Loztastic's page

you know, Big Gay Weddings are great for the economy.

and cute corn-fed Mormon missionarries going door to door are also a treat. Last month, I gave two a one hour lecture on health and safety, and didn't let them get a word in edgeways

I wonder if the two can be combined?

Ultimnatly, "sponsoring" is a way to get people to do some kind of wacky event, and say to people "if i do this, make a donation to charity X"

the advantage to the charity is the person being sponsored does all the leg work collecting lots of little donation, that are paid in in a single lump, when if the charity did all the little collecting, it would cost more to process than the money raised

I've never understood that. How does "getting sponsored" work?

people make a small charity donation if you complete the task you are being sponsored to do

Now, I don't know if this charity runs in the USA, but here in the UK & Australia there is an annual charity event called "Movember" where, at the end of october, men regardless of their facial hairyness, go clean shaven, then, during November grow a Moustache. and get sponsored to raise money for prostate / testicular cancer charities

for the second year, I am taking part, and blimey I look like an idiot, and it's only 1 day in!

anyone else doing this?

Also, The Moff has said any dating od the doctors time-line is fairly arbitary, and the reason his age bounces about is he does't know how old he is, having lost count hundreds of years ago (and, being a time-traveller, he has no reference point)

so, the "200 years" could just be "a long time"

I can't think of any stretch that long in the Doctor's life between things happening.

between 1st Doctor and 7th Doctor he aged about 400 years - the general consensus for where a lot of this took place was during the 4th and 6th doctor's time

I have an idea for a campaign i'm thinking of running with a yet-unnamed system. and I was wondering what people thought of the idea so far

in year 21something-or-other, various bases exist on mars - biotech reaserch, miners, archiologists studying "mysterous ruins" from an alien civilisation - total population in the low 1,000's approx.

Eventually, study of the ruins starts to unlock magic as a workable system - done as long rituals rather than spellslinging

at about the same time, contact is lost with earth. a ship is sent back (6 month trip) to investigate, and contact is lost with that too. The colonists realise they are on their own, so start terraforming as best they can (magic filling in the gaps in technology)

queue campaign start time - 50 years on. the atmosphere is still too cold and too thin for people to live outside, but gene-mod people can (basically, engineered to be shorter but with big chests containing big lungs, and very hairy for insulation). a small percentage of people will be engineered outside-dwellers, as will a small percentage with a "human +" genemod package. magic is still uncommon, but fairly accepted - mainly used in a ritualised magitech/item creation kind of way.

any thoughts on things I would need to add?

I am thinking GURPS as a system, but could be convinced otherwise

In America, we force those people to use check cashing establishments.

wouldn't work over here - most benefits are paid by bank transfer only, and I don't know a single employer who pays by any means other than bank transfer

I should add, one think that helps keep banking competative in the UK is the Government run NSI/Post-office bank. They offer a fee-free bank account, with a debit card.

This means, of course, that if people are unhappy with their banks, they can just up-and-shift to NSI

There is also a law requiring banks to offer a "basic" fee-free bank account - on the basis that you can't function without a bank account, and people with poor credit ratings struggle to get banking

That said, what about this Herman Cain character?

As an outsider looking in, he looks very scarry from a political standpoint

God doesn't make mistakes.

Because, Baby, I was born this way

There are many times I am glad I live in the hippy socialist EU

paying for cheques?

paying $5 for a debit card?

if anything, banking is really competative here at the moment, with most banks treating current (what you would call chequing) accounts as a loss-leader marketing tool to sell other products to you. When I last switched bank, I even got paid by the new bank to go to them :-)

Too late. And I'm counting down until we've heard all of these:

"If evolution is correct, then why are there still monkeys?"

"I don't believe that a 747 can be assembled out of random parts by a tornado!"

"Scientists think they know everything but it's obvious that people who don't know anything about science are far better suited to answer science questions because if you actually study a topic and work at it as a profession you're just putting on airs."

"Scientists are against God because they're scared of Him because they're immoral people, like Nazis."

SO many ideas for games!

Immortal science-nazi's using weather manipulation to make airoplanes!

it's a TARDIS from 200 years in the future - he could have repaired it by then

I'm still betting on the person in the spacesuit being The Doctor

It really was very, VERY good!

do you mean Time-Rift?

the Time-Vortex is the big swirly outside space-time alternate level of reality :-)

The UK Version IS helped by Russel Tovey (the actor who plays george) having a massive gay fanbase, him spending a lot of the show with his shirt off, and when he was last single, Twittering pictures of himself in just his underpants

back in Forest of the Dead, when she died, she said to the doctor

"it would stop both of you hearts, even you can't regenerate from that" when explaining why she took his place

so, no need, at all, to explain why she didn't regenerate

If Rory was 'recreated' by Pond after his death, what's the deal with his memories? Does he remember dying AND being made into a robotic centurion? Can someone explain that slowly to me?

