miffy495

Just listened to this while doing some yard work. Feel like I need to chip in that there is in fact a novelization of the film Jumanji, which I purchased at around age 7 from my Scholastic book order. Unfortunately, I no longer own this.

I have 2 15 minute breaks and a half hour break every shift at work. I just finished an 8 day work week, so that hour a day of reading means I actually do get through books at a reasonable pace.

EDIT: Replied to a thing without seeing that the page had changed. Damn it.

Be sure to mention the sick jumps.

My best friend since I was four years old (so, 20 years, for those unaware of my age) is rolling into town today to attend a colleague's wedding and is sleeping on my couch while here. I'm more nervous about this than I should be, given the unfortunate situation of politics. See, I've known this guy since miniature-person times, so we know each other well enough to remain friends despite being on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum. That is, he works in the campaign office for the Conservative Party of Canada in Ottawa, whereas I am deeply ashamed to call his boss my Prime Minister. I'm not happy about how his politics have shifted as we grew up, nor is he happy about mine, but we've got a "from the day" relationship where we just ignore that when with anyone else we'd be arguing 'til our faces turned blue. Hell, occasionally we even get to have real respectful debates with someone on the opposite end of the spectrum who we know very well, which I think is valuable for both of us when it happens, and we do know when to draw the line and call it a no-win as well. It's certainly made us more understanding of the other side, at the very least. Thing is, none of my friends, and in particular my partner, have known him since small times and they're mostly in line with my current politics. The worry is that sometime in the next few days a huge argument is going to break out between my best friend from childhood and my partner, which would completely suck. Hopefully out of respect for me they can both hold their tongues when things come up, but neither one has a particularly good track record of this. Fun times ahead!

'Blix, if you still have a code to spare, I'd love to give the game a shot.

I expect at least one recreation of the end of Goldeneye.

You try finding a fish that hasn't been marked by water...

Happy birthday, 'blix and subbes!

Ha, weird. I'm getting near the end of my first playthrough myself, and I really like it. I have completed good and evil playthroughs of Infamous 1 on my hard drive, so the intent is to see how each side goes through the second game, but with a couple of other games as a palette cleanser between run-throughs. I don't mind the collect-a-thon stuff so much, seems kind of inherent to the game (see also: Crackdown, which I see Infamous as following in the footsteps of), but it can certainly be janky as hell. That may also be inherent to the gam, I don't know. I'd say that this, Crackdown, and to a certain extent Prototype kind of split off into their own genre, and I love those games for it. It does require a certain tolerance, but if you have it the game is fantastic. I'm seriously considering picking up the DLC that came out for Hallowe'en last year where you become an electric vampire. Sound like just the right kind of stupid to appeal to me.

Man, he looks so much like a muppet there...

Is Transformice making a comeback?

I'm not even using the stand for it. I just rest it on my knee. You may want a CPP if you're a lefty, but it works perfectly fine for me. Did you play Metroid Prime Hunters? It's a similar kind of control. Oh, and I can't believe I forgot Mario 3D Land, which is fantastic.

Snake Eater 3D is a pretty bad port. Kid Icarus is the shit, and Mario Kart remains Mario Kart. Those are probably my two biggest recommendations.

Oh wow, awesome. When that post just kinda fell into the general noise behind some other discussion I thought that no one would read it. Glad you enjoyed it! This summer is the first time I've really started reading books regularly since early university (isn't it awesome how going to school can totally kill reading for pleasure?) and as a fan of his movies it was a great way to kick off the summer.

That's mostly because you're a member of the one group that society is catered to. If you're not a straight white male, you get defined by the characteristics you have which are not those. We get to be members of society rather than female members of society or homosexual members of society or black/asian/whatever members of society. That's the problem. That those others get singled out and are so infrequently represented (or at least represented positively) is why it matters that people who are outside of that relate their experiences. The thing is, most male writers are, by and large, spending most of their time writing about what it is to be male. It just doesn't seem like it because that's the standard. EDIT: ...and while I was writing Sal laid it out. Oh well, I'll leave it up anyway.

Someone may. Since when has this been about what any one of us personally finds offensive? You said earlier that everything funny could possibly be offensive to someone. I'm just trying to point out that the problem with those jokes isn't that they are possibly offensive, it's that they definitely have a human target. I'm going to stick my neck out here to illustrate my point. Also, trigger warning for those reading: I will be talking about the subject of abortion. You talked about abortion jokes earlier, so I'm going to use that example at the risk of offending someone. I will tell an abortion joke and accept abortion jokes (a certain class of them at any rate, ones which do not target the potential mother) in the presence of people whom I know believe as I do, that a foetus does not count as a person at least until it's out of a womb. If you disagree with this, I'm not trying to start that argument: that's just what I believe. In my mind, those jokes are harmless because the target of them (again, I am referring specifically to jokes where the target it the foetus, not the woman) is not fully a human being. Also for that reason, I will not make (or even really tolerate) these jokes in the presence of someone who's views on this matter are unclear to me. This is because it may be wildly offensive to them or hurtful if they have gone through a traumatizing experience. I'm certainly not going to make a joke on the matter on a public forum such as this. To reiterate, I find abortion jokes permissible with a very select group of people because I do not believe a foetus qualifies a person and am certain that they believe likewise. This matter is still up for debate in society at large. What is not up for debate is that other races, sexual preferences, or genders are people. In order to find jokes which target them acceptable, I think that a similar attitude would have to be adopted. That is, to reject the premise that the group under fire qualifies as people. Even feigning this is still remarkably harmful to that group and encourages those who unironically espouse those views to continue to have them. That's my problem with what you were saying. And as an aside, "I'm sorry but you're not going to convince me that I'm wrong" reads as a very insincere apology and comes across in a way I'm sure you don't want it to.

