# "We're in the pipe-5x5": Snackbar's Top Five Lists



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 14, 2008)

With a new job, you get to meet and greet everyone and of course you eventually encounter the nerds; my HELLO MY NAME IS sign with the Inigo Montoya quote from The Princess Bride is typically the weed-out test--either you get it or you don't.

And of course, you get to talking about likes/dislikes. So, not that it's unique by any means, a casual collection as time permits of my top five whatevers. Often these are in no particular order.

To start off, Top Five Worst Movies:

*Batman and Robin:* Good lord, where to start. The Schumacher fetish with blacklights or the Shatner Overacting Award for Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, with honorable mention to Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. I love Clooney, the guy has class with gas, but any equation with Alicia Silverstone in it is guaranteed to crash. She's the Ted McGinley of film, people. The only positive aspect was that Vendela Kirsebom got to play her character dead and frozen for most of the film. The rest of us had to suffer.
*Moulin Rouge:* Now I know almost every woman on the planet is going to trounce me on this one (OMFG EWAN MCGREGOR SINGS! PITTER PAT!) but please, turning "Like a Virgin" into a can-can dance? That's like having NWA's "Fuck tha Police" rendered as a classical piece by the London Symphony Orchestra - it don't work. I personally haven't liked Nicole Kidman since Malice, because she was and always will be the evil redheaded bitch character to me. Musicals are sort of like putting the top part of the beryllium sphere on the core of the nuclear bomb; you don't do it just right and with the right amount of delicacy, everyone will be shitting out there intestines within 24 hours.
*Nutty Professor 2:* Didn't we learn all we needed to learn in the first movie? Wasn't it better when the Klump family was delivered in only a couple long, flatulent interludes instead of a 90-minute long fat joke? Do we have to not only prison rape biology but piss on the corpse as well? Does Eddie have to ruin Janet Jackson for me, too?
*House of Sand and Fog:* I can't talk too much about this flick, because I will have to go off and kill myself. I would prefer having Ben Kingsley build a time machine out of a 1990 Honda Civic (the fiberglass and schoolbus yellow paint makes the flux dispersal...) so he could travel to 1990 and bring Jennifer Connelly's ginormous breasts back to the future.
*The Water Boy:* I normally love Adam Sandler films, but this one loses me. Once again, in defiance of all that is good and proper in the world, Rob Schneider is in it. Sandler took probably one of the most boring skit characters (the buffoon) and made a whole film about it, which seems to be _de rigueur_ for any SNL film translation since Wayne's World. I also have a theory that a talented, Oscar-winning actor is required by SAG to star in at least one godawful movie every 5 years to keep the bell curve accurate; the process for this has yet to be laid out, but I'm sure it will rank up there with Fermat's Last Theorem and Grand Unification in it's complexity.


----------



## Surlysomething (Mar 14, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> [*]*House of Sand and Fog:* I can't talk too much about this flick, because I will have to go off and kill myself. I would prefer having Ben Kingsley build a time machine out of a 1990 Honda Civic (the fiberglass and schoolbus yellow paint makes the flux dispersal...) so he could travel to 1990 and bring Jennifer Connelly's ginormous breasts back to the future.
> [[/LIST]



We can't be friends anymore. Go watch Transformers again, geesh. This was a great movie...not everything can be funny and or animated.
:doh:


----------



## PamelaLois (Mar 14, 2008)

As a woman, I have to TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU about Moulin Rouge! I hated hated hated that movie. I think it lasted all of 20 minutes in my dvd player before the machine used it's considerable intelligence and barfed it right out the front door. (insert barfing smiley here) I can't imagine a worse film in all of history, except maybe Batman and Robin or Meet the Parents.


----------



## Surlysomething (Mar 14, 2008)

PamelaLois said:


> As a woman, I have to TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU about Moulin Rouge! I hated hated hated that movie. I think it lasted all of 20 minutes in my dvd player before the machine used it's considerable intelligence and barfed it right out the front door. (insert barfing smiley here) I can't imagine a worse film in all of history, except maybe Batman and Robin or Meet the Parents.





I can't stand that movie either. Got through about 5 minutes before I wanted to stab myself in the eye.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 14, 2008)

PamelaLois said:


> As a woman, I have to TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU about Moulin Rouge! I hated hated hated that movie. I think it lasted all of 20 minutes in my dvd player before the machine used it's considerable intelligence and barfed it right out the front door. (insert barfing smiley here) I can't imagine a worse film in all of history, except maybe Batman and Robin or Meet the Parents.


I am sure I've made my opinions known here about my feelings about Ben Stiller being the antithesis of humor. I don't often buy into conspiracy theories, but his success in film definitely supports the one about the Jews controlling Hollywood. I actually prefer a Weinstein or Spielberg somewhere in a movie credit, because regardless of Stiller and Woody Allen, they make damn good entertainment.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 14, 2008)

Surlysomething said:


> We can't be friends anymore. Go watch Transformers again, geesh. This was a great movie...not everything can be funny and or animated.
> :doh:


It's not all about funny/animated. World According to Garp: Great. The Notebook: Excellent. Untamed Heart: Cried my goddamn eyes out. I loves me some tragic romances. Se7en is painfully tragic, but I love it regardless. I watch Schindler's List every year, not because it's depressing as all Hell, but because it's a damn good film.

I personally could not find one redeeming quality in any character from HoS&F.


----------



## GWARrior (Mar 14, 2008)

Ive never seen Moulin Rouge but Ewan McGregor turns me AWN.

eta: And I dont get why everyone loves The Princess Bride. It was ok and I adore Cary Elwes, but it was nothing spectacular. I guess Andre the Giant really was that good.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 14, 2008)

GWARrior said:


> Ive never seen Moulin Rouge but Ewan McGregor turns me AWN.
> 
> eta: And I dont get why everyone loves The Princess Bride. It was ok and I adore Cary Elwes, but it was nothing spectacular. I guess Andre the Giant really was that good.


I don't get why everyone loves Rocky Horror Picture Show. I guess the way I see it is there are enough geeky quotes lodged in Princess Bride to keep it entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist for a while. That and, shit, it's got Wallace Shawn and Mandy Patinkin with some of the best quotes out there.


----------



## Tina (Mar 15, 2008)

So what's with the Aliens quote but nothing listed, Admiral? 

1) My sister and I saw Moulin Rouge together and laughed uproariously we thought it was so bad. We still sometimes joke about it.

2) Jingle All the Way is the only movie I walked out on. I felt like I would peel my skin off -- or someone else's -- if I didn't get out of there.

3) Prince of Tides. Someone should have murdered Streisand in the first scene. Maybe Jason or Freddie.

4) My son watched Willow so many times when he was little that I had the dialogue memorized. If I never see it again it will be way too soon. Peck! Peck! Peck! Peck! Peck! Peck! (I will crush!! destroy!! kill!! whomever tries to foist that movie upon me!)






5) Final Fantasy. Were I not there with my son, I would have walked out. It was a film not only without a heart, but also without a pulse. The only thing it was about was, "Look at the cool effects we can do! We can make something look like fabric blowing in the wind!" That film was just one whole flatulent gust of wind.

There's more, much more, but I'm tired.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 15, 2008)

Tina said:


> So what's with the Aliens quote but nothing listed, Admiral?



My top 5 movies will be along sometime this weekend, and Aliens is in that list.

I was informed this afternoon of THIS website, which apparently has the same kind of topics. The site is run by Lore Sjöberg of the Brunching Shuttlecocks, and he apparently published a book of his 'ratings'. Some of them are classic. All I can say is I'm not grading my lists and I'm a damn sight cuter.  Guy has a goatee that's just an actual goat glued to his chin. Egads.

_Just in case Lore is a BHM/FA, I do like your work, guy. I think my fave from the Brunching days was your Mr. T Name Generator._

Just as a teaser (as I got my muse back a bit), a list of Top 5's to come in the upcoming days/weeks, in no particular order:

Favorite movies
Favorite foods
Worst people on the planet
Star Trek episodes (from each series)
Favorite science fiction weapons/attack ships
Favorite authors
Favorite scientists
Favorite comic book superheroes/villains
Favorite quotes
Favorite Mozart pieces
Favorite children's names
Worst children's names
Favorite children's books
Sesame Street songs/skits
Words that sound naughty but aren't
Favorite/worst porno actors/actresses
Favorite dungeons and dragons _______ (this is either going to be monsters, spells, classes, modules, etc.--haven't figured it out yet)
Favorite urban legends
Top 5 misinterpretations of evolutionary theory
Favorite work illness excuses


----------



## moore2me (Mar 15, 2008)

*Top Five Worst Movies:*

1. *Time Bandits* - Yawn, Snore.

2. *The Hills Have Eyes II* - Just watched the first 2 minutes. Got disgusted with the birthing scene. Deleted the TIVO movie. Watched reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies instead.

3. *Once* - I ordered this on Pay Per View so I was really motivated to watch the blasted thing. I tried at least ten times and each viewing session only lasted about three minutes. I kept thinking, I need to be cleaning my bathrooom, or defrosting the freezer, or vacuuming, or calling my mom, or driving spikes thru my eyes. I finally just deleted it from the TIVO and recorded a rerun of Hee Haw. The moral is you cannot make a full-length movie out of one good song.

4. *The Fountain* - The special effects and story line of this movie made me think about some person that was on a really bad drug trip and was trying to drag me with him. I did not want to go there. Not because it was scary, but because it was stoopid. Even the hunky Jackman, could not save this turkey. Glitter, gold, and romance could not revive it either. Let it die. In fact it should have died in the first 10 minutes.

5.* Norbit*- I think this fillm is another piece of evidence that the Eddie Murphy we all had come to know and love from SNL and Berverly Hills Cop has been abducted by aliens and replaced by another "look-a-like" alien lifeform. This alien lifeform has little sense of humor, extremely bad taste, does not like fat people, makes crappy movies, and offends many earthlings. I think the real Murphy was replaced sometime around the filming of the Nutty Professor.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 15, 2008)

moore2me said:


> *Top Five Worst Movies:*
> 
> 1. *Time Bandits* - Yawn, Snore.


I'm gonna hafta disagree with you on that one, Lou. It's Terry Gilliam, which pretty much makes it an edgy flick. Everything else I am okey dokey with. I wouldn't say The Fountain is on my worst list, but it's in the top 20.


----------



## Zandoz (Mar 15, 2008)

The movie that I watched and count as my all time greatest waste of time will get me in trouble with a lot of folks....Napoleon Dynamite. I was constantly encountering people going on and on about it, so one of the few times we rent movies, I had my wife pick it up. About 15 minutes into it, she was asleep. I sat through the whole thing right up to the credits, thinking "OK..the funny part must be coming any second now"...it never came. Stupid, yes...funny, no.

<ducks>


----------



## GWARrior (Mar 15, 2008)

Aw, i like Time Bandits and Willow.


----------



## GWARrior (Mar 15, 2008)

Zandoz said:


> The movie that I watched and count as my all time greatest waste of time will get me in trouble with a lot of folks....Napoleon Dynamite. I was constantly encountering people going on and on about it, so one of the few times we rent movies, I had my wife pick it up. About 15 minutes into it, she was asleep. I sat through the whole thing right up to the credits, thinking "OK..the funny part must be coming any second now"...it never came. Stupid, yes...funny, no.
> 
> <ducks>



same here. I was completely stoned when I saw it, and even then it wasnt funny. The only part I laughed at was the steak-throwing.

And whats really is sad is that Jon Heder could possibly be a pretty good actor, if he was Napoleon Dynamite in every movie he's done. poor guy.

eta: I guess I should add my worst movie. *Asylum of Terror*. My friend and I were going through this period of renting the most obscure, B-movie horror flicks we could find, and this one jumped at us. But it was hardcore lame. It wasnt even B-movie. more like C... maybe even D. Bad lighting, bad sound, even worse plot. But, one naked chick did get screwdrivered to death...


----------



## Tina (Mar 16, 2008)

GWARrior said:


> Aw, i like Time Bandits and Willow.


I liked it, too, G -- the first couple of times. After about 20, and when I would be out in the kitchen cooking, or whatever, and I anticipated every freakin' line, I knew it had gone too far.


----------



## cute_obese_girl (Mar 16, 2008)

My top 5 worst movies (that I've actually seen, or at least started and turned off). The top 5 most awesomely bad would be a whole different list.

1. Anchorman: I'm sure I'll get many people who will disagree on this one, but I did not laugh once. Plus it was one of the most misogynist movies ever made. Really, I don't even consider myself that much of a feminist, but the whole time I was wondering how Christina Applegate did not just up and slap Will Ferrell in practically every scene in the first 30 minutes. I turned it off after that.

2. The Sweetest Thing starring Christina Applegate again as a repeat offender, Cameron Diaz, and Selma Blair. This movie was the trifecta of why are they famous again?

3. Little Black Book: Kathy Bates, Ron Livingston and Holly Hunter made me overlook the fact that Brittany Murphy was in the movie. What a mistake. Plus unbeknownst to me the background story was actually about a jenny jones type talk show.

4. Just Married: Again Brittany Murphy, but this time with the added insult of Ashton Kutcher. He should have stayed a model because every time he opens his mouth I just think :doh:.

5. The Blair Witch Project: This one was just a supreme waste of time. I don't understand how anyone thought it was scary/creepy/what have you. Who knew the people who left early due to motion sickness from the hand held camera were actually going to be the lucky ones.

