Archive for June, 2008

As an American, one thing I have gotten used to is the fact that people in England always want to copy us. They started by copying our democratic system of government, and then moved on to TV shows. Soon programs like The Weakest Link, The Office, and Dr. Who had been seized, and translated out of their native tongue and into what they like to call “The Queens English”. Its just like our English, except that its spelled funny, they cuss wrong, and use proper grammar.

Well now they’ve gone an Anglo-morphed my list.

Here is the result, as transcribed by one of their medics.

(Submitted by Stitch)

1. Not allowed to phone out for pizza while on exercise.
2. Not allowed to sell moonshine.
3. Not allowed to feign bleeding during a drugs test.
4. My corps badge is the Rod of Aesclepius, not “the SnakeStick.”
5. Not allowed to run a book on racing the very same cockroaches we don’t officially have!
6. Not allowed to invent medical conditions.
7. Not allowed to sneak back in under the barbed wire at three in the morning.
8. Not allowed to start a gay bar on the camp. This applies in conjunction with #2
9. If I am gonna be mistaken for a guy, must not get caught “sneaking” into the women’s accommodation.
10. See 9: When caught, “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body” is not a reasonable defence.
11. Not allowed a mohawk.
12. Not authorized to issue “beer tokens.”
13. Not mine: Not allowed to head-butt vending machines, even if it did steal a pound.
14. Not allowed to play “human bowling.”
15. Medicine balls are not appropriate equipment for playing dodgeball.
16. A live adder is not appropriate equipment for playing dodgeball.
17. Not mine: Must not leave a still running while away on exercise…BOOM!
18. “How the fuck do you even tie your shoes?” is not motivational.
19. Not allowed to get in fights in town.
20. Not allowed to practice medicine “off the books.”
21. If your disease sounds strange and Stitch diagnosed it you’re probably being had! (See Skippy #213)
22. Not allowed to play companies off one another.
23. Not authorized to administer “mob justice.”
24. See 23: Even for something sickening.
25. Not authorized to administer military discipline.
26. Not authorized to promote teddy bears above my own rank.
27. Not allowed to leave a teddy bear on sentry.
28. Must not show up to a staff parade dressed as a ninja turtle.
29. Must not show up to a staff parade dressed as a drag queen.
30. Must not show up to a staff parade in nothing but my boots and a hat.
31. Must not sneak prostitutes onto the base.
32. Rubbing the inside of a respirator with Deep Heat is evil.
33. Rubbing my face with baking soda before entering the respirator test chamber is cheating!
34. Not mine: Must not receive fellatio from a resuscitation doll.
35. Mine: Must not be the first person to train on said doll.
36. Not allowed to get anything pierced.
37. Not allowed a facial tattoo.
38. APC’s are not for taking a girlfriend in.
39. The night medic should refrain from turning drinks “Irish”, even if she’s freezing her arse off!
40. Not allowed to do “funny shit” with tritium paint.

Also, I like the word Anglo-morph. Anglo-morph sounds like it should be a monster that Godzilla would fight. A giant very polite city crushing monstrosity, with bad teeth. It’s probably looking for tea. I hear they like tea.

Like a 300 foot tall Eddie Izzard with atomic fire breath.

Um, I’ll stop now.

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Here’s some fun things that I found online this week.

Mozart. Amadeus Mozart.

Dance Dance Galactic Revolution

Stuck

Military Discipline

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I doubt the following is safe for work, but if the title did not tip you off to that, you deserve to get fired.

In his last post, Skippy mentioned that one of the things he does not want to see in porn is clowns. Also this has unintentionally turned into “list week” on the site, so I ran with it.

I am sure most readers of this site are aware of a film called “Clown Porn.” (That link is definitely not safe for work.)

I had always thought it would be funny to make a clown porno of some sort. As a comic, I know it only has so much potential, and figured it would make a good animated short. You can imagine my surprise to find out that there was a full length, live action movie about clown sex. So I checked out the trailer at the above link, and realized that they missed so many potential jokes and sight gags. But then again, people that make porn are not known for being too funny, at least not intentionally. But they tried, and I have to give them credit for that.

So, here is a list of clown porn gags that I would incorporate into my movie if I were to make one.

