TheLastBaron

Even though I knew it wasn't going to be through SLG it still feels really weird to see him somewhere else since they're so linked when I think of them (he's from the same are as me and so is SLG so I used see him and get my books signed at SLG). That being said there's no way SLG could do the book, they can't even keep JtHM in print and it's their most popular book (I think it's been out of print since 2011). Also as much as I really liked them in the late 90's/early 2k's I don't think I've bought anything they've put out in over a decade. I'm interested to see how it ends up, but at the same time all his stuff is so specific to a certain time for me (middle school) so I don't know how well it'll translate for me personally regardless of how good it is. Either way I'm glad to see him putting something out, his output is very sparse (I can't think of anything recent he's done outside of a Marvel anthology by alternative creators.)

Just saw Cursive live, I've seen them before, but this time they had a cellist with them and played the entire Ugly Organ. It was really good. It's weird that that album is 12 years old now.

This will probably get fixed soon (I'm assuming it's a glitch), but Watchmen (digital) is currently free on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/B00BWNXMEK-ALAN-MOORE-ebook/dp/B00BWNXMEK I tried it and it works.

I really liked it, if the preview is what I'm assuming it is (just checked, it is) obviously it's a big set piece, but I thought the book stayed strong all the way through. It's also a really pretty book. Obviously from the preview the art is good, but also the book design is great. It's just a really nice book to look at.

Their selection is definitely broad rather than deep.

So scribd have added a bunch of comics to their service which is I guess just a subscription service for ebooks and such (I haven't used it before). You can get a free 1-month trial meaning essentially you can read a bunch of stuff for free. They have a pretty decent selection of stuff, no DC or Image, but there's a fair amount of Marvel books and then a lot by other people like IDW, Boom, Top Shelf, ect. I actually feel kind of bad because I was planning on buying Second Thoughts by Niklas Asker already and now I don't have to. https://www.scribd.com/

Just finished Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and have started Good-Bye. I really like both of them. I hadn't heard of Tatsumi before (I don't really read much manga besides like Shigeru Mizuki's stuff), but I was going through some of my old issues of Optic Nerve by Adrian Tomine and in the front matter of one he had his upcoming projects which included working on Drawn and Quarterly's English releases of Tatsumi's work. The way AtOiT collects a bunch of small stories dealing with these quiet and depressing/disturbing moments of urban life is definitely something that is reflected in Optic Nerve (in the issue where Adrian Tomine said he was going to be working on it he even states that Yoshihiro Tatsumi is one of his favorite cartoonists).

I actually just started it yesterday. I've only read the frontmatter with the photos and essay about the process of making it.

So an episode of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego was on when I turned my TV on last night so I watched it. I definitely don't remember the opening song being that awful.

Got some new stuff. I guess not actually new since I've already read everything here, but I wanted the Jacques Tardi box set and I needed to replace my copies of Wednesday Comics which were the original newsprint ones. The Nobody I just threw in because it was eight bucks and I lent my original copy to someone and don't remember who.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/01/21/exclusive-milestone-media-rises-again-hudlin-cowan-and-dingle-will-revive-company-with-eye-toward-characters-of-color/ Omg. Milestone is coming back I'm so excited.

So just out of curiosity I was wondering what everyone's favorite sports/teams are. For me it's changed over time a bit. Mostly every sport/team I follow is related to my dad (with one exception). I live in the Bay Area, but my dad is from is from Boston (well he's actually from Littleton which is 40 miles west and a fun fact is that Steve Carell used to be his mailman) so I follow the Red Sox and the Bruins rather than the Sharks and the Giant's/A's, in fact I really don't like the A's because I've never been to an A's game outside of the A's vs Boston context. I've sort of gotten a little cold on following baseball though, it was by far my favorite sport growing up and most evenings I would sit with my dad on the couch watching it, but it's not as big of a deal as it used to be which is probably related to them winning the world series (my dad regularly re-watches the dvd's of the 2004 series especially when he's super stressed out, it was a huge deal here). On the other hand I've never cared for the Patriots or the Celtics. The Patriots my dad has never followed as a result of them being terrible when he was growing up, and he likes the Celtics, but I just never was into Basketball probably because I never played it growing up. Hockey is kind of weird because when I was super little I liked the Sharks, I had Sharkie stuffed animals and everything and always got excited going to games, but at some point switched completely over to only really caring about the Bruins which is again probably related to watching games with my dad. These days I don't have cable so don't watch much, but will try and listen to Bruins games on the radio if I can, whereas I just check the scores for Red Sox games usually. All that being said my favorite sport is soccer and my favorite team of any sport is the San Jose Earthquakes. This is definitely just from me playing growing up, I played on club teams and then in high school. It's almost the opposite of other sports, my dad knows nothing about soccer (well he does now) so if we're watching a game together it's a lot of him asking me stuff about the game which is what I used to do with him. I have season tickets and I don't care how bad they are I'm super excited for the new season and new stadium. Not having cable does kind of suck though because as much as I love the Quakes the MLS is the MLS and I used to watch every single Premier League game for years (which isn't actually very much since teams only play ~once a week) and now I get once game a week over the air if I'm lucky. I could stream them and sometimes I do, but the time difference makes it annoying. I also know absolutely nothing about any college sports except when I hear people from my area going on to play for teams since there are two big private schools here (Mitty and Bellarmine) who are among the top in the nation for athletics and people always make a big deal about it.

Would you self identify as a "real chill bro"?

