Lurker > CaptainOfCrush

Belgium is a damn strong team.
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Yoblazer
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It's been years since I've watched these. Pretty sure RotS is the best movie but I'm close to going with Phantom Menace just because it's the most laughable. Clones is definitely my least favorite.
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Yoblazer
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How hard is it to get the bells and whistles (box arts and release dates) for these games? The little I've seen makes it seem like you need to find and save that stuff individually for each game.
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Yoblazer
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LapisLazuli posted...

That would be very different if so. Then the only issue is the unprofessionalism

I have never in my life seen or heard an interaction begin with "can I have your number." I think most people would assume the situation played out more like the one SEP described versus the agent literally mouthing "number" as soon as he saw her.
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Yoblazer
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Theo72 posted...

or maybe she just doesn't want to be hit on when going about her business

Sure but her posts about her "ordeal" are over-the-top lame.
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Yoblazer
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The best job I ever had was the one where I interacted with other college students daily, and man oh man did I hit on plenty a lady.

For her to have this reaction, my gut tells me that either she's just a lame person or the TSA agent in question was super creepy and repulsive looking. If a normal dude steps up to the plate and politely strikes out, the girl walks away with an ego boost and nothing else is said of it.
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Yoblazer
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LordoftheMorons posted...

I get the impression though that Obama really did intend to be more visionary (I need a better word here since it's not really the opposite of being pragmatic), but then adjusted when confronted with the practical and political realities of the job.

He probably had to adjust more than he hoped once confronted with the sad reality that a non-negligible part of the country hated his guts because of his name and skin color (and that a ton of Republicans were all too keen to stoke the fires of that bigotry).
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Yoblazer
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Think we'll see an N64 Classic? It'd be another money-printing opportunity, but I'm not sure - mainly because that console's library is really shallow (especially if Nintendo can't secure some of those Rare games) and because it seems like everyone wants to forget about the ol' N64 controller.
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Yoblazer
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How long until you guys think we'll get a Dummies version on Youtube?
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Yoblazer
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Do you feel that you had good parents when growing up?
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Yoblazer
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Mac Arrowny posted...

CaptainOfCrush posted...

Flushable wipes. I have a bidet installed in my toilet and a container for flushable wipes right next to the TP. Clean bootyhole and it feels so good.

If they're flushable, why don't you flush them?

I do. The container is to dispense them lulz
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Yoblazer
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Flushable wipes. I have a bidet installed in my toilet and a container for flushable wipes right next to the TP. Clean bootyhole and it feels so good.
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Yoblazer
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I wish he would have spent more time on that WCW game. Looked hilariously bad.
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Yoblazer
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Claire
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Yoblazer
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I strongly advise you to save a little more and avoid PMI. PMI sucks.
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Yoblazer
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I didn't finally move out for good until 29 and felt really embarassed about that. While living at home allowed me to save money (I moved into a place I bought), I do regret not living on my own in college and the years after. Could have had so many great stories.
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Yoblazer
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Just checked ebay and they seem to be going for $140-150 before shipping. It's a big markup but nowhere near the $200+ some people were expecting. If Nintendo manages a couple more good shipments, supply might actually creep toward demand.
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Yoblazer
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It's funny to watch the conspiracy theorists at work here. Their prevalent theory seems to be one of multiple shooters, how that "had to be the case," and how the media is intentionally silencing it.

When the chaos was ongoing in Vegas late Sunday/early Monday, the speculation of multiple shooters was widespread, and EVERY media outlet reported on the possibility. So what's their take here? That the media was initially rife with speculation about multiple shooters, and then the government secretly coerced every credible media outlet to change their narrative?
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Yoblazer
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A girl who went to my high school (in California) was one of the people murdered in Vegas. Small - and sometime very sad - world. She was in my brother's graduating class and he just got the news broken to him.
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Yoblazer
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Apparently there are six hour lines to donate blood. Shelters across the city are fully stocked with food and water. Last night, people were offering rides and places to stay for those affected within minutes of the news breaking. Proud of the community for bonding together during such a horrible day.
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Yoblazer
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Has there been news on whether all/any of the weaponry the shooter used was legally obtained? It feels like there's this general assumption that weapons able to cause this much carnage must either be illegally procured or illegally modified, but I haven't read anything official yet.
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Yoblazer
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"Hellooooo-OOOO-ooo" - Mr. Jackpots
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Yoblazer
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UltiXX posted...

