VOTE, the Democracy Demon's Devilishly Devious and Decidedly Diabolical Desultory Derision (Random Banter) #100

[dish]

No, he was a lovely little boy. And I'm still cut up that he disappeared.

CaoCao: brutal tyrant or misunderstood genius?

[Cristo Meyers]

Depends on who you ask. Some think Liu Bei is supposed to be the good guy (that whole "man of the people" thing), others Cao Cao (he was the rightful ruler).

Most everyone agrees that Sun Jian and his kin are pretty much supposed to be looked down upon, though.

[dish]

Well, I've always had a soft spot for Cao Cao (although it was my husband who named the cats). Oh, and Zhugeliang - he's the best.

[Player_Zero]

My cat is called Tiger. She is tiger striped. She is also older than me...


Do you know a story that goes like this...
There once was a Tiger-Shaped Cat. This cat died a million deaths and was reborn a million times. He was owned by various people who he didn't care for....

The cat wasn't afraid to die...

One Day, The cat was a free cat, A Stray Cat. He met a white female cat, and the two cats spent their days happily together....

Years passed by and the white cat die of old age. The tiger-striped cat cried a million times, and then died. It never came back alive...

[CurlyKitGirl]

Back from my job interview and I have a nice long moan to begin.
Moan The First:
I actually decided to buy my first new item of clothing in over a year today. A pair of jeans. So I went Peacocks (armed with my £20 worth of vouchers) and started looking around. And noticed something. Sure, they all fit around up top; but I'm a shrimp.
So they're all too long in the leg. By many inches. About six. Even if I stand on tiptoes they still scrape along the ground.
I check out the whole half a rack of sizes with short leg thingies. And they're not in my size.
So what I have now is the best fitting pair in the shop - six inches too long in the leg. At least they're unembellished.
Oh, and I bought a lovely pair of earrings (my one feminine weakness).
Moan The Second:
Okay, my bibliophiliac desires are too great. Today alone I added sixteen books to my Wanted List. Bringing my total of books to buy to a grand 103. And that's just in my two local book shops and seven charity shops. Jeeze! Some of the books on my list are: Lian Hearns' faux Japan series; a lot of Austen books; Milton's Paradise Lost; Dante's Divine COmedy; four Feist books; the complete TRC/xxxHolic; Robin Hobb; Twenty Years Later and The Man in the Iron Mask (the after Musketeers books) and many more. Yet I can't afford them. So I can't buy any of them. *sigh*

Fleepin' Enormous Moan The Third:
Public transport.
That shoul say it all, but let me elaborate in detail my distaste and effective paranoia.
In a car or plane you can go from A to Z nonstop. So sleeping and being ditracted is permitted, nay encouraged (providing you're not driving). Transport via bus to school/college is the same. They stop along the way but terminate at the common destination.
I like, no, love being distracted and/or sleeping. Especially as I suffer from insomnia and am a natural night creature so napping is well . . . welcomed. So, let's move onto things like local buses.
They're not so bad. Seeing as I nearly always (read 99.9% of the time) get off at the town centre there's one stop after that - the bus station. ABout one minute away from the town centre. All well and good. Except for the two buses who do the summer tourist route or ones I seldom catch. I have to make absolutely certain they get off at my stop even though I know they stop there. Hell, this's the same for my two common buses. Paranoia at work. And those summer buses. One's an open top. It runs every day in summer.
Even today. But it's only four minutes from town to my home. So I get on. ANd it's like a fleepin' swimming pool in there. Literally. And the heavy rain comes down the stairwell so you get rained on inside, have to take a shower to get off the bus and risk going waterskiiing to get off.
Now for the buses to other towns and trains. They're meant to allow occasional sleep. But if I'm that paranoid about my local town imagine how worried I am about those buses (and especially trains). I can't relax and get seriously nervous within two stops of my stop in case I miss it or the driver won't stop for me. Trains.
Trains scare me. What if I miss my stop. Tjere'll be ten, twenty, a hunderd miles until the next one. And if you miss it you can't run up to the driver and say 'I've missed my stop could you let me off here please?' can you? You sit down in a cold sweat panicking about what to do. Especially if, like me, you don't have a mobile or the person you're going to meet doesn't have one.
And you have to spend even more money to get back to your stop. And wait for ages. Unless you have a kind conductor, paying is obligatory. And what if you get on at one end of the line to go to a place you've never been before and your friend, who gets on at another stop doesn't catch the train? Or did but couldn't find you so is on another carriage? What do you do? Hang around the train station for the next train? Wait at the station until tme to go home?
Trains (and occasionally buses) send me into a nervous nervous panic. Yet I still have to catch them to get to places.
I mean, if I panic like mad getting on a bus into town (when I know for a fact that every bus in the district goes into the bus station imagine how awful that feels leaving town.
I hate public transport so much.

