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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in danger2013's LiveJournal:

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    Monday, January 5th, 2009
    4:13 pm
    4:11 pm
    Grenadier
     http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Grenadier

    Grenadier

    Format(s): Anime
    Genre(s): Adventure Series

    "The ultimate battle strategy: To avoid battle by removing an enemy's will to fight." — Empress Tenshi

    a.k.a.: Grenadier ~The Senshi of Smiles~

    Based in an alternate version of Japan's civil war period, this is the story of the travels of Tendou Rushuna, a buxom young woman with astonishing skill with a revolver. Known as a senshi, or firearms expert, Rushuna is on a personal journey to bring peace to the land. Uncomfortably aware that shooting people is not the best way to accomplish this, Rushuna is struggling to master the peaceful teachings of the Empress Tenshi. Accompanying her is Kojima Yajiro, a.k.a. Yatchan, a skilled samurai who has grown weary of battle and sees value in Rushuna's goals. Also along for the ride is Kurenai Mikan, an orphaned balloon artist who has painful memories of her own to deal with.

    Learning that there is a price on her head, Rushuna journeys back to the Capital to clear her name. Pursued and watched by a mysterious man in a clown mask, Rushuna must battle the Juttensen or Ten Heavenly Enlightened one by one, each armed with strange and deadly weapons. She gains allies as she travels, beating her enemies with her skills and winning them over with her purity, trying to learn more about the mysterious Jester and to understand the Empress's strange actions.

    Though there are only 12 episodes, Grenadier manages to explore each character and many of the foes in depth. The anime is very well suited to the incredible ballistics and improbable weapons of the show, easily switching speeds to let the viewer see what is happening during combat. Featuring high quality animation, the show also is known for its ample eye candy. Rushuna's impressive bosom gives her a signature method of reloading her revolver in combat that must be seen to be believed. It was for good reasons that the popular anime collection AMV Hell played the song "Dark Chest of Wonders" as accompaniment to Rushuna's eye-popping gymnastics.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This show provides examples of:

    Anime Anatomy - Although Rushuna is rarely completely naked, there are situations where you'd think that at least her nipples would be exposed...
    Anime Theme Song - Since it aired on two different networks, there are two theme songs.
    Blasting It Out Of Their Hands - Rushuna's primary method of disabling opponents, although since she is using live rounds, one wonders why they're not dying of blood loss.
    Um, because they're usually still conscious and able to staunch the wounds?
    Boobs Of Steel - Rushuna is the best marksman in the show, and the most endowed female. Unfortunately, so is her Evil Counterpart and rival.
    Bottomless Magazines - Subverted: Rushuna can only fire six shots at a time, and even after reloading repeatedly she still runs out of bullets in at least one episode. That cleavage of hers can only hold so much, you know...
    Broke Episode - Rushuna and Yajiro have to resort to street performances in order to get money in one episode.
    Calling Your Attacks
    Chivalrous Pervert - Teppa
    Crouching Moron Hidden Badass - Rushuna
    Crowning Moment Of Awesome - Rushuna's crazy Gun Kata duel in the final episode is a shining example, although Yajiro gets one when he deflects a massive cannonball with a frickin' katana.
    Darwinist - The Jester.
    Dramatic Wind - With Mikan's forgiveness, Rushuna's skirt is blown in the wind.
    Evil Counterpart - Setsuna the Tenchi impersonator. This is reflected quite well visually, with her outfit, hair, and skin being stark contrasts to Rushuna's brighter colors.
    Fan Service - One of the figurines actually came with two different detachable bosoms.
    Firing In The Air A Lot - Win a weekend at the Peach Blossom Tower!
    First Name Basis - Yatchan
    Furo Scene - Rushuna is constantly searching for her next hot bath.
    Gainaxing - Like you wouldn't believe. Actually used for a practical purpose, though.
    Gun Kata - Rushuna and Setsuna in episode 12
    Hot Springs Episode - Seen in the closing credits.
    Hyperspace Arsenal - Mikan manages to produce an inflatable boat, costumes, a glider, even fully colored doubles of herself on demand. And her 50 gallons of water balloons vanishes without a trace. Apparently Mikan is carrying an inflatable portable hole!
    I Have The High Ground - While the Jester can stand on air, he favors high vantage points such as tree tops and cliffs.
    Improbable Aiming Skills - Rushuna is the queen of this, and is often considered to be The Stampede's Distaff Counterpart because of it.
    Improbable Weapon User - Basically every member of the Elite Imperial Guard. Aizen Teppa uses a special, nigh-invincible cloth, another uses sound, and the Jester uses what appears to be Frickin Laser Beams.
    Luminescent Blush - Kasumi gets the hots for Teppa.
    Magic Bullets - Every blessed one of them.
    Magnificent Bastard - The Jester, who is more proactive than most.
    Marshmallow Hell - Done humorously, but also practically and for emotional effect as well. Rushuna hides Yajiro from enemy troops in a hot spring with it, but also uses it on a couple of her defeated enemies in a form of the Cooldown Hug.
    Most Common Super Power - The three best women fighters in the series all have this. Lampshaded in manga by Mikan during an Omake, where she asks Rushuna how she got so big, and Rushuna has no idea.
    Ms Fanservice - Rushuna. Yes. If it weren't for Mai Shuranui, she'd be the queen of this.
    Only A Flesh Wound - Rushuna shoots dozens of people but never kills anyone.
    Samurai - Yatchan.
    Revolvers Are Just Better - The two best marksmen in the show both use revolvers, and Rushuna's is not only a custom job, but also considered very outdated by the standards of the setting.
    Scary Shiny Glasses - Though not very scary, when Aizen Teppa hides his emotions, his lenses go shiny.
    Schizo Tech - Robots, machine guns, and missiles, right next to swords and samurai armor.
    She Is All Grown Up - With the use of balloons, Mikan briefly appears to be older than she is, and even does Marshmallow Hell to Yajiro at one point.
    Sign Language - Suirou
    Take My Hand - Yajiro and Fuuka, episode 9
    Team Shot
    Technical Pacifist - Yatchan believed that only with a sword could you feel the weight of a human life.
    The Gunslinger - Rushuna and Setsuna.
    This Is Something Hes Got To Do Himself - Yatchan versues the Jester.
    Twelve Episode Anime
    Unorthodox Reload - Rushuna loads her gun by ejecting bullets from her cleavage.
    You Gotta Have Blue Hair - Every Japanese character has black hair, and Rushuna's blonde hair immediately marks her as a foreigner.

    Current Mood: bouncy
    3:58 pm
    Baldur's Gate
     http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaldursGate

    Baldurs Gate

    Minsc and Boo, series mascot(s)
    "Ok, I've just about had my FILL of riddle asking, quest assigning, insult throwing, pun hurling, hostage taking, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, patience! If you've got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!"
    —The Player Character

    This is silly! Buttons are not how one escapes dungeons! I would smash the button and rain beatings liberally down on the wizard for playing such a trick!
    —Minsc

    Baldur's Gate is a Role Playing Game series in a High Fantasy setting, using the second-edition ruleset of Advanced Dungeons And Dragons. It was developed by BioWare with Black Isle Studios, published by Interplay Entertainment, and includes:

    Baldur's Gate (1998)
    Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (1999)
    Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
    Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (2001)

    The original game and its Expansion Pack, TotSC, are set along the Sword Coast of Faerûn between the titular city and the borderlands of the nation of Amn. The sequel, Shadows of Amn takes place largely in Amn itself, in and around the capital of Athkatla, and its Expansion Pack Throne of Bhaal moved the plot further south to the northern border of Tethyr.

    The plot centers around the hero (named and designed by the player), who is regularly pursued due to power granted by a Mysterious Parent: Some want those abilities for themselves, others are simply fearful of what the hero may become because they know With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. The first game centers around the hero learning about the powers and their source; the second deals with the consequences and choices that come with that power and knowledge.

    The series is best known for its memorable selection of sidekicks, which your hero can have up to five of at any time. All have distinct, if sometimes simple, personalities and backstories, and most will drag you into at least one sidequest unique to them if they stay on your team long enough. Especially in the sequel, they also have a tendency to make comments or suggestions about the current situation, or interact with each other positively or negatively.

    Its engine and successors were also used for the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. Since Interplay's license from WotK for AD&D ran out except for the Baldur's Gate franchise, Interplay made two unrelated AD&D-based games with the “Baldur's Gate” moniker: The console exclusive Gauntlet-alike Dark Alliance series, and The Black Hound (codenamed “Project Jefferson,”) a cancelled game that was actually going to be sold as Baldur's Gate III (one of the original creators apparently intends to complete it in the form of a module for NWN2, which he also worked on.)

    The character sheet is under construction
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tropes:

    Adventure Couple (yourself and your chosen partner)
    A God Am I (Amelissan) is quite arguably the living definition of this trope. Also The Player Character can engage in this behavior. Oh, and Sarevok...and Irenicus.
    All There In The Manual (As far as game mechanics go, that is; most of the Baldur's Gate II manual is essentially a reprint of the AD&D 2nd. Ed. Player's Handbook.)
    Angry Black Man (Valygar Corthala doesn't take your shit.)
    Bag Of Spilling (Baldur's Gate 2; justified by getting captured between games. You get to keep all your skills, though.)
    Battle Couple (Khalid and Jaheira; potentially you and your chosen partner)
    The Berserker (Minsc and Korgan, although neither of them brood much over it)
    Bonus Boss (Aec'Letec in Tales of the Sword Coast, Kangaxx in Baldur's Gate II, and Demogorgon in Throne of Bhaal). To a lesser extent, all but one of the Dragons in Baldur's Gate II - you don't have to fight the other four unless you want to.
    Bonus Dungeon (Durlag's Tower in Tales of the Sword Coast and Watcher's Keep in Throne of Bhaal)
    Bonus Level Of Hell
    Break The Cutie (Imoen gets more serious between games due to this trope)
    Broken Bird (Viconia)
    Broken Bridge (the city of Baldur's Gate is closed off until you solve the ore problem)
    Cain And Abel (played straight in BG 1, then played with for all it's worth in Throne of Bhaal, which is more like 'Cain and Cain and Cain and Cain and Cain and Abel.)
    ...Only with Abel murdering all the Cains.
    ...And going on to become God.
    Burn The Witch
    The Call Knows Where You Live
    Cant Argue With Elves (Subverted; you can. And if you don't, Valygar will. And if he doesn't...well, let's just say the elves deserve to be argued with this time around.)
    Character Alignment (It's a Dungeons And Dragons-based game. Duh.)
    Clown Car Grave (Due to game mechanics, zombies, mummies, and others can endlessly spawn at times)
    Cloudcuckoolander (Minsc relies very heavily on Boo, his "Miniature Giant Space Hamster", for advice. The hamster's advice, as related to the PC by Minsc, actually works at least once. Of course, using his insanity to get committed to an asylum is handy too.)
    It's worth pointing out that Giant Space Hamsters do actually exist in the game's cosmology. Spelljammer is part of the same multiverse as Baldur's Gate and contains such hamsters, and shrinking spells do exist. It is thus hypothetically possible that Boo really is a Miniature Giant Space Hamster.
    In fact, Miniature Giant Space Hamsters are a genuinely known to exist variant (one of dozens) of your basic Giant Space Hamster. Of course there's no way to tell the difference between a Miniature Giant Space Hamster and a plain old hamster.
    Cool Old Guy (Keldorn, sorta)
    Cute Bruiser (Mazzy)
    Cut His Heart Out With A Spoon (Just see the quote at the top of the page.)
    Deadpan Snarker (Most evil party members; the protagonist can be pretty sarcastic in the first game as well)
    Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu (The Bonus Boss battle against Demogorgon, the D&D multiverse's number one Demon Lord. Amellissan also counts, seeing as how she was almost 99.99% the Goddess of Murder by the time you fought her.
    Considering that the remaining .01% of Murder God is the player character, any 'normal' monster that manages to kill you might also qualify.
    Does Not Like Men (Shar-Teel)
    Doom Magnet (The protagonist)
    Dropped A Bridge On Him Several party members from the first game turn up dead in rather anti-climatic fashion. Inverted when, due to the open nature of the games, several characters who should (If you got them killed) be dead after the first game can still show up for a cameo in the second. Lampshaded when the PC can actually ask them 'Didn't you die?'
    Empty Room Psych (Averted)
    Enemy Chatter (several scripted encounters which may or may not end in a fight)
    Expansion Pack (along with the two official packs, this series has a large community of amateur modders)
    The Eeyore (Xan)
    Feed Me (Irenicus in particular)
    Fetch Quest (most of them optional, thankfully)
    Gender Bender (Anybody - there's a certain enchanted girdle to be found in the game - but Edwin in particular, as he actually has a subplot that uses this)
    Give Me Your Inventory Item (Branwen in Baldur's Gate)
    Gladiator Revolt
    A God Am I (the various Big Bads and, possibly, yourself)
    Grand Finale (Throne of Bhaal)
    Grid Inventory (Inverted; the sizes of the objects do not matter, but their weights do)
    Hand In The Hole
    Heel Face Turn (Sarevok in Throne Of Bhaal and potentially Viconia if she's the main character's love interest.)
    Hello Insert Name Here
    Heroic Sociopath (Korgan)
    I Have A Family
    I Want To Be A Real Man (Anomen)
    Improbable Power Discrepancy — The Amnish guards in Baldur's Gate 2 are incredibly more powerful than the Baldur's Gate guards in Baldur's Gate, so much so that if the power discrepancy were "real" instead of merely game mechanics (to compensate for higher-level player characters), the Amnish could simply march their supermen up to Baldur's Gate and conquer the country within days. And then there's the Tethyrian and Calishite legions in Throne of Bhaal, whose rank-and-file footmen carry +3 weapons.
    Infinity Plus One Sword
    Item Crafting
    It Was His Sled The player character is a child of Bhaal. The series is even informally referred to by many, including some of its creators, as "The Bhaalspawn Saga", for crying out loud.
    Jerkass (Many evil party members — oh, and Anomen)
    Karma Meter
    Kleptomaniac Hero
    Lady Of War (Jaheira)
    Large Ham (All the villains, plus Minsc, Mazzy, and occasionally Jaheira, Anomen, and Edwin).
    Like Brother And Sister (The main character (if male) and Imoen). It's revealedThey are actually half-siblings
    Literal Genie (in Baldur's Gate 2; limited wish spell, and indeed the wish spell)
    Lovable Traitor (Saemon Havarian)
    Love Redeems (The player character can convince Viconia to go from Neutral Evil to True Neutral if she's being romanced.)
    Luke I Am Your Father
    The Mole (Yoshimo in Baldur's Gate II)
    Malevolent Architecture
    Multiple Endings
    The Munchausen (Jan Jansen)
    Murder The Hypotenuse: Haer'Dalis will do try and do this to you if you romance Aerie with him in your party.
    Only if your relationship with Aerie hasn't been solid when you get him. If you have solidified your romance with Aerie, he gracefully backs down.
    Mysterious Parent
    The Napoleon (played straight with Korgan, subverted with Mazzy)
    Novelization
    If such a novelization were to exist... and this troper isn't saying it does!... He would have to advise, just as a public service announcement, that you don't buy, read, or even stare directly at it. He... hypothetically... read it, and it is really, really awful. Like, toxic, almost. Hypothetically.
    Describing the hypothetical novelization of Baldur's Gate (purely hypothetical, mind you!) as 'toxic' would be regarded as an insult to good poisons everywhere. This troper would not dignify calling the pages it would have been printed on as toilet paper, as mere contact with the stuff would probably give you cholera.
    Adaptation Decay (The fact that any novelization would likely contain lots of this explains why none so far exists.)
    Character Derailment (To the point where you wonder if the author of these totally hypothetical novels has ever been in the same room as a copy of the game, much less played it.)
    Designated Hero (Abdel, the totally nonexistent hero of these totally nonexistent novels, is not exactly a shining beacon of goodness. More specifically, he murders at least one person I can think of for no reason, steals another man's wife and then cheats on her with a vampire, and completely and utterly fails to actually save or help anyone, largely due to his own stupidity and lack of self-control. ...Actually, since the game allows you to create and play as a bastard of this magnitude, this is probably the closest the novelization ever got to being like the game. Or should I say 'the closest it would have gotten'?)
    Said character has a save file with a similar character included with one of the games, while supposedly neutral good, has a party of entirely evil characters.
    Everybodys Dead Dave (Hypothetically, we could also say that no one except for Gorion's ward makes it to the end of the trilogy alive. Hypothetically speaking, of course. It's impossible to spoil something that doesn't exist.)
    Suddenly Sexuality (So in one of these completely nonexistent and theoretical novels, it turns out Imoen is into chicks)
    Never Got To Say Goodbye (the protagonist)
    Now Where Was I Going Again (check your journal and find out, duh)
    Necromantic (Bassilus)
    The Obi Wan (Gorion)
    Old Save Bonus (A Tales of the Sword Coast player can import a higher-level hero than normal into Baldur's Gate II. Also, pantaloons.)
    Perky Goth (Haer'Dalis is a doomguard — basically a Nietzsche Wannabe who is happy about knowing that the universe is pointless and everything will inevitably rot and die.)
    Plotline Death (Gorion in Baldur's Gate, Yoshimo in Baldur's Gate II)
    Pre Ass Kicking One Liner (loads of them)
    Purely Aesthetic Gender (save for the romances, dialogue and certain people hitting on you harmlessly)
    Rant Inducing Slight (see quote on top of the page)
    Rebellious Princess (Nalia. Nobility instead of royalty, but the principle is the same.)
    Relationship Values (the romances in Baldur's Gate II)
    The Reveal (several)
    Scary Black Man (Sarevok, though his race isn't made clear until Throne Of Bhaal gives him a badass new portrait)
    But Not Too Black
    The Scrappy (Anomen; also highly subjective in that various players end up thinking of different characters as The Scrappy)
    Sdrawkcab Name
    Sidekicks (lots to choose from, most of them very memorable)
    Sidequests (you can spend more time on these than the actual plot, easily)
    Shapeshifting Squick The sheer range of creatures which show up claiming to be Bhaalspawn in To B is... is... well, it raises some interesting questions about what the God of murder was doing while "walking the earth". Everything from humans to dragons to chinchillas.
    Considering that he foresaw his death while walking the earth and decided the best thing to do is sire as many kids as possible, to use their essence as a springboard back to life, it makes perfect sense.
    Chinchillas, dude. It makes sense, but perfect sense is giving ol' Bhaal too much credit...
    Smug Snake (Edwin)
    Somebody Elses Problem (Christ almighty the civilians of this world are lazy gits.)
    Superpowered Evil Side (the "Slayer" form)
    The Sword That Speaks (Lilarcor)
    Take Your Time
    Talking Is A Free Action (Sometimes Time Stands Still when dialogues happen. Sometimes it doesn't)
    Tear Jerker (The fates of Khalid and Yoshimo. And Dynaheir!))
    Technical Pacifist (Aerie, before she... look below)
    The Three Faces Of Eve
    The Toblerone (Minsc and Korgan)
    There Can Be Only One (Sarevok's plan, and, essentially, the climactic scene of Throne of Bhaal)
    Time Keeps On Slipping (not that it matters much)
    Took A Level In Badass (Imoen, Aerie and Nalia in Throne of Bhaal)
    Vendor Trash
    The Very Definitely Final Dungeon
    The War Sequence
    Those Two Bad Guys (Xzar and Montaron)
    Wide Eyed Idealist (Aerie and Nalia in Baldur's Gate II)
    With Friends Like These (Xzar and Montaron—to you and each other)
    You Cant Go Home Again (Candlekeep)

