Nachimir

Touché, but I mean, really. Not all actors and actresses are good looking. They tend to be, but some of them are, you know, just very good at what they do instead. It reminds me of a guy who pitched during one of our projects. He was tall, fat for his height, and wearing a tiny t-shirt that was way too short and let his belly poke out of the bottom. He then got out a pink PSP to show mockups on. He noticed the panel he was pitching to start snickering, and came straight back, in a broad northern accent, with "Look, I know I look funny and have a pink PSP, but I'm happy with that. I'm secure with myself and know who I am". His pitch was bloody excellent.

I've often wondered how actors and actresses who are cast to play ugly/fat characters (or ones that are utterly contradictory to any kind of widely held physical ideal) deal with their self-image. There has to be a level of healthy self-acceptance there somewhere.

I find Last.fm and Spotify work really wel together: Last.fm to find random related artists, and Spotify to try out their back catalogues. Right now, I'm annoyed that this came out a few hours ago, they're only doing 100 physical copies, and they're all gone already: http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=240778

One bit of it I saw was a little disturbing and contradictory, in that he basically got a supermodel in full makeup to sit with women in front of a mirror, telling them they were beautiful without their makeup on.

I was told I would cringe, but find it hilarious that he has an uncle who actually says

To answer the original question, if the safety is off and you don't have training, then unless the person with the gun hesitates or is monumentally uncoordinated, you die. If the safety is on, you probably still die if you end up grappling. If you have any kind of training in how to disarm people, you probably die anyway too. Pulling guns out of people's hands while they're pointed at you is a ridiculous idea, but it is also super dramatic and heroic. You would, at least, lose part if not all of your hand. If it was a hollow point, it would turn your hand into mist, probably take out a good part of your forearm if not all of it too, fractures would track up what was left of any bones and very likely along your ribs too, which needless to say would fuck you up royally. Even if you got really lucky, it's not the kind of arm injury you can put in a plaster cast and wait to knit, it could entail major surgery even if you got to keep so much as a stump. You can see this glock has one just above and in front of the trigger: http://www.tarnhelm.com/gifs/GlockSafetyLg.jpg Likewise on this Walther, it's pretty easy to determine by touch, but also has a red mark to show it's unsafe too: http://world.guns.ru/handguns/walther_ppk_ud.jpg (Notice too that it's easier to flick off than on while holding it normally). I've a feeling gun designers make safeties easy to check and alter by touch without reorienting the weapon. Anything that needed to be checked visually wouldn't be particularly safe or efficient for a gun user under pressure. Basically, cinematic conventions around weapons are absurd, the obvious flaws that undo villains are generally designed out, and they're much, much deadlier than they're portrayed as.

Haha, that was excellent Did the green blip for the crooks team actually follow the boat around, or did it stay at the dock?

I played the new Dominion Seaside expansion tonight, and it's absolutely excellent. There are several different ways to build your economy, including the traditional treasure cards, but there are also some cards you can chain to get 5 - 8, and you can use pirate ships, which you can use to attack and build a separate economy (that can't be touched by attacking cards) or boost your money in a turn. More successful attacks = more money collected to boost subsequent rounds with. In one game with 3 players, all three economies got built: one with lot of treasure cards, one with pirate ship cards and a lot of tokens that had been built up, and one with chainable cards that all gave +1 coin, to the point where the player was regularly laying down chains worth 4 - 8. That seemed pretty unusual, and most other games I've played, the cards selected dictate one type of economy and that's it. It has some good defensive cards included too, and the duration mechanics where cards last for two turns are pretty good. There are also three cards that, effectively, let you send things to sea in one way or another, protecting them from other players but making them a bit harder to use yourself. The designers picked some mechanics that really fit the theme well. We found that games can go on for a long time compared to the basic set or Intrigue, and even when you play like bastards with lots of attack cards, it's still always enjoyable (We didn't like Intrigue so much - any game with the saboteur in and not enough defensive cards basically got forced into poverty and repelled people from the more interesting, expensive cards). One other really nice thing is the silver embargo tokens. By using an embargo card, you can place an embargo piece on any stack. Any player then buying from that stack also has to take curses corresponding to every embargo on it. It can make getting the estates and duchys almost pointless

Congratulations Kingzjester, and sorry to hear the parents are driving you mental. PiratePoo, excellent idea. I tend to leave the internet alone over Christmas, and some digital artists/designers I know make sure to have at least one day a week without any computer/net time. It does wonders to not look at a screen for a prolonged period. --- I have had an incredible couple of days underlined by general lack of sleep. A report that was due on Monday was really stressing me out and I thought I was going to get a bollocking at work despite putting in extra hours over the weekend to get it into a better state. It turned out I'd misunderstood the amount of work that needed to be produced, and thought it had to be a lot bigger than it actually needs to be. The whole 15 pages came back with just two minor corrections, a couple of suggestions, and a "Fucking excellent!" attached to it. Things are going well with martial arts girl, who I saw last night, and today I was in a long meeting with another company to discuss future plans, except the 8 or so of us had the meeting walking around Derbyshire hills, woods and streams with dogs for company. Tonight, played the new Dominion expansion and Pandemic at a local comic shop games night, and then GTA with you guys. Sweet

That was awesome, thanks Highlights: Stealing the boat then beaching it during cops and crooks: "The boat is on land" appearing for everyone. Also, stopping short of the end of the Mr. Tasty race, taking a few people out with the RPGs I'd picked up, then running over the line without losing 2nd. It was cool chatting about boardgames too. Miffy, the dinosaurs one I mentioned was Lost Valley Of The Dinosaurs. It didn't just have dinosaurs and bullets, it had dinosaurs, bullets and motherfucking lava.

Not quite Space Asshole, but close. A Space Bastard shirt from Warren Ellis: http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7967

Erm... psst: Activision own Blizzard. Am I misunderstanding your post as an actual query, or did you just mean "What the fuck Actiblizzard?"?

I think they're going for something like the Animatrix/Gotham Knight approach of shorts, which did work well in both those cases. I'm not sure it'll work with discrete chunks of a single story (e.g. IMO The Authority was a horrible comic when it dipped into art styles I couldn't get on with), and I'm not interested given that trailer anyway. The way they turned it into a slogan is funny though, they should have added a constricting anus count too.

Edit: Huh, yes it does.

Hilarious.

Great submission from a random Twitter person today: "If this game were a stereotype, it would be a black guy with an enormous wang." - IGN.com (@forchhiro)

Expert spin. I really want less to do with Activision the more I hear from them.

UURRGH. First no triathlons, then no decent multiplayer mode with parachutes, and this. It's like they're trying really hard to make it irrellevant.

I actually vote vanilla too, though I'd like to try races with nitrous again at some point. Preferably on the tiny star junction track with many laps.

what the fuck

oh my god

That's a very camp piece of interior decoration.

I think this guy *might* be taking the piss mQpcO8x6NNY

Shocking :0 With just this paragraph, I thought you were talking about Dan Brown though

Holy fuck that's one vicious audience :0