1. Clown deepthroat: The clown nose honks each time it hits the pubic area above the penis. Honk. Honk. Honk. Honk. Honk.

2. Never ending penis: Think about that scarf a clown pulls out of his pocket that just never seems to end. Imagine a clown “whipping it out” and he just keeps pulling and pulling and pulling more penis out as it makes a large pile on the floor. And it should probably be rainbow colored just for the fun of it.

3. Clown car vagina: One clown goes in, and then the next and the next and the next, until you have about twenty clowns in her. She acts like they are running around in there, she orgasms, and then shoots them out one by one like human cannon balls.

4. Squirting “flower”: You have a male clown undress a female clown. He takes off her shirt to reveal her breasts, and as he uncovers them, they squirt him in the face. He quickly covers them back up. Slowly he reveals just one and gets squirted right in the eye. Giving up on the breasts, he goes and removes her panties and gets squirted from there too.

5. Oooops the condom came off: If you do the safe sex thing, you could have the condom fall off inside the female clown. The male clown sticks his whole arm in to retrieve it. He looks like he is reaching all around in there and finding nothing. He suddenly gets a pleased look on his face and starts to pull something out, but instead of a condom, it is a bunch of flowers. He throws them to the side and goes back in, and after some more intense fishing around, he comes back out with a rabbit. Back in, and this time he finds a monkey wrench. He goes in one more time and you see him pull the end of the condom out. When he almost has it out, suddenly, it pulls back. He engages in a tug of war with the condom until he eventually loses and gets pulled in.

6. Cotton candy: A couple of clowns would not have real pubic hair, just little mounds of cotton candy.

7. Rainbow pubes: This is self explanatory.

8. Sweeping up the wet spot: It’s like the old sweeping up the shrinking spotlight bit, but with the wet spot.

9. Confetti money shot: He pulls out and shoots confetti all over the female clown.

10. Seltzer money shot: He pulls out and is going to skeet on her face, but instead it is a huge torrent of seltzer water. Lots of it. And just when it seems like there is no more left, and she begins to rub it all over herself, another huge torrent, larger than the first blasts her.

11. More honking: All intercourse will have honking on the in-stroke.

12. Slide whistle: Some how this seems like a good sound effect for an anal scene, but could be good for another blow job scene too. Whooooeeeep. Wheeeeoooop. Whooooeeeep. Wheeeeoooop.

Well that’s it, and just like real porn the women will leave their shoes on. Their big floppy shoes. I wonder, do they make floppy shoes with clear heels?

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So the other day my wife sent me the following link: NSFW

Go ahead an take a look, I’ll wait.

Ready? Good.

Now this nice lady has gone and made a list of the things that she doesn’t like to see in porn. And since I kind of have a thing about lists, I thought I would help her out, by making my own list.

Things That Skippy Doesn’t Want To See In Porn

1. Marilyn Monroe (Before you say anything, bear in mind she’s been dead for around thirty years)
2. Andy Dick
3. Any of the Muppets
4. Weasels
5. A Pterodactyl
6. Clowns (Even though you could get 20 of them in the back seat of a tiny car)
7. Daleks
8. My Grandparents
9. Any form of Lol-speak
10. Limericks, iambic pentameter, or haiku
11. Non-Euclidean Geometry
12. Product Placements
13. Fan-fic
14. Subliminal Advertising
15. Festive citrus, a female wash pot, or females sharing a cup

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Normally I try not to engage in snark-fests with people who leave comments on my site. It doesn’t make me look particularly classy, and it rarely, if ever, solves anything.

But sometimes you get “one of those comments”. One of those ones that are so far out there that it is just begging for me to say something. A comment that just demands my attention, like a hot redhead in a mini-skirt wriggling coquettishly. And like a hot redhead in a mini-skirt, sometimes I just have to go “Man I’d like to get me a piece of that.”

