1,003 thoughts on “Scroll in the Sky”

  7. Morning Pan
    I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today. I will finish royalties today…

  8. My Grandmother’s brother was one of hundreds of thousands of American solders killed in Europe in the effort to eliminate the Nazi’s. Given what that effort cost us in human lives and tax payer treasure, I simply do not understand why we now even “tolerate” their presence in this country.
    http://tinyurl.com/yc28wk4y

    One of the “canceled events” was a Marching band competition that was basically the season ending Pinnacle competition for HS bands. We’re talking something that THOUSANDS of HS kids have spent thousands of hours in the heat, cold, rain – training for since last July. While their friends are off being kids, these bands have been standing in a field doing that drill “one more time”. We won’t even talk about the money spent on these shows. The kids are crushed. The Senior’s, for whom this would have been their last performance, are devastated.

    There is a special place in hell for these Nazi MF’s.

    • That is seriously fucked up. But as we’ve learned in the past year, the dying minority of frightened bigots don’t intend to go extinct quietly.

    • Expensive for the university as well. That was a major source of funding for their music programs. It will easily cost the 50k plus in revenue.
      BTW – the other program that got canceled was a big science and technology fair for high school girls. They got two things they hate with that one … women AND science.

  19. Caption:

    Little boy looking up at older sister, smiling:

    Can we kill them all now?

    Sister looking down, also smiling:

    Yes, yes we can.

  28. Today has been a fucking parade of first-world problems, so far. If I’d pitched this as a sitcom script, Hollywood would have rejected it as being “too unrealistic.”

  31. Thinking on J0e’s comment, I e come up with a compromise. I found a new Chucky movie that came out this year. So today,s movie is The Cult Of Chucky

    The Netflix write up: Following a string of murders in the asylum where she’s confined, Nicaragua Pierce begins to wonder whether Chucky is real after all…

    Da da dum!

  158. Mrs. TRA and I decided to re-watch season 1 of Stranger Things before tackling season 2. Then you add in the Talking Dead that we haven’t watched yet from the season premier of Walking Dead. We’re falling a bit behind. The good thing is, none of it’s going anywhere. We can watch as we need to.

  159. So I’m onto Endymion in the Hyperion Cantos series.

    I had forgotten the ickyness of Raul meeting the very young lass he will later sleep with due to the mechanations of time travel.

    It’s almost as bad as Heinlein’s Door into Summer.

  160. Hey Guys

    I’ve been having a lot of problems with my current email provider so I’m slowly switching everything over to a Gmail account. If you want to update your records, it’s the same beginning (firstnamelastname) at gmail dot com

    My old one is still active for now. I can receive replies to anything I send, but any new emails, should be sent to the new email address or there is no guarantee I will get it.

  169. Oh, and my email thing seems to have been sorted out so you can continue using the old one if you want.

    The problem was the way Shaw deals with deleted emails. Normally, you delete an email it goes into your “deleted Items” folder (or trash, or whatever your system calls it). Then you delete the items in your deleted items folder (or clear your trash, or whatever) and it goes away forever. Apparently Shaw has an extra step. When you clear your deleted items folder, everything goes into another part and is not permanently gone. You have to actually go into this third folder and delete it again. I wasn’t aware of this extra step so I had years of double deleted items taking up space so I had reached my limit. Once I cleared this third folder all was good.
    Of course, it would have been nice if Shaw actually told me I was reaching my limit so I could figure out why but no, they had to simply stop emails. I could get/send simple emails, but anything that had any kind of graphic of attachment would not go through.

  174. This is what our conversation was like yesterday buying Halloween candy

    Me- we only had about a half dozen kids last year so we shouldn’t get too much
    Hubby reaches for a box of 100 mini chocolate bars
    Me – that’s too many
    Hubby – we’ll give each kid two
    Me – still too many
    Me, looking at the box – this box has caramilk bars, among others. You don’t like caramilk so won’t eat those that are left over
    Hubby – you can eat them
    Me – I don’t want to. I’d rather get less, then not have a bunch left over
    Hubby, adding another box of 50 candy bars to the cart- it’ll be fine
    Me – shakes head

    Basically, hubby wanted a bunch of chocolate for himself and was using Halloween as an excuse to do so

  176. During my trip last week, I also watched “The Girl With All The Gifts”. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t find it all that great. It was interesting to think of it as a prequel of sorts to “The Last Of Us”.

