What happened to our (the US's) democratic process that every piece of legislation  except increasing pay, vacation time, and benefits to congress now requires a supermajority of 60 to overcome the almost automatic not-nearly-as-cool-as-it-is-on-TV filibuster put in place by "the other side". 
 
I am really disappointed with my elected representatives, and the ones I didn't elect. Just.... fuck. Going to pour a shot, and go dangle off a ladder hanging xmas lights up now. Feel free to explain why I shouldn't be pissed off right now -- not about specific legislation per say, but that the process has broken down so badly, that the worst case scenario is the norm?  
 
P.S. Do any brits out there familiar with the US system think Question Time would work here?

 Fallout.... set in Australia! 
Think about it. Completely new avenues of lore to explore, completely new wastelands to scrounge. I mean as much as the series has "homaged" to Mad Max, might as well take it full circle and set on there.  Drive nuclear powered Rovers across the wastes, fight along side power-armored ASAS troops, loot jars of Vegemite off of corpses to regain HP, find Quigly's rifle as a Unique. 
Shit, think of all the creatures right now living in the land down under that can kill you. Now imagine gigantic, radioactive pants-shittingly scary versions of them. Radioactive drop bears, gator-lurks, beasts that look like Cthulu fucked a pit viper, giant two-headed baby-stealing dingos, thylacine's that can swallow you whole!
It's not like the aussie government's track record couldn't be satired equally like the US's is in the current fallout series, or have their own vault's run by the AU branch of Vault Tech. 
 
What do you guys think? Crazy fever dream, or awesome sauce?    

I mean really, another ANOTHER quest that is asking fucker to post their fucking  spammy ass blog posts. Arg. Also, DONT CLICK POST TO FORUMS LIKE I DIDN'T NOONE IS READING THIS!

I had to write that 3 times because erection kept working its way in. Fucking Freud.  
Anyway, I am several chapters into my book, tentatively titled "What the Fuck Have I Gotten Myself Into: Holy shit thats a lot of pages", or Dead Drop. Either works. Its a typical airport-novel, with lots of stock characters (a big tough FBI agent, the hot, snarky ATF agent, the gruff-but-lovable Boss agent, and the lone-wolf erudite terrorist mastermind), explosive action set pieces, and fast moving globe-trotting scenes.  Its been fun so far, feedback has been good, and now I am realizing the importance of plotting out your story before you start typing. 
 
I need to cause enough of a shit storm in the US, that some small groups of citizens take up the antagonists cause, and get absolutely brutally butt-fucked by the full might of the U.S. military, as has been the case in the past with small insurrections. However, Shay's rebellion wasn't put down with A-10 strikes, so the sheer bloodbath, with more prodding from my mysterious Tinkerer stirs an even bigger wave of unrest and distrust, and more armed uprising. Powder kegs, and such.  
 
But what could one man, reasonably well equipped, connected, and educated, do to stir up the populace? So far its been general domestic terror acts to stir general chaos, but it needs to head towards this specific goal, and I'm not sure how. How do you actually start the class struggle? Devalue the economy, hurt the stock market, make leaders seem ineffectual. Those kinds of ideas. I'm about to blow up the Golden gate Bridge, so don't feel timid. I would really appreciate the feedback y'all.

Hello world. I am going to come off as a grouchy intolerant asshole, once again, but given the migraine I have right now, it's to be expected. I am in the process of reading and critiquing a set of creative writing submissions for one of my online classes. This is not my first class,  just an additional one, and while I am by no means an expert, I do have some experience in this matter. So to anyone out there who may be in a similar course this semester, or feel like taking one, or just write for funsies, I have some helpful advise.
 

1. Spell-check. Proof read, then spell-check again. Then do some more proof reading. You know, catch  those your/you're affect/effect kind of things. Makes everyone else's life a little easier, and lets them focus on thematic and mechanics, and singing your praises as an author.
2. No one likes Manic Pixie Dream Girls. If you write the phrase "... had never met anyone like her before", I will smack you on the nose with a newspaper. Let that character trope die a painful death, please. Every story I've read so far this semester has had one. It is a crutch writers use when they can't write an interesting or endearing normal character, nor figure out how to have their main character grow as a person without being dragged out of their boring old stuffed shirts without some crazy bitch.
   