And so I present morrogoth who responded to I’ve Been Wanting To Get This Off Of My Chest with the following:

to ward away evil summoned one must:
1. deny its exsistance, for a god is no more a god if no one believes in him any more
2. takes salt, silvers shavings and amethyst dust and create a circle and reverse that ritual, it will seal the creature again
3. dont believe that 2 con artists were able to translate texts from a people who barely left writings, into a full working spell book, and i know for fact that the rosetta stone has no sumerian text on it.
4. dont believe that 1 of said conmen mysteriously vanished leaving his house for sale to future led zepplin front man, his disappearance leads many to believe he messed with bad stuff, or he got caught in the cookie jar
5. cthulu was created when law and order seemed unbalanced, as many ancient religions. so if i recited fancy unintelligible words i can bring Sprague de Camps Conan the Cimmerian to life to pillage and loot?
or then the sexy red nails or Set?
remember my words
magic has no power over those who not give it power

Rebuttal by skippy

Thank you for you kind and timely words of advice. I do have a few issues with them that I would like to address

1. Deny the summoned evil’s existence.

This is potentially awkward, seeing as you just summoned him and all.

“WHY HAVE YOU SUMMONED ME, O SMALL PINK AND TASTY ONE?”

“I don’t believe in you! Now Piss off!”

Just seems kind of rude to me. Plus I kind of suspect that the Great Lord C’thulu doesn’t particularly care if you believe in him or not. The only thing that belief changes, as far as he is concerned, is your flavor.

I think that non-believers taste like zesty ranch.

2. Salt, silver shavings, and amethyst dust?

Dude, that’s pretty much seasoning for C’thulu. You might as well just soak in a marinade and lightly sprinkle yourself with 11 herbs and spices. You’ll be tentacle-licking good.

3. This whole thing you list seems awfully specific to ward of all evil. What if you summoned something from say, the Aztec pantheon? How is disbelieving in two random dude’s translation of Sumerian going to help you there?

I don’t think that Ahuitzotl even speaks Sumerian.

4. Again, not going to list that nonsense again down here, but I rather doubt that most people here believed that in the first place. Or where aware that it was a possibility.

But if I ever find myself confronted with some form of dark and eldritch being of darkness and evil, I will definitely inform it, in no uncertain terms, that I don’t believe that the future Led Zeppelin front man disappeared as a result of supernatural shenanigans.

Because I bet that shit works like Kryptonite.

5a. I’m pretty sure C’thulu was created when Howard Phillips Lovecraft had some bad hashish.
5b. Summoning Sprague de Camp’s Conan the Cimmerian would be a neat trick. Seeing as how Conan was a Robert E. Howard character and all.
5c. I’m pretty sure that I could probably summon Conan, Red Nails, or Set by reciting fancy unintelligible words. I’m just awesome that way.

I suspect that you, however, would probably be lucky to get two Pokemons and a Snork.

I appreciate the advice, but it is clear to me that you are no higher than a 3rd level pseudo-neo-pagan. Once you get enough XP to level up you’ll gain the new class ability called Joke. I really think if you manage to get that one it will help you out a lot.

I myself am a 9th level Sarcastic Asshole. (Its a 4th Edition Prestige Class)

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A Specialist who is currently still serving has written this and asked if he can share it with the world here. And since I am such a huge fan of having other people write stuff for my site, herbal I have agreed. Pretty much anyone who has ever served can identify with at least some part of this list. It seems to be a list themed week so far. I may need to run with that.