[Player_Zero]

Public transport is The Devil, yes.

What annoys me is that other people are allowed to use it.

...And there's always a bunch of w*nkers on the back seats playing rap music on their phones, too.

[dish]

Curly: I once ended up at the wrong airport in Tokyo (Naurita rather than Haneda), took an airport bus to the right airport, missed my flight, and was stranded with only 20US$ left in the whole world. Went to a bank in the airport to change the dollars - and they would only accept two of them (since the others were 'too old' for their machines to check). Oh, have I mentioned that I don't speak a word of Japanese?

You know what? It all worked out ok in the end. (I've been vaguely intending to write this story out for the 'hope' thread, because the ending is seriously cheesy.) You have got to relax and let life take you on its journey. If you miss your stop it's probably for a reason, and - trust me - good things will happen.

Player_Zero: I think I might enjoy Cowboy Bebop. If I come to Nottingham will you lend me the DVD?

Here's a story:
Once a lion fell in love with a marmoset. Unfortunately, their difference in size was causing far too many problems, so he went to see the Goddess of Mercy.
"Dear Goddess," the lion cried, "please shrink me to the size of a marmoset. But if you will, leave me with my most prized trait - my courage."
The Goddess was touched, so she shrank the lion, but left him with his courageous heart, and the result is now know as the Pekingnese dog.

[Player_Zero]

I don't exist, if you'll recall. How can I lend a DVD?

Also, I hereby declare it storytime!

...Cool... Raining...

[CurlyKitGirl]

I used to have two cats. A Tom and a girl - Jessie and Smudge respectively. Then we had six because Smudge and Jessie had kittens. Then we had two because we gave the kittens away. Now we have one because Jessie boy disappeared over eighteen months ago.

I really don't like public transport very very much. And rap music is despicable.

[Dallas-Dakota]

I really don't like public transport very very much. And rap music is despicable.

Oh Curly!
Marry me?

[Player_Zero]

I said storytime, darnit!

*Links Watership Down again.*

...Now... To find some stories to post...

...Hmm... I can't find any... Maybe I'll make one up. That might kill some time.

[dish]

I'd tell you a story if the server wasn't always so busy...

Oh, Curly and d-d, while it's not to my taste, would you believe that there is actually such a thing as intelligent rap? Even Eminem had a serious sense of humour.

Right, story time. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

Thousands of years ago, after the evil emperor Qin Shi Huang united China he decided to build the Great Wall. This involved a lot of labour, so his soldiers were dispatched around the empire to round up all the available young me. One man, called Fan Qi Liang, ran away to hide from the conscription in a local landowner's garden. While hiding there, he was discovered by the owner's daughter: Meng Jiang Nü, and they fell in love.

Fan Qi Liang was so in love that he agreed to marry Meng Jiang Nü openly, but sadly, this was his downfall, as the soldiers crashed the wedding and carried him away on his wedding night. Meng Jiang Nü waited for him at home, but the seasons turned and turned without her hearing a single word.

Finally, in the depth of winter, Meng Jiang Nü went out in search of her husband. She took with her the winter clothes she had sewn for him, and journied to the Great Wall. When she got there, she travelled from construction camp to construction camp searching, but there was no sign of her lover.

Eventually Meng Jiang Nü broke down and sat on the wall sobbing. Her tears ran down and the section of the wall they touched collapsed, revealling the bones of hundreds of men who had died attempting to complete this massive project.

Meng Jiang Nü took a knife and cut her finger. Her blood dripped onto the lifeless skeletons until it was soaked up by one body. She knew this had to be her lover - Fan Qi Liang - and so she buried him. Then she climbed up to the highest part of the wall and threw herself to her death in a ravine below.