Snack, in case you're interested there is a website called filmspotting dot com that is a radio show/podcast about movies. They do a different top 5 list every week.


----------



## Gspoon (Mar 16, 2008)

My 5 worst? Oh boy...

1: Roller Ball:... Why the hell is there a friggin motorcycle in that skate park failure sport?

2: Meet the Spartans: Oh wow, I sure haven't seen enough "THIS IS SPARTA" jokes in my life time, lets see how many people we can kick into the pit of death and make it semi funny. Also, I hate all the fuggin pop culture referances... Please folks, write a joke, instead of writing about some failure celebrity's life.

3: Strange Wilderness: Ok, the shark was funny! You gotta admit.

4: Doomsday: Haven't seen it, and I sure as hell wont. Why? Please. If doomsday really happened, people wouldn't be around wearing tattoos, being run by some albino dude with poor eye makeup. Doomsday means.... doomsday! The world comes to an end! THE END! End of story, no more human race. They say it is because of some disease, yeah... if this disease is so bad... why aren't the people on the other side of the wall dead or unable to move or something. Seriously, all it did was make people look a lil funky, not kill them.

5: Hulk: He can jump!


----------



## stan_der_man (Mar 16, 2008)

Zandoz said:


> The movie that I watched and count as my all time greatest waste of time will get me in trouble with a lot of folks....Napoleon Dynamite. I was constantly encountering people going on and on about it, so one of the few times we rent movies, I had my wife pick it up. About 15 minutes into it, she was asleep. I sat through the whole thing right up to the credits, thinking "OK..the funny part must be coming any second now"...it never came. Stupid, yes...funny, no.
> 
> <ducks>


I can completely understand your impression about Napoleon Dynamite, but you have to appreciate the movie for what it is. It is very.... Idaho. Sort of like shooting a jackrabbit in the ass with a BB gun while it scampers across the desert. There's quick little flinch, it runs faster and then disappears into the sage brush. Segway to whistling wind. Then some random guy in a big-rig driving past honks his horn and gives you the thumbs up. The charm is not seen by all.


----------



## Red (Mar 16, 2008)

Top Five- 

1) Martha, meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. Dear American/non Brit viewers, please do not take this film as an insight into the lives of the British. Not all of us are complete twats. Euuuuuuuuuuugh, this film made me so angry, and Winstone, what the flippity flip were you playing at accepting that role?

2) Cabin Fever.The SFX looked like an explosion from a Heinz factory. Story line stemming from turgid, egotistical teens with a mini budget to blow, but with no talent to burn.

3) Con Air. What's with all the SHOUTING? I can't follow the storyline because you're all SHOUTING, oh never mind.

4) The Break-Up. Dude, where are my emotions?

5) Anything 'starring' Will Ferrell.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 16, 2008)

Now, you will say "Feh, typical nerd: 3 of the 5 were science-fiction." I'm sure I could expound on other films that take the cake for me, splitting it up by genre (which I may do in the future) but this list is simply a group of films that historically I can pop into the DVD player time and time again and never tire of. Movies whose scripts or scenes are solid in my mind, and the music/soundtrack as important as the movie itself.

*Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan* - The standard, the _magnum opus_, the standard by which all Trek films are measured. James Horner penned one of the most amazing soundtracks of his career (Aliens is another he uses with common themes), you had the death of Spock, probably one of THE classiest death scenes in film and Shatner wore a decent hairpiece for a change. With Nicolas Meyer directing, using a combination of three different scripts and some of Industrial Light & Magic's earliest CGI work, he seamlessly inserted Mr Roarke, err, Ricardo Montalban as batshit crazy Khan Noonien Singh to give it top honors in Trek fandom. It's a great ride from start to finish.
*Casino* - Yes, The Godfather series was edgy, but Casino had the best of all combinations in terms of cast, scenery and overall hip music. Some of the scenes were so perfectly done, and I feel that Sharon Stone deserved an Oscar because she played her part to a tee, esp. in comparison to the Big Names she had to work alongside.
*Cannery Row* - This is a rather obscure film based on the John Steinbeck novel of the same name, with some stories from two other novels, Sweet Thursday and Tortilla Flats, thrown in (and the immortal John Huston--the ORIGINAL Gandalf--narrating). It is by far my favorite Nick Nolte movie, because he nails the character so well. The ensemble cast and classical music (Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #6 was so perfectly adapted to the scene with the waves clashing against the California tide pool) were wonderful, and for a sleeper film that only saw a lot of air on HBO in the mid-80s, it is a classic favorite of mine.
*The Matrix* - Using a combination of martial arts and cyberpunk--something the Japanese have been doing since, umm, FOREVER--the Warchowski Brothers brought the anime style to the big screen and made it a colossal hit. With amazing wirework and fight choreography and an equally amazing soundtrack, they made you question the nature of the Singularity, i.e., are we living in a computer simulation (the original concept, that humans were simply millions of transistors in one giant cybernetic CPU rather than living batteries was dropped as something considered too deep for general audiences to digest)? The sequels had their moments, but Hugo Weaving solidified his place as one of the great villains of modern cinema.
*Aliens* - To this day there is controversy as to whether the original Alien film was horror or science fiction since it crosses the genres. Cameron took it by the horns and made the sequel 100% action, with a kick-ass lady hero, a group of tough space marines outmanned and outgunned, and the dude who gargles with cigarettes as the jumpsuited android with the heart of gold. With yet another excellent score by James Horner (the coda to "Futile Escape" is something that works whether if you're sitting in an action film or going 90 mph on the highway) James Cameron made us simultaneously crap and cream our pants with a finale that shows why you should never, EVER get in the middle of a catfight: The ladies will just work it out on their own


----------



## Jack Skellington (Mar 16, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> I normally love Adam Sandler films



You know, I don't think I've ever heard anyone admit that before. 

I do agree that Aliens and Star Trek 2 are awesome movies.


----------



## Gspoon (Mar 17, 2008)

Favorite Movies?

1: Godfather: Wow, what a movie! Nuff said

2: No Country for Old Men: The only movie I have ever seen and truly felt satisfied with the story

3: Cloverfield: Ok, yeah, someone is going to give me a hard time with this. But I felt it was written perfectly, mainly because my mouth was on the sticky floor when I left.

4: The Big Lebowski: Holy crap is this movie funny!

5: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory: How else did I become an FA?


----------



## Ben from England (Mar 17, 2008)

Red said:


> Top Five-
> 
> 1) Martha, meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. Dear American/non Brit viewers, please do not take this film as an insight into the lives of the British. Not all of us are complete twats. Euuuuuuuuuuugh, this film made me so angry, and Winstone, what the flippity flip were you playing at accepting that role?
> 
> ...



Movies that spring to mind that I really hated. White Noise inflicted an enormous amount of mental anguish as my instinct to run screaming from the cinema did battle with the seven pounds I'd paid to watch the movie. I stayed. It was horrible. 

I hated,hated, hated Redacted. Just hysterically hysteronic. Arghh. 

Didn't hate it as a movie, but had some real problems with some of the images used in the new Rambo movie. Kid's being executed in close up, babies being thrown in fires and women being raped and mutilated struck me as a tad inappropriate as a means of making cartoonish bad guys evil. 

Transformeres was an awful, awful film. 

I can't watch Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells anymore. I hate Danny Dyer (if you're not in the UK you will never have to hear about him. And you're not missing much) and everything he's been in. 

Pirates of the Carribean. Spesh the thrid one. I was working in a cinema and had to sit in on that movie like seven times. The bit where they flip the ship 
over and sail upside down. My head nearly exploded. 

The Break Up is awesome, by the way.


----------



## GWARrior (Mar 17, 2008)

Ben from England said:


> Pirates of the Carribean. Spesh the thrid one. I was working in a cinema and had to sit in on that movie like seven times. The bit where they flip the ship
> over and sail upside down. My head nearly exploded.



i thought it was ok, but definitly the worst of the 3. I dont know if it was any longer than the other two, but it sure as hell felt like it. My ass was killing me by the time the lights came up. And the battle scene went on FOREVERRRR.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 17, 2008)

GWARrior said:


> And the battle scene went on FOREVERRRR.


 Like the fight scene from They Live, but not as cool


----------



## Tina (Mar 17, 2008)

Oh, _They Live_ kicks ass. Definitely on my list of favorite bad films. John Carpenter rules.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 17, 2008)

Tina said:


> Oh, _They Live_ kicks ass. Definitely on my list of favorite bad films. John Carpenter rules.


Half the time the tinfoil hat part of me thinks we are living that sort of scenario; aliens or some Illuminati-like cabal has implanted subliminal messages into every aspect of our lives as a form of control. Sometimes it's the only way you can explain such abject stupidity in humans.


----------



## Tina (Mar 17, 2008)

I hear ya, Admiral. And reading stuff like what I read a couple of years ago about how big advertising agencies are studying the human brain in order to more subliminally advertise sure didn't help.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 17, 2008)

Tina said:


> I hear ya, Admiral. And reading stuff like what I read a couple of years ago about how big advertising agencies are studying the human brain in order to more subliminally advertise sure didn't help.


Either that or an invasion by aliens that basically look like walking 6" of breast cleavage (to men) and Hugh Jackman's ass (to women). They'd have the whole planet wrapped up in about 10 hours.


----------



## GWARrior (Mar 17, 2008)

mmmm Hugh Jackman's ass :eat2:


...huh?


----------



## Surlysomething (Mar 18, 2008)

Hugh Jackman?

-gross-

:huh:


----------



## Green Eyed Fairy (Mar 18, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> To start off, Top Five Worst Movies:
> 
> *Batman and Robin:* Good lord, where to start. The Schumacher fetish with blacklights or the Shatner Overacting Award for Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, with honorable mention to Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. I love Clooney, the guy has class with gas, but any equation with Alicia Silverstone in it is guaranteed to crash. She's the Ted McGinley of film, people. The only positive aspect was that Vendela Kirsebom got to play her character dead and frozen for most of the film. The rest of us had to suffer.





I think Mr Freeze and Uma were in one movie.....while Silverstone was in another Batman movie. I could be wrong but I liked the one with Silverstone (matter of fact, I like Silverstone period  ) but have to concur that Arnold sucked ass in his Batman movie



Admiral_Snackbar said:


> [*]*Moulin Rouge:* Now I know almost every woman on the planet is going to trounce me on this one (OMFG EWAN MCGREGOR SINGS! PITTER PAT!) but please, turning "Like a Virgin" into a can-can dance? That's like having NWA's "Fuck tha Police" rendered as a classical piece by the London Symphony Orchestra - it don't work. I personally haven't liked Nicole Kidman since Malice, because she was and always will be the evil redheaded bitch character to me. Musicals are sort of like putting the top part of the beryllium sphere on the core of the nuclear bomb; you don't do it just right and with the right amount of delicacy, everyone will be shitting out there intestines within 24 hours.



I must be the one woman exception....I think Moulin Rouge bites. Like...who gives a flying f**k about it? 
But then again....I hate Lifetime TV too.....



Admiral_Snackbar said:


> [*]*Nutty Professor 2:* Didn't we learn all we needed to learn in the first movie? Wasn't it better when the Klump family was delivered in only a couple long, flatulent interludes instead of a 90-minute long fat joke? Do we have to not only prison rape biology but piss on the corpse as well? Does Eddie have to ruin Janet Jackson for me, too?



I think both sucked....end of story


Admiral_Snackbar said:


> [*]*The Water Boy:* I normally love Adam Sandler films, but this one loses me. Once again, in defiance of all that is good and proper in the world, Rob Schneider is in it. Sandler took probably one of the most boring skit characters (the buffoon) and made a whole film about it, which seems to be _de rigueur_ for any SNL film translation since Wayne's World. I also have a theory that a talented, Oscar-winning actor is required by SAG to star in at least one godawful movie every 5 years to keep the bell curve accurate; the process for this has yet to be laid out, but I'm sure it will rank up there with Fermat's Last Theorem and Grand Unification in it's complexity.





*I* invented electricity....Ben Franklin is of the devil!!!

One of the ladies I work with loves that scene as much as I do.....so shush yo mouth about it Admiral


----------



## Green Eyed Fairy (Mar 18, 2008)

moore2me said:


> 1. *ASS Bandits* -



Need I say more? .



moore2me said:


> 4. *The Fountain* - The special effects and story line of this movie made me think about some person that was on a really bad drug trip and was trying to drag me with him. I did not want to go there. Not because it was scary, but because it was stoopid. Even the hunky Jackman, could not save this turkey. Glitter, gold, and romance could not revive it either. Let it die. In fact it should have died in the first 10 minutes..



The funniest part of this pic was the reaction of people in the theater when it was over....they all sat there making comments about how awesome that over-rated over dramatized pile was.........:doh:



moore2me said:


> 5.* Norbit*- I think this fillm is another piece of evidence that the Eddie Murphy we all had come to know and love from SNL and Berverly Hills Cop has been abducted by aliens and replaced by another "look-a-like" alien lifeform. This alien lifeform has little sense of humor, extremely bad taste, does not like fat people, makes crappy movies, and offends many earthlings. I think the real Murphy was replaced sometime around the filming of the Nutty Professor.



I liked Norbit....I watched it several times.


----------



## Green Eyed Fairy (Mar 18, 2008)

Gspoon said:


> 3: Cloverfield: Ok, yeah, someone is going to give me a hard time with this. But I felt it was written perfectly, mainly because my mouth was on the sticky floor when I left.



lol...please allow me to do the honors 
I went to see that at a $3 Movie house last night.....Gawd, how I wish I could have my money and 80 minutes of my life back :doh:



Gspoon said:


> 4: The Big Lebowski: Holy crap is this movie funny!


