Gromnir

some gender bias at work in this thread. trans prisoners, significant outnumbered by women prisoners in a ca prison setting, is gonna be the folks we assume is most in danger from being forced into sex acts against their will by fellow inmates. not saying the reverse is impossible, but am thinking one reason why transfer numbers were initially so low is precise 'cause only the most desperate trans prisoners were gonna considers such a dangerous option. however, time passed and the nightmare stories o' forced geldings did not materialize. the trans prisoners is gonna be abused wherever they go, but it turns out the women population is not as bad as is the men. HA! Good Fun!

our insurance provider called us up to tell us we underpaid for home insurance in june, even though we paid the amount demanded at that time. explanation is the nameless and faceless underwriters decided the fire threat in our area were higher than previous realized, so they retroactive (?) increased our premiums by more than $100... on top o' the june increase which were more than $500 above what we paid last year. didn't help that initially the insurer were trying to make it sound as if we had made a mistake in june and underpaid. *sigh* y'know, we were gonna fight it, but it's too hot and am getting too old. we did explain how this kinda after the fact price hike did not make us want to continue our decades long relationship particular as we shopped around and discovered we could get cheaper with other providers. we were gonna keep 'em for at least our home residence, but our patience has evaporated. we will observe the recent widespread ca wildfires these past few years has caused all homeowner insurance premiums in our geographic area to rise, but our insurer has been worse than most. plus, since am now only having a handful o' properties insured with them, is clear they do not feel the need to cater to us. had gotten kinda accustomed to the first class treatment but am now an ordinary plebeian. HA! Good Fun!

today there were a hotfix for the bug which prevents players from being able to interact with vendors, which was one o' the reasons we stopped playing. so, that's good. everything else which is broken, such as oracles being fubar and numerous animal companion bugs and crusade glitches (pre and post drezen) remain. might give the beta a try now that we are able to converse with quest npcs reliably as well as buy and sell stuff. HA! Good Fun! ps it is current possible to choose oracle as long as it is not your level 1 choice and keeping in mind nature is still a broken mystery which will lead to you needing exit the level-up window. so, repeat and restate to be clear, oracle is doable as long as it isn't your starting class and recognizing you cannot take the nature mystery. am not sure if you may add nature via a mythic powha.

gonna give you benefit of doubt and assume you are confusing ben hur remakes. 1959 were remake o' 1925. HA! Good Fun! ps and there were a 1907 version, before amentep corrects us, but it were a short.

we could name a few more but ben-hur is the one which always leaps to mind when this issue is raised and you had that covered. weren't gonna quibble once the point were made. in gd's defense, am suspecting many folks aren't gonna realize a few remakes is remakes. stuff like little shop of horrors and insomnia? horror films get overlooked, so the thing and the fly is possible ignored. also, am knowing there is fans o' internal affairs, but the departed were superior in every way, but again, am suspecting at least a few folks don't know or forget the scorsese film is a remake. regardless, ben hur were actual more than enough for us. HA! Good Fun!

please keep in mind parkland is in florida. HA! Good Fun!

we avoid emotes, but conan's response to thulsa doom bs works for us. HA! Good Fun!

good thinking. better than a gun, chemical repellant to be used against would-be hijackers on the road and for those potential home invasion nogoodniks while not travelling. HA! Good Fun!

just out of curiosity, what is it about wearing a mask which offends you? from our pov is a minor inconvenience, but am knowing some persons have.... philosophical reservations. am not gonna reply, so feel free to respond sans judgement, but am genuine interested to hear what evokes such a reaction ("Well… I am NOT going to do it.") to cdc guidance in light o' the transmissibility o' the delta variant and the current (as well as projected) increases in hospitalizations and deaths. spreads asymptomatic, so... obviously is no need to explain self, but am admitted curious. HA! Good Fun!

pass out the tissues for those who suffer muppets version ... maybe need some kinda weird factoid to make this relevant? hmmm. is s'posed the longest title ((hey won't you play) another somebody done somebody wrong song) o' any single to reach number 1 on the billboard top 100. HA! Good Fun!

nepotism offends our sensibilities. nevertheless, am thinking is kinda kewl a story so much focused on egon spengler's grandkids should be directed by a reitman and that a bernstein is contributing to the score. HA! Good Fun!

