “Scar-BROW”, which he thought sounded like a pirate name (like if a pirate had a scar across his brow). When he signed my year book at the end of the school year, he addressed it to, “The wildest pirate on the Seven Seas!”

Hahahaha!
Full disclosure: Scarborough is a popular beach suburb near me and we pronounce it “scar-ba-ra” or “scar-bra” ^_^

Thankfully you stayed out of the world of Medieval studies and never got vintage pronunciation, pronouncing the gh hard with a rumble in the back of the throat as if you're going to spit. So it's something like Scah-browghhk-- tooie
Fortunately English lost all that back of the throat stuff with the influence of French after the Norman Conquest so you have Sca-bro or Sca-bra.
Try Wyl-ugh-bee sometime. One of the dozen or so variant vintage spellings of my last name from when spelling didn't count. One of my ancestors spelled his name six or seven different ways on different documents. That's the 17th century for you.

bravo1102 wrote:
One of my ancestors spelled his name six or seven different ways on different documents. That's the 17th century for you.

Yeah it was all done by the sound of the thing rather than the letters used. We still have that with words like Chanfron and even focussed, the spellings for those vary. To a lessor extent aluminium haha!

Since I've been learning German ALL that phonetic stuff has come flooding in on me full force hahaha! Like a tidal wave. No way to avoid it. XD
Those buggers like to pronounce every single letter plus “s” and “z” and “W” and “v” are reversed…

Accordingly, our original family name was SCARBOROUGH (with the extra O), but when my dad went into the Marines, they misspelled his name on his service record to omit the extra O, and it's been SCARBROUGH ever since. My mom has asked me dad why he didn't ever correct them to which he simply said he felt he was in position to question authority. For whatever reason, only one of my brothers opted to revert back to the original spelling, but the rest of us still omit the O.

My last name being misspelled is such a pet peeve of mine. I've seen SCARBROUGH, SCARBOROUGH, SCARBRO, SCARBORO, SCHARBROUGH. I once flirted with the idea of adopting “Jo Scarbro” as my pen name, just to make it simpler for everyone, but I decided against it. I did eventually use it as my Instagram handle though.

No one will ever dispute the right of a Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman to have their name spelled right on their tombstone. It's not a question of authority but the notification of the correct next of kin.
I've known a few “alphabet” s in my service time. Alphabet is the usual nickname for someone with a long (often hard to pronounce) last name. One guy's name was such that he never had name tags because they were such a pain to have custom done. It is different now as the ethnic makeup of the service has changed. They have a right to have their name spelled right so their next of kin can be properly notified. It's the least that can be done for someone willing to give their life.

Germans can be painstakingly precise when it comes to that. Some say it's because of all the bloodletting the German people have suffered since the 17th century when almost one third of the population perished in the Thirty Years War and that was only the beginning of three centuries of war. Small wonder they got so good at it.

Clearly, veterans and service people aren't really respected in this country as our government likes to pretend they are. I can go into my long-winded spiel of what a sick joke VA is and the additional grief they've caused my mother since my dad died three years ago, but I'm kind of tired of repeating that same spiel over and over again. Let's just say because he wasn't a combat veteran (he was a desk jockey - specifically, a Supply Sergeant), they feel his service wasn't important or significant enough to see to it my mother (or even myself) has any kind of support in the wake of his death. Even Colonel Sherman T. Potter once said it was the non-coms who were the backbone of the service.

My last name (not Eberhardt, that one is part of my unnecessarily long first name) has Slavic origins and was probably Germanized to make it more pronounceable. My ancestors - known to none of us, because all the church records burned during the war - may as well have left it the way it was, as it appears to look quite puzzling to anyone who doesn't habitually speak German, and a few others who do. It gets misspelled all the time. So, whenever I have to look for my name on a list, I'm quite used to checking for several possibilities of initial letters they might have given me this time.

I have such a simple, British/Irish name and yet people still mess it up in many ways XD

Michael John Morris.

Many people just automatically call me “john” instead of my first name.
“Morris” is misspelled as “Morrison” and “Norris”, even “Marwis”.
My first name is commonly misspelled as “Micheal”, even by my own sister! It's pronounced in many different ways because lots of cultures have their own version of the name and they're all different…

“My-kull” is the usual way to say it.
For some it's “Michelle” (Mis-shell“), for others it's ”Mi-hi-el“, and even ”Mik-kay-ul“ or ”Mik-kale".



And that'[s just for a common, bland, simple western, Christian name of biblical origin haha! But it's so widely used by so many cultures and it's very old, which means there are variations.

GONE WITH THE WIND was one of my mom's all-time favorite movies, that before I was even born, she and my dad were expecting me to be a girl, and she wanted to name me Scarlet.

Now, I have an absurd and abnormal affinity for alliteration, but I cannot imagine going through life being a female with a name like Scarlet Scarbrough. I'd probably be a butch lesbian in a women's prison right about now, after growing up with a childhood full of torment, ridicule, and scorn.

GONE WITH THE WIND was my mom's favorite book and movie too. That's why my sister's name is Melanie.

Scarlet_Scarbrough wrote:
I'd probably be a butch lesbian in a women's prison right about now, after growing up with a childhood full of torment, ridicule, and scorn.

When did you get out? ;)

This level of trolling is very, very rare for me.
You have been uniquely blessed XD

Okay, who's the wiseacre who done pranked me today? Oz? I feel like this has your fingerprints all over this.

Scarlet_Scarbrough wrote:
Okay, who's the wiseacre who done pranked me today? Oz? I feel like this has your fingerprints all over this.