One of the funniest ever made, IMO


Gspoon said:


> 5: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory: How else did I become an FA?



I love it too....also like the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory....that dysfunctional Willie with his PTSD flashbacks rocked my world


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 18, 2008)

moore2me said:


> *Top Five Worst Movies:*
> 4. *The Fountain* - The special effects and story line of this movie made me think about some person that was on a really bad drug trip and was trying to drag me with him. I did not want to go there. Not because it was scary, but because it was stoopid. Even the hunky Jackman, could not save this turkey. Glitter, gold, and romance could not revive it either. Let it die. In fact it should have died in the first 10 minutes.


I once compared The Fountain to watching a video of an emo kid standing with a razor to his wrist for 2 hours but never having the balls to do anything, followed by watching a really sexy woman masturbate almost to orgasm, but suddenly she stops, gets up, itches her ass and farts, throws her clothes back on and walk out the door. It was like the ultimate letdown. Cubed. 



Gspoon said:


> 4: The Big Lebowski: Holy crap is this movie funny!


 Walter Sobchak is my god. The 2nd best Coen Bros. movie ever made (Raising Arizona being #1).



> 5: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory: How else did I become an FA?


 This better be the original Gene Wilder version, not the _art nouveau_ Tim Burtonhands one. Tim did justice to the Roald Dahl book (face it, they never could have done the Veruca Salt scene with the squirrels at the time they made the original), but the original will always be the best.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 20, 2008)

*Top 5 Combat Spacecraft (Science Fiction):*

Now when you think science-fiction craft, you think big. Enterprise. Death Star. Spaceball 1. I prefer to think of the small, usually one-person craft used in close combat dogfighting. We're mainly talking highly maneuverable craft that have a lot of bang for the buck.


*X-Wing Fighter** (Star Wars):* Pretty much one of the classics. The presence of supposedly 'attack foil' positions for the wings, which suggested something aerodynamic rather than functional, were I think more cosmetic than anything else, plus it made for a cool 'prep' scene in the movies. Force powers aside, it went to show that all you need is one mosquito to take down a buffalo.
*Shadow fighters (Babylon 5):* One of those ships that pretty much elicited a shit-your-pants reaction from anything coming across it. The small fighters had organic beings slaved in as a sort of living, cybernetic ship. The weapons were immensely powerful for a small craft, and when they got dispatched it was a like a dandelion puffball of death. Add in the cloaking/phasing factor, and you had something that could destroy anything that came in it's firing range. Unless you had something that could disrupt the neural capabilities of the pilot (such as a telepath), you were toast.
*Cylon Raider (Battlestar Galactica):* Not the 'Killer Frisbee' ships of the 1970s series, but another version of living combat vessel in the new series. These were regular Cylon minds that were downloaded into vessels instead of physical beings. The fact that the Cylons could resurrect meant that a pilot could be killed again and again, but when reborn would retain all of it's tactical experience. Their scythe-like appearance with the red eye light made them even more menacing.
*U.S.S. Defiant (Star Trek Deep Space Nine)*, tied with the *Species* *8472 Bioship (Star Trek Voyager):* This is a tough one, mainly because the Defiant isn't so much a one-man fighter, but it's a highly maneuverable starship with a huge amount of firepower. Originally a concept vessel designed as a 'Borg-buster,' the Defiant was upgraded, armaments increased and given a Romulan cloaking device to help battle the Jem'Hadar ships. It was radically different than any other Federation ship in the Trek universe, and it kicked huge amounts of ass. I have to give an honorable mention to the ships of Species 8472, the only beings able to defeat the Borg assimilation techniques. Also possessing incredible firepower, they were living vessels, able to link up in a chain of 9-10 smaller ships to generate a particle cannon capable of destroying a planet. The fact that one exploding bioship alone could destroy a Borg cube made this short-lived series alien memorable.
*Gunstar (The Last Starfighter):* This wasn't a phenomenally popular ship, but the placement of the Gunstar in one of the first CGI science fiction film battles has it's own significance. Granted that in the film, the rest of the Starfighter battalion was killed in the original Xurian attack, Alex Rogan and Grig managed to stop the entire invasion force by attacking the communications relay for the smaller fighters. Obviously the coolest aspect of their prototype Gunstar was the Death Blossom: When you absolutely have to kill every motherfucker in range, accept no substitute.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 26, 2008)

*Top 5 Science Fiction Weapons:*
*Lightsaber (Star Wars):* The obvious first place. Yes, the Death Star could destroy a planet, but that's the chickenshit way to do it. Real men fight face to face, to the death, cauterized arms, heads and ass flying everywhere. It's sci-fi's answer to horse medicine: If I can't fix it, slice it into itty-bitty pieces. Yes, there may be several 'forms' of lightsaber combat, but the principle form says to point the business end at the enemy and wave it around--you'll eventually slice into something.

*Hactar's Ultimate Weapon (Douglas Adams' Life, The Universe and Everything):* The absolute most awesomest weapon...that never worked. Intentionally. The Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax (an ancient, insanely aggressive race, asked their computer (Hactar) to build it, and he did so:_ It was a very, very small bomb that was simply a junction box in hyperspace which would, when activated, connect the heart of every major sun with the heart of every other major sun simultaneously and thus turn the entire Universe into one gigantic hyperspatial supernova._​You can't get much more 'holy shit' than that. For obvious reasons, it had an inherent flaw that rendered it useless when activated.

*M41A Pulse Rifle (and the M56 Smart Guns) - Aliens:* James Cameron took adaptations of actual modern weapons of the time and 'upgraded' them to futuristic models to fight alien baddies. Firing armor-piercing, explosive tipped rounds, the shoulder model and the M56 (which required a floating arm and additional hardware/scopes to use) tore through aliens like butter, even though in this case the butter flung highly corrosive drops of organic acid.

*Sonic Weapon (Hands of Blue - Firefly):* The Hands of Blue (a name provided by the fans) were a covert team of Men-In-Black type assassins working for the Alliance (the Blue Sun corporation). When they encountered someone they wanted to dispatch quickly--usually a guard or some other person who had personal contact or knowledge of River Tam-- a pen-sized weapon was held in the hand, two small telescoping booms extended, and after a brief moment, any person in the vicinity immediately 'bled out' as their blood vessels were ripped apart by ultrasonic vibrations. It was a rather graphic depiction for network TV, but that and the cold nature of the operatives made them a chilling addition to the rogue's gallery of enemies.

*Varon-T Disruptor (Star Trek The Next Generation, The Most Toys): *This is a niche weapon in sci-fi fandom, but I thought it deserved a mention. The episode in question had Commander Data captured by a trader named Kivas Fajo who collected rare and valuable items, in this case the only sentient android known to exist. On his ship his primary weapon of choice was the Varon-T Disruptor. It was a prototype, only 5 were made (he owned 4) and it was banned in the Federation.
The reason for the ban was that it disintegrated the victim, but extremely slowly. The victim would feel intense pain as it was torn apart inside out until finally vaporizing. At the end of the episode, Fajo uses it on his friend and former lover, and it was terribly graphic. It was one of those weapons where you would feel dirty just using it.


----------



## moore2me (Mar 26, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> *Top 5 Combat Spacecraft (Science Fiction):*.


 


Admiral_Snackbar said:


> *Top 5 Science Fiction Weapons:*



Since my knowledge of spacecraft and weaponry (both real and imaginary) is extremely limited, I have combined these two categories into one list - with your indulgence Admiral Snackbar Sir.

1.) Award for Awesome Weapons and fight scenes - *Starshiptroopers* by Paul Verhoeven. I love the fights involving bugs with their biological weapons and humans with their modern weapons. Their carnage was pretty even too. Another part that was neat about this movie, was the director let women fight and die just as hard as the men did. 

2.)Award for Kids Driving Spacecraft - *the Last Starfighter*. This movie impressed me on several levels. If a kid can operate a spacecraft, maybe there's hope for a klutz like me. It also starred the Robert Preston - which was wonderful in my book too. Plus, it was done in '84 before they had a lot of the fancy computer graphics.

3.)Awards for hand to hand fighting with spaceweapons - would have to be the last Star Wars film by Lucas, *Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith*. The fighting of Yoda was fabulous. The other guys weren't bad either. The surfaces they fought on were inspired - lava flows, disappearing structures, impressive heights, wow!

4.) Award for Spacecraft Fighting - *Independence *Day. Heck, that alien mother ship would scare the poop out of anyone. They wouldn't even have to fire on you, just hover over your town. It would shadow out the sun all day. And Will Smith flew a fighter jet inside of the monster craft !!!!

5.) Honorable mention for neat alien weapons - *Mars Attacks!* Even tho this was a comedy, the aliens had an great arsenal of ray guns to vaporize poor earthlings, the ability to switch heads between dogs and people, and giant robots to chase down quarry. And, the best we could come up with was yodeling??????


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 26, 2008)

moore2me said:


> 1.) Award for Awesome Weapons and fight scenes - *Starshiptroopers* by Paul Verhoeven. I love the fights involving bugs with their biological weapons and humans with their modern weapons. Their carnage was pretty even too. Another part that was neat about this movie, was the director let women fight and die just as hard as the men did.


Verhoeven gets my vote for the gross out, but to me his pinnacle flick will always be Robocop. My issue with Starship Troopers was that a) It had almost NOTHING to do with the original Heinlein book and b) Denise Richards; to this day I try to figure out how she was ever given acting roles.



> 4.) Award for Spacecraft Fighting - *Independence *Day. Heck, that alien mother ship would scare the poop out of anyone. They wouldn't even have to fire on you, just hover over your town. It would shadow out the sun all day. And Will Smith flew a fighter jet inside of the monster craft !!!!


 Don't forget Jeff Goldblum crashing their *alien operating system* with a Macbook-designed virus (not to mention the modem handshaking scene). Good times 



> 5.) Honorable mention for neat alien weapons - *Mars Attacks!* Even tho this was a comedy, the aliens had an great arsenal of ray guns to vaporize poor earthlings, the ability to switch heads between dogs and people, and giant robots to chase down quarry. And, the best we could come up with was yodeling??????


 The martians in War of the Worlds were killed off by common earth bacteria. Remember, this is a Tim Burton movie. You should not be surprised if a guy with scissors for hands comes out of the woodwork riding the Pee Wee Herman bike to slice their little alien heads off.


----------



## moore2me (Mar 26, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> Verhoeven gets my vote for the gross out, but to me his pinnacle flick will always be Robocop. My issue with Starship Troopers was that a) It had almost NOTHING to do with the original Heinlein book and b) Denise Richards; to this day I try to figure out how she was ever given acting roles.



*
I'll give you a hint - did you watch Undercover Brother? Her portrayal as White She Devil wearing a white leather catsuit would answer your question. And don't forget her shower scene. *




Admiral_Snackbar said:


> The martians in War of the Worlds were killed off by common earth bacteria. Remember, this is a Tim Burton movie. You should not be surprised if a guy with scissors for hands comes out of the woodwork riding the Pee Wee Herman bike to slice their little alien heads off.



*
Tim Burton does have an penchant for lopping off heads. I believe Burton's record was probably in Sleepy Hollow*.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 26, 2008)

moore2me said:


> *I'll give you a hint - did you watch Undercover Brother? Her portrayal as White She Devil wearing a white leather catsuit would answer your question. And don't forget her shower scene.*


Well, I was trying to refer to her acting ability, not that she has big thingys and can look good naked. The fact she married a poon hound like Charlie Sheen and birthed his spawn drops her down several leagues in my book.

She was a Bond girl, right? Christmas something? A doctorate in nuclear physics?


----------



## MadWeePete (Mar 26, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> She was a Bond girl, right? Christmas something? A doctorate in nuclear physics?



Dr Christmas Jones. I believe you are correct about the doctorate.

Also on an early subject about Star Trek. The only film that can rival The Wrath of Khan is First Contact.

And for stupidest plot the winner by a landslide is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.


----------



## Blackjack (Mar 26, 2008)

MadWeePete said:


> And for stupidest plot the winner by a landslide is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.



Probably the least of the movies, yeah, but it definitely had its moments.

And there's always the scene on the bus, which has inspired a number of hilarious redubs, like this one.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 26, 2008)

MadWeePete said:


> Dr Christmas Jones. I believe you are correct about the doctorate.
> 
> Also on an early subject about Star Trek. The only film that can rival The Wrath of Khan is First Contact.
> 
> And for stupidest plot the winner by a landslide is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.


Christmas Jones sounded to me like how you get all worked up wanting to get laid at the holidays, but you find out all the coats are on the bed.

First Contact was the first Trek film I was involved in the Internet spoilers phenomenon. They had a website, lots of leaked short videos, production stills, etc.. I was (and am) a huge fan of the Borg, so seeing the newer effects technology was pretty awesome at the time. I did have issues that a longer cut was never released, because apparently in order to keep the PG rating, they only allowed Data to break the neck of 1-2 Borg (the original cut was apparently much more violent).