Islam is taking credit

I think you mean ISIS.
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Yoblazer
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Looking forward to your thoughts on Episode 8.
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Yoblazer
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8I'm ok, thanks. Last night and this morning was filled with a stream of texts to/from friends. All friends I've heard from are safe. One was near the venue but was unharmed. He posted eerie pictures afterward of a strip casino completely empty, which I have never seen before. Another friend said SHE had coworkers at the venue who fled behind an airplane hangar for refuge.

I'm at work now and it's creepily normal around here, but we're in the suburbs. The strip must still be crazy.
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Yoblazer
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Jakyl25 posted...

CaptainOfCrush posted...

The story broke right before I was about to go to bed and I've been following it for the last hour. All friends that I've contacted are safe, though it feels like the entire city is in panic mode.

You have friends that would go to a country music concert? Interesting

I have friends who work in food/beverage service and modeling. They usually work events like this so I was pretty worried. Two friends said they were planning to work the event but changed their minds earlier in the day. Spooky.
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Yoblazer
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My family and all friends I have been able to contact are safe, thank you. Right now, trying to figure out if my office will be open for work. Haven't processed this yet.
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Yoblazer
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The story broke right before I was about to go to bed and I've been following it for the last hour. All friends that I've contacted are safe, though it feels like the entire city is in panic mode.
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Yoblazer
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Here's my experience for the ppl still hunting one: I went to Target 15 mins before it opened and got a ticket. I called my brother and said they might have enough for more ppl, so he drove by (he probably got there right when the store opened) and snagged one too. I bought mine and drove straight to work.

Our Target had at least 50. Another one nearby had 70. Sounds like there's some decent supply out there.
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Yoblazer
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SCREW YOU NINTENDO

Target is the savior
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Yoblazer
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Chrono Trigger
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Yoblazer
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Checked the other walmart near me, they have 45 in stock and a line 70 deep. To bed I go.
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Yoblazer
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Walmart line's already like 30 deep.
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Yoblazer
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The Wal-Mart near me is selling 45 units at midnight. I'll stop by before bed tonight. If the line looks manageable, I'll endure it.
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Yoblazer
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Ah, I've been meaning to ask when you moved from Vegas and where to. My parents were thinking about Riverside 7-8 years ago before they settled on southern Nevada. I spent time in that city and Norco scoping out houses with them... and man, the area just smelled funny.
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Yoblazer
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Fresno is NorCal for sure. Some SoCal snobs argue that nothing north of LA County is truly SoCal. Hell, some people limit it to LA, OC, and San Diego, relegating the Inland Empire to just bumsville.
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Yoblazer
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I'm truly glad that some people appreciated my stories. Here are a few more, some of which deal with the war that drove us out. I figured it was appropriate given the N. Korea happenings that were almost lost in the news yesterday:

-While the U.S. government may not have been popular, American culture was widely consumed and seen as the coolest of the cool. American food products were no strangers to Iraqi markets (for some reason, we REALLY preferred Pepsi to Coke), and even television and music was imported. The TV show Dallas was a big hit, among many others. Michael Jackson was insanely popular; they played his music in Iraqi discos throughout the 80s. The Bee Gees and Abba dominated the decade prior (neither are American but eh).

-This appreciation for all things American/Western permeated down to children as well. As a kid growing up there, I believed that blonde people were simply cooler. When my uncle took me to get one of my first haircuts, the barber decided to humor me with a catalog of different hairstyles. "Which one would you like?" I immediately pointed to a picture of a blonde dude with long, flowing locks - barely able to contain my excitement at the sudden possibility that I might look like him. Then the barber pointed to a picture of a dude with short black hair. "OK."

-The school system was solid. I cant remember if I even reached kindergarten (may have been all pre-school), but I do remember an English class. Foreign language for 4-5 year olds; not bad.