[Rockphed]

Fleepin' Enormous Moan The Third:
Public transport.
That shoul say it all, but let me elaborate in detail my distaste and effective paranoia.
In a car or plane you can go from A to Z nonstop. So sleeping and being ditracted is permitted, nay encouraged (providing you're not driving). Transport via bus to school/college is the same. They stop along the way but terminate at the common destination.
I like, no, love being distracted and/or sleeping. Especially as I suffer from insomnia and am a natural night creature so napping is well . . . welcomed. So, let's move onto things like local buses.
They're not so bad. Seeing as I nearly always (read 99.9% of the time) get off at the town centre there's one stop after that - the bus station. ABout one minute away from the town centre. All well and good. Except for the two buses who do the summer tourist route or ones I seldom catch. I have to make absolutely certain they get off at my stop even though I know they stop there. Hell, this's the same for my two common buses. Paranoia at work. And those summer buses. One's an open top. It runs every day in summer.
Even today. But it's only four minutes from town to my home. So I get on. ANd it's like a fleepin' swimming pool in there. Literally. And the heavy rain comes down the stairwell so you get rained on inside, have to take a shower to get off the bus and risk going waterskiiing to get off.
Now for the buses to other towns and trains. They're meant to allow occasional sleep. But if I'm that paranoid about my local town imagine how worried I am about those buses (and especially trains). I can't relax and get seriously nervous within two stops of my stop in case I miss it or the driver won't stop for me. Trains.
Trains scare me. What if I miss my stop. Tjere'll be ten, twenty, a hunderd miles until the next one. And if you miss it you can't run up to the driver and say 'I've missed my stop could you let me off here please?' can you? You sit down in a cold sweat panicking about what to do. Especially if, like me, you don't have a mobile or the person you're going to meet doesn't have one.
And you have to spend even more money to get back to your stop. And wait for ages. Unless you have a kind conductor, paying is obligatory. And what if you get on at one end of the line to go to a place you've never been before and your friend, who gets on at another stop doesn't catch the train? Or did but couldn't find you so is on another carriage? What do you do? Hang around the train station for the next train? Wait at the station until tme to go home?
Trains (and occasionally buses) send me into a nervous nervous panic. Yet I still have to catch them to get to places.
I mean, if I panic like mad getting on a bus into town (when I know for a fact that every bus in the district goes into the bus station imagine how awful that feels leaving town.
I hate public transport so much.

Do your buses at least run regularly? I spent 2 hours getting home from jury duty yesterday because the East<=>West bus only runs once an hour(compared to the North<=>South bus which runs often enough that it was playing leapfrog with itself.) A couple weeks ago, I ended up being late getting home because the 3:30 bus didn't run. Last winter, I waited for an hour, in the cold, for a bus, only to watch the bus I was transferring from go by again before the one I needed came up.

Although I have only ridden a train once, and then it was an extension of a bus line, you have my sympathy for the trains. They are slightly scary making.

[Eldpollard]

Back from my job interview and I have a nice long moan to begin.

Moan The Second:
Okay, my bibliophiliac desires are too great. Today alone I added sixteen books to my Wanted List. Bringing my total of books to buy to a grand 103. And that's just in my two local book shops and seven charity shops. Jeeze! Some of the books on my list are: Lian Hearns' faux Japan series; a lot of Austen books; Milton's Paradise Lost; Dante's Divine COmedy; four Feist books; the complete TRC/xxxHolic; Robin Hobb; Twenty Years Later and The Man in the Iron Mask (the after Musketeers books) and many more. Yet I can't afford them. So I can't buy any of them. *sigh*

.

With regards to books, and the buying thereof, there is always your local libraries. Free books is always good (unless you have overdue ones. Not me though, staff in my council's libraries don't pay fines.)
If anyone here is unlucky enough to live in Kirklees I offer my services as book fine remover man.

[Zakama]

My cats are called:
XiXi (pronounced 'she she' - it's Chinese for 'peace')

Umm... I'm pretty sure it's not spelled the same way, but the sound she she means pee pee (yes, pee pee, not just pee) in Korean.

[CurlyKitGirl]

Do your buses at least run regularly?
*snip*
Although I have only ridden a train once, and then it was an extension of a bus line, you have my sympathy for the trains. They are slightly scary making.

Yes.
Yes they do.

Trains are very scary and I have to catch one on Saturday.

[Phase]

Thousands of years ago, after the evil emperor Qin Shi Huang united China he decided to build the Great Wall. This involved a lot of labour, so his soldiers were dispatched around the empire to round up all the available young me. One man, called Fan Qi Liang, ran away to hide from the conscription in a local landowner's garden. While hiding there, he was discovered by the owner's daughter: Meng Jiang Nü, and they fell in love.