I still put First Contact several steps below WoK, because it stands out on so many levels from an other Trek film. As for ST4, are you sure you're not talking ST5? Kirk free-climbing El Capitan? The singing around the campfire with the 'marshmelon' maker? The Vulcan who found God and it turned out He was an insane immortal being imprisoned outside the edge of the galaxy? The only thing with more suck than that was ST Insurrection. That movie should have created it's own singularity and imploded into the event horizon, dragging a poorly-made up F. Murray Abraham screaming into it.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 26, 2008)

Blackjack said:


> And there's always the scene on the bus, which has inspired *a number of hilarious redubs, like **this one**.*


I hate you, Blackjack. I hate you with every fiber of my Confederate body. I will now have that song (and the hideous original video for it) in my head for days.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 3, 2008)

So my love of Trek was rekindled in 1986, when that crazy, bald-headed pacifist took over the helm of the Big-E. Although it dealt with inevitable costume issues, writer's strikes and really bad homages to classic Trek episodes, it did eventually settle into it's own. Here then are my top 5 episodes from that series:

*The Best of Both Worlds (Season 3-4):* The top of them all, a combination of awesome battles, one of Trek's most implacable enemies (Da Borg), internal conflict (a hot blonde Commander to usurp Riker's place) and a cliffhanger for the ages. Introduced the proper pronunciation of the word, "few-tile".

*Yesterday's Enterprise:* One of the few Next Gen time travel episodes that didn't suck, if not one of the better time travel episodes in the entire Trek franchise. One lost battle 22 years prior to the Next Gen series spins things into a parallel universe where the Klingons are kicking ass all over the Federation (Picard's denouement is rather chilling, since Stewart has to WHISPER), Tasha Yar never died (although with that haircut, we wish she had) and Guinan is the only one aware of what's gone wrong. Props to the casting director for putting Shooter McGavin in as Yar's love interest. Served as a launching point to bring back Denise "Short Timer" Crosby as a human/Roluman commander.

*Where No One Has Gone Before:* I think this is a controversial point, because 1) It was a first season episode, which most of the fans wish could they could unmake, and 2) it was the episode that firmly entrenched Wesley Crusher as the saving grace/brain trust/Mr. Engineering 'Mozart' of the series, much to the sadness of many a fan (no fault to Wil Wheaton). The Big-E goes to the end of the Universe, and it turns out to be a MathCADD simulation. We hear Picard speak his native French, Worf renews ties with his childhood pet and we meet The Traveler, whose major talent involves "thinking it so." A bit of trivia: The actor who played the Traveler (Erik Menyuk) was originally going to play the Data character but lost out to Brent Spiner.

*The Nth Degree:* There were only a few instances in all of Trek where an actor famous for other film/tv shows had a bit role on Trek and you regretted it not being a longer-lasting part. The prime one for me is Brad Dourif's role as a serial killing Betazoid on Star Trek Voyager; it fit the actor perfectly, the concept had lots of possibilities but I am sure it would have led to much upstaging and overall abuse of the idea. Dwight Schultz as Lieutenant Barclay (which I equate to a modern-day perv; guy got laid on holodecks, using his commanding female officers as his 'partners', no less), the socially inept engineer who once he got past his insecurities was actually a competent officer. This episode took a small cue from the "Flowers for Algernon" storyline and due to an exposure to an alien probe (that old chestnut...) Barclay becomes a soooper geennnnyusss, overcoming all his shortcomings because as all Asperger's know, you just have to be smart enough to rise above awkwardness . Introduced such lovely dialogue tongue-twisers as "hierarchical collective command structure".

*In Theory:* The classic episode that all nerds dreamed about - Data gets a girlfriend. Granted she is using him as a rebound for the unemotional man she had just broken up with, and later realizes she got involved with a man 'utterly incapable of emotion,' which is nicespeak for saying 'better to have a man with just enough emotion to hurt me vs. a man who does there best not to,' a corollary of ladder theory at it's finest. The hot alien mom from the Alien Nation tv series did quite well, and we get to see what happens in the subplot when you get too deep into a dark matter nebula. Data's interviews with his crewmates about the nature of relationships is classic.


----------



## Blackjack (Apr 3, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> So my love of Trek was rekindled in 1986, when that crazy, bald-headed pacifist took over the helm of the Big-E.



What, no "Inner Light"?

I have to get back to watching that show, actually. I'll probably be starting the second season within a week.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 3, 2008)

Blackjack said:


> What, no "Inner Light"?
> 
> I have to get back to watching that show, actually. I'll probably be starting the second season within a week.


Oh Inner Light is up there, just not the top 5. I hate crying like a little wuss at the third act every time I see it.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 7, 2008)

Now, as all geeks know, a computer desk/workstation has to have a requisite number of geeky items on hand at all times. Here are some of mine:

*Caffeinated beverage:* This is the obvious first. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands begin to shake, the shake becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
*Empty container of caffeinated beverage:* Come on, you mean you're just going to have one? Granted I recycle my cans but trips to the recycle bin have to be timed between sessions of Bookworm Adventure.
*Paper:* Oddly enough, hard copies are still a must. Whether it's a printout of your latest order from ThinkGeek or some cool article you downloaded off Lifehacker, you still apparently need the processed tree pulp to do work these days.
*Remote control:* I'm obviously going to be watching New Amsterdam while I am surfing or chatting. I have to be doing something else, right?
*DVD/CD Blanks:* If I've just finished burning something, it's there on the desk. If the burn failed, I have convenient coasters for item #1. If I have more than one, thrown effectively they stick in the wall with alarming effectiveness.


----------



## Surlysomething (Apr 7, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> Now, as all geeks know, a computer desk/workstation has to have a requisite number of geeky items on hand at all times. Here are some of mine:
> 
> *Caffeinated beverage:* This is the obvious first. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands begin to shake, the shake becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
> *Empty container of caffeinated beverage:* Come on, you mean you're just going to have one? Granted I recycle my cans but trips to the recycle bin have to be timed between sessions of Bookworm Adventure.
> ...



work or home? either or?

very different animals for some of us


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 7, 2008)

Surlysomething said:


> work or home? either or?
> 
> very different animals for some of us


OK, I have the same items on desk at both work at at home in the Nerd Cave, except for #4. Boss won't let us have TVs at work.

Side note: At my other job, my buddy and I had various dead CD/DVD blanks we brought in and used a big, black Sharpie to write interesting labels for them. Some of the more popular ones were:

Secret Government Files
The "Real" Zapruder Film - Director's Cut
Me, Myself and Your Mom
Sideshow Carnies - XXX Edition
Antique Furniture, Circus Midgets and ?
Tiffany - Banned From the Mall (Uncensored)
The Three Stooges: The Boss, The Boss' Boss and Shemp
The Rockhard Files Episode 4: Seminal Justice
Paris Does The Hilton (21st Floor Edition)


----------



## Surlysomething (Apr 7, 2008)

1. Beverage (in the morning it's a Tim Horton's coffee/afternoon it's either a diet Dr. Pepper or a Diet Pepsi)

2. Note book. Handy for current conversion rates and well, you know..notes.

3. Bath and Body Words antibacterial hand lotion (cucumber melon scented). I type so much that my fingers crack open. Seriously.

4. Snack. High fibre granola bar or smarties. Depending on the mood. 

5. Family pictures. The nephew and my two youngest sisters. Doesn't feel like my space without them.


----------



## Green Eyed Fairy (Apr 7, 2008)

In my "work area" aka "desk" at work (it's a checkout window in a dental office)
1. Beverage- sometimes two! In the morning it's usually a bottle of iced tea and another one with juice. 
2. Sticky notes pad at my side- for quick jots when I'm on the phone and can't get the computer to respond fast enough
3. Favorite writing pen- I'm kind of OCD (or even anal ) about which pens I write with- I squirrel them away if I like them. I have to have a certain one beside my right hand while working. 
4. Snacks down in the drawer- dried apricots in a resealable bag work well- so do cookies in a baggie. I sneak bites between patients if I am hungry.
5. Lip gloss/hand lotion- for when my lips or hands are feeling dry. I have some gloss that also doubles as a lip color


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 7, 2008)

Surlysomething said:


> 1. Beverage (in the morning it's a Tim Horton's coffee/afternoon it's either a diet Dr. Pepper or a Diet Pepsi)


 What about a bag of Timbits?


----------



## moore2me (Apr 7, 2008)

*Top 5 items on home computer desk:*


Notebook listing my usernames and passwords

Beverages - usually flavored water like Propel or coffee along with Tina's Fractile coaster

Two Ty Beanie Babies - Durango the Horse & Titptoe the Rat

Scotch tape to tape post-it notes to computer, desk, printer, bookcases, and anything else that stands still

Snacks - Nonni's Biscottis, Special K 90 calories bars, Pringles Baked Wheat Stixs


----------



## Surlysomething (Apr 7, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> What about a bag of Timbits?


 

Mmmm...Timbits. I had some yesterday.

Unfortunately (mostly fortunately) I get my Tim's at a gas station that has a Tim's coffee bar and doesn't supply the donuts. 

But they are delicious.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 8, 2008)

moore2me said:


> Scotch tape to tape post-it notes to computer, desk, printer, bookcases, and anything else that stands still


 I hope someone can someday tell me why Post-Its became such a huge success when the glue in fact, sticks to nothing well except OTHER POST-ITS!

It's like inventing a pen that doesn't write, but the mere sight of you carrying it makes you instantly attractive, or say, a memo pad with a sticky back that never sticks to anything, eventually falls through some crack in your desk and gets lost.


----------



## moore2me (Apr 8, 2008)

Post-its also stick other paper great. I have found some in books years later and they still work. However, sticking to platic or wood is less than stellar. Most of the stuff I post around my computer is technical info like 

1) Where my computer hide the file I stored
2) What kind of attachment works best and size allowed
3) Dial-up numbers when my server decides to crap out
4) Emergency numbers for technical help of all kinds - server, printer, laptop, phone, veterinarian, 911, pot roast help line, poison control center.
5) Answers to challenge questions - (as you get older this becomes important)

These notes are important & that's why I need the scotch tape to make sure they stay on all the plastic & wood around me. Plus, I select the fluorescent notes as they stand out in all my desk clutter.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 8, 2008)

moore2me said:


> Most of the stuff I post around my computer is technical info like
> 
> 1) Where my computer hide the file I stored
> 2) What kind of attachment works best and size allowed


 Aaah #2. Nothing is nicer in my office inbox than an official letter from the VP that has a tiny 2 MB logo graphic embedded in it. It's called a 16-bit GIF, people. Learn it, know it, live it.

It was especially tiring because we had a scant 50 mb inbox limit, so three letters from the big bosses in a day would cramp my style heavily.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 22, 2008)

Back in the early days of RPG, conventions would utilize dozens of fan based adventures, and the creators of the game (Gary Gygax in particular) would often beta test pre-designed adventures intended for sale (termed "modules") at these conventions. Many of them won awards and were further refined after playtesting and then sold. Some of them were eventually adapted as online versions using the Neverwinter Nights gaming engine. Below are the favorites from my youth, so warnings ahead of time for the Mom's Basement Esoterica:

*Ravenloft:* This was the initial game that launched the fusion of D&D with Gothic horror - Count Strahd von Zarovich rules the land of Barovia, whose mists oddly enough are a cumulative poison; thus once you enter Barovia, you have to get the antidote (from the Count, of course) in order to leave or the poision will kill you. Featuring one of the most elaborate 3-d maps of any module, as well as a Tarot-style fortune telling that lays the groundwork for the rest of the adventure--you could play the game several times, but based on the cards not the same way--this game kept the traditional roleplaying items intact while presenting a rather compelling anti-hero in Strahd (a vampire pining for his lost love). The concept was later expanded into a whole series of adventures, and Ravenloft became an actual plane of existence, a Twilight Zone world where adventurers from other gaming worlds would oddly find themselves trapped within.

*Tomb of Horrors:* This was the weed-out module for all your whiny gaming friends who thought their 10th level Chaotic neutral fighter was unkillable. Featuring every sort of trap imaginable, not to mention and end-module boss who could suck out your soul. The art was also amazing, and the image of the Gargoyle with the O-Face (the mouth was actually a magical disk that would instantly annihilate anyone who crawled into it) has become a pop culture icon of sorts.

*White Plume Mountain:* This was one of those Monty Hall type of adventures; touring through the "abandoned" volcanic home of a mad wizard, dealing with his riddles and traps littered throughout, eventually (we hope) netting you 3 kick-ass magical weapons, one of which was a carefully neutral version of Elric's Stormbringer. Of particular fun was the slip and slide room, a long corridor with a deep pit of poison spikes in the center, with an entirely frictionless floor.

*Expedition to the Barrier Peaks:* The age-old adventure "what if" involving a spacecraft from an alternate reality crashing into a mountain on a D&D-type world. The futuristic aspects were carefully structured so as not to give your barbarian a disintegration gun that would shift the balance of power, and the module was complex enough (again, excellent maps) to keep you busy just trying to find your way around. Lots of robots and androids about, many of which were malfunctioning, such as a medical droid that attempts to grab the nearest character and perform radical surgery. A slight nod to Monty Python was shown in the ship's arboretum, where a bunny sitting on top of a tree stump was in fact a tentacled subterranean monster who used the bunny as a sort of enticement prize, like the wiggling worm-tongue of a Deep Sea Angler.

*Queen of the Demonweb Pits:* The final chapter in a huge multi-module saga that really tied the room together. Helped to introduce one of D&Ds most loved/hated creations (the Drow elves) as well as create complexities for many high-level adventures for most of the game's history (the insertion of the Drow deity Lolth, which was potentially killable). The Underdark was much more elaborately designed when R.A. Salvatore created his Drizzt saga, but QotDP still ranks as the fan's #1 favorite.

