CritterKeeper

It was on the news tonight -- Lincoln Towing has been shut down! (The line about a charm school is referring to the location of a state prison.) I grew up listening to this song on the radio on a regular basiis, despite being about 150 miles south of their range ;-)

TOH, may I ask what you think of Neil Gaimen's novel American Gods? He borrows a large number of gods from other cultures, and tries to reflect how they have been altered in American culture. Did you find such use offensive?

First post in 175 days! Does that mean I get 175 points? Or 175 quattloos?

15 million cases per year, 300 to 500 million deaths in the 20th century (and that's with the disease being eradicated three-quarters of the way through the century). Which would have continued if the anti-vaccination...people....had their way. Current official death toll of September 11 attacks: 2,975 (this includes rescuers, and does not include the 19 hijackers) Current official death toll of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico: 2,975 I wonder how many memorials will be built in their honor, how many Presidential visits will be made, how many fellow Americans will put up flags all over the country to show support to the victims of Maria?

At least they know what the problem is, and thus have a good chance of fixing it! And you could have been stuck in a boot in the hottest part of summer or in the bitterest, coldest part of winter. wielding the silver lining polish again....

For some reason I keep thinking of Justin as blond. Maybe because Nanase's red hair is so red?

Does a better job of making them still look like themselves while transformed, and I like the implied BDSM interactions and power exchange. Went too far into unrealistic proportions for my tastes, and I just don't find cows particularly attractive, although it was pretty well-executed for what it is. Facial expressions are good, body language is eloquent!

The Tropeless Tale (Obligatory Warning) One of Mercedes Lackey's early books included a suspicious number of the monster's victims being the idiot jerk bosses of long-suffering computer programmers. ;-) Next time you want definitions, may I suggest onelook.com? Then you'll be able to find a more complete range of definitions, such as (bolding is mine): Oxford's "The underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group. ‘Yet one suspects that there is another agenda behind his attempt to subvert the global uniformity.’" Or Merriam-Webster's: 1: a list or outline of things to be considered or done agendas of faculty meetings 2: an underlying often ideological plan or program a political agenda Or from American Heritage: n. a·gen·da 1. A list of things to be discussed in a meeting. 2. a. A program of things to be done or considered: "King's broadening of the civil rights agenda to include issues of class, income, and employment" (James Carroll). b. Informal A usually unstated underlying motive: "Everyone has an agenda, whether he or she is honest about it or not" (Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger). 3. A datebook: bought a leather-bound agenda.

You said no walking around the bases, the first thing I pictured was having to jump over the various holes rather than walk or run around them. Hmm, make the holes large enough, that might work as another variation, and solve the problem of having to basically make all hole-in-ones....

I had a lot of those growing up, too. Olivia Newton-John was at the peak of her popularity when I was a kid, and I checked all of her old albums out from the library -- she had a lot of country classics she'd done covers of, so for years after that, I'd hear "Take Me Home, Country Roads" sung by John Denver and think it sounded wrong. ;-) Same thing still happens; I'm pretty sure there are a lot of kids out there who think of Eric Clapton's "Layla" as a slow, acoustic, bluesy number....

Tedd's frame is smaller than Elliot's, so a buff Tedd should still have narrower shoulders than a buff Elliot. Just swapping the heads, so to speak, ends up looking wrong. I would like to see Tedd use his gender spell to be extra-manly someday.... Considering that catboy is a form Elliot has been able to assume since the beginning of the shapeshifting, you'd think we'd see more of it. I don't think it's painful for him anymore, like it was when he first started; he can change himself a lot more by becoming very short or tall woman, than by just giving himself cat ears and fur!

I'm with my mom at the Fox Valley Folk Music and Storytelling Festival! My dad was really into folk music, and Mom and I picked it up from him. (My sister, not so much.) The three of us used to go every year, so this really brings him to mind, in a happy way. :-D

Dan did say body-snatchers wouldn't be affected by the Big Burn if they were attached to a host who'd get hurt by it. Picture an Aberration like Sirleck, on a host like the first one we saw him possessing. A host who, according to Sirleck, was brain dead and would die the rest of the way as soon as he left him. A body-snatcher could arrange things so that they had a trail of at least three verifiable brain-dead people they'd taken control of, and pretended a miraculous recovery except for amnesia, which would explain not knowing their friends and family. That Aberration could claim to have been doing that all along, only taking over bodies that "no one was using anymore." If their situation became public, with a spin of their choosing, I'd bet there would be people willing to do the equivalent of leaving their bodies to science or donating their organs, to give this poor unfortunate being a new home. Sure, it would all be fake on the part of the body-snatcher; we know they are officially completely without remorse or empathy. But they could make all sorts of trouble for DGB and get themselves some sort of legal status and rights -- which they could then abuse for years to come. And that sort of Aberration could always choose to disappear and go back to their evil ways if playing (ostensibly) by the rules didn't suit them anymore.

