Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

[minuspace]

You might be surprised to learn that I’m in a damned fine mood. I have a fucking future and the mental capacity to plan things over a month out in the future!

All the more reason to push a token amount of that energy into shitting on LuciferX when he decides he can pretend like he didn’t threaten me with fake gangsters and Clarence.

Look, you can be as pretentious as you want. It will never make up for frootyloops. There is no defensible reason to excuse that behaviour.

[altered]

Again, nobody fucking asked you. Not one fucking person even hinted at asking you. Instead, I’m going to give you a number of suggestions you can do instead of being here, you tiny moron fuck.

Change your password to a keyboard smash and log out.
Live in a dumpster.
Fist-fight a brown bear.
Cut your power cable.
Purchase and race a combine harvester.
Set your computer on fire (be sure to use a magnesium firestarter).
Eat twenty or more oranges in under 24 hours.
Go join the #discord IRC channel and find out where zlax and the other Nazicordians live these days.
Make a threat on this forum again so you can get banned.
Raise emus.
Climb a dead tree, without safety equipment, in a rainstorm.
Move to a remote Russian peninsula where you can’t access the internet.
Live on a boat in the South China Sea.
Start a business adding pointless internet access capabilities to something that doesn’t need and can’t make use of them, i.e. Juicero.
Sell all of your worldly possessions, invest in Bitcoin, and wait for the market to rise.
Build a rocket to go into space so you can prove the earth is flat.

[Cramulus]

Around here (suburbs of NYC, which is in phase IV right now, basically everything except bars / movie theaters / etc are open but with reduced capacity and mask/distancing requirements), a lot of us have resumed some elements of normal life.

My close in-town friends have been sequestered since it started. Basically any time we've reached out to them, they've said "NO. We're locked down until this thing is over."

like, okay, that's fair---but you do know this isn't "ending" right? Not any time soon, at least. We can't suspend life indefinitely, we have to figure out how to keep living WITHIN these conditions. Don't know about you guys, but I can't handle "just don't see any people for a full year". You can't crank the safety dial to 100% forever or you'll go crazy. So we've been doing porch hangouts, backyard dinners, hikes with friends. No parties or indoor socializing, but we kinda need SOME face-to-face social experience every other week or so.

My in-town friends finally broke, invited us to walk in the park with them. Suggested that back-porch D&D might be a Thing again soon.


It was a huge relief, because we'd kinda written those guys off.


how have you folks been dealing with the lockdown conditions in your region?  how has your life changed as of July & what concessions have you made?

[LMNO]

We've eaten at a few patios, and yesterday finally had our first 6-person backyard distance party.  I still don't like going into public buildings, and I'm not sure when I'm ever going to be able to play live music again.

We were supposed to go to Montana in August, but made the foolish assumption in March that the country would have at least figured out how to manage the virus.  Thanks to the dummies, I'm terrified to go into an airport, much less a plane.  Fuckers.

I've been doing curbside pickup of groceries, which Whole Foods was good at.  But then our local WF decided to prohibit workers wearing BLM signage, so I now I've been trying to figure out how to get everything I need from various local places.  Add to that the Goya boycott, and it takes like a whole day to get stuff.

We're lucky enough to be able to work from home, so we've at least been solvent.  I know a lot of people don't have that luxury.

I've also started jogging again.  Boy, I'm out of shape.

Unexpectedly, I'm honestly enjoying wearing a mask.  My go-to is a gaiter that looks like a handkerchief.  It looks pretty badass.

[Cramulus]

I'm not sure when I'm ever going to be able to play live music again.

Same story with running larps

I sent out a survey to my customers, basically saying that there aren't any LEGAL obstacles to running this upcoming event... Connecticut is allowing up to 150 people to gather outdoors, and this particular game doesn't have any combat or close social contact that would prevent you from masking or observing social distance. So we COULD run, but how do you feel?

Only 25% of the people surveyed said they would "definitley" or "probably" buy a ticket to an event in September. So it's cancelled, hoping the world is in better shape this Spring.


after we clear the safety hurdle, the next hurdle is consumer confidence

and without good leadership at the national level, and given how politicized safety has become, that hurdle is absurdly high

[Doktor Howl]

We've eaten at a few patios, and yesterday finally had our first 6-person backyard distance party.  I still don't like going into public buildings, and I'm not sure when I'm ever going to be able to play live music again.

We're hunkered down as this shit roars through Arizona like goddamn Lord Humongous.  Our social activities now include:

1.  Weekly Zoom things with friends.
2.  Video games.
3.  Rewatching every single Star Trek, in chronological order.

TOS is, by the way, awful.

[Cramulus]

two days ago, I subjected my fiance to TOS

after 20 minutes, she made me turn it off

[Doktor Howl]

two days ago, I subjected my fiance to TOS

after 20 minutes, she made me turn it off

It's frankly shit.

Has she watched any of the other Treks?

