@Thenomain I still seriously loved Carnivale. Still do.
One of the pipe dream game settings along the way was a twisted mashup of that and Firefly: a traveling space carnival with that dustbowl feel, set on the ship caravan traveling along a series of rag-tag frontier worlds instead of a traditional highway.
@AlexRaymond Building, you can likely get some traction with.
Code? It's a much more specialized skill, and I don't really think it's reasonable to expect players to contribute code in order to allow their ideas to be realized. Also, you really never know what someone's going to add that may be more than a little fishy, violate privacy, etc. in ways that ultimately may prove to be much more added trouble than added benefit in the long run.
@Coin That example makes my head hurt more than a little.
I mean, I can see it from both sides: it is a harmless thing, and it is technically 'benefits gained'.
They're just not remotely unreasonable or unfair or quantifiable benefits that in any way disadvantage anyone else on the game or provide an advantage to you, or the other player's character(s).
^ This is the spirit of that 'law'; it is the only reason that rule could ever be necessary.
While, yes, enforcing the spirit of the law rather than its letter requires the dreaded situational judgment call, enforcing the letter of the law above its spirit creates too many openings for the spirit of the law to be violated through the inevitable loopholes, and trivial things that do not in any way violate the spirit of the law become egregious offenses that make the rule itself appear absurd. This alarmist approach ultimately diminishes the chances of the rule being taken seriously even when it is actually necessary or important, because everyone has been running around screaming that the sky is falling any time there's so much as a gentle spring breeze.
Dirty words that aren't. (Amusing for a very literary hobby.)
@Arkandel I am so sorry.
It is sometimes just so quick (both the final moment and the decline to such), and it can feel far too fast. Give yourself the time you need to say goodbye, and don't feel you need to stop cherishing her memory.
It's one of those times when it really is OK to not be OK.
All the hugs. 
Sadly, I only have one traditional Dad joke. My father puns egregiously instead. It's so common that if me, my mother, or my husband sees an opening for a pun and he's not present to make it, one of us now must, citing "because Dad's not here to do it for us" as the cause -- not because he's a convenient scapegoat, but because he really, really would.
@Thenomain Ancient Cat was amazing with this sort of thing. If she had any sort of problem, she would run up to me immediately and yowl a very specific sort of yowl. Paw caught inside her collar and she couldn't get it out? Yowl at Mommy. Ear got a spider bite and was swelling? Come yowl that yowl at Mommy. And so on. 'Mommy and Daddy are arguing about something'? Rush right in between us and meowl the most PEEVISH noise either of us had ever heard until we both shut the fuck up (other than trying not to giggle at the small, highly indignant puffball that was just wailing right over the both of us until we stopped). There were other examples, but those two were just incredibly clever and sweet. Clever beasties are awesome.
Currently, we have an average beastie and the dimmest bulb in the chandelier. Somehow, the flurfaderp is equally awesome, because she is as lovey-dovey as she is super unsmart and uncoordinated. This is a creature that is so earnest in her insistence on snuggling that she'll lose her balance and faceplant when she over-reaches for a headbonk on the regular, and will 'aren't I adorable' wriggle her way right off the bed at least once a week. She taught us that the really, really, dumb ones are just as awesome... if they're lovey-dumb.
@Lithium WtF2e has all manner of suggestions about a pile of free NPC pack members (that would be offering support and services and potentially fighting with you), too. That was my personal first NOPE, WE WILL NOT BE DOING THAT call when such things were my call. I was chill if people wanted to pool points for a retainer or something (nobody ever did so far as I know) but there were not going to be dozens of free retainers floating about.
@Apu Know this feeling all too well. All the hugs and empathetic wincing.
Some people just suck. Some don't. I just wish the ones really good at just pretending they aren't heartless, selfish jackasses would stop existing entirely.
@Thenomain For whatever it's worth, if there's a template of sorts for something like that (basically, 'format the data from this resource like so'), I actually don't mind data entry, and you can poke at will with what resource needs to go into what format.
It's boring but it's boring in that mindless meditative way for me, and while I'm not working on anything these days, you've helped me out one hell of a lot when I have been, so it'd be the least I could do.
Now I'm curious if anybody else had a cat that randomly licks plastic bags. Our wee insane Siamese did that, and we would just hear the quiet, raspy rattle of plastic for twenty minute stretches or so, and for some reason it was oddly creepy. We'd try to call her over to make it stop, but then she'd just look at us with Innocent Face<tm>, and then go right back to licking the plastic bag.
That cat's Innocent Face<tm> was simply never to be believed.
@Gingerlily said in RL things I love:
She is obsessed with socks and hides stashes of them around the house and then later brings them to us as gifts.
We had a sock cat once. We'd find oddly stacked socks like weird art in the hallway.
She always seemed to know when I had a date coming over, though, because unfailingly, that's when she'd drag a bra right out into the middle of the living room floor, in easy view of the door. She never did it any other time, either. Damn fuzzbutt must have been psychic.
