
DeathQuaker RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8 |
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DeathQuaker wrote:Also, teen girls are stupid. There is no era of literature that causes or fixes that.Hey now. Teen boys can be just as stupid. Let's spread the gender equality around.
That's totally fair, as is TacticsLions "people." I was referring specifically to NH's complaint about certain girls going after the jerks instead of the nice guys.
I was also very generally and mostly being silly. I apologize if that did not read.

lisamarlene |
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Shakespeare's comedies are a guilty pleasure, much like any other cheesy rom-com. I can't love Gilbert and Sullivan, or corny 50s musicals and not love Shakespeare. Howard Keel is basically Richard Burbage with a better dentist.
But my favorite Shakespeare is still Orson Welles' "The Chimes at Midnight", which is sublime.

NobodysHome |
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DeathQuaker wrote:It's about bathing in his brilliance of words and punnery and gender f&$+ery.His talent with words is irrefutable. But so is Eddie Izzard's and I enjoy his material more.
I feel this reply was a little TOO flippant.
I acknowledge that Einstein was a genius, and the current cosmological model built upon his underpinnings is the best model of our observations that is available to us.
Yet I do not like this model, because of the arbitrary introduction of the cosmological constant just to make things work. When you're randomly throwing in ingredients so that things work, you're missing something fundamental.
Similarly, I will not deny Shakespeare's brilliance; it terms of sheer volume, quality, and consistency of amazing wordplay, the world has never seen his equal.
And yet, similar to the cosmological constant, it just doesn't sit "right" with me to couch a stupid plot in brilliant wordplay and call it a "masterpiece".
So, personally, I do not enjoy his works because I find the characters and the plots tedious. But not the wordplay.

lisamarlene |
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And in case you haven't seen it, or it's been a while, here's the Blackadder bit where Shakespeare gets blamed for Kenneth Branagh.

Scintillae |
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Scintillae wrote:DeathQuaker wrote:Also, teen girls are stupid. There is no era of literature that causes or fixes that.Hey now. Teen boys can be just as stupid. Let's spread the gender equality around.That's totally fair, as is TacticsLions "people." I was referring specifically to NH's complaint about certain girls going after the jerks instead of the nice guys.
I was also very generally and mostly being silly. I apologize if that did not read.
Oh, you were fine. I'm just a bit twitchy from the "sorority girls are awful but frat boys are fine" thing a few pages back. Didn't say anything because I didn't want to make it a Thing, but here we are.

NobodysHome |
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Oh, speaking of things that are incomprehensible to me, the bidders on eBay are at it again.
eBay: This item usually sells for $27.02. We recommend starting bidding at $14.31.
NobodysHome: OK.
Bidder: Hey! I'll give you $25 to sell it to me today!
Er... you're offering me less than the expected selling price to end the auction early? Unless I'm desperately trying to unload a $27.02 lens, this seems like an utter no-brainer to me. I'm wondering whether it's just people hoping to get a quick discount by making an under offer and hoping the seller clicks OK. Because I now have two $25 offers on the lens and an $18 offer.
Er... up it to OVER the selling price and you've got a deal! Heck, I'll take $28 and call off the auction.
But with three people already expressing interest, why would I sell for UNDER the recommended selling price?
As a side note, Shiro and I have done some checking and those "selling prices" that eBay gives you are rip-offs; you can usually get 20-30% more going through another vendor. So it's not like I'm gouging the buyers. But as you know time is my biggest asset, so losing $5-$10 so I can just click, "Sell this this week" and it even prints the shipping labels for me is just worth it.

lisamarlene |
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DeathQuaker wrote:Oh, you were fine. I'm just a bit twitchy from the "sorority girls are awful but frat boys are fine" thing a few pages back. Didn't say anything because I didn't want to make it a Thing, but here we are.Scintillae wrote:DeathQuaker wrote:Also, teen girls are stupid. There is no era of literature that causes or fixes that.Hey now. Teen boys can be just as stupid. Let's spread the gender equality around.That's totally fair, as is TacticsLions "people." I was referring specifically to NH's complaint about certain girls going after the jerks instead of the nice guys.
I was also very generally and mostly being silly. I apologize if that did not read.
Oh, you mean "Taming of the Shrew"?
Or are we back to "Much Ado"?
DeathQuaker RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8 |
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I like saying the word "Macbeth" at the type of theater geeks who insist on calling it "The Scottish Play" even when, say, eating burgers at a diner or going to the zoo. I can allow a bit of in-theater superstition but if you utterly lose your s$&$ at me (as someone once did) for saying "MacBeth" while sitting in book club and you haven't performed in anything for the last 5 years, then I will totally mock you.
Re: "Taking of the Shrew," if one has some time to kill, go see the film version with Elizabeth Taylor. It's an interesting production, a(nd if you're not familiar with her sort of take on Katarina, it may change the way you interpret the text.
Re frat boys: Glad I missed that conversation. I'm not going to go in depth, but I live in a college neighborhood. Sheer criminal behavior has gone on in some of the frat houses(enough that some were shut down in recent years). I can't say I hold a positive view at all of the Greek system, even if some are well operated.