la law? well, tng had drumhead, and even got gene freaking simmons to guest for it. 'course the genuine star o' that show were the vision o' the future. tng (especial initial) were, even more than tos, less 'bout characters and more 'bout imagination stretching stories; outer limits stuff but with a regular cast. data didn't develop as a character were not a problem for roddenberry 'cause his real contribution were bringing assimov's positronic brain material to trek. the idea of data were more important than the character. who were the star o' wet soil if not the crystalline whatsitz? don't even get us started on 11001001. as such is no surprise tng remained dedicated episodic for the first couple seasons while gene's health remained good enough for him to maintain day-to-day control. 'course the problem is writers and actors and fans no doubt saw different than roddenberry and season 1 helped make obvious a bunch o' ciphers for a cast were not the best approach. HA! Good Fun!

lieutenant barclay grew more as a person than any cast regular. took how many seasons and the finale for picard to join the card game? required a locutus plot to force stoic picard to face personal conflict. once roddenberry were gone a few o' the female characters got better writing. even so, data, who appeared to be designed specific for growth, changed little. have a non fan watch a rando season two episode then a season seven episode and then tell you which were the matured data. nine regulars were needed so they could rotate character focus to keep the show from seeming staleness. HA! Good Fun! ps sounds like am slamming tng. ain't true. as we noted, some o' our all-time favorite tv were tng, but the writers o' tng faced serious self-imposed obstacles. they nevertheless managed to somehow come up with new material for years, squeezing everything possible outta an episodic format w/o the possibility o' real character growth from the main cast. we can't imagine trying such today.

colin farrell sounding as if he knows what is a "paradox." now that is acting. earlier article "Of the 20 addresses visited most by its dedicated enforcement teams, more than half were home to middle- or high-schoolers who were identified as targets." ... "Today, the Sheriff’s Office has a 30-person intelligence-led policing section with a $2.8 million budget, run by a former senior counterterrorism analyst who was assigned to the National Counterterrorism Center. The No. 2 is a former Army intelligence officer. "Twenty analysts scour police reports, property records, Facebook pages, bank statements and surveillance photos to help deputies across the agency investigate crimes, according to the agency’s latest intelligence-led policing manual." ... "“This reduction in property crime has a direct, positive impact on the lives of the citizens of Pasco County and, for that, we will not apologize,” one of the statements said. “Our first and primary mission is to serve and protect our community and the Intelligence Led Policing philosophy assists us in achieving that mission.” "But Pasco’s drop in property crimes was similar to the decline in the seven-largest nearby police jurisdictions. Over the same time period, violent crime increased only in Pasco." ... however, if you are looking for a bright spot... "Pasco is an overwhelmingly white county, and the program did not appear to disproportionately target people based on race." HA! Good Fun!

our pov is similar but different. it isn't as if nicholas cage sudden became a bad actor. doesn't shock us when he does good work. nicholas cage is an indiscriminate actor. doesn't shock us at all when he does a bad movie. am recalling kick-ass were the first movie cage did after his taxes problem. is one o' the more unique superhero films and am thinking cage were actual underappreciated in that movie 'cause so many fixate on chloë moretz. nothing stopped cage from doing good movies save for fact he stopped seeming to care if he did bad movies and so he got a rep as kinda a b-movie punchline. cage alone will not sell us on a movie, so am invariably waiting for multiple other people to offer themselves as guinea pigs before we consider wasting a couple hours on a nicholas cage movie. have heard good things 'bout pig. will watch eventual. HA! Good Fun!

star trek, unlike star wars, tried to have a science-based explanation for the seeming implausible. q was a useful tool for ignoring such. if you had a good story idea which just didn't make sense from a science pov, then make it a q episode fixed the problem. even better, you got an all-powerful walking and talking deus ex option who is not some kinda remote and ineffable being but rather one o' the more annoyingly human characters in the star trek universe. ironic, the reason the character were drek from a star trek pov is exact what made him useful/necessary. q were a clever way for adding magic into the star trek universe, 'cause he were an extreme example o' arthur c. clarke's third law. can't emasculate q with science 'cause explanation is he is just too advanced to be explained. regardless, am having no idea o' the current state o' trek. as noted, haven't watched discovery or picard. that said, the last thing we would want were a return to roddenberry's utopian vision (presumptive sans the misogamy) with the federation existing as some kinda big happy family o' well-intentioned space explorers sans any o' the predictable interpersonal problems o' a real family. can't even imagine writing such and is a real testament to the trek writers how after some growing pains in season one they managed to put together so many excellent episodes. HA! Good Fun! ps have mentioned previous how netflix were a godsend for our trek viewing. each trek series had multiple amazing episodes, often with large gaps 'tween great episodes. no dozens of discs with a streaming service. and if somebody reminds us o' an episode we maybe shoulda' appreciated but didn't, is easy to use streaming menus to convenient watch a episode. am not having the patience o' amenetep to rewatch all o' tng, but thanks to streaming, is ez to avoid such a slog. trek, for us, exists ala carte. thank goodness.

