Raithe

And still going strong... Clarkson threatened with three years in jail as Argentina re-opens Falklands row probe...

With the bouncing around on planets doing heroics, I finally actually wrapped up part of that macrobinocular chain. I thought "finally, i'll get around to clearing that." Got to Nar Shadaa, wen through the first batch of that Heroic 4 fairly easily - The whole jumping from air car to air car was a new and fun touch. Then I get to the hideout.. and find out you have to have a group to do it, because there are multiple clickied you need to press all at the same time. I loathe these quest chains that are all single player up until the end point, and then it demands a group. Especially on these quirky quest chains that no-one seems to be at the same point on.

With the upcoming Halloween / Day of the Dead time... Dressing up the Pinata?

To be fair, the book series started interestingly enough (with a few clichés) but then wandered into the authors personal political diatribe hidden behind fantasy and various deus ex handwavey stuff to fill it out and wrap it up. The tv show was entertaining enough with just the right touch of camp to the seriousness.

Cinemablend - How Kurt Russel Feels about Big Trouble In Little China remake

Still, we should wander back into the random amusements territory rather than get stuck being oh so serious here...

I think it comes down to how you read the tone, and that's always going to be a personal interpretation. To some the things she said and that style come across in a somewhat pushy, half threatening "if things go bad I'm going to be reaching for this bat" type of way. To others it's more a "I'm just being safe and letting you know this in case of issues". Either way, it made the guy uncomfortable so he backed out, and that's his choice. Her rage over it seems a bit odd regardless. Personally, I'd see it in a better light if it was more a "I let a friend know where I was going and the name of the guy I was meeting" as a general safety net. But jumping to the big name drop of "police chief" does seem a little overkill and heavy handed.

Variety - Fall TV Ratings Well, a general "scorecard" on how the current crop of tv shows are doing and the likelihood of them being continued, or cancelled....

Hm, with the small influence you get from going through the story stuff and the supply crates I had from doing all those heroics and meeting the resistance leaders on the planets.. I had enough to reach influence 10 with all 4 of the recruiters.. and still have a couple of crates left over. I haven't really hammered the influence system yet with my companions. I've got Lana up to around 21, Senya at 19, and the rest of the "main" core around 12-15. The rest are mostly in the 11-13 range. I went and did the heroic Star Fortress with a 3 man group and that rushed through sweetly.

Rumour has it that potentially you might be able to kill Gault when he turns up in the new story side of things. One of the reasons they've changed companions so that they can be switched from dps/tank/heal roles is so they have the potential to kill off companions. Plus with the new story stuff, you end up with a crapload of fresh companions (of a sort) that you'll be able to use. Although only 6 or so I imagine will have serious depth to them. And one of the key people in the new Alliance the Outlander sets up pretty much specifically states "if you see a Deveronian by the name of Gault or this or whatever alias he's using.. Shoot him." So here's hoping. On the other side of things, I actually spent a chunk of sunday and Monday running through every single Heroic on the Weekly Heroics terminal. Man, took me some, but the whole "transport to heroic" is a nice feature. Did net me a total of 20 Alien supply crates, 22 Artifact supply crates, 23 Military supply crates and 21 Smuggler supply crates... The lower 3 bars of my inventory were filled with companion gifts...

The Last Testament of Flashman's Creator

For that Halloween mood.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWxJaBZcQl8

For the offbeat amusement... ABC - Ukrainians transform Lenin statue into Darth Vader

It's all about the pun...

And as the weekend hit here with the loss of an hour on the clocks...

Okay, this kind of amused me...

The bit in the novels that really worked well was the further explanation on how so much of what was going on was purely set in motion by Palpatine as distractions to the Jedi, ways to set it up so more Jedi would get exposed to the dark side and potential "corruption", and then Yoda's realisation of just how monumentally he'd screwed up. The half a page or so when Yoda was fleeing the Senate chamber after that duel with Palpatine and the penny has dropped, and he's just "oh hell. I spent 900 years training Jedi to fight the LAST war and got them all focused and living the wrong way and set them up for this..." was really well done and highlighted elements to the story that never really get picked up in the films.

What's really weird is that the story actually worked a lot better if you read the book versions of Episodes 1-3. It just failed in the medium of film, maybe it was helped by all the extra padding/information/what characters were actually thinking in the novels rather than just having to go by mass cgi effects and the brutal dialogue when it's on screen.