Calax

Well, am inviting the waifs and strays around tomorrow. Friends on their own or away from home for Christmas. I miss the buggers after about a week not seeing anyone, to be honest. Family are all well and good. But (and maybe this is boarding school talking) your friends are your real family, I think. Family now taken over almost whole house. So am kipping in my office. I have a sleeping bag nestled up beside a filing cabinet. I love it. It's like camping, only awesome. I am incredibly tempted to move in permanently. For some reason I thought you'd said that you were inviting over waifs and strays to be buggered.

They're happy for all the support you've given them for the past eight years... since they opened in 2002.

Unless you've had to adopt a family like my aunt. They have the nuclear family festivities, but then invite the neighbors over because that family is cut off from their relatives due to stupid things said.

There's only been about 6 or so shows since Tom was on. Top Gear has turned into a weird phenomena where they do a single season of 6 shows, and a couple of "specials" a year. But apparently it still manages to turn into one of the biggest exports of the BBC to the world. You had a batch of american "big names" turn up on the show, but they were all the ones that were quite heavily "anglisised" or very big on the UK, such as Christian Slater or the like. In the last year or so tho, they seem to have started to have a few hollywood names who weren't UK born turn up to take the "reasonably priced car" around the test track and plug whatever they were currently doing. He was on in series 15, they've had at least a year since then (12 episodes).

Well, I know Cameron Diaz did that. And I think that Jay Leno mentioned Tom saying something to him (Leno is an interesting conversation because of how much Jay loves cars). Basically if there's an american on the show that has been near tom recently, he teases them abotu Top Gear. I'm surprised he hasn't found a way back on the show.

Surprised it wasn't Tom and Simon showing up. I know that Tom has a love for the show. I've seen other episodes where the stars are talking about being ribbed by him on the Top Gear track.

The product placement for bmw in MI4 was actually kinda hilarious. Two second scene featuring their motion sensative map that the passenger and driver can use (superimposed on the windshield) that goes nowhere... a "lookout person" feature that's used twice... a cool concept car... In other MI news, I just found this http://www.switched.com/2010/03/05/mission...-laptops-baffl/

They never occupied, but they were rather brutal in the two invasions that they tried to pull off. Also the Korean peninsula has been invaded, as Mesh mentioned, quite a few times. The invasion of the peninsula under the Toyotomi left a LOT of bad blood, particularly the destruction of farmlands. It took the chinese to bail out the Koreans in that case. But even closer to now, the capture/occupation in WW2 created more bad blood between the Japanese and the Chinese.

In the days of Yore, Japan and China were one nation. They split up and did dastardly things to each other, partly due to the nature of their divorce. Mongols probably didn't help matters either

From what I've seen, most of the rampant consumerism has died down. I haven't been in and rediculous lines, but then I've also not been out at peak shopping hours or on peak shopping days.

Well, if china does come in and start colonization/annexation, they might try to re-hab the population and then restructure the society. SK can't re-start themselves from the ground up, but NK is so beaten down that it'd probably be pretty easy to structure them into a national workforce for some industry. Personally if I were China I'd consider it a long term investment and go about building up the population and convering the place into a manufacturing center using the raw resources from china or other nations. In 20 years everything "low tech" could read "Made in North Korea" while high tech would be "Made in China". I don't see any unification going on however. For the same reasons that the Japanese never would "re-unite" with China.

Talked with my brother, and it would appear that I'm going to get a free iphone 4 from him with a warranty on it. Just gotta pay the bill. For getting rid of my old plan and the activation fee etc.

Well, i think the original idea for Nar Shadda was that it was a giant city planet that had no rules. Although it was a Moon

ALL HAIL TVTROPES!

True, but if they controlled the GDP of another country it'd be much easier to manipulate their economy to start working better. Particularly if they manage to create an industry that mirrors the SK export stuff. If it works and they manage to get something like Hyundai going they'd probably have a pretty good chance of turning things around.

Apparently the new Tribes game has decided to REALLY open their beta. I just got a random invite in my inbox and I don't remember ever signing up (unless they added me for trying out Global Agenda or something).

That's a tough choice ? Seems offing him would be sensible, with or without the show trial, naturally. So far rather enjoying my Agent, was a head scratcher how I got Light side points for being vague rather than threatening an assassin. But still, made up for that by killing a runaway dad and offing some smuggler. Because Vague and threatening generally means no dead bodies, which are FOR SURE darkside points.

And not as many men. Russia/China, if they play their cards PERFECTLY, could theoretically annex NK, or at least make it a puppet.

Would the NK's maybe flee through China to Russia? I know that Russia is trying to deal with a lower population.

There was a reason I posted as "IIRC". I hedged my bets with q4 But either way, it's still gonna be a pretty good game IMO

Probably one of the better ones to watch will be ME3 which IIRC is aiming for a Q4 2012. D3 is gonna be really hit or miss.

Seems stupid.

The darkside/lightside thing does actually do something. It provides titles. (yes, stupid I know but screw it). As to datacrons, if they're there to make you poke around, why does it seem like you're expected to die trying to get to half of them by falling to your end? The constantly respawning enemies is actually fairly common on various games. Basically the idea is that a respawn timer for most mobs is modified by the number of players in the area. During the cata(world of warcraft) leveling curve, if you were with "the pack" you'd usually end up having to kill 3 mobs in a row just to have a moment to rest. Figure that by the time you start in on a second character, or even just as time goes by, it'll calm down as the population spreads out in terms of levels.

Well, I'd be happier to have them, if they didn't attach a play bonus/effect to them, and instead kept it as a RP tool

I would assume that if the kid is controllable the people who are actually in power will keep him as a figurehead to the public, rather than attempt to kill him. I mean he's publicly taken his fathers position so killing him with a bullet in his head isn't really an option. However making it seem like his dead dad beat him with a candlestick or something would do well I think (Say the glorious leader did it from beyond the grave). Either way, it seems like the guy in charge is a manga freak/gamer.