The Vagrant Erudite |
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Ugh. I would be in the Red Death crew
Honestly...English class and being forced to read stories I gave no f%%%s about had me give up on reading, an activity I absolutely adored before and after, throughout middle and high school. It was similar to Math revulsion caused by endless homework.
I still want to kick in the dick the middle school gifted English teacher who assigned us Nicholas and Alexandra. I don't care that he later gave us Ender's Game. That does not make up for it. Not by a long shot.
First and only F I got in school was because I got 3 chapters into that literary abortion of a historical fiction and flat out REFUSED to continue. No paper written. Test bombed. No discussions in class. I put my foot down.
Guess what? 25 years later and I'm still proud to have stood up for my principles and refused. I still passed that year by order of every other quarter's grade. It didn't affect what high school I got into, what college I got into, or anything else other than reinforcing my rebellious nature.
...and Mr. Torres of Liberty Middle School in Orlando, Florida from that year can suck a giant bag of dicks, one nob at a time.
(Nah. He was nice. I wish him no harm. Man was just doing his job. Most of my rants are exaggerated for comic purposes.)

The Vagrant Erudite |
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DeathQuaker wrote:Oh, you were fine. I'm just a bit twitchy from the "sorority girls are awful but frat boys are fine" thing a few pages back. Didn't say anything because I didn't want to make it a Thing, but here we are.Scintillae wrote:DeathQuaker wrote:Also, teen girls are stupid. There is no era of literature that causes or fixes that.Hey now. Teen boys can be just as stupid. Let's spread the gender equality around.That's totally fair, as is TacticsLions "people." I was referring specifically to NH's complaint about certain girls going after the jerks instead of the nice guys.
I was also very generally and mostly being silly. I apologize if that did not read.
Oh...they aren't fine by any stretch of the imagination. They just don't use upward inflection voice. That alone is nails on a chalkboard to me.
But I'm sorry for not spreading the revulsion around.
There is a guy in my online gaming group who uses that stupid everything-sounds-like-a-question tone so while it may be gender dominated it isn't exclusive. I want to stick thumbtacks under his fingernails when he talks sometimes, and he's someone I actually like.

gran rey de los mono |
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Had my Formula D racing game league tonight. It was rough. There were three pieces of debris on the track before anyone made it to the first corner. Three of the ten cars didn't finish the first lap, one of them was out on the 11th or 12th turn of the game. By the time the 7 surviving cars finished the first lap, there were 16 pieces of debris on the track. We stopped for the night when everyone had finished the 2nd lap, and there were 21 pieces of debris out. It's going to be a rough second half of the race when we pick it up in two weeks.

The Vagrant Erudite |
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And speaking of Fool/Venice, Pocket is my favorite protagonist in any book I've read in the last decade or so. He is a genius horny dagger master pissed off jester with a giant mentally handicapped but supremely loyal best friend and assistant, who bangs just about anything that moves with two legs and nothing dangling between them (and sometimes even with - threatened to bugger Kent while he was in the stocks), and manages to talk s+ to the face of the most dangerous people alive and get away with it by a combination of wit, charm, bravery, and sheer dumb luck.
Oh Moore, you are a genius worthy to take Pratchett's mantle after his death, if only you could be more prolofic. If we could merge you and Butcher into a single author the world would no longer mourne the late great Sir Terry quite as much.

![]() |
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And re: Sugar, yeah. The simple fact that it is nigh-impossible to get even things like ketchup or marinara sauce without sugar/corn syrup in them is downright depressing. If you don't prepare everything from scratch at home, you're getting too much sugar in your diet, period.
Yesterday for Shiro's game we got Japanese takeout. And even the ramen had been sweetened.
For someone who's fairly strongly sugar-sensitive, it was nasty.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew

Tacticslion |

I like saying the word "Macbeth" at the type of theater geeks who insist on calling it "The Scottish Play"
I like calling it "McBoooiiiiiieee" because not only is it nonsense, but I heard i once on an internet video.
Which means that I have been calling it that for, like, a week or two, at most.

