Lurker > MrMallard

Honestly the best part of the episode is how Ray's character is named Ray Magini, and Lisa figuring he mustn't be real because his name is an anagram of "imaginary".

And then he just fucking shows up again after Homer has weeks of electroshock therapy.

nvm Solar_Crimson summed up the best part of the episode. The name thing is a close second though, at least imo.

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IdiotMachine posted...

Yea... and?

I mean, I don't bitch about later seasons up until The Boys of Bummer - I was born in 1995, so I grew up with 2000s-era Simpsons and beyond. But this shares a thread of casual cruelty with The Boys of Bummer, in that the incompetence and malice of the people around them force the focal character of the episode into extremely cruel and painful scenarios.

Homer got weeks of electroshock therapy because everybody thought his new friend was a figment of his imagination. Bart got harassed by an entire town of people, including adults, celebrities and personal heroes, until he attempts to commit suicide - because he dropped a series-winning catch during a Little League baseball game.

It's just like, what the fuck was the deal with the Simpsons at this point? I don't mind Jerkass Homer to a degree, but this takes whatever stupidity and malice the show had before and turned it up to eleven.

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...but nobody else sees Ray Romano, just Homer talking to him? So everyone's convinced that Homer had a psychotic break and they basically commit him to all sorts of outdated psychological treatment to gaslight him into thinking Ray Romano was a figment of his imagination?

But then Ray Romano walks up and is like "hey Homer" and everyone realises that through a series of convoluted coincidences (like Moe wearing an eye patch when Ray was at the bar, or Ray being behind the chimney when Ned notices them working on the roof), everybody missed out on seeing him despite all the time he was spending with Homer?

Meaning that Homer just got subjected to intense psychological treatment to convince him that his recent friend never existed in the first place, due solely to the incompetence of everyone around him and sheer bad luck?

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Wait, hold on. When did America reinstate the draft?

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Would have preferred 1, love the glasses and hair, but 4 is a solid choice as always.


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If you accompany it with like a whole invented persona that speaks in ebonics and AAVE exclusively - given that this isn't how you speak irl, and on other MMOs under other characters which aren't black - then yes, it is wrong. The same way creating an Asian character and speaking in broken English would be wrong if you were a fluent English speaker of another race.

If it's because you like playing as black characters, and you're not a shithead about it, then I don't see the harm.

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I've been through a lot, and the thought of bringing a kid into this world for them to experience the same fate is fucking horrifying.

Though I do recognize that my feelings on the matter stem from selfishness and narcissism. Like, both of my parents were molested as children. Both of them have severe problems. But they were able to pull it together enough to raise me and my sister.

Maybe I just need to be in a better place in my life before I entertain the thought.

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Community is really good. Feel free to disagree, but I feel like to some degree, Community is to mid-2000's sitcoms what It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is to Seinfeld. More of a tame example, in that the cast aren't illiterate trailer trash dirtbags who engage in plots about smoking crack and finding babies in dumpsters (which isn't a bad thing - I love Always Sunny), but the show still pushes a ton of boundaries and it's worth a look.

I would ask you to give the first season a chance, because it's a lot more subdued to begin with. Eventually it sheds its skin and becomes amazing.

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A time traveller from the future who was raised in the past returns to stop the destruction of the world with the help of the king of a Mad Max-esque nation and a weasel.

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This isn't a meme topic about FlameTurtle is it? Or are you guys actually close irl?

Joke response aside, congratulations. I hope you guys have a long, fruitful and happy marriage.

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God is a many-armed agent of sin and avarice, and you're just a cat with a slingshot.

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Ashley Babbitt got herself killed.

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Saleswise, the Wii beat both PS3 and Xbox 360.

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Heliogabalus posted...

The article says they were buried with grave goods typical of both genders.

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Gotcha: wash my prostate under cold water. thanks

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On an unrelated note, it's my birthday today. I've been making a lot of these wall of text threads lately and I recently vowed to step away from CE for a while because the more I write the less I seem to say, but I thought I'd indulge in this one as a treat.

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The Reagan, Gingrich and Cheney variants alone would probably fuck up about 30% of the country at least.

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nice topic, did they teach you how to make them like this at yolo high

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Fuckwit as in not only do you not believe in religion and make a big show out of criticising it as stupid, irrational and unethical, but you use your so-called superior rationality to be the most insufferable sack of shit possible and push your own brand of close-mindedness and bigotry?

In particular, do you remember when you could call yourself an atheist and not be associated with redpilled neckbeards whose brains have been deep-fried by far-right rhetoric? Dipshits like The Amazing Atheist ruined things for a pretty long time.

