social topic

2008-12-23 11:21:39 pm

Yo.

Quote from tomatobob:

You have the entire internet at your disposal and you have the nerve to ask how you are supposed to know things?

You have a point. After having dialup for so damn long, though, using Google to learn anything is not my first impulse. Forgive me. >_<

Chanoire

2008-12-24 12:17:45 am

Without context, there's no particular reason why you'd know that there was any reference being made at all. For all a non-TV-watcher knows, Frank Whatever could be some long-ago forumer or something equally obscure, with no particular indication that it's worth researching. I'm disappointed in Ark for thinking that his introduction provided sufficient information. :P Although I'm also disappointed in Zhs2 for having such a melodramatic reaction rather than quietly looking up Festivus when it became apparent that he was in fact missing something about it. >_>

Zhs2

Edit history:

Zhs2: 2008-12-24 12:25:08 am

2008-12-24 12:22:49 am

Yo.

Actually, I think I was misinterpreted. I didn't "kill myself" because I had just learned that it came from a TV show, but instead because it came from a TV show. I mean, come on. I should be the one going >_>

Oh, well. Some people like watching television a bit more than I do, I guess.

playerman1230

2008-12-24 12:58:36 am

Hated by all

Quote from Zhs2:

Oh, well. Some people like watching television a bit more than I do, I guess.

One of those guys is totally me. I usually watched FOX Monday and Tuesday, and NBC Thursday.

And yay, my Wi-Fi Adapter works (better than having to hog a 150 foot cable all the way to the router).

Poision Envy

2008-12-24 01:05:33 am

Club 27 Goals

Only time I watch TV is when my grandma has it on, or Adult Swim is on.

AS ftw =D

arkarian

2008-12-24 01:17:54 am

red chamber dream

I don't watch nor particularly enjoy Seinfeld but enjoy Festivus just the same. Doesn't really have anything to do with how much TV you watch.

Quietus

2008-12-24 05:46:15 am

Super Secret Area - Dead Ahead!

I hardly ever watch TV, as I just get bored so quickly. I just find most stuff on TV to be cheesy and tacky.

Regarding researching the Frank thingy, I was in a similar boat to Zhs2, in not knowing what Festivus was, but a quick search informed me, so even if you don't know who he is, I guess you could find out. Very Happy

Gamma_Metroid

2008-12-24 09:54:35 am

The only things I watch on TV are The Cosby Show, Planet Earth, and sometimes other stuff on Discovery like Mythbusters, How It's Made and maybe Destroyed in Seconds once in awhile. Oh yeah and Crocodile Hunter.

Phazar

2008-12-24 10:24:44 am

...

Quote from Gamma_Metroid:

Crocodile Hunter.

RIP.

Misanthrope

2008-12-24 11:47:32 am

"... Standing on the shoulders of giants."

Bleh, I don't watch at all most of the time. Really, the only show that interests me is House.

A Silly Goose

2008-12-24 01:49:11 pm

Look, witty text!

The TV I watch is pretty much limited to edutainment--National Geographic, the Science Channel, the Military Channel, Investigation Discovery, History International, and Discovery HD Theater, though not the last one quite so much because dammit, we don't have a HDTV to see that American Chopper guy's mustache in crystal-clear detail.

Opium

2008-12-24 02:07:51 pm

Quote from A Silly Goose:

The TV I watch is pretty much limited to edutainment--National Geographic, the Science Channel, the Military Channel, Investigation Discovery, History International, and Discovery HD Theater

I'm pretty much the same way.

RT-55J

2008-12-24 02:24:37 pm

Armor Guardian

The only TV shows I really watch are Monk, Psych, and Mythbusters, but even then I don't watch them religiously.

Bioniclegenius

2008-12-24 03:34:23 pm

Fear Me! (Or else...)

Hey, Christmas for me in 11 hours and 26 minutes! HALLELUJAH! (wow, did I actually spell that right on the first try?)

nn12000

2008-12-24 03:52:23 pm

Mister ...

