Random Thoughts

[El Pollo Guerrera]

Been hearing Rush's music all my life... and really started listening to it for the last 30-ish years... I feel kind of foolish for not noticing the drums at the beginning of "The Spirit of Radio" are supposed to represent someone turning an old manual radio dial quickly past a bunch of stations to find "a familiar voice"... and it happens twice, second time right before the 'reggae" bit.

[Ceir]

More double-tapping this thread. Some more office archeology turned up a crusty old notebook of mine from the mid 90s-early 00s, full of old computer game stuff. Y'know what most modern games lack? Cheat codes. Now, obviously you don't want people cheating in multiplayer, but even in single player games, they're just mostly missing. There are some that still have console commands, there are some that have what used to be cheat codes as accessibility options! But there was something neat about finding that shit out secondhand or on the nascent internet like it was some big secret. The important ones from OG Doom are still burned into my brain 30 years later - IDDQD, IDKFA for life!

[Ceir]

More food thoughts, turns out. When did ordering pizza become such a faff?

Feeling lazy and didn't want to deal with the typically long times my favourite local place suffers from, so I went ahead and rang up Pizza the Hutt. Got put on hold. Landed in a call center instead of the local number I dialled. Was offered three add-ons and a survey. Received six text messages in the next thirty minutes telling me my order was being made, ready, being picked up, being delivered, nearly delivered, and had been delivered would I like to take a survey. And my local Phutt is apparently so skint for drivers (read: has driven them all off, pun acknowledged and ignored, by treating them like shit) that they're farming out deliveries to bloody Doordash.

Next time I'm just going to call ahead and get a pickup from Local Place.

[Food Lady]

More fast food thoughts. Boneless hot wings are the adult-oriented version of chicken nuggets, and I'm okay with that.

I, too, am totally OK with that.

[Kit-Ginevra]

/\ If any ladies would like to show that they can replicate this, I would be very happy to act as a guinea pig for them...

[Nunavut Pants]

(Prompted by a very odd and long wandering conversation with a close friend of mine--)

I was really happy to learn, back in my late teens, that I could do things to someone I cared for that made them feel so good that it shut their brain down temporarily...

[Ceir]

A thing that never fails to make me smile: the fact that when not in flight, small birds look like they're moving in stop motion.

[Ceir]

Had a conversation with a friend at work today, and we came to a startling conclusion.

Of the classic Looney Tunes main characters we could think of, Marvin the Martian is the only one who - given sufficient motivation and the actual ability to do so - would actually swear. Not often, or blatantly, or prodigiously, but exactly and to great effect; what TVTropes dubs the "precision F-bomb".

Not Daffy or Yosemite Sam, they're blustering hotheads full of rapid-fire agitation that blows out as quickly as they're launched off-screen. Not Sylvester or Elmer Fudd, they have the frustration, but they're not frustrated enough to cross the line. Anyone else is too laid-back, goofy, innocent, or kind-hearted (yes, even Bugs the trickster god).

But Marvin - Marvin goes the other way. He's just cool-headed, calculating, and capable of enough negative emotion to be the one to drop the one very quiet, very precise, very just-in-the-background "...oh, shit" in the movie. And he's the only one that could pull it off.



(And you just read that in his voice, too.)

[Ironclad Alibi]

Triple post, tax paid with three things.

Couple friends and I were discussing this the other day. If you just heard it out of the blue in the world, with no appropriate context like a convention or anything, which of these classic sound effects would make you most go "well I have Concerns":
Transporter?
Tardis?
Ecto-1 siren?

Probably the Ecto-1 siren. Having grown up on 50s and 60s scifi movies, the ones that used a theremin for sound effects, I am used to the other sounds.

[Ceir]

Triple post, tax paid with three things.

Couple friends and I were discussing this the other day. If you just heard it out of the blue in the world, with no appropriate context like a convention or anything, which of these classic sound effects would make you most go "well I have Concerns":
Transporter?
Tardis?
Ecto-1 siren?

[Ceir]

Double post, double thought tax for the necro.

Thought A: because the rerun channels on my broadcast TV love CSI, NCIS, and their ilk, I idly wondered if any of the CSI lines ever did a crossover episode with their own sibling series - I know NCIS crossed over with JAG a couple times, but I didn't know if CSI ever did. Lo and behold, what's on tonight but the Miami/New York crossover. Answers that question.

Thought B: if I ever own a van or camper, damn right it's gonna be plastered with space wizard murals and stuff, and the hell with resale value.

[Ceir]

More fast food thoughts. Boneless hot wings are the adult-oriented version of chicken nuggets, and I'm okay with that.

[Nunavut Pants]

Apparently Mickey D's in our town used to have weekly specials on cheeseburgers--something like two for a dime. My folks, being starving students at the time, would buy as many as they could afford, and freeze them.

I guess that's why I view their plain cheeseburger as a comfort food, though I don't really remember having them all the time.

[dalesys]

A very specific, very weird bit of nostalgia, and/or making myself feel old: man, there was a time when walking into Taco Bell with ten bucks meant you came back L-O-A-D-E-D...

I remember Arctic Circle having hamburgers for 19¢. 5 for 95¢

[Ceir]

A very specific, very weird bit of nostalgia, and/or making myself feel old: man, there was a time when walking into Taco Bell with ten bucks meant you came back L-O-A-D-E-D...