*Honorable Mention: Baba Yaga's Hut -* This was actually a module featured in an issue of Dragon Magazine (the Better Homes and Gardens of the D&D crowd) which took an old Russian fable character and made her into a sort of Doctor Who-ish hag. Her little hovel was actually a mobile tessaract, with many rooms inside, featuring lots of treasures and monsters to keep you busy adventuring. Since the interior of the Hut was on a different plane, magic didn't work correctly nor did clerical spells in some cases. Of note was the treasure room, featuring a WWII era tank and futuristic weaponry. The cool aspect of the module was that you didn't have to kill the end boss; Baba Yaga had the potential to be as much a source of sage advice as anything else, and in my early years I incorporated her as a sort of evil Gandalf-in-residence into my adventures, mainly since most of the quest items involved delivering something to her on penalty of being her next meal.


----------



## moore2me (Apr 23, 2008)

*Top 5 Classic Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Modules That Should Have Been *
________________________________________

Having never played D&D myself (altho I did watch the movie) I cannot give you my favorite adventure modules. However, I can tell you some modules that should have been produced to prepare young adults for life in the concrete jungles of our civilization and to battle against real demons.

1.) *Driving on the interstate during rush hour.* This would allow the player to assume an identity of a type A or type B driver and pick a corvette or a VW bug. It will then pit the driver against an 18 wheeler breathing fire down on your roof that follows you at 70 mph 10 feet away from your fiberglass bumper. The game then unexpectedly has a car breakdown in the middle lane and forces you to stop or swerve at the last minute while the lanes on both sides of you are full of school buses with children in them. 

It then starts to rain and the rain turns to sleet and your car starts sliding. The lady ahead of you is driving at 5 mph on the freeway and wont move to the right. You notice your gas gauge is on empty and start looking for a gas station. You notice you left your purse at home. You start looking for change and find 75 cents in the console. If you can make it to your office intact, without breaking down, having a wreck or causing a wreck, you win the game. You have 15 minutes and your office is 10 miles away. You notice you one of your tires is wobbling a little. You really need to put your makeup on and take the curlers out of your hair. Your boss also calls on your cell and asks you to order some cupcakes for a surprise birthday party at the office today. 


2.) *Battling the demon in-law * You find a partner that appeals to your instincts and the two of you decide to become hitched. You meet his mother-in-law, Zelda, a widow, who appears to be human and appears friendly towards you, but something doesnt smell right. The hair on your back goes up, you are afraid, very afraid, but you love your mate and marry anyway. Zelda starts her work slowly  she sends food over that her son loves. She is a good cook. You being new to cooking are not that good  but are learning. You cannot compete with Zelda tho  and you hear about it from everyone. Zelda starts to tell you how to decorate your little house. She takes down your curtains and brings some she likes better over to hang. She inspects her sons laundry and comments his underwear isnt white enough and his shirts are too wrinkled. She goes thru the refrigerator and comments the food isnt nutritious enough. Her son deserves better than that. Zelda announces that she has bought a house just two doors down from you guys so she and "sonny" can have breakfast every morning now. "Isn't that nice?", she says. She also says she expects sonny to help mow her grass, rake her leaves, and expects you and her to shop for groceries together - she will teach you how to buy what sonny like and how to cook it. She says she doesn't have a TV, but if it's okay can come over at watch a few shows at night on your set. 

You find Zelda one day going thru your medical records and commenting on your genetic potential as a mother for her sons children. She suggests a surrogate or an egg donor. She says she has a friend who can hook this up for a small fee. She also announces that she has invited all the relatives on his side of the family to a dinner party next week at your house. Wont that be fun? About 6 of them will also have to stay with you as house guests too. And Uncle Joe is a klepto and Aunt Susie is bringing her pit bull which just had puppies so she cant leave it home alone.

To win this game, you will have to play this module and come out smelling like a rose and not get a divorce or kill anyone.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Apr 23, 2008)

moore2me said:


> Having never played D&D myself (altho I did watch the movie) I cannot give you my favorite adventure modules.


 My dear, as much as I hate to burst thy bubble. Saying that you understand a little about D&D from watching the movie is like saying you can perform an emergency heart bypass surgery after watching Patch Adams; there's just no real correlation. Plus anything with a Wayans brother in it is instantly discounted as relevant . 



> 1.) *Driving on the interstate during rush hour.* This would allow the player to assume an identity of a type A or type B driver and pick a corvette or a VW bug. It will then pit the driver against an 18 wheeler breathing fire down on your roof that follows you at 70 mph 10 feet away from your fiberglass bumper. The game then unexpectedly has a car breakdown in the middle lane and forces you to stop or swerve at the last minute while the lanes on both sides of you are full of school buses with children in them.
> 
> It then starts to rain and the rain turns to sleet and your car starts sliding. The lady ahead of you is driving at 5 mph on the freeway and wont move to the right. You notice your gas gauge is on empty and start looking for a gas station. You notice you left your purse at home. You start looking for change and find 75 cents in the console. If you can make it to your office intact, without breaking down, having a wreck or causing a wreck, you win the game. You have 15 minutes and your office is 10 miles away. You notice you one of your tires is wobbling a little. You really need to put your makeup on and take the curlers out of your hair. Your boss also calls on your cell and asks you to order some cupcakes for a surprise birthday party at the office today.


Ensure that the driver has a decent Dexterity ability score, and try to get those +2 Caltrops of Tire Deflation for the 18 wheeler. He can't harm you if he's slowly crawling to a stop.

Have a local sage sell you a Decanter of Endless Petrol to take care of those last-minute fill ups, and a beautification spell will take care of the appearance-related things long enough for you to take some time and fix your face.



> 2.) *Battling the demon in-law * You find a partner that appeals to your instincts and the two of you decide to become hitched. You meet his mother-in-law, Zelda, a widow, who appears to be human and appears friendly towards you, but something doesnt smell right. The hair on your back goes up, you are afraid, very afraid, but you love your mate and marry anyway. Zelda starts her work slowly  she sends food over that her son loves. She is a good cook. You being new to cooking are not that good  but are learning. You cannot compete with Zelda tho  and you hear about it from everyone. Zelda starts to tell you how to decorate your little house. She takes down your curtains and brings some she likes better over to hang. She inspects her sons laundry and comments his underwear isnt white enough and his shirts are too wrinkled. She goes thru the refrigerator and comments the food isnt nutritious enough. Her son deserves better than that. Zelda announces that she has bought a house just two doors down from you guys so she and "sonny" can have breakfast every morning now. "Isn't that nice?", she says. She also says she expects sonny to help mow her grass, rake her leaves, and expects you and her to shop for groceries together - she will teach you how to buy what sonny like and how to cook it. She says she doesn't have a TV, but if it's okay can come over at watch a few shows at night on your set.
> 
> You find Zelda one day going thru your medical records and commenting on your genetic potential as a mother for her sons children. She suggests a surrogate or an egg donor. She says she has a friend who can hook this up for a small fee. She also announces that she has invited all the relatives on his side of the family to a dinner party next week at your house. Wont that be fun? About 6 of them will also have to stay with you as house guests too. And Uncle Joe is a klepto and Aunt Susie is bringing her pit bull which just had puppies so she cant leave it home alone.
> 
> To win this game, you will have to play this module and come out smelling like a rose and not get a divorce or kill anyone.


Well, the first thing is to cast a Detect Planar Outsider spell and verify that your mother-in-law is not a demon from the Abyss. One advantage is to inscribe a thaumaturgic circle onto the floor with a gold crayon, and cast Cacodaemon. When she walks across the circle, she will be trapped, and you can then use a Spiritwrack spell to torture her in order to find out what her true intentions are.

Remember, killing a demon or devil on this plane banishes them back to their home plane for 100 years, so as long as you can prevent your son from summoning her back here, you'll be cool. I know you don't want to kill anyone, but muzzling a hellspawn is not easy work, and I doubt you have enough experience points to manage the task. I would seek out a demonologist priest to at least try to cast a Protection from Evil spell around your home, which will prevent her from entering again.

Just a suggestion, though.


----------



## moore2me (Apr 23, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> My dear, as much as I hate to burst thy bubble. Saying that you understand a little about D&D from watching the movie is like saying you can perform an emergency heart bypass surgery after watching Patch Adams; there's just no real correlation. Plus anything with a Wayans brother in it is instantly discounted as relevant .
> 
> *I performed emergency heart bypass surgery yesterday on a "volunteer" I captured and it almost worked just fine. If I had of used a human heart instead of a sheep heart, he would still be alive today (the man, not the sheep). And I hated Patch Adams, I prefer the Hollow Man for surgical techniques. *
> 
> ...



*I prefer the demon banishment technique used by the Indian witch doctor in the Manitou where a circle is drawn around the area to be protected using magic totem powder and the evil spirit or Manitou cannot enter the circle. The demon is then sent back into hell by a series on incantations by the witch doctor.*


----------



## Surlysomething (Apr 24, 2008)

1-5 

you're so crazy!


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (May 5, 2008)

Wargames was one of my favorite films as a kid. I was just entering high school, and a PC was something that us Commodore 64 dorks could only dream about. Regardless of how it launched an entire generation of nerds, hackers and nuclear armageddon fanatics (no pun intended), it still had several aspects that I just don't ever see being plausible, all the obvious dramatic license aside.

1) The way to get a cute chick to suck face: Change her grade and give her a life-threatening adventure. This is a given in Ladder Theory. Girls like bad boys, and being the guy who almost ends the world (and then saves it) is like technological Spanish Fly; I'm amazed the Jen Mack didn't just mount David Lightman right there on the NORAD desk.

2) The way to get programmers to show all their best tricks: Have a female in the room. Despite the resoluteness of even the most stolid hacker, a cute jock in jogging pants will make you babble all your secrets with more speed and honesty than a soldier with a gun to her head screaming "I kakka Gao, VC!!"

3) If I'm designing a system that could potentially unleash World War III, I'd use some stronger rules for my backdoor account password just in case some kid looks up my obit at the library and deciphers it.

4) If I discover an inquisitive, genius teenager who may be committing espionage by hacking into NORAD, the LAST thing I'm gonna do is let the little shit into the fucking NORAD War Room. Don't the guys who drive the black panel vans ever just blindfold someone and take them to an anonymous location with no access to computers, locks, escape plans (tour bus) or flirtatious security guards who like tennis players?

5) I am guessing that the acoustic coupler (the box that gives Joshua his 'voice') that Lightman uses is a Radio Shack exclusive, since both he and NORAD can afford to use it on their systems.

Honorable Mention: Barry Corbin was denied the Oscar, you Academy Bastards.


----------



## Green Eyed Fairy (May 9, 2008)

I can't believe, that as a nerd, I haven't seen you mention Weird Science :doh:

The part where she tells Gary's father that he is out of shape and she will kick his ass still makes me LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (May 10, 2008)

Green Eyed Fairy said:


> I can't believe, that as a nerd, I haven't seen you mention Weird Science :doh:
> 
> The part where she tells Gary's father that he is out of shape and she will kick his ass still makes me LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL


I haven't gotten to my 'Top 5 John Hughes Movies' thread yet


----------



## Green Eyed Fairy (May 10, 2008)

Please forgive me, Admiral. I always forget that I just pretend to be a nerd...and you seriously oust me on it usually  :wubu:


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Jun 9, 2008)

Going off of this article, which was mainly geared toward men who are fans of sports, sporting events and sport-related movies (I have my own issues with some of them, namely Passion of the Christ, which I personally feel is nothing more than a mainstreamed Christian snuff film with a surprise ending), I submit my list of films that nearly always bring a tear or an unabashed bawling fit:

NOTE: I try not to list any movies which I have only seen once. In my personal opinion, for a movie to make you cry on the 2nd and successive viewings really makes it one for the tear books.


*Powder:* Yes, the director may have been a child molester but dammit if it's not a tear jerker when Powder communicates with the sheriff's comatose wife and tells him about the wedding ring. I am reduced to blubber every single time.
*City of Angels:* I didn't get the same effect from Wim Winder's original, but the beginning and the ending are just nasty, eye dribbly sad (and that was before I had kids where now every single film with kids suffering or dying has me all upset).
*Schindler's List:* This was from the original list, and I too lose it at the end when they make the ring for him. "One more person." Gaah.
*E.T. The Extra Terrestrial:* Just saw this on regular TV last week, and my 5-year-old was watching and bawling his eyes out, which of course got me into it which only made it worse for him. Damn you, Spielberg.
*A.I. - Artificial Intelligence:* Most of the movie was post-modern sci-fi drivel, but they really did an amazing job at the very end (spoilers ahead) when the boy robot gets that one last, perfect day with his mother, and how he could finally rest afterwards. It was so innocent and poignant, from the voice of Meryl Streep as the Blue Fairy to Ben Kingsley as the future AI mecha leader.


----------



## moore2me (Jun 9, 2008)

*Top 4 movies that make Moore2Me cry:*



*Old Yeller * I absolutely refuse to watch this movie ever again. (Spoiler alert incase you have been living on Mars.) When the kid shoots his doggie, I am reduced into such a wretched state of tears . . . .just typing about it . . . . has got me started tearing up . . . . . . now I've gone and done it . . . . .



