Kaiser Mazoku posted:

"The thread" meaning THIS thread?

Need this lore.

Tunicate posted:

Nah, it was offsite. Don't recall other details, except the caricature was a malfunctioning transsexual battletank that everyone hated or something.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Local slang for an outhouse is "privy". That adds even more depth to the "loving why?".

Tunicate posted:

Nah, it was offsite. Don't recall other details, except the caricature was a malfunctioning transsexual battletank that everyone hated or something.

Tunicate posted:

Nah, it was offsite. Don't recall other details, except the caricature was a malfunctioning transsexual battletank that everyone hated or something.

there wolf posted:

Well I have a new handle if I ever need to re-reg.

quote:

Among these cheerless men, only occasionally stirred to irritation by the clanking sound of steel balls pouring out in an enviously large quantity into the winning buckets of their lucky yet dispicable neighbors, was a white man in his fifties sporting a wrinkly gray suit called Smith.

quote:

Japanese women, in his opinion, turned out to be far more capable of inflicting pain on men due to the sheer improbability that a simple facial gesture they made could mean so much more than the abusive language of women, much better in size, in his home country.

quote:

By now, he was already numb to the poignant fragrance of the tea that he had stopped pausing between gulps to savor it lavishly as he used to. Between every gulp he would let it glide on top of his tongue and roll around his mouth until his taste buds were all fully saturated with the refreshing flavor of it. Then slowlylyhim hehe would let the tea trickled down his throat, tickling it with a nice, warm sensation, which he liked so much, before swallowing everything.

The_White_Crane posted:

So I came across The White Man and the Pachinko Girl while I was looking for a completely different book on Amazon...

Cornwind Evil posted:

I swear if I ever write a book series and get an extraordinarily nasty review from a critic, I am going to put them into my next book as a useful, competent background character. I think this would work a lot better than neurotic tanks and child molesters; they'd probably be so baffled and going through the text with a fine tooth comb to find the insult that wasn't there, which seems a better return jab than 'Mr. Dickcheese Shitopinion was ugly and smelled, and someone ran him over with a steamroller and everyone cheered, and then six models came to my house and I left them all screaming I was the best at sex."

quote:

Oh, and then there are New York's Mayor Ebert (gamely played by Michael Lerner) and his adviser, Gene (Lorry Goldman). The mayor of course makes every possible wrong decision (he is against evacuating Manhattan, etc.), and the adviser eventually gives thumbs-down to his reelection campaign. These characters are a reaction by Emmerich and Devlin to negative Siskel and Ebert reviews of their earlier movies ("Stargate," "Independence Day"), but they let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla. Now that I've inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones.

Pastry of the Year posted:

Pastry of the Year posted:

Pastry of the Year posted:

"The Beginning" by Kevin Lindo Cadelina

Some samples from that album:

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

e: I mean, he might not even be wrong, current events considered.

A Pinball Wizard posted:

I tried to build a sexual stadium in my room but the landlord objected.

Pastry of the Year posted:

"The Beginning" by Kevin Lindo Cadelina

Some samples from that album:

Xarbala posted:

I'd wondered where that grinning spaceman was from

Sham bam bamina! posted:

It was on the front page. Some goon you are!

Sham bam bamina! posted:

It was on the front page. Some goon you are!

quote:

will be generous and say that 5% of this book is historically accurate. Indeed, that is probably what is most perplexing about this: given the vast wealth of dirt and absurdity that are amply documented about Rome’s nuttiest Emperor, it is a mystery why Barber and Reed would chose to go into uncharted territory and brazenly make up lurid bullshit. For historical accuracy, this book is more manure than McVeigh used to bomb the Oklahoma City fed building.

Examples of inaccuracy can be found on almost every page, ranging from minor to major. Minor example: Caligula’s last words, per Barber and Reed, were “testicles!”, when in reality they were “Strike again - I still live!” (spoken to his assassins.) Major Example: the cause of his sister Drucilla’s death. Barber and Reed would have us believe that she died from complications arising from a 8-day marathon of sodomy held with anybody willing to get in line for a poke. In reality, scholars are divided: Drucilla either died of hemorrhagic fever, or was killed while pregnant by Caligula himself (most likely the baby’s father!) in an effort to free the fetus in a personally-botched cesarean section.

Sometimes the authors aren’t even trying to pretend to be accurate, but brazenly make up bullshit on the fly. We get ample and vivid descriptions of Caligula at various Coliseum games, but in their ten seconds of research Barber and Reed seem to have overlooked that Caligula died in 41AD and the Coliseum wasn’t built until 80!

