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I'm really more of a guideline, not a rule...
Oh no, all my tables are showing!
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That makes sense. I may have had my vocabulary infected by later editions - that might be a reason I'm not finding what I'm looking for (though I thought it was the language used).
Tiers of play essentially tells you what kinds of adventures you tend to go on, depending on your level.
As a made-up half-example:
1-3: village heroes
4-6: heroes of the city
7-9: heroes of region
10-12: heroes of the country
13-15: heroes of continent
16-19: heroes of world
20+: heroes of foreverObviously it doesn't quite line up like that; I literally just took groups of three levels and made up something about them. You could go into more specifics, like:
1-3: village heroes - At this tier of play, the PCs are generally facing threats that might threaten a few people, or even a small village. Perhaps saving a child lost in the woods, a farmer's daughter that was kidnapped by a small gang of thugs, or exploring an old graveyard said to be haunted.(Again, this is just made up by me just now.)
Basically, I'm trying to find the "scope" expected at different levels of play across the 3e-to-PF systems.
Hm. More straightforward than I recalled, but okay! Also, it uses the...Back in 2007, Ryan Dancy said this on an RPG.net forum post:
"D&D 3/3.5, by design, changes roughly every 5 levels. You may find that your group becomes comfortable in one of those 4 quartiles, or you may find that your group enjoys the changes of pace that happen when moving from quartile to quartile."
Someone on EN World broke 3/3.5 down into quartiles like so:
Levels 1-5: Gritty fantasy
Levels 6-10: Heroic fantasy
Levels 11-15: Wuxia
Levels 16-20: Superheroes
Of course some of you may have heard of the E6 hack of 3.5 by Ryan Stoughton which was birthed from this discussion, to keep play in the Heroic Fantasy realm.
Note also that in the living campaigns (living city and living greyhawk), the word tiers was also used to describe the general level of the module, with each tier being 2 levels.
So a tier 1-3 module supported levels 1-6ish. encounters changed based on tier. At tier 1, you got common street thugs, at tier 3, you got the sub-lts of the gang and so on. Players were supposed to play a character that was within 2 levels (give or take) of the tier in which play occurred. E.g., I could bring a level 4 PC to a tier 2 table.
This language changed to APL (average party level) sometime in year 2 or 3 of living greyhawk (still back in the earlyish days of 3.0). Again, encounters and what not changed based on what APL was being played.
So, the word tier has some historical baggage and may (or may not) have been what you remembered.
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Happy birthday NH! :)
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From his description of it, they just wanted to lock up and didn't want him to wake them up so they told him to sleep somewhere else.
Not something I'd do with my kids, 'cause sleeping somewhere else is where parenting nightmares begin...
Maybe that was supposed to be a hint...
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...That makes sense. I may have had my vocabulary infected by later editions - that might be a reason I'm not finding what I'm looking for (though I thought it was the language used).
Tiers of play essentially tells you what kinds of adventures you tend to go on, depending on your level.
As a made-up half-example:
1-3: village heroes
4-6: heroes of the city
7-9: heroes of region
10-12: heroes of the country
13-15: heroes of continent
16-19: heroes of world
20+: heroes of foreverObviously it doesn't quite line up like that; I literally just took groups of three levels and made up something about them. You could go into more specifics, like:
1-3: village heroes - At this tier of play, the PCs are generally facing threats that might threaten a few people, or even a small village. Perhaps saving a child lost in the woods, a farmer's daughter that was kidnapped by a small gang of thugs, or exploring an old graveyard said to be haunted.(Again, this is just made up by me just now.)
Basically, I'm trying to find the "scope" expected at different levels of play across the 3e-to-PF systems.
Hm. More straightforward than I recalled, butBack in 2007, Ryan Dancy said this on an RPG.net forum post:
"D&D 3/3.5, by design, changes roughly every 5 levels. You may find that your group becomes comfortable in one of those 4 quartiles, or you may find that your group enjoys the changes of pace that happen when moving from quartile to quartile."