Let's see: Mythbusters, Destroyed in Seconds, Kiro 7 Eyewitness News (local), It Takes a Thief, How it's Made, Dirty Jobs, Total Drama Island, Family Guy, Robot Chicken. That's about all I watch anymore. I keep forgetting that Futurama is on Comedy Central now, but I don't usually watch TV around 9. There's other shows that I like, such as Nanny 911 and Operation Repo, but I rarely remember when those are on or what channel they air on.

As for Christmas: 11 hours and 10 minutes. Huzzah :\

KennyMan666

2008-12-24 04:02:28 pm

Viking

Precursor

Christmas - already here. Presents have been gotten. Some neat stuff.

Chief among them? Ghibli DVD box. Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. Fuck yeah.

Bioniclegenius

2008-12-24 04:53:22 pm

Fear Me! (Or else...)

Hoping for some sort of electronic, or a gift certificate to Slackers... or something lego-based... or whatever. I'm not really picky, but hey, I'll take whatever. laugh new

(such as the new version of SMILE... [/hint][/begging])

arkarian

2008-12-24 05:34:43 pm

red chamber dream

I only watch Scrubs, Burn Notice, and Desperate Housewives regularly on live TV. I watch The Office every week online and various other shows on DVD.

Opium

2008-12-24 06:17:44 pm

Right now I like to watch just about anything, because I just smoked a huge Xmas doobie.

uNsane

2008-12-24 06:26:32 pm

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Does nobody watch Ghost Hunters? Or torrent season 4 with an availability of 1.151? Or burn seasons 1-3 onto DVD for their moms? Or watch The Simpsons and Family Guy while typing short, pointless posts?

nn12000

2008-12-24 07:30:39 pm

Mister ...

Quote from uNsane:

Or watch Family Guy while typing short, pointless posts?

How about long stories/novels? I seem to do that on a daily basis. Sometimes I'll do sprite work instead. Just depends what I feel like doing.

Poision Envy

2008-12-24 07:33:55 pm

Club 27 Goals

Quote from uNsane:

Does nobody watch Ghost Hunters?

I stopped watching that after this one episode that was super corny >.<

tomatobob

2008-12-24 07:35:25 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

The very first episode then?

Toozin

Edit history:

Toozin: 2008-12-25 03:45:36 am

2008-12-25 03:37:23 am

Not impossible

just highly unlikely

Quote from starkarian:

I only watch Scrubs, Burn Notice, and Desperate Housewives regularly on live TV. I watch The Office every week online and various other shows on DVD.

This is why, if ark were a woman, I would totally hit that.

Also, to throw my TV cents in: Extras (which I am watching RIGHT NOW) and Flight of the Conchords are two of the funniest shows in the history of things moving and speaking and people watching them and laughing at them. And also Dexter, which is not strictly funny but still fucking awesome.

JaggerG

2008-12-25 07:20:27 am

Shifty Leader

That M2k2 guy

Toozin is indeed correct. I'm not too into Extras, but Flight of the Conchords and Dexter are fantasmic.

Quote from DJGrenola:

Things I hate about Christmas:

i) No daylight. Days are as short as they get. Even if you wake up at dawn, the sun will have gone down again before you've finished brushing your teeth.

I get up at 5 pm fairly often normally, so I almost completely miss the sun. I'm not too pale and I don't sunburn easily, but according to most of the people around this city I'm not mexican enough.

Quote from DJGrenola:

ii) Freezing cold, raining, windy. Whoever removed humans' ability to hibernate should be caught and shot, now.

I have a tendency to sleep like 13 hours a day if I don't specifically have something to do that day, and still sleep in an hour later than I should if I do. :^\ Others have requested I donate some of my sleep to them for mutual benefit. I accept, but it's unfortunately not up to me, so nothing changes.

Quote from DJGrenola:

iii) I have no family to spend it with. This year I'll be enduring it in an empty, cold house, and a grand total of zero people will care.

Perhaps nobody is going to be there, but don't think nobody cares.

On a side note, am I a bad person for being reminded of Linkin Park's My December?

Quote from DJGrenola:

iv) Occlusion of both Christian and pagan messages that are supposed to underpin it all. Christmas is now merely a mechanism for temporarily transferring purchasing power from parents to children.