    Current Mood: accomplished
    1:58 pm
    1200 Things Part 3
     1001. No matter how bad the game is going, I won't stradle the table like Slim Pickens riding a bomb.
    1002. Foam Finger of Death is not a real spell.
    1003. I cannot start with an armor class higher than my actual age.
    1004. Not permitted to die from essence loss during character creation.
    1005. Even if I bought the book at Walmart, I don't get a discount on advantages.
    1006. If I take the Poison Immunity advantage, that doesn't include Radiation.
    1007. That whole Expedition to the Barrier Peaks? Dream Sequence.
    1008. Texans do not get revolvers as a racial weapon proficiency.
    1009. No matter how many points I put into the skill, can't use sword swallowing to parry.
    1010. Stone Giants don't have heat sinks.
    1011. Even if we are facing Yuan Ti, my battlecry cannot be "COBRA!"
    1012. Note to self: Lightsaberchucks...BAD IDEA
    1013. The expressive dance skill is not a substitute for language skills.
    1014. I will stop blaming every massacre we come across on Decepticons.
    1015. Despite what the rules say, berserking does not improve my aim.
    1016. Even if spells are use them or lose them, I will not waste Meteor Swarms on a goblin.
    1017. I will not lay siege to Cinderella's Castle.
    1018. Elves do not get Viking Funerals.
    1019. Even if we have more ammo than fuel, I still have to cut down the tree with the chainsaw, not the HMG.
    1020. If we have to add a new PC mid-campaign, he doesn't have to pass a drug test first.
    1021. Can't use the Jedi Mind Trick to convince the stormtroopers the Droids over there are the Droids they are looking for.
    1022. Can't start the game with 24 hours to live.
    1023. The bluff skill is no substitute for actually knowing the spell.
    1024. Slings make poor thongs. And vice versa.
    1025. If I have two cyberarms, they have to be on different sides.
    1026. My character cannot gain a level through nepotism.
    1027. I will not use the d20 system to test the validity of any Kennedy Assassination theory.
    1028. My character has mastery level in singing. I do not.
    1029. I will not convert to Eilistraee just so I can watch naked drow chicks getting their groove on.
    1030. No matter how much he pisses me off, I will not raise the barbarian’s dead mother-in-law.
    1031. Just because my superhero game has 18 stats and yours only has 3, doesn’t mean mine is 6x better.
    1032. Monofilament does not automatically make the world a better place.
    1033. Holding the hand crossbow sideways ‘gangsta style’ does not add to my intimidate check.
    1034. Even if I wait for the ninja to jump at me, I can’t crucify him with a repeating crossbow in a single round.
    1035. If at any point in his lifespan my character can clear out every single Cave of Chaos in one single round, he’s vetoed.
    1036. My druid can't summon or change into a skunk. No seriously, it’s not allowed in the rulebook.
    1037. Kangaroos are poor substitutes for taun-tauns.
    1038. There is no such thing as a Viking Assisted Suicide.
    1039. Jury Summoning I is not a real spell.
    1040. I can not name my character anything that was suggested by Tom Servo.
    1041. Doesn’t matter if I’m just using to spot weld, force lightning still gets me a dark side point.
    1042. Erasing the compass on the map and redrawing it in reverse does not mean the villain will start building his evil railroad backwards.
    1043. Ninjas do not have a hive mind.
    1044. No matter how much ammo I start with, I can’t impact the total world supply.
    1045. We will not gut every animal we kill to see if they have treasure inside like in video games.
    1046. We can’t stabilize the dying villain before we make our escape just in case he was a load bearing villain.
    1047. If my troll is the smartest character in the party, the entire party is vetoed.
    1048. I will not attempt to overdose on Rogaine so I can disguise myself as a wookie.
    1049. I can’t summon anything in MM4 just so I can take a bathroom break while the DM looks it up.
    1050. If the weapon has the 3-handed trait, I don’t get a sidekick just for the extra hand.
    1051. As a matter of fact, the high and tight buzz cut doesn’t exist in Exalted.
    1052. I’m not automatically eliminated from the crappy module if I guess the wrong murderer like in Clue. So I should stop making random accusations.
    1053. I was not raised by a pack of feral Ironclads.
    1054. I will call the elf druid by his real impossibly long elf name, and not just Llanowar Leafblower.
    1055. I will also not simply refer to the elf druid as that dirty, dirty hippie.
    1056. There is no such thing as a Dwarven Battle Perm.
    1057. Canadian is not a real language.
    1058. When I get to the custom weapons creation section, I will keep turning those pages.
    1059. Even if the villain is Lawful Evil, slapping a cease and desist order on him isn’t going to work.
    1060. I will go into the villain’s lair and take him out the old fashioned way. Not just wait outside his favorite bar with a rifle.
    1061. In the middle of a Black Ops I do not have time to put a banana in the exhaust port of their AV-9.
    1062. Even if I think of something the Demi-lich isn’t immune to, he’s immune to it.
    1063. Even if my character sheet says otherwise, I can’t max out the party with Delta class Cyberware immediately after character generation.
    1064. Even if I can prove at least a half dozen practical uses for it, I can’t have a slip and slide for the dungeon crawl.
    1065. Even if we are playing in the New Republic era, I can’t call dibs on Boba Fett’s armor.
    1066. If the GM’s wife is in the party, I’m not allowed to hunt anything cute.
    1067. I do not get to put remote detonation switches into the weapons of any PC’s I build them for.
    1068. I cannot have a handgun that starts out doing more damage than most people have wounds.
    1069. I do not have to check before each adventure that my fellow adventurers are not doppelgangers, Cylons or pod people.
    1070. Even if we are Womprat hunting, we don’t have to dye the wookie fluorescent orange.
    1071. I will go take out the villain’s dungeon the old fashioned way, and not use magic to reroute a river into it instead.
    1072. After rerouting a river through the villain’s lair, I will not pan for gold wherever the river comes out.
    1073. Just because the game left the rules for stun setting grossly unbalanced doesn’t mean I have to take advantage of it.
    1074. Despite the name, I can’t actually wear a cloaker. But I will fail to notice the cloak weighs over a quarter ton.
    1075. Metal detectors don’t automatically find Cylons.
    1076. When told to dress like a Goth I will make sure with no uncertainty whether they mean black clothes and eyeliner or chainmail and shield.
    1077. There is no such thing as a weresaxophonist.
    1078. If 48 straight hours of pistol whipping doesn’t convince the terrorist to spill his guts, another 48 hours probably won’t either.
    1079. A tattoo gun is not standard equipment in a mapping kit.
    1080. The Cryokinetic is forever banned from water balloon fights.
    1081. Even if the rules allow it, my sumo wrestler can’t take super human attractiveness.
    1082. There is no such thing as a brothel crawl.
    1083. My IRSAn will not use his powers to help fill out wikipedia articles.
    1084. My sumo wrestler can’t have lap band surgery without affecting his martial arts skills.
    1085. “Everybody Wang Chung tonight” is not an acceptable use of the Mass Suggestion spell.
    1086. Tornadoes don’t have hit points.
    1087. Even if I take twice as long, that doesn’t mean I can take 40.
    1088. I cannot try and throw large blunt objects at malkavians, kobolds or kender. Or their players.
    1089. Even if the game is a crappy rip-off of World of Warcraft, my character can’t speak in Leet.
    1090. Even if I roll a natural 20, I can’t jump the grand cannon on a stock steam roller.
    1091. In the middle of a Black Ops, if a character dies I will not disavow knowledge of him until after the mission is over.
    1092. If the battle goes for 20 rounds, we don’t have to stop and wait for the zamboni guy to clean up the battlefield.
    1093. I will not tell the rookies they can roll down their Y-Wing’s windows.
    1094. My wizard does not need to shout out the name of what he’s summoning every time he picks a creature.
    1095. Anything short of adamantine full plate is not considered light armor for dwarves.
    1096. In the middle of a Black Ops I can’t start a major Corpwar just because I’m bored stiff with the current run.
    1097. Even if he used INT as a dump stat, I don’t have to carve ‘this end towards enemy’ on the barbarian’s axe blade.
    1098. If I’m in an assault mech, bump drafting is discouraged.
    1099. After a successful Black Ops, before I’m paid I will not immediately adopt a dozen children for the tax breaks.
    1100. I cannot wish that someone else was an Oscar Meyer weiner.
    1101. I will not cut the vault guards in on the haul instead of fighting them.
    1102. 1980’s break dancing moves have their place. In front of the Vodacce prince is not one of them.
    1103. Just because I was paid in advance doesn’t mean I can let the incompetent expedition leader die.
    1104. There is a limit to how much innuendo I can fit into one combat round.
    1105. Even if it is just my character speaking, I will not claim Texas was stolen from Mexico. I will live longer that way.
    1106. I cannot put Nodens on speed dial.
    1107. I will not attempt to clear out the dungeon using only Bangalore torpedoes.
    1108. Picking his pocket means more than just turning him upside down and shaking him vigorously.
    1109. I will not do anything that Bilbo Baggins hates.
    1110. Even if I have enough, putting silencers on my minigun doesn’t work.
    1111. There is no such thing as a Magic Murder Bag of Holding.
    1112. I will stop referring to the Eladrin as just the Elf Mk II.
    1113. I will not shoot vampires in the chest with a large pistol just so they have to explain the embarrassing sucking chest wound.
    1114. I will not take a phobia of anything that doesn’t exist in the game world.
    1115. If I have an ability that lets me alter minor aspects of my appearance, that doesn’t include girth.
    1116. Add Bulldozers to the list of things vampires are allergic to.
    1117. Can’t strangle a werewolf with a roll of Kodak film, no matter what we all know it’s made out of.
    1118. In the middle of a black ops I will not use up all the claymores just because I don’t want to take them back with me.
    1119. I cannot have my mercy surgically removed.
    1120. Even if I’m in charge I can’t order the Assault Lance to perform West Side Story dance routines.
    1121. If given a Holy Avenger sword, I can’t melt it down and reforge it into a weapon my paladin actually uses.
    1122. Even if it still give a combat bonus to everybody else, I can’t just stand there and read a comic book behind the villain.
    1123. In the middle of a black ops I can’t call my girlfriend to remind her to pick up some Chinese on her way home.
    1124. I will leave out mating rituals when presenting a cultural exchange with diplomatic ambassadors.
    1125. Letting the Red Shirt guard the plane is really frowned upon as it doesn’t leave anybody to sacrifice to the Shoggoths.
    1126. Cannot start the campaign on fire.
    1127. Will not start all my skills at 89% just so I get massive SAN boosts early.
    1128. I cannot RickRoll people with any video that increases their Mythos Lore.
    1129. I will refrain from casting Dimension Jump and Magnificent Mansion on every police box we pass.
    1130. I cannot wish we were playing the previous edition of the game.
    1131. Summoning a Water Elemental right above the Fire Elemental doesn’t work.
    1132. There will be no more debating how much XP Mr. Tumnus would be worth.
    1133. I cannot be the Bizarro version of another player.
    1134. Nowhere in my barbarian’s description will I include the word “Jaunty”
    1135. My Eshu does not get bonus frequent flyer miles automatically during character generation.
    1136. Doesn’t matter how big we make it, a pit trap isn’t going to take out the Tarrasque.
    1137. I have to go into the dungeon, not just send in dozens of summoned creatures every morning.
    1138. Fireballs don’t have a non-lethal option. I will ponder this after I’ve cast one at that guy we needed alive.
    1139. My weapon is a +3 Flaming Flail. Not my Great Balls of Fire.
    1140. I will not use a portable hole to cheat at golf.
    1141. In the middle of a Black Ops I will not look at the target’s HR files to see if they have better benefits.
    1142. I will not use the mage’s Staff of Wizardry in lieu of a pool cue.
    1143. Torching the forest doesn’t get me any XP for anything inside the forest.
    1144. I cannot have any gun that lets me kill the villain without being in at least an adjacent county.
    1145. A 2nd level commoner is not twice as common as a 1st level commoner.
    1146. If we don’t have a thief, I can’t call AAA to slim jim the dungeon entry door.
    1147. I will lick the Rodian’s antennae and stick him to the wall while he sleeps.
    1148. No matter how long his speech is, my sniper will not shoot the speaker introducing the target.
    1149. During the psi-jump my neutral can’t do mean things to the psions while they are tripping.
    1150. I will not try to feed the Qin extremely salty food to see if he melts.
    1151. Our mission is to rescue the princess. Not to bring Sexy back.
    1152. Even if given detailed instructions on pages 50-51, can’t take Cloud City on a joy ride.
    1153. I can’t wish to change my vote on what module we’re playing.
    1154. Bass line is not an acceptable perform skill specialty.
    1155. Thri-kreen do not have the flaw Obsession: Pretty lights
    1156. The party leader is not the one that looks best in a chainmail bikini.
    1157. I can’t ‘make it rain’ before the invention of paper currency.
    1158. If I make a cowboy with the young ‘un flaw I can’t name him Sioux.
    1159. If I don’t have any points in medtech, I can’t try faith healing.
    1160. We will not end every adventure with a public service announcement.
    1161. If my character requires the GM to memorize the rules for siege warfare, he’s vetoed.
    1162. We can’t trade the ranger for a giant, pirate or padre.
    1163. I am forbidden from using more than ten sourcebooks to make one character.
    1164. I will wait for the GM to finish his incredibly complicated riddle before answering correctly.
    1165. I can’t wish for somebody to publish the rules for gnomes or bards.
    1166. The time machine is not for collecting autographs.
    1167. I can’t stop rolling at 7x dead.
    1168. I am forbidden from doing anything that makes a passerby flinch.
    1169. If even the rules allow it, I can’t have my uneducated peasant start with every known language.
    1170. If the rules contradict Isaac Newton, Newton wins.
    1171. I will not send the villain a fake message his mother is coming then attack him while he’s cleaning.
    1172. My brooding costumed vigilante can’t take the flaw Dark Secret: Well Adjusted to Society.
    1173. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Dick Clark is not Shemsu-Heru.
    1174. Even if I spend the points, I can’t take the U.S.S. Montana as an ally.
    1175. My knight will not buy a Shetland pony just so he can use his lance underground.
    1176. I will remember the spiked chain cheesemonster is allergic to the improved sunder feat.
    1177. I will stop asking NPC’s how much XP they are worth.
    1178. The seduction skill does not have a to hit on roll.
    1179. No matter how well I make my bluff check, the Star Destroyer crew isn’t going to believe I’m the new captain.
    1180. Dressing up the wizard as the monk still won’t stop monsters from appearing beside him and attacking him first.
    1181. When asked what game we want to LARP, Frogger is not an option.
    1182. Chewing hoagga leaves does not make me a goddammed sexual rhinodon.
    1183. No it won’t help if we put a silencer on the bazooka.
    1184. When approached by a famous historical figure, I can assume he’s a time traveler and not a zombie.
    1185. Paladins do too urinate.
    1186. In the middle of a black ops my buttocks is forbidden from making contact with the target’s copy machine.
    1187. It’s okay to feed the Ewok after midnight.
    1188. Flash Bangs are not to be handed out to trick or treaters.
    1189. A stagehand does not get a better sneak bonus than ninjas.
    1190. I will not Conga Line the Pattern.
    1191. Super powers that are only useful to art majors are vetoed.
    1192. My last wish cannot be for a cage match between Cthulhu, Godzilla, Galactus and the Tarrasque.
    1193. I will avoid making wishes that locks the game in an infinite time loop.
    1194. I will not go to FTL just to avoid the red lights.
    1195. I will not min/max the appraise skill just to clean up on The Price is Right.
    1196. Even if we cleared it out, we can’t turn White Plume Mountain into a theme park.
    1197. Even if the rules allow it, I can’t put a spinal mounted weapon on a bicycle.
    1198. I cannot have a destroid that requires me to take the ally advantage two dozen times just to crew it.
    1199. Stan Lee does not have to make a cameo appearance in every single adventure.
    1200. Even if I make it out of one continuous design, a dracheneisen castle doesn’t count as one object.

    Current Mood: chipper
    1:57 pm
    1200 Things Part 2
     To keep the list a bit more readable, split it in half. Here's 501-1000