1. I am sick of shaving.
2. I am sick of weekly haircuts.
3. I am sick of military haircuts.
4. I am sick of waking up at 5:30 am
5. I am sick of formations.
6. I am sick of running.
7. I am sick of pushups
8. I am sick of sit-ups.
9. I am sick of PT.
10. I am sick of layouts.
11. I am sick of maintenance.
12. I am sick of motor pool closeouts.
13. I am sick of police calls.
14. Addendum to 13: I am sick of picking up smoker’s disgusting cigarette butts because they are too lazy and ill-disciplined to put them where they belong.
15. I am sick of waiting around for hours, ailment doing nothing, price but not allowed to leave work.
16. I am tired of driving. I have never had any real interest in it, and now, thanks to the Army forcing me to get a military license despite never having held a civilian license, I view it more as another degree of enslavement to the whims and fancies of others to such an extent that I categorically refuse to get a civilian license any time in the predictable future.
17. I am sick of downloading CONEXes to be inventoried, multiple times in a week.
18. I am of being treated like a child, all the while being told that the military makes you a man.
19. I am tired of mass punishment.
20. I am tired of being accused, even only by inference, of being a thief any time anything goes missing.
21. I am tired of being accused, by inference, of drug use when another person is caught using drugs.
22. I am tired of doing nothing for most of a day, then being kept late because someone else realized that they didn’t know where something was, and therefore, I have to try and find it for them.
23. I am tired of MREs
24. I am tired of military food.
25. I am tired of hearing cadences at 6:30 in the morning, especially when I have the day off.
26. I am sick of mandatory “fun” events.
27. I am sick of being told that I will enjoy something/have a good time, when it is plain that not only will I not have a good time/enjoy said activity, but I must participate in sports that I absolutely despise.
28. I am tired of being asked if I want to re-enlist.
29. I am tired of being asked why I do not want to re-enlist when I answer no.
30. I am tired of waking up at three AM to sit on guard. I know it is necessary, but that doesn’t make me hate it less.
31. I am tired of block leave being the only times I have available for leave.
32. I am tired of details, big and small.
33. I am tired of being tasked out to do other unit’s work for them.
34. I am tired of the bullshit associated with jumps.
35. I am tired of being told that if I PCS, I won’t have to jump again. I know that, but I won’t get a PCS approved without a re-enlistment contract, and that isn’t happening–see 1-33 inclusive, and 36-92 inclusive.
36. I am tired of safety briefs that completely fail to apply to me (most notably, being told not to drink and drive–see item 16. Note that many other things completely fail to apply to me, but drinking and driving is very high on the list.)
37. I am tired of hearing the same safety brief, three times in a day, from different people at different times.
38. I am tired of CQ shifts.
39. I am tired of Battalion Staff Duty Shifts.
40. I am quite certain that even one Brigade or Division Staff Duty Shift will be more than enough to make me despise them as well, given the likelihood of seeing an important personage, and then having to do some trivial, pointless, task to satisfy their whim/ego.
41. Field problems are aptly named–I am in the field, and that is a major problem. Camping trips are occasionally fun, but not when you have to repeat a task over and again, and then comply with standards that are completely disregarded in actual combat (e.g., safety stakes and safety Ts)
42. Dress right dress is getting pretty damn annoying, especially when it applies to tasks (i.e. someone else is doing it, therefore, we must as well)
43. Class A inspections. This would not be nearly so annoying if it wasn’t for the fact that they are the only reason that we have to wear them.
44. The fact that jump boots are going away, so I’d be forced to look like a goddamned leg during 43.
45. “E-5s and above, fall out of this formation. Battery, Attention! Half-right, FACE! Front-leaning rest position, MOVE!” every time someone makes their E-5 (or above).
46. Being told, “You’re doing great things for your country,” in an disingenuous tone of voice during any of the above.
47. Being told, “You’re doing great things for your country,” in a genuine tone of voice during any of the above.
48. Being told, “You’re doing great things for your country,” at any time, in any tone of voice, whatsoever.
49. My chain-of-command’s probable reaction to reading this. Yes, sir, I beat you to it.
50. Reward by punishment–while I am flattered that I am so highly thought of, I’d rather that you demonstrate it in a different manner than giving me more work to do.
51. Waking up at 0330, to go to a battery formation at 0400, to go to a battalion formation at 0430, to go to a brigade formation at 0500, to go to a division formation at 0600, to be ready for a division run at 0630.
52. Number 51 being the start of an exciting, fun-filled week filled with mandatory attendance of other team’s sporting events, as well as number 53.
53. Standing at parade rest, while carrying M-4 with bayonet, for over an hour in the hot-ass North Carolina sun while someone who has never served in the division, let alone the military, yammers on about how great we are.
54. Running back after 53.
55. Performing retirement ceremonies for important persons from other units–where the hell are their units, and why can’t they be bothered to march around in a circle for their CO?
56. The existence of Hooah!2O. That is crossing the line in terms of being entirely too full of one’s own propaganda; being a party to that shame is more than any man should be asked to bear, even if the complicity is only by association.
57. I miss my dogs.
58. I have a degree to complete, and no, I can’t complete it to the level I’d like to in the military.
59. I would, at some point in the near future, like to have a long-term girlfriend/lover/wife. Being in the military is not conducive to maintaining such a relationship, especially with the current 15 month deployments.
60. The fact that I can legitimately be questioned, and frequently am, about where I am going to and why I am doing that by people I have never met, have no connection to my unit, and I am unable to respond with the truth–namely, that it is none of their business, and that I resent the fact that I am being delayed in my errand by someone who does not belong to my unit for their own satisfaction– without serious repercussion.
61. Along those lines, being berated for failing to salute an officer who was crowded by NCOs (in a breach of military custom and courtesy, as they should have all been to the left and behind by half a pace) when I could not see said officer’s rank. In a combat zone. By an NCO who was reading a newspaper while walking, and decided that junior enlisted were easier targets to satisfy his ego, rather than correcting a continued breach that caused others to fail to notice an officer walking by. Oh, and said NCO also failed to correct another nearby NCO who also failed to salute, for the same reason that we did.