  182. I have REALLY enjoyed the Orville this year but that last episode, “Majority Rules” was one of the worst hours of TV I’ve ever not enjoyed.

    #myopinionMINEffffppppttt

  188. Well I live with snakes and lizards
    And other things that go bump in the night
    ‘Cause to me everyday is Halloween
    I have given up hiding and started to fight
    I have started to fight

  190. It’s spooky when I comment on deadpan.

    I read through all the things and then say..

    I loved the Sliders/TNG repurposed Orville episode.
    I loved the Cause and Effects repurposed TNG episode of Discovery.

    Long live sci-fi for Cj

    • I think the reason Orville is so well praised is not because it is a great show. It’s more along the lines of it feels more like Star Trek then the new show does.

      The new Star Trek would be a fine show if it wasn’t under the Star Trek umbrella. If they made a few changes, such as changing some of the races (the klingons could look like they do now since they don’t really look like Klingons, just change their race name to something non Star Trek), and just called it Discovery, without being associated with Star Trek, I think I would like it better. I know it’s silly, but it’s because they call it “Star Trek Discover” that it doesn’t work for me.

      • Probably correct. Tho to be fair when you compare this first season to TNGs first season, Orville is far superior. I’m hopeful Orville grows as TNG did

    • “The real scandal is the Fellowship’s collusion with Saruman the White, which the left-wing media still refuses to report on.

      Brilliance.

  198. J0e, it’s tychebooks.com
    The biggest problem we seem to be having is Google Calendar doesn’t want to show the events. Google says it with our website, our provider says it’s a Google issue. If I can’t get it working this morning, I may have to use a different calendar

  220. sigh
    I’m sorry, rest of the world.

    http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/358640-epa-names-industry-state-officials-to-advisory-boards
    “Among the dozens of new members to the Science Advisory Board, Clean Air Safety Advisory Committee and Board of Scientific Counselors are representatives of Phillips 66 Co., Southern Co. and the North Dakota Petroleum Council.

    Some of the new advisers have controversial scientific views, including one who believes air quality is too clean for children, while the new members include multiple climate change skeptics.”

  226. Murder on the Orient Express

    Well acted, enjoyable enough, brings nothing new to the table (how could it?).

    If you haven’t see the 1973 film or read the book then yes go for it, otherwise save your pennies.

  243. Hi peeps! If you love Yankee Candles, or know anyone who does — our sweet Sophie is fundraising for her Ice skating troupe.

    Reach out to me or Jack for details. The sale ends Nov 15.

    TIA!

    • Yes. I am frustrated by what I see as an article that tries to address a problem(Yea!) the rest of society wants to not talk about … yet is contributing to the “miss-understanding” of the problem itself (Boo).

      /essay
      The author seems to want to define “mental illness” as only in the category of people who hear voices our have some other dramatically debilitating problem with reality.

      What about depression? What about anxiety? What about a host of other things that slowly cause people to turn inward, becoming lost in their own ever darkening thoughts which can eventually result in violence to themselves or others? Is THAT not mental illness?

      Let’s face it, to the general public the term “mental illness” is synonymous with either people who “ride the short bus” or wear a straight jacket. So there is a huge stigma associated with even talking about the first sign of any of the problems I mentioned above much less going to seek help. So an illness that could have been stopped or controlled at an early stage, is allowed to metastasizes into something completely debilitating to the individual if not outright dangerous to themselves and perhaps others.
      So why not remove the stigma by calling these issues as something other than a mental illness?
      Ah, now there’s the Catch 22. Treatment cost money. If insurance is willing to pay anything towards this at all it has to be diagnosed as an illness.

      Now I circle all the way around to the mass shooting thing. The gun lobby wants to paint the mass shootings as a “mental health issue” not a gun issue. Fine then. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
      Time for the NRA and the whole RNC to step up and lobby for free or reduced counseling to everyone. Make getting at least a twice a year mental cleaning as common as a twice yearly dental cleaning. You go in, sit down and tell someone who ISN’T an anonymous Face Book Troll what is on your mind!
      A cure all? Of course not but it is a start. Plus maybe it makes seeing a counselor more socially “normal”.
      In any case, it sure seems better than the current solution which is “Wait for someone to lose it and start shooting into a crowd – then hope there are a bunch of untrained civilians with their own guns nearby who will start spraying bullets into the crowd as well, until the original shooter finally gets killed.”
      That’s not a “fix”, that is the plot to a “grind house” movie. It is also what the Governor of Texas has suggested as a solution.

