BigJackBrass

GayOldTime, 1 month ago to food

This week's #SundayLunch is neither a soup nor a salad, regardless of what Cambell's says.
Try it at home! (Or don't.)
#vintageAd #soup #food

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

https://writing.exchange/@golgaloth/111554797247431949

Aaron_DeVries, 1 month ago to random

The sphere is to spaceships what crabs are to evolution.

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

From the Beeb today:

"Liz Truss's publishers have apologised and agreed to remove a false quote linked to an antisemistic conspiracy theory from her new book… Biteback Publishing says it will remove the quote from all future editions"

All future editions… I'm sure that Truss's book is going to have loads of those and definitely not be marked down to 50p in The Works before summer 😁

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to 13thFloor

There are a couple of old sci-fi stories that pop up in my head now and again, even though I last read them decades ago. One of them concerned a missing piece of ship's equipment called an offog and the crew's frantic attempts to find out what it was and cover for its absence before an imminent full official inspection. We've mentioned it when chatting on the Whartson Hall podcasts, but I couldn't recall the author and title at the time. Eventually, I remembered to look it up.

The story is "Allamagoosa" by Eric Frank Russell and it's online here:

https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___3.htm

#Fiction #SciFi #Offog

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

Somehow this caption fails to tell me a single one of the many, many things I urgently need to know about the photograph.

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

'It was reported at the time that Cameron shouted, “There’s something in me! Get it out,” while a conga line formed around him'

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/16/the-titanic-drug-poisoning-is-one-of-the-greatest-mysteries-in-film-history-about-to-be-solved

somedude, 1 month ago to random

For any of my friends overseas who might be wondering yes there are in fact a great many of us who realize just how crazy we here in the US must look to the rest of you

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

Fans give their opinions about the latest Spider-Man costume redesign, amid claims that it panders too much to the health and safety lobby.

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

"We are truly in the pit of national despair, understandably, and I wonder if it’s helpful to see through their eyes that there are good bits of Britain"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/14/why-do-us-celebrities-sarah-jessica-parker-love-the-uk-because-they-dont-live-here

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

Tackling chores in the morning leaves me completely unable to focus on doing stuff for myself in the afternoon (or anything at all: I generally fall asleep), so today I'm being a little self-indulgent and working on some Cliff Edwards Project tunes first.

#LongCovid #Ukulele #CliffEdwards #UkuleleIke

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

Idle thoughts of a morning:

Growing up in Britain when I did there were almost always black and white films on telly in the afternoon and a surprising number of old adventure serials at different times, mainly Saturdays. As a result I was routinely exposed to entertainment from thirty or forty years earlier.

Pop culture elements persist differently today. I don't get the impression that black and white anything gets much airtime (the occasional deliberate artistic choice on a new release aside), discounted in a similar way to silent movies when sound came along. On the other hand, there are far more outlets for entertainment and we have things like Star Trek still being mined after nearly sixty years.

I'd be fascinated to compare how young people perceive old shows and movies today—and indeed what they consider old—with back in the seventies and eighties. Can't think how it could possibly be done, of course, since I tend to be surprised that anything after 1999 isn't really quite recent (and that there are people born since then who are adults, rather than primary school children). I suppose every generation encounters that difference between X number of years ago being "before I was born and therefore ancient" and X number of years ago being "a year or two… How long? You're kidding…"

Idle thoughts.

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to RPG

There's a thread on the EN World forum titled "What Games do you think are Neotrad?" This in turn links to a thread called "A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto" to help those (raises hand) who don't know what neotrad is supposed to mean. The latter thread itself links to "Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective" in order to "…disambiguate neotrad and OC" as neotrad is being defined in opposition to OC which, we're told, is a culture of play rather than neotrad's definition as a design ethos. Would you be surprised if I told you that we are then directed to the article "Six Cultures of Play" from The Retired Adventurer blog?

Anyway, a number of people are evidently deeply into this discussion, which to me has all the hallmarks of an argument about categories of popular music ("It's not post-punk, it's early proto new wave!"), and I wish them well from my position of making stuff up and having a laugh with friends. I may not need what they're trying to find—and I certainly don't understand how they're going about getting there—but it seems pretty civil and I trust they have fun with it.

#RPG #Games #Fandom

BigJackBrass, 1 month ago to random

Right then, time to knuckle down and clear out the clothes I don't wear. There isn't enough space in this house for me to hang onto things I cannot use on the off-chance I might wear them at an unspecified point in the future.

Going to be really brutal about this: if I've not worn it in the last twenty years, it's out!