Lurker > MrMallard

ai123 posted...

Picking a 'best of'/singles complication as a favourite is normally frowned upon, as they don't have the flow and structure that the very best albums have.

But, you know what? I don't hate your choice one bit. That's a legit pick.

It's the only Best Of that I would ever pick.

Like I like Elton John and Billy Joel and - as much as I've grown out of them - Queen, but I wouldn't put their myriad of Best Of albums on a list of my favourite albums ever. But this collection is so well composed, and they do that bridging thing by adding a little outro to one of the songs to lead into the last song in the album, that I just have to give it to them.

It's one of those situations where you can't help but reflect on the tragic death of Karen Carpenter, and you see the album as a journey through her life and the highlights that she brought. It's rare that you get that; as beloved as he was, you don't get that with Freddie Mercury because Queen have three (well-deserved) Greatest Hits albums and they played very contemporary, boundary-pushing rock music. The Carpenters were always a nostalgia act, and the untimely death of Karen invites a more morose, emotional connection with the music. And an album that spans that entire gamut of her professional life just has that emotional weight to it that other bands don't.

I feel kind of bad feeling like this, because I think she was royally fucked over by their label and by Richard Carpenter. They shelved her solo album for years, she *called them* and asked about releasing it a couple weeks before she died. But they didn't budge. They released it three years after she died. They made her the face of the band when she just wanted to drum, and when she took control of her image, they denied her the fruits of her labor because they feared that she'd outshine the Carpenters and leave Richard behind. It's so unbelievably fucked.

All of those emotional loose ends come together with this collection. Richard still profits, as does the label. But it's such an emotional, cathartic experience that I don't care. You can't do that with anyone else, but it's different for Karen.

It's really well structured, and they make a little outro for Won't Last A Day Without You that leads directly into Close to You. The song before that is I Know I Have To Be In Love which gives off the big ending vibe, before ending with Won't Last A Day, Close To You and a reprise of the first song on the album

The image I get is Tammy and Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec going on a wild bender and getting married in jail.

Too much purple, 1/10

Choco posted...

these people don't exist. stop looking at memes and go outside

Sure, but I thought it was a fun, goofy situation to make a topic about.

I've also been around the block with Tumblr fandoms, with Harry Potter as well as SuperWhoLock and Steven Universe and all that shit. The people exist; they're a fringe group but they exist. Are they as prevalent as they used to be? No. But they're still around, and the concept is funny enough to goof on.

Lil_Bit83 posted...

Erm isn't that kinda callous of them?

I think the intent is solidarity. Like so many Jewish holidays are celebrations of survival, so in the face of Russian aggression, Jews are going to Ukraine to celebrate Rosh Hashanah in defiance of the terror and aggression of the Russian military.

Jewish people have faced annihilation so many times, including in Ukraine where - as the article states - over a million Ukranian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. So to stand up and celebrate where a world leader is trying to forcibly eliminate an entire people is to flip Putin and Russia the bird and to say "eat shit, you're not getting rid of anyone you fascist cocksuckers".

Now whether it's a wise idea to venture into an active warzone, I don't necessarily agree with. But more power to them for showing up and making the statement.

I missed a few payments early this year and my $60 internet bill jumped up to $75 - because that's a good idea, making a person who didn't pay you pay more money - but that was fine because I knew I fucked up and I just accepted it.

Then without warning, the price jumped to $85 a couple months ago. I didn't like it, but shit changes and prices are rising so I was like fuck it.

So this new bill is $85.28. And I know it's only twenty eight cents, but it's got me all sorts of fucked up because all my bills are round numbers and after the previous price hikes I'm suspicious that another one might be around the corner.

My place used to be a business, and when they converted it to a rental they cut all the internet lines. Because of that, I need a wireless 5G modem to get internet connectivity in my place. Telstra - my ISP - is the only service that provides that where I live.

Next paycheck, I'm already spending over one thousand dollars of my $1250 paycheck on rent and electricity. I made an irresponsible decision this weekend to drink, which set me back about $80, and taking that into account I'd have like $50 to feed myself and get me to work the entire week - otherwise I was still playing a very precarious balancing act with a $130 budget. This bill needs to be paid by the fourth of October, which is during my next paycheck. Even if I was perfect, subsisting on canned tuna and carrots every day and night to keep costs down, I'm losing money this paycheck.