Lemme guess, are you a Doctor Who fan, by any chance? (Hooray for Jodie Whittaker!)

I'm glad you're able to keep a sense of humor about all of this. "The punch line: my trip to the ER was interrupted by a trip to the ER." Reminds me of my sister, when a vasculitis from her Lupus lead to the tip of her little toe turning black and falling off, "...and this little piggie got beheaded!"

I think Comcast must have given up on me. I dropped cable more than a year ago, and I haven't gotten any offers for good deals to come back in a long time. I may have to lure them -- Doctor Who will be back on BBC America "Fall 2018" and I haven't had as much luck convincing the Beeb that my computer is in London as I used to have. If only BritBox carried new episodes, so I could sign up for them instead! (Or, heaven forbid, if only there were some actual competition for Comcast I could switch to instead...)

I've gotten four servings out of a one pint "half baked" occasionally. Of course, I've also occasionally downed the whole thing in an afternoon. Typical for me would be three different sittings to eat a pint, less often two sessions per pint.

Oh, good. I haven't hated this storyline, but it's not exactly something I'm interested in either, so I think if it had gone on much longer I'd have gotten annoyed, or even stopped reading for a while. At this length, it's a somewhat interesting foray into a fandom I'm not familiar with, which lets me learn a little about it without having to immerse myself directly. Here's hoping the next story has our main characters as themselves!

I remember watching The Transformers and G. I. Joe in the afternoon, after high school let out, when we were in the mood to give our brains a rest for an hour. I started watching Transformers with the movie (the friend who had wanted to see it, had to explain stuff like why people were cheering when the good-guy boombox ejected little cassette bots to fight the bad-guy boombox's cassette minions), and only watched Joe because it was on after Transformers. My older sister and I were savvy enough to know the shows were trying to sell toys, and evaluating how they did it and how successful or blatant they were was part of the fun of watching. We could appreciate the good writing and try to figure out where the bad writing went wrong, and see writing about new toys as a challenge the writers had to meet, rather than an automatic failing. When my sister invented the Nocturnicons, she figured out gimmicks for the toys, like a bat who was a spy/had excellent hearing, and the toy was a Mister Microphone-type toy inside. She also wrote a terrific short story with Starscream's ghost that was modeled after Steven King's short story "Survivor Type" (if you've read it, you will likely remember it the moment I say "med student stranded on a desert island"). I leveled the field by inventing some female Decepticons, again with the toys all planned out. I don't recall doing as much of that with Joe but I was aware of the marketing elements there, too, trying to come up with things like an excuse to put everyone in new outfits (perhaps an "alternate universe" episode where you can make evil versons of the good guys and good versions of the villains, who just happen to be the same mould with different colors of plastic ;-) or create a new character who was an inventor as an excuse for new gizmos and their toys. The challenge was to tell a good story in the process of selling those toys, to come up with interesting toys and well-rounded characters who were distinct from those that already existed. And there were times when the shows managed to do all of that, if you paid attention. I honestly think a good show will sell more toys than a bad one, even to little kids, and I think at least some of the writers and people in charge got that. Every writing class or group I've been in has used challenges as an exercise, like "write a story with only dialog" or "write three paragraphs with your main characters, not using the letter 'e' at all" or "write a scene set in an unusual place, where the setting it an integral part of the story." These shows were a great example, basically "write a half-hour episode which introduces this new toy, in a way that will make kids like the character and want to buy it." Sometimes, having to follow restrictive rules can lead to wonderfully creative stuff. ....I'm still disappointed in them for not coming out with a Starscream's Ghost toy made of clear plastic....