See point one: "potentially offensive" is different from "targets and (hopefully unwittingly) promotes the further marginalization of a marginalized group". I don't think any of us has a problem with the former.

It's worth digging into. The last several missions are goddamned crazy, and totally fun. That the ending is basically exactly what was predicted on Idle Thumbs back when the game was announced (I'll spoiler that if requested, but doubt it's necessary) made me so happy I almost couldn't work the controller.

My partner has that hat...

Twig, one thing that confuses me about your position is that you seem dismissive of humour that doesn't offend, as if it isn't possible for it to be funny. I'm curious as to why this is for two reasons: first, because we're not talking about humour that doesn't offend, but about humour that doesn't have a target. If you're offended by scatalogical humour and someone makes a poop joke, that's not really on the teller of the joke. The only target in that joke is poop. If someone makes a sexist/racist joke, the target of that is a human being, and one who is at a noticeably different level on the power hierarchy of our society, thus being pushed down further. If a white man is telling this joke, even the most unbiased white man in the world (though I doubt he'd even think about telling it), it really is still society continuing to push down on the target group. And yes, this joke is also awful if the member of the target group is the one telling the joke as it makes white dudes think it's ok to keep telling these jokes themselves ("What? They see it too!"). This also shows why the problem as I see it doesn't lie solely with the teller of the joke either. Their intent becomes sort of moot when you consider that the people laughing interpret it however they want. When you tell the most innocently intended racist/sexist exaggeration-for-the-sake-of-comedy type thing, know that someone believes it for real, and they may be listening to you at that very moment and are actively having their beliefs validated. You don't mean to do harm, and I definitely understand wanting to believe that the world is at a point where no one could genuinely believe what you're saying thus it is obviously a joke (hell, I did for the longest time), but that's not the case. You are doing harm. Second (and a much more minor point) : There is plenty of shit that is hilarious that doesn't have to offend. Several years back when I started to learn about this stuff and started to cut terms/jokes from my vocabulary (starting, interestingly enough, in the the exact same way that you say you've stopped using "gay" as an insult), I found that I'd accidentally challenged myself to become a much wittier person. I've become far more creative, and really far more funny, because I decided to stop making casually racist/sexist jokes. They really are the easy way out. It's a byproduct of how ingrained this shit is in our society that all you have to do is say "this minority, amirite?" to get a cheap laugh and feel like a funny person. The laughs I get now are from legitimate creativity and cleverness, and as a joke teller I have to tell you they're infinitely more rewarding. If you want to feel truly funny, cut the easy jokes and challenge yourself to actually be funny. I'm not saying that you're not, nor that anyone who goes for the easy offensive jokes isn't, I'm saying that we don't know yet because they haven't really tried. EDIT: Oh goddamnit I got accidental-smiley-ed by the forum. I'll leave the crying face up anyway because it makes it seem like I'm sad my second point is less important.

I have no interest in this game, but wanted to go on record saying that this is a fucking AWESOME idea. I hope it starts coming to other games soon.

It sort of bothers me that this show has the same name as a favourite series of mine, Canadian deadpan satire show "The Newsroom", which ran in 1996/97, and then again in 2004. Also, they had a TV movie. Here's a clip from the 1997 season where the news director (played by series creator and lead writer Ken Finkleman) is trying to put together an opening montage for a story on a potential meltdown at a nuclear plant in Ajax, just outside Toronto (when they mention OJ, keep in mind, 1997) : [media=]

Happy birthday! We pooled our money and got you this virtual bass.

I kind of like that this topic exists, at the very least because it means that people here are willing to discuss stuff without resorting to clamping their hands over their ears. Opinions were actually changed thanks to talk in this thread, which definitely reaffirms my faith in our little corner of the internet. At any rate, I gave $25 to the thing. I may or may not actually watch all of it, it kind of depends how the first few episodes are. The thing about something like this is: if you're willing to give money to it, it's probably not so that YOU can watch it. You're probably already on board with the cause. What it does give me, however, is the potential for a friendly and non-condescending arrow in my quiver when I need to say to a friend "Dude, you just said some stupid shit and here's why." I didn't give her money because I have any burning desire to watch her series, I gave her the money because I want her series to exist so that there's more exposure for this stuff out there. I love games, but when I don't feel comfortable playing almost any of them in the same room as my partner, there's a problem. This applies to pretty much any game, no matter how safe it may be at first glance. Hell, even Pokemon has that Lopunny thing that's a hyper-sexualized lady rabbit. I play games in private because of what MAY come up, even when I try to be aware of the big offenders (see: the latest Hitman trailer, to risk beating a dead horse) so much still slips under the radar that no game is really safe, and that's a fucking pitiful state for the industry to be in. Poking a few holes in the boy's club, or at the very least trying to? Yeah, I can throw her a few bucks.