Ben X

This is a relatively long post about something rather boring, but it's also a PSA for UKers (and a good general reminder for everyone to keep their receipts and paperwork forever, even if it means scanning to save on space). As I tweeted recently, if you're paying your council tax directly at the post office or whatever, rather than direct debit, make sure you keep the receipts forever. Three and a half years ago, I rented a flat for 6 months. I paid my council tax at the post office because I knew I wouldn't be there long and I didn't want to set up a direct debit and end up overpaying or getting screwed by the council somehow. This Christmas, I got a letter from a collections agency telling me that I owed the council £255 and that if I didn't pay within 14 days of the letter (never mind it being Christmas, a time when a lot of people are away and the council itself is closed for most of those 14 days) then PROCEEDINGS COURT BAILIFFS ETC. No correspondence from the council, just straight up threat letter from some independent company. I called the council today, and it turns out surprise surprise they have no record of me paying them £430. What they did have a record of was me being there two months longer than I actually was. Thankfully, partly because a friend of mine had the exact same thing happen to them and with no proof had to pay out hundreds of pounds they didn't owe, I had kept the receipts for three and a half years. So I told them that, and they said that I should email them the proof, and that £125 of that debt was a no-payment charge. A no-payment charge from a council who didn't contact me for three and a half years to ask for payment. Apparently I should have paid less than £130 in total and it seems I am actually owed about £300. We'll see how quick they are to pay that back to me - perhaps I should send the bailiffs round to them. (Although I'm not confident that this is correct either - I suspect I paid around the correct amount and the person I spoke to was reading something wrong, which at least is a nice change from maliciously trying to con me out of hundreds of pounds.) In summary - it seems to me that UK city councils will purposefully lose records and then wait for long enough that you're likely to have not kept yours, and then not only ask you to pay your tax a second time but also charge you £125 for absolutely nothing, indirectly through a thug company.

Yeah, the sea-lion comic doesn't work as a good argument against GG or anything, it's more of a "this is how it feels" thing. I don't think transposing it from a discussion about an ostensible political movement to one about disabled people is fair, though. The point is that you wouldn't expect to get this kind of response if you, say, tweeted at a friend that you don't like Democrats. Although it would still be a bizarre way to respond to someone who said they "could do without people with spinal deformities". (Also, a minor point: White refers to the people in the strip as "two clearly privileged dudes", whereas one of them is clearly a woman.)

It's his girlfriend's stuff (see also her manga in the Plug Your Shit thread).

Okay, that's the 12 days, and therefore Xmas 2014, over! We could probably stretch it to the 6th Jan but as we started before the 25th Dec I think that would be just a little bit too much Christmas. EX-MAS, MORE LIKE.

Just finished watching the first season (only 8 episodes), and I won't be watching the second. Nicely shot, but ponderous and repetitive with shallow, muddled characterisation and a pointless, mishandled gimmick.

Oh, I forgot my cyber-presents! I got the Deponia adventures and Wolfenstein New Order!

Crystal Skull is the same stuff as Raiders, just done really really badly.

We ran out of shit romcoms to watch over Christmas and ended up watching I Could Never Be Your Woman. It turned out to be really good! Directed by Amy Heckerling and retaining a handful of Clueless actors (primarily Paul Rudd, who is utterly charming in this), it walks up to tropes then ignores them, has a sharp script and features a bizarrely large number of Britcom actors doing American accents.

When is the next page coming out? This slack schedule is an INSULT TO HER FANS.

For Christmas I got: the new Robocop and Firefly coffee-table-book companions, both of which are nice but a little shallow, especially the Robo one which spends almost as much time on the reboot as the original and smacks of promotional release paying lip service to the franchise as a whole. South Park seasons 1 - 16 Seinfeld 4-9 (I already had the first three) Wayne's World 2 and the Blue Is The Warmest Colour graphic novel (which the film was based on) - neither of which I asked for or much enjoyed! Sweeeeet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXP1xu8pxQA

I liked it the first time, then it started getting a bit repetitive.

Only another few days of Christmas celebration to go! The Twelve Fights Of Christmas by Rachel Lark

That art is great, and I'm looking forward to following the story. I particularly liked the visual transition from roof tiles to keyboard!

I don't want it bad but I'd be interested to see it and your post is rendered a little pointless without it! I always thought of ZMF as a self-aware gimmick-poster on the AVClub who disappeared years ago, and nothing more. Then I listened to that one-off podcast he did with them recently about the Sons Of Anarchy finale, and it was just embarrassing - a meandering, charmless drunk with no interesting or coherent thoughts on the finale or the show in general. I guess he's also a shouty 'Twitter personality' now?

You really should have made an 'ice' pun.

Ha ha, yeah, I've actually got one of JKO's PnC pieces on the wall too, they're gorgeous.

Hooray, I just found the original game on disc! Wonder if it still runs...

Ugh, it's one of those awful HD paintovers, bad luck Doug.

Is it like an accusatory lecture? Or an awkward rant?

To harp on about 'deep dive': I just saw an io9 post that calls a 4-minute video about the sound design of the new Godzilla movie a "deep dive". FOUR MINUTES! I haven't watched the video but I assume that, like all other sound design featurettes, it'll be about them doing foley and combining different noises for creature noises. DEEP DIVE!

Point of information - the "baby boomers" are the children of those who fought in the war, born from the post-war shagfest.

WOW that's busy. It's almost as bad as Drew Struzan's Star Wars posters.

Awww