I don't know if that makes her worst cat, for embarrassing me in a spectacularly entertaining fashion, or best cat, because maybe she was trying to make sure I got laid regularly. It's been over twenty years now since then, and it remains a mystery.
...was absolutely there for two days, re: 'wtf is going on?' medication.
Codeine (in any form) makes me aggressive, hyper, moody as fuck. (Hydromorphone can go die in a fire; it does all of that and makes me either awake for 3 days in a row or only awake 2 hours a day, I lose any and all sense of balance, spend a lot of time blankly staring at walls, and it gives me a migraine the whole time. WTF, demon pill?!) The only thing that doesn't seem to have a nasty-ass side effect is ye olde actual morphine, which, yeah, if you're in the hospital, sure, but they are not gonna send that shit home with you. (Nor should they, IMO.)
Minor surgery 2 weeks ago. 1x100mg vicodin x 6-8 hours. Irritable as hell, sleep's all over the map, but nothing dies and nobody (that I am aware of) is in need of a horrified apology.
Slightly less minor surgery Monday. It suggests 2, every 4-6 hours. Notice the detail that's missing here? So did I. And this shit hurts, so I was taking two, though I was taking two every 8 hours, because I did not want to risk becoming Satan incarnate.
Yeah, that detail was kinda relevant, though, because what I hadn't noticed was that each of these was 300mg. So we're talking 'six times the bitchyface'.
It was a very colorful two days before I figured this out, that's really all there is to say about that. 
I do not even want to know what I may have typed in various messengers or emails, since apparently my mother is so horrified by an argument we had that she isn't speaking to me -- and I do not even remember speaking to her. At all. And I am getting the 'you know what you said!' routine so I do not even know what I'm supposed to be groveling about or apologizing for, and I feel bad and have attempted to do so, but she literally will not tell me what the hell I said that was so upsetting. (It wouldn't be profanity or snark, either, because while she'd always chide my father for using crude language around me when I was a kid, I absolutely learned to snark and swear from her! So I am at a genuine loss here.)
I nominate the H. H. Holmes murder castle for the building.
'All rooms include special disposal amenities. All leases month to month; inquire for daily and weekly rates; gas and waste services inclusive. Be advised: the furnace acts up intermittently and may blast foul-scented heat even in summer months.'
@Ghost Actually, that's sort of the irony of the argument.
When phrased that way, it very much suggests every white person acts with intentional and abusive racial prejudice.
It is actually intended to refer to the argument that all white people benefit from white privilege, and white privilege came about because of centuries of institutionalized racism, regardless of how fortunate or unfortunate in any other way that white person is, and regardless of how they feel about or treat someone of a different racial origin.
It's not actually hard to explain as a concept, and it's not even terribly controversial these days.
Instead of saying 'all white people are racist', say: 'a long history of racism over a period of generations, through which they were the only people with certain rights, white people gained a number of social and financial benefits that people of color do not have by default as whites do' and, imagine that, suddenly people are curious about what and how (whether they agree or not at the outset) and are going to be a lot more willing to engage in discussion of the subject than they would be if they think you're saying that the reason they have to cut your coffee date short is because they just can't miss the start of the Klan meeting.
It's a pretty easy topic to have a sane discussion about, and yet a lot of the people who have gone out of their way to learn about it do use the academic shorthand, and in the process, completely lose sight of the fact that the shorthand comes across as a personal attack to people who were not sitting there in class with them to know what it's shorthand for.
You don't often successfully get people to listen to you about anything by alienating them as your opener. In other words, sometimes academia makes people impressively stupid with the more someone learns.
@Misadventure That's their house! ...mine is wineless. Which, bringing things back to the general topic of the thread, I am now officially somewhat angry about.
@Auspice WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.
Somehow, the last line is what truly kills me. It starts off pretending to be so straightforward and factual and then goes off the rails so fast you'd think somebody strapped a rocket to it.
@Ghost My mother is in that choir. Every Xmas, her 'gift' was 'I sing with her in the choir'. Despite being so Not Remotely Catholic. This is the one upside to fucking up my throat a few years ago, because after that year, I... <eyetic>
You know it's bad when the rehearsal host cheerfully chirps, "There's wine and cheese and clementines for after rehearsal!" and the choir director quietly tilts down his head and mumbles, "Can I have the wine now? We should really all have the wine now. Maybe it will help," into the sheet music.
Their typical style is... very Pirates of Penzance. So just imagine the Modern Major General sharply and crisply and operatically going for the 'when I was a sinner' solo, and... shit, just remembering that makes me wish there was wine in the house now.
@Ghost ...but the WASPiest suburban Catholic church choir ever should never again attempt 'Go Tell It on the Mountain'. Never.
Never, ever, ever.
Like shit you can't unsee, there is also shit you can't unhear. Often, in your nightmares.
@Auspice It is sadly no longer there. If you have it in a tab still, my gods, c&p!