    501. Even if playing a game allowing animal characters, Tai Chihuahua is not a good concept.
    502. If my name isn't Grimlock, can't start every sentence with "Me Grimlock"
    503. Dwarves do not get Beard Cancer.
    504. If the party is to frequently meet with Queen Victoria, I cannot play a Texan.
    505. My warrior cleric will not pick his deity solely on the god's BAB.
    506. Mjy Vjikjing Skjald wjill njot tjake ljibjertjies wjith thje rjunjic ajlphjabjet.
    507. My character cannot give another character the alcoholic disadvantage during play.
    508. I will not tell the noobie to roll his THACO.
    509. I will not base my superpowers off of Christ. Even if my character is nothing like him.
    510. After a bloody battle, I will not celebrate by lying down and making carnage angels.
    511. When GM demands to know what my character is doing, it better not be "The Charleston"
    512. The nationality of my favorite soccer team does not add to my Brawl Skill.
    513. Trying to rip the face off the villain will not get the Scooby-Doo ending.
    514. No giving my Roman gladiator the short disadvantage and naming him Minimus.
    515. I am not the Lord of Rodly Might.
    516. Not allowed to name my characters Grimlock.
    517. I cannot make called shots to their self esteem.
    518. Affirmative Action does not require me to play a drow.
    519. Dual wielding party members is also frowned upon.
    520. Under no circumstances is my medical droid allowed a groin mounted rectal thermometer.
    521. I will not convince the entire party to play Amish for the cyberpunk campaign.
    522. Not allowed to parry at the wrist.
    523. When I'm rescued the correct response is 'thank you' not 'took your freaking time!'
    524. I will not ask my gun for advice.
    525. Running a non-stop Rocky Horror fest for staked vampires is outside the budget for most Samedi.
    526. If an NPC is known as the "One" I cannot volunteer to be the "Two".
    527. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot spend $64,000 to get the vorpal option for a forklift.
    528. I cannot buy every single advantage during character creation.
    529. My character is not from Duncan, Idaho.
    530. I cannot earn bonus XP for 'catching air' with an MBT. So stop trying.
    531. No making up gnomish subraces.
    532. Despite being a staple of comic books everywhere, I cannot teleport objects in front of naked people.
    533. I cannot increase my comeliness by growing a pornstache.
    534. When I level up, I just can't copy the guy next to me's choices.
    535. I cannot make a dungeon crawl easier by opening a rival dungeon and hiring away all his guards.
    536. If a powergamer joins our crew, I will not billet him in the newly furnished auxiliary airlock.
    537. The Cause Disease spell cannot inflict Nitrogen Narcosis.
    538. Even if I spend the points, I cannot start married to any of the X-Men.
    539. Defensive perimeter traps my character sets up are automatically party knowledge.
    540. A full minute of stunned silence means "My God what did you do?" not "Please continue."
    541. When prompted for a target by the guided missile "the naughty bits" is not a valid choice.
    542. No, I do not have time to carve that mountain in the shape of anything.
    543. There is more to buying rations than ramen, spam and beer.
    544. I will not cast Gate to bind an infernal creature of power to my bidding and make him mow the lawn.
    545. No going 100% tracer round on the HMG just because I like the pretty colors.
    546. Dead party members, while effective, are not appropriate anti-grenade measures.
    547. Perform skill does not apply to the following: Performance art, spoken word, or fan dances.
    548. I cannot have a "What Would Ao Do?" bracelet.
    549. It is not physically possible to cook off an accordion.
    550. Dwarves can indeed tell the difference between their genders.
    551. Cannot install Lojack on the Dragonkin.
    552. If my character's drow wife finds I let my niece appear in a Gnomes Gone Wild Video, my death will not even warrant a saving throw.
    553. No matter how well I make my disguise check, my gnome cannot convincingly pass for any member of Rush.
    554. Even though armor gives him no benefit, my monk still has to wear something.
    555. I will stop snickering every time the monk announces he's touching someone with his quivering palm.
    556. Even though I'm the ranger, I can't stalk the elf babe.
    557. If they get a bonus to spot my gun with a geiger counter, I can't have it.
    558. There is not a 'Take your daughter to work day' for adventurers.
    559. Even if the Ranger offers his sword, the elf his bow and the dwarf his axe, my gnome can't offer his accordion.
    560. Can't hire a sentient black pudding to be the ship's janitor.
    561. I can't play a deep gnome just to make the rest of the party have to pronounce Svirfneblin.
    562. "Pass without trace" doesn't work on bad checks.
    563. I can't make anyone Jewish with a called shot.
    564. The Lutherans don't have an inquisition.
    565. My vampire hunter can't have anything he saw on an infomercial at 3am on PBS.
    566. When confronted with a haunted house with bleeding walls, no converting it into a self supporting blood bank.
    567. I cannot consult my lawyer before making my wish.
    568. My first wish cannot be "I wish you grant all my wishes to the spirit and letter of the wish'
    569. All 3 of my wishes cannot involve Alpacas.
    570. The DM does not want to know how my human fighter is triple wielding scimitars.
    571. I will not secretly maze the wizard's familiar, druid's companion or paladin's mount just for a laugh.
    572. Even if the rules say otherwise, I cannot carry 100lbs of styrofoam without encumbrance penalties.
    573. Improved evasion does not work against Save vs. DM.
    574. "Get dressed quickly in the dark" is not an advantage, bonus, benefit, feat, skill, perk or merit.
    575. Even if I'm a near immortal demi-god with the power to create entire worlds with a thought, still bad to throw a party when Dad's away without permission.
    576. I can't use my sneak attack opportunity to cop a feel.
    577. No matter how stupid the PC's comment, it doesn't provide an attack of opportunity.
    578. Rectomancy is not a school of magic.
    579. "Pimp my Death Star" is not a real show, and I'd better believe Grand Moff Tarkin knows this.
    580. A sledgehammer does not give any bonus to my search for secret doors roll.
    581. No filling the paladin's stocking with coal on Christmas to make him wonder what he's got to atone for.
    582. I can't thwart the Rebel Alliance's attack with the newly invented manhole cover.
    583. Can't intimidate the evil wizard just by constantly summoning bigger versions of what he's just summoned.
    584. On second thought, a minotaur architect is a really bad idea.
    585. No using psychic powers before the adventure to figure out who to take life insurance out on.
    586. Cannot spend extra money to get the optional "flay" setting for my pistol.
    587. No taunting the 1st level magic user with "Mighty bold talk for a guy with only 4HP."
    588. Paladins are immune to STDs, but if I take advantage of this ability, I lose it. Wonderful paradox, isn't it?
    589. If my gun on a scale of 1-10 is a 7, it's vetoed if that's the Richter scale.
    590. I can't convince the rival party our Q-Ship is just named that because it's piloted by John DeLancie.
    591. Defibrillators do not allow me the use of the Cleave feat.
    592. No matter how well I roll, other PCs cannot be haggled into paying me to perform errands for me.
    593. Tensor's Herniated Disc is not a real spell.
    594. True to fluff or not, my berserker cannot take the beekeeping skill.
    595. I cannot pick a race with a prehensile ANYTHING.
    596. No dual wielding whips until I at least have proficiency with them.
    597. The party does not need to know about the time I woke up duct taped to the back of a Drow Matron Mother.
    598. Any adventure that ends up with my character being worshiped as an orc god was just a dream. Retroactively if need be.
    599. Cannot start the new adventure with me trying to run down who ever didn't show up for the last adventure.
    600. Even if I'm a wizard, I still can't apply embarrassing tattoos to the NPC.
    601. If we run out of cannonballs armadillos will not do in a pinch.
    602. Find Familiar scrolls are not a substitute for the hunting skill.
    603. I cannot have any gun mentioned in the Geneva Convention by name.
    604. If my alignment forbids torture, that includes Gnomish Poetry Slams.
    605. Even if this an adventuring party, I can't show up to the adventure drunk and wearing only a toga, lampshade and half elf stripper.
    606. If my power is super growth, that includes my skin.
    607. A N-Scale tuba player is not an appropriate miniature for my gnome bard.
    608. The answer to 'who's got point?' is not the fireball.
    609. No diety will let me use my nipples as holy symbols.
    610. I cannot name my character Dwead Piwate Woberts.
    611. No initiating social challenges based only on the color of the werewolf's shoes.
    612. Every time a PC takes himself out through his own stupidity does not let me sing the Oompa-Loompa song.
    613. I can't have a magic item I can't request with a straight face.
    614. My superhero tank must be height/weight proportionate.
    615. One close call with a mimic does not give me the right to attack every door I come across.
    616. Even if they are the same cliched acid for blood aliens, can't load my shotgun with baking powder.
    617. The forehead is not an appropriate place for a kill count holo-tattoo.
    618. No matter how much my humanity loss, a chainsaw is not a substitute for a bayonet.
    619. No matter what the dice say, I can't kill a 4th gen vampire with a pump action loaded with buck in a single round.
    620. My Blessed does not have the hindrance Ailin': Stigmata.
    621. No offering the old man and the farm kid a better rate to Alderaan.
    622. Paladins make poor vikings. And vice versa.
    623. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot play a Dire Gummi Bear.
    624. When asked what my character is doing, it had better not be the vitakinetic.
    625. I must remember before the next time I shave off the sleeping dwarf's beard and glue it to the sleeping elf, wars have been started that way.
    626. Dwarves are not proper substitutes for pufferfish.
    627. The GM decides if my character dies from a stroke, not me.
    628. I can't use audible glamour to trick the cleric into building an ark.
    629. Just because they are all into rock, metal and axes, dwarves are not all headbangers.
    630. Replacing the solo's bullets with blanks so he comes in dead last in bodycount isn't funny.
    631. Medicine cabinets are not the best place to stash spare squeeze tubes of explosive putty.
    632. When asked to tutor someone on his defense trait, can't keep punching him until he get it.
    633. When told to choose my weapon in a duel with the assassin, can't pick his weapon.
    634. Cannot recreate any scene in 2001: Space Odyssey involving women's lingerie.
    635. Arguments cannot end with the statement 'Alright, we'll settle this like penguins!'
    636. Recon means tell them what I saw, not slaughter all the monsters without them.
    637. German characters do not gets 4 racial bonus to intimidate French characters.
    638. The DM is not impressed by me spoiling his well planned ambush by just casting Glassee on the door.
    639. Before hiding with all the werewolves to ambush the Settite, make sure he didn't leave the LARP 4 hours ago.
    640. Even if he loves me too, Chitti-Chitti-Bang-Bang is not an appropriate choice for the romance background.
    641. Casual attire does not include shoulder holsters.
    642. My character's grandma was not, is not and will never be a contract killer.
    643. Even if the rules allow it, I can't gain 1,000,000 XP with one forged check.
    644. No matter how much mousse I use, my hair will never have damage resistance.
    645. My matter how high my faith skill, still can't take God as an ally.
    646. If the game store owner goes into vapor lock, the adventure is over.
    647. Any answer to a question involving the words 'wizard', 'station wagon' and 'wood paneling' is no.
    648. Can't marry off another PC more than half a dozen times.
    649. Zero bodycount does not mean just the ones they can find.
    650. Gnolls don't fall for the fake ball trick more than once.
    651. My alignment is not Sarcastic Good.
    652. My fighter cannot take the flaw: Addiction- stabbing things.
    653. Cannot wish for the party to have common sense. Even the wish spell has its limits.
    654. If the party goes into my room and finds a Deva wearing only baby oil, oven mitts and spurs, they can start the module without me.
    655. When asked my position in the party, it's not 'whatever's closest to Bangkok.'
    656. A crayon is typically going to cause a penalty to my forgery skill.
    657. Can't put a glass bottom on my tank to I can see the looks on their faces.
    658. Changes sexes is restricted to male or female.
    659. Quoting Ministry lyrics is not SOP for the Gladius Dei.
    660. Walmart is not my one stop shopping place for hunting vampires.
    661. The line on my character sheet for 'Sex' is not for keeping score.
    662. My Paladin will stop referring to her detect evil power as Evildar.
    663. Even if I just rolled 832d6 for damage, still can't get a bonus to my intimidate check.
    664. Unlike real life, I don't gain the whirlwind attack to smack all my backtalking children.
    665. My WW2 era mad scientist will pick a new target for his project other than Manhattan.
    666. When offered a Dracheneisen item of my choice, can't pick Nunchucks.
    667. No matter what the dice say, can't decapitate an Aberrant with a straight razor.
    668. AT-ST soccer games are strictly against Imperial Army protocols.
    669. Cannot name Boba Fett as a godparent to any of my children.
    670. While I'm fixing the X-Wing, the brash pilot is still miffed about the Y-Wing loaner.
    671. House Kurita Mechwarriors do not appreciate posters of Godzilla taped over their optical sensors.
    672. Teleport Without Pants is not a real spell.
    673. It's not necessary to install a portcullis in every single room of my castle.
    674. When deciding what to do with the ancient alien artifacts we discovered, EBAY is not an option.
    675. Even if the rules allow it, I can't take the identical twin advantage 22 times.
    676. My character's primary purpose in the party is not to just leech 1/6 of all the XP.
    677. Elves do not have the racial trait: No Gag Reflex.
    678. Distract the bad guy does not mean with a recreation of the Apollo landing.
    679. I do not have time in the Black Ops for break dancing, Greco-Roman Wrestling or phone sex.
    680. My axe doesn't go off accidentally when I'm cleaning it.
    681. Even if he is a total blast, can't channel Baron Samedi at a Coming Out Ball.
    682. Can't make a called shot with a flamethrower.
    683. After finishing the cliched "New boss is villain" adventure, can't file for unemployment.
    684. My mummy can't take out multiple life insurance policies on himself and name himself the prime beneficiary.
    685. The game of chicken does not involve the polymorph spell.
    686. My vampire hunter does not take the "un" out of "undead"
    687. I cannot backstab anybody with a Buick Skylark.
    688. Even if the rules allow it, my Paladin cannot have the flaw: Hatred- All living things.
    689. The combat feats I can use with a battering ram are extremely restricted.
    690. Mordenkainen's Dysfunctional Family is not a real spell.
    691. No matter what the kids say, animated balloon animals is a poor use of the Create Golem feat.
    692. The Dr. Jones School of Swordfighting is not an appropriate Swordsman's School.
    693. There is no conspiracy to write out the gnome's contribution to the Fellowship of the Ring.
    694. Search the old castle means enter it, not level it with artillery and dig through the rubble.
    695. Buying the Elf Babe a trampoline and telling her it boosts her Dexterity isn't fooling anybody.
    696. Any plan involving strapping puppies to my armor is vetoed.
    697. No "accidentally" crosswiring the X-Wing's fire control and ejection seat switches.
    698. During the Black Ops no accessing the target's HR files and getting babes' phone numbers.
    699. Fed Ex does not deliver to the Keep on the Borderlands.
    700. Not allowed to use basic economics to crash the evil empire's economy by spending all my swag there at once.
    701. Cannot take the moniker "the Hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalinist"
    702. The Banana of Disarming is not a real magic item.
    703. Cannot sharpen Ioun stones for increased headbutt damage.
    704. No using my hideously low Charisma to get the villain to do the opposite of what I suggest.
    705. Need to stop using my reality altering ability to make every day Mardi Gras.
    706. Cannot base my barbarian after Wink Martindale.
    707. A throat punch does not give a bonus in a contested philosophy check.
    708. My paladin mini is vetoed if it's obviously Private Drake from Aliens.
    709. Any plan is vetoed if it was obviously inspired by Boromir.
    710. My info gathering mission must include info that wasn't obviously obtained in a brothel.
    711. If almost all the words in my character's background start with the same letter, he's vetoed.
    712. When told to leave a trail for the rest of the party to follow, they didn't mean with cigarette butts.
    713. If if the rules allow it, can't sink a battleship with a stapler.
    714. I do not get a bulk discount on ninjas.
    715. Even if the rules allow it, I can't invent the strip joint.
    716. I cannot play a race the GM can't pronounce.
    717. I cannot start the game in post-apocalyptic Poland driving a Porsche.
    718. Warnings given retroactively in battle aren't appreciated.
    719. A fluffy tail does not add to my comliness if I'm already 1' tall, furry and a squirrel.
    720. Don't have to include the line "And then stab them a lot" in the plan; it's already assumed.
    721. Even if my super power is invisibility, still have to provide a model for my character.
    722. Can't intentionally fail all my secret door checks so I don't have to play Tomb of Horrors again.
    723. If my character is related to a god, it can't be as a parent.
    724. The time machine is not for finishing my set of Disciple autographs.
    725. No, there is not a Mr. Of Arc. No, I still can't hit on her.
    726. My black ops experience does not include panty raids and beer runs.
    727. Cannot singlehandedly make Starfleet Academy the #1 party school in the Alpha Quadrant.
    728. Not legal to retroactively challenge anyone I just shot to a duel.
    729. Cannot take the flaw Obsession: Elf Chick's lingerie.
    730. No part of the plan includes: You give me the idol, I give you the whip.
    731. No matter how many called shots to the neck I make, I'm still not going to cause a cool pyrotechnics display.
    732. Not allowed to trade in my X-Wing for a Gunstar.
    733. Cannot make a plan that hinges on the villain first being allergic to peanuts.
    734. My character's background cannot be a wikipedia biography with "Falco" crossed off and my character's name written in.
    735. Adding hydrolics to my R2 unit does not give him an intimidate bonus.
    736. No taking the party to Kara-Tur just because my character has a thing for Asian chicks.
    737. Will not color code everything on the ship just to piss off the Vargyr.
    738. Though highly educational, no more slipping the anti-paladin sodium pentathal.
    739. Can't make the blacks ops super easy by sending a couple of strippers to the guardroom first.
    740. Not allowed to give my character a name from a bushman click language.
    741. Not possible to tap a keg for mana.
    742. Apparently Chaotic Angry and Neutral Hungry aren't real alignments either.
    743. Even if the rules allow it, can't takes out an MBT with a shotgun loaded with slug.
    744. My second wish can't be for a new, more open minded genie to grant my remaining wishes.
    745. Can't wish I was the GM.
    746. No making up holidays for my cleric.
    747. Can't just walk the obstacle course, even though I beat everybody who tried to run it.
    748. Holding a pillow over a sleeping person's face is not a gnomish expression of affection.
    749. There is not a Spent Clip Fairy.
    750. A bag of holding is a bad place to stash bear traps, badgers or crushed glass.
    751. If the party has to pose as classical German composers, I will not declare "I'll be Bach"
    752. Cannot take the spetum as my favorite weapon just because it sounds dirty.
    753. No encouraging swedish accents.
    754. Even if the rules give no maximum encumbrance, still can't pick up the bank and walk away with it.
    755. There is a reason no game has pasties in it's starting equipment list.
    756. The Power Armor skill does not have a cascade skill dance.
    757. I will not build a character with a skill from every single expansion book.
    758. Not allowed to take a toad for a familiar just for it's pharmaceutical properties.
    759. Restricted to one blue chip for humor per game.
    760. Can't use the time machine to rename famous historical discoveries after myself.
    761. Not allowed to forge the 1.1 ring.
    762. Fighter can't put points in Perform just so he can hammer dance after each fatal critical hit.
    763. No slipping the juicer Ritalin.
    764. In the middle of a chase in a commandeered car can't spend an action to change the radio presets.
    765. Can't parry with a called shot to the face.
    766. No more Crazy Ivans while I'm driving the AT-AT.
    767. When challenged to a high noon shoot-out, that means in the time zone I'm currently in.
    768. Burning my bard song on CD and putting it on repeat does not mean the effect never ends.
    769. Before turning undead, make sure the assassin didn't take the vampire template.
    770. My mythos investigator doesn't talk in his sleep.
    771. Mashed potatoes do not add to my damage resistance.
    772. Not allowed to base a paladin off Lee Marvin.
    773. My great axe priviledges can be taken away.
    774. If I've leveled up 5 times to the Dragonkin's 0, that doesn't mean I'm lapping him.
    775. My investigator's motto is not "99% Mythos Lore, 1% Sanity- don't push me"
    776. Even if it was obviously in self defense, my character is not allowed to kill George Takei.
    777. Tai Kwan Doberman is not a real martial art.
    778. It is not possible to bioengineer a kosher pig.
    779. Even if we are in Ravenloft, Paladin can't go up ten levels in one night.
    780. When told I have to join the RPGA to play in a game, can't sign the membership card "D. Duck."
    781. My tribe's trial by combat ritual is not best described as "Calvinball with axes"
    782. My paladin's job is not to enforce happiness.
    783. The following are also not acceptable Ironclaw characters: Mortal Wombat, Dalai Llama, Boom Orangutan.
    784. Monks do not make 3 Stooges sounds in combat.
    785. Even if the rules allow it, can't shoot 20 guys in one round with a musket.
    786. No I cannot keep the drow priestess we just found as a pet.
    787. "Start a career in modeling" is not an appropriate use of the Suggestion spell.
    788. "You take the scary one" is not our default battle strategy.
    789. Even if it's for his own safety, can't secretly remove the firing pins from the powergamer's guns.
    790. If I have access to warm water, I don't take watch unsupervised.
    791. Not allowed to give any birthday gift to a child that immediately earns me a dark side point.
    792. Despite the movie's claims, Wookies get no racial bonus for chess.
    793. When building a superhero, can't spend half his points on radar sense and the other half on cooking.
    794. Pregen characters do not have cutesy nicknames, even if their real names are pretty lame.
    795. Improved Evasion is not solid proof "Duck and Cover" works.
    796. In the middle of the black ops can't lock a bunch of long haired molting cats into the CEO's office.
    797. If in the middle of our dressing down our CO strokes out, we took the joke too far.
    798. Not allowed to use guppies as buckshot.
    799. Can't hunt drow with a spotlight and 30.06.
    800. The default response to a social challenge in any game is not to just shoot them.
    801. We do not settle disputes in Paper-Rock-Scissors with games of Vampire.
    802. Fake eye spots on my helmets do not help intimidate the monster.
    803. If my personal carried firepower exceeds that of the Battleship Texas, there's a problem.
    804. I cannot take the Dementia: Obsession counting things if I'm not a Malkavian.
    805. On second thought, I can't take it even if I am a Malkavian.
    806. My character cannot have a noticeable impact, positive or negative, on a town's population.
    807. Large dice are for rolling. Not sound effects.
    808. Covering fire does not include nuclear weapons.
    809. I don't earn the bonus XP for a written background if it's just a summary of the plot to Dig-Dug.
    810. While the party is off searching for secret doors, can't position the slain orcs in compromising positions.
    811. In the middle of a black ops can't reprogram the cleaning droids to wax the floors for 12 hours straight.
    812. I don't have to take a lower level bard adventuring as my opening act.
    813. Taking the orc warlord's skull as a trophy is acceptable. Not as a hand puppet.
    814. Sending the villain a nymph stripper only works once.
    815. Somebody doesn't "accidentally" fall on two dozen shanks.
    816. The adventure wrap up is the epilogue. Not Miller Time.
    817. Cannot challenge anyone to a dance off. To the death.
    818. Augment their psi means their mental powers, not their air pressure.
    819. Taking each class as I level in alphabetical order is forbidden.
    820. Even if the rules allow it, my Paladin can't serve the god of obituaries.
    821. My sorcerer will not take a level in druid just to make it easier to get to the flammable stuff.
    822. If everybody in the room is in black leather, we're in the thieves' guild. Not a fetish club.
    823. Even if infinitely useful, absolute power over elastics is not an appropriate super power.
    824. The back up trap handler is not the guy with the lowest INT.
    825. I cannot have Bracers of Brachiation until I tell the DM what brachiation really means.
    826. Elves do not respond to chainsaws the same ways dogs react to vacuum cleaners.
    827. My battlemech does not play Dixie every time I hit the jump jets.
    828. Even if the mages critically fumbles his stealth check, can't threaten to bleed him slow.
    829. Despite the song's claim, a pelvic thrust does not cause Sanity loss.
    830. Even if we are in Sweden, I can't use one blanket seduction check on the entire crowd.
    831. I didn't 'accidentally' forget to buy any skills.
    832. I will not run up my bar tab and then skip out leaving the DM's super NPC to foot the bill.
    833. Overrunning a larger army is not a glorious victory if it happened at 3AM and they were still in bed.
    834. I will stop reminding Elminster he's not as cool as Merlin, Gandalf or that shapechanging wizard from Krull.
    835. I cannot lure out the Psycho Killer into an ambush by having sex with another character.
    836. No paraphrasing the party leader's elaborate plan as 'pick somebody you don't like and let them know it.'
    837. Even if the rules allow it, I can't take the 1st Armored Division as an ally.
    838. Doesn't matter how high my influence is; I still can't make Carmen Miranda hats part of the unit's dress code.
    839. In the middle of a black ops no inserting a memo into the target's computer mandating 'clothing optional Mondays'.
    840. Even if it would have immediately solved the last six adventures, I won't throw dynamite in every well I come across.
    841. No more tricking rookies into putting whoopie cushions on Lord Vader's throne.
    842. When handed Dieties and Demigods and told to pick a god for my druid, I will skip right by the Cthulhu Mythos.
    843. It doesn't matter how high his hit points or damage reduction are, we aren't sending the dwarf into battle via catapult.
    844. As a matter of fact, Jeopardy does screen for telepaths.
    845. It's not a good idea to taunt Greek heroes with "Who's your daddy?"
    846. Doesn't matter if it's an anime style game, I don't get a bonus to hit with eyepokes.
    847. Polymorph Mother-in-Law is not a real spell.
    848. The Caern is not "Disneyworld as if run by coyotes"
    849. The FBI tends to notice when people buy several miles of hamster tubing at once.
    850. Doesn't matter how practical, we aren't reanimating the dead dragon and having him haul that horde back for us.
    851. When plumbing the depths of depravity, I must remember to come up for air.
    852. Any superhero offensive to more than two major religions is vetoed.
    853. Even if I'm faced with yet another Get of Fenris Lupus Ahroun, I will not refer to him as CliChe Guevara.
    854. We will not take the dead dryad with us to use as kindling.
    855. I will not keep reincarnating that bugbear until he comes back as something we can actually eat.
    856. A funeral is not a proper place for setting new fashion trends.
    857. I will not disbelieve the magic mouth before he gives out the important plot information.
    858. Even if it is hours of entertainment, can't feed the Red Talon peanut butter.
    859. I will concede we're on a dungeon crawl and stop trying to talk to the monsters.
    860. Under religion I cannot put Born Again Klingon.
    861. I will not use undocumented zombie workers to help build my castle.
    862. Bigby's Offensive Finger is not a real spell.
    863. Even if there is no alignment in Traveller, giving feuding TL1 tribes TL12 weapons and putting the results on PPV is just wrong.
    864. My doctor's bag will contain more than just a bonesaw and a bottle of whiskey.
    865. I do not put the cad in decadent, nor the rave in depraved.
    866. Even if it's catchy, I don't have to yell my battlecry everytime I roll to attack.
    867. We can't all play bards just to relive our favorite Spinal Tap moments.
    868. I cannot have a gun with an area of affect larger than it's range.
    869. Richard Simmons is not an appropriate role model for a Get of Fenris.
    870. I will not use my vast personal knowledge of Dublin, Texas to get an unfair advantage in the campaign.
    871. My halfling cannot take the flaw Obsession: Ring of Invisibility.
    872. Any gun that sets off the metal detector before I even pass through it is vetoed.
    873. I will not combine Thermographic Sights and a gun that can shoot through walls. It makes Black Ops too easy.
    874. After cleaning out Ravenloft, when it's my turn to pick treasure, can't call dibs on the castle.
    875. If my superhero has a healing factor, claws, combat sense and longevity, he can't take the flaw Total Pacifist.
    876. If I want to play a rampaging nordic warrior and get handed a treehugging elf hippie instead, I can't play her like a rampaging nordic warrior.
    877. Even if I am playing a chick, I can't spend all my starting cash on shoes.
    878. Rifts in the time/space continuum are not for my personal amusement.
    879. Buying a bigger gun does not restore sanity.
    880. Searching the dead PC for spell components is ok. Using him for spell components is not.
    881. Any character that can run the 2 minute mile is vetoed.
    882. I will not convince the party to name all the characters the same thing.
    883. I do not need to see proof of insurance before making a medtech roll.
    884. Customs doesn't care what my charisma bonus is.
    885. Halflings do not store food in their cheeks for winter.
    886. Elves are not deciduous.
    887. Despite evidence to the contrary, half-elves do not automatically go both ways.
    888. Breast enhancing spells gain no benefits from meta-magic feats.
    889. I will not try to regain sanity by nailing the reporter chick in public.
    890. Dwarves do not get Roto-Rooters as racial weapons.
    891. I will not brag too loudly I'm the real reason behind the sinking of the Titanic.
    892. Cultists tend to notice if you've replaced their summoning ritual with Jitterbug instructions.
    893. Invisibility is all or nothing, can't just target their clothes.
    894. I can't just keeping buy rounds of drinks until everybody passes out so I can rob them.
    895. I will not miss the final epic battle just because I crit my seduction check.
    896. Polish is not a sub-dialect of gnomish.
    897. Any action causing the powergamer to storm off while actually appreciated is frowned upon.
    898. Healing people of other faiths gets a penalty in Deadlands. Not Serenity.
    899. I will not have the architect build my castle using a hexadecimal base to screw with the powergamer.
    900. I will not fill the bag of holding with dirt so we can just fill in pit traps as we detect them.
    901. In the middle of the Black Ops a diversion is not blowing off the top twenty floors of the building.
    902. Can't set the bad guy on fire until after I've blown the persuasion roll.
    903. If I fail to make a bluff check, can't shoot him to change it to an intimidate check.
    904. Not possible to fire a gun with your teeth.
    905. Humming the James Bond theme in the middle of a Black Ops doesn't give me any bonuses.
    906. They make platemail in a variety of styles. Crotchless is not one of them.
    907. Can't use my attack bonus as a substitute for the skill: Hibachi Chef.
    908. I can't take Telekinesis as an auxilary mode just to get free food from the snack machine.
    909. Dual wielding spike chains does not let me use the battlecry "DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER!"
    910. I will not convince the entire party to play rockerboys so we can be a Europe cover band.
    911. Can't take a level of monk just for tone.
    912. Droogie is not a starting language.
    913. After casting my one first level spell, can't leave the dungeon to go sleep.
    914. Can't bribe the biokinetic to take my drug test for me.
    915. On second thought, let's not disguise the wookies in the stormtrooper uniforms.
    916. A runic facial tattoos is acceptable for my berserker. Not a Betty Boop.
    917. Have one point in every single skill in the game doesn't count as a super power.
    918. Can't clean out the dungeon by renting the adjacent dungeon and being as obnoxious as possible.
    919. Goldfish do not get a bonus in a staredown.
    920. My mech gunner can't have a nude pinup in his cockpit. Especially if it's of his pilot.
    921. "But she's hot!" is not an acceptable excuse for my Black Ops solo dating the tabloid reporter.
    922. No matter how much we look, we're not finding the secret door leading to the back of the villain's hideout.
    923. Druids do not hibernate.
    924. Before I make my next wish I have to ask myself: "Is this going to shatter the very fabric of reality again?"
    925. Any gun that can fire more rounds in one shot than I can physically carry is vetoed.
    926. If given a stock NPC, I must play him as written. So Jar-Jar has to lose the sarape and the cigar.
    927. I do not get a bulk discount at the jenny's guild.
    928. The Flaw: Odious Personal Habit- Teleports into romantic moments is only available at the maximum penalty.
    929. Telekinetic Redhead Chick is not a real superhero.
    930. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot circumnavigate the world on foot in one turn.
    931. There are no alignment restrictions on becoming a lawyer.
    932. Nowhere in the bible does it say ninjas have to line up in a straight line to fight me.
    933. If escorting a high priority target, I can't biosculpt the entire team to look like her.
    934. Nerve gas complicates fast talk rolls.
    935. Cannot take the shape of any animal the GM doesn't know.
    936. 'The power of Christ compels me' does not justify my Blessed's actions.
    937. I cannot take life insurance out on anybody I have for the enemy background.
    938. Psychotherapy doesn't eliminate the alignment change penalty.
    939. Just because I've hit name level does not automatically give me groupies.
    940. I will not abuse the Exemplary virtue to set up highly choreographed dance routines with random crowds.
    941. In the middle of a black ops I cannot make an educational video.
    942. We do not need an elf on this dungeoncrawl for the same reason miners need canaries.
    943. I am not Bjorn of Borg.
    944. Before accepting a harem as a reward for my heroism, need to check with the wife.
    945. I don't get any equipment before the GM can Google it.
    946. If Australia doesn't exist, I can't use my Australian accent. Even if I am playing a space koala.
    947. I cannot bet the powergamer he can't field strip the grenade faster than me.
    948. Even if the rules allow it, I can't catch dropped cannonballs with my teeth without drawbacks.
    949. I will not make my castle's halls 9x9x9' to keep out gelatinous cubes.
    950. The ability to give superpowers to characters is acceptable. Naming the character Captain Franchise is not.
    951. The most important stat in Call of Cthulhu is not movement.
    952. Keifer Sutherland does not make numerous cameos in my character's background telling him he's destined for greatness.
    953. No matter how high my strength, still can't use that wall as a shield.
    954. I will not convince the entire party to play identical copies of the same character on the grounds we're sextuplets.
    955. No matter his age, my bard can't start a boy-band.
    956. Despite the halberd being 6' long, it can't hit monsters more than 5' away.
    957. Even if it's been more than two hours since we left the bar, the dwarf isn't getting the DT's.
    958. No matter how practical, I can't have shotgunchucks.
    959. The town drunk is not our one stop source for all mythos happenings in every town.
    960. I will not base my Call of Cthulhu character off the lead character in Slingblade.
    961. Even if I am pissed for working on my birthday, in the middle of a Black Ops I will not refer to my CO only by his first name.
    962. If I don't have an instrument for my bardic song, an 'air mandolin' won't suffice.
    963. After critting with a cannon, we can't dump a barrel of gunpowder over the gunner's mate.
    964. Elves aren't marsupials.
    965. Even if we're freezing to death, I won't cut open the half-orc and shove the elf inside him.
    966. Using precog on the personals to find out who puts out on a first date is abusing the power.
    967. There is no such thing as a Tequila Golem.
    968. A paladin with a British accent is acceptable. One with a Peter Lorre accent isn't.
    969. When I'm allowed a bunny as a familiar, that doesn't include Ava Fabian.
    970. I will not make a super hero that requires a graphing calculator to create.
    971. I cannot take the flaw Enemy: Random packs of wild dogs.
    972. "Threesome" is not a specialty of the seduction skill.
    973. Shotguns are not a traditional part of Texas funerals.
    974. If short changed at the Hong Kong deli I will call the manager. Not roll for initiative.
    975. There is something wrong with a 2nd level Kamikaze.
    976. I was not issued a flamethrower for my own personal amusement.
    977. Disable plot device is not a real skill.
    978. Nowhere in the plan does Franco go in where the others have been.
    979. Mumus do not appear in the starting equipment list for a reason.
    980. As a matter of fact, a 90' tall hostile pineapple is much more terrifying than a dragon.
    981. My last wish cannot be for Ragnarok.
    982. Trailblaze means find a path, not cut down every tree between here and there.
    983. Elves do not take 1d3 1 minutes for their entire menstrual cycle.
    984. In the middle of a black ops I cannot moonlight as tech support.
    985. Even if it isn't in the rules, I have to use the same scale miniature as everybody else.
    986. I cannot switch miniatures between each combat.
    987. Even if starving, can't suckle the elf chick.
    988. David Bowie cannot cast glitterdust at will. This issue is also closed.
    989. When asked to describe my character, I can leave out the hickies.
    990. Even if he botches his medicine roll, I can't sue the medtech for malpractice.
    991. "Kiww the Wabbit" is not a proper viking battlecry.
    992. The rest of the party would appreciate it if I didn't take Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy as a flaw.
    993. Even if the rules allow it, I can't empty out the entire castle for a week with just a cherry bomb.
    994. Corporate Pop Whore is not a real prestige class.
    995. Drakkar Heartgourger is not a proper name for a paladin.
    996. Dwarves can't take trees as favored enemies.
    997. I can't beat on the drow until he admits his name is Toby.
    998. The script for the Baywatch movie does not cause more Sanity loss than the Necronomicon.
    999. I can't train squirrel mobs to abuse the grapple rules.
    1000. I will stop referring to the powergamer as MinMaximus.

