Random Chatter

[Star Eater]

Heading off to an 80s movie night get together.

[Angel Intheuk]

I just discovered the neighbouring flat's cat, who we have let come to our balcony because otherwise pigeons shit all over it, has been shitting on our balcony. Talk about irony.

Lol, the definition of owning something in the animal world...shit (and pee) all over it


Talking of which, I miss my cat but I'm looking forward to getting my bearded dragon next month , got the vivarium nearly set up now, just waiting til I get paid so I can get the lights and food etc and then it'll be ready for him/her...ooh my maternal hormones can't wait!

[minaa]

I am having trouble keeping fish alive and keeping my snake fed. I'm a newbie to this sort of tank-animal-keeping, and it's definitely irritating. I won't give up, though. Just gotta get on top of that learning curve (called money and patience).

[Kamber Parrk]

Perhaps there is no Heaven, no Hell, no Karma.

Perhaps, though, consciousness is eternal-- perhaps like a subatomic SIM card of sorts.

You just keep having an existence wrapped around this particle without any regard to how good or bad you were-- without any judgments, and without any recollections of who or what you previously were.

[w176]

I'm up in the mountains at the moment skiing, and today we had the sort of lightning conditions that lead to a complete whiteout. Diffuse white light in a white landscape, so you cant make out any shapes or any depth in the landscape, because everything is the same shade of white, nothing cast any shadows and there are no highlights. There is real risk falling onto a ravine or off a cliff during that kind of conditions because you can't see the edge, because it too is the same shade of white too. I pretty much grew up on that mountain, so there was no risk of running off a cliff, but it still a humbling and visually interesting experience.

I didn't have my camera with me, but still wanted to share. (Photo from Wikipedia.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteout_(weather)

[CLANLESS]

I remember making my goldfish live on cheetos and potato chips. The goldfish was seemingly in perfect health and lived for two years. I was nine.

[Velocity Kendall]

guess who retired this week?

the exxon valdez. true story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez

[Star Eater]

I remember reading about Exxon in MAD Magazine when I was a kid.

[Psychotime]

I just realized I don't see Ilaekae post much anymore. I guess he must be busy.

guess who retired this week?

the exxon valdez. true story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez

In early 2008, SeaRiver Maritime, an ExxonMobil subsidiary, sold Mediterranean to a Hong Kong-based shipping company named Hong Kong Bloom Shipping Ltd., which renamed the ship once again as Dong Fang Ocean, now under Panama registry.

I'm so immature.

I had no idea it was still in commission after the legendary incident, but the renaming it went through before finally being turned into scrap makes alot of sense.

Renamed: Exxon Valdez (1986-1989)
Exxon Mediterranean (1990-1993)
Sea River Mediterranean (1993-2005)
S/R Mediterranean (1993-2005)
Mediterranean (2005-2008)
Dong Fang Ocean (2008-2011)
Oriental Nicety (2011-present)

Seriously, it sounds like something from South Park.

[Star Eater]

Played my first real game of Warhammer today. Ogres vs Chaos Warriors.
I was ogres, I won and I won well! I enjoyed it so much that I am
now building up an army of my own.

[Reutte]

My acne has gotten so bad that I think I'm finally at the point where I've got scars. *sigh*

[Einen]

My mother had a handicapped dog and my father's parrot was recently handicapped as well. I feel a family curse a-brewin'.

[Kamber Parrk]

I tossed a banana to some crows today.

A large squawking dominate alpha crow warned off the other crows and pecked tentatively at the banana. Initially, he sampled only the outer skin and seemed a bit put off.

He came back after awhile and pecked deeper into the fruit inside-- looked to be enjoying himself. Then the crows, seemingly, had sudden business elsewhere and all took off. Later, they came back. But the big guy was no longer interested in eating or defending the banana. And, the other crows seemed totally uninterested in it as well.

Guess crows just really aren't that much into bananas. . .

[Star Eater]

Haha crows crack me up. We get a lot of them here as well.
They can be pretty funny to watch. My dad had one as a
kid that talked.

[Angel Intheuk]

Reutte Been there, it's not nice. There is hope though, if you drink plenty of water, exfoliate (gently) with natural apricot scrub once a week and put Aloe Vera gel on the scars before you go to bed that's what helped me stop them getting worse. best of luck.