3. If your story is not set in a generic current day setting, give me a fucking time stamp. And if you flash back, and/or flash forward, give some context clues as to what the hell is happening, and when.
   
4. Keep the POV of down to only one main character if possible. I just finished reading a story that had 3 main characters that the narrative followed, and would occasionally have them occasionally recollect an additional character.  Confusing as hell.
5. Maintain a sense of past or present tense. This is a tricky one. Are we the audience viewing the story as it unfolds Live in front of a studio audience, or are we looking back upon the events after dust has all settled? Or are you book-ending your back-story with present day events in the initial and ending chapters?  Just pick on, and try to maintain it throughout. Actually if 98% of the story is flashback, consider removing that part, and writing it chronologically without the cold opens, and time jumps.
   
6. Show. Don't tell. Nobody likes long, tedious exposition for the sake of long, tedious exposition. 
7. Don't try to be a cartographer, tour guide, ichthyologist, or Dan Brown. Long winded, overly detailed, yet error filled exposition about too much of anything is a pain in the ass. I don't care that you know Manhattan like the back of hand, just tell me they went from A to B, not each and every street and corner they go on. But don't make up a whole bunch of shit either. Most good detail questions can be answered with a simple Google search, or even a post on a Forum.
   
8. Fuck Chekhov, and the guns he rode in on.
9. ETA: If you are on a fucking Mac, please be considerate enough to your classmates to correctly save your files. I have had to add ".rtf" to 3 papers this week to be able to properly open them, and it is really annoying. Several fellow students just write comments about how they can't download or open the files, and it screws the whole feedback system up. Jerks.
10.   hack745 adds: "Also, people need to write endings according to their characters, not because they want the story to end a certain way. I can't even begin to tell you about the amateur stories I've read that were totally ruined by the predictable and cliche ending they tacked on.  Oh yeah, and, "...it was all a dream," was never a good ending. Stop. Fucking. Using. It. "
     
    

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr....... Just does not sit well with me. I was gonna be a nice boy, and subscribe, and get my T-shirt. But that ONE thing, just is filling my stomach with acid. here are my hair-brained ideas that I am shitting out with about 90 seconds worth of thought, that make a fuck-ton more sense to me than the Splitcast.

• Merch store. It is fucking do-able, even if they have had problems in the past. Hoodies; T-shirts (which they fucking have now anyway!!!!!); plushie bombs, luchadeers, whiskey bottles; stickers; patches; mugs, steins, shotglasses, cocktailshakers; keychains. All doable.
• Fire Kessler
• more ads
• sponsored Bobcasts, like many, many podcasts I listen to already do. I'm sure NOS energy would buy airtime, or something. I would much rather listen to a 10 second "brought to you by" than wait a goddamned week. Or even an NPR style- "Users like XYZ and QRS", where you just hit the Paypal button, and for $10, get your name read by Ryan. None of that messes with the integrety of the podcast.
  
• Donation button. I would have donated to y'all years ago.
  
• have a shorter bombcast. Stop doing the Wiiware and DSIware time wasters.
  
• use lower bitrates, offer DL links offsite, or some such to cut down on bandwidth issues.
• Subscribers get a video podcast, and scrubs get the old, regular format one.

EDIT

  @ LlamaNL If we get 5,000 subscribers by 10amPST on 9/10, the Bombcast goes free for everyone. Forever. Deal?

Taxi Driver
 

I love me some Borderlands. I am about 3 Achievements shy from S ranking it, including Moxxi's Underdome. (shudder) I have put in an obscene amount of time into it, second only to maybe the Mass effect series. I love the just fucking ridiculousness of it, that vast range of shit to go find, and the unprecedented loot whoring.
 