I know drinking was a poor choice. Work dropped a bunch of shit on me on Friday, me and a coworker had to clean the entire laundry so that the board of directors could walk through and see our new machinery. I learned that day that we had to clean the entire place. When I drank, I drank box wine because it was the most economical choice despite being the worst thing for me to drink. It was a bad decision all round.

My savings have been dwindling for months so I need to pull my head in. It still bites that every last cent I earn this next paycheck is going to bills. There's no point in this topic, I'm just complaining.

Kradek posted...

Nah, he's just actively running damage control for fascists and has been for awhile. The only people who still call him "center-left" are right-wingers trying to legitimize him.

Reminds me of when someone made a topic on here about Tim Pool being a leftist, and when I asked who the fuck he was or what he did, the user painted him in the best possible light and tried to get me to look him up on YouTube.

Or that guy on Reddit who saw a post I made about a distressing mental health episode I was having in a desperate cry for help, and told me that Jordan Peterson had videos that could help.

I delete my GameFAQs account and keep the money.

Toonstrack posted...

Lol this also didn't happen

Ahhhh wait, this is the bait thing. I'm you guys are trying to get me to say something too spicy! Ahhhhhhh hahaha. I see. That explains why the other guy who has had no interaction with me is claiming to he so familiar.

The fact that you're typing in this affect is undercutting your point. When you manually type out the laughter to set a tone, everybody reading it knows that whatever the other person's saying hits too close to home and is most likely correct.

Seriously, I doubt you're a spring chicken on the internet. idk why you would choose to react like this and think "ah yes I am winning this argument". Read the room, chill the fuck out and come back with a clearer head - everyone makes mistakes, don't dig yourself a deeper hole.

K181 posted...

For the life of me, I dont understand why he voluntarily signed there to begin with. A load of teams were offering him money, why sign for the biggest joke even then?

Because if you manage to turn that team around and win the World Series, you end up in the fucking history books no questions asked.

Another factor might be that the west coast of America is geographically closer to Japan than the rest of the country, so if he wanted to go home he'd have less of a flight to worry about.

When she hypothetically gets married, she makes her vows about how she was worried that she would end up being her man's Cho Chang, but after a key event she realised in her heart of hearts she was his Ginny all along.

In the case of a straight guy, the vows are about whether he was gonna be her Viktor Krum, but after a key event he realised he was the Ron to your Hermione.

Kim_Seong-a posted...

I'm skimming wikipedia and google and this just seems like "Buddhism with Christian-Fundie energy".

Religious fundamentalism exists in every religion. There are frigging Hindu nationalists who invite hate crimes against Indian Muslims.

I have a lot of affection for Macaulay Culkin, but I've just gotta say it.

That lady looks like Macaulay Culkin.

Zikten posted...

Universal Studios should make up Houses for the American school

Glockenflue
Akattak
Deaglebung
Mosingart

So that's what he was trying to pre-empt.

Guide posted...

Can they have an appreciation for things outside of it? Most people I've dated had some sort of strong focus on some hobby, but they had culture, as in they had appreciation for topics outside of their main interest.

For the purposes of this poll, they do have other interests like food and travel, but they like to exclaim how much they like something by comparing it to how much they love Harry Potter. They compare a good dinner to a Hogwarts feast, they praise a local IPA bar by saying it's just like the pub in Hogsmeade or whatever, they say they like your glasses by saying you look like a sexy grown up Harry.

They're not totally single-minded about it, but depending on how much they enjoy things, the topic inevitably seems to return to Harry Potter.

imo, there's room for intense special interests, but being a Harry Potter/Star Wars/Disney Adult is kind of a turnoff and I don't think I would date someone whose life is defined by their undying fandom for a media property they've been obsessed with since they were five years old. Like there's a point where I don't think I could have a productive relationship with someone who runs that hot for something like Harry Potter.

That's not to say I'm an attractive kettle of fish myself, it's just a statement of preference.

DisgracefulSins posted...

Guess he will get out in time for the 2070's.

But he won't be hanging out down the street, that's for sure.

HudGard posted...

I was recently looking up all the voice actors from Batman TAS and was sad to see how so many of them are gone.

Kevin Conroy was a big one.

What gets me is that I only learned he was gay after he had died. Initially I ranted about all the nerdy YouTube videos gushing over his Batman voice but never bringing up his queerness, but apparently he only came out in a 2016 magazine interview. Most of the videos I was shit-talking were from before that happened.

