When unrolled it might say “KICK OUT THE JAMS!”

This is the way.

Virtually anything with a Newberry Medal is highly likely to have a traumatizing beloved character death somewhere in it. Maniac Magee and Bridge to Terabithia were good examples from my childhood.

I wonder if he was trying to mate with the toilet.

I have real love for TNG S1E16, “Too Short a Season.”

The Enterprise is dealing with a hostage crisis on a planet where the local government wants this old admiral who had negotiated a truce there decades before to come back. He shows up and it turns out he’s taking experimental de-aging drugs to grow younger. It turns out that when he had negotiated the original truce before, he had violated the prime directive and given weapons to some rebels, but he told himself that he made it even by giving the same weapons to the other side, which led to decades of bloodshed.

The writing is just okay, and the old guy / young guy makeup is pretty bad, but the scene where the admiral dies while looking into his wife’s eyes gets me. I also like to imagine that the ep might have originally been written with Kirk in mind as the old guy, because the whole “Well I made it fair by giving weapons to both sides” seems like the kind of cowboy insane shit that Kirk would pull and then never consider the consequences. The episode feels a little bit like it’s revisiting some of the times when Kirk would do his thing and then warp off into the sunset while definitely leaving some loose threads behind.

He’s a great guy. Fantastic actor. Love him. He’s a weird-looking dude.

Meanwhile:

You ever see one of those compliment rap battles? They’re pretty awesome.

I like the ability to adjust playback speed. I listen to everything at 1.1 and it just feels like everyone tightened up their delivery a little bit and took out dead air. There was one podcast where the subject was interesting but the delivery was agonizingly slow, so I turned it all the way up to 1.5.

I’ve been playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon virtually every day for years, through I don’t know how many updates. I’m far from convinced that every run is winnable, but there are some patterns that I’ve observed.

Mage and Huntress seem to be my best classes. The Mage’s staff means that you are guaranteed to have something that’s worth upgrading. The Huntress’ bow and her special abilities like growing grass by walking can make for some truly interesting gameplay changes, whereas I feel like most of the other classes’ abilities are more about moderate improvements to quality of life.

A Ring of Haste is probably my favorite ring to find, since being able to kite monsters is a great path to victory. Tenacity, Elements, and Strength are boring. Wealth can be good if it comes upgraded, but I wouldn’t put scrolls into it. Evasion always seems to turn on me sooner or later. Energy and Arcana can improve quality of life but are otherwise pretty mid.

A Wand of Regrowth is almost always a path to victory, especially if it comes upgraded, doubly so if you become a Warden, and triply so if you can combine it with the Sandals of Regrowth.

A Wand of Blast Wave is incredibly useful when used to knock enemies off ledges or into traps, saving yourself the trouble of killing them.

Other wands are a super mixed bag, depending on what you can manage to do with them, but I’ll say that some of my most fun and successful runs are putting a Wand of Corruption into my Mage’s Staff and becoming a Corruption Battlemage. You whack an enemy, Amok him on his friends, then corrupt them, then rinse and repeat until you win.

I’ve already mentioned the Sandals, which I’d say are incredibly useful if you’ve got a Wand of Regrowth or a Blooming enchanted weapon, but are otherwise hard to keep getting enough fresh grass to make worthwhile. I think the Ethereal Chains and Hourglass are my favorite and most useful artifacts. Horn of Plenty is okay but not great, unless you can combine it with being filled by the Battlemage’s energy generating ability. Other artifacts are mid, but I’ll make a special mention of the Unstable Spellbook which seems to screw me as often as it helps and yet I can’t deny that I have a great time with the mayhem it adds to my run. The Alchemist’s Toolkit is terrible; I hope a future patch significantly alters or replaces it, because honestly why bother using it at all?

I think my favorite runs are Corruption Battlemage or a Sniper with a nicely upgraded Boomerang; I always get a lot of fun out of using the boomerangs.

There’s no end to the conversation but that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s far and away the most played game on my phone… possibly my most played game ever, measured by eternal hours. The publisher is an absolute treasure and he deserves all the praise and success in the world.

Gravity Well and Melt are also both pretty fuckin great.

Bonus:

Shot them myself.

If you’ve got an Asian grocery store near you they’ll most likely have loose leaf. I got into pu’er tea this way and it’s fantastic!

Not sure if I merit being called an audiophile, but…

Huge collection of mp3s ripped from CDs. Stored locally, currently using a Unihertz Jelly Star as a glorified digital audio player, running BlackPlayer EX, which I like for it being a good mix of minimalist and giving me freedom to customize as much as I feel I need. When I’m using headphones, I want my ears uncovered so I use Shokz bone conduction headphones.

Hanlon’s Razor is always in effect.

I want the Marvel Ultimate Alliance model to come back. Build a four-member team from a huge cast of Marvel characters. Have their powers synergize with each other in interesting ways. Get team bonuses if you have the entire Fantastic Four, or Defenders, or what-have-you. Equip different costumes from different continuities for different effects. Action RPG elements.

There were a couple for the PS2 era that were awesome, and then they made one for the 360 that had better graphics but actually a much smaller cast and wasn’t as good as it should have been given the enhanced technology. And then nothing since. Midnight Sons sounded similar but I haven’t heard great things about it. The template was perfect! Just keep making more of that!

“It is obvious to the most simple-minded that Lokai is of an inferior breed.”

“The obvious visual evidence, Commissioner, is that he is of the same breed as yourself.”

“Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me! Look at me!”

“You’re black on one side and white on the other.”

“I am black on the right side.”

“I fail to see the significant difference.”

“Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side.”

Entire album is fantastic. Easily in the top ten albums ever made, possibly top five. This song, Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, Call Me Al, the whole African infusion. The whole thing is excellent.

Nice

Also, start eating crickets! They’re a great source of protein!