62. Being mandated to attend ceremonies for people who I have never met, are not in my unit, and otherwise unconnected to me by anything less tenuous than shared military service and proximity to their locale–often made close by their travel to my location from some other base.
63. Being required to respect the rank of an NCO who does not deserve his rank, does not deserve respect as a person, and is wholly incapable of showing anyone who is not his superior any respect whatsoever. Yes, Hall, I’m thinking of you.
64. I am far too available, for far too many people, to do far to many things for them, all the time.
65. I am not a messenger boy, I have not worked as a messenger boy, and I will not seek employment as a messenger boy. Unsurprisingly, I must play messenger boy far too often.
66. If I shoot someone in the face, I will get a medal. If I give someone who I am not married to an orgasm, I can go to jail. Go figure.
67. When I show initiative, I invariably fail to do it the way my superiors envisioned it being done, despite them having no idea that it needed to be done in the first place. This is cause to chastise me and make me do it over again.
68. When I learn the obvious lesson from 67 and not perform tasks without being given explicit directions, I am instead chastised for lacking initiative. Apparently, being right is not part of being junior enlisted.
69. If I am right about something when an NCO is incorrect, said NCO will then begin going through various and obscure “general knowledge” questions until he finds one that I do not immediately know the textbook answer to–which is then used as a pretext for doing pushups or other form of corrective training. The state of being junior enlisted is that of a zero-sum game: NCOs win, Joes must therefore lose.
70. Being told that becoming an NCO will remove the “junior-enlisted blues”. So will getting out, and it will also exempt me from the “NCO blues” and the “I have an idiot Joe, and must therefore get yelled at by 1SG and BC for his antics blues” that will inevitably come the instant that I become an NCO.
71. There is more to medicine than Motrin and water.
72. If it is comfortable, then it obviously is not military wear, nor is it authorized for wear at any time.
73. Being told about the “college option” for re-enlistment. I have a better college option–it’s called getting out.
74. Room inspections. From my personal experience, it is frequently an excuse to find something wrong with someone, and then berate/smoke/counsel them.
75. Legal extortion in the form of “voluntary” associations/charities, such as the 508th association, AER, and CFC–except that not contributing/joining results in, at the minimum, several stern lectures about supporting your unit, followed by a negative counseling statement. One would have thought that men in their thirties and forties would have grown out of taking the lunch money of those smaller and weaker to them.
76. Most places will fire you when you screw up sufficiently. Not so the Army! They will make you work more for less pay. This isn’t hard to avoid happening to you, but that isn’t really the point.
77. Stop-loss. When the previous 76 reasons kept someone from re-enlisting, the Army finds a way to make them stay in. You know, to piss them off.
78. Stop-move. This is even more fun than the above. See, it happens when someone decided their unit was crap quite some time before deployment orders came down, and then took appropriate action, including re-enlistment, to guarantee that they are not part of that unit. Then the Army says, “Too bad. Stay with them for another 18 months,” before laughing evilly.
79. “There is only one standard–the ARMY standard!” is a blatant lie. This wouldn’t be so bad, but it really applies to things like time off and leave/pass policies, where it seems some parts of the Army are geared to making the lives of their soldiers as miserable as possible on a division-wide scale.
80. The tendency for the aforementioned units to make their soldiers so in love with them that they desire nothing more than eternal servitude with them. It’s like battered wife syndrome.
81. The fact that the above 80 reasons are actually used by people to stay in because they love it so much. Do you really want to work with someone who enjoys absolutely everything you hate about your job?
82. The fact that the division to the left of this sentence has turned me into someone who actually has incorporated 44 into his being.
83. IRR recall as a means of coercion for re-enlistment. Yes, I have had several NCOs tell me that I was going to be recalled anyhow, so I may as well re-enlist. If that doesn’t make you love the Army, nothing will.
84. The Army will teach you valuable skills for life is a blatant lie. Well, unless sweeping rocks and parking cars in perfect lines are valuable skills.
85. Military logic is as follows: in the PX at Salerno (and others in Afghanistan) there is more Sergeant Major rank than there are Sergeants Major in Afghanistan–similarly with Colonels and CW5s, not to mention Major General. One can find no specialist rank. Not even a slot for them. You know, because that would make sense.
86. Keeping in line with the above: General order 1-A states that any sex outside of marriage during a deployment to the CENTCOM AO will result in UCMJ action. This is fine. What is not fine is that they then proceed to stock large quantities of condoms in the PX.
87. Another actual occurrence with the above: in the Jalalabad PX for a period of not less than a full week, there were the following items: three sizes of envelopes, two types of file folders, four types of paper, paper shredders–but not one pen or pencil.
88. Somehow they managed to find space to stock vehicle cell-phone chargers.
89. Being awoken less than two hours after I go to sleep after a 12 hour night shift to perform a detail that, and I quote, “won’t take long.” That phrase is a lie. If it wouldn’t take long, then why the hell are they waking up the night shift to do it when there are day shift guys sitting on their asses? Oh, and it did in fact, take long.
90. The Army Times is the Army propaganda magazine. This is not the problem. What is a problem is that, increasingly so, it is showing how the Army is failing soldiers. If your own propaganda machine cannot make you look good, it makes one wonder just what in the hell you’re missing that would make them look really bad.
91. Health and Welfare inspections: the reality of these is that they are not about the health and welfare of the soldiers. They are intended to catch someone doing something wrong. That is it. Things that actually affect the health and welfare of soldiers are a distant second. This includes decrepit barracks rooms in buildings that charitably should be condemned (see the Ft Bragg barracks incident. Also note that I live in one of those barracks). Catching someone with more booze than regs allow is more important than getting soldiers into decent housing.
92. Continuation to the above: married personnel are apparently exempt from this, as are senior enlisted personnel.