Someone on EN World broke 3/3.5 down into quartiles like so:
Levels 1-5: Gritty fantasy
Levels 6-10: Heroic fantasy
Levels 11-15: Wuxia
Levels 16-20: Superheroes
Of course some of you may have heard of the E6 hack of 3.5 by Ryan Stoughton which was birthed from this discussion, to keep play in the Heroic Fantasy realm.
I hate the phrase in general, and the practices that came along with it.
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*SIGH*
So most people are getting the clue: My mother and GothBard got me nothing (as far as I know; GothBard might surprise me later today), the kids are still asleep, and my mother in law got me cash, which I'll never shake a stick at. Because that's silly.
But Shiro, being Shiro, was desperate to get me something so he got me a rather nice Bulova watch. Which now goes with my nice Nixon. And my nice Timex. And the PoS Amazon non-brand one he got me a few years ago.
How many watches does one man really need?
Ah, well, at least it's nice and it fits in my bedside table drawer with the rest of them.
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Let's send Nobody a shady trenchcoat so he can stand in parks to get rid of his unwanted possessions.
"Hey, kid, want a watch?"
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And now for something completely different: spider eats possum !
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And now for something completely different: spider eats possum !
I saw that a couple days ago. My first thought was "Don't show this to Zelda...don't show this to Zelda...don't show this to Zelda".
She's arachnophobic.
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*SIGH*
So most people are getting the clue: My mother and GothBard got me nothing (as far as I know; GothBard might surprise me later today), the kids are still asleep, and my mother in law got me cash, which I'll never shake a stick at. Because that's silly.
But Shiro, being Shiro, was desperate to get me something so he got me a rather nice Bulova watch. Which now goes with my nice Nixon. And my nice Timex. And the PoS Amazon non-brand one he got me a few years ago.
How many watches does one man really need?
Ah, well, at least it's nice and it fits in my bedside table drawer with the rest of them.
I have several pocketwatches, and love writing with fountain pens.
While going through my dads things, I found several well to do watches and very heavy ballpoint pens.
It turns out we have a lot of similarities, but are not EXACTLY the same, like some other fathers and sons.
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And now for something completely different: spider eats possum !I saw that a couple days ago. My first thought was "Don't show this to Zelda...don't show this to Zelda...don't show this to Zelda".
She's arachnophobic.
would you like to have me show it to Zelda, giving you a veil of plausible deniability?
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And now for something completely different: spider eats possum !
Also, HOLY F~&@ING SHIT! That's right up there with the pitcher plant eating a bird!
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Happy birthday NH!!
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would you like to have me show it to Zelda, giving you a veil of plausible deniability?And now for something completely different: spider eats possum !I saw that a couple days ago. My first thought was "Don't show this to Zelda...don't show this to Zelda...don't show this to Zelda".
She's arachnophobic.
I'd say yes, but she'd still blame me anyway. She blames me when people I've never heard of before does something like that. She just assumes I have this giant network devoted to skullduggery that has its tendrils everywhere.
It doesn't help that Aiymi keeps telling her stories.
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I want to know why a self-respecting, able-bodied teenager isn't able to pop out a screen, jimmy a window, and shinny themself in. That's what I would have done at his age.It really is kind of sad how our fear-based society has driven normally-rational people to do really out-and-out bizarre stuff.
As I've mentioned before, Albany is a low-crime area to the point that a lot of people don't bother locking their doors unless they're asleep or out of the house. The last home invasion occurred in 2014, and that was in the student housing, which is a separate city in and of itself.
Yet we still have people who move here from other areas and insist that they won't feel safe until they've installed a chain, a no-key deadbolt, a can't-break-it-down door stopper, a steel gate, or whatnot.
Whatever. Not my house. Not my money. Not my problem.
*Except* that I just learned that we had a friend crashed on the couch because his parents are one such couple, and they couldn't conceive of going to bed without all the locks in place, thus preventing their own son from coming home. And they wanted to sleep, so they told him to find somewhere else to sleep.