    The rest is found here:
    http://theglen.livejournal.com/131998.html

    Current Mood: bouncy
    1:54 pm
    1200 Things...
    1200 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG
    1. Cannot base characters off the Who's drummer Keith Moon.
    2. A one man band is not an appropriate bard instrument.
    3. There is no Gnomish god of heavy artillery.
    4. My 7th Sea character Boudreaux is not 'Southern' Montaigne.
    5. Not allowed to blow all my skill points on 1pt professional skills.
    6. Synchronized panicking is not a proper battle plan.
    7. Not allowed to use psychic powers to do the dishes.
    8. How to serve Dragons is not a cookbook.
    9. My monk's lips must be in sync.
    10. Just because my character and I can speak German, doesn't mean the GM can.
    11. Not allowed to berserk for the hell of it, especially during royal masquerades.
    12. Must learn at least one offensive or defensive spell if I'm the sorcerer.
    13. Must not murder canon NPCs in their sleep, no matter how cliche they are.
    14. Ogres are not kosher.
    15. Plan B is not automatically twice as much gunpowder as Plan A.
    16. I will not beat Tomb of Horrors in less than 10 minutes from memory.
    17. Collateral Damage Man is not an appropriate name for a super hero.
    18. When surrendering I am to hand the sword over HILT first.
    19. Drow are not good eating.
    20. Polka is not appropriate marching music.
    21. No longer allowed to recreate the Death Star Trench Run out of genre.
    22. There is no such thing as a Gnomish Pygmy War Rhino.
    23. Any character who has a sensitivity training center named after him will be taken away.
    24. Even if the rules allow it, I am not allowed to summon 50,000 Blue Whales.
    25. The green elf does not need food badly.
    26. Valley speak has no place in a fantasy setting. Especially if you're the paladin.
    27. I am not to shoot every corpse in the head to make sure they aren't a zombie in Twilight 2000.
    28. The Goddess' of Marriage chosen weapon is not the whip.
    29. I cannot have any gun that requires me to continue the damage code on back.
    30. I am not to kill off all the vampires in the LARP, even if they are terminally stupid.
    31. The backup trap handler is not whoever has the most HP at the time.
    32. I cannot buy any animal in groups of 100 or over.
    33. There is no such skill as 'improvised cooking'
    34. I am not allowed to base any Droid off any character played by Joe Pesci.
    35. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to play R2 units.
    36. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to sit on the same side of the table.
    37. They do not make black market illegal cyberweapons for rodents.
    38. When investigating evil cultists not allowed to just torch the decrepit mansion from the outside.
    39. Gnomes do not have the racial ability 'can lick their eyebrows'
    40. Gnomes do not have the racial ability to hold their breath for 10 minutes.
    41. Gnomes do not have the racial ability 'impromptu kickstand'
    42. Having a big nose adds nothing to my seduction check.
    43. No longer allowed to set nazi propaganda music to a snappy disco beat.
    44. Not allowed to spend all 100 character points on 100 1pt skills.
    45. My character names are not allowed to be double entendres.
    46. Sliver rhymes with silver because the computer frelling says so.
    47. They do not make Nair in wookie sizes.
    48. The elf is restricted to decaf for the rest of the adventure.
    49. Not allowed to blow up the Death Star before that snotty farm kid gets his shot.
    50. Not allowed to use thermodynamic science to asphyxiate the orcs' cave instead of exploring it first.
    51. No longer allowed to use the time machine for booty calls.
    52. My bard does not know how to play Inna Godda Davida on marachas.
    53. Not allowed to start a drow character weighing more than a quarter ton.
    54. Cannot pimp out other party members.
    55. Before facing the dragon, not allowed to glaze the elf.
    56. No matter how well I roll, a squirrel cannot carry a horse and rider at full sprint.
    57. In the middle of a black op I cannot ask a guard to validate parking.
    58. Expended ammunition is not a business expense.
    59. Not allowed to pose the Netrunner in embarrassing positions when he's on a run.
    60. Not allowed to short sheet the bedroll of impotent deities.
    61. Can only taunt the ranger about his lack of swimming after my USCG E8 saves him.
    62. I am not allowed to do anything I saw Han Solo do once.
    63. No, I cannot buy 10,000 marbles even if I say please.
    64. My paladin's battle cry is not "Good for the Good God"
    65. There is no Summon Bimbo spell.
    66. Not allowed to start a character that speaks every language except ones the party speaks.
    67. There is no Kung Fu manuever "McGuire Swings For Bleachers"
    68. Bring him back intact includes redundant organs.
    69. There is more to wizardry than magic missile. Even if I can do 200 damage automatic with no save.
    70. Not allowed to cook up nerve gas in the sink even if the target number is 5.
    71. There is no 'annoy' setting on a phasor
    72. Not allowed to start a character who is over 100 years old unless he's an elf or dwarf. Humans are right out.
    73. Not allowed to name my cudgel Ceremonial Whoopass Stick.
    74. My thief's battle cry is not "Run And Live"
    75. Nor is it "You take care of the orcs, I take care of the traps"
    76. I am not allowed any artistic license while translating.
    77. I did not get my super powers from James T. Kirk.
    78. Not allowed to commission a pistol that costs more than a sedan.
    79. I am not liquid metal.
    80. When accepting a challenge for a duel, I must allow the other guy time to find a pistol.
    81. A picture of my ex-wife is not an acceptable backup weapon.
    82. Victory laps after killing the dragon with my 1d2 bow is considered in poor taste.
    83. My gnome does not like big butts and he cannot lie.
    84. Not allowed to talk my fellow inquisitors into buying a 220lb pull crossbow.
    85. Not allowed to talk my fellow inquisitors into buying an industrial strength flamethrower.
    86. Not allowed to make a superhero with a 99% chance of dodging even after the -10 penalty for a successful called shot.
    87. There is no such thing as a dwarven katana.
    88. My bard does not get a bonus to perform if she is obviously not wearing anything under her tabard.
    89. The elf's name is not Legolam.
    90. My swashbuckling fop cannot take the flaw Dark Secret: Not Gay
    91. A wet towel does not constitute an improvised weapon.
    92. The name of the weapon shop is not "Bloodbath and Beyond"
    93. I am to remind my DM that he must never, ever give my paladin a dire boar for a mount again.
    94. I cannot base my ancient kung fu master on neither Gene Simmons or Bluto Blutarski.
    95. I must not put the Thunder God on the spot again.
    96. No making up polearms.
    97. My one wish cannot be 'I wish everything on this piece of paper was true'
    98. There is no such thing as Speed Polka.
    99. Not allowed to see if Jedi can parry a shotgun blast with their lightsaber.
    100. When any character from a d20 sourcebook is allowed, that doesn't include System Lords.
    101. I am not allowed to pave ANYTHING.
    102. I am not authorized to start any civil engineering project on the taxpayer's dime.
    103. There is no such thing as a Club 3 of Cup Checks
    104. Nor is there a 1 Longsword, 5 against party members.
    105. I am not allowed to polymorph anyone into Abe Vigoda.
    106. I do not have weapon proficiency in cat.
    107. There is no such game as Wereshark the Buffet.
    108. No, I do not get XP for every single crewman on that Star Destroyer.
    109. Not allowed to kill a vampire with any part from a DC-10 larger than my car.
    110. Not allowed to serenade the party even if my character has an internal tape deck.
    111. I did not pick the garrote skill last week from my grandmother.
    112. If the gun can't fit through the x-ray machine, it doesn't go on the plane.
    113. My Droid is not allowed to paraphrase any Jack Nicholson soliloquy.
    114. The Demilich only falls for getting stuffed in the bag of holding once.
    115. My musical instrument does not double as a personal flotation device.
    116. Not allowed to take a coffee break during the final super villain showdown.
    117. I am restricted to memorizing Floating Disc only once per day.
    118. I will pick a more traditional paladin weapon instead of a sledgehammer.
    119. My character's names cannot be anagrams of playboy playmates.
    120. Not allowed to kill another party member with a boomerang again.
    121. I am not a contractor for Dragon Cave Cleaning Services Inc.
    122. The paladin's alignment is not Lawful Anal.
    123. Not allowed to forget to mention traps when the powergamer has point.
    124. I cannot insert the words "Kill Phil, Sorry Phil" into any list of instructions.
    125. Lingerie can only snap coincidentally so many times per day.
    126. Dwarves do not count as burrowing animals.
    127. Not allowed to download AOL 6.0 on the Arasaka mainframe.
    128. Polka Gnomes exist only in my mind.
    129. Not allowed to name my ship The Antidisestablishmentarianism.
    130. I am not authorized to form the head.
    131. Not allowed to bet how many times the lich bounces.
    132. There is no such feat called "Death Blossom"
    133. My acrobat cannot balance on the warlord's head for more than one round.
    134. The King's Guards official name is not "The Royal Order of the Red Shirt"
    135. I cannot demand payment in electrum, backrubs or bubblewrap.
    136. I cannot start the 7th Sea campaign with 3 confirmed Drachen kills.
    137. I do not have a scorching case of lycanthropy.
    138. If the mere thought of it costs the others sanity, I'm forbidden from doing it.
    139. My bard is required to take levels in the perform skill and cannot 'just play by ear'
    140. The Dutch language does not exist in the Forgotten Realms.
    141. My maid does not know kung fu.
    142. Not allowed to give a 4 year old a sugar rush just to jack up the CR later.
    143. Not allowed to by a holy symbol for every god just in case one of them is right.
    144. There is no such thing as pleather armor.
    145. I cannot go back in time to cut in line at the Declaration of Independence so everybody now is asked for their Terrence E. Woczinski when signing documents.
    146. Not allowed to play an Australian in any game set before 1600.
    147. Hobbits are not allowed to have Norse ancestry.
    148. There is no Gnomish Deathgrip, and even if there was, it wouldn't involve tongs.
    149. Looting the unguarded baggage train is not considered a glorious victory.
    150. Not allowed to create recreational drugs in suppository format.
    151. Halflings do not have a racial proficiency with the flamethrower.
    152. When the guy is at -9 HP is not the best time for my cleric to convert him.
    153. I will not propose to every noblewoman at the royal ball until I crit my charisma check.
    154. I am not allowed to rub the monk's head for luck.
    155. I am not allowed to rub any part of the elf chick for any reason.
    156. When one person forgets to buy rations eating the half-elf is not our first option.
    157. Any capital scale weapon is not 'my little friend'.
    158. I will not declare myself a god just so I can grant myself spells.
    159. Airlocks do not double as trash disposals.
    160. I will not load any gatling weapon with nothing but paint rounds.
    161. I will not nail every single female party member except for the elf chick played by that creepy guy.
    162. What ever monster we just killed is not to be tonight's dinner.
    163. Not allowed to try and make a dire version of any dog of the toy breeds.
    164. I am not to tattle to the halfling assassin's mom about his career choice.
    165. I am forbidden from replacing anything with folger's crystals to see if they notice.
    166. Not allowed to bribe the enemy commander into withdrawing with a stolen Elvis LP collection.
    167. I was not recruited by Star League for any reason.
    168. I was also not recruited by 12 dwarves and a wizard to rob a dragon.
    169. I am neither the pagan god nor goddess of fertility.
    170. I cannot name my character Xagyg or any anagram thereof.
    171. My character's dying words are not allowed to be "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur"
    172. At no point can I justify spending force points on a seduction check.
    173. I am not allowed to recreate Veers' March of the AT-ATs on Zhentil Keep.
    174. There is no use of Shatner's spoken word album that doesn't require a humanity check.
    175. I am not directly descended from either Huey Lewis or any member of the News.
    176. I cannot make called shots to the plectrum, anvil, stirrup, hammer or Isle of Langerhans.
    177. Stinking cloud is a privilege, not a right.
    178. There are no profanities in Celestial.
    179. Chummer means he is my friend, not that sharks find him tasty.
    180. I have neither the touch nor the power.
    181. I cannot quote Shakespeare in Crinos.
    182. No figuring out the plot and killing the actual villain five minutes into the adventure.
    183. There are no rules for cooking corn dogs in any d20 supplement.
    184. A starting character has no need for 100gp worth of hemp rope.
    185. My bard does not need roadies for a dungeon crawl.
    186. No cutting line to be a god.
    187. I cannot gain more than three drama die per session for making the GM pee.
    188. I cannot play a elf with a scottish accent, nor a cajun dwarf.
    189. Tourretes is not a flaw, it is a reason to kill the character at creation.
    190. Duel wielding small animals is strictly forbidden.
    191. My character is not related in anyway to Boba Fett. This goes double for Star Wars characters.
    192. If the gun is best fired using the artillery skill, my character is not allowed to have it.
    193. Not allowed to kill vampires with seismic charges.
    194. When the other guy picks swords for the choice of weapons, that does not leave me pistols.
    195. I cannot use a silent feat enabled power word stun and blame it on the dog.
    196. I cannot name a character anything that I can't say politely in another country.
    197. My epic level character cannot take on the minor goblin menace to his country just to stay sharp.
    198. Not allowed to steal my own soul.
    199. My third wish cannot be 'I wish you wouldn't grant this wish'
    200. I cannot name my character cliche canon characters from other systems.
    201. My thief is prohibited from speaking solely in Cant.
    202. Character descriptions cannot contain two of the following words: Slavic, Tonedeaf, Karaoke, Musician.
    203. My superhero's strength is not classified as snazzy, neato or bodacious.
    204. I am not too sexy for the elf, too sexy for the elf, so sexy myself.
    205. My 3rd ed. Red Wizard is not allowed to start a business named Thay Co.
    206. I cannot forge a 1 sword of Brad's Min/Maxed Paladin/Monk Slaying.
    207. The following weapons are not legal choices in a duel: Steamroller, Nerve Gas, Landmine, Midget.
    208. I cannot whine about the crappy selection of magical bec de corbins.
    209. My Paladin's heraldry is not a smiley face.
    210. My Antipaladin's heraldry is not Mr. Yuk.
    211. If at any point if my dwarf takes on the mannerisms of Macho Man Randy Savage, he dies.
    212. If the party always starts the adventure in a tavern, I cannot opt to start in a brothel.
    213. I am not the patron saint of common sense.
    214. There is no prestige class Drizzt Slayer.
    215. They do not make heavy weapons in pump action.
    216. There is an upper limit to the number of Bozo boostergangers I can get in a Volkswagon.
    217. If the weapon is capable of staking vampires hiding behind engine blocks, I can't have it.
    218. No matter my alignment, organizing halfling pit fights is a violation.
    219. In formal introductions to royalty, I must not introduce my companions as just "The Other Guys".
    220. I am not the master of the low blow or the gang up.
    221. If I get that Yugo up to 120mph again, that's gonna get some paradox.
    222. Druids are not against my religion.
    223. I cannot convince the Solo he has a cortex bomb when he really doesn't.
    224. I cannot insinuate elf chicks are all easy, even though you never hear about a half gnome do you?
    225. I am forbidden from monologuing.
    226. Troll bubblegum...bad idea.
    227. My last wish cannot be "I wish we were playing another game."
    228. I cannot use my time machine to hire Hitler a hooker in 1920, thus avoiding WW2.
    229. Not allowed to spontaneously check if the elf can take a punch.
    230. There is no such thing as monofilament tooth floss.
    231. I am not allowed to do anything that would make a Sith Lord cry.
    232. It is not possible to recreate any scene from Dr. Who in Crinos.
    233. If I am the medtech it is generally assumed I am going to have skill in medicine.
    234. My character does not get d34 HP a level.
    235. My Samedi is required to have dots in obfuscate. Plural, as in more than one, two more than none.
    236. My character has no need for 24,000 cartons of cigarettes, especially in his neighbor's garage.
    237. Not allowed to use more than 3 words per game that the GM has to look up the definition.
    238. My bard cannot play or has ever heard of the theremin, didgeridoo or glass armonica.
    239. My rockerboy cannot play or has ever heard of the theremin, didgeridoo or glass armonica.
    240. Any character with more than three skills specializing in chainsaw is vetoed.
    241. Cannot use the jedi mind trick to get out of a speeding ticket.
    242. Not allowed to give quicklings Mountain Dew.
    243. Cannot cast haste on the king during a long winded speech to get him to hurry the hell up.
    244. Not allowed to taunt the rest of the party in 8 different languages because they forgot to take any.
    245. Not allowed to attend any opera whose name the GM confuses with a strip joint.
    246. I cannot keep selling that creepy guy's always naked elf chick to nomads every chance I get.
    247. If the king rewards me with a forest, I am to assume he intends for me to keep it a forest.
    248. There is no Halfling god of groin shots.
    249. If a black op requires me to impersonate an employee, I cannot bill the target for overtime.
    250. Superfluous Man is not a viable superhero concept.
    251. I am not the Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Gundam Wing Z.
    252. I can not order the Druid to transform and roll out.
    253. If the other party members forget to take any food prep skills, not allowed to let them starve to death.
    254. I cannot blow 5 paradox in: A police line up, the candy aisle of Krogers, the Miss America Pageant.
    255. I cannot create a superhero that can palm the moon.
    256. The following cleric domains do not exist: Wet T-Shirts, Atheism, Keggers
    257. I cannot wish nobody else gets wishes.
    258. There is no such thing as Skyclad Armor 5
    259. My Highlander's name cannot be McHammer.
    260. Gnomes do not have a racial bonus in bobsled.
    261. The Barbarian's name does not translate into "Screams like little sissy girl" in my language.
    262. When the GM forces the plot, I cannot make choo-choo noises.
    263. Not allowed to attempt to kill the Hutt by pouring salt on him.
    264. I cannot use the time machine to go to Ancient Greece where all the women were leather clad, oiled down with big bosoms.
    265. It assumed my mechwarrior knows at least what one of the buttons in his cockpit does.
    266. At the end of a black-ops, I cannot crank call C-SWAT on the target's phone.
    267. I cannot yell "FREEBIRD" every time the bard makes a perform roll.
    268. Mr. Welch is not allowed to speak in 3rd person.
    269. My character cannot hear the soundtrack.
    270. I cannot derail the adventure for a two hour in character discussion on the qualities of rope.
    271. Tracheotomies are best left to characters with skills in medicine.
    272. No skill allows specializing in defenestration.
    273. No matter how smart I make my animal companion, he still can't take the tax accountant skill.
    274. I cannot commune with the Gods during peak hours.
    275. I must remember at dinner time Rock is not a dwarven delicacy.
    276. I must remember at dinner time Log is not an elven delicacy.
    277. My half-ogre cannot surprise the halflings with spontaneous games of dodgeball.
    278. Anything the DM has to ponder the full impact of for more than a minute is forbidden.
    279. I cannot base any elf off of any British Prime Minister.
    280. Thermonuclear hand grenades do not exist in any genre except Paranoia.
    281. I cannot get emotionally attached to any generic nondescript unnamed NPC.
    282. Even if laughter is the best medicine, it still doesn't restore any of my HP.
    283. I have been assured with total certainty Ralph is not a Japanese name.
    284. When the CO asks for volunteers, I can't help others make a decision.
    285. I am not from Margaritaville, and even if I was, that doesn't excuse the hawaiian shirt and lawn chair during the dress inspection.
    286. No character of mine can start with 400 previous convictions for any misdemeanor.
    287. When asked for advice before a fight "Don't wet yourself in public" is not what they were looking for.
    288. I cannot name my character after another PC already in this game.
    289. My character does not have the flaw Addiction: Helium.
    290. I cannot figure that the dungeon we're in is the Pac-Man maze and point it out to the rest of the party.
    291. I cannot form a huddle to discuss strategy before facing the final monster in the dungeon.
    292. I cannot take all the monsters I've killed to the taxidermist after the adventure.
    293. Clowns shoes have no place in a dungeon crawl.
    294. My dwarf is not claustrophobic, likewise, my elf is not agoraphobic.
    295. When my enemy blinks does not give me an attack of opportunity.
    296. I cannot make called shots with a crew served weapon.
    297. I cannot hand out artillery flares to the bad guys on New Years and tell them they are roman candles.
    298. Sprechen Sie Bang-Bang? is not real German.
    299. I do not get any XP for anyone I kill by stampeding sheep.
    300. I cannot give the rebel operatives the codenames Luke, Han, Chewie or Yoda.
    301. "Well Hung" is not a physical, social or mental trait.
    302. A gimp suit does not count as leather armor.
    303. I cannot gradually describe my character more and more until it's obvious I'm describing Burt Reynolds.
    304. My life long nemesis is not allowed to be the unsuspecting cleric sitting across the table from me.
    305. Anything my character does that ends up as errata I am retroactively prohibited from doing.
    306. Chaotic Evil dieties do not have hymnals.
    307. Even if he can use them from the start, my barbarian can't specialize in fencing weapons.
    308. A Mao suit is not proper garb for my shugenja.
    309. I cannot cast invisibility on random household items like car keys, tea sets and bear traps.
    310. I cannot spend all my points on just followers.
    311. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot start the game as pope.
    312. I am not the son, father, husband, exroommate, former professor or retired garbageman of the villain.
    313. My British Superspy does not get a reroll on his seduction check if his shirt gets ripped off.
    314. Under 'Religion' I cannot put 'Xenu'.
    315. My gnome cannot save point on the ride skill simply by asking for piggyback rides everywhere.
    316. My character is not allowed to commit suicide five minutes into the campaign.
    317. My battlecry is not 'Now young Skywalker you will die'.
    318. Vampiric cows are not the fast food innovation of the future.
    319. My character does not have the flaw: Dark Secret- I'm Kilroy.
    320. The Sultan does not want a treasure bath.
    321. The monk's official title is Brother of the Lotus Path. Not the Slap Happy Jappy.
    322. My bard knows more songs than just "I Saw Your Mommy"
    323. I cannot start the game with a highly contagious deadly disease.
    324. I cannot start the game pregnant.
    325. Even if he was a paragon of humanity in his alternate dimension, Good Hitler is not an appropriate superhero concept.
    326. Cannot accumulate 200 points of flaws for Hackmaster.
    327. I am not allowed to decide which one of us is the Chosen One.
    328. I cannot keep my phaser on disintegrate just because it's the coolest setting.
    329. Not allowed to spoil the plot by simply removing the hinges on the door.
    330. The Halfling Paladin does not represent the Lollipop Guild.
    331. I cannot invoke Consecrate Weapon on a Man of War
    332. I cannot spend character points to buy imaginary friends.
    333. I cannot fistinate anybody, whatever the hell that means.
    334. Pinball is not a specialization for wizards.
    335. When installing cyberware, can't install the Clapper as a built in feature.
    336. Cannot start a Cthuhlu character with a pre-existing hatred of books, altars and cutlery.
    337. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot control 20,000 pigeons and use them as flying piranha.
    338. Any character named El Robotico Jiraffe de Fuego is begging to be vetoed.
    339. Can't avoid going on an epic quest with the excuse "Can't find a sitter"
    340. I cannot start the game married to another PC without their consent.
    341. Not allowed to declare myself a free agent and take offer from other adventuring parties.
    342. After the first adventure I cannot write a tell all book about the party.
    343. I must remember royalty do not share the same love of parody as my bard.
    344. No matter how much I make my IQ roll by, I can't make the other guy's head explode.
    345. I don't have weapon proficiency in elf, either.
    346. I most certainly don't have weapon proficiency in a Phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range.
    347. If I'm not the decker, I can't do anything I saw in Tron once.
    348. The rest of the party appreciates it if I don't start the game in Cyberpsychosis.
    349. Power Word: Beer Me is not a real spell.
    350. I am not allowed to buzz ANYTHING.
    351. I cannot take skill Profession: Ecdysiast
    352. When I choose my wizard's familar, Belgians are not a legal choice.
    353. I cannot pick a Destroid that makes the Veritech pilots feel inadequate.
    354. Tricking the party into killing each other off and then turning in their corpses for the bounty is frowned upon.
    355. My monk's battlecry is not "Round 1: Fight!"
    356. No matter how well I roll, the Quack skill is not a substitute for the Doctor skill.
    357. I cannot disassemble a car in under 5 minutes.
    358. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot make a character that gets double XP per game for showing up.
    359. Killing quicklings with marbles only works once.
    360. I must remind the GM that my Blessed can Raise Dead before he runs another murder mystery again.
    361. It is not feasible for my Archer to recreate Hudson's Last Stand.
    362. It is very unlikely my half-ogre and the half-elf, half-dragon, tiefling and aasimar have the same dad.
    363. When challenged to a showdown, I'm meant to face him at 10 paces with pistols, not 10 blocks with a Sharpe's Big .50.
    364. I am to avoid killing, upstaging or seducing historical characters.
    365. Not allowed to setup the main villain with the mad scientist's sister.
    366. Female minotaurs do not have udders. This issue is closed.
    367. No using excessive firepower to force the plot along.
    368. My teleporter cannot stop the alien invasion with just the law of displacement, laws of motion, and a huge freakin' asteroid.
    369. Not supposed to stop the soon to be cyberpsycho by disassembling him earlier in the adventure.
    370. What happens in Sigil does not always stay in Sigil.
    371. No thinking up new, creative and fun uses for cursed items.
    372. Cannot start the game blitzed, especially if I was stone sober at the last game break.
    373. It is bad form for the queen to see my nipples.
    374. I am not to combine the advantage Fearless and the disadvantage Curious in the same character again.
    375. Killing the building does not add to my body count.
    376. The barbarian must remember that 'human shield' is a figure of speech.
    377. My character is required to have a minimum wisdom of 10, that way I have no excuses.
    378. I can cannot give my character the moniker "Tim the Barbarian". Especially since he's the bard.
    379. I am to stop asking the elf to put a good word in for me with Santa.
    380. I cannot use the ventriloquism skill to convice the fighter his new sword is a magical talking one.
    381. Min/Max for combat=good. Min/Max for accounting=bad.
    382. I can't bet the power gamer he can't solo the module.
    383. It is not ok to use 10,000 rounds to kill two sentries.
    384. The titles "Viking" and "Obstretrician" are mutually exclusive.
    385. All characters will use the bathroom before the dungeon crawl.
    386. The following words are not legal for the command spell: Prognosticate, theorize, notarize.
    387. I cannot give magic items super easy commands words like 'is' or 'the' and activate when you say them.
    388. Pursue means chase after, not just make called shots to the knees.
    389. My samurai is not required to commit seppuku if he fails to hit the monster.
    390. My character's background must be more indepth than a montage of Queen lyrics.
    391. A starting paladin has no conceivable use for industrial lubricant.
    392. I am forbidden to see when halflings or gnomes bounce higher.
    393. If I can fit my head down the gun's barrel, I can assume it doesn't have the non-lethal option.
    394. If the light spell expires, no lighting the dwarf.
    395. I cannot have any weapon that requires me to crank start it first.
    396. I will refrain from using wildly inaccurate high explosive weapons in close quarters.
    397. I will not tell new players that 1st level characters do not have a scent as a defense mechanism.
    398. No matter what popular media says, harpoons are not proper ninja weapons.
    399. When I have to pick a starting dementia, Stockholm Syndrome is not appropriate.
    400. Check the door means to listen at it, not put several rounds through it.
    401. When a virgin sacrifice is demanded I will not look knowingly at the paladin, netrunner or Hermetic.
    402. No matter how many people I need to feed, I will not use MDC weapons to fish.
    403. My rigger does not get a bonus if his log in code is up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, A, B, Start.
    404. No subcontracting dungeon crawls.
    405. I will not name my character for the power gaming campaign Generic Cleave Path Fighter #7.
    406. The first rule of Finnegan school is not "Do not talk about Finnegan school"
    407. I will not blow all my starting funds on hookers and booze.
    408. If I have to sacrifice my fifth dot in resources to afford it, I can't have that gun.
    409. I will not cast darkness at the magic missile.
    410. If the NPC is on the cover of the rulebook, I can't kill him.
    411. It is bad form to shoot a god while he's monologuing.
    412. I will not try to skip to the main boss dressed like a singing telegram.
    413. The chaotic neutral alignment is forever closed to me.
    414. If my stats are STR10 DEX10 CON8 INT16 WIS17 CHA15 I'd better not be the half-orc barbarian.
    415. My archmage will not join a party running Keep on the Borderlands as a ringer.
    416. I will not substitute accuracy with enthusiasm.
    417. The solution to all my problems is not Crinos.
    418. Steel toe boots do not add to my AC.
    419. Spankings generally will not change evil alignments.
    420. "For the King" is an example of a good battle cry. "Smoke the Mother" is not.
    421. I will not convince the GM's noob GF to play a psychotic combat monster.
    422. My marital status does not affect in anyway my fear checks.
    423. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot play a duck.
    424. I cannot liven up the adventure with snappy musical numbers. Even if they did it on the TV show.
    425. Chainsaws and butter churns filled with bees do not use the same weapon skill.
    426. Thirty minutes after a massive battle against Cathayans I am not bloodthirsty again.
    427. I cannot do anything I saw Jackie Chan do once. Even if I am in Home Depot at the moment.
    428. I will never create a plan that first hinges on the invention of velcro.
    429. If the character isn't deaf, his only language cannot be AMSLAN.
    430. Spray paint is not a substitute for proper camouflage.
    431. We will not implement any battle plan that includes the underlined words "And hope they miss a lot"
    432. Cannot put anything featuring Calvin on my starfighter.
    433. I will not find a peaceful solution to the adventure just to piss off the power gamer.
    434. Never again will I convince a player to keep a character nicknamed "Stumpy McLunger"
    435. No bribing the DM's new GF with chocolate so he'll go easy on us.
    436. Even if my cleric has the domains of Wealth and Healing doesn't give me the right to start an HMO.
    437. From now on my Highlander will refrain from dancing the Can-Can.
    438. The ability to afflict everyone in 150' with herpes is not an acceptable super power.
    439. I will not start the game as a toddler just to rack up massive stat bonuses as I age.
    440. I am forbidden from trying to merge the best features of automatic weapons and manual transmissions.
    441. There is an upper limit on the number of people a bullet will go through.
    442. When told to be subtle, playing a foul mouthed chain smoking squirrel is not a good choice.
    443. Zombies are not infectious in D&D. So I should stop shooting PCs in the head if they are bitten.
    444. Whether it's fair or not, my thief will not insist we take turns checking for traps.
    445. I will not admonish my fellow paladin with 'a little less lawful, a little more good'
    446. Ninjas are not ablative.
    447. If the NPC is critical to the plot later, I cannot crit him 4 times in one round.
    448. I will not attempt to unionize the brutes.
    449. I will not switch to an entirely new class every single time I level.
    450. When told to distract the villainess, they didn't mean with a surprise marriage proposal.
    451. I cannot start the campaign conjoined to another character.
    452. Not allowed to convince the entire party to base the group only off Gary Oldman characters.
    453. I will not redefine the term 'trapdoor'.
    454. No staking a vampire with anything larger than his chest cavity.
    455. Styrofoam is not an appropriate component for golems.
    456. I cannot put my familiar up for stud.
    457. I did not invent the wet tabard contest.
    458. "When I'm in the mood" is not a valid trigger for a contingency spell.
    459. The vampire clan with vissitude is not pronounced 'Karl'
    460. I'd better have a real good excuse for being a necromancer if I'm lawful good.
    461. Tasha's Uncontrollably Hideous Sister is not a real spell.
    462. 1st Watch is not for accordion practice.
    463. Even if it is hip to be square, I still can't play a Modron.
    464. 2nd Watch is not for starting up pick up rugby games with wandering monsters.
    465. After a successful black ops, I will not leave paint bombs under all the boardroom's seat cushions.
    466. 3rd Watch is not clothing optional.
    467. There is no 'accidentally' slipping a Smite Evil into a pillow fight.
    468. If the party wakes to find a chariot upside down in a fountain, I'd better not be the prime, usual or only suspect.
    469. If I wake up to find black cloaked figures in my room, I will not immediately point them to the halflings' room.
    470. Sarcasm is wasted on Imperial Stormtroopers.
    471. I am not fluent in any dialect of gibberish.
    472. When my cleric is told to "Buff the Elf", I know exactly what it means and may not miscontrue it in any way.
    473. No matter the CR of the monster, no naked pookie dances upon victory.
    474. Black and Decker does not make prosthetics.
    475. Can't trick the rest of the party into babysitting my kids.
    476. The alignment of 2 years olds is not automatically Neutral Evil.
    477. I cannot spay the Vargyr.
    478. Castillians do not always end their sentences with the word 'Ariba!"
    479. As a matter of fact, Dwarven Battlegarb in no way resembles Angus Young's stage costume.
    480. I will not address Fauner Posen with 'Jawohl mein Liebenaffe'
    481. I am forbidden from doing anything that ends with a snarf, rimshot or spit take.
    482. No uploading porn to my CO's HUD.
    483. No downloading porn from my CO's HUD.
    484. If the word 'Mullet' appears anywhere on my samurai's character sheet, he's vetoed.
    485. My Mossad agent's battlecry is not "Torah, Torah, Torah"
    486. No how tough the encounter was, I will keep the congratulatory ass slapping to a minimum.
    487. Halfing mating rituals do not include beer can crushing, power belching, or Lynyrd Skynyrd trivia.
    488. If I have to pull out of the dungeon because I'm low on HP, no filing Workman's Comp.
    489. No making up any strange hobbies just to get out of taking watch.
    490. Quoting Bob Dobbs while charging into battle is unusual. Quoting Bob Newhart is right out. Quoting Bob Dillan is just silly.
    491. If my Faith is 4 and your Faith is 2, that doesn't mean Jesus loves me twice as much.
    492. Beer Boy is not an acceptable hireling for the dungeon crawl.
    493. I will not base any Media character off Milo Bloom.
    494. I will not use a time machine to invade Germany on September 2, 1939 by surprise, securing Dutch domination of Europe.
    495. No supplying my own canned applause.
    496. While Bardic music can increase skill rolls, bad jazz adds nothing to seduction rolls.
    497. If somebody in the party has a Wisdom or Intelligence lower than 8, I am forbidden from talking to them.
    498. A firefight is not the best time to tell the party my Medtech has a fear of blood.
    499. No inventing the minefield.
    500. My superhero will not spend points to fly just because he's too lazy to walk.
    means.

