CritterKeeper

Just remember, you can always go back and file off the serial numbers later. If making liberal use of prior works helps get you started, go for it!

Okay if I revive the Grammar and Spelling Thread we had on the old forum? The idea was to put all such corrections, discussion, and (gentle) humor into one thread, and then anyone who wants to improve their English can keep up with it, while anyone who wants to avoid that sort of thing can just avoid that thread.

In the universe of The Dresden Files, there is a group fighting what is known as The Oblivion War. They're deliberately trying to destroy all knowledge of certain dieties, so that when they are finally forgotten completely they will cease to exist. This mostly consists of destroying the cultists who follow them and all written knowledge of the diety in question. The White Council of wizards has sort of the opposite battle to fight. There are certain spells/rituals which Harry compares to a vending machine -- put in the correct coins, the correct rituals and power, and you get back a certain result. Turns out that the more people try to use such a ritual, the more diffuse and dissipated their powr gets, until they are pretty much useless. The White Council therefore have a favorite tactic of deliberately publishing stuff like the Necronomicon so as to rob them of their power. Naturally, these two strategies occasionally come into conflict, and the Oblivion War has to manage to destroy certain tomes before the White Council get the chance to copy and publish them.....and they can't tell the White Council about it or they'll spread the very knowledge they're trying to suppress.

I lean towards bonus XP for clever ways around obstacles of all sorts, genuine role-playing, cooperation, and good puns (with penalties for bad puns).

rhinovirus

Fully functional

You can do that with whipped cream, too. Too thin to swim in to get out, too thick to breathe.

The point was that even if you *don't* hold it "too long," you *still* have a risk of someone dying. That there is no safe way to do it, only higer and lower risk.

*Notices that the token is coin-shaped, and on the other side it reads TUIT.*

Wallace and Gromit

Italian beef and cheesy garlic bread -- things have been too busy at work for lunch until now (5pm) so I've run to the pizza place next door to get them. Here's hoping I have time to eat them, too!

A cockatiel who can whistle "If You're Happy And You Know It" and the Imperial March from Star Wars.

That would only make him stronger and more awesome. :-) Seriously, after the last season, between his scene with Bonnie at the end of the Zygon episode, and spending a whole episode confronting fear itself and literally punching his way through a diamond wall, I hope like hell they don't waste such an amazing actor by letting him go after only three years. Pertwee was four years and Baker seven! It's so great to see a Doctor who carries the weight of his years, and an actor who can do subtle as well as broad, often both at once!

I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym

Poor Dan. I'm glad he shared with us just how hard it was to create a comic with a character death. The Geek is strong with him. We may have only just met Blaike, but Dan has likely known him for years.

Are we going to have to explode another TARDIS here?

TVTropes Will Ruin Your Life

Um, I don't really understand what that means. Metal? Are they putting gold leaf in their flags? Stitching metal daggars to the cloth? Are they saying you can only have a black or white background, rather than, say, blue on red, or green on yellow?

I love how often this happens. Cats that people used to write off as "He's just getting old" now get diagnosed and treated, and live for years longer! And if you catch diabetes early enough, and give them the right diet and insulin, cats have a pretty good chance of going into remission and not needing the insulin anymore.

Unless she's trolling again.... Could you summarize that rule? I only just learned the rule about a bastard using his father's banner but with colors reversed (and thus how appropriate Jon Snow's having a white direwolf is). Exactly. She kind of remembered they're important, but didn't know why until she finally recalled the details of her dream. She wouldn't know anything about any Marks not in her dream.

There's people who are into all sorts of things. To get back to "non-lethal takedowns," I attended a class once that talked about how an arm around the neck can put pressure on the carotid arteries and render someone unconscious in several seconds (fastest if the other arm is locked across the back of the neck to occlude a smaller vessel there, too). The airway is in the space left open by the corner of the elbow, so breathing is unimpeded. They spent a decent amount of time explaining that this is considered high-risk because there is a small chance of death every time it's done, for example through dislodging plaque from inside the artery to lodge in the brain, or increasing pressure on an undetected aneurysm causing a rupture. It's been banned in wrestling and the like. Didn't stop people from taking advantage of the chance to try it while they had an opportunity to with an expert.

He's in good company....

Hook

I find that one especially frustrating when they said "Let the people vote and decide who will nominate the next Justice," when Obama still had over a year left of the four year term the people did elect him to. Makes me want to see a reporter insist that they say out loud how many years a President is elected for. (While the joke that they seem to think a black President only gets three-fifths of a term is clever, I think they'd be about as bad with any other progressive President at this point.)

An awful lot of plans these days are unlimited-talk-and-text at a minimum, and often either unlimited or very large amounts of data. In the years since Susan complained texting cost both of them money with every message, things have changed a lot. I used to have a pay-per-text plan, but I don't think my provider even offers such a thing any more. On the other hand, I know a good number of people for whom their cell phone is their only phone, their only computer, or both, and often their only high-speed internet connection as well. If you're not paying for a land line and a cable modem, then the expense isn't that great to have a plan with a cell phone for everyone in the family.