osmosisch

I've heard OK stories about parship.nl but I'd have to ask my friends what they were on.

CS2 contains photoshop

I don't believe those sites are used/popular in our neck of the woods. Also you can't drop a line like 'hilarious dud dates' and not share some stories, man. That's just cruel.

Ben, Adobe CS2 is available for free and should fill your needs: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=cs2_downloads It let me do this in 5 seconds of fiddling:

If we're considering fascinating autobiographical stuff why not head straight to Proust? (joke)

Have you tried the online type of thing for finding dates? The organic process is so slow these days. Two of my friends were getting antsy too and tried online stuff and they're happily married now. dunno.

I hope the drugs were organic. Sounds like you're having fun! e: if you had headed west from Hamburg into the Netherlands you would have been in my region!

The first couple of Divinity games are sort of like Diablo but with more quest/narrative stuff. It's comparable to some Ultimas I believe. If that floats your boat they're well worth checking out, otherwise there's some pretty decent let's plays of them over yonder http://lparchive.org/title/divinity

Ohhh I completely misunderstood what you said. That makes a lot more sense. That aspect (characters being sketches) I found not so jarring either because to me it underlined the loneliness and isolation in which Stoner has placed himself. There is not a single relationship he has with anyone that is unreservedly close.He has so much trouble throughout his life relating to other people that it causes his relationships to and knowledge of others to be mostly sketchlike. The book has two threads in my mind: one of tragedy (Stoner's inability to connnect meaningfully with anyone except a doomed relationship) and one of victory (his discovery of a passion that gives meaning to his life, ie. literature and the teaching thereof). That's completely my interpretation of course, but it made me really appreciate the novel. As far as the romance/Katherine is concerned, I don't know what to say except I was completely able to empathise with the arc, but that might just be my mind doing a lot of the legwork filling in the pieces. A lot of the questions you raise I basically filled-in my own answers to. For example, I don't feel like I need the words to a lecture to accept the statement that he's giving a great lecture. I feel the 'show, don't tell' adagium has been overstressed a bit lately. But my explanation for why Stoner and Katherine fall in love is mainly that for both it's the first time they've found someone that they can really relate to, as is stressed several times in the description of their romance. The strength of such an experience cannot be understated to me.

I absolutely adored IJ and Lot 49, and hated GR, so I wouldn't say the one needs to lead to the other.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have to say I don't agree that the secondary characters are poorly drawn, it's just that their motivations are only stated subtly and usually in one or two places at most. I did not find Edith's motivations to be unclear at all - she's been warped by her upbringing, and has gotten basically nothing she wanted out of her marriage. Her reaction (an entirely obvious and human one) is to try and make Stoner as miserable as she is. This is corroborated in the deathbed scene. Similarly, bright but lazy grad students attempting to coast by on a specific connection with a flawed faculty member are not far-fetched to me. Finally the romance is...well, hero-worship is a thing, and being stuck in a loveless marriage is likely to bring in the goat in anyone. I did not find this part inexplicable either. Your objection that the romance isn't presented as ethically troubling is the only one I share. It made me feel a bit icky. But then the book does not make judgement on almost any ethical dilemma; they are mostly stated as is, and the viewer is left to decide. Was Edith justified in how she acted? Stoner certainly seems to think so on his deathbed.

Sorry bro In case it helps, I've only been married w/ kids for 3 years (anniversary was 7-8). That's how things kind of are these days.

I bought a friend of mine a custom comic of his as a graduation present. KC rules. His stuff's been getting really hard to follow lately though. The gravedigger/ghost thing left me scratching my head.

That's more of an orgasmy face.

If it's antagonistic it's not actually a joke, just hedging your bets in case someone is antagonistic in return.

At least we can agree that there's a Pixar movie for everyone to love

I'm 100% in the same boat. What a dumb film. It's got cute moments but mainly it's weird, and even creepy in places such as when a rat marionettes a guy into doing romantic stuff. I mean wtf. I was mostly OK with Wall-E until the very end, when in the credit animation the humans magically manage to fix everything caused by milennia of fucked-up behaviour almost instantly. It completely trivialises how bleak things really are in the actual film. As far as Up goes, it's in my mind a lovely short film (the opening about young Carl) with a whole lot of pointless stuff following it. The Incredibles remains one of my favourite animated films, next to the Emperor's New Groove, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and My Neighbour Totoro.

Holy shit, no. Thumbs are fun to listen to because of their enthusiasm, and I can think of few ways to kill that off faster.

I've been to Brussels and hated it - all those creepy EU monoliths everywhere. Very dystopian. That's actually similar to what people say about Warsaw so I guess your tastes just run in that direction. You should check out Ottawa and Washington DC next I guess! Also sorry for being late, I forgot to check dates.

Most Poles I know advised me to not go to Warsaw at all and visit Krakow instead. So I did, and can't help you from experience I'm afraid. I'm currently with the in-laws in southern Poland so I can ask around if you want.

I like competition just fine. I just dislike conversation being the means through which it is executed. If a game is going to consist of sitting around and gabbing, I'd prefer the gabbing to be pleasant.

Yeah I feel my comment was unclear and/or misinterpreted. What I meant was that the end of Kafka to me seemed like it might actually feel like a resolution to someone more familiar with whatever Japanese stuff was being referenced with all the kami/shinto business, not that I found the actual structure of the book to be alien/offputting. It was the content, not the lack of three acts (my favourite books eschew this sort of rigid framework in fact).

Up to fifty, in fact!

I don't know how to phrase it clearer than that I prefer conversation to be cooperative rather than antagonistic.

It was chock-full of the author being self-congratulatory about his erudition in a manner I found very grating (name-dropping classical music and books for no good reason), and there was basically zero payoff for me plot-wise in that the ending felt hollow, empty and resolved nothing. I don't mind a book being vague and confusing for a large part as long as things are tied up somehow, and Kafka did none of that for me. Perhaps being more grounded in Japanese culture could make things clearer but it's popular enough in western climes that that's probably not it. This might not be entirely accurate any more, I read it several years back and as I said hated it so didn't exactly try to store anything except my opinion about it.