hmmm. might wanna rewatch the part where riker savors jellico coming to him for help. has been years since we watched, but am recalling riker is pretty damned petty considering, as we mentioned earlier, it turns out jellico were right. now do something like that every week. ah, the internet never forgets while roddenberry is alive, the jellico and riker thing happens only if aliens is covert taking over the federation or something similar. and show actual torture? doubtful. keep in mind the maquis/federation conflict is also in large part philosophical, and we is beat to death with the philosophy. the philosophy is just an excuse for the conflict with members o' same crew sniping at each other every week and the federation being shown as subject to corruption, mistake and conflict. roddenberry dying were a sea change for trek. HA! Good Fun! ps we did have something similar to jellico and riker happen while roddenberry were alive, but the guy playing the role o' jellico were a capitalist from the 20th century. season one "neutral zone" episode.

to be fair, conflict is at the heart of any drama. once you fix the ideal, and you remove inter and intrapersonal conflict, it becomes difficult to create new material which is compelling. you have removed obvious channels of conflict. do a movie or a limited series with largely fixed characters who is as close to objective good as is possible? no problem. try and do that with a long running series in 2021 without it getting stale fast. also, am suspecting cbs/paramount isn't necessarily to blame as is hard to imagine most studios being sold on a white bread kinda approach to trek storytelling in a post 1990s reality. and to be fair, cbs had multiple shows with idealized characters being swell every week for years. functional, dr. quinn medicine woman and touched by an angel was spiritual successors to star trek in more ways than were ds9. both shows cbs and both released contemporaneous with ds9. the notion of a genuine utopian society with a group o' objective good people doing good deeds on a weekly basis is a tough sell when such is s'posed to be a starting point as 'posed to the goal. am not seeing a problem with tos star trek and pre locutus tng storytelling, particular in a scifi movie or limited series which focuses more episodic. also, pale moonlight and visitor from ds9 is all-time trek favorites for us and am confident neither gets made by rodenberry... sure as hell the recent mentioned tng chain of command doesn't get made 'til after rodenberry is gone, though am suspecting amentep sees such as the moment the wheels o' the bus went flying off into the void. HA! Good Fun!

admission: have seen 0 episodes of picard and only oneish of discovery. what we saw o' discovery were less than entertaining, and so our plan were to wait a bit. wait made sense 'cause our working theory were that much like voyager or enterprise, as much as the shows were panned by fans, there would be at least a few fantastic must-see episodes. the thing is we keep waiting for our hardcore trek fan acquaintances to tell us they got to the good stuff. and so we wait and wait and continue to wait. am personal a trek fan in the more limited sense we has seen every previous show and every episode with the previous stated exception o' season two of the cartoon. is a few trek episodes we can recollect which we would add to all-time best tv, regardless o' genre. converse, there is a whole lotta trek dreck too. we assumed our friends who is serious trek fans woulda' watched discovery and picard regardless o' quality, and that is exactly what has happened. less courageous, am unable to find the motivation to gird our self for an unpleasant or uninspired tv slog. if our trek acquaintances is gonna voluntarily forge ahead into fields we suspect is littered with mines, who are we to stop 'em, eh? the thing is, everywhere they step is mines. is no not-mines. thus our plan has been foiled by what we thought were improbable: trek shows which trek fans have difficulty saying anything positive 'bout? what? am no longer waiting for the next trek show or movie. HA! Good Fun!

am thinking bsg is illustrative as to why so many american tv shows have poor finales fib. the show creators were making it up as they went along. they didn't have a plan any more than did the cylons. they added and subtracted and changed and their creation became increasingly unwieldy with plotlines which were as likely to bifurcate as dead-end. somehow gotta maintain tension for years and if part of the tension is based on a mysterious plan, how do you reveal protagonist progress w/o undermining the mysterious? gotta multi year show with dozens o' episodes and fans who you has tried to keep satisfied even though many like the show for different reasons. great stuff, unless what you genuine enjoyed 'bout the show were the boomer bot's personal conflict or the President somehow keeping the fleet together in spite o' impossible odds and weekly (literal) catastrophes. you got fans o' the show who were all watching for different reasons, so as a writer you would make battle episodes and adama and roslin episodes and baltar and six episodes and etc. make worse, 'cause after a couple seasons as a writer for same show, it must have been tough to find new things to say 'bout characters. solution is to instead put those established characters in increasingly improbable situations to create drama. perhaps add new characters? how long can you keep that up w/o it looking contrived? but what happens when you get to the finale, which you had not genuine planned for, and you sudden realize you gottta try and make all your fans happy? you imagine the size o' the whiteboard you would need to diagram all plots and characters you has spent years developing and you discover your imagination can't reach so far. many bbc shows and a few o' the newer streaming offerings got an advantage when coming up with finales 'cause they got fewer episodes than the traditional broadcast tv multiyear offerings and they often (not always) got a planned duration, which is if anything likely to be shortened as 'posed to expanded. HA! Good Fun! ps since am talking bsg, we noticed bear mcreary did the music for the he-man cartoon, which we were not previous interested in viewing. our opinion is kevin smith is a tool and we were never particular interested in the he-man character which were created to sell leftover and repurposed conan action figures. low expectations. our understanding is the new cartoon isn't genuine 'bout he-man anyway, so maybe that helps? dunno. am nevertheless interested to see/hear what mccreary does for the cartoon given he is sorta a tim burton movie character come to life.

