The Old Hack

Vaguely relevant: this absolutely adorable video of a chocolate poodle waiting for their human to arrive and pick them up from a day care in Seoul. Look how enthused the furball gets when spotting Mommy!

That depends on the importance of being Earnest.

"Olé!" " 'WITH MILK'?" Terry Pratchett, "Reaper Man"

Oh, but remember that the really hardcore gamers inevitably suffer losses of dice, making replacements necessary. Dice get left behind, lost, fall beneath furniture, accidentally claimed by others, or even thrown out the window after the fatal sin of one too many bad rolls...

Indeed, and this seems in no way a bad thing to me.

Cats are like that. I'm glad you have such a good friend. Give him some scritches from me and tell him he is doing a good job.

Big talk from the Pharaoh of a country where the national sport was pyramid sandhockey. Did you ever ONCE get deities from outside the Egyptian pantheon to play?

I think you can pretty much take that for granted. It is enough of a trope that it once almost got Quark of Deep Space Nine lynched. Mind you, I once had the interesting experience of getting bumped from Economy to Business Class while flying from Denmark to the US. I consider this a far better way of handling the problem. Certainly I do not expect nearly as many customer complaints will result from this method.

Bumped to steerage? After paying for second class? I don't think I could have managed to be that polite.

It's just a jump to the left, then a step to the right...

My wife would probably be standing nearby if she had the chance.

I do not think that Shakespeare intended that to mean, "Be a thief instead." o.O What? Polonium is its own reward. But since the Prof ran off with mine and I can't be arsed to take the lead, this time I am taking the radium.

I don't want lead anymore. These days I go for polonium.

I could wish for that to happen. It might well force the issues between Tedd and Mr. Verres out in the open and finally start Mr. Verres down a road where he actually tried to understand Tedd rather than just think there was something wrong with him.

Good luck, Prof. And take good care of yourself.

I am unaware of one but I would be ASTOUNDED if you were the only one. And the term may well exist and probably does. On top of this, add in the pressure to be 'normal'. It would not only discourage such individuals from discussing the matter but would make them prefer to not even think of it as many people are reluctant to think of themselves as 'not normal.' This pressure is not to be underestimated as it keeps many fully LGBTQIA* people from ever admitting what they are to themselves. *sigh*

Two points. One, the genders are not even and never have been. By now, the only 100% definite male left in the Main Eight is Justin. Tedd is genderfluid. Elliot may well be genderfluid as well, though I suppose it is possible that there is some other form of way of describing Elliot that fits better. As to the rest: Grace is a seyunolu. I am not even sure if human sexual identification applies to them at all, but let us for simplicity's sake assume so for this argument. Grace will occasionally spend time as male but not even nearly as much as Elliot has, and seemingly desires to continue to do. Susan does not seem to have any interest in being male. Ellen is female and always has been. Nanase was only male one time, which was during the birthday party arc. That leaves only Sarah as someone who has shown much interest in being male and even this is mostly mentioned in exposition or flashbacks. That leaves a final score of one male, one genderfluid, one probable genderfluid, one possible genderfluid but otherwise female, and four females. And even if we ignore the genderfluidity/other options, we would still only have three males and five females. Two, Dan has repeatedly stated in public posts as well as one time in a private communication with me that he does not feel comfortable at having Ellen be male. Some may call that a mere authorial quirk but given that these stories originate in Dan's mind I feel that it should be respected. (If you wonder when I was exchanging mail with Dan, it was back when he made this image as a Patreon commission. We were discussing a good way to make the long-desired All Male Wallpaper and Dan told me that he still was having trouble swallowing mEllen, so I told him to just make Ellen the referee and not worry about it.) Dan also says that he is not sure what is behind this concern of his but that he has never been able to overcome it. I do not wish to armchair analyse him, so I have chosen to simply respect it instead.

Prescription strength STFU? o.O

No, merely -- as was his wont -- allowing his logorrhea and sesquepedalianism run away with him.

And the concept of it will be with us for as long as we live!

Er, just in case I was not being clear enough -- I was in no way seeking to either refute you or cast any blame on you. I was simply taking the thought experiment through various steps to look for paths it might lead to. My apologies if you thought I was attacking your argument!

I especially like that with these last posts, coffee is officially considered medicinal on these forums.

I just saw a clumsily phrased headline on Danish TV stating that a man had been convicted of murdering an entire municipality three times over and sentenced to a lifetime in jail. Given that about 100.000 people live (or at any rate, used to live) there, this struck me as a not entirely unreasonable sentence. Then I started to wonder. I am informed that in some parts of the US the punishment for repeating a crime is cumulative. Presuming that the convicted murderer was not actually sentenced to death, how many thousand years of prison would he be sentenced to?

Cheers. Long live a good cup of coffee. As my wife would say, down the hatch!

That is not quite what I meant, but I can see that I included this thought without realising it. Mind you, since I agree fully with it, I shall take credit for it by saying that my subconsciousness obviously wanted to say it. To be slightly more serious, what I meant was that the temptation to perform a given deed grows stronger in inverse proportion to the risk of getting caught. Understand, I do not mean that temptation automatically becomes irresistible -- only that it is at its strongest when one believes there will never be any consequences for one's acts. In many ways, we truly are what we do when we think we are unobserved in the dark. But as Vorlonagent states, it is also a factor if the temptation is available to one at whim in nearly any situation. In the technological variant of this scenario, you would need to prepare a place with cameras and/or listening devices; it would take some preparation and cost money. In the magical variant of it, it is basically anywhere and any time. It is the difference between being in a candy store where the counter is staffed and the candy is on display behind glass or being alone in one after closing hours where all the candy is lying around in open boxes.