Tacticslion |
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SUga... ~collapses as the sugar rush wears off~
I helped!
I have no idea how to Anglicize Japanese. So I'mma go with the video. Translations provided by a rando in the YouTube comments and cannot be trusted, unless you know they ca be.
Donna mii~iitchi daaaatte <All roads aren't straight>
Maaaassugu janaaaai da-rou-ou <Yes they're windy>?? sic??
Sou magari kuneeeeette <And most likely bumpy>
Dekoboko s%&+eeeeru ha-zu sa <From time to time , things can get rough>
Tsurai koto taki ni wa aru yo ne <We'll keep running anyway>
Boku tatchi wa soredemo hash-i-ru yo <Would you care for something sweet?>
Amai mono deeeemo iiiiiiikaaaaaaaaga?
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
Kanashiku natta-ra <If you get sad,>
Mabuta wo tojiiiite go-ra-an <Just close your eyes>
Hora yume no naka' nara <Because in your dreams>
Namida wasuuuurerareru <You can forget your worries>
Moshi koko de ensuto s$&+tatte <Even if our engine stalls here,>
<We won't panic>
Boku tatchi wa soredemo hash-i-ru yo <Would you care for something sweet?>
Amai mono deeeemo iiiiiiikaaaaaaaaga?
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
Ka-rada no highway <Go down the highway>
Wo kake megu-ru yo <Running along the open road>
Toubun wo... ge~nki no gasoline ni <Gasoline of energy,>
Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)
S! U! G-A-R!
Jump into your racing car!
Say "SUGAR RUSH!" SUGAR RUSH! (Hey!)

captain yesterday |
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The good thing about having english as a foreign laguage is that I never had to bother with shakespear.
I read lord of the rings, the hobbit and other fantasy works.
The good thing about being home schooled in the States is I also didn't have to read Shakespeare, it was completely voluntary.

Orthos |
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So hi, been absent a few days in abject misery.
I have a fractured tooth, apparently! And the painkillers I was given over the weekend did almost nothing for it. I have thankfully since been given something stronger that actually does the job and am going in for surgery in about three hours to have the offending tooth removed.
Which means I'll probably go back to being absent as I sleep off the post-surgery recovery period for the next couple of days.

DeathQuaker RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8 |
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DeathQuaker wrote:I haven't seen/read Ado...Fs! Fs for all! *shakes tiny fist*
And getting into it or not, I see you too, bitter ghost of Jonson, you can't fool me!
It's a fun romp that like many of Shakespeare's plays, beneath the tomfoolery challenges a lot of conventional notions about gender and romance (note, and perhaps a warning: it is mainly a play about why most men are either jerks, stupid, or both). It is FULL of puns and double-meanings and is best enjoyed if you are familiar enough with Early Modern English to understand all the wordplay (there's even a rather naughty pun in the title that relies on knowing Renaissance slang). As you are a non-English-as-first-language speaker, I recommend reading an annotated version, and would recommend that for even most people (myself included).
Unfortunately of the two recent-ish film versions (in the last 25 years or so) there are, both have some issues (Benedick is badly miscast/performed in both; I will say in Branagh's version, Emma Thompson as Beatrice is brilliant though; in Whedon's, Nathan Fillion's Dogberry is also amazing). Branagh's is certainly better than Whedon's. There's been a few BBC productions I have not seen but generally their Shakespearean productions are excellent.
And as a note to all and sundry, since we were talking about the Great British Baking Show earlier, I just saw in looking it up on Wikipedia that Mel Giedroyc (of "Mel and Sue") played Beatrice in a stage production last year. That would have been fun to see!

