Fizzzzle

Family is traveling to Oregon on the Oregon trail, parents were killed by dysentery or something. Older brother is taking care of the younger ones. They had an older-older brother who left or god kidnapped by Indians years before and/or lived as a trapper, I don't remember. The story is about the two brothers learning to live together in a new world, one who came from "civilized" society, the other who comes from the wild. I read the book once when I was like 13. It stuck with me for some reason, but I've never been able to find it again. I don't remember the title or the author.

That is indeed what hanging out with comics is like: source: dabbled in comedy for a minute and one of my best friends/old roommate is (or at least was) a comic. Get more than one in a room together and it's exhausting.

There's been a book that I read in middle school that I've been trying to think of for the last 15 years, I've never been able to find it. It's some obscure book that would only be found in an Oregon library. I've tried Reddit numerous times, I've tried Google, I've tried Facebook. I don't even remember if the book was good or not. I just remember some plot details. But not enough to help.

Yeah, banking on at least one hitting here. That reminds me I need to buy some batteries...

Maybe they were just nerds for small-unit cavalry tactics and the whole starting the KKK thing is incidental?

I had never played it before. The NES was before my time. I feel like going back and playing old games for some reason. The original Phantasy Star is next. Honestly, for a game that came out 36 years ago, it holds up a lot better than you might think. There is no story to speak of, you just get plopped into the world and go do things. You rescue the princess in the end, but like... the game doesn't even tell you that that's what you're doing? You're just wandering around aimlessly whacking at monsters, for the most part. The controls are a bit messy, but it basically is a less refined version of A Link to the Past, so the gameplay still holds up. How in the world they expected anyone to be able to beat this game without a guide is beyond me. The entrance to the final dungeon is literally a hidden door in a rock that you have to just *know* to bomb, or else just bomb every wall until you hit it. And that's how you beat the game. There's nothing in the game to even tell you it's there. I would say "do not recommend," but honestly, if you ARE using a guide (highly recommended - without a guide, 75% of your playtime would be aimlessly wandering the overworld, trying to find entrances to things), you can 100% complete the game in like 5 hours. If you're ever bored on a Sundayd afternoon, go for it.

Has anyone done research on why there seems to be a correlation between warmer climates and shit-hole-y-ness?

It kind of does feel like things are precarious. The bronze age collapse was the last time in human history that economies were so intertwined that no one was spared when the house of cards fell down. It's easy to think of a country like China as our enemy, but the reality is that if they go down, so do we, and vise-versa. It's kind of scary to think about. A drought in the Yangtze basin, fighter pilot that flies a little too close to Taiwan, a dam on the Nile, any one of a number of things causes the house of cards to fall down. Our connectivity with one another has both allowed us to progress as far as we have and will also be the cause of our downfall, whenever that happens. And to people who think nationalism and "looking out for ourselves first" in some way is the solution... It's already too late for that.

Infrastructure spending doesn't have immediate short term profits for people that matter.

There definitely is such a thing as sex without emotional attachment, as long as it's temporary. Sex (at least sex you enjoy) requires arousal, arousal requires hormones, hormones make you act irrationally/emotional. Unless you're a psychopath, your brain is basically wired to develop feelings for someone you're sleeping with if you do it long enough. Where the line of "long enough" is depends on the person, which is why it's a slippery slope. Somebody catches feels, and that might happen after tryst #2 or #25, but it will happen eventually.

I was going to say "at will employment" but then I remembered he's Canadian. The thing about at will employment is that it's allegedly for workers freedom, but in practice means your employer can fire you at any time, for any reason, meanwhile you're still supposed to give notice if you quit.

At a bar I used to work at, we had this homeless guy that would come by and deliberately be a creepy shithead to people until we called the cops. His name is Eric. It got to the point where I wouldn't even have to say anything to the dispatcher, I would just say "Eric's here" and they would send a car. The fucked up thing is most of the time the cops (who also knew him) would just drop him off a mile away, and sometimes he would just come right back. He wanted to go to jail for the night, and they never wanted to take him. Made my shift extra stressful.

When it hit 120 in Portland last year or whenever that was, I got so tired of people from phoenix being like "uUUUh, this is nothing," I was like dude.. 120 hits different when most buildings don't even have ac.

I could see Sony doing it financially, but EA's most valuable properties at this point wouldn't necessarily make sense as PS exclusives, so I don't think they would. Amazon or Disney makes the most sense. Or Tencent, obviously. I wonder what that would mean for the future of Kingdom Hearts if Disney bought EA

I understand your situation is unique, but I would advise against stuff like that as a general rule. There is no such thing as unemotional sex. Sex is emotional by default. You can have sex with someone once, two times, maybe even a handful of times without feeling the effects of that emotion, but you will eventually get emotionally attached. Our brains are just wired that way. Believe me, I've tried. Not saying you shouldn't do it, as I don't believe in telling anyone what they should or shouldn't do because I'm an idiot, I'm just saying introducing a third party in any committed relationship is a slippery slope. He's okay with it because he's not threatened, you realise the other person is giving you something he can't give you, so you become attached, now he IS threatened and insecure, etc etc. I've seen it happen. Hell, it's happened to me.

Eh, power goes out pretty often here, it's business as usual

I got fired once. I was working at a restaurant that was absolutely fucking wild, and I was the bar manager. Like, as soon as the boss left for the night (when she was even there), folks would start racking up lines in the kitchen, drinking, or just general debauchery. My boss eventually confronted me because someone told her they saw me drinking and she basically gave me the option of keeping my job if I rolled on everyone who was doing the drugs (I was also doing the drugs). I told her she could have the job, I'm out. She ended up cleaning house after that - pretty much everyone quit or got fired, even people who had been there 15 years. Plus, I only got a $3/hour raise to be a manager right before the minimum wage went up by $2.75, and when I brought that up she basically told me to go fuck myself. I wasn't really too upset about it. I found another job within like 3 days that paid better.

This sounds great for the winter when it's cold. NO CAMPING OUTSIDE ON THE STREETS. IF WE CATCH YOU, WE'LL GIVE YOU FOOD AND SHELTER!

I love that this is your answer, and I mean that with complete sincerity.

Fuck yeah, mark your kidneys.

maxing out a credit card just isn't as exciting. Also, if he didn't play this song, I would go on a hunger strike It's unabashedly one of my favorite songs of all time. It was the first song I learned how to play on every instrument. He plays Love or it isn't worth a kidney.

If you find Devin Townsend tickets for the royal Albert hall, I'll sell a kidney, we can do it. Did you see his Covid concerts?

I would LOVE to see Devin Townsend. I bet he throws a great show. The guy has more talent in his pinky finger than I do in my whole body. Fun fact: he plays almost exclusively in a really weird open-C tuning, ask him to play anything more complicated than like smoke on the water in regular tuning and he doesn't know how to do it. I think that is so rad.

Also Chainsmokers. Again, drugs. It was kind of before they went all poppy. They were still playing hard house music, like the kind you stomp to. Their show was sick, though. I was also on enough ecstasy to kill your grandma. I don't know, I spent most of my 20s either fucked up going to shows or bartending shows.

Rammstein sounds dope. Best concerts I've ever seen, in no particular order: My Chemical Romance Body Count Avenged sevenfold c. 2005 Dropkick Murphys Foo Fighters Zedd (I was on a LOT of drugs) Infected Mushroom (drugs) Gary Clark Jr (only gig I've worked where I wish I wasn't working, he was just exuding sex the entire time) I want to go to Europe and see Sabaton. I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of their music, but their shows look dope as fuck