But man, it needs some work still. There are still some really annoying bugs to be found; online play is a coin toss that someone won't break it  with modded weapons, or steal the good shit; and there are just some head scratching exclusions. So here is my quick and dirty list of things I would kill to have fixed in the last patch/DLC, or in the Sequel.
 

1. Add fast-travel to the DLC, specifically Knoxx. Knoxx is HUGE, and has lts of roads and stuff, and even has the new vehicles, but when you just want to pop in and run Crawmerax, or the Armory, you have to slog through map, after map to get there. I don't know if there is a tech limitation that needs to overcome, or a stupid design decision, but it needs done.
2. On that note, travel itself could be juiced up. I would really like the map screen have more options, including setting waypoints, and flipping to other pages, so you can see where you are going. 
3. Add more guns. Better guns.
   
4. Fix rocket launchers. They are next to useless with some classes. And they are so finicky with how they deal damage and splash damage. And add some guided or homing rockets.
5. FIX UNDERDOME, you fucks. And send us an apology. Add checkpoints. Add weapon proficiency increases, or drops for the creeps.
6. Just give it another bug sweep.
7. Edited to Add...
   
8. Gatling guns.
9. Ice or Temporal elements and abilities. Sometimes i really just want to slow the mobs down a bit, THEN mow them down
10. Give us a claptrap! Give us a companion fellow that you can give vender junk to, who will go and sell stuff, like the dog from Torchlight. Or a grinder like Deathspank.
    

• More story, better story, actually have a real story. Seem to be a sticking point.
  
• Crafting is another big one. Being able to take that big badass gun, and make it set stuff on fire, or add a scope to that one almost great gun... If you could break down all the vender trash and recycle the parts, it would make grinding a little more fun.
• A trade system. @ Brackynews  had the great idea of mailboxes so you could send gear to either your other characters, or your friends. its not like there aren't a crapload of mailboxes in the game already...
• Horizontal splitscreen, please fuck.
• Custom characters, more classes, more trees, more special abilities. 
• Armor as well as shields.
• Suppressed weapons for stealth killing, and better AI reactions to such. Actually just better AI than just constantly run at and/or shoot at you and yell.
• "A minimap, for fucks sake".
• MOREDERLANDS, AMIRITE?
• Remove dueling, its borken and never works as it should.
• Add Knoxx vehicles to vanilla game worlds.
• Address coop quest system issues
• Some randomization to some areas.
  

Ok, don't let the opening line paint me as more of a dick than I already am. 
I've spent part of the weekend researching Whiskey Media. It is actually pretty interesting. The website and twitter has some really good nuggets of information, including the WM tagline "Disproportionally Influential" which is as awesome as it is true; and more fodder for the 9/9 Event. At least it states there will be one.
But the site's ' Advertise With Us' section is great for anyone who stayed away during Marketing 101 (I did in fact fail that class).  It specifically points out that they want to leverage a company's product onto the sites as unobtrusivly as possible, with as much user integration as possible. How to do that? Well... 

Social Gaming Quests – Empower your brand by having our audience complete a series of clue-based quests related to a specific franchise or concept.

Community Driven Content Contests – Don’t interrupt. Rally. Our most creative and influential contributors promote brand awareness through wiki contests, brand inspired videos and art "

 

Or at least consider going to Anime Vice? On the first page alone, including all the Stickied threads, there are as of this posting (this one included ) FIVE THREADS about anime. 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing anime, or manga, and I even defended it one or two of those threads. And I'm not bashing the people who enjoy it, and want to talk about it. But can we try and focus to just a couple of threads? Maybe have a mod sticky one for us to post in? I mean there's even a thread with a guy asking for links for downloading, which is about as close to a TOS violation as this place really gets!  
I know it's the Off Topic thread, but can't we talk some things that are not japanese animated shows, or recommendations, or about how mature or childish it might be, et al? And again, if you are just down for that kind of talk, there is the WM sister site that needs some clicks. Go, talk, wiki edit. Just tone it down over here for a few days maybe?