*The Yearling* - Same with this movie. (Another spoiler alert incase you too are from another solar system.) When the kid shoots his pet deer . . . . . .here I go again . . . . . .kleenex . . . . nothing wrong with me . . . just an old softie


*Dr. Zhivago*- I have watched this old movie at least five times and the end when Urie's brother tells Urie's daughter the ability to play the guitar is a gift, here come the water works. I just can't help crying. It is so sad for the lost love of Urie and Laura. I think this is one of the greatest love stories of our time. (Plus, nobody had to shoot his dog.)


*A Tale of Two Cities*- The old B&W version or any version of this Charles Dicken's story brings me to tears when a man loves a woman enough to give up his life so that her husband might escape the guillotine during the French revolution. (Thank goodness no dogs had their heads cut off. )


----------



## Green Eyed Fairy (Jun 9, 2008)

Top five that make the fairy cry....movies

1. The Color Purple- an oppressed woman overcomes...and everyone knows suffering...but all get what they deserve in the end. There are so many scenes in the movie that make me cry....but I really like this one. They are trying to sound out the sinners....but it was the "sinners" turn to teach something about God and forgiveness 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxS9qSU-25E

2. Forrest Gump- odd choice, eh? Through out the movie..where his love interest keeps on running from him and keeps running into the cycle of abuse. The scene where she stands in front of her childhood home and bombs it with fistfuls of mud.....that gets me every damn time. 

3. Beaches- one helluva movie about friendship. Tragic ending but still makes you feel "okay" about it all 

4. Million Dollar Baby - Didn't think Clint could get me to cry.....I have to give a lot of the credit to Hilary Swank...she impressed the hell out of me with "Boys Don't Cry"

5. Titanic- My sister told me how good this movie was before I saw it myself. It meant so much to me when I did...because the message of "loving life" really hit me hard. My older sister was on her second run with cancer that she eventually succumbed to...and I had came out of a dark depression a year or so earlier where I almost ended my life. Yeah...the message was strong...and correct.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Jun 17, 2008)

We've all met one of these people. Hell, you may be one of them. I've been on the Intarwebs for close to 15 years now, and I've seen all types come and go. Below are some examples, with allowable overlaps as what I see as the most irritating personalities you may have the misfortune of encountering:

1. *The Attention Whore*: Closely associated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, these are the people who believe the entire Internet hinges on their every word. They can say no wrong, they can make no mistakes, everything is about THEM. A good example here is Professional Douchebag John Fitzgerald Paige, whose classic "I have to be at the gym in 26 minutes," along with his online store selling his asshattery to the masses indicates how clueless these nitwits are, and, by association, impossible to prove wrong. The worst example happens when #1 crosses with #2, and you get a woman who think's she's perfect and you're not worthy to drink her bathwater (Paris Hilton comes to mind) or you're a guy who thinks all women over 100 lbs. are fat pigs, or who feels that just because she didn't swallow on the first date, she's some sort of frigid bitch. It's an even sadder state of affairs because these people, for some bizarre reason, continue to be irresistible to the opposite sex (which, according to Ladder Theory, still demonstrates that something is obviously amiss with human sexuality). Regardless, they have become easier and easier to spot online, but avoid them at all costs, especially in trying to make your case in any fashion. In their obviously correct opinion, you're the asshole, asshole.

2. *The Misogynist/Misandryst:* Every post made everywhere is about hating women (when posters are men) or hating men (when posters are women). If you are a woman who posts something porn-positive, you're a deluded slave to a male mentality and an unknowing victim, if you're a man who posts something extolling the wonders of women, you're still a closet pig just waiting to stick her in the kitchen to make babies and availing herself to kiss your vile penis whenever you demand it. There's little to be gained with debating someone who thinks you cannot think outside your gender. In many cases, the #2 has a valid point, either due to personal experience or seeing obvious examples of it online. The problem is a broad generalization and a _reductio ad absurdio_ argument.

3. *The Self-Appointed Lothario:* This can fall into two categories. On one hand you have the ridiculously successful suave mo-fo who seems to have gone down on everything but the Titanic. They may not be God's gift but they definitely know the secret to getting the ladies to follow them like puppies. His Little Black Book looks like the U.S. Tax Code Manual or the UNIX Bible. He ran out of notches to carve into his belt and now punches his conquests out in Braille. His photos are sometimes fake, but more often than not he's got a taste of #1 and loves to show off his abs and his muscular pectorals, with or without unrequested views of his third leg, which he happens to be able to pee out of. He may eventually have an STD named after him, but he's really got a good sense of humor and is trying to find that one special girl-next-door (no more than 110 lbs., works out 4-5x a week, makes over 100k year, 38D or larger, nympho, no kids, pets or parents) to spend the rest of his life with. Basically take everyone in the Bachelor and Bachelorette shows, throw them in a blender and hit _frappe._

On the other hand is the clueless dork who fawns, sometimes sycophantically over any and every woman he can chat it up with, using the same tired rhetoric for no other reason than to apply the statistical maxim that the larger the sample size, the greater the possibility of Actual Sex With a Woman. Although mostly harmless with the exception of a stalker or two, with some of these guys you want to pull them aside and tell them to either go back to the Romper Room until you grow some pubes or learn a bit about _selectivity_. You feel bad for them more than anything, because like any nerd we may have been there a time or two, and then realized we had found some dignity stuffed in the closet behind the Legos and Cabbage Patch Kids, finally deciding to be a bit more selective and self-confident and not go after every human with female genitals.

4. *The Professional Victim:* This is the type of person who, like Tyler Durden's friend Bob in Fight Club, has the kind of unabashed honesty that makes you go a big rubbery one. You don't know this person from Adam or Eve, but within 10 minutes you have enough of a medical history to make your own diagnosis on WebMD. Their pharmacological catalog looks like a drug bust in South Central LA. They may like you, but you also remind them of someone who ripped their heart out many years ago, did horrible, unspeakable things to them (which they will tell you about in graphic detail shortly) whom you came back to time and time again because you needed them, but then required years of counseling afterwards when you finally broke free. A good male example is the guy who makes an effort to tell you about the dozens of women he's slept with but just can't seem to find the right one, when in actuality it's THEM who has the problem (sometimes several). The defining difference between this and confiding in an actual online friend is that you usually ASK for the details from a friend--they offer a question and you request the answer in confidence and out of concern; The Victim often does this randomly, offers their information up _en masse_, usually within a first meeting, and everything just seems to go downhill from there. You're fighting an indiviual who bathes in the relative anonymity of the Internet, and uses it as a sort of armchair self-help group, of which you are an unwitting participant. The best defense is to grab a DSM, throw them a bone and let them self-diagnose elsewhere. Save their chat logs just in case you would eventually be asked by the authorities whether "did this person indicate that something was wrong or say anything out of the ordinary before they snapped?"

5. *The Classic Troll: *The most classic example of Internet Villany. These people refer to Democrats as "libruls," tend to be excessively religious or strongly atheist, may be homophobic, radical Greenpeace or PETA freaks or NRA gun nuts, but overall their mission is clear: Drop enough argumentative crap into a thread to completely derail the topic and focus all attention on fighting their illogical flame war, which they often hastily skedaddle in and out of just to keep the fire burning. You're the Billy Goats who just so happen to be trip-trapping over their bridge, which is to say you have an opinion on an important topic that they can't wait to slot into one of their easily-dismissible buckets of nonsensicality. Forget trying to argue with them at all. They form the worst of the Venn Diagrams, overlapping sometimes all of the above-listed examples into one singularly twisted wire of discord.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Jun 18, 2008)

Dealing with life as a soft atheist/hard agnostic/secular humanist, it's not unusual to be assaulted with a number of attacks from the religious side. I will say that you often have arguments from other atheists, who rally against my lack of conviction in some cases, my willingness to tolerate religious moderates and my perspective that their extremist positions cannot exist in the world we know today. So, while this is by no means a complete list, I hope it's at least a primer on how to avoid many of the common nonsensical arguments levied against those who question the value of faith and religion:

1. *"Atheism is just a form of Satanism or a religion in it's own right."* 
This is a very common argument, one that I hear more often than not. The first point (Satanism) implies that since Satanism's one precept is "do what thou wilt," the atheist mindset indicates that a Godless life is an amoral life and therefore an atheist is just a closet Satanist. As someone who understand a bit about biology, my argument is that we are still only about 1 million years removed from our primate ancestors, and at times display levels of evil unheard of in the animal kingdom. As Joseph Conrad once said, _"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."_ I no more believe in an omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God than I do His fallen angel who exists solely to combat Him. For all intents and purposes, you may as well call me a Lex Luthorist by that reckoning. 

Calling atheism a religion ties into #2 below, and the argument ties heavily into a complete misunderstanding of the term atheism: a- meaning "no" and "-theism" meaning "belief in a God". Therefore it's simply an absence of belief in a deity. Religion by Webster's definition is the worship of some supernatural being or deity. Even a loose definition of "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith" doesn't apply, because faith in an atheist context is a loosely-held position that is tied to supposition or a form of loose hope not associated with the supernatural.

2. "*Since scientists tend to be atheists, isn't it just a type of science worship?"* 
Buddhists are not by definition scientists, and their belief system is considered atheism in a Judeo-Christian sense. There are a number of scientists, Human Genome Project Lead Francis Collins for one, who are fervently Christian but who are prestigious scientists in their own right. I would say by and large that many scientists are not people of religious faith, but science is not something to be worshipped in that context. We don't pray to "data" or "a god of perfect experimental design". Theories are not carved upon stone tablets and carried around the University grounds for all to bow and pay homage. I would say that non-scientists often interpret the "wonder" and "beauty" of science as described by scientists to be similar to a religious awakening, but they are applying an association that doesn't really exist. I can be fascinated and awed by the complexity of a molecular machine such as the actin-myosin motor, which transports organelles inside a cell and is required for muscle contraction, but I would not give thanks to science as a gateway for anything other than providing the tools for discovery.

3. "*If God cannot be proven since His existence relies on faith, and you need evidence to prove something scientifically, can you really prove the existence of God in the first place?"* 
This is to a degree true: You can't prove that which is by definition in faith unprovable. You can fall back to the Douglas Adams postulate that if God demonstrated proof of his existence, and since proof denies faith He'd vanish in a puff of logic, but realistically we are discussing a philosophical construct vs. a scientific one. Even in this area, there are degrees of atheism. By definition, I would consider myself an agnostic atheist, in that we cannot know in the scientific method of the existence of God, but evidence to date and my personal opinions infer that one does not exist. There are numerous philosophical and epistemological takes on the definition, and most are in the realm of rational discouse instead of the public domain where more clear cut lines are drawn. In any situation of public debate I would be labeled a non-believer, pure and simple, with or without various degrees of displeasure as to my position.

Note too that atheism is NOT antitheism, which is to actively oppose all forms of religion or supernatural beliefs. Journalist Christopher Hitchens espouses this particular take, and it is the one I think most religious people are pointing to when they are speaking of someone out to 'destroy Christianity'.

4. *"Atheists talk about Christian atrocities like the Crusades or the Inquisition, or the Muslims and their fanaticism, but godless leaders like Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin have killed more people than any Christian!"*


This is without a doubt the one argument that throws me into a tizzy. CONSTANTLY thrown up not just as an attack against atheism, but also one against evolutionary theory (see the recent travesty "Expelled" film where Ben Stein--the Nixonian cognate of intellect that he is--stated that evolutionary theory and the support of science led to the Holocaust). I won't try to put it in my own words, but this blogger put it into a very succint and accurate summation. A short quote:_It is irrelevant whether Catholic Adolf Hitler or seminary boy Joseph Stalin had shifted to atheism at the time of their crimes, or whether dictators such as Pol Pot were raised outside Christianity  because they acted out of megalomania, paranoia, or political ambition and not specifically according to any dictates of nonbelief. (Even if they had acted out of atheistic motivations, this would say nothing about the truth value of atheistic beliefs.) Dictators have historically demonstrated a predilection for claiming divinity for themselves or for setting their regime up as the state religion against any competing religion. Such actions have nothing to do with atheism and everything to do with self-aggrandizement and power consolidaton. _​
_Similarly, so-called Social Darwinism has nothing to do with Charles Darwin or biological evolution beyond the fact that Darwin was inspired to decipher the mechanism of natural selection by Thomas Malthus' study of competition for limited resources. The sociological philosophy could just as appropriately have been termed Social Competitionism or Social Malthusianism as Social Darwinism. However, like so much else that frightens religionists, the label has afforded a convenient target for fallacious arguments._​5. *"Atheists have no morality or hope. How can you have hope in life when there is no afterlife?"*

This is one position which I think many religious people have the most concern with. If you believe there is no afterlife, no ultimate justice or judgment for your actions, what is the drive then? Atheists do have morality--the Golden Rule, the Categorical Imperative, behaving humanely toward all things, these do not require a religious perspective, despite some of it having come from a religious take. I would argue that goodwill extended from a non-believer is much more altruistic, because at the heart of any religiously-inspired good deed is the simple premise that to do so gets you good marks with God. I am sure that developing countries welcome food and clothing and shelter built by Christian charities, but expect that along with that 'selfless charity' comes Bible lessons and conversions to their faith. Winning of hearts and minds as it were.

As to an afterlife, it's a position that makes you want to live life to the fullest *here*. Enjoy THIS life, defend the health of the planet, work to better societies and preserve unique cultures, because once it is gone, it's gone for good. I admit my own limitations in living out this part of the situation--I could do more in the community or more to educate others; I know when my kids get to school age I will be getting involved more. I also know that I raise my kids well, with excellent manners, a kind and loving heart, a nonjudgmental appreciation of others and a desire to learn about the world and that uniqueness in everyone. When they come of an age when they can cognate for themselves whether a religious calling is for them, I welcome them to learn as much about it as possible. If I am questioned about it, I would gladly try to answer them in a way that respects their level of intelligence and to not cloud their minds with my particular subjectivity. I hope I can be as successful in that attempt when the time comes.