I know it's different in other areas of the country, but in Albany, "I'm sorry, son. You can't come home because we're going to bed and putting the house on lockdown so you can't get in," suggests some major traumatic experience in the family's past.
Which they haven't had.*SIGH*
indeed you all sound crazy to me. We have a solid lock or two on our door, and it is locked every night. Noone has a key except the occupants, however, which makes the parents sound less vigilant and more like a*!%%!*s.
That said, having set hours for when your kid needs to be home and making them spend the night elsewhere if they miss their curfew could be good, if strict, parenting.
I remember, when my parents, my siblings and I had locked ourselves out of the house, my brother (at the age of... seven? Eight?) crawling in through the catflap to let us all in. Now, I'm 75% convinced that I imagined it, since my brother was not an especially small child, and we did not have an unusually large cat.
Also, happy birthday Nobody's Home. A shipping container full of failed candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party is on its way to you as we speak.
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Another big tree came down at MiL's house in last night's storm. Time to price out a used chainsaw on craigslist. She keeps refusing to have any trees pruned, cut back, or removed, even when obviously diseased or damaged, and this is what happens.
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Another big tree came down at MiL's house in last night's storm. Time to price out a used chainsaw on craigslist. She keeps refusing to have any trees pruned, cut back, or removed, even when obviously diseased or damaged, and this is what happens.
I will give her 10 percent off my normal rates, as it is an emergency.
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Well, I'm living the LisaMarlene lifestyle:
(1) Went to bed just before 9 last night, but Impus Major woke me up at 10:22 pm to tell me he was going out, GothBard woke me up getting home at 11:15 pm, I woke up at 1:45 am to use the restroom and GothBard asked me to check on IM, so a few texts later and I was up 'til 2:55 am, then I couldn't get comfortable, and my alarm woke me up at 5:45 am, seemingly right after I'd finally fallen asleep.
(2) Would have been sore anyway, but thanks to the poor sleep woke up with an aching back. Popped 600 mg of ibuprofen and got to work moving a few thousand pounds of furniture, books, and other sundries around.
(3) Needless to say, after several days of pleasant mid-60s overcast, today is mid-70s hot sun, making my work that much more miserable.
But that's *most* of it -- all the boxes and bins are in studio storage, and one more run at around 3:30 pm should get all the water-soluble stuff indoors.
I will not be happy tomorrow; I'm scratched up, sunburned, sore, and exhausted.
But what a way to spend a birthday!
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*SIGH*
So most people are getting the clue: My mother and GothBard got me nothing (as far as I know; GothBard might surprise me later today), the kids are still asleep, and my mother in law got me cash, which I'll never shake a stick at. Because that's silly.
But Shiro, being Shiro, was desperate to get me something so he got me a rather nice Bulova watch. Which now goes with my nice Nixon. And my nice Timex. And the PoS Amazon non-brand one he got me a few years ago.
How many watches does one man really need?
Ah, well, at least it's nice and it fits in my bedside table drawer with the rest of them.
You never know when you'll forget your phone, Fitbit, IPod, or smartwatch, in such cases it helps to be prepared.
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Well, I'm living the LisaMarlene lifestyle:
(1) Went to bed just before 9 last night, but Impus Major woke me up at 10:22 pm to tell me he was going out, GothBard woke me up getting home at 11:15 pm, I woke up at 1:45 am to use the restroom and GothBard asked me to check on IM, so a few texts later and I was up 'til 2:55 am, then I couldn't get comfortable, and my alarm woke me up at 5:45 am, seemingly right after I'd finally fallen asleep.(2) Would have been sore anyway, but thanks to the poor sleep woke up with an aching back. Popped 600 mg of ibuprofen and got to work moving a few thousand pounds of furniture, books, and other sundries around.
(3) Needless to say, after several days of pleasant mid-60s overcast, today is mid-70s hot sun, making my work that much more miserable.
But that's *most* of it -- all the boxes and bins are in studio storage, and one more run at around 3:30 pm should get all the water-soluble stuff indoors.
I will not be happy tomorrow; I'm scratched up, sunburned, sore, and exhausted.