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Just to change things up, I thought I’d start showing off some of the non-military lists I have been sent. So here’s the first entry, of what will probably be many, of the IT List.

42 Things That I Am No Longer Allowed To Do in I.T.

(Submitted by MC900FtJedi)

1. Not allowed to randomly rickroll users upon login to the application.
2. Not allowed to comment that Visual Studio 2005 is a “bloated piece of shite” within earshot of the Microsoft consultant.
3. Rooms at adult-oriented hotels cannot be charged to my corporate card.
4. Not allowed to discharge a fire extinguisher in the Halon-protected server room.
5. Lolspeak is not appropriate for error messages.
6. Lolcode is not a corporate standard.
7. Not allowed to use Star Wars references when naming new applications/modules; it makes Legal nervous.
8. That goes double for South Park.
9. If something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that doing it will get me an invite to the HR Director’s office.
10. Not allowed to continue to explain to users what an ID10T error is.
11. Or PEBKAC, for that matter.
12. “Mental Health Day” is not a valid reason when requesting time off.
13. Not allowed to say “Domino’s Pizza” when answering the phone.
14. My cubicle is not holy ground.
15. Not allowed to charge the down payment on my SUV to my corporate card.
16. Not allowed to tell the new developers that it is a department standard to capitalize all vowels in source code.
17. Not allowed to put up “Happy Birthday” fliers for non-existent employees.
18. Not allowed to change my manager’s startup sound to “Balls! Balls! Balls! Balls! Balls of steel!”.
19. Must not play battleship with a fellow developer on the text pager during the departmental meeting.
20. “Yak Shaving Day” is not a recognized company holiday.
21. “If it was in your ass you’d know,” is never an acceptable answer.
22. Not allowed to execute a DoS attack on the network admin’s PC.
23. My department VP does not appreciate it when his administrative assistant receives flowers on national Boss’ Day.
24. My dog did not eat the source code.
25. Not allowed to place a 2 Meg animated GIF on the start page of the application.
26. “Did you see the rack on her?” is never appropriate.
27. Especially during Bring-Your-Your-Daughter-To-Work-Day.
28. Maxing out my corporate card’s $10,000 limit every month is not mandatory.
29. A bloodhound is not a packet sniffer.
30. Not allowed to hide all but the decaf coffee.
31. Not allowed to name applications/modules/procedures in such a way that their acronyms would be sexually suggestive (Data In, Logical Data Out).
32. Not allowed to create Help Desk tickets for office supplies.
33. “That’s how I roll,” is not an acceptable answer as to why I was two hours late.
34. I am not the king of all I see.
35. Under no circumstances am I to ever touch the UNIX machine on the 7th floor.
36. Not allowed to use the DR (disaster recovery) machine as a public Starcraft server.
37. I do not have mafia ties.
38. No one is interested in hearing the details of my prostrate exam.
39. Friday is Hawaiian Shirt Day, not Hawaiian Dress Day.
40. Calling someone an “f***ing idiot” is acceptable after I hang up the phone, not when I think my phone is on mute. Which it wasn’t.
41. Not allowed to have a three-martini lunch. Especially since when I say “three-martini lunch” I really mean “five margarita pitchers binge”.
42. Must not come into the office at 3 am and pass-out under my desk after a Tuesday night “three-martini lunch”.

