Posted on General

Scrolled Lang Syne

Happy New Year!

This post is going to seem dated in about a month.

965 thoughts on “Scrolled Lang Syne”

  7. Happy New Year, Deadpan! I stayed up until midnight with my friends last night, then did nothing today except go to church, work on creative writing, and talk convention plans over the phone. It was a good day.

    To reply to comments from the previous page:
    Lo Pan says: “A belated thanks for the card, Ms. Bowen!” <– You're welcome!

    Everybody says: "Let's talk MMMMMMeetup plans!" <— The eclipse weekend in KC works for me. 🙂

  9. So, confession time:

    We got through phase 1 of our Holiday cards this year, but never got to any follow up phases. As a result, some friends and family got cards, some did not. Apologies to everyone we missed. The phases were not in any kind of priority order, of course.

  14. Much Music (Canada’s version of MTV) rated Michael Jackson’s Thriller as the number one music video of all time. I find it hard to disagree.

  30. I’d still like to see the movie shown in the trailers some day. I know it happens, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case where so little of what was shown in the trailers actually made it to the final cut.

    • Honestly, I don’t really care. I get why people are grumbling a bit about it. After all, the Jyn vs a Tie Fighter scene looked cool. But the trailers did their job and got people excited and filled theaters. The movie I saw was great. No complaints from me.

    • I won’t go into my trailer shpiel again, but I didn’t have that experience during viewing; I only noticed the discrepancies when watching the trailers afterwards.

      I’m good with the film we got. The most intriguing missing scene (to me) was of the TIE Fighter facing her down on the catwalk.

  32. So we thoroughly enjoyed Rogue 1 but got home feeling a bit … down.
    Thankfully we were clued into a BBC thing that could be found on You Tube – “Peter Pan Gone Wrong”. A totally silly fare that left all laughing out loud.
    New years day was saved!
    Then right after, we watched the new Sherlock. Oh well. Back to melancholy.

  74. I think I just confused a friend by commenting that karate chops seem to common in 60 and 70’s in fight scenes in the 60’s and 70’s.

    Out of fashion these days.

  78. In honor of Tolkien’s Twelve-ty-fifth birthday:

    _______________________________

    “The Stone Troll” is a poem composed by Sam Gamgee and recorded in the Red Book of Westmarch.[1] Sam recited this poem when Aragorn and the hobbits were resting[2] in the shade of the trolls who had been turned into stone during Bilbo Baggins’ adventure with the Dwarves.[3]

    The Poem

    Troll sat alone on his seat of stone,
    And munched and mumbled a bare old bone;
    For many a year he had gnawed it near,
    For meat was hard to come by.
    Done by! Gum by!
    In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone,
    And meat was hard to come by.

    Up came Tom with his big boots on.
    Said he to Troll: ‘Pray, what is yon?
    For it looks like the shin o’ my nuncle Tim.
    As should be a-lyin’ in the graveyard.
    Caveyard! Paveyard!
    This many a year has Tim been gone,
    And I thought he were lyin’ in the graveyard.’

    ‘My lad,’ said Troll, ‘this bone I stole.
    But what be bones that lie in a hole?
    Thy nuncle was dead as a lump o’ lead,
    Afore I found his shinbone.
    Tinbone! Skinbone!
    He can spare a share for a poor old troll,
    For he don’t need his shinbone.’

    Said Tom: ‘I don’t see why the likes o’ thee
    Without axin’ leave should go makin’ free
    With the shank or the shin o’ my father’s kin;
    So hand the old bone over!
    Rover! Trover!
    Though dead he be, it belongs to he;
    So hand the old bone over!’

    ‘For a couple o’ pins,’ says Troll, and grins,
    ‘I’ll eat thee too, and gnaw thy shins.
    A bit o’ fresh meat will go down sweet!
    I’ll try my teeth on thee now.
    Hee now! See now!
    I’m tired o’ gnawing old bones and skins;
    I’ve a mind to dine on thee now.’

    But just as he thought his dinner was caught,
    He found his hands had hold of naught.
    Before he could mind, Tom slipped behind
    And gave him the boot to larn him.
    Warn him! Darn him!
    A bump o’ the boot on the seat, Tom thought,
    Would be the way to larn him.

    But harder than stone is the flesh and bone
    Of a troll that sits in the hills alone.
    As well set your boot to the mountain’s root,
    For the seat of a troll don’t feel it.
    Peel it! Heal it!
    Old Troll laughed, when he heard Tom groan,
    And he knew his toes could feel it.

    Tom’s leg is game, since home he came,
    And his bootless foot is lasting lame;
    But Troll don’t care, and he’s still there
    With the bone he boned from its owner.
    Doner! Boner!
    Troll’s old seat is still the same,
    And the bone he boned from its owner![4]

    • The finest rockets ever seen:
      they burst in stars of blue and green,
      or after thunder golden showers
      came falling like a rain of flowers.