      /essay

      • A couple of further thoughts:
        -The Democrats also need to stop cowering before the NRA and the right-wing zealots and step up.
        -I like that the article deflates the automatic “it’s not guns, it’s mental illness” lazy defense that gets trotted out after mass shootings.
        -Let’s start addressing the anger problem in the US. All of the major evil forces of influence (trump, foxnews, alex jones) got powerful by stoking anger.

  263. Seeing talk that Cold Stone Creamery is offering free ice cream to men with full beards today, but nothing from their official site. Could it be true?

    • Disappointing. His antics are disgusting, and I’m not giving him a pass, but — according to the accounts, he always asked first, never forced himself, and never physically touched any of the women.

      Some of the women say they felt uncomfortable saying no, because of his position of power and fame, which is fucked up. But IMHO, while this is creepy as fuck, he’s still far less of an evil predator than Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Roy Jones, Kevin Spacey, etc.

      Please feel free to disagree with me, or call me out if I’m being too easy on Louis CK.

      • No Ill agree with the point that he’s a different kind of scumbag than the other names you’ve written. And a couple accounts say that, while he did ask, he was pretty much in the act of doing it when he asked. No all, a coupole. Still… threatening people’s careers (even if it is thru an agent) if they tell is the biggest dick move you can do.

      • If his participants did not openly agree to his antics, then he should’ve stopped. It’s kinda like Date Rape and how guys (usually it’s the guy) says “she didnt say no, so…”

        I funno – thats my take

  267. CYNFUL!!!!!

    Wowza! You have knocked me out of my socks (and baby socks) with your adorably, awesome homemade goodies for Baby M!!! I love it all. Thank you for being thoughtful – our winter baby will be cozy, for sure.

  269. Today I’m working on a nonfiction book. I hate putting these together. Between drawings text boxes, and footnotes, it takes four times longer to put one together than our other books

  272. Got some good news from work. One of our books has had the movie rights purchased. I know that doesn’t mean it will actually make it to film, but still pretty cool.

    What it really means is extra work for me as they want sales stats

      • My first response is “oh this guy is lying. Takei has always been outspoken against this kind of stuff. Steven Segal OF COURSE did all his dirtbag stuff that he is accused of. But this is George Takei. He would never.”

        But that’s a dangerous line of assumption isnt it?

        • A delineation here between this and other recently reported “assaults” is that, by the accusers own description, they were not meeting under any premise of a professional or business situation. This was a date where there was drinking before the incident occurred.
          So you have two consenting adults, voluntarily agreeing to be alone together in an intimate setting … where there was reportedly enough drinking that one of them reports becoming woozy.
          If all occured as the younger man says, perhaps Takei mistook the other’s intentions? According to the younger man, when he asserted to Takei that he did NOT want to be physical Takei said ‘OK, fine.’ He did not press him further nor did he make any threats.

          On it’s own, this story has enough “grey area” to give Takei the benefit of doubt.
          If similar stories arise about him I reserve the right to change that opinion.

          • “So you have two consenting adults, voluntarily agreeing to be alone together in an intimate setting … where there was reportedly enough drinking that one of them reports becoming woozy.”
            Man I just can’t go there. Justy because you consent to drinking and being alone together doesn’t mean you consent to assault.

            That being said there are other holes in his story that give me pause

          • Woa … didn’t mean to imply there was consent to assault.
            I meant to imply that two people willingly entered an intimate situation … that could easily be interpreted as “let’s go back to my place for sex.” and one of them DID (according to this account) interpret it that way. When the other adult made it clear that it was not what they wanted the activity immediately stopped with no further demands or pressure.

            What I am saying is, if Takei was intending to be nefarious he either would have continued the “assault” or he would have applied some sort of psychological pressure “Hey, this is good for your career” “Hey, you’ll never work in this town again.”

            This just sounds like a two people who made completely different and incorrect assumptions about where a date was going and when that mistakes was spoken things stopped.

            In this case “No” meant “No” and was respected as meaning such.

          • I (once) like(d) some of these guys who’ve been accused, like Cosby, Louis CK, Spacey, Whedon, Takei, etc., but if they’re proven guilty, then all of that is the past. We should shun/reject proven perpetrators of this kind of shit. Their victims need our full support, because they’ll never fully recover.

            But as someone who’s been subjected to every kind of bullshit false accusation from a malicious psychopath with dishonest intentions, I know firsthand how important it is to validate claims. And the falsely accused need our support even more now than before.