Indeed, the book offers up an entire chapter exposé on the great gladiatorial games that are flights of fancy undoubtedly used as an excuse to give lurid descriptions of the sex supposedly going on in the stands. When Barber and Reed finally remember that there was armed combat going on center stage, their descriptions are equally ludicrous. We are led to believe that it was common practice that a skilled gladiator could decapitate an opponent in one swoop, catch the body, and then maneuver it to write the Emperor’s name on the ground with the arterial spray. Of course, things just get silly (not that they weren’t already) when we “learn” that thousands of species became extinct from having been hunted and used in the great games, and this had such a traumatic impact on the ecosystem of north Africa that it shifted from being a lush jungle to the dry desert it is today.

quote:

For the first twenty or so pages, Barber and Reed almost have you convinced. Sure, a lot of what they describe seems improbable. Maybe Tiberius forced everyone in the palace to kneel every morning before his “diseased, blackened sexual organ,” maybe he didn’t. And perhaps it's only slightly hyperbolic to say Caligula spent “the first months of his reign almost entirely in incestuous copulation with his sister, Drusilla”—that depends on just how one defines “almost” and “entirely.” But then Barber and Reed go too far, writing that Rome’s “plebian scum” loved Caligula because:

…he was a visible presence in the filthy backstreets of Rome, often to be seen carried about in a litter with Drusilla by his side, energetically masturbating with one hand while distributing gold coins with the other; the plebian scum elbowed and crushed one another into the dust in order to simultaneously catch the imperial spurting semen in their mouths and the coins in their hands.

Now, this strikes me as highly improbable on any number of levels. That Caligula might enjoy a good wank while throwing coins out of his litter is plausible, I guess, but how long could one really sustain such a jerk ‘n’ toss? I suppose it's possible that Caligula began each day by venturing forth into a filthy Roman alley to masturbate and distribute his coins, but after each dispensation, wouldn’t he need a few minutes to rest before moving on to the next filthy alley? I’m willing to concede that Caligula at 23 was probably extremely resilient and horny, but still, this seems like it would become a burden at a certain point. And what did he and Drusilla do while Caligula was in his refractory period? I'm sure what seemed like a great idea while they were back in the palace would become, at this point, rather boring and even awkward.

And then there is the question of the “plebian scum” angling to receive the “imperial spurting semen.” Now, again, no doubt Caligula at that point was a young man with a first rate prostate and impressive distance, but just how would one project semen from a litter (where one typically sits or reclines) to the waiting mouths of the plebian porno cast? I suppose Caligula might stand while he threw coins and masturbated, but then the litter would be in danger of overturning, unless of course Drusilla was doing same on the opposite side—which seems unlikely.

SerialKilldeer posted:

Another claim I remember, from the gladiator chapter: sometimes an artificial lake would be made in the coliseum, and gladiators would come out in boats to fight "naval battles." Maybe that much did happen (I'm no expert) but according to Barber and Reed, the most spectacular part of the show was at the end, when all the male spectators would jerk off and simultaneously ejaculate into the water.

SerialKilldeer posted:

quote:

We are led to believe that it was common practice that a skilled gladiator could decapitate an opponent in one swoop, catch the body, and then maneuver it to write the Emperor’s name on the ground with the arterial spray.

quote:

Maybe Tiberius forced everyone in the palace to kneel every morning before his “diseased, blackened sexual organ,” maybe he didn’t. And perhaps it's only slightly hyperbolic to say Caligula spent “the first months of his reign almost entirely in incestuous copulation with his sister, Drusilla”—that depends on just how one defines “almost” and “entirely.” But then Barber and Reed go too far, writing that Rome’s “plebian scum” loved Caligula because:

…he was a visible presence in the filthy backstreets of Rome, often to be seen carried about in a litter with Drusilla by his side, energetically masturbating with one hand while distributing gold coins with the other; the plebian scum elbowed and crushed one another into the dust in order to simultaneously catch the imperial spurting semen in their mouths and the coins in their hands.

quote:

Sure, a lot of what they describe seems improbable. Maybe Tiberius forced everyone in the palace to kneel every morning before his “diseased, blackened sexual organ,” maybe he didn’t.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

This reads like a speech bubble from Tycho in a Penny Arcade strip.

SerialKilldeer posted:

I just remembered a terrible "history" book I read a few years ago: Caligula: Divine Carnage by Stepehn Barber and Jeremy Reed. It's a collection of essays about various Roman emperors, plus one about the gladiator games, and the orgies, blood-sports, and general debauchery the Romans supposedly got up to all the time.

I don't have the book, but here are a couple of reviews I found and quotes from each:
http://www.branchfloridians.org/plebeian_scum.html


http://consumedandjudged.blogspot.com/2012/02/caligula-divine-carnage-2001.html?view=classic


Another claim I remember, from the gladiator chapter: sometimes an artificial lake would be made in the coliseum, and gladiators would come out in boats to fight "naval battles." Maybe that much did happen (I'm no expert) but according to Barber and Reed, the most spectacular part of the show was at the end, when all the male spectators would jerk off and simultaneously ejaculate into the water.

Also, I recall there were maybe two primary source citations in the whole thing, and no citations of scholarly works except maybe a vague reference to "German researchers" or something like that.

BioEnchanted posted:

I like to think that they did consult actual historians and got trolled really hard, like they were Zim and the historians were the Tallest:

"That seems a little unlikely..."
"It's not unlikely! It's ~meticulously researched~ :iamafag:"

Cornwind Evil posted:

I swear if I ever write a book series and get an extraordinarily nasty review from a critic, I am going to put them into my next book as a useful, competent background character. I think this would work a lot better than neurotic tanks and child molesters; they'd probably be so baffled and going through the text with a fine tooth comb to find the insult that wasn't there, which seems a better return jab than 'Mr. Dickcheese Shitopinion was ugly and smelled, and someone ran him over with a steamroller and everyone cheered, and then six models came to my house and I left them all screaming I was the best at sex."