-In gearing up for the Persian Gulf War, the state media encouraged each family to dig a dirt bunker in their backyard for safety. My family complied, so to this day I remember my uncles and their friends digging away, naively hoping a dirt hole would save us from an Allied missile strike. One of the dudes dug up a camel spider, and deciding it was high-time to get his lulz on, proceeded to grab me by the ankles and dangle me a foot above the monstrosity.

-We never used that dirt bunker during the air raids, choosing instead to barricade ourselves in the old family home. I don't know if I've spoken about this before on Board 8, but I was there during the initial missile drops of Desert Storm, and they are among my most vivid memories of Iraq. I was in Los Angeles during the infamous Northridge Earthquake of 1994, the one which leveled countless buildings and injured thousands. It felt like a gentle tickle compared to the relentless armaments of MURICA. Now, I'm still willing to believe that the targets were strategic military ones and that the bombings took place far away from a neighborhood as residential as ours. The problem is they felt pretty damn close. Each one rattled our windows to what must have been near the shattering point. Whats worse is that they seemingly intensified and inched their way closer as the night progressed. I remember the most fearsome blast of all one that I swear almost knocked our front door off its hinges. "That's it. The next one is killing us," my grandma grimly said. Whats strange is that I dont remember being all that frightened, for which I can probably thank the naivety of a five-year-old mind in a time of crisis.
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Yoblazer
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-Even for well-off families like mine, we had nothing that compared to the dizzying assortment of STUFF options we enjoy in the U.S. In Iraq, corn flakes and bananas were delicacies to me, among my favorite foods when I could enjoy them. I lost my fucking mind when I saw how common they were in the U.S. Every once in a while, I’ll look at a banana and remember how rare they were to me as a kid.

-My mom almost fainted the first time she stepped inside a Target (her first big American retail store visit). Those places did not exist in Iraq. Everything was a mom-n-pop.

-From what I understand, there was no “auto insurance” the way we have it here. If two men got into an accident, they stepped out of their cars, yelled at each other for five minutes, and drove away. Women had every right to drive but many chose not to simply because it was way more stressful over there. Even many men decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. My dad didn’t really learn to drive until we moved to the States.

-My dad was an army doctor during the Iran/Iraq war. I’m not sure how many of his stories are exaggerated but good lord, he saw some shit. He also told me that his single most dangerous day at the job was the day the Iran/Iraq war was actually DECLARED OVER. Everyone fired their guns in the air to celebrate, and the resulting fallout was injuring civilians everywhere. The hospital director called my dad’s apartment (just a quarter-mile down the street) and told him to come in because of the situation. My dad stepped out and said he could hear the celebratory bullets raining down around him. He grabbed his thickest medical book, held it over his head like a helmet, and broke the quarter-mile world record in his sprint to the hospital. I’m pretty sure celebratory gunfire is still a thing over there.


I'll write some more later. I have a ton of memories but they're all scatterbrained, so I apologize if some of this is a little incoherent.
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Yoblazer
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Below is a hodgepodge of anecdotes and random memories/feelings from my time in Iraq. I was born there in December 1985 and left with my family in early 1991 after the Persian Gulf War. We spent about nine months in Jordan waiting for our immigration approval and arrived in the U.S. on February 29, 1992 (leap year babeh!).

-The old adage was “nowhere in Iraq could three men have a conversation without Saddam knowing about it,” and you could feel that people lived by it. There was an unquestioning understanding of Saddam’s reach and authority. I remember my family, and I’m guessing most others, were hesitant to criticize Saddam in their own homes, let alone in public. Publically talking about him the way we talk about Trump or Obama would have almost certainly gotten someone jailed and possibly executed.

-A couple of neighborhood boys once told me that “Saddam’s police will be out patrolling this street tomorrow.” The next day, I stayed indoors and literally crawled around on the floor because I didn’t want the agents to spot me through the windows. Stupid jerk kids.

-We fearfully (and I guess lovingly) referred to him as Saddam. Hardly anyone used his last name in conversation. Conversely, the American President was known simply as “Bush.” I actually remember my family freaking out and being super impressed when I knew that his full name was George Bush.