            I’ve seen commentary on FB from a few saying that regardless of anything, they believe the victims. This is fucking unacceptable. Treat alleged victims with sympathy and take them seriously – – but don’t automatically assume they’re being truthful. Don’t automatically hate someone based on unverified words.

            /rant

          • No no. I just think in these cases you can’t simply blow off the accuser just like you shouldnt automatically assume guilt. Well unless literally 5-20 people all come out with similar stories about the same person. Then, yeah, you kinda take the victims at their word there. I’m looking at you, gross fuckface Brett Ratner

  276. I’m up amd streaming NASA’s feed of the Antares rocket launch — where my nephew’s science experiment will make its way to ISS! So neat!

  277. Hubby accidentally saw a space shuttle launch

    He was in Florida for a conference. He and some coworkers were out on a restaurant patio for dinner when they hear and feel a deep rumbling. They liked around and saw the shuttle launching. I was a little bit jealous when he told me that evening

    (Yes, I know it’s coincidence not accident, I just think it’s funnier to say he accidentally saw a shuttle launch)

  282. Today’s launch was a success!

    It was cool to watch the streaming of it. My sister and nephew were at the launch and said was an amazing sight and sound to see.
    Neat.

  285. Yknow I’ve never actively been angry at a tv show. That is until I watched Marvels Dumbhumans. What an insipid, poorly written and executed, unevenly acted, waste of time and money this show was. I’m glad it’s done. I hope it’s dead. I weep for Jack Kirby’s corpse rolling around in it’s grave

  288. The roofers who were supposed to show up at 7am … showed up at at 6:25am.

    and so the fretting begins. Two days of waiting to see if they do more damage then they fix. Two days of having an army of strangers crawl all over my personal space.

    uncomfortable

  300. Attention Deadpan!

    It’s time to start organizing the annual Deadpan Secret Santa exchange! I’m reposting here for those who didn’t see the post in the Facebook group. All Deadpanites are invited to participate. The following people have already opted in:

    The Energizer Bunny
    Vanamonde
    ditto
    Jack
    Tiffany (see note below)*
    Rhettro
    Jeremy from Seattle
    David LoPan
    Lone Guise Knight (I believe that’s The Roaming Asshat on this site?) said he was a Mmmmmaybe

    *Tiffany, you said of FB that you and Baby M were both in – does that mean I should assign someone to buy a gift specifically for Baby M? Instead of, or in addition to a gift for you?

    As a refresher, here’s how it works:

    – Between now and next Saturday (Nov. 25), send me a Facebook PM or an email (amybowenwrites at gmail) to say you’re in and give me your shipping address, if I don’t already have it or it’s changed since last year.

    – On Sunday morning, Nov. 26, I will randomize the list of participants and send you a message back with the name and address of your giftee.

    – Please ship your giftee a gift of approximately $10-20 so that it arrives in time for Christmas. Nerdy gifts are generally appreciated. 🙂

    – You will receive a similar gift from the person assigned to you.

    Happy gifting!

    • Thanks for running this again, Santa Amy!

      I’d recommend reposting this to the FB Deadpan page.

      Lone Guise Knight is not The Roaming Asshat (formerly UsedHair), they’re separate people. Although now that you mention it, I’ve met them both in person, but never seen them together at the same time. . . )

    • There’s 1 pic making the rounds. He’s pretending to grope her through a kevlar vest while she’s sleeping; it looks to me like a dipshit fratboy prank. She says she wasn’t in on the joke, which makes it 100000% unacceptable behavior.

      The more serious thing is her allegation of him forcing kisses on her during a USO play rehearsal.

      • I haven’t heard anything.
        As always though, I would say one must take a breath and look at the details.
        Was this a “one-off” instance of being a stupid ass where he owes somebody a big apology for behaving inappropriately (and a public shaming to remind others that this sort of “joke” is neither a joke nor funny) or is this another in a long string of predatory incidences.
        I think that we are beginning to see that with the real monsters, everyone knows about them but no one talks … until someone does.

        • K. And if he stuck his fingers in her vagina as a “one off instance being a stupid ass” would you even consider questioning it? Inappropriate is inappropriate no matter how many times.

          • Aggressively kissing someone who’s made it clear that they don’t want to be kissed is a shitty move. It’s clearly less shitty than an adult pedophile perving after 14-year-olds (Roy Moore) or an adult pedophile perving after teenage beauty contestants (Trump) or groping women without consent (Trump) – – but still shitty. And those assholes’ misdeeds are not relevant to the allegations against Franken, whether he did it or not.