My family did a gift exchange including close friends, and I couldn't think of anything to get for them, so my sister suggested I give her $20. My family encouraged me to give this as a gift. Throughout the day, I felt very embarrassed to have resorted to it, but I guess it's good that I put it in a nice box. :^( At least my brother got me something I didn't particularly care for so I didn't feel as bad. Still though, I felt like crap until the gift opening ended.

I don't even understand the meaning of Christmas anymore, and ironically it made me feel even more separated from my family.

Quote from DJGrenola:

v) "Christmas" "music", which is simply impossible to avoid unless you happen to be the fortunate owner of a decommissioned nuclear bunker. Christmas music composed much after the end of the 19th century is universally dreadful. (I'll make one exception, which is Fairytale of New York by the Pogues / Kirsty MacColl [RIP]. <3 Kirsty MacColl). The rest of it is reprehensibly, unforgivably awful, saccharine tripe.

I really enjoy Christmas Music from early cartoons such as the chipmunks and peanuts albums. On the other hand, today I heard a remix of the Grinch theme that omitted all but the last lines of a couple of the stanzas. It made no sense out of context and didn't sound as good as the original, and the original isn't even the best in that movie. >_<

Quote from DJGrenola:

vi) Waste. So much waste. Wasted energy as people burn kilowatts of power in trying to make their houses look like slightly more of a radioactive accident than their neighbours'. Piles of entirely unsuitable, unwanted, and immediately-disposed-of presents, given solely because people are afraid to appear churlish. Wasted paper, wasted plastic, wasted trees. Primary ingredient of all this stuff: crude oil.

I used boxes and packaging my mother saved up over the years, but yeah I really hate tearing paper, balling it up, and just trashing it. It doesn't feel right to destroy for some reason.

Quote from DJGrenola:

vii) Booze culture. Quite how the binge consumption of a highly addictive substance which makes people ill, aggressive, violent, and stupid has become more-or-less essential for societal acceptance is absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend. And it is a phenomenon at its absolute worst at Christmas. I disagree with much of Islam, but the Muslims -- and, indeed, the prohibitionists -- really did get this one right.

I'm not exactly pro-prohibition, but I never drink. My family doesn't heavily drink at our Christmas gatherings. That's mostly reserved for specific people's birthdays.

My friends consider it a necessity to enjoy drinking sometimes, but frankly, I'm not interested in the short-term effects, and I understand that becoming a social drinker really only increases the chances of having some kind of bad experience later on. After "You have to at least take one drink just to say you tried it" is "You haven't even gotten drunk yet," and then becomes "You have to get completely trashed at least on your birthday, just to say you tried it." Then it's "Dude you've done it before and nothing happened." My friends try to tell me to come drinking all the time and I never do - and perhaps I'm lame in their eyes - but seriously, fuck that shit. I'm still cool to hang out and play smash bros, but they can't be taking it so seriously that I'm not up for everything they invite me to.

Quote from DJGrenola:

Christmas is rotten to the core.

(Note to Charles Dickens: don't even think about sending any ghosts over, because I'll cut them into little pieces and urinate on the remains faster than you can say "Egon Spengler".)

That's pretty fast. You should record it and submit it to SDA.

TL;DR version: points i and ii don't apply to me, I disagree on points iii and v, I agree on iv and vi, and although I partly agree on point vii, it doesn't apply to me during Christmas specifically.

EDIT: added responses in spoiler tags for scroll-ease.

Toozin is indeed correct. I'm not too into Extras, but Flight of the Conchords and Dexter are fantasmic.

[spoiler="i"][quote="DJGrenola"]
Things I hate about Christmas:

i) No daylight. Days are as short as they get. Even if you wake up at dawn, the sun will have gone down again before you've finished brushing your teeth.
[/quote]

I get up at 5 pm fairly often normally, so I almost completely miss the sun. I'm not too pale and I don't sunburn easily, but according to most of the people around this city I'm not mexican enough.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="ii"][quote="DJGrenola"]
ii) Freezing cold, raining, windy. Whoever removed humans' ability to hibernate should be caught and shot, now.
[/quote]

I have a tendency to sleep like 13 hours a day if I don't specifically have something to do that day, and still sleep in an hour later than I should if I do. :^\ Others have requested I donate some of my sleep to them for mutual benefit. I accept, but it's unfortunately not up to me, so nothing changes.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="iii"][quote="DJGrenola"]
iii) I have no family to spend it with. This year I'll be enduring it in an empty, cold house, and a grand total of zero people will care.
[/quote]

Perhaps nobody is going to be there, but don't think nobody cares.