Scintillae |
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Scintillae wrote:DeathQuaker wrote:Oh, you were fine. I'm just a bit twitchy from the "sorority girls are awful but frat boys are fine" thing a few pages back. Didn't say anything because I didn't want to make it a Thing, but here we are.Scintillae wrote:DeathQuaker wrote:Also, teen girls are stupid. There is no era of literature that causes or fixes that.Hey now. Teen boys can be just as stupid. Let's spread the gender equality around.That's totally fair, as is TacticsLions "people." I was referring specifically to NH's complaint about certain girls going after the jerks instead of the nice guys.
I was also very generally and mostly being silly. I apologize if that did not read.
Oh, you mean "Taming of the Shrew"?
Or are we back to "Much Ado"?
I can actually give Taming some wiggle room with this. It partly goes back to the first version of it I ever saw being the 1976 Commedia dell'Arte version, where everything is so ridiculously over the top that it cannot be taken remotely seriously...and making it extremely clear that Katharina is absolutely playing Petruchio like a fiddle. The fact that the script leaves room for the director to twist how the "taming" actually goes makes the play slightly more salvageable for me, coming across these plays as a teenage girl in the early 2000s.
Much Ado, on the other hand, has no such room for interpretation. There is no way to take the story as anything but "this girl MAY OR MAY NOT have had a boyfriend that is not me SO I MUST PUBLICLY DESTROY HER REPUTATION to the point where her family has to fake her own death to fix things." And...I work in a high school. I know too many people who would react like Claudio for me to take it as the parody it's hopefully meant to be.
Don't get me wrong. The Beatrice/Benedick banter is great. It's just a shame it's a side plot being dragged down by this festering sore of a main plot.
There are a lot of stories I've been able to reread years later with a more educated head and, if not love them, actually appreciate that they have something resembling merits. Jane Eyre, for one. But I'm finding that a lot of Shakespeare's comedic-appeal-to-the-masses stuff gets harder for my inner historian to reconcile with changing values of today. Which is sad because his wordplay is phenomenal.

DeathQuaker RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8 |
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I can actually give Taming some wiggle room with this. It partly goes back to the first version of it I ever saw being the 1976 Commedia dell'Arte version, where everything is so ridiculously over the top that it cannot be taken remotely seriously...and making it extremely clear that Katharina is absolutely playing Petruchio like a fiddle. The fact that the script leaves room for the director to twist how the "taming" actually goes makes the play slightly more salvageable for me, coming across these plays as a teenage girl in the early 2000s.
The Elizabeth Taylor version I mentioned also plays with this... it isn't so much that she is tricking Petruchio in this version, but that they together are tricking everyone else.
Much Ado, on the other hand, has no such room for interpretation.
Uh, yeah, it kind of does. No, you can't interpret Claudio's words to be sarcastic, but...
There is no way to take the story as anything but "this girl MAY OR MAY NOT have had a boyfriend that is not me SO I MUST PUBLICLY DESTROY HER REPUTATION to the point where her family has to fake her own death to fix things." And...I work in a high school. I know too many people who would react like Claudio for me to take it as the parody it's hopefully meant to be.
Don't get me wrong. The Beatrice/Benedick banter is great. It's just a shame it's a side plot being dragged down by...
Claudio and Hero's plot is absolutely meant to be parodic. Claudio is an obvious, abject parody of the big manly hero, who is made to look a sadistic clod compared to slightly cowardly, wimpy, but brilliant Benedick who seeks an intellectual equal. Claudio and Hero are the romance everyone thinks they want and it is shown how utterly shallow it is, and no intelligent interpretation of the play would suggest that Claudio and his stupid assumptions are sided with. But everyone roots for Beatrice and Benedick, who are absolutely the main plot and not the side plot, and the leads, and have the real romance despite being the opposite of romantic leads typical to the time. The entire play is about how typical romantic conventions are stupid. It also directly challenges a common stereotype against women at the time--that they were unfaithful and men had to guard themselves. The play instead shows the constancy of women (in spite of men's ridiculous assumptions) and that men who presume otherwise are fools---and of course also highlighted in the song of the play, "Sigh No More," which basically says, "Men are asses, so f$@&'em and go have some fun."
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey, nonny nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey, nonny nonny.
If you have seen a version of the play that takes Claudio seriously, it was a bad production. But it is not a bad play. Moreover, as my focus of lit when I was in grad school was feminist readings of literature, I can assure you feminist focus on "Much Ado" abounds (at least it did 20 years ago) and offers some what I hope are enlightening interpretations should you ever seek them out.

DeathQuaker RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8 |
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Quote:no intelligent interpretation of the play would suggest that Claudio and his stupid assumptions are sided withWell, she did say we were talking about high schoolers.
Well, she was saying she knows many high schoolers who act like Claudio.
Which only drives home the fact that Claudio is indeed supposed to be a meat-headed teen boy (maaaybe in his early 20s but IIRC he is supposed to be youthful) no one should take terribly seriously.

