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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • My friends and I went to see The Thin Red Line in the theater on opening night. It was literally a sold out showing. We ended up having to sit in the second row.

    After the first 40 minutes or so we noticed a few groups of people walking out. 20 minutes later a few more groups left. It became a slow trickle of people just getting up and leaving.

    When the movie ended and the credits began I turned around to look at who was left. There was literally just one other guy sitting a few rows behind us.

    I get it. It came out on the heels of Saving Private Ryan, it was marketed as a similar style “war movie”, it had a laundry list of big names who were only onscreen for a few minutes… all those people ended up watching a deep, languid reflection on life, love and the very nature of humanity. So yeah, not a typical formula for box office dynamite.

    I understand why so many people would not be able to sit through the entire run time, but it’s honestly their loss. I loved the movie, and the shock of turning around to see an empty auditorium made the experience even more memorable.







  • How has this thread been up for half a damn day and no one has mentioned the Borderlands series (Smoogy@kbin.social at least mentioned Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, but that was just a Borderlands 2 DLC which got re-released as a standalone.)

    My wife and I put tons of hours into most of the the Borderlands series. I recommend playing them in release order.

    1. Borderlands is a fun shoot n’loot that’s got a loose plot, but it’s not terribly deep. It’s like a sci-fi road warrior feel. It’s a fun co-op game with plenty of DLC and replay value. My personal favorite.

    2. Borderlands 2 is all the fun of the first but they went all in on the writing and voice acting as well. It’s tons of fun. Arguably the best of the series in every aspect. It’s also tons of fun in couch co-op.

    3. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is the third game but canonically it’s the second. It’s the same concept but with new anti-gravity mechanics and lasers. It’s like Mad Max on the moon. I believe this started life as a DLC for BL2 before Gearbox decided to turn it into a fully fledged standalone game.

    4. Borderlands 3: It was a fun game with some really great level design, but the writing seemed forced. Worth a playthrough to see where they take the storyline.

    5. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands - Borderlands meets DnD. A spin-off of the aforementioned Assault on Dragon Keep DLC. The game itself is a lot of fun, but it’s a miserable split screen co-op experience thanks to the terrible menu and inventory management system.




  • I worked with a guy who complained about the company allowing employees to put their preferred pronouns in their email signatures. He said that while he was an “ally to the LGBTQ community”, he thought pronouns were a way to create further division.

    So I started using she/her while referring to the guy in emails.

    He didn’t like it. And he didn’t understand the irony of demanding that I stop. He also didn’t understand the irony when HR told him that the easiest way to fix his issue was to declare his preferred pronouns.

    Long story short, I still get to refer to her as she/her.



  • It’s not so much a catch phrase, but words that I will always remember.

    My grandmother was a WWII vet who came home and vowed to be a pacifist. She raised 7 kids before going back to school. She was at Kent State in 1970, working on her masters degree. She happened to be on the commons when bullets started flying.

    She died ~2002. When we were cleaning out her belongings we came across a brown stained handkerchief in a plastic bag along with some news clippings. The clippings were her letter to the editor of the Akron Beacon Journal describing her experience on May 4th. The hanky had a little handwritten note that said “this is the blood of Allison Krause. Shed for many. May 4th, 1970”.

    My grandmother was an amazing woman who did so many great things after the war. You could easily write a movie about her accomplishments. But out of everything she did, the words on that little note made the biggest impact on who I would grow to be.

    Here’s a little write up about the hankerchief/clippings.