He has said he has plastic Rory's memories, but they are hazy and come and go

It is getting fairly low viewing figures here in the UK (well, compared to Children of Earth), bouncing between 3.4 and 5.8 million - Children of Earth generally got 6.7

The general feeling is the plot is too unfocussed and has too much filler - whole episodes so far could have been done at a 10 min montage

another thing a lot of people are saying is that the fun is gone, and it is too serious

Being from Lancashire, our local "special" food is the "Butter Pie"

a butter pie being a pie (naturally) filled with potatoes, onions and a buttery sause. there is a big local argument as to if there should be a layer of cheese on top (two companies make the butter pie, one includes cheese, the other doesn't)

also popular arround here is the Chorley cake and the Eccles cake - both drued fruit in a thin pastry (the type of pastry differs) and the manchester tart (A tart filled with a layer of jam, a layer of custard, and a layer of dried coconut. with a cherry on top)

on the flip side, it is dairy farm country here, so we have hundreds of local organic cheeses and a long history of pickles and chutneys

just on the news - 3rd evening of rioting just broke out in another two districts of London

it seems that these ongoing riots, rather than being connected to the protest on Saturday, seem to be being deliberately started by criminal gangs, for the purpose of looting

one of the riots tonight is taking place in a very afluent district, but being done by people who have, effectivley, been "bussed in"

is this the right time for me to memtion, once again, that i went to school with Christopher Ecclestone?

Also, as an asside, the North of England tends to vote more in line with Scotland than with the South of England - and that has tended to limit the south-east centric policies of Westminster

if Scotland hived off, you would likley be left with the North feeling less and less represented

it goes a bit further than England-VS-Scotland, and is more "Regional Britain" VS the south-east.

once you get more than 100 miles from london, you get an increasing feeling that the massive centralisation of power in the south-east makes the government less and less representative of your regional idenity

Scotland, however, has a strong enough identity to rally arround (And Wales, to a lesser extent) to turn it into a political cause, whereas in England, the regions just grumble along with nothing really to focus it on.

I've said it before, but if anyone is going to have a reboot, it needs to be Saphire and Steel

sureel late 70's/early 80's british sci-fi

all I will say is, when IT happened, my hair stood on end!

well, what little hair I have anyway!

My current mobile phone contract expires on tuesday, so i'm going to get a new phone - currently undecided between finally joining the Cult of the iPhone, or getting a windows/android phone. one way or the other, though, I will be getting a smartphone

my question is, are there any usefull "gamer apps" out there - like a dice-roller-type thing?

Work on a magistrate-type system, ie, someone who is both judge and jury. then, have the PC either represent him/herself, or a high charisma character act as advocate (time for the bard to shine)

you then either NPC the prosecutor, or if you want real fun, have a player who can be trusted to do it seriously and will get into the role, guest NPC the prosecutor.

if you want to bring dice into the case, have each advocate "attack" using various "social" skills, with a DC based on the counter-arguments of the other side, ie, opposed social-skill rolls, assign bonusses and penaltyies for fun arguments and cunning legal tricks.

also bring magic into it - it's likley the "judge" would be a cleric of a justice-type god, a bard, a wizard with skill at divination, or a paladin

similarly, both the trial and the punishment are likley to involve magic in some way. detect lies, mind-reading, even speak with the dead (picture a ghost giving evidence at their own trial) and the like. with cells in anti-magic fields to imprison wizards, or magically re-inforced for super-strong characters

then, punishments, in the tech level we are discussing are likley to be, even for murder not custody. execution could be an option (bad for a PC). a wiergild is likeley (ie, you pay a significant sum of money to the victims family) or how about a Gesa to do some service for them and the state - some noble quest. and also pay for the rezzing of the victims. remmber, murder is likley to be seen differently when premature death is only a temportary problem

Affray is a great offence

used generally in two situations - mainly, when two people fight in the street, it's used to prosecute both of them

or, more seriously, when a group of people "tool up" and go out "looking for trouble"

Uhhhh, seriously, the right not to be offended is one that has never existed in a free and open society, and never will. The reason you can't yell fire in a theater is that if you do, there will be chaos. As an extension of that chaos, people are likely to die. It is the same with why you can't incite violence at a demonstration losing its temper, it's because chaos happens, and people die.