    Due to LJ truncating this list, the rest is now here...
    http://theglen.livejournal.com/89715.html


    Current Mood: amused
    1:44 pm
    The Truth about Elves
     Our Elves Are Better

    As a rule, elves are both beautiful and graceful — and they know it, too, which is my major problem with the manky little gits. The fact is that most elves are arrogant snots.
    — "Wulf", in Heart of the Lion 3: The Red and The Green, by Anthony Pryor-Brown
    Everything you can do elves can do better, elves are much better at everything than you.
    — Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

    Elves are many different things to many different people, but it's important to remember the one thing elves always are: Better.

    Better than you, me, and even other elves. Especially other elves.

    They are also quite aware of that fact and will let you know it, again and again and you won't argue about it, ever. That said, fantasy elves aren't always elitist Smug Snakes. There's six main kinds of elves in fiction:

    High Elves: These guys are better than you, and they won't hesitate to remind you at every opportunity. They're usually physically superior in "every way that counts" (which is to say, they don't count others' strengths as worthwhile) and are usually highly proficient in magic. They'll frequently be part of an ancient civilization/kingdom that has been in Medieval Stasis since before human speech. These guys usually favor whites, reds, blues, and imperial purples and wear super-sumptous clothes along with delicate jewelry that make fangirls squee with envy. Rapiers, bows, and spears are favored weapons for their ground forces, with the option of sleek scimitars in settings where rapiers are too modern.
    Wood Elves: In tune with nature and prone to spiritual contemplation. All the same, they kick bow-y butt in combat. Generally they're magical in a druidic rather than wizardly way. Can be The Empath, often found in a Hidden Elf Village in a forest. These guys are among the least stuck up elves, but that might not be saying much, since they usually replace Cultural Posturing with lectures on respecting nature. Obviously, they favor greens, browns, and flowy billowy clothes when they aren't wearing leaves. They generally use bows, knives, and short swords.
    Dark Elves: Take the above two, sprinkle in some xenophobia and a dash of Always Chaotic Evil, allow to simmer and season to taste. Dark Elves are usually closer to The Fair Folk, except these guys are organized as cities or even civilizations and hell bent on evil, rather than "just" operating on an alien morality. These guys will wear black leather bondage gear when they aren't wearing Spikes Of Villainy, speak in the Black Speech, and kick dogs. Same weapons as the others, only their blades are serrated. Yet despite living in caves they're still gorgeous.
    Half-Elves: Since elves can't help being so awesome, it's no surprise they get to 'know' a lot of people, If You Know What I Mean. The result of all this canoodling are Half-Elves. These guys have half the coolness of their elf parent, but half the suck of their human side (including mortality and - worse by far - facial hair). They are usually outcasts, or if not outcasts, then have utterly embraced one of their parentages completely (not surprisingly, usually the Elf part because humans suck). Even so, expect pure blood elves to sneer at them, and at best pity them. Only rarely will they be treated as equals, which gives them an Wangst rating on par with the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire. Oddly, Elves will usually treat Half-Elves far worse than they treat normal Humans, despite the fact that Humans are the only real reason for their hate in the first place.
    On occasion, pure-blooded Elves will disavow the existence of Half-Elves altogether because no Elf would ever associate with such an inferior species. In these cases, it's not unlikely for the parent to be ridiculed and/or exiled, as well.
    Disturbingly close to 19th Century "Tragic Mulatto" stories (see the entry in Pass Fail).
    Space Elves: A newer variation, Space Elves can be a straight up copy of any of the aforementioned variants, but IN SPACE! Usually, they are also notable because their technology is either organic, crystalline, or otherwise very pretty and completely renewable/in tune with nature (and can probably blow your ships right out of space before you can even see them). And of course, replace a bow with a laser gun (or better yet, laser bows!) and you're in business. (Note to future writers: no one has yet done Christmas Elves In Space!)'(Note to the Note: Sluggy Freelance'' did Christmas Elves in Space.)

    All elves usually share the following traits:
    Human-sized, if not slightly smaller. (Exception: High Elves are frequently taller, just to emphasize their inherent arrogance superiority.)
    Lithe and nimble, bordering on Squishy Wizard.
    Fair
    With pointy ears. The exact pointyness varies. Some favor "Humanlike with a point at the tip", while many works (particularly anime for some reason) have thin, trianglular ears a foot long, often sticking out at a 90-degree angle from their heads.
    Long Lived and immune to Who Wants To Live Forever.
    Magical in one way or another, either from being highly spiritual or innately magical.
    Straight and golden-blond or white shoulder length hair, straight dark hair, or flowing red tresses the color of autumn leaves are common. For some reason other colors and curly or kinky hair are rarely seen, unless it's a setting where elves are distinct from humans by having a rainbow of unnatural hair colors, like metallic silver, ruby red, purple, bright blue, pink and green.
    No facial hair. Period. They don't grow it and never have to shave. This is pervasive to the point a Perma Stubble or beard on an elf would be near mind shatteringly weird. (This is occasionally averted, most notably in Elfquest, Looking For Group, and the Warcraft universe. Also in Lord Of The Rings where extremely old elves can grow a beard as impressive as any human, but it's rare)
    Very, very pretty. To the point of fetishism. (Those pointed ears...)

    This subject is prone to Internet Backdraft on RPG forums. Many see elves as only enjoyed by twinks or those who wish to see themselves as better than everyone else in every facet, yet others claim that elves are above such things.

    Compare Our Elves Are Worse The Fair Folk. Contrast Humans Are Special. Also see Christmas Elves for the other kind of elf.

    And whatever you do, don't mention the Dwarves.

    Current Mood: amused
    Friday, January 2nd, 2009
    4:57 pm
    Rights - As Presented by George Carlin
     "Boy everyone in this country is running around yammering about their fucking rights. "I have a right, you have no right, we have a right."

    Folks I hate to spoil your fun, but... there's no such thing as rights. They're imaginary. We made 'em up. Like the boogie man. Like Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio, Mother Goose, shit like that. Rights are an idea. They're just imaginary. They're a cute idea. Cute. But that's all. Cute...and fictional. But if you think you do have rights, let me ask you this, "Where do they come from?" People say, "They come from God. They're God given rights." Awww fuck, here we go again...here we go again.

    The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument, "It came from God." Anything we can't describe must have come from God. Personally folks, I believe that if your rights came from God, he would've given you the right for some food every day, and he would've given you the right to a roof over your head. GOD would've been looking out for ya. You know that.

    He wouldn't have been worried making sure you have a gun so you can get drunk on Sunday night and kill your girlfriend's parents.

    But let's say it's true. Let's say that God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights?

    The Bill of Rights of this country has 10 stipulations. OK...10 rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week, because we've had to amend the bill of rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things, like...SLAVERY. Just fuckin' slipped his mind.

    But let's say...let's say God gave us the original 10. He gave the British 13. The British Bill of Rights has 13 stipulations. The Germans have 29, the Belgians have 25, the Swedish have only 6, and some people in the world have no rights at all. What kind of a fuckin' god damn god given deal is that!?...NO RIGHTS AT ALL!? Why would God give different people in different countries a different numbers of different rights? Boredom? Amusement? Bad arithmetic? Do we find out at long last after all this time that God is weak in math skills? Doesn't sound like divine planning to me. Sounds more like human planning. Sounds more like one group trying to control another group. In other words...business as usual in America.

    Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you're at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, I want you to type in, "Japanese-Americans 1942" and you'll find out all about your precious fucking rights. Alright. You know about it.

    In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps.

    Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. And rights aren't rights if someone can take ‘em away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY privileges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know that every year the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter.

    Yeup, sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn't give a fuck about them. The government doesn't care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. It simply doesn't give a fuck about you. It's interested in its own power. That's the only thing...keeping it, and expanding wherever possible.

    Personally when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true: either we have unlimited rights or we have no rights at all."

    Current Mood: mischievous
    1:25 pm
    On Writing (Buddy Ebsen)
     Here's a great quote about writing.

    "You take a blank piece of paper and, whatever you're thinking, you write it down. I'm very satisfied if, in my mind, it increased the value of the paper. That's what writing should do. It should increase the value of the paper." – Buddy Ebsen

    Current Mood: creative
    1:00 pm
    From the Palladium boards, just like the previous entry.

    That's a good point: I was on a different message board, arugueing with some 'dead-head' about the "kill the brain" rule. I kept bringing up varient zombies from fiction that were resistant to this, but he didn't accept it. My arguement was that like vampires, werewolves and many other creatures, the attributes, powers and weaknesses of zombies has been reworked that if, IF you ran into one, you wouldn't know the truth from the myth. (He didn't accept this argument either.)

    So, I took a different approach: I told him to imagine that a robot was walking down his street, smashing things and killing people, and it was up to him to kill it. I asked him how would he stop it?
    Smash it with a hammer? Throw water on it? Use a magnet or Electricity to scramble it's circuts? Catch it in a logic loop and make it's brain explode? Hack it's CPU with a Powerbook? Hit the red button on the back of it's head? Tell the robot that it's going to Robot Hell if it doesn't stop it's rampage? The point was that there are many forms of robot in fiction, but no one REALLY knows how to stop a "Killer Robot". This is the same of the zombie.

    He insulted me and then logged off.

    Oh, and the only way to beat that robot was to teach it to love.

    Current Mood: geeky
    12:55 pm
    Zombie Survival (and Disasters)
     Well, I would point out that there are ignorant people out there. I mean sure, most people are at least familiar with concepts like Zombies and Horror movies, but then there are families who bring their children up in a very sheltered way (with or without religion) where things like horror might have been forbidden.

    -

    *That* said, keep in mind also that the biggest thing that kills people in emergencies is the modern desire to treat everything with disbelief. If there is a fire, before people react they want to actually see the fire for example. Part of it is a desire not to be taken advantage of or "punk'd" so to speak.

    On top of that highly individualistic societies like the one in the US, tend to raise people to believe that they are 'special' even from their earliest cognitive thoughts. This means that in an emergency people always think that their needs are paramount. In a casino for example during the rare sectional evacuations (serious fire, or a terrorist threat that has to be taken seriously even if it's not real) people do not want to leave slot machines, abandon their chips, or leave without locating other members of their party.

    Indeed the evacuation plan for the casino has dealers and table games people cashing everyone out before evacuation which basically means that in a REAL emergency of huge level people would die left and right, since they wrote the policies assuming any alarm is a false one and figuring if it's not the insurance would cover the massive damages/loss of life. Being a false alarm it's better to avoid the inevitable lawsuits and people claiming "OMG half my chips are missing" when they come back or whatever.

    On top of that there is the sheer idiocy of evacuating the old and handicapped, oftentimes first. Politically incorrect? Well given the situation it's occurred to me that in the time and personal attention it takes to evacuate one of these people you could have saved dozens. Given the "fun" in false alarms, all I can think to an extent is that thank god they eventually decided to go with some federal laws that allow you to dump them in stairwells (arguably the most structurally sound part of the building) but my god you've never seen people get so upset. What's worse is the people like that who refuse to cooperate with security until they find a caregiver/family member as that is oftentimes 10x worse than just trying to get a regular party together.

    So basically going with my experiences, crisis = tons of dead people.

    If I was writing federal/business guidelines I'd remove the ability of people to perform lawsuits from situations incurred during an evacuation (false alarm or not), and allow rescuers in most cases to perform the equivalent of a triage and abandon people that would take the most work until last. Some places might allow this, but my experiences have led me to believe most don't. Indeed it seems the whole "handicapped first" thing is almost a universal practice and it's been claimed it's in the law.

    -

    The above rant aside (the inabillity to save people in a practical sense), I will also point out that too much knowlege of fantasy and horror and such can also lead to the seemingly glaring "what are they" comment.

    See, in horror there are plenty of differant kinds of zombie-like creatures that follow the same genere. You've got several differant takes on possesed people that use the same idea (Demons, Evil Dead), your basic cannibal mutant guys (like CHUDs to some extent), and other similar things. Not to mention whacked out concepts like John Carpenter's "Ghosts Of Mars" or the "Critters" series (this last one being very un-zombie like)

    Head Shots, Dismemberment, true bordeline invulnerability, do they possess people if they go down? Yes it takes a true oddball to think of all these possibilities based on fiction but just think about it. If I ran into someone with more experience in a situation like this I'd probably ask the same "what are they" question albiet with some eventual clarification.

    This is also incidently while when watching zombie movies I realize your supposed to get freaked out by the evil of humanity when you occasionally see people performing Mengele-like experiments on Zombies, but honestly when I'm fighting something like this in a war of extinction, any information gathered is useful. If I'm killing Zombies, or hordes of the hopelessly possesed, I'm not going to be worrying about moral and humane rules of engagement.

    Though honestly I imagine if it really came about someone would probably eventually think of such a thing. "Yes, we must destroy the legions of the walking dead/damned, but do so with dignity for they were once people". Followed by people burning the equivilent of the Reapers Survival guide and drafting a new equivilent of the Geneva convention.

    Especially in this country we definitely seem that stupid at times.

    Current Mood: enthralled
    Thursday, January 1st, 2009
    10:47 am
    Movie Cliche List Part 3
     SCHOOL
    If you're a high school student in a film, you will always get one of the preferable eye-level lockers.
    In all high school or college classrooms, the teacher or professor will always be interrupted in mid-sentence by the end-of-class bell.
    In every school, there is at least one nerd or wimp that is shoved into lockers that are big enough to hold them.
    High Schools are always either in the middle of a city or a car ride away from the beach.
    SEX
    All beds have a special L-shaped top sheet, which reaches up to armpit level on women but only to waist level on men.
    No-one ever needs a kleenex after sex.
    If you're a woman in a film and have just finished a steamy lovemaking session, make sure to lay back and pull the sheets up to your neck, just like in real life.
    All women moan during sex, but none sweat.
    Women (and men less often) either make love with their underclothes on or have put them back on in the immediate aftermath.
    Two total strangers, upon falling into bed together, will always reach an incredibly intense, mutual, and SIMULTANEOUS orgasm on the first try.
    SHOPPING
    When bringing home bags of groceries in a film, it's required that you spill at least one bagful on the kitchen floor.
    Bags of groceries are never heavy.
    Whenever anyone in a movie goes shopping, they always come back with stuff sticking out of the top of the shopping bag, usually carrot tops and French bread.
    Corollary: every shopping bag contains at least one baguette (loaf of french bread).
    SIGNALS
    If the tapping sound or flashing light represents morse code, there's always someone around that can interpret the message.
    When Morse Code is used, the interpreter will call out words as they are being sent, rather than letters. Furthermore, a single word is represented by a few "beeps", and all words are sent at the same rate, no matter how long the word is. Example:
    beep-beep-be-beep...
    "Help..."
    be-be-beep beep...
    "Us..."
    beep-be-be-beep beep...
    "We're..."
    beep beep-be-beep...
    "Surrounded..."
    be-beep beep beep...
    "Send..."
    be-be-be-beep beep...
    "Reinforcements..."
    beep be-beep beep...
    "Hurry..."
    etc.