*Honorable Mentions:* I won't go into details on these, but rather point to what I consider excellent references to counter these arguments.

*"Atheists are anti-American, because this nation was founded on Christian principles."*

*"Atheists are fighting a losing battle. Church attendance is on the rise, belief in Christ and Allah is increasing. The Armies of Faith are on the move and the godless do not stand a chance."*


----------



## moore2me (Jun 18, 2008)

Admiral Snackbar,

What's sad is most of the Nazi were thought they were Chrisitians. They went to church (mostly Catholic), had sacrements, had priests, followed religious holidays, sang Christmas carols, even had Christmas trees at home with presents. Just like many Americans did. There was just a core of inner evil underneath the leaders of the Nazi realm that was allowed to permeate into their government. None of these guys were even close to Christ's teachings, or Budda's, or Mohammed's for that matter.

And the few young men and women in the US and around the world that are trying to follow in these demonic Nazi, dead men's footsteps are foolishly traveling down a path that will strangle the life out of their souls. It will lure them in by making them think the Holocaust did not happen or was inflated and these young can't see or hear the true horror behind the lies. But most folks, who call themselves or called themselves Nazis were not Atheists.

As you can see Admiral, I have a rather strong opinion & that is - Nazis give even Atheists a bad name!


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Jun 19, 2008)

moore2me said:


> As you can see Admiral, I have a rather strong opinion & that is - Nazis give even Atheists a bad name!


For want of a successfully critiqued painting and a lack of political motivation, former altar boy Adolph Hitler could have been the 20th century Picasso of Germany instead of a genocidal killer.


----------



## SparklingBBW (Jun 19, 2008)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> Wargames was one of my favorite films as a kid. I was just entering high school, and a PC was something that us Commodore 64 dorks could only dream about. Regardless of how it launched an entire generation of nerds, hackers and nuclear armageddon fanatics (no pun intended), it still had several aspects that I just don't ever see being plausible, all the obvious dramatic license aside.
> 
> 1) The way to get a cute chick to suck face: Change her grade and give her a life-threatening adventure. This is a given in Ladder Theory. Girls like bad boys, and being the guy who almost ends the world (and then saves it) is like technological Spanish Fly; I'm amazed the Jen Mack didn't just mount David Lightman right there on the NORAD desk.
> 
> ...




This movie was a biggie for me as well. I still crush on MB and still find myself passing on the philosophies of the film to my friends. 

My two favs being, "I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it'd help!" (And yes Corbin was robbed!) and naturally, "The only way to win is NOT TO PLAY." I find this especially useful when dealing with borderline personalities, web trolls, Jehovia's Witnesses, and otherwise complicated people. 

Great movie admiral!


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Jun 19, 2008)

Genarose54 said:


> My two favs being, "I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it'd help!" (And yes Corbin was robbed!) and naturally, "The only way to win is NOT TO PLAY." I find this especially useful when dealing with borderline personalities, web trolls, Jehovia's Witnesses, and otherwise complicated people.
> 
> Great movie admiral!


I am always trying to find a reason to insert the phrase "I don't need some silicone DIE-OWED to tell me that" into a discussion.

I would say that arguing with your boss and saying "I don't have to take that from you, you pig-eyed sack of shit" may get you in a wee bit of trouble.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Jul 16, 2008)

Per a request, I'm adding this in. Granted he had a relatively short career directing (only 8 movies in IMDB) but he did write a ton of things. I'm only focusing on his director credits. Granted after he made his deal with the devil writing Home Alone, Satan demanded that "in order to grant thee this boon, thou shalt not direct another successful film".

Ferris Bueller's Day Off: OK, who doesn't like this movie? Wunderkind teenager pwns parents, teachers, principals, community. Gets the girl, helps his best friend grow a pair, saves the parade and reconciles with his sister. If he had only averted a nuclear holocaust and became President, it'd be the perfect movie.
Weird Science: Kelly LeBrock saying "wanker". Anthony Michael Hall and Some Kid Who Never Went Anywhere get to live out the ultimate geek fantasy. Bill Paxton made this movie great, and Ms. LeBrock didn't hurt. Even had Robert Downey Jr., who at that time was doing enough blow to finance a small Guatemalan city.
The Breakfast Club: A Brat Pack Sub-Critical Mass. All you needed was some rich, preppy guy and it would have exploded, decimating Shermer, Illinois. They lost me on the lack of a fat, nerdy character, but A.M. Hall had the concession on geek in the 1980s. Excellent soundtrack, as well as the quintessential Barry Manilow teardown that kids are still using on teachers, parents and old people to this day.
Sixteen Candles: Like B.C., it had all the right 80s teen elements. You even had the exchange student angle that was stolen from then on out. I kept waiting for the inevitable sequel, Sixteen Months Later, where the Prom Queen has Farmer Ted's bastard child, Molly Ringwald and her boyfriend murder her asinine parents and live off the life insurance, and Long Duk Dong becomes the host of the most popular dating show in existence. I'd pay money to see that.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles: While Uncle Buck holds a special place in my heart, the presence of Macaulay Culkin taints it with his insipid, precocious cuteness. Hughes got it right - give two of the most popular comedians in history a road picture and let it write itself. They even throw in the "goddammit, I am NOT going to cry" bit at the end with the happy ending. A staple holiday picture in our home.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 5, 2009)

Now I know everyone will say that "dragons" are a classic D&D monster, but really, they've become sort of synonymous with boring. Even though 4th edition rules have beefed them up considerably (along with every other freaking' monster), there are still some older, more unusual ones that lay near and dear to the Admiral's heart.

NOTE: For reference I will try to use the abilities/stats common to 2nd/3rd edition rulesets, since many monsters changed a lot (or disappeared entirely) with the new rules.
*Mind Flayer (Illithid):* What's not to like about an obvious Cthulhu pastiche that latches onto you like a tentacled lamprey and sucks your brain out in one round? Once the backstory came out in the supplement, The Illithiad, they became even creepier, mainly because they were an alien race from across the multiverse that reproduced by inserting larva in the brains of other humanoids, which then transmogrified into the mind flayer. Granted these baddies were more attuned to psionics-based adventures, but they sure provide some fun for those Underdark adventures where someone goes "goddammit, ANOTHER Displacer Beast? Give me something exciting!". Also as an honorable mention are the Githyanki Knights who were the nemeses (and former slaves) of the illithids.
*Rust Monster:* Aaah, the great equalizer and the crap-your-pants nightmare of plate mail-wearing, broadsword-wielding fighters everywhere. A cross between a chicken and an armadillo, I used to LOVE dropping nests of these fuckers into campaigns where everyone just assumed hack and slash fun, then were standing there in their leggings after one of the little guys dissolved their suit in 2 minutes. One of the favorite magic items I ever thought up was an alchemical rust monster powder, which you could throw and if it scored a hit, performed at 50% of the strength/rate of a normal rust monster hit.
*Penanggalan: *Surprisingly, when I looked this up on Wikipedia, I was surprised to see that the D&D version was much less freaky than the actual Malaysian folklore of the monster: A vampire that feeds on pregnant women and children. Basically a vampire whose head detatches from the body, dragging a clot of internal organs around, dripping with acidic ichor, which only turns other women into spawn. Unique for it's gross-out factor in an otherwise already gross compendium (the 1st edition Fiend Folio).
*Beholder:* Like the Rust Monster, the central eye of the Beholder was the bane and nightmare of mages everywhere. Having a good missle weaponeer on your team was essential, as well as someone who could chop off eyestalks with finesse. It was one of those monsters that was a D&D equivalent of Gump's box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get. Instant death? Turned to stone? Disintegrated? Oh, the possibilities were endless, and that was just the native form. Once they introduced the variants (beholderkin) it got even more interesting, such as the fungal pod that mimicked a beholder but exploded and spread infectious spores all over you if you sliced at it. Good times.
*Tarrasque:* This was the answer to the cocky gamer from #1 who whined about not having anything tough enough to kill after he waded through a horde of pissed off Mind Flayers, killed Lolth (the Drow spider goddess) and basically yawned at everything you threw at him. The Tarrasque made everyone his bitch and if he didn't, he just swallowed you whole. Not only was he a massive, almost Tyrannosaur-like creature, but he regenerated constantly, was impervious to magic and missile weapons and assuming you got him down to -10 hit points, you then had to WISH for his death. The newest edition of D&D shows him as basically unkillable.


----------



## Tad (Mar 5, 2009)

I was always of mixed feelings about Rust Monsters. I thought their existence was a great thing, to keep players nervous, and you had to occasionally meet one to give that backing. But far too often, in experience and what I saw in pre-written stuff, they were essentially sprung as a trap, which just seemed mean, like the DM/writer was just enjoying a laugh as the characters lost things that had been hard won, without any real chance of avoiding the situation.

Beholders were a beautiful puzzle. 

Mind flayers had a nice horror component to them, I agree.

The others were from after my playing days, I think.

After a bit of jarring my memory circuits (my D&D days were at least a quarter of a century ago…but my son is now starting to play, so I might need to really get those old circuits humming again), I think the monster that I loved to hate the most was Trolls. That relentless regeneration meant you could never rest easy, even once you’d killed them. There were more terrifying things, like the undead that would suck away your hard earned levels, but trolls seemed to have the right balance of creepy versus manageable to make them really interesting. 

But the most memorable encounters were pretty much all versus characters (or monsters that could have character classes, like the Lich). How could it be otherwise? A really detailed, interesting, monster, might have most of a page about it, and have several abilities. A group of characters could draw from the entirety of the Player’s Handbook and the half of the Dungeon Master’s Guide that was dedicated to magic items, so they could have almost any ability and strategy.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 5, 2009)

edx said:


> I was always of mixed feelings about Rust Monsters. I thought their existence was a great thing, to keep players nervous, and you had to occasionally meet one to give that backing. But far too often, in experience and what I saw in pre-written stuff, they were essentially sprung as a trap, which just seemed mean, like the DM/writer was just enjoying a laugh as the characters lost things that had been hard won, without any real chance of avoiding the situation.


DMs walk a difficult line. On the one hand, with any lasting campaign, you want your players to survive, have fun, advance. To grow into the character is to enrich the game. Since you're essentially playing god, you're also at the whim of chance to a degree (dicerolls) but also executive privilege (rolling a natural 20 but choosing a lesser hit to avoid killing a weakened character who was just having a bad night with the dice). It's sort of the same absurd logic of life; the mom who has a miraculous 8-child birth but a plane crashes in Turkey killing all 50 passengers.

On the other hand is also the schadenfreude aspect as well. The cocky player who thinks they can't be killed should find himself with a number of handicaps; bad dice rolls, a surprising number of critical hits that blow through his amazing Armor Class, monsters always doing max damage. The overriding rule is "Do not piss off the DM" and I've found myself on both sides of the screen wishing someone hadn't dropped a challenge for something tougher to kill, then suddenly finding 20 ogre mages teleporting in from god knows where, all armed with Staves of Automatic Mass Death.



> After a bit of jarring my memory circuits (my D&D days were at least a quarter of a century agobut my son is now starting to play, so I might need to really get those old circuits humming again), I think the monster that I loved to hate the most was Trolls. That relentless regeneration meant you could never rest easy, even once youd killed them. There were more terrifying things, like the undead that would suck away your hard earned levels, but trolls seemed to have the right balance of creepy versus manageable to make them really interesting.


Yeah, I always made sure to equip my guys with at least some means to burn shit. Usually anything that regenerated could be killed with fire, or at least a mage who kept one slot open for Burning Hands just in case.



> But the most memorable encounters were pretty much all versus characters (or monsters that could have character classes, like the Lich). How could it be otherwise? A really detailed, interesting, monster, might have most of a page about it, and have several abilities. A group of characters could draw from the entirety of the Players Handbook and the half of the Dungeon Masters Guide that was dedicated to magic items, so they could have almost any ability and strategy.


I think that was an aspect that made Ravenloft so fun; the nemesis was a mage/vampire, and he was motivated, detailed and in control of everything. The right DM could play Strahd Von Zarovich with finesse, making it a multi-series adventure and (if you played within the Ravenloft game system), an ongoing campaign for PCs just to get out of the Demiplane (as a backstory: The eventual Ravenloft gaming system had the original adventure and many others on an artificially-created "Demiplane of Dread," which you were always magically transported to but often found it impossible to escape--some twisted curse of the gods or something).

Again, with a talented DM, you can make the nemesis of the story as deeply unique and varied as any player character.


----------



## Blackjack (Mar 5, 2009)

Man, I gotta get into D&D some. It just seems so _complex _to me, that I don't have any idea where to start.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 5, 2009)

If nothing else, 4th edition rules took a lot of the Illuminati-like secrecy out of it, adapted it for a whole generation of people used to World of Warcraft and somehow balanced it out. Some people hate the balance, some people hate the fact that the company that makes the game adapted it for online usage. Their print magazines, modules, tools are all online now for a nominal monthly fee, and now that many, MANY players are using laptops in lieu of true pen and paper, it works, and works well I may add.

I recall seeing one group that had two members who were remote (other city, family obligations, etc.) that did a gaming session where half the people were in the room and the other half were camming in on iChat or some other app, using online tools to do dice rolls, character stats and so forth. Try doing that 2-5 years ago.