  80. My daughter can recite the entire script of “The Camping Episode” or Spongebob if asked. I think that episode reaches a Python level of humor.

    Anyway if you want to avoid a sea bear attack please read below.

    Defenses and Attractions

    Attractions of a sea bear (with explanations and/or reasons):

    Playing a clarinet badly.

    Waving a flashlight back and forth really fast – flashlights are their natural prey.

    Stomping on the ground – they take that as a challenge.

    Eating, distributing, or even holding cubed cheese. Sliced cheese is fine.

    Wearing a sombrero in a goofy fashion or upside down.

    Running

    Limping (worse than running)

    Wearing clown shoes

    Crawling (worse than limping)

    Wearing a hoop skirt.

    Screeching like a chimpanzee.

    Drawing an oval on the sand.

  88. Good morning.

    I think people on Facebook might be tired of hearing about my upcoming trip so I thought I’d ramble on about it here and bore you all to pieces instead.

    Because I love you.

      • I do believe so. LostRalph will be arriving early tomorrow morning in Arizona, then we fly out 2am on Sunday to Miami where we will meet up with the woman I’ve been buying coffee from online for the last 10+ years. We’ll spend the day with her, then meet Andycaster and his wife and kid for dinner, then possibly meetup with other people who are going on the cruise at some pre-cruise meetup. Maybe not. Depends how exhausted we are.

        Then Monday morning we climb aboard the Norwegian Pearl with many Star Trek cast members and the Shat, himself, as captain. We get a photo op with him later in the week.

        First stop Cozumel, Mexico on Wednesday where we’ll be taking a tour of the island including a tequila factory and chocolate factory – with samples, and probably some shopping.

        Then after another day at sea, we’ll stop at Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas which is being converted into Risa “the pleasure planet” on Thursday, then we’ll stop again at Nassau, Bahamas on Friday – then back to Miami.

        It’s a week filled with Star Trek geeky goodness.
        The program kills me every time I look at it: http://2017.startrekthecruise.com/media/STTC17_Schedule.pdf

  89. So I’m sitting in MacDs after seeing Passengers.

    Ok, the plot is dumb but the whole film could have been less icky if both main characters had woken up due to a fault in the hibernation pods.

    • Yep. This is a subject I could ramble on and on about, but this is the direction we need to go. There’s a lot of push back from established industry, but the future will come regardless.

    • It was a reasonable question Van. I would love to have you visit again except I have to work the weekend before. It’s one of the reasons the weekend we picked works the best for me in August as I do have work the week before and after, but not that weekend

  94. Hey Van
    I spoke to hubby and he vetoed a visit. It has nothing to do with you. (I feel like a girlfriend, it’s not you, it’s me).
    While I put on a good front, the truth is, I’m not overly healthy.
    My schedule for that time should be.
    Thursday, get things together for WWC
    Friday – Sunday – Work (basically 12 hours each day)
    Monday – decompress (I have an agreement with my boss, if I work a weekend con, I get the next several days off)
    Tuesday, see my doctor and massage therapist so they can give me heck and help undo what the three days will have done
    Wednesday – pack for Kansas and continue to do nothing.
    Hubby is worried (probably rightfully) that if we have company, I will want to go out and do the touristy stuff instead of just veging out. If I do that and then still go to Kansas for a few days following, I’ll be no good for a while when I get back.

    Maybe the following year if I’m not working the weekend before.

  95. So, we watched the latest Bourne flick, “Jason Bourne” today. It was complete and utter crap. I can enjoy a dumb action flick if it has some redeeming qualities – this one has terrible direction, terribly choreography, terrible editing, and terribly cinematography.

    Someone must have incriminating photos of Matt Damon somewhere for him to have agreed to this.

  96. crap joke for the day:

    A man goes to the doctors feeling a little ill. The doctor checks him over and says, “Sorry, I have some bad news, you have Yellow 24, a really nasty virus. It’s called Yellow 24 because it turns your blood yellow and you usually only have 24 hours to live. There’s no known cure so just go home and enjoy your final precious moments on earth.”
    So he trudges home to his wife and breaks the news. Distraught, she asks him to go to the bingo with her that evening as he’s never been there with her before.
    They arrive at the bingo and with his first card he gets four corners and wins £35. Then, with the same card, he gets a line and wins £320. Then he gets the full house and wins $1000. The National Grid comes up and he wins that too getting £380,000.
    The bingo caller gets him up on stage and says, “Son, I’ve been here 20 years and I’ve never seen anyone win four corners, a line, the full house and the national grid on the same card. You must be the luckiest man on Earth!”
    “Lucky?” he screamed. “Lucky? I’ll have you know I’ve got Yellow 24.”
    “Oh Hell,” says the bingo caller. “You’ve won the raffle as well.”