Drawing parallels between those restrictions of free speech and a situation where people may be emotionally distressed, that shows only a lacking education.

again, different "free and open" societies place the bar at different levels

I give you

Go to Go to Section 5 of the Public Order act.

which makes it illegal in the UK to deliberatly do something JUST to cause "Harassment, Alarm or Distress"

I find it sad that people would even argue if torture works or not

it's irelevant if it works or not - if you condone torture, you have crossed a line, regardless of if it works or not, a line that should never be crossed

A couple of years, there was a documentary in the UK on the WBC - a Journalist went to live with them for a week, then interviewed some people on the fringe

firstly, it struck me how sad it was for the children, they have an upbringing that is nothing like "normal", attending mainstreem education, but segrigated from their peers, and bussed arround the country to protest. if they do try and move away they are treated as if they are "dead to" the family, and never spoken of or to again

point two)
Freedom of speach is always a sliding scale, and every country sets its own limit as to where that scale starts. the UK "Incitement" laws, and some Section-5 Public Order Act offences would be considered unconstitutional in the US, but S5 POA is one of our most frequent prosecutions

I'm SO glad they are banned from entering the UK under out Hate Crime laws :-)

Taliban fighters were terrified of the Gurkha due to them being built up as a sort of bogeyman on the battlefield, as in tales of them eating their enemies. The Gurkha allegedly said nothing to refute these claims.

probably best not to tell the Taliban that most of the Gurkha's are vegetarians?

I saw a great interview with her a few years ago

she said that, if she was ever being really annoyed by someone, she would let her voice drop and octave, have the hand holding her cigarette go that bit more stiff, and mentally "feel" her hair go into the beehive, and she would "channel" patsy

The sad part is, of course, that it took Joanna Lumley paying for a massive campaign, including court action, for the government to accept that giving the Gurkha's british citizenship after their period of duty, was a good idea

again, I don't know the exact laws, but burglary might be a better example

in the UK, for example, say I'm stealing from a shop. if i reach my hand over the counter to take something from behind it, say out of the till or from a covered display, that's a burglary, not a theft. a quick reading of guidance on US law suggests that would NOT be a burglary in america, leading to distorted figures - again, like-for-like not being compared

Now what are the rates for other crimes? Rape? Home burglary? Assault?

It can be really difficult to compare crime on a "general" basis internationally - murder, yeh, "any crime involving a gun" yeh

but, beyond narrow specifics it becones harder. so, for example, in the UK the legal definition of a rape is different than in the US, and you are not comparing like-for-like. secondly, when you get to "wider" crime statistics, say "the total number of convictions" there are countless offences in one country that don't even register in the other - say, for example, Public Order offences in the UK. a Section-5 PoA, which counds for a significant percentage of british crime (that is, "words or behaviour likley to cause harassment, alarm or distress") might not be an offence in much of the US

There was a write-up about the gun-man on the BBC. from the sound of it, he may have had mental health problems or a personality disorder

Went to see Season of the Witch last night

now, other than me and hubby shouting "Witch!!!!!" at eachother since, we were not impressed!

For that amount, I hope your dream included the book providing you with actual, real-life spell ability, rather than just in-game mechanics.

sadly not, it was all due to a new "role-playing tax" that the Government introduced

In Manchester a few years ago, outside a Synagogue I saw the sign

"The Messiah is comming, but even then City still won't win the league"

I dremps last night that I went to buy "Ultimate magic" for pathfinder

and, at my local game-store, it was for sale at £90

which, at current exchange rates would be $140

what a bizzare dream

I always find these things incredebly sad as they are clearly glorious building fading away. It would be nice to think that they will find new uses and be restored

however, fron a stylistic perspective, I do love the "look" of urban decay - some of those pictures are fantastic.

a city close to me has a district full of gorgrous georgan buildings all empty and falling appart. it is, in some ways a very attractive vision of decay that could make incredible art, but i have always said, if i had the money, /I would buy one of them and restore it, as they are glorious buildings on a structural level, and the area could be incredible again in the future

"Fanny Pack" produces much hillarity in the UK, as over here, a fanny isn't ones BACK bottom, but the front one

Now, before i start, my definition of a rubbish christmas present doesn't come from the price, but from a lack of thought or effort

however, this year, the prize goes to my mother, who is never the best at giving presents (I spent my childhood always too embarassed to tell people what i got for christmas). this year, amongst other things, I got a Draft Excluder.

yes, one of those things that you put under a door to keep the wind out.

also, two people got me shaving sets. when I have a beard. Althought i do accept they may have been dropping hints

What I liked was that it was a good who story, but that christmas was a part of the plot - rather than the previous christmas specials, which were "who with the knobs turned up" with a bit of christmas stuck on at the end