One universal rule I've discovered in all my years is "Never assume acceptance of a new way of doing things when it involves a group of people who pick apart absolutely everything". There are people who go on, I kid you not, page long tirades about the fact that miniatures are sold as plastic cast/shoddily painted molds today instead of unpainted lead figures. MINIATURES! :doh: My god, shut down EVERYTHING, we have a fucking national crisis on our hands!

Bottom line is each version had it's pluses and it's negatives. 1st and 2nd editions were relatively comparable, 3rd edition was so overmerchandised you had to pack like a goddamn sherpa to take all your books, supplements and stuff to a session, 4th edition is the newer, online gaming creation, and it's just starting. So far, as a guy who has a job, children and sex doesn't have 20+ hours a week to pour into my game anymore, the lighter, less-intensive style works well for me.


----------



## Tad (Mar 5, 2009)

Beej: Just to point out, there are many, many, many different pen-and-paper role-playing games out there, the majority of which are probably simpler to learn than D&D. D&D was first, and became best known, and has continued to have the most market presence. However, there are certainly plenty of people (and obviously I tend to be one of them) who kind of view it as the Microsoft Windows of RPGs. It is easy to get, easy to find others who use it, and it does work reasonably well after a fashion, but.for the most part, for almost anything you want to do, you can find something else better suited for the task. 

In particular, D&D is a game where, to a large extent, you play the game rules. The game rules may bear some resemblance to a reasonable fantasy reality, but you will almost always be more successful choosing your strategies to take advantage of the rules, rather than doing what seems to make sense or what seems the most cool and dramatic. There are other games which work much harder to model some form of reality and to have less odd and funky rules, and there other games which try to encourage dramatic story-telling, with far less intrusive rules. Which style any particular person prefers tends to be a matter of taste.

For the past few years Ive done role-playing via yahoo-group (mailing list plus a central spot to store files, links, etc). But using a game system where many conflicts are settled with a single die role, and even insanely long, drawn-out, dramatic, ones are apt to come down not much more than half a dozen roles per player. I cannot imagine playing D&D by mailing list!

I listened in while my ten year old took part in a demo game of D&D, 4th edition, this past weekend. I think the new system did have a lot of new improvements, but it really did not seem like its essential nature had changed.


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 5, 2009)

edx said:


> Beej: Just to point out, there are many, many, many different pen-and-paper role-playing games out there, the majority of which are probably simpler to learn than D&D. D&D was first, and became best known, and has continued to have the most market presence. However, there are certainly plenty of people (and obviously I tend to be one of them) who kind of view it as the Microsoft Windows of RPGs. It is easy to get, easy to find others who use it, and it does work reasonably well after a fashion, but.for the most part, for almost anything you want to do, you can find something else better suited for the task.


 There's always some dude spouting out about the awesomeness of GURPS or whatever else passes for the Linux of RPGs these days 



> In particular, D&D is a game where, to a large extent, you play the game rules. The game rules may bear some resemblance to a reasonable fantasy reality, but you will almost always be more successful choosing your strategies to take advantage of the rules, rather than doing what seems to make sense or what seems the most cool and dramatic. There are other games which work much harder to model some form of reality and to have less odd and funky rules, and there other games which try to encourage dramatic story-telling, with far less intrusive rules. Which style any particular person prefers tends to be a matter of taste.


 I agree to an extent, but I would also say it's incredibly subjective and based on the DM/GM you use. You get some guy who is a rules whore and he's going to make it miserable. Back in Dragon there used to be "pages from the mages" which was their Q&A session and some of the most asinine, nitpicky shit would come through, and someone at WoTC had to make a call on it. This also lent to the issue of "whomever has the mostest time to read everything can find a loophole for anything", which got suckier when you had a campaign where 50-60% of the guys were unmarried dudes living in mom's basement, knew the Player's Handbook and the last six issues of Dragon cover to cover and so forth.



> For the past few years Ive done role-playing via yahoo-group (mailing list plus a central spot to store files, links, etc). But using a game system where many conflicts are settled with a single die role, and even insanely long, drawn-out, dramatic, ones are apt to come down not much more than half a dozen roles per player. I cannot imagine playing D&D by mailing list!


 I always refer to the people in the Society of Creative Anachronism as those who are closet LARPers who follow a high-level ruleset based on local kingdom rules and historical precedent. Our party currently has a significant metagaming aspect to it, and we do a good deal of work writing interstitials, session summaries, drawings, etc. in between sessions to enhance the fantasy aspects of things (and get XP rewards to boot).

I would also say as an objective observer (not a participant) that if you want a strictly by-the-rules game style, Magic-The Gathering and related games take the cake. They look as dry as the Gobi desert in terms of how much roleplaying is involved.



> I listened in while my ten year old took part in a demo game of D&D, 4th edition, this past weekend. I think the new system did have a lot of new improvements, but it really did not seem like its essential nature had changed.


I guess I go by my experience with the game; playing many years ago in junior high/high school, a sabbatical to my mid-20s and then rediscovering post marriage/post-kids with a bunch of WoW disenfranchised traditionalists who just enjoy getting together and eating my wife's cooking


----------



## Surlysomething (Mar 5, 2009)

This thread freaks me out.

It's like I just stumbled into the epicenter of Kingdom Nerdville.


----------



## Uriel (Mar 5, 2009)

Hehehe @ Surley above...Yep.

I guess you never knew that RPGs CREATED BHMs...Not all, but a huge percentage of the guys who play games are fat guys. I'm going to take a lot of pics at Gencon, just to tease the girls on the BHM boards.


Anyways, catch-Up

Top 5 D&D Monsters for me

1. Umber Hulk: How can you guys forget him??? Cross between a huge beetle and an ape. I played with dave Arneson at a Gencon SoCal a few years back, and I made sure to sit right next to him...which annoyed him, as I was drinking a coke that had a lot of rum in it... He could totally smell booze, and he didn't seem to like it. One of the worst games that I have ever played, but also one of the best, for the same reason...he ran D&D, as in Basic circa 1974 D&D. Haha, It was really bizarre....Anyways, I plied him for the story of how they came about creating the Umber Hulk. Short story was that several of his friends were in Japan, looking for a company to create dice for them, and someone saw a pack of little Gaiju-style monster toys. From it, one artist crafted the Umber Hulk, Rust Monster, the Bulette and several others (I had these as a kid...still have a 'Bulette').

2. Githyanki/Githzerei. These guys made the Mind Flayers interesting, since before, they were just (To me) a headache of Psionic weirdness.
Um, pun not intended...but still.

3. Green Slime!!!!!!!!! I used to use the various Green Slime kids toys/goop, dripping it over the figs.  It came off easily enough, and had the added bonus of removing dust etc...

4. Pseudo Dragon...every since I read Quag Keep (The first D&D story ever), I have loved them.

5.Beholder...already covered above.

Top 5 Old-School Modules (No specific Order)

1.Ravenloft, as above

2. Giants Series/Drow modules, as above under Q1.

3. White Plume Mountain: I'm currently running an updated version with Pathfinder, and it is a hoot, watching younger players struggle with weird traps, puzzles and something other than hack-n-slash. They love it, however...

4. Ghost Tower of Inverness. Umber Hulks (See Above), weird chessboard traps, Mini Elemental Plan adventures...did I mention the Umber Hulk!?!

5. Pharoah/Oasis o/t Whiter Palm/Lost Tomb of Martek.

OK, I need 6. The Chateau de Amberville Adventure. My brother ran this something like 6 times, and we loved it every time. He had a knack for creepy Poe-like GMing. oddly, we had never read the actual Amber modules. Oh, and isle of Dread...and All that Glitters...and Ravager of Time. The UK modules rocked.


-Uriel


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 5, 2009)

Surlysomething said:


> This thread freaks me out.
> 
> It's like I just stumbled into the epicenter of Kingdom Nerdville.


Well, you know, that's just like your opinion, (wo)man.

Now back up before I cast a Level 24 Eroticism on you 



Uriel said:


> Hehehe @ Surley above...Yep.
> 
> I guess you never knew that RPGs CREATED BHMs...Not all, but a huge percentage of the guys who play games are fat guys. I'm going to take a lot of pics at Gencon, just to tease the girls on the BHM boards.


As I like to say, Tolkien created fat guys...Gary Gygax just made them sexy.

The only problem with BHM RPG addicts is they expect women to you know, be comfy in chainmail, or very revealing loincloth type clothing, ala any woman drawn by Luis Royo or Boris Vallejo. Think Gor meets Leia in the metal bikini. I would also guarantee if given a choice between a sexy lady standing in front of them and $400 of free miniatures and a kick-ass dice bag, the average BHM may think twice about the chick because you never really can have enough dice or minis.



> Top 5 D&D Monsters for me
> 
> 1. Umber Hulk: How can you guys forget him??? Cross between a huge beetle and an ape. I played with dave Arneson at a Gencon SoCal a few years back, and I made sure to sit right next to him...which annoyed him, as I was drinking a coke that had a lot of rum in it... He could totally smell booze, and he didn't seem to like it. One of the worst games that I have ever played, but also one of the best, for the same reason...he ran D&D, as in Basic circa 1974 D&D. Haha, It was really bizarre....Anyways, I plied him for the story of how they came about creating the Umber Hulk. Short story was that several of his friends were in Japan, looking for a company to create dice for them, and someone saw a pack of little Gaiju-style monster toys. From it, one artist crafted the Umber Hulk, Rust Monster, the Bulette and several others (I had these as a kid...still have a 'Bulette').


We actually fought a bulette during our last session. Tough-ass creature. I remember the original classic edition module (5 pts if you can name it) that had the odd looking thing in it.



> 2. Githyanki/Githzerei. These guys made the Mind Flayers interesting, since before, they were just (To me) a headache of Psionic weirdness.
> Um, pun not intended...but still.


 I am still waiting for an author to come along and make a really good Githyanki novel in the tone of Salvatore or Greenwood. I am sure it can be done if you get the mindset properly.



> 3. Green Slime!!!!!!!!! I used to use the various Green Slime kids toys/goop, dripping it over the figs.  It came off easily enough, and had
> the added bonus of removing dust etc...


I bet that slime looked pretty interesting after a week or month's worth of dust. I used to hate Green Slime, and I had DMs who loved to shove it in. It's a nice "I'm tired of these characters, let's kill them all off" ploy where a party falls into a pit trap that's basically 3' of green slime. Happy trails, Hans.



> 4. Pseudo Dragon...every since I read Quag Keep (The first D&D story ever), I have loved them.


If I had to pick a fave dragon it'd have to be Black. Nothing says lovin like a gout of corrosive acid in your face.



> 5Beholder...already covered above.


Great minds... 



> Top 5 Old-School Modules (No specific Order)
> 
> 1.Ravenloft, as above
> 
> ...


I still vote Baba Yaga's Hut as a huge favorite. Dr Who meets D&D; infinitely large structure on the inside, controlled by an ancient old hag


----------



## Uriel (Mar 5, 2009)

Admiral_Snackbar said:


> I still vote Baba Yaga's Hut as a huge favorite. Dr Who meets D&D; infinitely large structure on the inside, controlled by an ancient old hag





Ha, I have that somewhere. I have every Dragon that I ever bought, most without covers now, obviously. Wasn't there a Tiger Tank in there? Hehehe. 


BTW, Any of you folks going to Gencon this year?


-Uriel


----------



## Admiral_Snackbar (Mar 5, 2009)

Uriel said:


> Ha, I have that somewhere. I have every Dragon that I ever bought, most without covers now, obviously. Wasn't there a Tiger Tank in there? Hehehe.
> 
> 
> BTW, Any of you folks going to Gencon this year?
> ...


I believe it was a Panzer and a futuristic alien car. Relics from her travel to other times and dimensions.

There was an expanded module based on the Dragon version, but I didn't recall it being as interesting

Some rumors about the module; during the encounter, you meet two female sorceresses - one good, one evil. Supposedly according to the creators the evil one eventually becomes Iggwilv, the one who eventually writes the eponymous "Demonomicon".


----------



## Tad (Mar 6, 2009)

Oh yah, I forgot about teh Umber Hulk--and also the Xorn!

I have vague recollections that in 1st edition D&D you could end up with a pseudo-dragon familiar, although we never had it happen. But it was just a little too Pern Fire-Lizard for my taste at the time.

The only of my old D&D books that I still have is an early printing of the 1st edition monster manual (the early printings had the fabric outer coating on the covers, instead of the paper coating, making them a bit more durable, hence why I held onto it). I should really go flip through and see if there were any others that I forgot.

We never played many pre-generated modules, for the simple reason that by the time we had enough pocket money to buy much of that sort of stuff we'd mostly moved on to other games (I think I had far more material for Space Opera, Champions, and Aftermath than I ever did for D&D). Hence I can't really offer much of an opinion there. The one that we had a fair bit of fun with, though, was the one where it actually a crashed futuristic space ship that you are exploring (and I think there were Mind Flayers in there, somewhere, but not positive).

As for fat guys and gaming....yah. I've never really been a big Con attendee, but several years ago I did go to one in Toronto, because a friend was running it. It was for the Glorantha based games Runequest and HeroWars/Heroquest, the core audience of which were people who were gaming in the early 80s, so generally in their 30s now.....with that much more time to spread out. There were certainly some thin guys, but the portion of men and women there who would qualify as obese was probably the highest I've ever been in.


----------