I've been listening to a lot of Tim Minchin, who rips into Christianity with a particular zeal - but he's a very sharp, entertaining guy whose atheism was never tempered with "wow, feminazis amirite guys". Like here's a song where he compares Jesus Christ to a Komodo Dragon because he was produced through parthenogenesis:

https://youtu.be/uY1jSWy4Eck

and here's a song about how religion perpetuates confirmation bias through the belief in miracles despite all the suffering in the world:

https://youtu.be/IZeWPScnolo

And here's a goofy arena rock pastiche about taking canvas bags to the supermarket instead of using plastic ones:

https://youtu.be/hFgtIziShmc

It's like somewhere along the way, people became so wrapped up in ideology that they lost the ability to laugh at themselves as well as others in a good-natured way, and it's resulted in the proliferation of the far-right and a skewing of the left to go further left in response. We went from "hey, Jesus has a lot in common with Woody Allen, doesn't he? And he's kinda like a zombie too, if you think about it - and a Komodo Dragon, too..." to "IT'S MR POTATO HEAD, YOU CULTURAL MARXISTS. JESUS NEVER EXISTED, FEMINAZIS RUINED VIDEO GAMES AND THE CULTURAL MARXISTS TOOK AWAY MR POTATO HEAD".

The worst part is how much the term "satire" has been dragged through the mud by this transition. Something like these songs by Tim Minchin are satire. The people who were swayed by truly good satirism into atheism or other provocative causes have continued to drag the term "satire" down with them as they descend into far-right ways of thinking. People began using it as a get out of jail free card or a defense against slander/libel accusations, even when whatever they said wasn't funny. I mean shit, after the January 6th insurrection attempt, there were qanon people going "everything I said was satire and not intended to be indicative of reality" to try and slip out of the ensuing backlash. Like no, you genuinely bought into a batshit crazy conspiracy theory that started with a genuine assertion that Hillary Clinton was funding a child sex ring underneath a pizza parlour, and the effects of that conspiracy have driven radicalized individuals into neo-nazi groups and militias - and neo-nazi militias. Satire isn't an adequate defense against the proliferation of that violent, reactionary rhetoric.

And the thing about an actual satirist, or a genuine, committed atheist, is that they stay committed to the bit but they don't use it as a diving board or an excuse for more and more reactionary rhetoric. They're not in it for the rapidly devolving community. They're in it because they have a point of view, and they speak truth to power about their core beliefs.

Tim Minchin didn't become a qanon shit-sucker, he remained a popular entertainer and wrote a bunch of musicals and everything. He's still active, and while his new material is a lot more serious, he's still as sharp and charismatic as he was in his heyday. Plenty of satirists and vocal atheists, like Stephen Fry, have remained topical and relevant without succumbing to terminal brain fungus.

It's these mouth breathers in the "critic community", fuckin clearance-rack entertainers who lacked any of the critical thinking skills to genuinely engage with what their forebearers were saying in favour of going "haha Jesus Komodo Dragon funny", who were swayed into movements and points of view that skewed further and further right. It was never about rationality or intellectual honesty, it was about attention.

And seeing people like Tim Minchin, with songs like Woody Allen Jesus that are as scathing as they are entertaining and self-deprecating, just makes that difference so much more striking. It highlights the dire fucking straits these vacuous shitheads have gotten us into, where self-reflection and critical thought has been replaced with tribalism and empty "gotcha" moments. It's a further condemnation of what it means to be an atheist, or a satirist, or a critic.

Like, there was a point where I was ashamed to consider myself an atheist because of sacks of shit like The Amazing Atheist, the same way GameFAQs users who swarm Zelda boards to talk shit and rig every site-wide quiz to favor Ocarina of Time made me ashamed to call myself a gamer. And it's only through acknowledging better people than them whose integrity was something worth believing in that I've managed to shed any of that baggage. Though frankly, calling yourself a gamer past your teenage years is always gonna be super cringy, even if Satoru Iwata was an incredible guy with an incredible marketing speech about the label.

There's a point here somewhere but I've said everything I really wanted to communicate. Tim Minchin is really good, I can say that much with certainty.

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idk what your sense of humour is like, but I thought I'd have a scroll through my phone and post some memes.

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Do you like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

Whether you're into it or not - there's an episode where the main cast of characters is trying to get their bar put on a review column in a local Philly paper or something, and Charlie - a very chaotic, illiterate guy who's more or less the butt monkey of the group - creates a very catchy ditty for the bar:

https://youtu.be/1gmWMk24OfI

Things go wrong in typical Always Sunny fashion, and while they have all of these critics and stuff in the bar, I think they lock Charlie in the storeroom or the bathroom or something. Charlie spends his time huffing spray paint out of a sock - so when they bring him out to play the ditty from before, this is what he sings:

https://youtu.be/hWpKhVf8hyk

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Nah, that's where Clark lives.

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Dragon Quest 1 is a very barebones experience, like you're basically required to grind to get to the last spell in the game otherwise you can't win. But as the first JRPG ever - or at least, the earliest one to establish the genre - it's charming to see how it all began.

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The ratings still did better than your political career did

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Dude's being a bigot. He has the free speech to put the sign up, but people are going to be disappointed in him and his business for making such a blatant transphobic statement.

rabble rabble dr. seuss, rabble rabble transgender people are sick in the head. It's the same stupid conservative horseshit as ever. What a moron.

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