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So it looks like I may be turning this into a regular weekly thing.

Because I am hardcore about being a geek like that. Plus I like finding out about which games are already doing ideas similar to mine.

Player Interaction

First and most basic thing: Universal Friends List. If you ever wind up making an second character, it can be a huge pain in the ass to have to re-enter all of your friends into a new list. City of Heroes has already done this, so there really isn’t an excuse for every new game that comes out to not include this.

Ditto for the ignore list. The idiot RoxUrSoxor, who is filling the newbie chat full of Chuck Norris jokes didn’t get any more interesting just because you decided to switch characters. In fact you should be able to select the guy, and put his whole guild on ignore with one or two button clicks. Because if there’s one thing you know, its that no one who would admit him to a guild has anything to say that’s worth listening to.

To avoid any problems from these universal lists, give the players the ability to “Opt Out”. Maybe a player has a character that they don’t want everyone to know about. Along those lines, perhaps a player just wants to play without his friends for a while. So make “Lurk Mode” an option. That way if you don’t want to hang out it tells all of your friends that you are offline.

Another related idea is an enemies list. Every game on the market provided options to keep track of all of your buddies. But so far I haven’t seen any that help you to keep track of all of the people who have ticked you off. To prevent this from being used as a tool for griefing it shouldn’t show certain details, like their location or even whether or not they are online. But the characters could be marked with an icon to help remind you that this is a player who has annoyed you in the past. This has the potential to actually be combined with the PVP mechanics to make a whole “blood-debt” system.

Yet another idea that I haven’t seen yet is Character Notes. The ability to basically make a little in-game post-it note and attach it to another player. Not physically in game, but just an icon, visible only to you, that showed that you had some notes written down about that player. Maybe another player was gracious about settling a dispute. Or maybe he sprinted past you to steal your treasure chest. Either way, now you can check your notes on how he acted in the past. I predict this turning into a great big pile of fun when combined with the enemies list.

Another problem area is quest tracking. Every one of these games has a either a journal or a log to track what quests you have available, and what your current progress is. And some of them even let you see if any of your teammates are on the same quest. But most don’t let you track your friends progress on their quests. I think you should actually be able to open up the quest log of any of your member of your team, right next to your own. This will make it far easier to keep everybody organized. Also, I think the whole “quest sharing” feature that many games already have should be mostly automatic. If you’re in a party with a guy who’s going to get a magic sword for rescuing a princess, then the king should just pass out blades to everyone at the end of the adventure.

One feature I have seen under-used is side-kicking. CoH did it first, Age of Conan has it now (they call it mentoring) but for the most part I haven’t seen any other games adapt it. I have no idea why not. The whole point of an MMO is that you are playing it with other people online. And unless all of your friends have exactly the same amount of free time, discrepancies in levels will develop. Anything that will allow players to overcome this sort of obstacle is a good idea. And since this feature has already been used in a well-known game, its kind of stupid that everyone doesn’t have it.

