CritterKeeper

You poke fun, but I have heard, over and over, Trump supporters who basically say, "I know Trump will be a disaster, but I feel like destroying the whole system is better than letting it continue!" They basically are choosing the Giant Meteor. It saddens me that so many people have so little faith in humanity and the future, that they honestly want to destroy what we've built up.

Ruffle Tedd's hair, Sarah! Ruffle Tedd's hair!

I have a fair number of friends who stash their cell, room key, money, etc there as the situation warrants, or even when they could have used a purse instead. At least some of the blame falls on clothing manufacturers who insist on making clothing for women with no damn pockets.....although I suspect at least one friend of liking the Iron Man look she gets from storing a still-glowing cell phone..... I also know of at least one case of a girl's phone getting ruined by moisture accumulation on a very hot day. :-/

That's the first time I've run into the term "fictating." Not even the great TV Tropes has an entry for it! There were a couple of short definitions in the Urban Dictionary. Thank you for expanding my vocabulary with such a useful word! I don't recall seeing anything in the actual canon that states that, or even implies it. I always just figured there is quite a range of power needs and of innate magical capacity, and Sarah was near one extreme, while there would be other people in the same boat but not quite so far out to sea. There may be any number of people who would need to exercise their magic a good deal before they'd be able to use their spell post-dambusting, let alone Awaken.

I've always advised clients to give the fun names to their pets, and give their kids names that won't get them teased in school. Pets don't mind if you name them "G'Kar," "Dulcinia," or "Orange." This is especially good to get out of your system if you have a name that makes for amusing combinations. The Brownes have both "Charlie" and "Buster." A longtime favorite is "Dudley" Dingboom ("Mom, now that we're engaged, I think I need to tell you why I never told you Mike's last name....") Of course, people aren't always good judges of what will get someone teased. I had one client whose last name was Walker, who told me that they'd named their son Luke "because we figured no one would remember that cheesy sci-fi movie by the time he got to school!" Earlier today I vaccinated a "Captain Jack" and had to keep reminding myself that he was supposed to be Sparrow and not Harkness.... When all is said and done, though, kids really do tend to get used to things and see them as normal pretty quickly. They might laugh when told a kid's name is Moon Unit, but as long as the so-named kid doesn't let it become a big thing, it will just be a fact among many within a week or two.

Granted, by Professor Elemental. There's no such thing as "normal," everybody's weird! I wish for a beautiful Victorian ball gown, custom made to fit me and flatter my figure, along with a guarantee to alter it as needed for the next ten years. It must be comfortable to wear and machine-washable.

Was he someone's uncle?

There have been some conservative republicans who have outright admitted that their goal in office is to make sure that government can't get anything done successfully. Their logic is, they believe government should be as small as possible. If government takes on a job, and does it, and does it well, then people will approve and will vote to let the government keep doing it. Thus, bigger government. On the other hand, if they sabotage and obstruct and conspire to make sure the government can't accomplish anything, then everyone will see the government failing or doing a bad job, and will believe them when they say that the government sucks and should be kept as small as possible. The "greater good" of smaller government, in their minds, outweights all of the good that the government could possibly be doing if they weren't sabotaging it. Sure, we could have health care for everyone, a good education, support for the elderly and infirm, but that would be Teh Evil Gummint!!!!

It does rouse one's morbid curiosity, doesn't it? Like hearing about a car wreck or a gruesome murder.....

Well, we have good reason to suspect them of being cunning linguists, so why not cunning schemers, too? ;-)

People often refer affectionately to their girl dogs as "my little princess" or the like. The cat who lives in our animal hospital is never referred to as a Princess, because we all know full well that even Queen would be a demotion from her current status as Cat.

*quietly makes a note about said Beserk Button* There was an episode of Forever Knight where that was a plot element. The murdered reporter's old articles on his computer had "form" where he meant "from" over and over (later fixed by the proofreader after they'd been sent in), so when the supposedly quickly-written suicide note had "from" typed correctly every time, they knew it was likely a fake.

Bleah. One reason I can't picture deciding to live there. Or a number of other states I could name.

We do have a chat room right here on 910cmx. *points to the row of tabs at the top of the page, just below the site logo* If you go in the chat room, a little red number appears on the Chat tab, letting everyone know how many people are in there. That can be seen by everyone who comes to the site!

I think in the spoken version of the joke, it ends up being more like one two-syllable word and one five- or six-syllable word. ;-)

May I ask why you are "anti-vaccination"? Because the guy who claimed they cause autism was proven to have deliberately falsified his data, and numerous studies since then have proven there is absolutely no link.

Wallander: The White Lion. Second viewing; the first time I saw it was within a couple of days of an episode of Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders that was also set in South Africa, and it was quite interesting to see the Hollywood version versus actual on location filming, with the realism you can expect from a British show.

Not quite that often, but it's been known to happen. One reason I keep a spare scrub top in a drawer by my desk. Tail is not exactly an attack so I didn't count it. I will note that my little girlcat has taken to jumping from one dresser to the other, and wrapping her tail around the floor lamp in between them as she goes by, making it wobble dangerously. I swear she must be at least part monkey, that tail gets such a good grip on the lamp!