On a side note, am I a bad person for being reminded of Linkin Park's My December?[/spoiler]

[spoiler="iv"][quote="DJGrenola"]
iv) Occlusion of both Christian and pagan messages that are supposed to underpin it all. Christmas is now merely a mechanism for temporarily transferring purchasing power from parents to children.
[/quote]

My family did a gift exchange including close friends, and I couldn't think of anything to get for them, so my sister suggested I give her $20. My family encouraged me to give this as a gift. Throughout the day, I felt very embarrassed to have resorted to it, but I guess it's good that I put it in a nice box. :^( At least my brother got me something I didn't particularly care for so I didn't feel as bad. Still though, I felt like crap until the gift opening ended.

I don't even understand the meaning of Christmas anymore, and ironically it made me feel even more separated from my family.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="v"][quote="DJGrenola"]
v) "Christmas" "music", which is simply impossible to avoid unless you happen to be the fortunate owner of a decommissioned nuclear bunker. Christmas music composed much after the end of the 19th century is universally dreadful. (I'll make one exception, which is [i]Fairytale of New York[/i] by the Pogues / Kirsty MacColl [RIP]. <3 Kirsty MacColl). The rest of it is reprehensibly, unforgivably awful, saccharine tripe.
[/quote]

I really enjoy Christmas Music from early cartoons such as the chipmunks and peanuts albums. On the other hand, today I heard a remix of the Grinch theme that omitted all but the last lines of a couple of the stanzas. It made no sense out of context and didn't sound as good as the original, and the original isn't even the best in that movie. >_<[/spoiler]

[spoiler="vi"][quote="DJGrenola"]
vi) Waste. So much [i]waste[/i]. Wasted energy as people burn kilowatts of power in trying to make their houses look like slightly more of a radioactive accident than their neighbours'. Piles of entirely unsuitable, unwanted, and immediately-disposed-of presents, given solely because people are afraid to appear churlish. Wasted paper, wasted plastic, wasted trees. Primary ingredient of all this stuff: crude oil.
[/quote]

I used boxes and packaging my mother saved up over the years, but yeah I really hate tearing paper, balling it up, and just trashing it. It doesn't feel right to destroy for some reason.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="vii"][quote="DJGrenola"]
vii) Booze culture. Quite how the binge consumption of a highly addictive substance which makes people ill, aggressive, violent, and stupid has become more-or-less essential for societal acceptance is absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend. And it is a phenomenon at its absolute worst at Christmas. I disagree with much of Islam, but the Muslims -- and, indeed, the prohibitionists -- really did get this one right.
[/quote]

I'm not exactly pro-prohibition, but I never drink. My family doesn't heavily drink at our Christmas gatherings. That's mostly reserved for specific people's birthdays.

My friends consider it a necessity to enjoy drinking sometimes, but frankly, I'm not interested in the short-term effects, and I understand that becoming a social drinker really only increases the chances of having some kind of bad experience later on. After "You have to at least take one drink just to say you tried it" is "You haven't even gotten drunk yet," and then becomes "You have to get completely trashed at least on your birthday, just to say you tried it." Then it's "Dude you've done it before and nothing happened." My friends try to tell me to come drinking all the time and I never do - and perhaps I'm lame in their eyes - but seriously, fuck that shit. I'm still cool to hang out and play smash bros, but they can't be taking it so seriously that I'm not up for [i]everything[/i] they invite me to.[/spoiler]

[quote="DJGrenola"]
Christmas is rotten to the core.

[i](Note to Charles Dickens: don't even think about sending any ghosts over, because I'll cut them into little pieces and urinate on the remains faster than you can say "Egon Spengler".)[/i]
[/quote]

That's pretty fast. You should record it and submit it to SDA.

TL;DR version: points i and ii don't apply to me, I disagree on points iii and v, I agree on iv and vi, and although I partly agree on point vii, it doesn't apply to me during Christmas specifically.

EDIT: added responses in spoiler tags for scroll-ease.