Cracks_InTheWalls

Oof, ow, my intestines.

There's merit to this. One of the beautiful things about this era is it's cheap as fuck (compared to other eras of history) to make and put out cool shit. Hell, we had a kid in town a few years back make a feature-length horror film with their phone that got screened at the indie theatre here. But you've got to dig and deal with the Sturgeon's Law factor to find gems among all the cruft out there.

Also noted that folks may want the mainstream entertainment of old, but real talk - once you're a certain age/level of experience, there's a good chance you're not part of the mainstream audience. Large groups don't make the stuff you like because you're not the target audience anymore, and four-quadrant approaches are dealing with a very different audience than they used to.

Been thinking about this quote from Terrence McKenna a lot recently (might seem a little quaint in the face of today's media landscape, but I take away a good message):

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y.

This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.

Lowest effort crop possible, but it is indeed a tub.

Actually, I have one at the ready, mostly because my dad used to call my brother and I by our feminine equivalent names to bug us as children (different time, young army guy).

Have not given thought to preferred choices, though, just that one.

Praise "Bob"!

I think on the whole, we do a little better at this than other platforms. Does depend on the subject, but I see more positive, respectful interactions here than I do elsewhere.

Always a good reminder though!

Even more out of context, it's a horrific way to treat the corpse of a rock and roll legend.

Say It Ain't So - Weezer
Don't Let Me Down - The Beatles
Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet
Living on a Prayer - Bon Jovi
Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own/Beautiful Day/Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2
Patio Lanterns - Kim Mitchell
Every Sperm is Sacred - Monty Python
Mama Tried - Merle Haggard
Anything from Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs when I can get away with it.
You Oughta Know - Alanis Morrisette (and it's a mistake every time)

Big on my maybe list:
Earache My Eye - Cheech and Chong. Aka as a straight cis guy, the only thing that would get me to perform in drag (preferably good drag, with help from people who know what they're doing)

Puppy Love/Put Your Head on My Shoulder - Paul Anka (been on a Paul Anka kick recently, and one of the karaoke spots I like is really close to where the restaurant his parents ran eons ago was)

I'm a Gun - Lorne Green (similar reasons as Paul Anka)

Why would there be a scale suitable for humans at a bank (I'm assuming customer side of the counter here)?

I mean, nothing life-saving or earth-shattering, and I don't put too much stock in it now because memory's a funny thing in general, but I've had 'premonitions'.

Biggest one was the period when I went to boot camp as a reservist. I had a dream several months prior about a guy saying 'Welcome to [specific base], welcome to hell' in a thick French accent outside of a barracks. I wasn't thinking about joining at the time. After I decided to join, got sent to boot camp and went to have a smoke on my first morning. Lo and behold, members of the Quebequois platoon that arrived the week prior were out there, and take a wild guess what I heard?

Idk, brain's making predictions all the time and sometimes it gets an eerie hit. We don't think about the ones that don't come to fruition as much.

My kid's in their early 20s and they will be getting at least a stocking until the day I can't fill one or die.

I'm in my mid-30s, and my parents still fill a stocking for me every year (even when I've said they really don't have to do that).

It's possible that this never stops, though it might change a little bit (more practical stuff, slightly less of it v. legit childhood).

To the larger question: oftentimes it doesn't change - they're just seen as children with the full rights, privileges, and responsibilities of adulthood. If you did your job right, you shouldn't have to worry about that too much - but you still will.

Oh man, I think there's a community about our friend Nicole, I'll see if I can find it.

Long story short, many of us got PMs from someone named Nicole, but were invited to call her the fediverse chick. She was supposedly an international student at a Canadian university, and wanted to connect with people at some link I personally never clicked on (iirc it was to some other fediverse service).

Nicole seemed very determined - many accounts, across many instances, with many, many messages sent. 'Nicole spam' is now a known term for many instance admins.