Bartimaeus

Haven't seen much out of Love to suggest that he could ever be the guy (even though he hasn't had much public opportunity), and the fact that the coaching/front office did the opposite of what they did with Favre pretty much cements that he's a bust to me: you wouldn't keep paying Rodgers 50 million a year at the very tail-end of his career if you really felt like you already had the guy in waiting. But regarding the void year...to my knowledge, the extension he signed this past off-season got rid of the void year stuff, so his contract is real until he retires (well, assuming he retires by 2026).

I hope it was a kind of reverse and that the main character became a zombie and actually ate her pancreas, that's the only way that would possibly make it better.

The Packers can lose maybe one more game for the rest of the season and still make it, and that's not certain, particularly given we already lost to the Commanders who are currently sitting two (effectively three) games above us...with the Giants and Cowboys being even higher for the other two wildcard spots (whoa, the entire NFC East may well make the playoffs...though I think the 49ers will challenge the Commanders for the last one, particularly with them still yet to play each other). Luckily, with the margin being somewhere between zero and maybe one games to lose for the rest of the season, the Packers still have to play @Eagles, Bears, Rams, @Dolphins, Vikings (who we've already lost to), and Lions (who we've already lost to). Should be easy!

Uh, why are you giving him ideas?

Yeah, see, I only read like 15-20% of it, and all I really saw to that point was that A. she was sick, and B. he was pathetic. Somehow, even though I don't think I've ever actually finished reading or watching a story that plays out like this, I recognize the signs for it pretty much every time and immediately nope out. These kinds of dramas so clearly telegraph what they are about and practically everything they're going to do within roughly the first five to ten minutes, and I just...nah. Structurally speaking, I like to see characters with unique personalities, traits, and mannerisms behaving at their normal baseline so that I can rightly determine how interesting/likeable/relatable/empathizable they are before you start to cut them down and dump all their crap on me - if you don't give me an opportunity or reason to like or care about the characters in the first place, there's simply no reason to be affected by them. But other people that aren't me are clearly better at getting what stuff like that was going for even in the absence of normal characterization stuff, so I guess it's not as big of a problem for the rest of y'all as it is for me...which, I'm not going to lie, simultaneously makes me both mad and a little envious, .

This terrible Packers team doing the same old same old to the Cowboys and then the Cowboys immediately crapping all over the entire city of Minneapolis the next week does bring a tear to my eye: it's so beautiful. The vast majority of NFL teams are always much closer to each other than one would usually think, even when you look at ridiculous lopsided affairs like that 40-3 game - I don't know if they'd win, but I do feel pretty certain that if the Vikings and Cowboys played again next week, it'd be a lot closer than that.

I thought it would be horror-related as well, and when I glanced at it, I was thinking "okay, this could be interesting - the art style looks like all the other modern trash stuff that I hate, but who knows, maybe this is a Doki Doki Literature Club type situation, I might be able to jive with that...but wait, why would she recommend this to non-anime fans, that would seem to be pretty niche". Uh, no, no, it's exactly what it appears to be. Whoops. Yeah, I almost universally hate stuff that overtly feels like it's stroking the male ego, even stuff that should otherwise appeal to me (e.g. Princess Mononoke - though that obviously approaches it from a completely different angle compared to something like I Want to Eat Your Pancreas). It often causes me to immediately deconstruct it: "So the most completely a/pathetic guy with zero friends and social skills magically becomes close to HOT POPULAR GIRL...who randomly gloms onto him because she needs him due to her being terminally ill and inexplicably not having any other outlets because of asinine reasons that are quickly glossed over and which would never practically apply to any normal functioning person in real life, thereby giving him an opportunity that he doesn't really deserve to help him grow to be a better and more capable person over the course of the story completely at her expense as she declines in health - her entire existence and subsequent doom in the story ultimately proving to just make him better while providing some cheap sadness near the end." I only read like 15-20% of it, but that's probably more or less accurate in broad strokes, right? I hate it, just can't do it. In this case, it was a long time friend of mine who is a married, adult woman that recommended it to me, so that doesn't really track...but on the other hand, I've known her since we were teenagers and she was a pretty instrumental part of making it so I never investigated anime to any great degree because everything contemporary I saw that she and most other anime/manga fans were interested in always looked mindbreakingly terrible to me, so, you know, it's ultimately pretty fitting, .

At the end? Except for the baby, what about the beginning...and the middle? That was completely intolerable, .

I've listened to it like ten times. It's the worst thing I've ever heard, but it's also the best, and that matters more. I hope you listened to enough of it so you could hear her making the literal pig oinking sounds. The world was made a better place with its absence, .

A good friend of mine recommended the manga of I Want to Eat Your Pancreas to me, and against my better judgement, I read the first two books. Now, I'm not a moron, I knew within about the first two pages that it obviously wasn't for me, but I decided to give it a more than fair shake, since this friend hadn't recommended anything to me in a very long time. Well, okay, the reason she doesn't ever recommend anything to me is because we never, ever see eye to eye on anything, and she thought this might be an exception, as she felt it had general appeal for people who don't like anime. Sadly, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is the epitome of the "soft piano drama" that I have so often maniacally ranted and raved about, so that's pretty unfortunate that I despised every page that I read of it. Strongly recommended for Sarex though, as it seems like something that could genuinely be up his alley.