    A message in Morse Code will start several seconds before someone actually interprets it; however, no information is lost, as the message actually begins when the interpreter starts to read it.
    SKYDIVING
    You got plenty of time up there, often a couple of minutes.
    You can almost talk casually to all your skydiving friends on the way down.
    If you don't have a parachute, just cling on to someone who has got one and don't let go until you're down.
    SMOKING
    Smokers smoke only when there is a romantic or dramatic reason to. At other times the smoker has no need of cigarettes.
    SPACE & VACUUM
    Explosions in space make noise
    Exposure to vacuum makes you horribly swell up and/or explode within seconds (ex. "Total Recall", "Outland")
    There's a deep humming in space, no doubt about it.
    Space is not Newtonian; spacecraft can't 'coast', but just stop dead if they run out of fuel or power.
    Laser beams are visible in vacuum.
    SPACESHIPS
    Spaceships make noise!
    Spaceships always fly perpendicular to the same axis. When two spacecraft encounter each other, they're always aligned on a plane and never approach at odd angles.
    All spaceships, no matter how small, have internal artifical gravity and no matter how badly your ship gets pummeled by the evil aliens in the evil alien ship, no matter how many external panels get blown away, no matter how many sparks or how much smoke pours out of your control panels, the artificial gravity will always keep working.
    There are tiny cameras mounted everywhere, on every panel, in your spaceship. No matter what happens anywhere int eh ship, you will always be able to ask the computer to replay the scene for you later (even if the computer went up in smoke) and unlike those blurry convenience store cameras, your tiny ship cameras always capture everyone's actions at eye-level with perfect lighting.
    Warp or hyper-drive will always fail at critical moments.
    Inertial dampers will always prevent passengers from being plastered against the walls during acceleration into warp speed, yet any explosion will send passengers reeling across the room.
    In a spaceship battle scene, for a ship to fire a weapon at another, it must be in visual range. Even though the 20th century saw the advent of weapons that can be fired without visual contact, the people of the future have lost this technology.
    SPORTS
    In any type of sport movie, a player on the field can look up into a crowd of 1 billion and immediately spot their loved one.
    STAIRS
    Whenever anyone is chased to a staircase, s/he will run upstairs rather than down.
    SUSPENSE
    In any movie where "something" has happened and villagers come to look at it, they always decide to "go for help". The most expendable member of the group is left to "keep an eye on it", and supplied with a weapon or signaling device "in case something happens". Said member ALWAYS responds: "What could happen?" This is a certain signal that he will die, gruesomely, within 2 minutes.
    TEENAGERS
    The walls of a teenager's bedroom or a twentyish adult's apartment are always highly decorated, beyond anything sane, with every available inch of space covered with something cool.
    A movie teenager will always have a drainpipe situated next to his or her window. This drainpipe will be specially reinforced to hold their weight on escape.
    TIME
    Movie timing is always exact. If a phone trace will take two minutes, for example, you can be sure that that means 120 seconds, not a fraction more or less. Same for bombs, amount of time to get to a destination, etc.
    Corollary to the above: all characters in a movie have their watches perfectly synchronized.
    TRAFFIC
    When a main character has to cross the street (in one of the slower parts of the movie), he/she can always cross the street immediately. Of course, he/she jogs across in order to miss the one car that drives by after they cross.
    If there is traffic, then that means that the movie is at a more intense part (like a chase scene) in which case there are a lot of cars that crash into each other. None of the important characters get hurt, the accident is never heard on the news, and nobody sues anybody important. Very few people even get out of their cars, and yet, no airbags are to be seen.
    TRAVEL
    Transportation always arrives and leaves on time.
    Characters arrive at the airport and get *right on the plane*. They must have the best timing of any people on Earth - I always have wait around for a while before boarding. (Not to mention getting a boarding pass and the "arrive 15 minutes before departure or you lose your seat" clause of most airlines. Good thing movie airlines never overbook!)
    Movie characters' suitcases are always weightless when they have to carry them.
    In emergencies, anyone can pick up flying a helicopter.
    Movie characters never suffer from motion sickness.
    TREES
    Whichever tree branch the hero has perched on, the villain will invariably pause under.
    VILLAINS
    The bad guy is the foreigner.
    Corollary: the foreigner is the guy who speaks English with an English accent
    The bad guy also has a side-kick muscleman, who has some sort of trademark gimmick that he/she uses to eliminate opponents. You must kill or decomission this muscleman by forcing a backfiring of this trademarked gimmick. If the muscleman dispatched by a different method, he/she is not dead. (For that matter, don't assume that anyone is dead unless their death was spectacular. Beware sequels.)
    No matter how dead you think you've killed a bad guy, he can still get up at least 3 more times. Therefore, always make sure to leave his gun in or near his hand after you've killed him and you turn away to comfort the girl.
    When a villain seems dead, he never is. He will always be allowed one, and sometimes two resurrections. The hero will frequently see him coming, even if his back is turned. If he doesn't, a friend will finish the villain off.
    The bad guy usually kills his henchman for failing, yet don't seem to run out of loyal henchmen.
    Bad guys lurk until their presence is revealed by a flash of lightning.
    You can kill the bad guy by taking careful note of any object that the camera has lingered on for an unnecessarly length of time; typically this is something like a meathook or a jagged bit of glass. You will be involved in a mighty struggle, and at the appropriate time you can become inspired (usually by either an insult from the bad guy or a look of faith from your love interest) with strength enough to force the bad guy into/onto/under/in front of the aforementioned object. Actor's Equity (Hollywood) requires that within 15 seconds either side of the bad guy's demise, you utter your trademark phrase.
    Whenever a villian has captured the hero, he will pause for 5 minutes to tell the hero _every_ detail of his plan to destroy and/or rule the earth, including times, dates, and addresses.
    The bad guy, having finally gotten the good guy into his clutches, will usually spend a few meglomaniac minutes gloating over his victory and his opponent's downfall. This increment of time will prove just enough to allow the good guy to figure a way out of his predicament, or just long enough to allow a rescue attempt.
    The bad guy, instead of simply offing the captured good guy on the spot, will devise some sort of drawn-out, fiendishly clever method of execution that will take enough time to allow the good guy to figure out his escape.
    When a villain seems dead, he never is. He will always be allowed one, and sometimes two resurrections. The hero will frequently see him coming, even if his back is turned. If he doesn't, a friend will finish the villain off.
    You can always tell which nationality the United States and the popular media are currently most unhappy with because that nation sends all their villains to star in Hollywood movies during those times (e.g. Germans in the late 40's and 50's, Asians in the 60's and 70's, Soviets in the 70's and 80's and Middle Easterners in the 90's).
    WAR
    You're very likely to survive any battle in any war, unless you show someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
    Every army platoon has at least one, usually black, member who can play the harmonica.
    All G.I.s know how to make a still out of a jeep radiator.
    If a soldier tries to look up an old buddy who was transfered to different unit, the buddy will be dead, or will die shortly there after.
    If a main character dies, his sweetheart back home will have nightmare at that exact same moment
    New replacements always get killed before you can even learn their names.
    The hero's weapon is always different from everyone elses.
    Every unit has a "Scrounge" who can get you anything from an atomic bomb to a date with the general's daughter for a bottle of cheap scotch, or vice-versa.
    The platoon sargeant never has a grenade on him, so he always asks someone else for the grenade, then pulls the pin out with his teeth. (which will usually cause you to lose teeth before extracting the pin!)
    Everyone who joins an Airborne (parachute) outfit doesn't understand why anyone would jump out of perfectly good airplane.
    Elite units (Special Forces, Rangers, Commandos) are always recruited from convicts and other socially degenerate segments of society.
    Elite units are always considered expendable even though they cost much much more to train and maintain.
    Roger, wilco -- over and out. nuff said. Radio transmission are always improper.
    The German Army always uses U. S. Patton Tanks.
    Cannons, howitzers, and main tank guns NEVER recoil, unless its old documentary footage.
    The battle hardened vet will always fall on a grenade for the new guy, rather than picking up the grenade and throwing it away, or jumping out of the fox hole.
    Fox holes never have overhead protection, or grenade pits.
    Only the "Japs" and the "VC" bother to use booby traps.
    German soldier always wear grey uniforms and jack-boots, though these uniforms were pretty much pahsed out by mid 1943.
    SS soldiers always wear there dress black uniform.
    The British Army is only allowed to fight in North Africa, and even then only elite forces other than the LRDG and SAS are allowed to fight.
    Only the Marines fought the war in the Pacific. No Army personnel were involved.
    The military hero always carries a special knife with an 11 inch + blade and a hollow handle with all sorts of gadgets. (most soldiers stick with the standard bayonet [6 in blade], Marine Corps Fighting knife[7 in blade], or airforce[5 1/2 in blade] survival knife. None have hollow handles because hollow handles break too easily)
    Snipers always know exactly where someone will pop there head out of trench and soldiers in trenches never use mirrors or periscopes, like they did in World War One.
    Any kid, or dog for that matter can wonder around through an artillery barrage and not get killed while half the outfit will alway get wiped out.
    No one will shoot the hero and the battle will even come to a stand still while the hero cries in agony and curse that "it should've been him" when his best friend steps on the land mine/get blown up/ dies charging the machine gun nest. The battle will resume as soon as the hero gets over his grief and gets angry. The hero will be victorious within 45 seconds of becoming angry.
    Any machine gun nest can be approached from behind without dificulty, but not until half the unit has been wiped out.
    Soldiers will ask for keys for military vehicles eventhough these vehicles dont use keys.
    If soldiers start to eat/drink/change socks/go to the bathroom, they will get orders to move out immediately.
    Soldiers will always make a comment about the food, usually something along the line of "I stepped in it but I've never ate it" or "if we feed this to the "krauts" we'd win the war tomorrow".
    Soldiers and sailors must have at least on bar room brawl usually followed by a scene where they come to each others mutual aid the next day.
    There has to be a scene involving giving chocolate to children or nylons/cigarettes to women in a WW II movie. The soldiers never try to take advantage of the situation by asking for sexual favors in return.
    There is also an obligatory scene where a soldier reads a travel brochure about beautiful Italy/Germany/France/Guam/ while the camera pans across the blown up country side.
    If the travel guide scene is omitted, you'll be treated with the scene where a soldier comments about how nice everything looks, too bad there's a war going on, he's going to come back when this is all over. He'll be shot by a sniper shortly after this scene.
    WEAPONS
    Major characters never run out of ammunition, nor do they ever have to reload. (If the movie _does_ make them reload, they never have to actually carry any spare ammo until that scene)
    Guns never run out of ammunition unless escape would be otherwise impossible.
    The first shot or burst of fire from a bad guy _always_ misses, and is there just to announce that a fight will be taking place.
    Bad-guy hand grenades make noise and smoke, but no real damage; good-guy hand grenades are devastating but selective; they will destroy tanks, but won't hurt the thrower, even if he drops one on his toe. Bad-guy grenades used by good guys become good-guy grenades, and _vice versa_.
    When the villain runs out of bullets, he'll throw away his gun. When the hero does so, he'll conveniently come across another.
    Machine guns submerged underwater for a long time won't jam or misfire when the hero pops up to use them. (see any Rambo movie)
    A cigarette case/lighter in the shirt pocket will always block the bullet.
    When the hero faces a ridiculously large number of shooters with high powered weapons, they will all miss after several shots. Then, the hero will pulls out this gun that looks like a toy and start picking off the bad guys from half a mile away, usually hitting them in the forehead.
    People always pump out a few (probably used) shotgun shells at each corner when chasing someone.
    When people aim a rifle with binocular-sight at someone on a very long distance, they manage to keep them in the bull's-eye all the time even if they move around.
    When faced with dozens of armed opponents, the good guy will show up and appear to be shot, perhaps dozens of times. He will fall down, and presumably be dead, but will later miraculously turn out to have had the foresight to wear a bulletproof vest, armor plating, or even a silver tray to protect his torso (Batman). No one will ever shoot him in the head, where he is unprotected. Afterwards, instead of learning from his extremely good fortune, he throws his protection away, confident that the same situation cannot recur in his movie.
    When superheroes like Batman or Robocop use high technology to protect themselves, the bad guys never take advantage of obvious weaknesses, such as no face protection.
    Characters shot with guns will fly backward, or upward and backward, through the air - the laws of physics notwithstanding.
    Characters use silencers on revolvers... and it works.
    In 50% of action movies made after 1988, "Teflon Coated Cop Killer Bullets" will be referred to.
    No movie character will ever use or refer to a safety on any firearm.
    No movie character will ever use a .22-caliber weapon.
    The cowboy who exchanges a dozen shots with the bad guys without hitting one will nevertheless be able to hit and detonate a stick of dynamite from 150 feet away with a revolver on the first try.
    Once a character has flipped up the long range site on his rifle, he will always make his next shot.
    Bullets removed from shooting victims and displayed to the camera will not be misshapen in any way from the impact - and will sometimes still have the casing attached.
    Shots fired at the rear of a vehicle will cause the gas tank to explode.
    Shots fired at windshields never deflect; they always penetrate and hit the bad guy in the forehead. If the good guy is driving, he'll simply have to duck a little to avoid them.
    Shots fired at guys hiding around corners never whiz past; they always strike the edge of the building near the character's face.
    Shots fired in Westerns that do not hit a character always ricochet loudly.
    If there is a trough of water present in a Western gunfight scene, at least one shot will splash spectacularly in the water.
    Western characters are never shot in the legs while hiding behind wagons.
    No gun will ever jam or misfire after a quick-draw.
    In a duel or in a gunfight between two characters standing in a street, at least one charcter is always hit on the first exchange of gunfire.
    No debris will ever fall from a ceiling after a gun is fired upward into it.
    Shurrikens and thrown knives never miss, unless they pin a character's clothing to a wall or tree.
    Horses are never wounded in horseback gunfights.
    Assassins will always wait 'till the very last moment to assemble their complex sniper weapon (often a pistol the size of a rifle).
    Even weapons experts will freeze when confronted with a weapon which is not in firing condition-ie an un-cocked single action revolver or a submachine gun with its breech closed (also un-cocked). The person holding the gun must make several moves to fire the gun, and the adversary could just reach out and take the weapon, but the dropee just freezes even though often it is obvious that the cylinder is devoid of any ammo.
    Movie gunmen never lock and load their weapons when anticipating a life-or-death confrontation. Oh they have their weapons drawn, but not charged with a round in the chamber. They usually (always when carrying a pump-action shotgun) wait until they confront their quarry to slam a round into the chamber with a dramatic ca-chunking noise.
    Bullets, even though they are only pieces of lead-sometimes encased in copper, always make little explosions when they strike any kind of inanimate object.
    Photos of loved ones, religous medals, and bibles can stop bullets better than a bullet proof vest.
    All sub machine guns sound alike and have the same rate of fire
    NEW requirement: all automatic pistols must be held sideways in order to be fired.
    If you are a cowboy, aiming your rifle while using your horse as a support will always assure a first round hit.
    All aautomatic weapons must be cocked in order to be fired, but bolt action weapons can fire two or three times without being cocked!
    You can never un-jam a weapon by just pulling back the bolt and rechambering another round, 'though that will work 99 times out of 100 in real life.
    WOMEN
    Women will always have shaved legs and armpits, even in caveman movies.
    Women will be worrying about their nails or dresses while people are trying to kill them. (see also CHASES)
    Women stand wide-eyed, hand to mouth, while hero battles villain. Women never thinks to clonk villain with handy object. Counterpoint: If woman does clonk, she always hits hero instead.
    Women always fight other movie women by pulling hair, falling to ground together, rolling over twice.
    High-powered female executives always wear miniskirts and five-inch heels to work
    Beautiful women will always fawn over an action hero, no matter what sexist remarks he makes to them.
    A female lead with feminist leanings will always despise a macho hero--until the first time he rescues her from certain death. She will then become totally conventional and dependent. Once she does this, the hero will become vulnerable and tell her about some tragic loss that will explain his belligerent attitude.
    Women wear make-up to bed, and wake up with hair and face completely intact.
    Women don't need to go to the bathroom when they get up but will shower frequently.
    If a woman is pregnant, she will deliver before the movie ends.
    Women also scream or make some other noise at the precise moment the villian is close enough to hear.
    Women always stand and watch the cars that are about to run them over, OR the bad-guys that are about to shoot them (even if there's cover close by).
    Strong (character/will) women are always macho, or bitchy.
    Women always stuff their fist(s) in their mouths when terrified.
    Women always have to be rescued by the hero, even if they're champion/ expert this or that.
    Women are always too hysterical to do what the hero instructs. He has to elp/force her/knock her out.
    WOOD
    Heros and villains can successfully use wood, no matter how thin, as a safe shield against bullets of any caliber.
    When crossing a rotting suspended bridge, with well spaced wooden slats, the slat will always brake when a woman steps on it. Also, it is odd that the wood will rot away long before the vine ropes begin to rot!
    Little league teams in movie land still use bats made of wood while every other little league team is forced to use aluminum bats.

    Current Mood: amused
    10:43 am
    Movie Cliche List Part 2
     ELEVATORS
    Movie elevators are always ready at that floor. But if the hero/heroine is being chased, elevator won't come.
    If hero OR villian takes an elevator, villain OR hero can beat it by taking stairs, even if the trip is 20 floors.
    Most elevator shafts and wires are clean and dust/grease free, and there's plenty of light so that the hero neither gets dirty nor needs a flashlight or some other equipment to see (Speed).
    When one character is pursuing another (good guy after bad or vice versa) and they reach the elevator just before it closes, they never stick their hand in the door so it will automatically open back up, nor do they press the call button to get the door to open.
    ENVIRONMENT
    Thunder and lightning always happen at the same time.
    Storms start instantaneously: there's a crack of thunder and lightning, then heavy rain starts falling.
    Heavy rain causes no loss of long-distance visibility.
    Everything is blue at night-time.
    Caves always have flat floors, and it's never fully dark.
    There is always someone in the canal or the storm drain when the flood hits.
    The moon is always out at night (except for those cheaper movies where the sun is still out..).
    Full moon can occur for several nights in a row.
    Eclipses happen frequently, and without any warning.
    EVIDENCE
    Incriminating evidence can be found either as photograph number four in a stack, or in the next to bottom drawer.
    Be sure to leave your important tapes, such as the one labelled "Incriminating evidence against Senator Smith showing him taking $24million in bribes and then fondling the drug lord's daughter" or your computer floppy disks labelled "All the nuclear launch codes are on here" where they can be easily found.
    All characters keep detailed newsclippings of important events in their lives, particularly those events that must be painful to recall, such as the loss of the character's immediate family due to their own negligence. NB: If the news report would have come out while the character was in jail or on the run, all the more reason for the character to have kept it intact.
    FENCING/SWORDPLAY
    At some point in a duel, the hero and villain will cross swords at face level, allowing them to grip each other's weapon while making nasty/sarcastic comments before they break the clinch and continue fighting. (Why doesn't anyone just ram the sword guard into their opponent's face, stun him, and then finish him off?)
    If the hero and villain's swords cross at or below waist level, they will break the clinch, fall back, and pause -- despite the fact that a simple upthrust into the opponent's belly after the break would end the duel right there and then.
    If there is a candelabra, the villain will show how talented he is with a sword by cutting the candles and watching them fall over; the hero will do the same but the candles won't fall until _after_ the villain has made a comment about the hero's lack of fencing ability, at which point the hero will topple the cut candles, showing that he is more skilled than the villain because _his_ candles didn't fall over from the force of the cut.
    During a duel, the hero will jump or climb onto a table/bench/piano/platform that raises him above the villain. At that point, the villain will swipe at the hero's legs, which the hero avoids by jumping up in the air over the villain's blade. _Very_ rarely, the positions are reversed.
    Duels usually have one scene where the actors go out of frame and you watch their shadows fighting.
    If the villain wounds the hero in his sword arm, one of three things will happen:
    hero becomes ambidextrous and fights with sword in other hand;
    hero finds something else to defend himself with (tapestry, chain, Mossberg 12-gauge) that can be used with the other hand;
    hero's girlfriend/sidekick comes up behind villain and impales him, thus saving hero.
    If hero is disarmed by villain, one of three things will happen:
    villain will show a trace of honour and allow hero to get his sword;
    hero will make mad dash/leap over or around villain to regain sword;
    just when it looks like the end, hero's girlfriend/sidekick throws a sword to him, which he manages to grab easily (for the _best_ send-up of this concept, check out ARMY OF DARKNESS where Ash jumps in the air and his chainsaw magically clamps back onto his wrist -- it's beautifully shot and extremely funny!).
    If there are stairs, the hero will be forced up them backwards by the villain, at which point the hero will either leap to the ground or swing from a rope/chandelier/tapestry to get away.
    If there is a tapestry or chandelier, the hero will cut it loose and drop it on the villain's henchmen _unless_ the movie is a comedy, in which case the hero will drop it on his own men by accident.
    FIGHTS
    If a character uses martial arts rather than a weapon, his opponents will always face him one-to-one. Spare bad guys may dance around the fight taunting our hero, but none will engage until his predecessor has been disposed of. And if it's an oriental martial arts film, they will fight in perfect one-two rhythm and form, hit-block-hit-block.
    Two guys or a bunch of guys go at it, repeatedly bashing each other in the face with massive blows, or hitting each other with chairs, sticks, refrigerators, whatever -- and they go one doing this, sometimes for minutes at a time.
    People can be rendered inoperative by bumping them on the head. Beware, though; after you have left the scene, this person will regain consciousness and be more determinted to attack you.
    Clasping your hands together and hitting the bad guy's back will also guarantee unconsciousness
    All fights taking place on the edge of a canyon, tall building, or other high place require at least one bad guy to get plugged by a bullet, arrow, or other missile weapon, causing to fall, but keeping him alive enough to hear his scream of terror echo as he plunges to his doom.
    Corollary: whenever someone falls off of a cliff or building, no matter how much damage they take beforehand, they scream, even if they were shot through the lungs twenty or thirty times, or were apparently unconscious.
    In the West, the favored hand-to-hand combat technique is to throw yourself prostrate on the other guy and hug him.
    When a villian is trying to murder someone with a knife, they'll often use just one hand. The victim meanwhile (usually a woman) is using both hands to restrain the villian's arm and keep the knife from stabbing her. But the murderer will NEVER simply use his other hand to take the knife and easily stab the victim. (see also Knives).
    FOOD & EATING
    Pastries are always in plain pink boxes. When we see a plain pink box, we expected to know that the box contains donuts or cake or some related item.
    All movie mothers will prepare a breakfast, usually consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon, etc. Dad and the kids will invariably arrive at the table 30 seconds before Dad has to leave for the office and the kids have to catch the school bus. Each will have time only for a sip of coffee/juice and/or one bite of toast. There must be enough food left over in these homes to feed an emerging nation!
    HELICOPTERS
    In movieland, there's an abundance of corrupt helicopter pilots. Villains have no problem renting a helicopter complete with pilot who doesn't mind shooting total strangers, or being shot at.
    When a helicopter is hit by a bullet or rocket, it'll explode immediately if it contains a villain, but if the hero is on board, it will loose power, smoke will come out of the doors, and it'll just reach the ground in time for the hero to get clear then duck just at the moment it explodes.
    People standing outside a running helicopter can always talk in normal or just slightly louder than normal voices.
    A pursued hero, with the bad guys just yards behind him, can jump into a shutdown helicopter, run through the twenty-five item startup checklist, engage and spin up the rotors, take off and be out of pistol range before the bad guys catch up.
    Bullets shot at a helicopter bounce off the fiberglass and aluminum "fuselage" components but make neat little holes through the plexiglas bubble.
    When a helicopter's engine dies, the main rotor immediately stops and the helicopter drops straight to the ground. If a bad guy is flying, the helicopter disappears in a ball of flame, but good-guy pilots just get out, dust themselves off, and walk away.
    When a turbine-powered Bell Jet Ranger helicopter is shot at, it's engine coughs and sputters, chugs along for a little while as the helo staggers through the air uncertainly, and then crashes using the good/bad pilot algorithm noted above.
    Every helicopter shutting down emits the chirp-chirp-chirp sound of the rubber drive belts disengaging, in spite of the fact that only the famous Bell 47G (the Mash chopper) actually makes this sound.
    Piston helicopters always start up with screaming turbine engine sounds.
    Rambo-style pilots can fly with one hand on the cyclic stick while the other fires an automatic weapon out the door. The helicopter automatically knows when to change altititude to fly over obstacles without the pilot worrying about that pesky collective pitch control.
    HEROES
    If the hero has a psychological/phsical problem which has prevented him from effectively dealing with problems, you can rest assured that this problem will disappear at an opportune time.
    The hero always misses the villan leaving the scene by seconds.
    Stripping to the waist makes the hero invulnerable.
    The hero will always be paired off with a female character. The sidekick never will.
    The hero's best friend/partner will usually be killed by the bad guys three days before retirement.
    The hero's new wife will be mowed down by 80 machine guns right after the wedding or during the honeymoon.
    Heroes can go without food or sleep, with no measurable drop in physical or mental faculties, for at least 72 hours.
    The hero will always have a small trickle of blood in the right corner of his mouth after a fight. His lip will never be split in the middle, and his upper lip will always be invulnerable. He will wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, then look at it. If his face displays any other injury, it will usually be a small abrasion on his right cheekbone. He will wear a band-aid on this for one day, after which it will be miraculously healed.
    The hero will always refuse the assistance of friends or medical personnel after a fight.
    If the hero gets into a second fight, his most injured body part will always be punched or kicked.
    A hero will show no pain even during the most terrific beating, yet he will wince if a women attempts to clean a facial wound.
    When a hero is paired with a weak sidekick, that sidekick will invariably save the hero's life at a crucial moment, or show remarkable proficiency with weapons in a key scene.
    If the hero is a white male and has an assistant/sidekick who is either not white or not male the assistant/sidekick will die, preferably in an act of heroic sacrifice.
    If the movie hero has a sidekick and he mentiones his family in the first two minutes of the film, the sidekick will surely be killed.
    The movie hero is (almost) always divorced, but he still has some contact with his ex-wife who tells him that she could not stay married to him because she loves him too much.
    HOUSES
    People never answer the door until the doorbell or knocking has sounded at least three times.
    The hero lives in New York City working at some okay, but not particularly high-paying job, and yet he or she has a roomy apartment filled with nice stuff, generally with a good view, and sometimes a nice, romantic rooftop to go to.
    People never get out of the house when there is obvious danger there (ghosts, murderers).
    People who hear something weird outside will go OUT to look, even if they know there's a homicidal maniac on the loose.
    When someone's in bed and hears a sound outside, he'll get up and turn the lights on before looking out of a window, even if this usually guarantees that he'll never be able to see anything going on.
    When an intruder is in the house, the occupant will snuck along a wall with his back pressed to it tightly and his arms out a bit from his body, palms flat agaisnt the wall.
    When there's an intruder somewhere in the house, the thing that jumps at the heroine in the dark turns out to be her cat, even if it comes from places cats wouldn't be, like inside a cupboard! As soon as she relaxes, the killer will show up and strangle her.
    Any apartment in Paris will have a view of the Eiffel Tower.
    INDEPENDENCE DAY
    "Things I did not know until I saw ID4"
    (this section courtesy of Perry O'Grady)
    I would like to be perfectly clear that I found "Independence Day" to be a great deal of fun and a thoroughly enjoyable motion picture.
    However, I realized that there were a number of things about which I was completely ignorant until I saw "ID4." The following is a list of things that I did not know until I saw "Independence Day":