And the last idea I’m going to jot down tonight is my way of dealing with spammers. Especially the guys that sit there and send private messages to every person on the server, trying to drum up business for their slave labor gold farm. One relatively simple way is to charge in-game money for sending tells out to people who have not friended you. Losing 2 copper coins to send some random guy a private message about his cool armor would probably be inconsequential to you. But if you are trying to send out 1000+ messages an hour about your awsome power leveling service, your character mights start running low on funds. I’m pretty sure that Eve Online is doing this one already.

But to take this idea to its logical conclusion, make a simple addition to the end-user agreement. If a player advertises out-of-game commercial services, then the game company will charge that player $100 per infraction. Plus their computer should explode. But I’m not sure how to do that last part.

Discuss.

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Pt 1 Military Humor

Navy Carrier Squadron “Pump It”

The Way To Amarillo

Swearing In

Ghost Riders in Dubai

Pt 2 Computer Game Humor

RP Servers – Probably Not Safe For Work

Violent Horsie

Sporn – Not Safe For Work

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Well, California has started having same sex marriages.

Good for them!

I never understood the problem people have with same sex marriages or homosexuality in the first place. Ya, I know, some people have religious reasons and think it is a sin and God hates fags, and all that crap.

Well they are wrong. I know they are wrong because I spoke to God, and It told me those people are full of shit, and although God does not hate anyone, if It did, those intolerant, bigots would be near the top of Its’ list. But since God loves and tolerates everyone, and there is no Hell, God told me the only punishment these bigots will get is a slap to the back of the head when they reach the after life, and a stern, “What were you thinking?” (Seriously, God is pretty hip once you get to know It better, and is also a surprisingly good cook.)

I think the argument that I have heard that makes the least sense, is that allowing homosexuals to marry will damage traditional heterosexual marriages.

How!?!

Well, I never can seem to get an answer on that one. How does two homosexuals being married impact your marriage in any way, shape, or form? You’re still married. If your marriage is so fragile that two married homosexuals down the street will endanger it, I guarantee that your marriage sucks already and the gays getting hitched is not your biggest problem.

Oh. Wait. I get it. A lot of the opponents to same sex marriage are worried that if the option to marry the same sex exists, they will be forced to go gay. Because that is the only thing stopping most people from being gay, is that marriage isn’t available. Why would anyone marry the opposite sex when you can marry one of your own and avoid all those Men are from Mars/Women are from Venus issues?

Why should I put up with some bitchy woman on her period once a month, when I can marry my best buddy, and enjoy a football game in peace?

You ever ask yourself the question, “Whose dick do I have to suck to get a little peace and quiet around here?” Well if I marry a man, now I have an answer to that question. And as far as sex goes, I bet I can convince my new husband that we would both be happier going out and picking up some chicks, because as cool as this same sex marriage thing is, I need a little poontang once in a while. I know this would not be a problem, because any man I found worthy of marrying would like pussy as much as I do…duh.

I know, I know. I’d make a horrible gay man. My girlfriend tells me that all the time. Plus I have an overly sensitive gag reflex.

Seriously though, I don’t think marriage should even be a legal institution, but since that isn’t going to go away anytime soon, I totally support same sex marriages, because this is America and slowly but surely we will give everyone the same rights and treatment as everyone else. I know America’s track record on living up to that is shit, and if you disagree ask a Native American, an immigrant, a black person or a woman,…hell ask anyone. We all get screwed in one way or another, but at least this is one wrong that is being righted and I support it whole heartedly.

If you are one of those people opposed to same sex marriage, you need to pull the stick out of your butt and stop trying to make other people live by your rules. By the way, it is not hard to remove the stick from your butt, as I am sure you can clearly see it being that your head is up there too. Just grab it with your teeth and it will come out when you pull your head out. Now go take a shower. Your hair smells, and you should probably brush your teeth too.

Finally, I will point out my only reservation about whether legalizing same sex marriage is the right thing to do. The only problem I see with same sex marriage is that if you do not have sex before marriage, you could be in for a rude surprise on your honeymoon when you realize your wife has an eight inch clitoris and no vagina. But I don’t advocate saving sex for marriage either.

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