I suspect that, up until now, vampires being killed was pretty much a non-event, meaning there was no proof any creature had ever existed, and no one knew that the monsters used to be human, so murder would never come into it. If they hadn't wiped out 99+% of the vampires, there would probably be at least one savvy enough to find some sort of way to seek official recognition as people, probably claiming they themselves were not guilty of any crime and weren't responsible for their condition. DGB would have to choose between testifying that they had evidence Aberrations were always killers (or in the case of Sirlack, kidnappers at the least), and thus reveal just how much they had known and for how long; or keeping quiet and risk allowing precedent to be set that would make their job much more difficult and/or create a lot of bad publicity if they tried to quietly take out the Aberration that was challenging them and were caught or recorded. A really clever Aberration would probably arrange thing so that an attack on them would be on camera and they'd have defendors in place to make sure they survived to gloat. As it is, there are so few Aberrations left, I doubt any of them will be seeking out attention....

Depends on what the alternatives are. If one is the pet drowning, possible after swimming to exhaustion or fighting desperately to escape a cage or locked door as the water rises inexhorably....and the other is their owner risking both their lives trying to stay to help them or trying to get to shelter that will allow them....then a temporary stay in uncomfortable circumstances is not such a bad choice.

I wonder if Lucy is going to claim the Queen Bee-atch crown now that Diane is outgrowing it? She has potential to make Diane's life miserable, if she wants to solidify her position as top of the heap of those who use and insult others to make themselves feel bigger. And she's already been casually cruel to Rhoda, back when she was mousey and submissive, even though they were supposed "friends"....

Having seen Rhoda and Catalina together, Rhoda seems more like the old days when new kinksters had to spend time as subs before they were allowed to try out being a Dom/me. She certainly seems to be coming into a more dominant role now! Then again, maybe she's a switch and enjoys playing both roles in turn.... I feel the same. The cliche may be to lose one's virginity in high school, but the reality is that I knew a fair number of virgins in college, too, and sometimes beyond that. Most likely they have, if we apply our world's standards, but not absolutely. Again, I've known couples who went around more than one base without ever hitting that home run until they were married. Especially with what we know about sen....seyen....ololu.....part-Uryuoms, they value closeness much more than sex. I can easily picture Grace wanting to snuggle, hug, and even kiss, without feeling the urge to go further. And Tedd, of course, at first would feel lucky for that much, and later he'd know that Grace didn't want it the same way he did, and might not want to make her feel pressured. (In other words, maybe he was wiser that Second-Life-Ellen in that regard....look what happened to that relationship when she pushed for sex!) Now this one I suspect is most likely! After all, Elliot's main reason not to, according to Nanase at least, was "math." Ellen and Nanase have zero chance of that problem, unless one of them makes a major change. Absolutely. No "things". Just watching things. And we've already debated whether solo is likely so no need to rehash here. ;-) A bit surprising if he's the only "out" boy in his school, that no one else has come to him in private, but not impossible and/or not necessarily leading in that direction if it had. A pity, because statistically there would be quite a number of LGBTQ+ kids at a school that size. Heck, in the suburbs any time within the last decade or so, there'd probably be at least one QUILTBAG club! EGS is showing its age a bit here. Future kids may (hopefully) not even see such clubs as anything more significant than a chess club or a journalism club, or whatever kinds of clubs non-nerd-school schools have. Hmm, I hadn't actually thought that relationship through to that aspect before. Maybe it's because Ashley still seems so innocent. But yeah, I could definitely see that as being the reason she was so affected by Bad Tom. Fits with my experiences, too. Whenever I see those statistics about how many teens have sex in high school, I always see the flip side too, that if X percent have had sex, then 100 - X have *not* had sex! ADD/ADHD can have similar problems, due to being too distracted to pay attention to social cues. Interrupting is a classic example. If you don't notice that people look annoyed when you interupt them, then you're not likely to learn not to interrupt. And then it's a mystery why people don't want to let you in on their conversations, and it feels like they just exclude you for no good reason. (And if that makes you all the more determined to be in on the conversation....) My default tends to be to assume everyone gets along and can be friends, until I get hit with a clue-by-four about it. Even when I've had problems with someone, I still tend to think, Well, we seem to be getting along now, maybe we can be friends, until something overt happens again. (Perhaps) Surprisingly often, that turns out well. :-)

Hence the wink. :-) Now you're getting into the spirit!!

Beat me to it!