Oh no, luckily, it has that as well. Random system I found with aforementioned Sakura card: Uh...thoughts and prayers?

How about even 'better', the Sakura line of GPUs by Yeston: NOPE! Don't think you could pay me to have that in my PC...well, unless you wanna get crazy with the offer, anyways.

Le Devilman Lady spoilers:

Devilman Lady, episode 23. Jun returns to the home that she grew up in, which her grandparents currently occupy. They talk about life in the city and how she's ready to return to a more traditional life after all that silly rough and tumble devil business, and share memories over sake. Gee, Jun, I wonder why? Well, all's well that ends well: the end! Okay, now I've seen the last three episodes. So the thing about Devilman is, the main story/premise stuff is largely arbitrary nonsense that doesn't really hold up to any kind of inspection in my opinion, particularly with regards to why anyone ever does anything that they do. In conclusion, I do not recommend this show to KP, because I think he'd largely find it too slow and boring, too shoujo-like for the most part, which from what I gather was not really how it was in the manga. The main plot moves glacially slow, the action stuff is pretty weak, and it doesn't really get close to reaching the same heights of insanity that even the old OVA stuff did...and never mind Devilman Crybaby. It's a "maybe" to majestic because he might appreciate the oddball blend of soft demonic horror with shoujo elements like I did which made it worth watching overall, but I can't say for sure.

So...you're recommending that I don't watch it. I think the thing that bothers me the most from watching the trailer is the wigs. They're really terrible wigs, and like...just let them have their normal hair, .

Oh, also, Donald Trump is officially unbanned from Twitter as of 10 minutes ago after Elon Musk held a Twitter poll as to whether to unban him.

Using the law to bludgeon private companies and individuals into allowing speech they do not want to platform is pretty obviously the complete opposite of free speech. If fascist scum spray paint swastikas all over the side of your house, I imagine most anyone except fascist scum would be a little peeved if the government compelled you to never wash said vandalism off - and that you must also allow the other defacement that any random bugger walking by decides to create or put on your property to stay up as well. It's the exact same for the Obsidian forums and any other website hosted and maintained by a private entity or individual: your property is your property, and the government forcing you to allow it to be sullied and tarnished is the impingement of your property and free speech, not kicking to the curb the random dregs who are abusing their privilege (and not right) to be there by taking a crap all over it.

Just imagine what it sounds like without the music, which is how it was originally delivered. Hard disagree on the song you just posted, though: couldn't make it very far into that one. At least the Tamura video I could watch all of, embarrassing as it was.

My first thought was "it's hard to believe this sort of thing exists in the same universe that I occupy". Thing is, I was already coming to this thread to post the following video that I had the same exact thought about, even though it's from a totally different end of the spectrum. I think yours is admittedly more effective as ear cancer, though.

The U.S. Justice Department has appointed a Special Counsel (one Jack Smith, most recently the Specialist Prosecutor for Kosovo at the International Crime Court) to handle two separate criminal probes into Donald Trump: firstly, the January 6th insurrection, and secondly, the issue of stolen classified documents. We'll see if it concludes and ends in convictions within two years...seems unlikely given what I know of the U.S. justice system and how slow it can move when one party is doing everything they can to delay, which has seemingly been Trump's MO.

Yes, well, now that I've actually seen the advert in question, your previous response also makes a hell of a lot more sense, .

Bastard browser tricking me and making me think you were responding to what I said. I should've known that there was something there because of the extra empty return at the beginning of your post which usually denotes something is missing but it can be hard to spot if I'm not looking for it, my apologies.

I don't think anyone's ever called me subtle before, that's not really my thing. What's your specific issue with what I said?

I don't think I'd say that Republicans are evil. It's a lot more complicated than that and there are a lot of different forces at work here, some of them genuinely kind of evil but more just mostly borne out of a combination of different values, ignorance, intolerance, lack of empathy, tribalism, various kinds of frustrations and feelings of being transgressed against over a long period of time, and so on...and all of which apply to at least some degree to the other side as well. Being too strongly polarized for too long understandably tends to create feelings of animosity when it keeps resulting in each side pushing and transgressing more and more against the other. In real life, for my part, I almost universally pretend that I don't know the first thing about politics so that I mostly avoid hearing anything about it from anyone else, because frequently desiring to decapitate all the loud-mouthed morons in your life that just can't help but incessantly assert their stupidity, intolerance, and ignorance because it's apparently an incredibly critical part of their personality and identity to do so is just not a very good place to be if you can instead avoid it. Wanting to decapitate internet morons, on the other hand, now that's where you want to be. Bring out the virtual guillotine, folks! No, but really, I don't know where we go from here, because for as long as each side feels like the other is infringing upon them in whatever area that is sacred to (both of) them, the level of anger exhibited is only going to continue to rise. Predictably, it results in some degree of hatred, violence, and death...but how much in totality, where do we end up as a nation and society on the other side of it, and how does the overton window shift? I don't see any of this magically fixing itself, but maybe if we can wait out the baby boomer generation running its natural course without all hell breaking loose before then, then perhaps the worst of it can be avoided...maybe. I guess we'll find out in due time, won't we?

Well, I can't complain, court jester's not that bad of a job...as long as you keep all of your blood, that is. Get a year of valuable experience, move on to better pastures - I hear Henry VIII will need a new one by then... Hm, maybe I won't suggest this particular idea to Ms. Bathory after all...