This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

One of my favorite things about Iain Banks's books is that he manages to make compelling plots based around a utopian society while still making it seem like a genuinely ideal place to live. Most utopian fiction tends to be about a seemingly ideal society... WITH A DARK SECRET *horn sting*. But with the Culture it's more like nope, this place is great, but the rest of the universe is still pretty awful and they feel like they have a moral responsibility to deal with that, which is where things start getting Tricky. The Culture is like that kindly old lady across the street who feels compelled to meddle in everyone's business. The Culture is Mary Worth, is what I'm saying.

I support bookthread, btw

So, a little late at the Pacific Rim talk but, i don't know if it's just me but i think people get too excited about so little. Yes, the robots, giant monsters and all that junk was great fun, but everything around that was so Hollywood-cheesy and not in a good sense; i literally cannot think about a more boring protagonist, a more cliché ending (WHOOPS SPOILERS I GUESS). It feels like a transformers movie but with actually interesting action scenes, 'unno man maybe i'm just bitter.

I think people are excited because it's not a movie based on a 30 year old toy/show/comic franchise, and that mako wasn't a love interest or fanservice object

but yeah it was fun and all but it got hyped up way too much

i liked the chinese robot

i liked the chinese robot

THREE ARMS

This legally blind 97-year old dude makes pixel art in MS Paint and it kicks ass

I'm slow as hell at everything but I finally saw Pacific Rim and eeeeee

I wish the Russian jaeger had gotten more screen time because it looked kick ass. :c But! I loved it.

I'd do a review but I would just embarrass myself...since it would just be gushing about how cool giant robots are.

I'm a little disappointed that the Russian and Chinese pilots ended up basically being disposable props; I would've liked to have seen more of them. Their bot designs were cool and they could've been entertaining characters.

I'm a little disappointed that the Russian and Chinese pilots ended up basically being disposable props; I would've liked to have seen more of them. Their bot designs were cool and they could've been entertaining characters.

I loved that Cherno Alpha was basically the most Russian mech possible and had the most Russian pilots possible, and also that its "special ability" compared to the other mechs was just "punch things really hard, in the face." And Crimson Typhoon was beautiful in its own way - so much agility, so little onscreen time :c only mech that could perform jumpkicks, too! It needed the three pilots and also had special feet that had lots of equipment to manage the calculations to let it do that.

Yeah, the Russians made me wish there had been a whole United Nations of wacky national stereotype Jaegers. In a serious movie that would be dumb but it would fit perfectly in the live-action cartoon that is Pacific Rim.

Where do cows go to be entertained

the COW-losseum?

Nowhere. The life of a dairy cow is a long stretch of dull grazing interspersed with painful artificially-lengthened milk production mitigated only by invasive milkings, ended not by the mirth of a movie but the swing of a maul.

the mu-cheese-um

Guy you are officially Banned Forever

You may find your personal effects in a smouldering heap by the front door

Guy you are officially Banned Forever

You may find your personal effects in a smouldering heap by the front door

I just hope I can ac-cownt for everything in the ashes

calf-shes

read as "moo-cheese-um"

read as "moo-cheese-um"

fuck I missed a big opportunity there didn't I

I considered it a statement on whether a cattle has buddha nature.

Auroch the field with the bovinest puns, calving a path heedless of the angus'd masses

Ruminate upon ye transgrassins

And despair

For I am officially putting the fresian this line of discussion

(that or it's just fuel added to the feedlot, one or the other)

What did the lawyer say to the other lawyer?

To the moooooooooovoes

This whole line of conversation is a load of bull.

What's your beef with cow puns Fogel?

I think they're absolutely bovine.

Maybe you heifer point. We cud chew on it. Let’s be kine.

is that advice cow

I live on a cow farm and I find this all very offensive

This is a story about yams, leaving home, and Pacific Rim. (Ok there's not a lot of pacific rim)

It's my last week in New Zealand, and I finally packed the majority of my possessions in the small hours of Sunday morning before my dad arranged to come pick them up around half past eleven. I had the whole week beforehand to get packed, but procrastination is my strong suit.

By the time he showed up, I still had balls of yarn and CDs and craft supplies and half a box of knicknacks scattered around, but my clothes and books and piles of paper were good to go so I got the bulk of things cleared out. I've been shuttling the last couple of boxes myself from my flat to my parents' place, and I'll get the last of them out today. We had brunch at an American-style breakfast bar on Sunday, and we invited two old friend-families over for dinner that night.

I have no clue if there's a single tidy word in English for "a family whose kids are around the same age so you all invited each other over for barbecues and potluck-type things while they were growing up", but I suspect it's steadily losing its need of use so maybe that's for the best. James (I don't know what his current online pseudonym is so sorry if you're reading this bro, I'm stealin' yo name) and I have been friends right through school, and his mum is unanimously in charge of desserts at these gatherings. I've never in sixteen years eaten a cake of hers that let me down, and she's basically like a second mother to me.

Seeing the extended friend-families after so long was a bit weird (the eldest of us kids are all working, the youngest are just about through high school, two are out of town at universities, and the parents have changed jobs a couple of times), but good fun. The conversation tends immature and oft-punctuated by someone screeching with laughter for most of the evening. James' mum is sitting with us while we're taking turns defacing a discarded magazine advert for Teen Beach Movie, when she tells the soon-laughing table:

"Oh Manu, James told me you took yams into a movie theatre."

Context.

James and I agreed to grab dinner and go and see Pacific Rim week or two ago. The intense negotiations over what were acceptable pizza toppings when shouting some dinner brought up James' lack of fondness for root vegetables.

But parsnips, I protested. Sweet potato! Yams!

"Yams," I insisted, with a little more enthusiasm than was probably appropriate. James didn't understand what the fuss was about, instead offering to ask one of the waitstaff if they did pizza with yams on it. I offered for him to shut up, but probably only dug my hole deeper when we swung by the supermarket afterward to grab movie fare. In my defence, the yams were on special at the supermarket, which would've been closed by the time the movie finished. I only had a coat with decent-sized pockets, so while James toted in bulk bin lollies and a drink, I had a bag of yams.

I still cannot believe he told his mother. "Just shut up and eat your yams, Manu," James says to me when I complained that the premise+trailer for some upcoming movie was terrible. "Enjoy your yams," he laughs when we both head off home after a very spectacular and explodey hour or two.

I do. I did enjoy those yams. I roasted them to perfection, although I had a panicked trip back to the flat yesterday afternoon when I forgot I put the last of them in the oven, and left the fucking oven on when I left the flat. So many stupid thoughts running through my head, like "Would I have to go to court if I burnt down the flat? Do unattended ovens even cause fires? Would my flatmate's clinically senile cat figure out how to escape a burning building? How long was I out roughly? Would my unclaimed bond cover smoke damage? Would I ever hear the fucking end of it from James if I burnt my flat down cooking yams?"

I found out the answer to precisely zero of those questions, as the yams had done me the courtesy of becoming a charred package of tinfoil rather than the catalyst to a ruined week. I'd had a long day with a lot of running about, and unattended cooking had clearly been a poor decision. I'm still not packed and I've booked out my last three evenings before I depart to various social engagements, but on the bright side:

-My former minimum-wage fulltime job paid me out a thousand dollars worth of unpaid leave
-I can probably call on my university professor for a reference if I apply for a science-related job in Japan
-I leave for Japan this week! Excitement
-I didn't burn the flat down, so I can probably get my bond back which is extra money for my new camera
-yams are still delicious