  104. Ok Deadpan, I’m taking a departure from my usual bad horror movie silliness to to just plain silliness

    Today’s movie is The Angry Birds Movie
    The PVR write up: Three flightless birds investigate the mysterious arrival of green pigs to their island paradise

    Personally, I think this movie is a couple of years too late as, in my opinion, that hype train left the station awhile ago but *shrug* here it is.

  174. Crap joke for the day:

    A guy and a girl meet at a bar. They get along so well that they decide to go to the girl’s place. A few drinks later, the guy takes off his shirt and then washes his hands. He then takes of his trousers and washes his hands again. The girl has been watching him and says, “You must be a dentist.” The guy, surprised, says “Yes! How did you figure that out?” ….”Easy,” she replied, “you keep washing your hands.”One thing led to another and they make love. After they have done, the girl says, “You must be a good dentist.” The guy, now with a boosted ego says, “Sure, I’m a good dentist, How did you figure that out?”…..”Didn’t feel a thing!”

  176. Succesful sneakery achieved for weekend fun!

    Thanks goes out to the following Pannites:

    LoPan, Rhettro and Mrs. Rhettro, Lejon

  183. Ep 1 of Man in the High Castle S2 under our belts. Good, but a lot of struggling to recall stuff from S1.

    And (no spoilers, please), it was very distracting to me to have Milton from Office Space playing what appears to be an important role.

  187. A woman takes a lover during the day, while her husband is at work – not aware that her 9-year-old son is hiding in the closet.
    Her husband comes home unexpectedly, so she hides her lover in the closet. The boy now has company.
    “Dark in here,” the boy whispers.
    “Yes, it is,” the man replies awkwardly.
    “I have a baseball. Want to buy it?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “My dad’s outside.”
    “Okay, how much?”
    “$250.”
    A few weeks later, the same thing happens, and the boy and the mom’s lover find themselves in the closet together.
    “Dark in here.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “I have a baseball glove. Want to buy it?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “I’ll tell.”
    “How much?”
    “$750.”
    A few days later, the father says to the boy, “Grab your glove. Let’s go outside and toss the baseball!”
    “I can’t,” the boy replies. “I sold them.”
    “How much did you sell them for?” the dad asks.
    “$1,000,” the boy proudly announces.
    “That’s terrible to overcharge your friends like that,” the father says, shocked. “That is way more than those two things cost. I’m going to take you to church and make you confess.”
    At church that Sunday, the father alerts the priest, makes his child sit in the confession booth, and closes the door.
    “Dark in here,” the boy says.
    The priest replies, “Don’t start that sh*t again.”

  193. ‘It’s just that, as a business model, as public policy, The
    Singularity is a disastrous way to think. It’s “bullshit” in the
    dark-side sense that it allows you to do all kinds of awful crap,
    that you can “justify” by saying, “Donald Trump?! I thought we’d
    all be downloaded cyborg immortals by now!” It was a way to
    jettison ethical, legal, moral and civilizational implications by
    pointing at an exponential graph and saying, “never mind, tomorrow’s
    Oz.” No, tomorrow isn’t Oz. Tomorrow’s always now, if you wait
    long enough.’

    • I look at how the far right has now spent over 2 decades developing their weaponize propaganda and how the other side clings to their “principles” believing if they just wait them out, it will all return to “normal” I wonder …
      – How long does something have to go on before we humans accept that it is has transitioned from “aberrant” behavior to “the NEW social norm”?
      Like with Betamax, when do you finally give up fighting to get the public to “come to their senses” and instead just move on to develop something totally new and different?

    • I agree with this 100%. It’s not the most popular view right now and probably won’t be here, but it’s the truth and I do believe it’s why he got elected.

  196. Silliness from last night:
    Synopsis by speaker: This is a community association meeting, not a condo association meeting. There are about 850 houses that make up our community. Community fees must be paid if you want to vote.
    Person raises hand: I didn’t see anything in the mail asking for payment of community fees. When do we get these? (reasonable question)
    Speaker: Where do you you live?
    Person: Such and such condo complex
    Speaker: All the condo associations pay the community fees on your behalf. These are then part of your condo fees. Everybody currently at the meeting signed in and was verified they are eligible to vote.
    Different person: I don’t live where the last person is, when will I get my bill.
    Speaker: Where do you live?
    2nd person: Such and such condo complex (different than first person but still condos)
    Speaker: You won’t get a bill. Your condo association pays the fee. Everybody here has been paid up.
    Speaker goes on to talk about what the fees cover.
    3rd person: How do we pay the fees?
    Speaker: where do you live?
    3rd person: yet another condo complex (there are three condo complexes in our community)
    me: face palm

      • That reminds me of the time I went to a City Council meeting.
        It was different subject mater but the EXACT same scenario played out. There was even a guy who lived 45 minutes outside of the city and came to whine about a City Council topic that had absolutely zero bearing on him. It was just that he had a microphone, a captive audience and by golly he was going to be heard for his 5 minutes.
        I had 2 epiphanies …
        (1) I now knew why the City Councilpersons I had personally meet were so stupid (it was a survival mechanism).
        (2) The best thing I could do for my community and the human race in general was to lob a grenade into that meeting hall.