But what a way to spend a birthday!
My work here is done.
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Well, I'm living the LisaMarlene lifestyle:
You are blasting the Ramones at 1 in the morning whilst baking a cake composed entirely of hen's teeth?
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I did a thing! A semi-kind-of-organized thing! Woo! So, I bought myself a planner. I swore I wasn't going to do this again because I have a whole string of failed planners behind me. I don't plan well. But this one was recommended by several ADHD peeps as being good. It isn't too structured, so there's a lot of flexibility of how to use it. And there are stickers! Because I am definitely able to be bribed to do my chores with stickers ;P
And it's Supernatural themed....in case the stickers thing wasn't already proof that I am not much of a grown up, I'm also using fandom stuff to try and trick myself into doing something good for me. XD
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Everyone pending on Steam has been added to the FAWTL group. Welcome aboard =)
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Oh, and let's not forget 18 Dollar Shave Club subscriptions.
(Which, yeah, I will endorse Dollar Shave Club if asked.)
As will I. Been using them for years, highly recommend.
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You are blasting the Ramones at 1 in the morning whilst baking a cake composed entirely of hen's teeth?Well, I'm living the LisaMarlene lifestyle:
I keep trying to tell you. I do not like the Ramones, Sam I Am! My sister Eve likes the Ramones. I knitted the Joey Ramone doll for her daughter, not Hermione. Given a choice in classic Punk easy listening, I will go to The Clash or DK or Joan Jett every single time.
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Oh update btw. I am having my gall bladder cut out next Thursday (not tomorrow but the next one.) Said it was minimal risk and recovery time would be short. So that's good anyways.
*Pats Vids stomach and gives his best hopes and encouragements for when you get under the knife*
So, since I'm waiting for a meeting and tomorrow will likely be extraordinarily busy for me,
** spoiler omitted **...
*Gives NH a shoulder pat*
Might give my own two cents on this subject later this week, if I can find the energy, will-power and cleared headedness.
Never the less, You have found your way out of your dependency, so whatever social-foibles other have about not drink seems of minor importance, if still an annoyance.
Kinda overdid it today. But (some) things got (mostly) done, kinda! So....that's.....something..... *sigh* Adulting is hard. :P
Anyhow, thanks for looking out for me, LM. Yesterday was rough and a PTSD episode would not have helped. <3
*Waddles by Lyn's place to offer her a small piece of othello cake, a cup of coffee and some snuggles + reassuring pats on her forearm*
Without getting into the nitty-gritty...
Until the [redacted for lengthy and descriptive creative swearing] insurance company authorizes the MRI, we won't know what has actually happened with her knee. Could just need ice and elevation and compression, or she could need surgery.
Healthcare in the US at its finest.
** spoiler omitted **
*Offers up a reassuring pat for Aiymi, an extra ice-pack for her knee and hisses in frustration at her insurance provider*
Long story short, friend had a suspicious lump found during a check up. Lots of fretting and an MRI later, it turns out to be a cyst. Not fun, but a gazillion times better then cancer.
Huge relief.
*Claps turtle-feet together in relief*
I want to know why a self-respecting, able-bodied teenager isn't able to pop out a screen, jimmy a window, and shinny themself in. That's what I would have done at his age.
*Looks quite guilty*
I might have done a bit of jimmy-ing open windows in my youth…
…
And a few times those window weren't on the house were I lived…So yea, lets just say that, when I was younger I didn't have a very well developed sense of boundaries, both material and personal.
(In fact still struggling with the personal aspect, but that's for another time).
Also,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOBODY!
Happy b-day NH.
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I got to visit Tiny and Troy today, twice, that's always fun!
Usually because it means they're going to fix something.
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I also saw a steer escape the Lodi Sausage Company processing plant (which is just an old cheese factory with a cattle door rigged to it) the Columbia County sheriff's department was mobilized, the last we saw it was running into some woods and junior farmer was swearing up a storm.