Cue the titles and that beautiful Max Steiner score.
Dun- DA-DA-DA

Scarlet_Scarbrough wrote:
GONE WITH THE WIND was one of my mom's all-time favorite movies, that before I was even born, she and my dad were expecting me to be a girl, and she wanted to name me Scarlet.

“As God as my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!”

GONE WITH THE WIND was the most popular film in 1939, because what better way to forget the Great Depression by reliving the Civil War at the turn of the decade during a second world war. Scarlet O’Hara was born way ahead of her time, depicts the modern woman of today even better than when the film was released. Never understood her obsession with Ashley when she had Rhett Butler at her heel.

Hattie McDaniel was an absolute scene stunner with her red petticoat and interactions with Clark Gable.

I watched part of GONE WITH THE WIND last Monday morning and I completely understand why it was so popular.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Okay, who's the wiseacre who done pranked me today? Oz? I feel like this has your fingerprints all over this.

???


XD

I love a good prank though, thanks for giving me a laugh! It was weird having to login as “Scarlet_Scarbrough” this morning because “J_Scarbrough” was now the incorrect username, lol.

Though released in 1939 GWTW didn't enter wide distribution until 1940 and many people didn't actually see it until aftee the war started in the USA. There are tons of stories about it and several making of documentaries. A particularly fun one is The Scarlett O'Hara War TV movie from 1980. It's about the Hollywood in fighting over the casting of Scarlett.

I'm always wary of when a politician gets compared to Hitler because no mater how much you hate them you know that people can do that with ANY politician.

But I think Trump earns it more than any other after his recent comments on Gaza.
He's advocating the MASS deportation of Palestinians from their homeland there. Satin that a million and a half people should be permanently removed and dumped into Egypt and Jordon and Gaza should be rebuilt without them “because it's a lovely place with great weather and it's just a worthless demolition site right now and the people who used to run it did a bad job”

For FU*Ks sake this man is evil. Straight up he is the SAME kind of piece of sh*t as Hitler.
Before the Nazis commenced full mass murder their plan was to transport all Jewish people to Madagascar.

Trump is advocating the genocide of the Palestinian people.

Ozoneocean wrote:
…
Trump is advocating the genocide of the Palestinian people.

True. I mean, asshole politicians always existed, but rarely they were as outspoken and explicit. And people vote him, probably many voters perceive this as a plus.

Trump is evil, no disputing that. He hasn't even been in Office for a week, and already he's done so much to fuck us all over. And Hitler is a fair comparison; Trump's already had his own personal Gestapo raiding cities across America to to round up and detain Hispanic and Latinx people (even if they're legal citizens) to deport them all to Mexico (newsflash: not all Hispanic people in the world are from Mexico). Hell, already he's using military jets to fly detainees to Mexico at $850,000 per flight of our tax payer dollars and Mexico is refusing delivery.

He also has completely stripped human rights away from transgenderes people (so in other words, we can all go back to calling Caitlyn Jenner “Bruce” since that's what he voted for), removed us from WHO, raised prescription drug costs for the elderly, has temporarily suspended all federal healthcare agencies until Robert Kennedy, Jr. (who is certifiably insane) is officially confirmed as Head of the Department of Health and Safety (for which hs presently has no date set), has pardoned every single January 6 insurrectionist, plans to make the Proud Boys a legit political organization, and of course there's his tariffs which will cause prices for all consumer goods to sky-rocket starting in February. He also is outright refusing to send any federal aid to fire-ravaged California unless they meet his two demands: 1) They all provide voter ID so he can see who voted for him in the election, and 2) If and when he does send them aid, they have to agree that he is the greatest “President” they ever had.

What kills me the most was the lady Bishop who pleaded with Trump to have mercy on those who he's causing to live in fear, and now the entire Republican Party is attacking her (and even sending her death threats) for preaching one of Jesus' messages; clearly, these far right Evangelicals and so-called “Christians” are no people of Christ.

On a state level, my state is voting in favor for having our Constitution amended so that Trump can run again for a third term in 2028. And my state wants school children to be taught about Hitler and other, “strong, independent world leaders” so that they can, “catch them while they're still young.” And yet, they claim students being in the presence of LGBTQ+ people is “grooming and indoctrinating them.”

As Franklin said, “A republic if you can keep it.” We couldn't.

Hitler is the modern version. A better model would be the demagoguery that ended the Roman republic just as the founders feared.

Hail Trump Augustus. Imperator Americanus

We really are going through and age of would-be emperors…
There's Trump in the USA, Xi-Ping in China, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, and various lessor pathetic figures like Lukashenko in Belarus, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, the was the now dead Duterte in the Philippines… and others.

The Supreme Court (which Trump appointed himself) has ruled that Trump is now our king.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
The Supreme Court (which Trump appointed himself) has ruled that Trump is now our king.

And Trump signed an executive order changing king to emperor.
It will take affect like the Gulf of America, Mount McKinley and the impending US statehood of Canada and Greenland. All hail Imperator Americanus

Ozoneocean wrote:
We really are going through and age of would-be emperors…
There's Trump in the USA, Xi-Ping in China, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, and various lessor pathetic figures like Lukashenko in Belarus, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, the was the now dead Duterte in the Philippines… and others.

And with AI they might be immortal

lothar wrote:

Ozoneocean wrote:
We really are going through and age of would-be emperors…
There's Trump in the USA, Xi-Ping in China, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, and various lessor pathetic figures like Lukashenko in Belarus, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, the was the now dead Duterte in the Philippines… and others.

And with AI they might be immortal

LOL Trump-gpt