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Hooray Wii! Hooray 5.1 Soundsystem! Weeeeee material possessions! I did get to see my new cousin (the daughter of a cousin is a cousin, right?) so that was nice. If you conclude that Christmas sucks beforehand, you might preclude yourself from enjoying that which might not suck. I say "might" because flying from Denver to Memphis was pretty terrible.

"Pneumonia" can be caused by any number of things: acute organ failure, for example, brought on by chronic drug abuse. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> So some coke he couldn't handle, then? I always thought he was a psychotropic fiend. PCP can mess you up bad. But it's sad (telling?) that he'll probably be known more for his vices than the occasional amazing song he'd make, or the dancing that made him a legend. I'd be all cynical and say he won't be remembered fondly ala Ray Charles because he didn't "white up" his music so much, but he made just as many clunkers towards the end as Ray did. Shame.

Being out on the road with just my laptop and me, I'm playing some Fallout 2 and BGtutu. Mmmm sorcerers are useful.

The thing is, if you're a big believer in free choice and freedom and such and so forth, you can't really tell anyone who wants to kill themselves that they shouldn't. Not even if they're depressed over some **** like the break-up of a relationship that was bad for them in the first place, not even if they harm others in so doing (take a depressed single mother with 4 kids who will permanently scar and impoversh her children if she kills herself). Their bodies, their choice. The problem is that line of thinking cheapens life, it becomes a commodity of less importance than the choice that ends it. so we have to decide if life is really valuable, or whether or not the choice to end one's life is reasonable. I'm not sure why anybody brought up the East in relation to this, as choice is never a factor, it's all about imperatives and obligations (and before we go off on some tangent on the nobility of the East, we have to recognize that communal worldviews can also foster perverse and cruel conclusions about the way things are, the "roles" of the lower classes and women among them.) And it should be pointed out that one our favourite bogieman, the Church, is far from alone in its condemnation of suicide. Kant, the father of humanist ethics, reasonably deduced that killing oneself is a violation of reason, because in his calculus all people have desires, and to desire a state in which one cannot have desire is a contradiction, and therefore to be discouraged. Personally, I've thought about it a time or two, like everybody else, and I've concluded that strength means living through ****, and that a true desire to murder oneself is indicative of such an overwhelming cowardice and ignorance, that they refuse to deal with their own problems, and run from them in a terminal way. Thus I see no reason to fetishize the practice.

Since you can't have freedom without peace, and since the Christmas thread is no more, I'll say that I hope you all came together for world peace yesterday. I know I did... twice. I love peace that much. Anywho, off to Memphis for a week. I expect things to go to **** in my absence.

Check the Alien thread.

Can we gets an Alien forum pleeaze :'( :'( :'( ?

Does anyone know if there's a tangible difference between mastery of any of the elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water) that you can get if you're a monk and you build the monastery? Or are they just titles?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Looks pretty cool. But I'd be interested in seeing what the game dynamic is, because there's supposedly some difference between older-school MMOs like Everquest or Anarchy Online and things like WoW and Guild Wars. Too bad I don't have the time to figure it out personally. How popular is this? What kind of membership tally does it boast? It certainly looks to be popular with bots Maybe that amount of banning is normal, or sub-normal, but it looks like a lot.

If one plays well, chances are the other probably will, yes. I don't know how much more strain the more advanced physics engine puts on. Might require more RAM to play well. But visually, you're set.

Well, seeing how as I'm an American and all, I cannot resist any movie about how truly, truly precious freedom is. And it's going to have big ****in' robots duking it out! For liberty! I can't wait! I bet the Decepticons are working for Al Qaeda.

Wait, the movie's about freedom? There goes all pretense of quality.

It's good for what it is, which is a humongous dungeon crawl. Even then, it's not worth playing for the extended amount of time it requires to beat. Even with the various PC mods that break the game's scaled encounter system (I've yet to see one that really works) it's all really easy if you know how to play an FPS. The issue here is calling it an "RPG". Hell, we might as well give next year's award to MGS4.

I Am X - President Trentemoller - Always Something Better Here's un that Meta will probably dig. Buck 65 - $5 Jesus

no, not really. Mikami moved to clover, which was a Capcom owned company... it's like saying you're moving out an apartment complex... then move into the apartment across the hall. He also said he'd decapitate himself if RE4 went to the PS2. Capcom's only real mistake about RE4 was anouncing the port "before" the GC version was released. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ya ya, that's the one. But will he be working on future REs, is the question?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> And here I had a friend swearing Capcom gave Nintendo RE exclusivity (something which was claimed before but backed out on). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I believe your friend was right. Some bigwig at Capcom quit in protest when RE4 was ported to the PS2, because of said Nintendo exclusivity. Shame, too. If RE4 had stayed GC exclusive, it would have actually made the GameCube a half-decent choice when considering what console you wanted to buy.

Indeed. I had started my campaign using Fallout PnP 2.0, which was okay for awhile, but as the scope of the game got bigger and more variables were introduced to the gameplay, it became more apparent that the system was more fitted to computers than DMs in a way that I couldn't handle well. After I started the campaign, I learned about SIMPLE, and given that I have a few weeks of vacation break from the game I felt that it would be prudent to "convert" the game to the more PnP-friendly Sawyer treatment. It wouldn't harm the game in any great way, I'd just have to change a few things and remake some characters under the new system. As is the case with any system switch, it's a little disconcerting and disorienting. But I'll probably get my players together and feel it out.

Wow, that's pretty good visual quality for Arcanum my computer can't seem to handle it for some reason. *edit - and by "can't handle", I mean "can't display the visuals without mangling them"

Gah, miniatures. I used to have the 2nd ed. campaign setting box, and I liked its doom-y feel, but I was never able to arrange an adventure in the setting. Seemed to me like Ravenloft could have made a great IE game.

*ahem*

BLIZZARD. I HAVE TO FLY ON SATURDAY YOU MOTHER****ING WEATHER. SPARE ME. Actually, I might be happier if the flight gets snowed in and I don't have to go, since I'm not a big fan of my family and all. But the weather might clear up by then. I don't want to have to deal with DIA, regardless.

Beat the game a second time, this time with a Warlock, and this time doing right most of that which I got wrong the first time, namely