I specifically remember after he died that someone posted an autobiographical comic he wrote, where his sexuality caused a lot of conflict in his family and his broader life. One of his supportive brothers had passed away at some point as well, and the 90's were the peak of the AIDS epidemic so dude probably saw some close people in his life pass away - and the way he tells the story, he was able to draw on his own dark past from anti-queer discrimination to poor family relations to voice Batman.

Looking at his Wikipedia page, it says that he was married at the time of his death. I'm glad he was able to find that. Another big celebrity death that gets me is Robert Reed, the guy who played Mike Brady in the Brady Bunch - he only came out publically days before his death. I think sometimes about whether he was able to find lasting happiness as a closeted queer man for his entire life y'know. We don't know because the man was so private. I hope he was, because the thought that he died of a long, debilitating illness, alone, after all the hardship he faced is kind of too much to bear. So I'm glad that in the case of Kevin Conroy, you can look at that and know that he was loved in his final moments.

vycebrand2 posted...

"Astin has been married three times. His second wife was actress Patty Duke, and Astin is the adoptive father of Duke's son, actor Sean Astin"

I don't know what to think about that. Wouldn't there be somewhat of a age gap. She was a teen in the 60's

The woman who played Morticia Addams got married and had a child at age 15. Shit was just kinda like that back then.

Also post #13 makes a more pertinent point.

archizzy posted...

You must know something I don't know as I have always known him as John Astin, not Tony.

ngl, I fucked up the name and I didn't catch it until you brought it up. My bad, I'll edit the OP if I can.

FortuneCookie posted...

Is this a case of somebody vandalizing a Wikipedia page to say that someone is still alive when they aren't?

No, I fucked up the name. Apologies.

While I'm on the subject, Jackie Coogan - Uncle Fester on the Addams Family - is a really interesting person. He was one of the first child stars - if not the actual first child star - in Hollywood, and he got so thoroughly fucked over by his own mother that he took her to court and won.

Like he had a great dad who kept a close eye on the money and made sure nobody would touch it until Jackie's 21th birthday, but he died in a car crash when his son was 20 - Jackie was actually the sole survivor of the crash. In the span of five months, his mother and her new boyfriend spent every last cent - somewhere between four and five million dollars, which would have been close to $51 million in 2021's value. Five months, roughly five million dollars. It was all spent.

He's the reason that California enacted a Child Actor's Bill to make it harder for parents or guardians to access the money that their child was making. And it was only with his role as Uncle Fester that he regained some of the fame he initially had as a kid.

I'm surprised that the original Gomez Addams, John Astin, is still alive. He's the last surviving member of the 1964 show's cast, including his on-screen children - I just looked the show up, and the original Wednesday Addams had a stroke and died this past February.

I loved the Addams Family when I was growing up. We had cable, so I'd get to see shows like the Addams Family and Whose Line is it Anyway. John Astin was in the prime of his life in the sixties, in his mid-thirties and the model of masculinity for the time. He's still working too, it seems like he mostly does voice roles nowadays.

Out of all the cast, I'm surprised that he's the last one left. Usually you see older guys dying first; men have shorter life expectancies than women. He really set the mold for Gomez Addams, and without the groundwork he laid for the character in the tv show, we wouldn't have gotten those great Raul Julia movies in the nineties.

I'm trepidacious to bring him up after what happened with Bob Barker, but this is just one of those curious things I wanted to talk about. Apparently he's also the adoptive father of Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings.

What a guy. I hope he's comfortable and healthy.

Edit: used the wrong name multiple times and somehow didn't catch it despite checking his Wikipedia page.

Priere posted...

Ben Stiller?

He was also the orderly in Happy Gilmore who abused all the old people in the home where Happy's grandma is.

Smoking never took. I tried it and I got a hankering, but the actual physical sensations of smoking were so shitty and unpleasant that I gave it up before I got hooked.

My sister chain-smokes to the point where she goes to a shop where they take illegal tobacco and package the smokes themselves. It saves on money, and her and her wife need their smokes. She got the smoking gene from my mother, and I got the drinking gene.

bigtiggie23 posted...

If you meant this as a joke it doesn't work since none of the 3 were alive during the most known September 11th.