Scintillae |
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Scintillae wrote:
I can actually give Taming some wiggle room with this. It partly goes back to the first version of it I ever saw being the 1976 Commedia dell'Arte version, where everything is so ridiculously over the top that it cannot be taken remotely seriously...and making it extremely clear that Katharina is absolutely playing Petruchio like a fiddle. The fact that the script leaves room for the director to twist how the "taming" actually goes makes the play slightly more salvageable for me, coming across these plays as a teenage girl in the early 2000s.The Elizabeth Taylor version I mentioned also plays with this... it isn't so much that she is tricking Petruchio in this version, but that they together are tricking everyone else.
Quote:Much Ado, on the other hand, has no such room for interpretation.Uh, yeah, it kind of does. No, you can't interpret Claudio's words to be sarcastic, but...
Quote:Claudio and Hero's plot is absolutely meant to be parodic. Claudio is an obvious, abject parody of the big manly hero, who is made to look a sadistic clod compared to slightly cowardly, wimpy, but brilliant Benedick who seeks an intellectual equal. Claudio and Hero are the romance everyone thinks they want and it is shown how utterly shallow it is, and no intelligent interpretation of the play would suggest that Claudio and his stupid assumptions are sided with. But everyone roots for Beatrice and Benedick,...There is no way to take the story as anything but "this girl MAY OR MAY NOT have had a boyfriend that is not me SO I MUST PUBLICLY DESTROY HER REPUTATION to the point where her family has to fake her own death to fix things." And...I work in a high school. I know too many people who would react like Claudio for me to take it as the parody it's hopefully meant to be.
Don't get me wrong. The Beatrice/Benedick banter is great. It's just a shame it's a side plot being dragged down by...
Oh, no one sided with Claudio in the version I saw. he was shown as being absolutely in the wrong...but they still had to take his accusations very seriously.
I don't know. Maybe reading it again would help, but the production I saw left such a sour taste in my mouth that I've avoided it for years.

Limeylongears |
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So hi, been absent a few days in abject misery.
I have a fractured tooth, apparently! And the painkillers I was given over the weekend did almost nothing for it. I have thankfully since been given something stronger that actually does the job and am going in for surgery in about three hours to have the offending tooth removed.
Which means I'll probably go back to being absent as I sleep off the post-surgery recovery period for the next couple of days.
Get well soon, Orthos!

DeathQuaker RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8 |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

So hi, been absent a few days in abject misery.
I have a fractured tooth, apparently! And the painkillers I was given over the weekend did almost nothing for it. I have thankfully since been given something stronger that actually does the job and am going in for surgery in about three hours to have the offending tooth removed.
Which means I'll probably go back to being absent as I sleep off the post-surgery recovery period for the next couple of days.
Ow! ow! Ow! Ow! Feel better soon! Hope surgery recovery is speedy.

Freehold DM |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

So hi, been absent a few days in abject misery.
I have a fractured tooth, apparently! And the painkillers I was given over the weekend did almost nothing for it. I have thankfully since been given something stronger that actually does the job and am going in for surgery in about three hours to have the offending tooth removed.
Which means I'll probably go back to being absent as I sleep off the post-surgery recovery period for the next couple of days.
I know how much that f*ing hurts. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone. In my experience once the tooth is gone you will bleed a whooooooole lot, then pass right out. Sleep well.

Orthos |
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Orthos wrote:I know how much that f+@$ing hurts. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone. In my experience once the tooth is gone you will bleed a whooooooole lot, then pass right out. Sleep well.So hi, been absent a few days in abject misery.
I have a fractured tooth, apparently! And the painkillers I was given over the weekend did almost nothing for it. I have thankfully since been given something stronger that actually does the job and am going in for surgery in about three hours to have the offending tooth removed.
Which means I'll probably go back to being absent as I sleep off the post-surgery recovery period for the next couple of days.
Yeah that's about what all I remember from wisdom teeth removal.

Vanykrye |
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Freehold DM wrote:Yeah that's about what all I remember from wisdom teeth removal.Orthos wrote:I know how much that f+@$ing hurts. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone. In my experience once the tooth is gone you will bleed a whooooooole lot, then pass right out. Sleep well.So hi, been absent a few days in abject misery.
I have a fractured tooth, apparently! And the painkillers I was given over the weekend did almost nothing for it. I have thankfully since been given something stronger that actually does the job and am going in for surgery in about three hours to have the offending tooth removed.
Which means I'll probably go back to being absent as I sleep off the post-surgery recovery period for the next couple of days.
I haven't had that pleasure. I have no wisdom teeth to remove. Not a situation of "they don't need to be removed" but an actual "they simply don't exist" situation.
I have evolved beyond humanity's petty needs for extraneous and unnecessary additional teeth.