Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@xinjinmeng I was SO RELIEVED to see articles like that confirm I was not the only one. Cards Against Humanity is one of my prime "guess we're not playing games tonight" games.

To be fair, it's not even the offensive--note the utter lack of scare quotes--humor. It's the kneejerk, brainstemmy nature of it. I hate it for the same reason I hate mid-era Adult Swim cartoons: bring me something *insightfully* offensive.

And the "joke generator" nature of it only makes it more stultifying IMHO. It's so damned easy to make a game that exploits randomness for humor. "Five Card Nancy" comes to mind.

But CAH has this strange accursed power to strip the surreality OUT of randomness and ground it in the most banal sort of "Ha! You sure said something you're not supposed to!" humor.

It's also just such a shitty game qua game. I have a huge pet peeve against "games" with no strategy besides "a bunch of stuff happens and then you win." It actually manages to be less of a game than Fluxx and that's IMPRESSIVE.

@Sig So... my sophomore year of college, I took a Sociology 101 course because it sounded cool and I was still determined to get a goddamn liberal arts education instead of a career.

It was a very popular elective for students in several of the professional degree programs, especially nursing and engineering, because it was "easy." So we had a lot of people in there who were just kinda intellectually along for the ride.

My prof was a big charming pudgy folk who, in retrospect, sets off my gaydar and enbydar fiercely. They had a habit of coming to class wearing things like "Give Me The Chocolate And Nobody Gets Hurt" T-shirts. And six weeks into the course, they assigned us "Body Ritual Among The Nacirema."

The next morning, they got up to the lecture podium with the BIGGEST FOXY GRIN. And they asked us, completely deadpan, "So what did you think of today's reading?"

OH GOD.

Maybe a sixth of the class had gotten it. And we all apparently decided very quickly to keep our mouths shut and enjoy the free entertainment.

One classmate got five minutes into earnestly defending the Nacirema and their strange differences. She observed how similar they are to us, and how the "scraping and lacerating the surface of the face" part could have just been shaving, seen through an unflattering lens.

She was so close I wanted to cry.

Eventually, our prof had mercy and said, "OK, everybody, I want you to take a look at the name 'Nacirema' and read it backwards."

First chorus, ~5/6ths of the class: "OHHHHHHH!"

Second chorus: ~1/12 of the class: "Huh?"

Third, one poor bewildered nursing student: "I don't understand!"

Yeah. That class, as you can imagine, was formative in ways that nobody at that university except our prof probably ever intended.

#WhyRaccoonsCryForHumanity

Sigh, I'd forgotten how enviable this video is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzTgXAQOp_s

@frameacloud And to be fair to your original post, raccoons *are* innately somewhat vaporwave, especially when we get our Lisa Frank on... =(^)_(^)=

approx current sanity level

(image courtesy of cricket arrison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mok11_0nqFM -- do not expect this link to enlighten you)

@frameacloud There's a Crash Pandas one-pager TTRPG, too, which is about... well it's also about stealing cars. What can I say, we're obsessed. ​

@frameacloud It looks adorable but I think I'm still holding out for Wreckoons. If it's got a raccoon in it but you can't steal a car, it's a good raccoon game but it's not the ideal raccoon game. :D Thank you for the link, though! I still need to slog through that bundle one of these days...

@anthracite Our art critic misspelled "embarrassment."

@Sig (I had some trouble digging up a free public copy so here ya go brother <3 : https://usflearn.instructure.com/courses/1058273/files/47476872 )

@Sig Right? I love satire like this, that turns some cultural blind spot right on its face. Ever read "Body Ritual Among The Nacirema?" (If not, go read it and come back -- I have STORIES about that essay. XD )

@catoxis@snouts.online Granted, it was really not outside the realm of possibility. I mean, you're a semi-local--I probably don't even need to explain that, say, the best empanadas and crawfish pies I've ever had down here have come out of gas stations.

In fact, come to think of it, I *have* eaten at a phone reseller! There was a fantastically seedy little food court on Winter Street in downtown Boston, with abysmal pizza and world-class falafel. And for a while the phone shop there had a chest fridge with surprisingly good $2.99 banh mi...

@catoxis@snouts.online There's a Chinese restaurant at the same address. I have a sneaking suspicion Grubhub is doing speculative client dumping again...

*blink*

*blink*

🖼

@Austin_Dern I'm *frightened* by how much I already know about that topic, and how interested I already am in that book. :D

(I think it's Czechia that has the dual numbering system, because they had one that dated back to military conscription...)

@001zlnv YOU ARE LISTING MY BROKEN DREAMS. D;

@anthracite

I can not be the only person who remembers this glorious, brilliant, cranky old science goat. <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN2oALaRfL4

The kindest and most compassionate thing we can do right now is openly cheer for conservatives to defy COVID-19 quarantine guidelines and for Red States to relax their lockdown guidelines.

It's the same way that the best way to stop an adolescent fad is for adults to aggressively, cluelessly adopt it. Even if we secretly *want* them to live and learn from their mistakes, the best way to do it is to make them think they're Owning The Libs by wearing a facemask.

At this point, the only way I can imagine achieving this is by telling them we APPRECIATE them flouting public health policy, because we're FINE with them dying for us. I really think it's gotten to the point where they will literally just do the opposite of what they think we want, no matter what that is.