That's what I'm saying, they weren't alive for 9/11 so this is probably gonna be the most impactful memory of theirs tied to that date. It was meant as kind of like a "feel old yet?" sort of comment.

thronedfire2 posted...

yea except for fish

someone's obv. never had a pickled herring

They don't taste very good now, but when I was a very young kid they were delicious

Also I found a video of the brawl:

https://youtu.be/t1WWDBTda2Y?si=wlFWNqN43PpRJ2BU

The messed up thing is that for all three women, it was probably the worst September 11th of their lives.

This is a good topic. Better than that topic about teaching religious texts in schools imo

I don't trust most things that my former best friend was getting into near the end of our friendship. Mr. Beast videos always seemed off to me, like he'd be walking down the street with his crew and offer one of them $500 to jump a fence and run through a guy's yard or something. At least back then, it felt like he was manipulating people with money and it came off really shittily - just a bunch of sycophantic yes-men being personal monkeys for this rich douchebag so he'd give them money, like that episode of the Simpsons, and Mr. Beast more than happy to fill the role.

It's great that he paid for all those blind people to get restorative eyesight surgery, but I still get a really off feeling about him. That's more of a me thing though, like I'm waiting for a shoe to drop but maybe there's no shoe y'know. What I can say definitively is that I don't like him. The dude is only famous because he's rich, and I got my fill of him at the tail end of a toxic friendship so there's no love lost there.

Sometimes. Dominos just released a new pizza where I live called the Capriciosa with anchovies, ham and kalamata olives, it's really good. There's also a local pizza place that does a pizza with the lot, and anchovies are included.

It's definitely a "sometimes" food, but I like anchovies.

Fake mango flavoring sucks, and the fruit is a pain in the ass to eat. But I do like fresh mango.

Prestoff posted...

Hopefully Tekken 8 single player content is also good as well.

I wish they made the games like Tekkens 1-5. Like clearly 4 and 5 upped the ante with the narrated openings and closings before the CG movies, so I would want Tekken 8 to be like that, but just something substantial for a singleplayer arcade playthrough would be good.

Remember when Lee put his adoptive father in a bowtie and a thong and put a bomb in the bowtie? It was weird and stupid, but it was fun. Bring back the CG movies and individual character stories.

https://youtu.be/fkqWDrjItrA?si=1r_xh5o3ljuVh6Tn

Oh no, the Christians are being discriminated against!

Meanwhile:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-24/751-graves-found-in-canada/100243008

https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/the-catholic-church-s-toll-on-aboriginal-australia

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62158819

I agree with the former and disagree with the latter. Like if you're talking about stars and you bring up the different cultures and religions who have stories about the cosmos or offering a specific religious studies course, that's one thing. But I don't think learning about any religious texts should be mandated.

American schools have been so fucked up with banning shit over the past twenty years. When I went to high school, there were multiple religious texts available at the library - I occasionally flicked through some book about buddhism. I think there should be religious texts available for students to read and check out from multiple religions - the bible and the Quran should be available at the minimum, and idk if the Torah is available in like a book form, but if it is, it should be available too.

That being said, I'm big on the seperation of church and state and I dislike the idea of integrating faith-based teachings into an areligious curriculum. If schools want to offer an elective religious texts course, that's fantastic and I think they should do that. I don't agree with making it mandatory. I had scripture in primary school and it sucked ass, and as I've gotten older I realise how weird and fucked up it was because the Muslim kids would have to leave the room during scripture and sit in another room. I also don't think it was educational or fun, which school could be at that age, so it was a slog with an agenda they were trying to push on kids.

Religious texts should absolutely be made available in school libraries. They were when I was in high school, though Australia is different to the US and the US is very anal about censoring school libraries. But unless it's an elective course that students can choose to take, I disagree that religious texts themselves should be taught in school. There's educational contexts where learning about different faiths and their views on things, like the cosmos example I mentioned earlier, is benign and interesting. But given the seperation of church and state, which I very much believe in regardless of the country, I don't want any religious studies to be mandated in an areligious curriculum - which I feel like a strong educational curriculum should be.

Posters itt proving Moore's point

I'll bump once bc I worked hard on this

Because vocal Nintendo nut-riders have been begging for this shit for over ten years.

https://youtu.be/MgkpTmzFgLs?si=lEmWL6Lsfl2vx_Ey

I love when stupid novelty shit like this makes it to the Switch. The one downside is that I was hoping it had officially licensed Nintendo tracks to play along to.