final episodes is a bit o' a pivot, though admitted we did feel a bit o' whiplash from the sudden race-to-the-bottom efforts following our bsg observations. whatever. particular for episodic shows which lasted multiple seasons, wrap up everything in one or two episodes is a whole lot to demand from writers, directors and cast. has been more than a few best final episode posts in the tv threads o' this board... we has mentioned stuff such as barney miller and angel in the past, along with the genuine lol final moments o' the second newhart. as for star trek, am gonna observe how voyager is kinda unique in that not only were the finale representing one o' the better episodes o' the series (not much o' an accomplishment) with janeway going out like a boss, but it involved f'ing time travel paradoxes and we nevertheless did not complete hate it. tng has picard and q as focus so can't be all bad, but f'ing time travel f'ing again? quit it. even so, while is hardly in our top ten o' tng episodes, as far as an episode which brings the show full circle and concludes satisfactorily w/o befouling the franchise with any sorta shame from inept final handling, we find not much fault with tng's finale, save to once again observe time travel is a cheap dodge, and have q explain that this particular anomaly ignores causality is hardly sufficient from our pov, but whatever, we just got through recognizing we were able to endure the time travel silliness for voyager, so will indulge an exasperated sigh and silent repeat the henry 5's "once more unto the breach" monologue. is gonna be an unpopular observation, but we kinda see voyager and tng as being rough equivalent in terms o' decent finales for trek show endings. the rest? *groan* ds9? how did ds9 end? oh, that's right-- never much liked the wormhole alien stuff, in part 'cause o' time travel. however, the episode as a whole weren't awful save for the cringy fire cave stuff, but that were more than enough to smear the episode for us. enterprise were so utter inconsistent. am not sure what we expected from a finale. better. we expected better even though were no reason to even hope for such. still, we will observe how enterprise ended superior to tos. tos finale were bad. period. sorry. dr. lester (who the hell is dr. lester and why should we care?) tries to take over the ship, but... am not gonna get into this one further save to observe how when fans o' tng were perplexed by how terribad were episodes such as code of honor and angel one, the tos finale served as a reminder such were always possible with a gene roddenberry story and should not have surprised anybody. more than a few shows with excellent runs and superior final seasons nevertheless had weak finales. star trek shows had terrible finales save for voyager and tng. HA! Good Fun! ps we didn't have reliable tv until the early 80s, so we never saw season two o' the cartoon.

bsg soundtrack were kinda in the same vein of, "do it because it's going to be cool." the adama maneuver music is storming new caprica. bagpipes and taiko drums? oh, and lets get a few o' the guys from oingo boingo to contribute. kinda wish bsg had run outta money midway through the third season and had been canceled. an unceremonious and incomplete end woulda' been so much better than what we saw at end of season three and near entirety o' season four. if bsg had been cancelled, we could all lament 'bout what if instead o' cringing in remembrance o' what was. HA! Good Fun!

it can't happen here not our favorite sinclair lewis novel, but it is disturbing how a book meant to warn 1930s americans as the public increasingly embraced nativism and worse isms feels all too relevant today w/o being alarmist. guys like trump and hawley is characters straight outta a cautionary tale that nobody remembers or has chosen to forget. HA! Good Fun!

is the one where a bald madeleine stowe triumphs over sci-fi alan rickman, and riker plays at being heroic but it turns out that the captain bogomil was right all along and yet we somehow convenient ignore that part. HA! Good Fun!

nothing new, but the the thousands o' comments is illustrative and disheartening. HA! Good Fun! ps we did find dark humor in dr. fauci needing to explain that the chief incentive o' being vaccinated were not freedom from mask wearing but the fact the vaccinated person faces a far more reduced chance o' death from covid-19 than the unvaccinated.