          • Hmmm.
            I looked back through my post and couldn’t find anywhere, it said inserting any part of your body into someone else’s body (without their consent) was anything other than assault.
            You must of been thinking of some other post.

  310. Drump lifted the ban on elephant trophies in the U. S.

    How does that make America great again?

    Is he grasping a “power” straws and throwing whatever he can at the wall and sees what sticks for his presidency?

    This guy continues to make me sick.

  312. Finally getting to see Ragnarok tonight. Yea!

    Last night was “TV party” with the guys.
    – While we ate dinner we watched an episode of Graham Norton show with the cast of “Murder on the Orient Express”. I think they were all drunk. It was amusing.
    Also, musician “St. Vincent” (I think maybe I have seen her name mentioned here?) sang a number while sporting fetish wear. The outfit distracted from her song for a while but I actually quite liked her sound.

    – watched 2 Tracy Ullman skits where she was being Dame Judi Dench as a delinquint. Hilarious! I thought she had the manor-isms and voice, spot-on.
    https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=spigot-chr-ffmac&p=tracy+ullman+dame+judi+dench#id=1&vid=4158b3d6f408ed41d253400579fcacc9&action=click

    – Watched the final 2 episodes of this season’s Star Trek. I find some of the characters a bit annoying but all in all I really like it.

    – Then we watched an episode of The Orville. I really want to like it. :/
    It feels like there is an internal struggle within it’s creative staff as to whether it is going to be the further adventures of TNG or if it is just going to be a sit-com set in space. That being said … if they decide to go with sit-com they’ve got to find some other joke than “Look at us !!!! We run a space ship but act like 14 year olds!!” That has it’s moments but not an entire episodes worth.

    – Watched an episode of a BBC show called “Bounty Hunters”.
    http://m.imdb.com/title/tt7350790/?ref_=m_nm_knf_act_i5
    It wasn’t bad.

    By then we were tired and sleepy and the fire was dying. Time to go.
    Huzzah for TV party night.

    https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=spigot-chr-ffmac&p=TV+party+tonight#id=1&vid=3ccc493925c3f7c872fa2c691791cc63&action=click

  315. I thought I’d pick up the book Westworld by Michael Chriton. Turns out, you can’t get it. Either in print or in e. Given the success of the HBO show, this surprises me. It must be in some sort of dispute or something by his estate.

    • Before I saw it, I would’ve said to stay away. But, after seeing it – it was mostly fun and still very flawed.

      Wonder woman — boooyaaaa girl power!
      Batman — better than he was in BvS
      Cyborg — grew on me as the movie went on.
      The Flash — blah and too sparkly.
      The Bad Guy —- typical CGI disaster and lame story.
      Aquaman —- Mmmmmmmm, Jason Momoa

      Stay for the end credits, too.

    • Glad it wasn’t atrocious but I’ll still pass. Being as we see maybe 4 or 5 movies a year total I’m not gonna waste it on something I’ll potentially hate. And I have a funny feeling I’ll hate it. Just because I’ve hate all before. Cept ww because still haven’t seen. #getoffmydclawn

  322. Sad news about Malcolm indeed tho unfortunately not surprising. He s been in and out health for years. I’m glad I got to see them in their 3rd heyday. In the immortal words of Scott Ian “Malcolm Young kicks ass”

  328. So Ghosted is a lot of goddamn fun and great for fam night. After a shaky pilot where everything you need to know about the characters and situation is forced into it, it really got rolling on ep 2 and beyond. We binged all 6 episodes last night. It’s X-Files monster of the week/overarching arc combined with lol moments and a divine chemistry between the two leads all wrapped up into tidy 22 minute episodes.

    • Let’s be honest here. With the exception of OitNB and a SMALL handful of other shows, the only reason we’ve bee really holding on to Netflix was the Marvel shows. Plus, if losing Disney combined with piping in 8 billion of new content is what it takes to make Netflix a better product, I’m in.

    • I feel a disturbance in the force.

      1st thought … “ANOTHER damn monthly charge? I don’t think so.”
      2nd thought – This could go either way.
      If it goes the way of PIXAR, where Disney just provides the money and distribution and stays the heck out of the original production team’s way … it might be okay.
      IF, however, they decide that Marvel is all just more product to monetized, so they basically squeeze “content” out of the same tube as all there other in house product and just slap a Marvel label on it … oh, the horror.