...and that sixth end can attack in at least three other ways....

Speaking of slurring out sylables, I've heard that the measure of an English accent is how many syllables you can delete from "Worchestershire." The measure of a Texas accent is how many syllables you can add to a certain four letter word that starts with an S. The punchline has to be delivered audibly, but involves a native Texan educated in Oxford. ;-)

Lady Romanadvoratrelundar

There's a good murder mystery series by Donna Andrews which she started back at the turn of the century after a challenge to do a story with a protagonist that had never been done before. Turing Hopper is an artificial intelligence program that started out as a library research computer. (Google existed at this point, but wasn't nearly as ubiquitous as it is now.) The service used several different versions of the assistance program, with different "personalities" to appeal to different tastes, and Turing Hopper was the most popular and thus got more and more resources. She could adapt herself to make herself more useful to customers, and decided that learning how to present a more appealing and helpful personality, as well as getting better at her job, would fulfill that purpose and keep herself 'alive' to boot. Sentience developed from there.

Even if Tedd did see Adrian during that flashback, he was still a baby in a crib! There's no way he'd be able to remember that -- most people can't recall anything before around age three, and many can't access anything below age four or five. Very rarely someone can remember something from when they were two, but current science suggests that such memories are more reconstructions based on outside knowledge. I think that's the key difference. Nanase creates a fairydoll that looks like her. Susan creates one that looks like a doll in her trunk. Dex creates a doll that seems to have come purely from his own imagination. His summons will likely be the most flexible of the three. Mr. Verres and Grace said that you can't create a creature that's actually made of fire, because it would burn itself up. Susan's mark is the symbol for 'female' but she doesn't summon women with it. Sarah wasn't good at trivia questions and she doesn't summon the Riddler (nor the Doctor, who also wears question marks ;-). Pandora sometimes makes the mark's shape fit the spell it gives, but she also sometimes uses that shape to troll people. We don't actually know whether Dex's fairy comes with any extras. We know the least hard data about his spell. I'm going by the ending image of the "Playing With Dolls" storyline. Susan has several fairies about her, but they're all based on the dolls they created that day for her to add to her trunk. If she actually did have a custom fairydoll spell, I would expect at least one fairy to look different from the models. Good analogy. In this case, we don't know whether they're both fish, or dolphin and manatee, or shark and guppy. Ooh, I like this idea! Can we put one of Grace's birthday stuffed animals in the trunk and find out? Or maybe try a GI Joe and see if the little guns can shoot? Huh. I had never, once, even considered the possibility that Dex wasn't an adult. He has been told not to do anything too creepy with his magic. And I like the fact that his fairy is such an innocent summons, purely a friend to comfort a lonely person. Now I'm torn. On the one hand, I don't actually feel like there's anything wrong with using magic to, ah, make yourself happy. Nanase and Fox can do whatever they like, and I hope we get a sketchbook out of it. On the other hand, I find the idea of a man creating a semi-sentient female just so he can have sex with her, a pretty big squick. A bit of a double-standard? Yup, I admit it. Hmm, on the other hand, I don't think I have a problem with a guy creating a copy of himself for sexytimes, so maybe it's not such a double-standard. Again, they speculated that it was possible that she could have a custom fairy spell, but there was no evidence that she actually did, and the final image of the sequence implies that she doesn't.

Judging by her face and ears in panel two, I'm betting that tail is sticking straight out with bottle-brush fur right now. Not nearly as easy to hide....

We really don't know a lot about the fairydolls. We know almost nothing about Dex's fairy friend, whether he can vary her appearance, whether she leaves a doll behind, whether he can inhabit her, etc. We do also know that, when he has access to enough power, Dex can summon much larger and more varied creatures, several at a time, such as the firemen and the bulldog dragon. We don't know if he can summon anything bigger or more numerous, without that power boost. It's quite possible he could summon an army, or at least a platoon; we just don't know yet one way or another. (We do also know he's a nice enough guy he probably wouldn't.) Hmm, and now I have a mental image of Dex creating animate miniatures for the gaming group he's in with Greg.... We know Nanase can only summon one at a time, in first-person perspective which leaves her body vulnerable, and when she returns to her body an inanimate doll that looks like Nanase is left behind. Nanase can return to a previous doll, in fact she has little control over what doll she inhabits under many circumstances. Her fairydoll self can scry her emptybody, and can punch with the force of her And she recently gained the ability to modify the clothing the doll appears in. We know Susan can summon multiple fairy dolls, but they probably have to be based on one of the old fairydolls in her chest. Her dolls can act on her subconscious and give her some limited sensory feedback, or they can be controlled first-person like Nanase's, possibly with variations between these two extremes. They'll vanish quietly if left alone, or explode if unsummoned early. So, any fairydoll squadron would be quite the mixed bag. Ooh, please tell me they have a similar method of "sealing the deal"!!! ;-) This makes it even more likely Pandora will come along to college with the gang, possibly as Sarah's roommate! We do know a vow persists even through a reset, so it could well be a much younger Pandora helping Sarah develop her magic.