Mangela Lansbury

I'm kinda sorry I commented on it and also kinda not. Do what you want and don't worry about judgment, folks.

I think what you both mean is Strike Witches. dishonest please don't

Something to keep in mind when talking about whether or not something should be illegal is the history of that thing. I don't know the history of weed in New Zealand, when or why it became illegal, but in America it became illegal for the same reason most other drugs became illegal here: racism! That's a pretty bad reason for something to be illegal.

Or the on label, black market use of prescription drugs, which some people obtain legally and use recreationally...

This kind of sentiment is okay on some levels, but I don't generally like it. I hear it a lot in America, and, I mean, good for the people who like to show themselves to be open-minded, but it still contributes to the stigmatization of drug users, which on some levels justifies things like the war on drugs or the marginalization of people affected by addiction. I don't know, it's just a sentiment that I understand but still don't like.

I'm just going to assume that SAM built some kind of Rube Goldberg machine to keep gators and jellyfish out of the coolant intake so it's a little entertaining. On top of being exciting for him, grats on not wasting a year of your life, SAM!

When you encounter a bear, you should ask him what he's drinking. If you're lucky, you'll be prodding a bear in no time.

Jeet Heer wrote a twitter essay in defense of twitter essays once. It has since been collected on Storify.

I got a coupon I could use for 10% off a PS4 at Best Buy, and this thread is making it really hard to be responsible with my money.

Alternatively, SAM developed a nuclear doomsday device and is about to hold the world hostage.

there was some anime a few years ago about a mahjong club and I don't even care/know about mahjong but I was super into that terrible anime because it was really good i will watch this sports anime and care about another sport for a little while

Congratulations! that ice cream on the bed is freaking me out though, move it before it melts, you are making a mess

Since the Bad Plus is going to be releasing an album with Joshua Redman, here's a 50 minute set they did with him!

Most tabletop mechanics lend themselves to interesting improv storytelling, but I'm not sure how you'd translate it to stage. Combining yes and's with any of the randomizing of a rolling system would be awkward, and that's where the interesting parts of tabletop RPGs comes from -- some unpredictability in how events turn out and how the players as a group react to the challenges that presents. The best I can think of is having a troupe on stage and leaving it to the lighting/sound improviser to do some rolling and inform the people on stage that they've failed or succeeded at something, or giving them more complex setups/repercussions, and I'm not a huge fan of that idea. If you want something to pull from maybe try and listen to a few episodes of the One Shot podcast. It's a podcast where improv artists from Chicago play tabletop games and, just by virtue of playing a bunch of different games, they explore different systems and mechanics.

I used to love driving -- I lived in Atlanta, so the immense amounts of traffic made it a leisurely affair where I never really had to pay attention for very long and got to listen to whatever I wanted for a while. Now I live in a snow infested tundra and hate driving. I avoid doing it whenever I can, even in the summer. I still have the car and I make sure I move it at least once a week, but I've had it for about 3 and a half years and it doesn't even have 30,000 miles on it. I prefer public transit for everything but grocery shopping. I also still sometimes go out for midnight drives when I'm incredibly stressed and need some time, though. Just get in the car, drive out to the middle of nowhere, get a little lost, and come back. It's therapeutic, and has been ever since I first got a car.

I want to find a place that will let me throw an occasional event called Huguenaughty Night.

There's a bit from a Slate interview where everyone's favorite comic wizard says he doesn't like the Killing Joke, thinks its gross scenes are unnecessary, and calls it a meaningless work. I'd quote it, but I'm on my phone at work so the formatting could end up just awful. http://www.salon.com/2009/03/05/alan_moore_q_a/

Maybe the first trade of the Prophet relaunch? It's kiiiiind of a mix of those three things, sort of.

My dad plays Angry Birds these days. That's it. He's the guy who has every pack of maps and perfect scores on all of them. This is weird (especially since he'll lay back in his recliner and play it until his afternoon nap sets in) but a lot less annoying than him calling me all dadstraught over the fact that Myst and Descent and that weird space train/monorail game he played that came out around then stopped working on his Vista desktop.

My condolences. Take care of yourself. Tonight is the first night I'm able to actually sit in my new place and relax. It feels so good to be in a living situation that isn't horrible and toxic.

I don't see it as unfounded. Homeless and mentally ill populations are generally ignored and invisible, and those are things that disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ populations. The only LGBTQ+ populations that really get any attention in the mainstream are the most heternormative -- those who want to engage in monogamous life partnerships with the person of their choosing, and have the financial means to participate in the culture of marriage and weddings. Assuming that invisible populations will continue to be invisible isn't a huge leap of faith. Nondiscrimination has a bit of a push. Things like homelessness, mental illness, and addiction I don't really see getting any mainstream attention from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups after marriage is a settled issue -- which is, in part, due to the nomenclature of marriage equality, but that's a whole other weird argument. I want to be wrong about that, but I don't think I am.

It's a well documented (the documents are redacted, but they exist???) fact that torture doesn't work, yet fiction tells us that it does. Even supposedly based on real life stories like Zero Dark Thirty show that torture kinda works, when torture super didn't help in the actual events. These kinds of narratives cause real harm, as seen in Pew research that shows rising support for sometimes using torture as an interrogation method through at least 2011, or just looking at the highly polarized reactions to the torture report released in December for a more up to date feel on public perceptions. I lost track of what y'all were arguing about, but I think that's still relevant and at least vaguely based on figures and examples?

Just put the poop on a geocaching web site and wait for the Facebook page to happen. Or put the Facebook URL somewhere with the box. Geocash in on the idea!

Will this be an artisinal, organic cat turd or will you fish it out of litter?

The local phenomenon of some (not all that) interesting thing getting a weird amount of attention isn't new at all, so I don't know what the problem is. There's not much to understand about why something is a thing. The van is novel because it's double parked and a lot of people feel very strongly about double parking, it's funny because it's not a very nice car and people who double park usually do so to ensure that nobody parks too close to their precious little baby... It's just kind of a neat little joke that people are sharing with each other. Why this one and not that one is something that marketing departments around the nation are trying to piece together every day, so don't worry about it too much. I had to accept long ago that the Portland airport, for some reason, has the popular ugly carpet, set apart from all the other ugly carpets in the world for some unknowable reason. You'll probably just have to accept that this abandoned car, unlike all the other abandoned cars in the world, struck a chord with people for some unknowable reason.