        I never went back to another meeting.

  208. Let me know how you like it. On a somewhat tangential note, when we were at my folks over the holidays, we watched “Krampus” on their newer HDTV. It was only 1080P resolution, not 4k, but it had some sort of motion enhancement that increased the apparent 24 frames per second rate of the movie to 60 frames per second. While this is a superior spec, it had the effect of making the movie look like it was shot like a cheap soap opera (which are shot at 30 frame per second). If you google “soap opera effect” you’ll get a more detailed account of this. I believe the newer sets allow you to kick the frame rate down to give a more “film” look.

  228. I have a question for the Denver branch. A friend at work is traveling to Denver, staying the night in a hotel by the zoo, and then moving on to Breckenridge for the rest of their vacation. He would like to hit a few breweries in Denver while he’s there overnight. Are there any specific recommendations for him? Maybe someplace he could take an Uber and then walk from brewery to brewery?

    BTW, I did think to tell him he needs to go to Breckenridge Brewery while he’s in Breckenridge.

    • I’d take an Uber to Great Divide and then walk to Jagged Mountain and maybe even Wynkoop. There’s also the downtown Breckenridge near there. Really, have him take a look at the ballpark district. There’s not only breweries there but beyond excellent tap houses. For the best in number of taps and quality, I’d recommend Falling Rock and Freshcraft.

      Really the thing about Denver is while there are mass quantities of breweries, not a lot are grouped together. That’s why I’d just recommend he stick to the ballpark area if he’s there for a night.

      Hope that helps!

  230. Last night we put the new tv on it’s stand. Then we just watched some normal tv without doing any set up and such.
    This morning I set up the tv, registered it, and synced it with NetFlix. I also changed my NetFlix to a 4k streaming account.
    Tonight we will get a proper view of our new TV in all its 4k glory. :happy:

  231. Since we’re on the subject of the Denver area, I have a question for our Colorado friends.
    What do you think of the Golden area?
    Do you know any one who went to the Colorado School of Mines?

  232. You guys, I’m now co-author with Rich Catino on the official MetalAsylum.net Facebook page, so I’ll probably start doing publicity stunt silliness through that account. I might occasionally ask for help drumming up responses to MetalAsylum.net FB posts.

    If you’re on FB, then we’d also appreciate your support of the page. Even if you hate all of the music. 🙂

  246. Hey Pan

    Had a silly “mom” moment yesterday. I was telling my Boo about our new tv. I said something along the lines of “it’s only eight inches bigger than our old tv. You wouldn’t think it wouldn’t matter but eight inches is a big deal”
    She bust out laughing.
    It took me a few minutes to figure out what was so funny. (she thought it was funnier when I didn’t know so she wouldn’t tell me)
    *sigh* I see I taught her well about the gutter.

  251. Guys… I’m, sorry Obamacare is getting repealed. To be perfectly frank, however, I’m glad my family and I will still be ok since we still have insurance through the ACA….

  257. A non-spoiler comment on Rogue One (Has every one of the regulars here seen it now?).

    I found a lot of the actions scenes blurry and/or darkly lit – – until the final stuff on the beaches. It could be that my eyes are really that bad these days – – but it just seemed like there was a lot of CGI fuzziness. The focused shots were clear, but a lot of the movements were not.

    Anyone else? Is my vision just getting like Chirrut’s?

  265. Ok. If I book on Delta, with one stop in Minneapolis- St. Paul, What kind of regrets would I have?

    Would I be better off waiting another month or so to book? I know they say you should only book three or four months out for best prices but I also know others will be booking flights to see the eclipse.

    • Minneapolis was one of the safer transfer areas when I used to book travel. More of their flights stayed on schedule and it was a small enough airport you could change planes easier.

  270. So excited to wait in long lines at my work, for a TB test.

    They need to test and read 3000+ employees by 1/31 and offering testing 3x week for four weeks….

  278. Watched Watchmen for the first time since I saw it at the flicks yesterday.

    Still enjoyed it, still think it one of Zack Snyders better films.

    Although this was still the theatrical cut.

    • I agree that her role can be recast if she has a prominent role in episodes 8 and 9. I disagree with her comment about the gold bikini. Yes it was titillating, but Leia wasn’t defined by the slave role Jabba assigned her and that led ultimately to his undoing. I think there’s a feminist subtext to that.