-There were only two channels on the TV, both state-run. They ended their programming at around 10 p.m. every night with the Iraqi National Anthem, which I would stand for and recite while my family laughed. I was pretty sharp for my age, but I sometimes think that makes people even more prone to fall for propaganda.

-My family is Catholic, and there was no indication (to me) that Saddam ever mistreated Christians in his country. My parents both attended and graduated medical school without issue, and our family had warm relations with our Muslim neighbors for decades. My mom says that Christians were even teased by their Muslim coworkers because Saddam would give them both Christian and Muslim religious holidays off.

-Similarly, there was no (easily detectable) professional discrimination against women. The crap that emerges from places like Saudi Arabia about women being forbidden to drive and existing essentially as property of their husbands… that never, NEVER happened in Iraq. Both of my parents’ med school class photos showed about a 50/50 gender split. My mom was actually paid more than my dad. It was common practice for Christian Iraqi women to keep their maiden names, and their husbands just had to deal with it. My mom kept her maiden name. After my grandpa died a few years before I was born, my grandma became matriarch and led the family like a goddamn boss. She was respected throughout the neighborhood as a leader by men and women alike. Iraqi women dressed similarly to their Western counterparts, though perhaps a little more conservatively. I don’t remember hijabs and burqas being at all common. I’m like… 90% sure that life for a woman in Iraq is worse now than it was in the 80s.
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Yoblazer
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HaRRicH posted...

Oh man, neat/weird/awkward. Would you be comfortable sharing something you remember from some of these songs?

It was honestly so long ago that the memories are very fuzzy, and it wasn't something I did for a long while (I was only in school there for preschool and maaaybe a bit of kindergarten, though that does illuminate how early they rolled out the indoctrination machine). I remember them being simple songs praising Saddam that we'd mainly sing on the school bus.

Even though we fled when I was five, I still have a collection of memories from living in late 1980s/early 1990s Iraq if anyone is interested in a child's perspective living under a regime most people would consider totalitarian. I've always been comfortable sharing but I've always had the impression that no one here really cared to hear it.
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Yoblazer
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Pistons/Pacers brawl is up there
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Yoblazer
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Eddv posted...

I literally dont understand why anyone gives a shit about this.

I remember growing up in Iraq and being required to sing songs praising Saddam Hussein. These displays of "highly encouraged" patriotism have always struck me as a Lite version of that old country propoganda. Silly at best and dangerous at worst.
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Yoblazer
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FFDragon posted...

Yeah the carny nature of wrestling still exists and lets them take advantage of the wrestlers.

I can't help be at least a little surprised that it still is in this day and age, though. If you look at the actual common law distinctions between independent contractors and employees that the IRS has used for ages... WWE wrestlers look a LOT more like employees.
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Yoblazer
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No but I'll probably get one when my current TV craps out. TVs seem so inexpensive nowadays that buying one isn't nearly as big a deal as it used to be.
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Yoblazer
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<3
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Yoblazer
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Why am I oddly happy about this lol
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Yoblazer
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I'll use my phone while driving and acknowledge that I'm being kind of a selfish asshole when doing it.

I have a magnet that keeps my phone near the windshield so I'm not breaking my attention quite as much, but I should still just cut it out altogether.
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Yoblazer
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Mac Arrowny posted...

It's horror just like The Sixth Sense and Silence of the Lambs are horror movies.

It's more conventional than those. Again, it features a lot of isolation and jump scares (generated by an actual paranormal monster). Aren't those among the most traditional of horror elements? What would have made this more of a "real" horror film? More deaths?
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Yoblazer
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Manny is pretty conceited, you can sense it when he talks. Maybe GGG is as well (who am I to know, I've only heard one interview), but I didn't sense any hubris or conceit from him tonight, which surprised me given he was 35-0 a few minutes ago and must have been disappointed beyond belief.

Err sorry, 37-0
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Yoblazer
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I've never seen any footage of GGG before the last 20 minutes, but he seems like the friendliest superstar athlete ever.
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Yoblazer
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