StarEater I remember playing the Ogres against my brother when I was a teenage, he always got to be the Warriors because they were the badass ones and he was proud of the paint job he did on them (I never got to win)

[Shahan]

rEADING the dark tower series, finished the first 2 and started the wastelands...
AWESOME series... dad-a-chum -dad-achek dum a chum?

Stephen King will the narrating the NEW Dark Tower book and a sequel to The Shining is coming out!!! a book.

also LMFAO Kamber About the SIM card analogy... thats awesome

[Star Eater]

I remember playing the Ogres against my brother when I was a teenage, he always got to be the Warriors because they were the badass ones and he was proud of the paint job he did on them (I never got to win)

Heh, it might also have been because Chaos Warriors are incredibly
tough and ogres can sometimes have a hard time flattening them
like they do most of the other races. Or so I found out!

@Sporus I read up to Wizard and Glass. Which was the
last book King wrote before he took a break. I did not enjoy
the rest of the series after that (Song of Susannah, Wolves of
the Calla) but that's just me. A lot of other people enjoyed them
the whole way through, I hope you do as well.

[Artimatum]

Posting in here.

On Gog.com they are giving fallout 1 away for free!(for 48 hours!)

[Star Eater]

Gog is probably the best thing to ever happen to retro gamers.
I am really looking forward to Legend of Grimrock.

[Shahan]

@Sporus I read up to Wizard and Glass. Which was the
last book King wrote before he took a break. I did not enjoy
the rest of the series after that (Song of Susannah, Wolves of
the Calla) but that's just me. A lot of other people enjoyed them
the whole way through, I hope you do as well.

awww... really?
I LOVE these books... anything similar to DT that you've read and liked that you'd recommend?
Will you be giving Wind through the key hole a shot? lol or did you not read the last one that came out.. i think VII ... little sisters of eluria is also out, its short stories though..
any i hope i enjoy them too, they're so good!
Eddie Dean is so funny.

[Star Eater]

I'm actually not a King fan myself. In fact, if I could go back
in time and not read "IT", I would. Some of the animal torture
in that book really scarred me. I like some of his concepts
but don't enjoy a lot of the content in his novels.

The Dark Tower series was something special though, I read The
Gunslinger again last month. Love it. There really is nothing I
can compare it to, but I don't read enough books. The first
time I read The Gunslinger, I literally could not put it down.
I won't be reading the new one.

You will love The Wasteland and Wizard and Glass though.
Wizard and Glass is different to the books that came before it
but what's great is, you gain a whole lot of insight into young
Roland and his friends who he has mentioned before and who
we saw in the first book.

[Shahan]

you gain a whole lot of insight into young
Roland and his friends who he has mentioned before and who
we saw in the first book.

OMG dude i read ALL the Graphic novels available at the time and they are all about his coming of age and the fall of Gilead... so i've had a really different experience reading DT... the comics/GNs are absolutely excellent... if you don't read much and you liked The Gunslinger i seriously recommend you read the first comic the "The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born"

the comics: http://www.stephenking.com/DarkTower...ic_novels.html

there's a lot now, i got them off TPB...
also the art for the first couple of comics is sooo well done...
IF you do read the comic let me know what you think... also what's cool is the comics so far have been roland growing up, the last comic was Battle of Tull which is the opening of the novel series... so that's cool.. there's a gap in roland's life though from the battle of jericho hill... and leaving Gilead to when he is older and enters Tull... and whats cool is that the new DT novel is supposed to fill that gap! kind of like 20 year old Roland with all his fingers... SO stoked.

@Velocity Kendall Carrie was his first book! I loved it.

@Star Eater again lol, I liked IT and i see what you mean, but I really liked the characters like Eddie Kazbrak.
I want to read/see Hearts in Atlantis ... I hear the Lo-Men make an appearance in the movie with and also that Ted Brautigan is awesome in the upcoming books(for me) I want to finish Wastelands by the end of the weekend...

anyway... lol yeah, sorry i dont know anyone irl who read the books and wanted to talk to someone about it lol.
yeah check out the comics, they're a light read, VERY light compared to the novels plus they lead up to the beginning of Gunslinger!

[Velocity Kendall]

Carrie was surprisingly well written i thought, plus it was short

[JDSart]

I checked my DA on the computer at work and i noticed every image i have looks dark as hell, clipping everywhere and most dark values just go to pure black, some hues also look really saturated, forget about textures. I´m no art wizard but if thats how everyone else has being seeing my images all along then i want to light myself on fire out of embarassment.