"I'm curious if that sentiment also carries over to alcohol for those who feel that way?" It does carry over to alcohol for me, I have been high a lot more than I have been drunk and I really dislike being around drunk people. That doesn't mean I'm against people who aren't idiots, my sister lives in Portland and is super into the craft brew scene there and I know a lot of people who just enjoy beer and I'm not against that at all, I just hate irresponsible rather than alcohol I guess. This past semester someone I knew from school got hit by a drunk driver and killed. He was working in a group with one of my best friends for their computer engineering senior project and was a really smart guy. It fucking sucks. For clarification though I personally don't find weed gross or even bad. I am regularly around people who are smoking and one of the reasons why I don't do it is just that I have a hard time socializing with people high and find it more enjoyable to just hang out with people normally. I also don't have a problem with a lot of drugs, the ones I do are mostly opiates. A couple of friends that I've known since middle school had problems with heroin for a while and while they're clean now it's never not going to be a thing for them now. Also in 2010 someone that I used to be really good friends with died from an overdose of fentanyl and it was really shitty. I don't think anyone is arguing that those should be legal though.

So I finished The Longest Journey a week or so ago and I liked it. I don't know if I was expecting to like it more than I did because of all the praise it gets, I found it really solid though. I liked the world and the characters and the voice acting, and the puzzles were good too. Basically everything was just really well done. There were times that I liked April and times that I didn't which is a good thing. I felt more time could have been spent in Stark though as you didn't get as much of the world as you did with Arcadia and it seemed really interesting. I started playing Dreamfall though and it's so weird, I didn't realize it wasn't a point and click game and the controls are annoying me so I'll probably end up playing it with a controller. Also I guess the two worlds ended up merging anyways, which is what you were preventing in the first game? Does this mean you don't revisit the setting of the first game? I don't know how I feel about it, I'm still really early on. We'll see.

So the new Star Wars comic is out and issue #1 is actually great. It's Jason Aaron and John Cassaday which is an all star team, but I still didn't know how it was going to end up, but I loved the issue. It's classic Star Wars, it's set between the first movie and the second movie (that is it's set after A New Hope) and the tone is spot on. It's funny, it's exciting, and it's interesting. I would call it a fun romp.

Dang, this thread actually reached the point of someone comparing themselves to MLK and Malcolm X because someone told them they were being an asshole.

Honestly I personally don't know anyone who I would think of as having (non-alcoholic) drug use as their primary characteristic. I definitely know a lot of people who smoke a lot of pot (and some who do significantly harder drugs, and while it's a debate for another time even they say if they hadn't started smoking pot they wouldn't have gotten into other stuff), but I guess outside of people who smoke all day and don't leave their house everyone I've met still does stuff which I associate with them more. I guess it's sort of like someone can get high multiple times throughout the day and still be normal and active, versus someone who gets drunk multiple times throughout the day probably isn't. Though there are the people I've seen on the street who have the stereotypical weed apparel who I never engage, which means I do agree with you.

As dumb as the Scarlett Johansson thing is (and it's dumb) I can picture a lot of people I know seeing that there's some sci-fi action movie staring Scarlett Johansson out and going to see it. If they just saw there was a new movie out based on some anime they probably wouldn't care, or at least not as much. I would imagine that the number of people this casting will bring to the theatres is a lot more than the number of people like me who now have no interest in watching it, so I guess I can't fault them too much for making a sound business decision, especially since the budget is probably pretty big.

While this is true, a large part of that is because it's the most accessible form. I know here where there's easy access to everything most people I know use wax since they can just use vape pens (which is kind a negative for me because they are just so common here that people have become incredibly flippant with using tgem. I see people using e-ciggs in my classes and it's a complete non-issue).

So are of the newer HM games really good? I played a couple of the DS games, the island one and the two towns one, and was pretty underwhelmed by both of them. I haven't tried the Wii one or the 3ds one though.

Is maintaining a large army still necessary for pursuing other victory conditions than a domination victory? Is going for a different type of victory still satisfying to play?

So as I said I am really uninformed in the whole debate. My question is, what would be the problem with just having things similar to the way they are in California (though I can;t actually speak for all of California as I don't know if it's treated different in other areas). That is, have it very heavily criminalized and widely available for "medical patients" while still technically not having it be flat out legal for recreational use. I'm not against it being legal, and there are still problems with the way things are here (for example one of my friends in currently not smoking for a couple weeks because he might be moving to a new job and they're going to have him take a drug test), but it seems like a lot the arguments for it being legalized stem from it's medical properties and marijuana criminalization being used as an excuse to lock up groups of people so if nationwide it was decriminalized/available for medical patients would that not solve most of the problems? If I'm way off base here, which I probably am, feel free to have at me.

I guess this is similar to where I stand, I support marijuana legalization, but with some reservations. It's hard for me to talk about it though because all I really know is that my view of the situation is incredibly skewed. Where I live in California marijuana is so decriminalized that I don't know how much different things would be if it were legalized. Last summer there was a big music event in downtown San Jose and while driving by I saw a guy standing next to a cop giving out free joints to people who signed up for a card with him (I thought I hard a picture, but I couldn't find it). I have a friend who grew a lot of marijuana and it wasn't even a sketchy ordeal. A couple of times he even had a cop see it and laugh (he lives maybe a few hundred feet from a high school). I live in a fairly well to do neighborhood though and I'm well aware that this isn't standard and in other places the criminalization of marijuana is very harmful for a lot of people so I have a hard time because I personally don't see it as a big deal at all one way or another, but that's obviously not the case. I don't know what else to say so I'll just leave this picture here. By the way I personally never smoke marijuana.