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Aaaaand... now that I can barely move, and I'd honestly prefer a hot bath and going to bed at 8 over my birthday dinner...
...NOW Impus Major volunteers to help!
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There is a FAWTL steam group. Everyone interested feel free to join.I've put in my request to join.
This is a good time to remind that there's also a FaWtL Discord called DaWtL. Because I fear posting an open invitation to a Discord where bots can get in, I don't post it here, but I'll gladly PM anyone who wants to join!
Hey! Country's (sometimes) good music!Of course the first day this week I decide to go without my shuffle so "I can hear what's going on around me" is the day I work with a hardcore country fan.
He's a good kid, great work ethic, bright, but damn does he need some taste in music.
The older the better.
I will unabashedly belt out Patsy Cline songs if I think no one is listening, and "My Rifle, My Pony, and Me" from the movie "Rio Bravo" was one of the lullabies I sang to Hermione as a baby.
And I have a fondness for Hank Sr. and The Browns. And Willie.
Even Monk liked Willie!
(I won't lie, my heart broke that one time Monk got to meet him, but couldn't play his clarinet. Spoiler alert, I guess, if anyone actually watched that show.)
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Also,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOBODY!
Agreed! Happy Birthday! If it helps, I virtually guarantee I'll forget what day it is very, very shortly!
(I don't remember mine unless my wife reminds me. I remember hers, my kids', and that's it.)
But have a birthday blast!
Also,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOBODY!
LOL. I knew you'd "out" me.
But ugh. Last night Impus Major decided to be out 'til 3:00 am, then have a friend crash on the couch. Not only did I lose 2-3 hours of sleep (that I needed), but my back's all sore and today is the first day of a 4-day marathon of assaulting the boxes in the side yard.
Curse you, Impus Major!
But I'm sure he had fun, and I remember back when I was his age and there was nothing like roaming around with a pack of friends in the wee hours of the morning for no reason.
3:00 am is still late, though. I remember always wrapping up between 1 and 2.
If he's anything like me, 3:30 is his bed time.
(Not kidding. If I'm allowed, I go strong, hit sleepy time at 3:30, and wake up sharp around 11:30. Things can - and, in the normal course of life, do - mess with this a great deal, of course, but if left to my own devices, I've consistently found that this is my life rhythm.)
A/C guy came by. It's basically what I was afraid of. Need to replace it because it uses the old R22 freon. And the furnace is so old it makes sense to replace it as well. Good news is that the power company has an incentive program right now that saves me $750, but I'm still looking at about $5000. Oof.
For a while I was waiting for the punchline.
This is terrible.
It really is kind of sad how our fear-based society has driven normally-rational people to do really out-and-out bizarre stuff.
I am not able to comment on this at this time, but yes, and absolutely. Grr.
As I've mentioned before, Albany is a low-crime area to the point that a lot of people don't bother locking their doors unless they're asleep or out of the house. The last home invasion occurred in 2014, and that was in the student housing, which is a separate city in and of itself.
Yet we still have people who move here from other areas and insist that they won't feel safe until they've installed a chain, a no-key deadbolt, a can't-break-it-down door stopper, a steel gate, or whatnot.
Whatever. Not my house. Not my money. Not my problem.
*Except* that I just learned that we had a friend crashed on the couch because his parents are one such couple, and they couldn't conceive of going to bed without all the locks in place, thus preventing their own son from coming home. And they wanted to sleep, so they told him to find somewhere else to sleep.
I know it's different in other areas of the country, but in Albany, "I'm sorry, son. You can't come home because we're going to bed and putting the house on lockdown so you can't get in," suggests some major traumatic experience in the family's past.
Which they haven't had.*SIGH*
That... is excessive. I mean... staying up late to welcome him home wasn't an option? For either of them?
>:I
And yeah, Strange Aeons is really beginning to get to me.
It was bad enough when it was, "Go to the house of a man with questionable associations, break in, and try to find some dirt on him. And oh, by the way, you need to rob him blind while you're there."
But the next section is, "A public official asks you to investigate a public library that has been haunted. Go in, deal with the haunting, and steal all the rare books and preservation supplies while you're there."