I have a led monitor and i have bothered to keep it as calibrated as i can. True this one at work is an old boxy one with some skewed settings and a lot of the darker images now that i check the galleries do seem to have some clipping and burned values here and there but still mine are the worst by far.

I´m going to ask friends with other monitors about it. But in general i think ill be very weary about how i handle the lower end of the value scale from now on. Thats the kind of stuff that upsets me with painting in digital.

[JDSart]

Also, i thought it was funny to read that Sthephen King took a break, i just imagined him taking a pee, blinking once and going going back to his writing lol.

I have been meaning to read The Dark Tower for a long time but i can only find the comic versions in the local bookstores, and they are way overpriced. I´d probably buy 3 books for the same price as just one of those comic volumes.

[s.ketch]

I was thinking about the moon the other night. It was full and I don't live in a rural place so it acts a huge night light. I could easily see outside without a flashlight, almost like a very dark day. As I was laying in bed, giving up on all hopes of going to sleep, I was looking at it.

It reminds me of how critical the present moment is in the context of time. We're lucky to live in a period where the moon is still close to Earth. It's just a rock trapped in our gravity well but will probably escape at some point. Well, if the sun doesn't get it first. What else are we lucky enough to catch? Should humanity spread through the solar system and galaxy, they will eventually come to a point where background radiation dies. Then what? What will humanity be when we live long enough for everything to change? What would we be like without the moon?

That's another thing. Everyone knows what the moon is. There isn't a culture that doesn't know it. Our ancestors knew it and our children will know it. I think that's what makes it meaningful. Yes it's just a rock but it's a metric for how we recognize our world. It's part of our home. The moon becomes a symbol in that regard. And it's a uniting symbol, one that surpasses borders and time. There are so many symbols that play on our natural disposition for herd behavior. The moon is different though. There's so much respect and time and resources dedicated to inferior symbols. Fleeting ideologies. It's a shame.

Can you imagine going to the moon? You're sitting on a rocket. Outside of the window, all the way to the horizon is home. Planet Earth. As you begin your journey, everything behind you becomes smaller. Your home planet drifts away slowly. There's a point where Earth and Luna become the same size. Even though they are difference sizes, you are at the right distance so that they appear the same. That's probably a pretty surreal experience on its own. But then the moon starts to grow. It gets bigger and bigger until you're so close that from horizon to horizon all you see is grey. That has to be a crazy experience to be on another heavenly body.

But we did it. Humans went there. The same object that people have been worshiping or admiring for all this time has been stood on by other people. I can't imagine being the first guy to do that.

What else can we achieve? How far can we go? What are other things like the Moon that tie us all together?

[SoufMeng]

My acne has gotten so bad that I think I'm finally at the point where I've got scars. *sigh*

There's medication for that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotretinoin is one of them. Works like a charm too but more of a pain for girls to get it prescribed though.

[Psychotime]

I probably gotta give some background on this for the people who don't know, but predominately black barbershops can be the worst. They take forever to cut your damn hair because they'd rather stop and talk (loudly) to each other or to the other people waiting. It's ridiculous, and I'm pretty sure anyone who's been to your typical black barbershop knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

I ended up leaving it to go to some other (much quieter because it was near closing time) place and ended up with some 20 something dude who didn't know what the hell he was doing (I guess he was one of the older barber's sons or something). When he wasn't tearing up my face with a crappy pair of clippers (he admitted he didn't have his appropriate ones with him) he gave me an awkward, lopsided shape up/tape up/whatever. That's the last time I ever let anyone under 30 cut my hair. He was nice enough to make the shave free, but I still payed him 12 bucks for the haircut.

[Psychotime]

Never heard of Taco del Mar before today, but I will be certainly going back soon. One just opened up over here in Savannah.

EDIT: I should point out that the habenero sauce is wimpy mess, though. Don't expect legitimate hot sauce, just expect the same kind of level you'd get from Taco Bell (except it tastes better).

[Reutte]

@SoufMeng, thanks, I'll check that out if things get worse.

@Psycotime- I think I paid about 40 dollars for my last haircut and it was just a wash and a trim. Ladies have to pay so much for haircuts, it's crazy. XD

I really really need to learn how to draw people. I'm taking an anatomy class right now that's brought up some interesting stuff but I'm still daunted by the task of drawing people.