So first of all, that Thousand Year Door reveal was kind of fucking crazy. Fanboys go nuts for that shit, and I could tell that shock announcement was special. It's especially interesting considering that Mario RPG is coming out next month - they're already giving fans a dream remake that's been next to impossible to do for decades, and now they've gone after the other Mario RPG holy grail of your average vocal Nintendo fanboys. If these remakes do well, do you think they're gonna announce a brand new Mario RPG - either a standalone title or a new series?

Here are my general thoughts:

* The Peach game looks really good. I love her outfits, and I think the game looks really cute and charming. It's been a while since we had a costume game like this - I feel like Mario games do power-ups in a very frenetic gameplay-oriented way, Wario games use costumes in really goofy ways that are about as much at the expense of Wario as they are to his benefit, and now Peach is giving us a more strait-laced take on the concept - individual diorama-style levels themed after different plays, with a thematically appropriate costume with its own unique power. When the launch trailer dropped, I didn't know what to think - but the Peach game looks really good.

* Another Code was a total wildball. I played the first game a little bit on my DS back in the day, and this remake looks really fucking good. I might actually get it. And I think it's awesome that they're localising the sequel and releasing them together as a pack. Like with the Thousand Year Door reveal, this reveal continues a trend in these recent Directs - like Ghost Trick, Another Code is a cult classic Nintendo DS game getting an unprecedented remake.

* I'm glad that Luigi's Mansion 2 isn't stranded on the 3DS at least. All they need to do is re-release the first game and you've got all of them on the Switch.

* So, F-Zero 99. First of all, fuck whoever popularised the rumor it was going to be coupled with a GX remaster. I feel like this reveal is only going to be received worse because of that, and frankly it let me down. Personally, I was turned off when I saw it was the SNES game - imagine a stupid clusterfuck of N64 models spinning around and fucking each other up, that would have been a lot of fun. I will say that the longer the trailer went on, the more it won me over; I love Tetris 99, and while Mario 35 didn't interest me at all, those two games are literally the only games in this style that Nintendo has released. This game is going to be absolutely fucking stupid in a fun way, and I think I'll either enjoy it for a few days and never touch it again - which is fine, imo, because it's a free game coming to all tiers of the NSO service - or have an unreasonable obsession with it for just shy of a month. It was a bit of a letdown, but the trailer won me over a little bit. I'm gonna give it a shot.

* Eiyuden Chronicles looks pretty great for a Suikoden successor. It's a bit archaic with the painted graphics, but I liked Suikoden 1 when I played it years ago and I'll consider picking this one up and giving it a go. I've gotta grab the Suikoden remasters when they come out though, I never made it far into the second game and I want to play it.

* TRPG fans are eating good between Wargroove 2 and Unicorn Overlord. Unicorn Overlord is stupid and awesome, I kind of love it. Not a tactical RPG guy unfortunately, but those games looked really solid.

* Kinda dig the Splatoon 3 DLC. If they make it infinitely replayable and if the upgrade system lives up to expectations I might buy my first ever copy of Splatoon. I thought it was a great way to launch the Direct, the colour palette system was a perfect "wait what the fuck" moment, the possibilities it implies is really fucking cool.

There's a bunch of stuff I didn't retain, I feel like my short-term memory has been even more scuffed than usual since recovering from COVID in January. My general impression was that the direct started strong, the remake of Mario Vs. DK kinda put a damper on things, the Another Code reveal was hype, I spent a bunch of time waiting for the F-Zero thing, the Peach game was a very pleasant surprise, F-Zero happened, there were a bunch of pretty good JRPG reveals like SaGa, the Eastward farming DLC looked okay and then the Thousand Year Door reveal had me smiling.

If you check out my other Nintendo Direct topics on The Site That Must Not Be Named, you'll see that I like just about any Nintendo Direct that comes out. Even that farming sim direct was okay, I haven't bought any of the games because I'm broke as shit but I like the look of Rune Factory 3 and I wanna try FaeFarm. To that end, this topic is more of the same - I had a good time. Literally the worst part of the direct were the leaks hyping shit up, only for the Direct to let me down. Again, fuck whoever popularised the GX remaster rumour. Fuck you.

But yeah, that's what I thought. Very Mario-heavy, but I like how the Peach game looks and the Another Code collection looks really good. I had fun watching.

pagesix topic

Almost an hour until the Direct, get hyped boyos