Dusty Chalk

I used to know a stripper in Honolulu...never ate her, though. I miss Honolulu -- my favorite place on earth that I've ever been to (and admittedly, that statistically sampling is error-prone-ly small). I wasn't into sushi back then, I have a feeling I missed out. (shakes himself) Okay, back on topic. Okay, me: Pilin Thai, in Tysons Corner -- I love Thai food, and I love practically everything on the menu. My recommendations for that place are: look at the menu, look at the ingredients, and if it sounds tempting, try it, because they do everything well. I tend to stay away from ginger, but their three-flavor chicken is a favorite of one of my friends; their Pad Thai and Panang Curry chicken are two personal favorites (their Panang is not peanutty at all -- they save their peanuts for the Massaman curry). I also love their thai custard and sticky rice desert, and their spring rolls and satay appetizers (two different ones).

I forget whether or not this has been posted already, because I'm a troglodyte homunculus -- the Engineer's Guide to Cats:

I thought you were done with sources?

That's incorrect. I have the M-Audio Sonica, the Transit's predecessor, and it (a) is a USB 1.1 device, and ( goes up to 24/96 stereo. The only difference between USB 1.1 and 2.0 is what else will be on the line, if it's dedicated, then there should theoretically be no difference. But if your computer only has 1.1, then there might be other performance issues related to the computer.

Incorrect. Contributes to the population problem. Have lots and lots of wild protected sex.

Jesus Christ, those are amps?!?!? I saw your post in the "What's the last thing you bought?" thread first, and from the other pic in that post, I thought it was a sub or something.

^2, I.E.: :kitty: :kitty: :kitty:

[img width=150 height=90 alt=whatever gang signs]http://www.head-case.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=2766&g2_serialNumber=2&g2_GALLERYSID=8088592a1f3cbe7b76f8d13df6dfbfc1 The "Wha'Ever" (white Californian tween) Gang sign.

There's nothing new or sudden about it. There are people (myself included, but there are others in my family who are even worse), who forbid people from discussing a movie that they haven't seen yet. This doesn't happen on the intarwebz, it happens in real life, verbally. As far as I know, it's always been around. I mean, think back to the movie Halloween: "Due to the shocking nature of the movie, no-one will be allowed in to the film during the last two minutes!!!1!" or something to that effect. That was freakin' 1978, 30 years ago. I have no problem with most movies having big reveals, I've long since come to terms with that, as that's been the case for most of my movie-watching lifetime. I've seen experiments by the likes of Brian Eno with "static" films that are more like sculpture -- you don't necessarily have to watch the whole thing to get it, but you leave, you come back, and you get a different perspective on it, or you don't come back, and you take away what you got. Bleah. I'd rather have a good old typical Hollywood movie where something happens, something else happens (to complicate things), and then a third thing happens (to resolve things). I still find enjoyable stuff to watch in those movies, which is why my favourite movies are the movies in which it is obvious that the film-makers (be they the writers, the actors, the director, or whomever) are having fun making the movie. Take From Dusk Til Dawn, for example -- one of the best things about that movie is the fun they were having with the special effects. And yet it's still so strong, and comes across so clearly, that it's still contagious, no matter how much critique you can lob at the rest of the film. But you still have to respect those who are only going to watch the movie the once (and I think statistically it's safe to predict that most people watch most movies only once). And it's not fair to judge the "damage" you do yourself -- the "damage" is perceived. That's like saying, "oh, I didn't hit you that hard". Sounds like the talk of a bully to me.

I stand corrected.

Warning: objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

That would be entirely implementation dependent; there shouldn't be anything inherent in the technology for that to be the case, in and of itself. It's basically a lossless digital-to-digital conversion in both cases. Unless I'm overlooking something. Well, there's the impossibility of ground loops in an optical connection, but other than that, there shouldn't be anything...

No, that's not true at all. Yes, there is a large contingent of people who watch movies as soon as they come out, and yes, they tend to gather on the net to talk about it right away. But you'd have to be stupid if you thought that that made up the entirety of the population. It's for everyone else's benefit that spoiler tags are needed. You who have seen it want to talk about it to anyone, but those who have not seen it, do not want to hear about it, so you should exclude your conversation exclusively to those who've seen it already. Hence, spoiler tags. But then there's the dilemma -- the people who have not seen it who are on the fence about seeing it, but still want to hear about it from people who have seen it, without spoiling it for them. I know I'd never go to you about that, because you don't know how to censor what spoils a movie out of what you'd say about it. And your point about "better" or "worse" films is totally lost on me. Practically all films these days have a "reveal" that doesn't survive multiple viewings. So yes, there's an entire school of thought that reveals are worth protecting. So fuck y'all that've seen it first, don't ruin it for the rest of us. And for that matter, there's an entire category of people who don't watch movies until they're released on DVD or BluRay or whatnot. So there's a whole second tier of people who don't see it until it's released for home viewing, which starts the cycle all over again. Yeah, I think I'm going to have to agree with Nate -- if you gotta ask, you ain't never gonna get to know. But do, please, shut up about it (the spoilers, not the discussion). I feel kind of tricked into talking to you about it -- initially, you seemed like you sincerely wanted to understand, but now it seems you want me to understand why you want to be able to reveal, and quite frankly, I will never agree with you about that.

Everyone would fill that in with the same value: "yours"

Accomplishments/Deeds/Things I Did Last Night

Yeah, pretty much. Did you even read my post? Skip the part about Super Ex-Girlfriend, you obviously didn't understand that that was an example of how a spoiler spoils (in this case, the spoiler was the title, not the ensuing discussion). I thought I explained pretty clearly how the spoiler spoiled, and why it did. Forget the rest of the film, and the fact that you didn't enjoy it -- I don't care, you're not taking the example for how the example was intended. I thought I did a pretty good job of explaining how spoilers spoil in general, and you didn't even bring that part up.

x2.

This is the way the forums @ xkcd.com do it, and I think it's quite nice. Does the spoilered text get sent in the email updates? Sure: obviously, you already understand the worst spoilers. But there are milder spoilers that just ruin the movie-watching experience, because they put you in the wrong frame of mind. I'm going to pick one that probably nobody here has seen besides me and Hirsch: My Super Ex-Girlfriend. The spoiler from that one is right in the title -- she doesn't become his ex-girlfriend until more than half-way through the movie. So the first half of the movie seems to be one long dragging setup, rather than what it's meant to be -- the first half of the movie. You're in the wrong mindset to be watching the first half of the film. So that's why spoilers are bad -- they put you in a different mindset than you should be while watching the film. For example, if there's a particular scene in the preview -- like between the good guy and the main bad guy (the "big boss fight"), and they don't meet until the end, you're watching the entire movie knowing that they're going to interact, so any possible suspenseful moments beforehand are rendered moot. Is Buffy really going to get out from under that car that Spike threw on her just before the commercial? Well, you know she is, because you saw a kiss between her and The Master in the previews for this week's episode, and they haven't kissed yet -- that kind of thing.

Hey now, I can get laid, I just choose not to. Besides, I like Billy's fantasy world better than yours right now (although reality is somewhere in between).

Hey, my chances with Shania Twain just went up from negative infinity to negative infinity plus a little bit.

...at which point Pete looked at Todd like this: I am? I am!?! I am? PS This is entirely made up, I wasn't even there.

Dew et. I love my Wheatfield.

Just wanted to offer a word of support -- you seem to be pretty tough, I think you'll come through this okay.

No-one's buying Dusty, Dusty is not for sale. And you couldn't handle two of me.

Oh, c'mon, you know you want the Billy Bags six-shelver.