I live in a small town on an island with 8k people in it that has its own international airport. I arrive an hour before if I have checked bags, drop bags off, go home, pick up the family, drop them off at the airport, drop the car off next door at my work, walk back to the airport, walk through security and board the plane.

I heard that one as Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Ohm, and continuing from your joke, the police officer arrests all of them. Ohm resists.

Romeo is annoying as a character, in all fairness.

It was about being more than just what you are expected to be. Every other emoji stayed what they were, he was able to change. That’s… it.

I preferred Inquisition, especially in terms of the stories and challenges of the characters, and especially their use of LGBT storylines.

In Inquisition, Krem is trans. Is that an issue? No, it’s just part of their character. Is that even the most focused on thing about Krem? Absolutely not, Krem is a badass, that’s the focus on Krem.

Dorian is gay. Is that a problem? Yes, but not specifically for some particularly homophobic reason, it’s mostly about his role and the pressure to marry his betrothed and generally come back to Tevinter and their ways, which Dorian has been fairly steadily against (not just the pressure to not be gay). It wasn’t a simple “I’m gay and want my parents to accept who I am” story.

Then there’s Veilguard. Where we have a drawn-out thing about how Taash is non-binary, and for some reason that is a huge problem for their mother, even though the Qun have been accepting of trans people the whole time (but supposedly get their loincloths in a wad about non-binary? Come on). And that becomes their, like… whole deal. They’re even bisexual, which is treated as a non-issue (thankfully). And they’re the big dragon-slayer person, who rarely offers anything in terms of killing dragons. It seems like Taash’s entire existence in the game is for a ham-fisted egg story, and it just gets tedious, frankly.

Every other character has interesting storyline and interesting interplay. Taash gets… one story, and a beat-you-over-the-head allegory in terms of accepting her Qun parts or her Rivian parts, with the painfully obvious answer of “both.” Basically, we are too far along to have the cardboard cut-out non-binary character in a story and calling it representation.

Gameplay-wise, I missed the tactical system for fighting from Inquisition, though once I got the hang of the ability system of Veilguard it was an okay replacement. Definitely more fluid.

By any chance are you a redhead?

I like combination jokes:

What’s brown and sticky?

What’s brown and rhymes with snoop?

Or:

What do you call a cow with three legs?

What do you call a cow with no legs?

What do you call a cow with two legs?

Where’s my two dolllllllllarrrrrrrrs?

I tell people I hate being wrong, so the sooner I am corrected or can correct myself the better.

And the answer is… whenever I’m wrong. I am fairly diligent about thinking through what I say and do, but everybody makes mistakes or lacks knowledge, so I am quick to admit being wrong when I am.

Also, counterintuitively, quickly and casually admitting to being wrong often serves to make people forget you were wrong in the first place. My wife and I have had conversations where she admits being wrong (after entirely too much argument), and comments about how I’m never wrong. And I tell her I’m wrong all the time, I just admit it quickly instead of making a big deal about it, so it’s not very memorable. (As we’ve gotten older, those conversations have become more rare, but she still had me 3D print a medal and trophy wall mount, where she gets a “You Were Right” medal or a trophy each time she’s right… like when she convinced me to take my vomiting dog to the vet at night on a weekend and saved his life, and ended up with a dachshund trophy for her wall)

What year is this? That type of humor was overdone in the 90’s, and irrelevant now. Even in the early 2000s it was normal to split bills or trade off paying. Same with the “wish I were gay” nonsense. I’ll be honest, I didn’t get past that.

May as well be joking about Y2K. Totally anachronistic.

Military. Search and rescue, specifically.

I don’t work in programming (helicopter maintenance/repair), but my boss goes one step further.

Boss: How long until it’s ready for a test flight?

Me: I’d say…

Boss: Wait. Give me an honest number, don’t add buffer time. I’m already going to double whatever you say to tell District.

Me: Oh, okay, with paperwork and ops checks, 3 hours is feasible, as long as we don’t encounter any other issues.

Boss: roger, six hours, sounds good.

The Civil Rights Lawyer did a pair of videos on this as well.

Maybe I’m getting old, but given the choice, at this point I’d choose neck and/or shoulders.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happy with whatever, but given the choice, I’d say relief over release.

“Hey, man, I didn’t see anything, and I got about 20 minutes left on this shit. Somebody else will probably find this dude and call somebody before I do. Either way, none of my business.”

Wow, I commented three other songs, but this one is it. This is going into my playlists.

Am I Evil - Metallica, originally by Diamond Head

Somebody that I used to know - Walk Off the Earth, originally by Gotye

Common People - William Shatner and Ben Folds, originally by Pulp.

The first because Metallica was just SO much cleaner, second because I thought the song was trash until I heard it by somebody who didn’t mumble through the whole thing, the third… well the Shatner one isn’t exactly good, but it’s at least entertaining, which is more than can be said for the original.

There’s three that I consistently have people who grew up at the same time don’t remember:

Denver the Last Dinosaur

Mighty Max

Exosquad.

Exosquad I watched religiously, and I don’t think they ever finished it. Mighty Max was on every day before I went to school, so it was my breakfast watch.

Them and millipedes are allowed if AND ONLY IF they stay either out of sight or up in the corners. If they crawl across my bare foot they’re done.

I went away for two weeks once, and afterwards went to the unfinished portion of my basement at the time to find the aftermath of an absolute warzone. Some yellowjackets (I think) had burrowed their nest through the wall, and there was an epic battle between them and the cave crickets (of which there were WAY more than I had thought). There were dismembered corpses absolutely covering the floors. And from what I could tell, you know who seemed to be the victor?

The millipedes. There was ONE millipede body amongs the masses of cave crickets and yellowjackets. And each of the others weren’t eaten, just ripped in half.

For the next year, we didn’t hear or see a single cave cricket, and that entire nest of yellowjackets was just… gone. But the millipedes… they flourished.

On an episode of a hospital-based show, a little girl (like, 8 or 10) drowns in a pool and effort to resuscitate fail. That didn’t get me, even with the parents crying. The girl has a sister, who is making a card for the girl who has already been declared dead. Sad, but didn’t get me. Sister explains that the girl died saving her, since she fell in the neighbor’s pool trying to get a ball, and the sister jumped in, pushed the sister out, and then couldn’t get out herself, and eventually drowned.

And I got slammed with a real-life memory. I work in Search and Rescue, and one case my station had over a decade ago was a pair of children that got swept out to sea. Only the younger brother survived. Because the sister spent the whole time keeping him above water, and ended up exhausting and drowning herself. I try not to think about it, because it fucks me up really bad, and especially because now I have a daughter and a younger son. That scene dredged that up real hard, real fast.