[Cramulus]

lol, nope -- I thought TOS might be a little more exciting and pulpy than TNG, and Shatner's acting is a fun ride all by itself

but yeah, it still kinda sucks

[Cain]

Not much has changed with me, because I was mostly working from home before the virus hit and I'm not someone who generally goes out a lot anyway.

I'm more careful about my shopping now - I go once a week, wear a mask, wash my hands before leaving and on return. I also cancelled my gym membership, because my local 24 hour gym (which was awesome) was closed for several months.

I would have liked to have visited either of my parents for their birthdays, but my parents are in their mid-50s and early 60s now, so travelling by train means a significant risk of picking up the virus and then passing it onto them, and my father barely survived a combination of pneumonia, flu and sepsis last year so I'd rather not try his chances with this in particular.

Right now the UK is "reopening" things like bars, hairdressers and so on. So right now I'm being even more careful because there has been a small, but noticeable upswing in infection and deaths over the past couple of weeks already.

[chaotic neutral observer]

If you haven't been indoctrinated into TOS by age 12, I expect you develop a natural resistance to the stuff.  Even then, there are probably only four or five episodes worth going back to.

The Galileo Seven
The City at the Edge of Forever
Space Seed (but only because Ricardo Montalban)

...uh...hmm.  Is that all?

P.S. I hate Trouble with Tribbles

[Doktor Howl]

lol, nope -- I thought TOS might be a little more exciting and pulpy than TNG, and Shatner's acting is a fun ride all by itself

but yeah, it still kinda sucks

Enterprise and Discovery are good for new folks.

Picard needs too much backstory.

[altered]

I watched TNG at my last temporary place, and the first season was almost entirely ASS. From there it rapidly improved, and I ended up liking it more than I wanted to.

But I’m still going to watch Discovery, when I figure out where and how.

[Faust]

On my rewatch of all the series that started with the baby (when I do the night feeds I put it on my phone) I've finished
TOS
Next Gen
DS9
Enterprise (First time watch)
Discovery
Picard
Starting voyager next

The Original series has 5 scripts, that it changes the cookie cutter creature, omnipotent being etc. If there is a villain with a female companion, Kirk is required to have sex with her, she will than betray the villain. It's very dated but relaxing to watch, the one stand out episode I loved (and there is only one) is The City on the Edge of Tomorrow. Possibly the only episode worth watching.

The Next Gen has the best exploration of individual sci-fi concepts, and some of the worst (The planet of the black men who try to buy Tasha yar was pretty cringy, and Crusher Banging the Scottish Ghost).

DS9 Starts so bad, you cant even feel the potential of where it will go in season 1 and I can understand everyone who gave it up in that. Every season is better than the last, and every single episode from season 3 is great. It has the best characterisations, people actually grow as individuals and has multiple proper morality plays which often don't end forcing a nice ending (a lot of the really tangled morality plays of the Next gen have unbelievably neat bows to tie them all all up). The characters all start as the least charismatic, but by the end they are my favourite (except Bashir, fuck Bashir)

Enterprise is the George W Bush In space show. Trip is the only real character who has any arc. Every episode of season 1 is bad, most of two is bad, and all of three and four are great, it was cut off in its prime, when it had finally hit its stride.

Discovery I really disliked when I first watched it. The newest show always has the title of most hated, until another show comes along. Its well acted, well shot, but suffers from Doctor Who pacing, the fast dialog (a departure from the Naval formality of the old shows) kind of makes it feel more fun, but strips away the feeling of exploration. Season 1 is good with a bad conclusion. Season 2 is terribly written, and having a ship that can go anywhere in time and space is somehow both overpowered, and squandered at the same time. It also has one of the worst AI stories in modern sci-fi. I am really hoping for more once off episodes in the next season because this shows characters would be great at the exploration stories.

Picard- The world of the federation is now an Aldi brand knock off blade runner, the federation surrendered all the Rodenberry ideals for a stupid September 11th stand in. And thats just the premise.
Everything is terrible. Everything is dark and moody and miserable. Picard is not Picard. The writing sucks and plagerised Mass Effect 3. I actively hate this show. Discovery has promise and an execution that failed. This does not have redeeming characteristics.

[Doktor Howl]

Discovery I really disliked when I first watched it. The newest show always has the title of most hated, until another show comes along. Its well acted, well shot, but suffers from Doctor Who pacing, the fast dialog (a departure from the Naval formality of the old shows) kind of makes it feel more fun, but strips away the feeling of exploration. Season 1 is good with a bad conclusion. Season 2 is terribly written, and having a ship that can go anywhere in time and space is somehow both overpowered, and squandered at the same time. It also has one of the worst AI stories in modern sci-fi. I am really hoping for more once off episodes in the next season because this shows characters would be great at the exploration stories.

But it wasn't an exploration series.  It was a horror series, much as TOS was Westerns and TNG was classic literature.