    It is reasonable to assume that the quality of the training of United States Marine Corps pilots is such that any Marine fly boy could hop into an alien spacecraft and immediately be able to fly it into deep space
    The White House press secretary has a listed phone number
    When stuck in a tunnel and faced with Armageddon in the form of a fireball that is capable of obliterating all life in Los Angeles, simply duck into a maintenance closet and let the end of the world pass you by
    Despite the fact that we are able to send a fax from a beeper on our hip while walking down a street in San Francisco to a Range Rover in Johannesburg, alien spacecraft need to be hardwired to a satellite to speak to each other
    High class strippers with a heart of gold can operate most heavy equipment
    It is not beyond the realm of imagination that the President of the United States would be a fighter jock and would be willing to return to active duty to do battle with invincible alien bad guys
    Alien spacecraft the size of Australia can be taken out with one well-placed sidewinder missile
    Most laptops are configured with interfaces powerful enough to override the communications systems of the most sophisticated futuristic societies
    Despite the fact that they wear biomechanical body armor that can only be removed with a scalpel and the fact that they possess hyper-developed brains that allow them to destroy their enemies simply by thinking about it, alien fighter pilots have a glass jaw and can be knocked unconscious for hours with one punch
    If you are a woman who: 1)survives a blast from an alien spacecraft that wipes out Los Angeles 2)lives through the ensuing helicopter crash 3)survives while buried by rubble 4)survives despite being transported by open backed diesel truck across the worst terrain ever created...do not check into a military hospital with the best medical help money can buy because YOU WILL DIE
    Despite the fact that no living person, even on a clear day with a map and two state troopers providing an escort, can negotiate the Los Angeles freeway system without getting lost, nearly-blown-up women can drive through the shattered ruins of a decimated Los Angeles straight to El Toro
    When you crash an alien spacecraft into the high desert because you were hurtled back through the earth's atmosphere by an atomic blast you set off, the fact that you do not have a parachute or any other visible means of slowing your fall does not mean that you should not walk away from the wreckage completely unscathed and straight into your girl's arms
    The standard trip home from space, when assisted by an atomic blast, lasts approximately two to three pulls on a cigar
    Although aliens possess technological capabilities millions of years beyond our own that enables them to embed secret codes in our satellite network, they can be stymied by Morse Code, which is generally printed on the front panel of a child's walkie talkie
    The most sophisticated labs in the world have impenetrable vault doors buried 30 stories into mountains but use regular hardware store glass panes for observation rooms in the lab nerve center
    Although aliens possess tentacles dexterous enough to manipulate human vocal cords from outside the throat when the need to speak strikes them, they can not open a door for themselves
    The correct military honor for a hero who saves the world by sacrificing his own life by flying directly into the alien death ray is to clap and cheer wildly in front of the hero's family immediately after he perishes
    Any vehicle, including clunkers, can make the trip down from Manhattan to Washington D.C. in just a few hours in gridlocked end-of-the-world type traffic
    INJURIES
    When the hero is knocked out, he won't get a concussion or brain damage. People hit on the head will not throw up.
    When a hero gets a bloody nose, he'll stop bleeding almost immediately.
    When a hero suffers through car chases and crashes, he never has to worry about unfelt spinal injury from impact.
    A slight blow to the head is usually enough to cause total amnesia
    Characters that get shot will never go into shock.
    The hero will always get shot in the shoulder, yet will be able to use his arm.
    A facial scars is likely to make you go insane and seek revenge for the rest of your life.
    If you lose a hand, it causes the stump of your arm to grow by six inches.
    A lost hand either comes crawling back, or a mad surgeon will replace it with one transplanted from an executed strangler.
    If a person gets shot they have plenty of time to tell all kinds of things except the most important information (like the name of the murderer).
    A person shot to death will immediately do just that - die. Their bodies do not flop and jerk around for a few minutes as the muscles contract involuntarily and sporadically as the brain dies a slow electro-chemical death (as with real gun-shot deaths).
    KIDS/TEENAGERS
    A kid always knows more than an adult.
    A kid can fend for himself even if his parents have gone to Paris, leaving him with no food, electricity, heat, money, etc.
    No child can ever be killed...even if they're electrocuted on a high-voltage electric fence that could kill a dinosaur (Jurassic Park)
    Eight to ten-year-old kids are the best computer hackers on earth and can break into any system.
    Girls who can't find a date to the prom in high school films are usually the girls that, in most high schools, would have almost every teenage boy asking them.
    KNIVES
    When you throw a knife, the blade will always be the first thing to hit the target
    unless you turn the knife around first.
    A competent knife thrower can work equally well with throwing knives, Swiss Army knives, butcher knives, table knives or swords.
    LANGUAGE
    Even when depicted as foreigners (including aliens from outer space) all actors speak and understand a common language (usually English) unless the film's plot depends on a language barrier.
    When foreigners appear in movies (hispanics in particular) they seem to be able to speak perfect english without making one single mistake except it seems they NEVER manage to learn how to say "Sir" or "Thank you"... they always say "Senor" and "Gracias"
    LIGHT
    A malfunctioning or burnt lightbulb usually means that someone is hiding in the room, ready to jump on our hero/heroine while he/she's busy hitting the switch or tapping the bulb.
    When someone lights a match in a dark old house (etc) and the single match has as much power as a 1000 watt bulb! Alternatively, they light a match, and then light an old oil lamp which has a vast amount of power.
    When people switch a light off, it will still be possible to see everything in the room, just in a slightly subdued/bluish colour...
    Lightbulbs blow up when:
    something psychic happens;
    someone opens the power box, rips out the biggest cable, and touches it to the rest of the stuff in there;
    If the lightbulbs are in a row, they blow in timed sequence.
    LOCKS
    Any lock can be picked with a credit card or a paper clip. Any safe can be opened in a few minutes with a stethoscope or some high-tech equipment with lots of blinking lights.
    MEDICAL
    More often than not, the best method to revive somebody after their heart has stopped, assuming that there has already been a lengthy attempt to revive them with CPR, those electric zapperthings, ect., is screaming at them something like:
    "You never backed away from everything in your life, now fight! Fight! FIIIIGHT!" or
    "You can't do this to me! I love you, goddammit!"
    MEN
    When men drink whiskey, it is always in a shot glass, and they always drink it in one gulp. If they are wimps, they will gasp for air, then have a coughing fit. If they are macho, they will wince briefly, flashing clenched teeth.
    Men on rafts, jungles, deserts or other extended duty don't have to carry razors because their beards don't grow. Counterpoint: Unless they drink, in which case 3-day stubble appears in 3 hrs.
    MIDDLE AGES
    Medieval peasants always have filthy faces, tangled hair, ragged clothing - and perfect, gleaming white teeth. (cf. Braveheart, any Robin Hood movie).
    If you are a princess, you always have a favorite lady in waiting, and you always send her to warn the hero of the evil king's intention just in time.
    Corollary: the lady in waiting is never quite as beautiful as the princess; however, she still always catches the eye of the hero's sidekick.
    In a swordfight, you can always parry behind your back, and you must always find a set of stairs to fight on so that the loser can roll down them and die at the bottom.
    Horses never get winded, throw a shoe, etc., until the pursuing sheriff is right behind the hero.
    Corollary: the wagon that breaks an axle or gets stuck in the creek is always the one carrying the king's entire treasury, which he totes around with him every time he goes gallivanting through bandit-infested countryside.
    MINORITES
    Minorities such as Native Americans or Asians will always have some sort of mystical knowledge or inate fighting skill. For example, the Native American always knows the course of events to come from some sign in nature, and Asians are all born with Martial Arts skills they can use to battle the bad guys.
    MONEY
    Gangster's Briefcases either contain weapons or banknotes. No one ever got coins at a robbery.
    Briefcases are designed to hold exactly three rows of banknotes. As if it had power by itself money likes to be sorted in nice packs and rows, even if it had been thrown into the briefcase ba a terrified casher at a bank.
    When you use a movie taxi don't ever give any change. Drivers won't know what to do with it. Just say "thank you" when you pay a bill, reach into your pocket without looking, take out whatever note is in it - it will just fit. (see also CABS)
    Same is true in restaurants. Checks are always designed to be 15 percent under the sum the male customer has in his hands first.
    MONSTERS
    After fleeing a monster, you will want to call for help from a public phone within ten feet of where you last saw the monster.
    MOTORCYCLES
    Motorcycle engines in movies can inexplicably change from 4-stroke Otto cycle to 2-stroke cycle operation.
    Motorcycles usually change from Harley Davidson choppers when engaged in highway operations to Yamaha Dirt bikes when operated off-road (as in "Then Came Bronson"). Police Harleys will morph into Triumph Bonnevilles when operating in tight quarters (on the ship in "Magnum Force").
    MUSIC
    Many musical instruments - especially wind instruments and accordions - can be played without moving the fingers.
    Native musicians are highly skilled, and can make simple instrumental bands sound like a full light orchestra.
    NIGHTMARES
    Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright ("boing!") in bed. Instead of just lying there going "eeewww!" as most of us do.
    PHONES
    All phone numbers begin with 555.
    People speaking on the phone never introduce themselves, and never ever say "good-bye" at the end of a conversation.
    A ringing phone is usually picked up within 3 seconds.
    Don't give the person on the other end of the phone time to say what they have to.
    You also never have to look up a phone number, for anyone.
    When a phone line is broken or someone hangs up unexpectedly, communication channels can be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying "Hello? Hello?".
    Always knock over the phone if it wakes you up. If you are expecting a call, make sure that you pull the covers up completely over your head so that knocking it over becomes easier. All houses have phones next to the bed.
    There's a dial tone to be heard on A's phone immediately after B has hung up on his/her end.
    The Movie Telephone Time Vortex.
    How often have you seen something like this:
    Phone rings. Hero/Heroine picks it up. "Hello. Yes. O.k. Right. Thanks, Goodbye." (Total elapsed time on phone: 5 seconds.)
    Hero/Heroine turns to other character: "That was John. He says that the Marilyn left for the lawyer's office about an hour ago, and she should have been there by now. He's called the lawyer's office but Marilyn apparently never got there. He also called Bill's, thinking she'd stop by there, but Bill hasn't seen her. John says he's going to call Anne, as Marilyn said she and Ann were going to go shopping sometime today. If she's not at Anne's, he's going to call the police. He suggests that we drive over to Mario's and check with him as to whether or not Marilyn told Wally about the statue. However, he thinks this is unlikely as Marilyn doesn't trust Wally, she only trusts us and Fransisco. John also suggests we try to get in touch with Fransisco . . . ."
    On the subject of phones, how about variations of the Bob Newhart-style conversation where we only get to hear one side of the conversation, as in: Marilyn hasn't shown up at the lawyer's office yet? (PAUSE) And you already called Bill's? (PAUSE) What did he say? (PAUSE) He hasn't seen her either. (PAUSE) So, John's getting nervous? (PAUSE) He's going to call the police...
    If I'm not mistaken, the conversation must have gone like this:
    "Marilyn hasn't shown up at the lawyer's office yet."
    "Marilyn hasn't shown up at the lawyer's office yet?"
    "No, and I've already called Bill's."
    "And you already called Bill's?"
    "Yes."
    "What did he say?"
    "He hasn't seen her either."
    "He hasn't seen her either."
    "John's getting pretty nervous about this."
    "So, John's getting nervous?"
    "Yes, he's going to call the police."
    "He's going to call the police..."

    When phone-calls are traced you can see a map on the screen with a beam closing in on the caller, and the caller always knows how long he can talk before he has to hang up to not be traced down. He always manages to say everything perfectly timed for 2 minutes.
    Video-phones display pictures of the callers looking straight into the camera. The camera must be in the middle of their screen, in other words.
    If the hero tries to call someone he needs urgently he won't need more than three rings to know that he/she is not there.
    If someone wants to call the hero, he/she will let the phone ring forever before hanging up, expecially if the caller does not know that the hero has to fight his way to the phone through a bunch of bad guys.
    A person is placing a phone call to a company, such as "Sports Illustrated." The phone at the other end is picked up, and the person PLACING the call says, "Hello, Sports Illustrated?", as if they are checking to make sure they called the right place.
    What this means is that at a major company, someone is answering the phone with "hello" and that's it! Not, "hello, Sports Illustrated, can I help you?" or anything like that, just "Hello!"
    POLICE
    Police Captains/lieutenants are always angry at their star detective and yell at him, threatening suspension if he doesn't drop the case.
    Corollary: it is only _after_ the detective has been suspended that he can properly crack the case.
    Many police chiefs are in constant contact with their city's mayor who will often "chew their ass" about a single criminal investigation out of the thousands going on in a city. (note: See "I Married an Axe Murderer" for a hilarious send-up of the "mean chief" cliche.)
    The police will never question the hero, even if he kills lots of bad guys
    The cops never show up during massive gun battles in city streets that involve bystanders and exploding cars. After the fact, you might just a siren in the distance.
    More murders always happen during the investigation of the first one. The last living suspect is the murderer.
    Most homicide detectives are brooding, near-crazed loners, most likely divorced or widowed, borderline alcoholics. Of course, there are more respectable-looking detectives, but they are inept and not nearly as tough as their mentally-troubled colleagues.
    Many detectives are recruited directly from the police academy, therefore accounting for youthful "seasoned detectives" (see "Speed," "Kuffs," "Stakeout").
    PREGNANCY & CHILDBIRTH
    The fact that a woman is pregnant or the fact that she notes her pregnancy is introduced by a scene where you hear the woman vomit.
    Whenever a woman announces to her husband/boyfriend that she's pregnant, it comes as a complete surprise to him, whether pleasantly or otherwise.
    No one is in labor for hours and hours... they pop out babies in a matter of minutes.
    No one is ever offered an epidural or medication, everyone uses lamaze (pant method), but they often scream at & demean those around them.
    Most babies are born clean, with perfectly shaped heads and dry hair
    All movie babies are born HUGE, usually the size of the average two month old.
    Women who give birth are perfectly made up afterwards
    PRISON
    In jail, there must be a brutal guard and an evil scheming warden.
    Inside a prison there is always a boss among the convicts. Usually he's black, blind and crippled surrounded by tough black musclemen, and he is the one the white hero has to see to get something.
    In a prison or a gymm, when someone is about to be threatened, it usally takes place when the subject is on his back pumping iron and the bar is lowered onto his neck thus reshaping the windpipe and driving some point home.
    PRODUCT PLACEMENT
    Time will stand still when when the hero is in the presence of a company logo.
    When a character picks up a bottle of whiskey or a pack of cigarettes, the label will always be clearly visible.
    If the producers find no company to invest into the picture, strange things happen to the world: gas stations have no brand names visible, stars use no-name airlines (they often crash!), all smokers use silver cases for their cigarettes.
    RADIO, TV & VIDEO
    A character turns on the radio just in time to hear a special announcement or some important news item. Then turns the radio off.
    ex.:
    CLICK
    "Three escaped lunatics have been spotted in . blah blah blah."
    CLICK

    The phone rings. Caller says, "You better check out what's on the news on Channel 13". He turns on channel 13 and gets the report from the beginning.
    All televisions show cowboy-and-indian chase scenes a large proportion of the time.
    All VCRs in films are always cued up exactly to the portion of tape you want to show someone.
    You will always be able to backwind the tape *precisely* to the beginning of the segment you want to see again.
    Whenever anyone scans through a videotape or audio tape on home equipment you can hear the audio portion of the tape being fast forwarded or rewound.
    Freeze frame is flawless.
    Whenever someone reviews surveliance video taken from a preceeding scene, the camera angle is never high above the actors, it's right up close, and looks _a lot_ like the angle the film camera used when shooting the picture. Aditionally, the audio is always crisp and clear, there's no background noise, because all security cameras come equiped with boom mikes.
    RESTROOMS
    In film, no one uses the restroom, except as a venue for escape. If there are multiple people in the restroom, expect a minor character revealation while they stand at the mirror
    ROPES
    When people are tied up in the movies, which is usually loosely and incompetently, they can't escape without finding some convenient device to burn or cut through the ropes.
    Corollary 1: There is always a convenient device at hand.
    Corollary 2: If the method involves burning the ropes, the person's hands will be tied at least a foot apart.

    Current Mood: amused
    10:41 am
    Movie Cliches Part 1
     AIRPLANES
    Piston-engine airplanes in the movies are unusually subject to engine failure. This failure mode is unique to filmdom - engine coughs, keeps running. Hero doesn't notice. Then it stutters, catches again. Hero notices, taps gas gauge, turns lever. Then it stutters exactly three times and stops immediately, including propeller. No further efforts are ever made to restart.
    ALCOHOL
    Only men are alcoholics. Any hopeless alcoholic can quit drinking when faced with an important challenge. The instant the alcoholic stops drinking, all his faculties return and he faces no annoying withdrawals.
    ALIENS
    If there is more than one or two of an alien race, they are always roughly the same size as humans.
    Aliens usually speak english and have same colloquialisms. planet.
    All members of alien species wear the same outfits, including clothing, hairstyles, and jewelery. This makes them readily identifiable. Aliens who do not dress like aliens are hiding something.
    This may, in fact, be a consequence of the fact that aliens all have single, monolithic cultures: one language, one religion, one outfit, per planet.
    ANIMALS
    Bad guys will always get killed by a snake, while the hero simply reaches out and picks it up with his bare hands. (In addition, he will either break the reptile's neck (?) or bite it's head off)
    Deadly reptiles will always attack a woman first, even if she's in the presence of thirty men.
    Dogs always know who's bad, and bark at them.
    ANSWERING MACHINES
    If the hero listens to his answering machine and one important message is unexpected then he usually has two very short messages on the tape before, one spoken by a man, one by a women. "Here'a John! I see you tomorrow at eight.".... beep ... "This is Sallieeeeee! I'll call again later." ... beep .... and then finally "Ahhhh! The killer is .....". If however the message is expected be sure that it will be the first one on the tape.
    ASTEROIDS
    (this section courtesy of Keith Lynch)
    Here are the fundamental principles of movie asteroid science, as derived from the NBC miniseries "Asteroid":


    Asteroids travel through space making a noise like a powerful but subdued engine.
    Asteroids are usually locked into orbits, but if a comet comes by, they can be bumped out of their rut and become dangerously unstable.
    It's only the fact that everything is locked into an orbit which prevents collisions in our solar system. Any asteroid that gets loose is certain to crash into Earth within a matter of hours.
    It's just barely possible to evacuate Kansas City to a distance of 100 miles in 48 hours. This requires lots of airplanes. It also requires martial law, so that "looters will be arrested on sight". (Have they no mercy?) With 30+ hours to go, people will panic in the streets and run around at random.
    A mile-wide asteroid can mostly burn up in the atmosphere, causing it to do only a relatively small amount of damage (bursting a dam) when it strikes.
    A river from a burst dam can exactly keep pace with a pickup truck for several minutes. It will then obligingly pause as the pickup truck turns around and goes in another direction.
    When a raging river washes over a pickup truck on a bridge, the bridge won't be damaged, the truck won't be swept off the bridge, and people in the open back of the truck won't be swept away.
    A four-mile-wide nickel asteroid (which would mass about a *trillion* tons) can be destroyed -- literally destroyed, so that nothing remains -- by three airplane-mounted lasers.
    But with only two airplane-mounted lasers, it instead instantly explodes into thousands of pieces. Astronomers are very surprised that it wasn't literally destroyed.
    Laser beams are easily visible in space.
    Incoming asteroids spend several minutes in Earth's atmosphere.
    Asteroids made of softer or more volatile stuff than nickel will harmlessly burn up in the atmosphere regardless of size.
    Asteroids that land in the ocean will do no damage regardless of size.
    Asteroids are discovered by astronomers peering directly through their telescopes in brightly lit observatories. Whatever they see will appear on computer monitors, however.
    Asteroid positions are reported in plainly audible 75 BPS Baudot teletype signals.
    Oddly, there will be no dog to be rescued at the last possible moment. Maybe only tornadoes and volcanoes come equipped with dogs. Would you settle for goldfish?
    BARS/DRINKING
    Every time some guy walks into a bar, usually the hero, he gets into a fight. Usually right under a BUDWEISER sign (see "product placement"). Likelihood of fight increases if country music is playing in the background.
    Movie heroes in a bar will either order strong alcoholic drinks and swallow them down like iced tea or will ask for milk. The latter will always provoke sarcastic remarks and a fight will ensue.
    When men drink whiskey, it is always in a shot glass, and they always drink it in one gulp. If they are wimps, they will gasp for air, then have a coughing fit. If they are macho, they will wince briefly, flashing clenched teeth.
    A cup of black coffee/splash of cold water in face is enough to render the most inebriated person stone cold sober in a split second (see several thousand westerns, and "Peter's Friends.")
    BINOCULARS & GLASSES
    Whenever someone looks through the binoculars, you see two joined circles instead of one.
    Glasses never collect moisture when you come in from the cold outside.
    Computer geeks and "intelligent" persons use them, action heros never have glasses.
    A villain will always commit murder right in front of the window when someone with binoculars is watching.
    BIOLOGY AND GENETICS
    People are often exact duplicates of remote ancestors, or of their parent at the same age.
    At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.
    Radiation causes mutation not to your future children, but to you, there and then. Mutation is never immediately fatal, but first either makes you into a formless blob, or a functional creature with animal-like features.
    Interbreeding is genetically possible with any person or creature from anywhere in the universe.
    Newborn babies can babble, crawl, and hold their heads steady.
    BODILY FUNCTIONS
    People never cough, sneeze, blow their noses, or show any other symptoms of being in less than perfect health.
    Only exception to the above is when they're dying. A cough is a symptom of terminal illness.
    Menstruation is an unknown phenomenon in movies. Female movie characters are all immune from it.
    You can eat as much as you want in a film and you'll never EVER have to go to the bathroom.
    Vomit is portrayed by distant toilet flush. Nobody ever throws-up on the carpet.
    BOMBS
    Evil geniuses who devise bombs to destroy things/people always have them detonate after at least an hour, giving the hero ample time to defuse it.
    Bombs always have big, blinking, beeping timer displays. Evil geniuses who devise bombs to destroy things/people are always thoughtful enough to include a visible display (usually LED) of how much time remains before the bomb detonates, giving the hero accurate feedback on exactly how much time remains.
    When you cut the wire to the detonator, the timer will stop. You will not be able to do this, however, until only one second remains.
    All wires have different colors, so the hero can easily differentiate them when he has to cut the right one.
    Bombs detonated with microwave ovens always explode 2 seconds after the timer reaches 00:00 and the microwave oven beeps (ex. "Under Siege").
    Explosions always happen in slow motion. When an explosion occurs, make certain you are running away from the point of detonation so the blast can send you flying, in slow motion, toward the camera.
    A building that in real life would require several dozen carefully placed explosive charges for demolition, can in a movie be destroyed by a single bomb in a car trunk (see "Lethal Weapon III"). This bomb will cause no damage to any other building on the block.
    CABS
    .
    Movie passengers either don't pay cabs at all, or have the exact change. Same is true in restaurants. Checks are always designed to be 15 percent under the bills the male costumer has in his hands first.
    Movie people can get cabs instantly, unless they are in danger, whereupon no cab can be found
    CARS & DRIVING
    Movie characters driving in the city will get to park wherever they like when they get to their destination.
    When you are alone in the back seat of the car, make sure you sit in the middle.
    Sudden accelleration of a car (be it forwards, backwards, stopping, skidding, sliding, or whatever) causes a loud skid, even on dirt or wet roads. Be prepared. Each wheel is also fitted with a smoke device to let you know when this happens. Hollywood cars are also special: when you take off quickly, you always leave a skid mark for each drive wheel, regardless of whether you have a limited slip differential or not.
    Pedestrians in Hollywood have the world's best reactions, so don't worry if you have to drive down a sidewalk. Mr Pappodopolus is quite used to having his fruit cart smashed, and despite his gesticulations and curses, he always manages to get out of the way in time.
    There are always people carrying around large sheets of glass on the street during a car chase.
    The person behind the wheel is talking to and looking at their passenger for the entire journey without actually looking at the _road_, changing gear, signalling etc. (ex. "When Harry Met Sally").
    Cars chasing each other in the middle of a city will not suffer enough damage to stop the chase.
    People being chased by a car will keep running down the middle of the road instead of ducking in somewhere where a car cannot go.
    A car will always explode when shot at, unless the hero is driving it.
    When you drive a car, you can always recognize all the persons you know that pass you in the opposite direction.
    If someone has "fixed" the foot-brakes in the car, the driver never use the hand-brake and the gears to slow down, at least not until the last moment.
    Cars often end up on cliff-edges with 2 wheels in the open air. The good guys are saved just before the car falls over, the bad guys join the car in the free fall, often caused by a bird setting down on the part of the car hanging over the edge.
    When a car falls off a cliff after a car chase, it usually explodes before reaching the ground.
    When speeding cars hit a parked car, they fly up into the air while the parked car doesn't even wiggle
    After a car crash, no movie character ever sits and shakes for five minutes, or becomes incoherent with shock.
    All cars seem to run on kerosene rather than gasoline (hence the copious black smoke when they burn).
    Watch steering wheels in movie cars, especially in "through the windshield looking at the driver" shots. 9 times out of 10, the spokes of the wheel, which one would think should be horizontal, or close to it, are vertical, i.e., one can see one of the wheel spokes vertical, above the dash, in front of the driver's face, even when he's driving straight.
    Whenever you see someone driving, even on straight and smooth roads, they are sawing at the wheel hard enough to be running an obstacle course. The car doesn't swerve at all, of course. The amount of excess wheel-twisting is independent of speed.
    Not only do movie cars always park right in front, but they are never locked. Even convertibles with their tops down, in NYC, are still there hours later.
    Movie cars have all excellent brakes and can come to a full stop from 80 MPH (with loud screeches, even on dirt roads) in 20 ft.
    There's never an annoying wind disturbing the coiffures of convertible passengers.
    There are no stop signs in movie land. Wherever you have to drive, no matter how close or far away it is, you never have to stop before you get there.
    Film cars do not have inside rear-view mirrors. Most of them do, however, have an appx 1" gray spot on the inside of the windshield where the mirror would normally mount.
    Film cars never start the first time when you're running away from the bad guy.
    If there is a large bump in a downhill road, speeding cars will always fly over them and hit the ground in shower of sparks. An interior view will then show the reaction of the passengers at the moment of impact. They will not be injured, even if they are not wearing safety belts. No tire damage, broken axles, or suspension failures will occur as a result of the impact. The car will then execute a sharp left turn at the bottom of the hill. Losing a hubcap at this point will be optional.
    Any time you see a really nice, snazzy foreign car or a great old car like a 65 mustang, you know it's going to be smashed into a million pieces.
    All too many times a Hollywood car chase will be interupted by the emergence of a semi from a driveway, alley, or street, resulting in the escape of the hunted, or the death of an expendable character.
    Police cars involved in chase scenes usually tend to suffer more than any other vehicles- they have head on collisions, smash parked cars, fall into water, and of course, experience the ever popular flying-roll, causing the car to land upside down and crush the lights and siren. Usually, we never get to see the unlucky police force member before or after the inevitable accident.
    A car that crashes will always explode in a ball of flames, but not until the hero can pull the important passengers to safety, and yell, "Watch out! She's gonna blow!"
    Acid applied by the villain to the hero's brake lines never has any effect unless the car is heading down a steep, winding road. Cars at traffic lights have invujlnerable brake lines.
    No one ever runs out of gas (even in long car chases). Corollary: every stolen car has a full gas tank and gets great gas mileage.
    Vintage cars are always 100% immaculate and freshly polished. They never have any scratches, dents or repairs.
    No one fumbles for car keys right before a car chase. they always jump right in and start the car up because they've left the keys in the ignition. Not a great idea in any major city.
    CHASES
    Woman falls to the ground whilst being chased by a bad guy, even when running over level, unobstructed terrain. Note that when a man and woman are being chased, usually the woman falls, then the man pauses and helps her up.
    Corollaries to the above:

    Man will then continue to run with woman, holding her by the hand or preferably upper arm, even though this takes them both below the speed either one could make on their own.
    All movie women must be pulled along by their hands, even if the male puller is short & fat and the woman is a track star.
    All movie women try to run in heels, never stopping to kick them off.
    Women not only have to be pulled along, they do not have enough sense to run and keep running unless a man touches her elbow, holds her hand or puts his arm around her shoulders.
    Chasees will always stop to throw obstacles (trash cans, lumber, chairs) in their pursuers' way. No matter that they take three times as long to dump the obstacles as it takes the chasers to simply jump over them.
    CHESS
    GOOD Chess players are always portrayed as upper class. (Go to any tournament and see how many rich guys there are there. NONE! They're too busy chasing women and driving fast cars to play chess.)
    Chess players in movies are always all around brilliant and charming people. (With very few exceptions, REAL chess players are introverted and so involved with chess they have little time to WASTE pursuing anything as trivial as LOVE, A PROFESSION, or SOCIAL GRACES. Exception: Computers! Most Chess players are, or will become, Computer nurds).
    Great Chess players are always honored to play on some rich guy's fancy Philipino Art Set. (In reality, better players are almost always adament about playing on a plain, unadorned wood or plastic "Staunton" set. No red or blue pieces, no ceramic or metal, no elephants for rooks.)
    The board is usually set up wrong, with the black square at the players lower right, or with one or both of the King/Queen set up backwards. (WHITE SQUARE GOES ON THE PLAYERS RIGHT. QUEENS on thier own color: white QUEEN on white, black QUEEN on black.)
    Supposedly brilliant players usually miss one move checkmates in critical games. This is akin to a professional race car driver backing his station wagon into the garage door.
    On the other hand, good players are often portrayed as seeing 15 or 20 moves ahead in detail from a middle game, when there are still many pieces on the board. (One could more easily predict the next president and all 535 congressmen correctly before the election. In the End Game, when the number of pieces is limited, looking ahead often becomes a question of counting moves, who can get to the critical square first, or of very limited numbers of moves, and is more feasible.)
    Beginners usually beat experienced players, as a mechanism for showing the neophyte's native brilliance. (This is about as common as a tall, athletic man who's never seen a basketball beating an NBA player in one-on-one. It could happen, if the pro had a really bad day, but who would you bet on?)
    Players who are really behind (have lost more pieces) come up with brilliant ways to win anyway. (If they're so good, how did they get behind in the first place?)
    CLOTHING
    Male characters generally are cold-natured. They need to wear jeans and leather jackets when the female characters are comfortable in cutoffs and a halter top.
    Heroes are the exception to the above. He often is more comfortable in extreme cold after losing his coat or having the shirt ripped from his back. When this is not true (Cliffhanger), swimming in ice water helps.
    Whenever anyone knocks out anyone else and takes their clothes, it's always a flawless fit.
    COMPUTERS & ELECTRONICS
    Word processors never display a cursor.
    You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.
    Movie character never make typing mistakes.
    All monitors display inch-high letters.
    High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.
    Those that don't, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain english.
    Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard
    Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS" (see "Fortress")
    All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.
    Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.
    All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.
    People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
    A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
    Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function (see "Demolition Man" and countless others).
    Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.
    When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
    If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (e.g Clear and Present Danger).
    If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automagically asked for a password when you try to access it.
    No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
    The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has (Aliens). However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled.
    Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics capability.
    Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.
    Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see "Alien", "2001").
    CONVERSATIONS
    Two people will often converse while one stares out the window, with their back to the other. When an emotional point is made, the first person will turn around.
    CRIME
    When you go to rob a bank in a film, you will always choose the teller who has just started his or her first day on the job.
    DEATH
    In situations like the Vietnem war, and violent inner city neighborhoods, the person with the most plans, prospects, and hopes will die.
    A dying person's last words will always be coherent and significant.
    A good person will always die in the presence of friends.
    If a person good person dies with his eyes open, a friend will close them, and they will remain closed. If a villain dies with his eyes open, no one will close them, and the camera will linger on his face.
    When your sidekick, lover, or similar acquaintance is on the verge of dying, don't call an ambulance; instead hold her warmly and whisper words of comfort, or kiss her passionately. Theoretically she may not be much into it under the circumstances, but hey, it may be your last chance! Then, when she relaxes or slumps over visibly, you can say your tearful good-bye to her, because this means she is dead. Alternately, if she is already slumped over when you get to her, check her pulse, but if the resulting music is soft and slow, don't bother trying CPR. If she doesn't like this treatment better than a chance to save her life, don't worry; it's not like she will be able to do anything about it!
    (see also VILLAINS)
    DINING
    The hero and heroine in love always get a great table in a restaurant, even in New York City at lunch on Saturday (When Harry Met Sally).

    Current Mood: amused
    Monday, December 29th, 2008
    6:59 pm
    Powerful Adversaries
     I found some good gaming tips before, but only posted the links in the past. Now some of those links are dead. So, I'm posting the whole article this time so I don't lose it.

    Powerful Adversaries (As Posted in the Palladium Boards)

    As you all know, sometimes, one of the hardest things for a GM to do is create a truly frightening boss. While this job is certainly made easier if the GM is considerably cleverer than his players are, however, at times I have found one problem many GM's have, rookies especially, is coming up with genuine challenges within the confines of the rules.

    Therefore, in order to help any GM's out there looking for ways to challenge the APS Metal Invulnerable Regenerating super tanks or Robot with more built-in weapons than a southern gun shop. I will post here a list of advice and tips I have learned over my years of GMing for making even Rule-based bosses powerful and dangerous for an overconfident party.

    Please note this advice is specifically for making what could be called "big bosses" or recurring villains. I'm not going to list tips for good "encounters" -- These are specifically for making sure the guy behind the guy behind the guy behind the mooks are threatening, and likely to stick around for quite a while (Or, for those who play games where the villains always escape to fight another day, indefinitely)

    Also, in addition, I will over the next while, Post various, specific examples of rule-valid yet highly threatening NPC's--ones enough to give even a freshly minted mega hero reason for concern.

    1. Bosses are experienced--use that to your advantage! Being level 8+ means more than just an extra 8d6 HP and +40% to most skills. It means you have not only been around the block, you have explored most of the nooks and crannies and carved out a nice place for yourself. Experienced NPC's are established. They are certainly having access to more than starting equipment. Remember, "Little" bonuses add up. This largely depends on what the villain’s specialty is.

    Magic-based villains are, perhaps, the easiest to use correctly. Give them spells like Talisman and Amulet (or for mystic object characters, have them have a benefactor that has further rewarded them with such). Do remember that the little bonuses added up quickly become big bonuses. Also, make sure they have talismans avaible, which will allow them rapid access to highly useful spells without needing to move outwardly. Remember, talismans can be triggered by thought alone, so even if pinned and gagged, unless they are stripped they can still have a few tricks up their sleeve! Have Mystic Armor ready to go. Flesh to Stone can be a highly effective--a singled failed save can take a PC out of the fight instantly, even invulnerable heavy hitters. Dominate is relatively low level and devastatingly useful--Not simply for turning on PC's to fight, but because you can force them to answer ANY question with total honesty. Why simply turn him to fight when you can lure him away from the shadows and learn everyone's weaknesses? In addition, let us not forget, while you cannot make them commit suicide, they do not get a save if they do not know something is going to be fatal. For example, telling them to walk in a room is always okay if they do not know about the pit trap with acid there. For speed demons, Befuddle is second level and ridiculously useful. Cut Attacks per melee in half and make them liable to forget what they're trying to do. Astral Projection can be a highly useful spying tool. If the party has no one to see the invisible, they automatically get unlimited license to know everything the party is doing. If you allow spells from other Palladium games, things like Mental Shock can be crippling in a close fight if they succeed their save and can automatically remove the party's Juggernaut from action on a failure. A good magic user doesn’t NEED to have any damaging spells to win fights against tanks. They just have to be smart.

    Psionics Villains are a bit harder to work with. There are only a limited number of psionics avaible in palladium compared to spells, and many of them are "buffs" that improve your abilities moderately too greatly but relatively little that is useful on powerful opponents. Still, what there is can be devastating if used properly.
    Super Telekinesis is a classic for a prepared villain. For example, any newly minted psychic can throw a car with their mind. An established villain can throw a car at with a trunk full of Nitro Glycerin at someone. In addition, throwing the party tank INTO the party ranged guy never gets old. Ever.
    Bio-manipulation is probably one psionics that needs no help, but I’ll mention it anyway. If your villain isn't trying to Paralyze and/or blind every PC with a save vs. psionics less than 5 from the shadows before the battle even begins, you’re doing something wrong.
    Telekinetic force field is a great defensive power. What's often overlooked is its utility in hamstringing their movements. Simply drop a TK force field around the opposing party instead of their own. Now not only do they still have to do enough damage to get though before they can damage you--they are trapped inside the shield while your villain is free to walk around and do things. Like finish his plan. Or throw the switch. Or finish making his evil speech--whatever it is he wants to do. And when the time comes to run, it's great for blocking the path to follow him.
    Astral Projection is just as useful for spying for psychics as it is for mages.
    Empathetic transmission is great for ending battles before they even begin. A lucky save can make some or all PC members run away in fear. Trust is perhaps the most useful; however, as they can make the PC's believe whatever sob story they can come up with to excuse their actions. Or even better, convince them an even bigger threat is nigh--from someone incontinent to them
    Hypnotic suggestion is great for long term planning. A simple order to "shoot the president" won't make them immediately go out hunting--but if they ever cross paths, it's bound to tie the PC's up for quite a while dealing with the fallout. Even if they can explain innocence, it provides an opening for the villain to make a move while the entire nation is distracted...

    Invention Characters are at once the easiest and hardest to make do with. On the one hand, given enough time and money (and sense we're dealing with Established big bosses, they will always either have or work for an organization with plenty of both), they make a machine to do pretty much whatever they want. On the other hand, how hard or easy these are to deal with depends more on the GM's creativity than the character themselves. Perhaps the most unlimited, being able to make an item for any situation whatsoever, it then falls on the GM to plan ahead and make things to deal with the party. However, it is possible to give an Arsenal of things, things so self respecting Genius would do without
    That they should have armor goes without saying. This doesn’t necessarily have to be worn by them; however, they could easily have a Robot NPC working for them, that, also as an experienced NPC, will have a robot with a much larger budget, improved over time. Likewise, they should have either military heavy weaponry or invented equivalents. Things like high-powered armor piercing rounds on long burst can quickly deal 80-200 damage, easily, and that's per melee attack. Now if your genius has had some time, replace Automatic Rifle Turrets with hypersonic armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot depleted uranium long rod penetrators. Sure, it'll only get off three shots a round. Better dodge 'em or take 2d6*100 damage a shot. Those things take out actual tanks in one it.
    All that leads to the general advice of their Base. Their base, of course, being a high tech super fortress that the Genius spends the majority of his time in. A patient party can always try to wait for the rare times they come out into the light of day, and they should be designed to make that an attractive option. As these fortresses vary so widely in design and purpose I’ll leave it to the individual GM's to come up with the exact types. However, the defenses of such places should always involve things like "Automatic Weapon Fire" "High Explosives" and "Lots of guards with Automatic weapons and high explosives". And just a few "Robots with really big automatic weapons and even bigger explosives" This ain't the dreamer tinkering in his basement and dreaming of owning the world one day, no. This is the guy who gives James Bond gear. As these guys are physically frail, their primary motive is in avoiding actually meeting the party at all costs. They rely more on minions than about any other class. The difference is their minions are significantly better armed and armored than other villains minions. They should always have at least one Bodyguard of any type Special Training type 3 levels lower than they are that is their personal bodyguard who is with them almost all the time, given a variety of high tech armor and weapons to make them much tougher. And they should always have, on them, Smoke grenade equivalents, clothing body armor with no less than 200 SDC and AR of 15, and a jet pack. Remember--paranoia isn't insane if the party really is out to get them.

    Special training classes are, without exception, the hardest to use effectively against mega level heroes. They don't have many real powers, and they don't have access to the vast, advanced level of weaponry avaible to the genius classes--their equipment is special military grade at best. The answer is simple: Give them Friends. A Special Training who works for a Genius suddenly gains enough high-grade equipment to be a significant threat. One who is friends with a mage can have some magical goodies on him for a surprise. Remember, these will be guys who have been around and have picked up more than a bit along the way.
    That's one option. The other option is even simpler. Fight Dirty. I don't mean the usual villain dirty--they have to be extra careful. Use the fact the hero's probably don't know their secret identity any more than he knows theirs to his advantage. Have him stake out their place, watch their movements.
    Have his plans be short, swift, and brutal. He can't last in a sustained fight. His plans should be getting in and get out before the PC's can get their bearings. Some useful tips:
    Gasses. Such villains should make liberal use of toxic attacks, flash-bang grenades, Tranquilizer guns, anything that gives them an Edge. They should then layer such. Drop a smoke grenade first to blind the party. Then drop a tear gas to make them loose their bearings. Then have them (in gas mask and thermal goggles), start sniping them with Tranquilizer darts and make them save each hit. They should never move in for the kill or capture until everyone has at least -8 on all actions and -50% to skills. These are, probably, the hardest ones to deal with invulnerable characters, as there's little they can do to them. This, really, has no easy solution, as characters like this are exactly what Invulnerability is designed to fight. If so, have the villain avoid direct confrontations. Why fight when they know they’re going to lose? Plan their plots around misdirection. Done properly, the party will never know his true intentions until AFTER he already got what he wanted. Congratulations on foiling the bomb at City hall, too bad for you all I wanted was to break into the vault at Mindwerks to get this new super weapon... (Which then, of course, will be something useful against the party

    Robotic characters are probably the easiest to beef up. Three Words. More. Is. Better. More attributes, more armor, more guns! More more more. And more friends, too. More people in good armor and automatic weapons at my back. More gas ejectors and chemical sedatives. The exact formula for their budget really shouldn't matter, but by level 10, a robotic character, rather power armor pilot, cyborg, android, or vehicle, should have more hidden devices and weapons than a military stockpile. Like special training characters, they can do little to invulnerable characters. Unlike them, just because they can't kill them doesn’t mean they can't fight them. They should have enough armor to take a beating and still keep coming back, and just because punches don't hurt them doesn’t mean they can't knock them for a loop costing them attacks. At this point, their primary purpose is to hold off the party while their minions accomplish their plans, and then make a getaway. Remember, the goal isn't usually to KILL the party; it's to finish their evil plan. With cunning, planning, luck, and lots of firepower, they can stall things until their plans come to fruition. [b]note[/b], a robotics villain who allies himself with a genius villain is probably the most devastating combo in the game, as there really is no limit to what gear they can make or what they can accomplish. Their greatest vulnerability is, typically, another robotics character or tank super powered character, which can dish out enough damage to force them to withdraw before their plan is complete.

    Last, but hardly least, are the super powered villains. Classics, they can be surprisingly difficult to make increasingly threatening at higher levels. For starters, most powers don't really improve as the villain grows in experience. A large variety of powers provides one time bonuses and modest increases in levels. Others see noticeable increases in utility, such as direct damage powers like the various EE powers, while many others provide a strongly useful benefit but little more than modest increases in range and duration as they level. Lastly, there are so many superpowers that provide so many options; there is no standard set of strengths and weaknesses for them. The best and I feel most elegant solution is to simply have them, whatever their powers, acquire...friends. Super powered villains are the most likely of all to form a "league" or alliance with other types of villains or even other super powered villains. No matter what area their strength lies, they will have dozens of things they can't do well. Don't be afraid to use Leagues in your game. Also: established super powered villains will have been successful enough to have their own Fortress's of Doom. These will be more modestly outfitted than, say, an analytical genius’s fortress, but whatever their weaknesses it will be designed to compensate for them. Also, make sure they have many minions. A bunch of guys running around with pistols may only be modest threats to powerful heroes, but sometimes a distraction is all it takes. They are also likely to devise traps that play to their strengths. Villains know what their weaknesses are, and so they work so as to not allow them to come into play. Give them Friends, and they'll be OK.

    That's all for now. More advice, and of course, criticism on my advice is welcome

    Current Mood: mischievous
    Saturday, December 27th, 2008
    9:31 am
    Brains!
     Found a link to this clever song on the Palladium Books forum.

    http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Re%20Your%20Brains

    Current Mood: artistic
    Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
    3:39 pm
    Gossip @ Work
     Workplace Gossip is Good For You
    A wise person once said, "Extraordinary people talk about ideas, average people talk about events, and little people talk about other people." Yet, here are 5 Cool Ideas on why gossip is good for you.
    1. Gossip is the hallmark of a healthy organization.
    Silence is a scourge that represents apathy and indifference. In its healthiest form, gossip indicates that people are taking an interest in what's going on. True, not all gossip is grounded in reality, but neither are brainstorming sessions and the resulting innovative ideas.
    2. Gossip is not bad when it exposes liars and frauds.
    W. Mark Felt, Washington's "Deep Throat," was a gossiper. His serial gossiping with Carl Bernstein exposed improprieties of the Nixon administration and eventually brought down the President.
    3. Gossip is an early warning system.
    Gossip can act as an early warning system that prompts leadership to sharpen their message and provide training. Indeed, alert managers will respond to hidden agendas, malicious communication and insidious "Chinese whispers." The Chinese Whisper Phenomenon occurs when original messages are twisted beyond recognition as they are relayed through the communication chain.
    4. Gossip withers in an environment of checks and balances.
    A diversified social network encourages people to be forthright and less gossipy. Pity the employees who still don't know that it is illegal to purposely convey false information at work. It's plain stupid to do so via e-mail, voicemail or blogs, which conveniently provide an electronic trail back to the gossip.
    5. Use gossip to get people talking about you.
    Oscar Wilde wrote that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Use gossip to heighten interest in your project, to advertise your service and to get yourself promoted.

    Current Mood: complacent
    Thursday, June 19th, 2008
    12:47 pm
    Kneel Before Zod!
     A funny excerpt from an interview with Anne Hathaway & Steve Carell for Get Smart:

    Carell: When I first started talking to Pete (Segal the director) about just tonally what the movie could potentially look like, I said, "What about a comedic `Bourne Identity?"' You take the action in that and you make it a legitimate spy movie that's funny, as opposed to taking the cliches of spy movies and turning them on their heads.
    If the villains are like Terence Stamp, these guys are scary and actually have some threat to them. There's some sense of jeopardy. The comedy laid on top of that might resonate more.
    Hathaway: There's a great story about Terence. He was switching hotels when we were shooting in Montreal. He just went downstairs and he couldn't find a taxi. He was standing around looking for a taxi and some guy just drove up and went, "Zod?" And he goes, "Yes." And the guy goes, "What are you doing in Montreal?" "I'm making a movie. Can you give me a ride?" And the guy goes, "Absolutely." So the guy drove him to his hotel.
    AP: I hope the guy didn't make him say, "Kneel before Zod."
    Carell: I'm sure he's had to say it to like, cash a check.

    You can find the entire interview here:

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/17/get.smart.qa.ap/index.html

    Current Mood: amused
    Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
    2:14 pm
    Men
     It's true. It's all true.

    Fall Classes for Men at:
    THE
    ADULT LEARNING CENTER

    REGISTRATION MUST BE COMPLETED
    by Sept. 10, 2007

    NOTE: DUE TO THE COMPLEXITY AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL
    OF THEIR CONTENTS, CLASS SIZES WILL BE LIMITED TO 8 PARTICIPANTS MAXIMUM.


    Class 1
    How To Fill Up The Ice Cube Trays--Step by Step, with Slide Presentation.
    Meets 4 weeks, Monday and Wednesday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

    Class 2
    The Toilet Paper Roll--Does It Change Itself?
    Round Table Discussion.
    Meets 2 weeks, Saturday 12:00 for 2 hours.

    Class 3
    Is It Possible To Urinate Using The Technique Of Lifting The Seat and Avoiding The Floor, Walls and Nearby Bathtub?--Group Practice.
    Meets 4 weeks, Saturday 10:00 PM for 2 hours.

    Class 4
    Fundamental Differences Between The Laundry Hamper and The Floor--Pictures and Explanatory Graphics.
    Meets Saturdays at 2:00 PM for 3 weeks.

    Class 5
    Dinner Dishes--Can They Levitate and Fly Into The Kitchen Sink?
    Examples on Video.
    Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning
    at 7:00 PM

    Class 6
    Loss Of Identity--Losing The Remote To Your Significant Other.
    Help Line Support and Support Groups.
    Meets 4 Weeks, Friday and Sunday 7:00 PM

    Class 7
    Learning How To Find Things--Starting With Looking In The Right Places And Not Turning The House Upside Down While Screaming.
    Open Forum .
    Monday at 8:00 PM, 2 hours.

    Class 8
    Health Watch--Bringing Her Flowers Is Not Harmful To Your Health.
    Graphics and Audio Tapes.
    Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.

    Class 9
    Real Men Ask For Directions When Lost--Real Life Testimonials.
    Tuesdays at 6:00 PM Location to be determined.

    Class 10
    Is It Genetically Impossible To Sit Quietly While She Parallel Parks?
    Driving Simulations.
    4 weeks, Saturday's noon, 2 hours.

    Class 11
    Learning to Live--Basic Differences Between Mother and Wife.
    Online Classes and role-playing .
    Tuesdays at 7:00 PM, location to be determined

    Class 12
    How to be the Ideal Shopping Companion
    Relaxation Exercises, Meditation and Breathing Techniques.
    Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

    Class 13
    How to Fight Cerebral Atrophy--Remembering Birthdays, Anniversaries and Other Important Dates and Calling When You're Going To Be Late.
    Cerebral Shock Therapy Sessions and Full Lobotomies Offered.
    Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.

    Class 14
    The Stove/Oven--What It Is and How It Is Used.
    Live Demonstration.
    Tuesdays at 6:00 PM, location to be determined.

    Upon completion of any of the above courses, diplomas will be issued to the survivors.

    Current Mood: frustrated
    Thursday, March 13th, 2008
    12:42 pm
    D&D Flow Chart
     A friend at work sent this to me. Amusing.

    This is a flow chart of he course of your life if exposed to D&D in the early part of your life

    http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/03/09/opinion/09opart2.ready.html

    Current Mood: amused
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