The AP is no longer relying on PCs being Chaotic; it's relying on them being out-and-out chaotic neutral or worse.
Reminds me of the worst section of Carrion Crown:
** spoiler omitted **
Prepping to run that section of CC, it's interesting to see various peoples' reactions to the same thing. There are plenty on the forums that complain that it exists...
- because it's robbing a guy you're meant to save
- because it's way too much WBL
- because it shunts WBL into non-potable wealth
- because it's something that no party would ever do
- because it's something that every party would do and why would they encourage that
... among others. Basically everyone seems to hate it for every flavor of reason, even conflicting ones.
That said, having run the previous AP, Serpent's Skull, the fact that they have an option in-AP to give you WBL is mildly refreshing, as it means the GM doesn't have to stretch themselves.
Of course, in my games, part of the problem is that my players (when I have them) rarely hold onto their goods without ensuring that every single daggum NPC has a good life, it's quite possible the <one creature> is gonna be recruited into the party (I'm expecting, "<That one> can't be allowed to live like this!" or somesuch) and they won't steal from the guy. I mean, I've allowed my players to starve before, and it was brutal, but they still refused to allow NPCs to go without, so eventually I just kind of started to make it rain and watch as they keep themselves at WBL by making sure everyone else has stuff.
Notsomuch my most recent group - cobbled together from a genuine grognard (talkin' OD&D days), a n00blet experiencing POWAH RUSH~!(tm) who isn't entire sure NPCsArePeopleToo, a guy who's intentionally playing an assassin, a self-professed morally-questionable alchemist, and a amoral would-be storm-avatar - they are doing fairly well at the semi-selfishness.
... of course on the other hand, the grognard nearly sacrificed his beloved character twice, the alchemist has gone out of her way maaaaaaaaaaaaaany times to make life better for locals, the assassin has put his life on the line to fight racism, the would-be storm-avatar has sacrificed her life twice (initiative, yo; barely beat the grognard; she kind of got better... ish. Not... not quite, though). Pretty much only the n00blet has leapt at the chance to do the hero thing, so we'll see how it goes.
EDIT: notsomuch spoilers, there, I guess.
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And now for something completely different: spider eats possum !
Oh! You beat me to it!
So many maps to tape together. Jade Regent book 5. The Harrowing. Book 4 of Dead Suns.
... now this sounds fascinating...?
I keep trying to tell you. I do not like the Ramones, Sam I Am! My sister Eve likes the Ramones. I knitted the Joey Ramone doll for her daughter, not Hermione. Given a choice in classic Punk easy listening, I will go to The Clash or DK or Joan Jett every single time.You are blasting the Ramones at 1 in the morning whilst baking a cake composed entirely of hen's teeth?Well, I'm living the LisaMarlene lifestyle:
*doesn't replace all the rock stuff with easy listening-doesn't replace all the rock stuff with easy listening-doesn't replace all the rock stuff with easy listening-doesn't replace all the rock stuff with easy listening-doesn't replace all the rock stuff with easy listening-doesn't replace all the rock stuff with easy listening*
Okay, T, I can avoid doing this... I know I can avoid doing this... I believe in me...
(That said, it's official: I think I like all the music. Or at least all the genres I've hit a large enough sample size for. I definitely don't feel like a given genre at times, but I honestly can't think of one that I hate based on genre alone, old or new.)
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I keep trying to tell you. I do not like the Ramones, Sam I Am! My sister Eve likes the Ramones. I knitted the Joey Ramone doll for her daughter, not Hermione. Given a choice in classic Punk easy listening, I will go to The Clash or DK or Joan Jett every single time.You are blasting the Ramones at 1 in the morning whilst baking a cake composed entirely of hen's teeth?Well, I'm living the LisaMarlene lifestyle:
Yes, yes, Ramones forever, I got it, I got it.
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Hey! I caught up! And I didn't even wrap around to the next page! Weird feeling!
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Here
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Let me
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Fix
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That
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For