Fan Qi Liang was so in love that he agreed to marry Meng Jiang Nü openly, but sadly, this was his downfall, as the soldiers crashed the wedding and carried him away on his wedding night. Meng Jiang Nü waited for him at home, but the seasons turned and turned without her hearing a single word.

Finally, in the depth of winter, Meng Jiang Nü went out in search of her husband. She took with her the winter clothes she had sewn for him, and journied to the Great Wall. When she got there, she travelled from construction camp to construction camp searching, but there was no sign of her lover.

Eventually Meng Jiang Nü broke down and sat on the wall sobbing. Her tears ran down and the section of the wall they touched collapsed, revealling the bones of hundreds of men who had died attempting to complete this massive project.

Meng Jiang Nü took a knife and cut her finger. Her blood dripped onto the lifeless skeletons until it was soaked up by one body. She knew this had to be her lover - Fan Qi Liang - and so she buried him. Then she climbed up to the highest part of the wall and threw herself to her death in a ravine below.

Nice story, but there's no Genghis Khan in it, so it only gets four out of five.

[Player_Zero]

Sad story is sad...

*Gets to work on thinking one of his own...*

...Actually, I have one that might work... I'll just need to edit it a bit...

[Thufir]

I much prefer trains to buses, because the stations are labeled. On a bus, you have to know what your stop looks like, which isn't very helpful if you've never been there before. On a train, it generally gets announced, and there are signs.
Idiots playing music loudly is very annoying, but I don't encounter it very often. In fact more often the loud music is me and my choir friends singing...

[bosssmiley]

@dish: Yay for oriental happy endings!

Spoiler

Show

cherry blossom fall, everyone dies

Moan The Second:
Okay, my bibliophiliac desires are too great. Today alone I added sixteen books to my Wanted List.
<trim>
Twenty Years Later and The Man in the Iron Mask (the after Musketeers books) and many more. Yet I can't afford them. So I can't buy any of them. *sigh*

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but bookcrossing.com. Send books into the wild to make new friends, find (or get sent) new booky friends. It is unalloyed goodness.

And, unless you're in Newcastle (best integrated transport system in the country) public transport does indeed suck and fail. It is a sad truth.

Unrelated: I should *never* go looking for 90s indie songs on YouTube.
I just end up depressing myself that I will never be that young, that floppy-haired, that thin, that idealistic, that resilient to hangovers/comedowns, or that excited by the limitless opportunities before me ever again.

D&D has it wrong (again): there are no beneficial aging penalties; they're nothing but unalloyed suck.

[YPU]

Yay, i just ordered ‘american gods’ wasnt that expansive on my favoured web order site.
And for my moan of the day; game systems. I tend to collect them fore the pure knowledge of them. I must have read over a hundred pen and paper role-playing games. Also, I am a creative person. Now I am co-writing the rules system for a local larp and you should think I would be able to write a semi original rules set that would at least borrow from enough sourses so that things cant be recognized anymore. Not so it seems, I cant come up with anything that’s not more then skin deep different from the rules used by the larps I play in, damn that.

[Thufir]

And, unless you're in Newcastle (best integrated transport system in the country) public transport does indeed suck and fail. It is a sad truth.

Is it really the best in the country? Awesome.

[CurlyKitGirl]

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but bookcrossing.com. Send books into the wild to make new friends, find (or get sent) new booky friends. It is unalloyed goodness.

And, unless you're in Newcastle (best integrated transport system in the country) public transport does indeed suck and fail. It is a sad truth.

D:
Shame though because I'm not signing up. But our college has a similar thing but on a college level size.
But from the sound of one of the threads I have Chronic Book Buying Syndrome or at least am desparately fighting it. Oh well, might as well get on with it:
"Hi, I'm Curly and I've had CBB since I was eight, but it's escalated in the past three years. Currently I have to wrestle with my ever weakening concious (and wallet) to not buy anything.
I probably need help; but I have no wish to get it."
A thread should be set up to help the forumites who suffer from this.

And our public transport doesn't suck but its quality is . . . undesirable.

[Player_Zero]

It's storytime! Here's a Player_Zero original.

There once was a man of great skill of intruments; his mastery over the harp, the lute, the flute, over all instruments was known across the lands.

This man, in his travels, fell deeply in love with a maiden of supreme grace, who returned his affection. She, like him, was gifted with great musicial talent; through the forests and the greenlands of the world she was known for her splendourous voice and song. The couple adventured across the world, sharing their music with anyone willing to hear it. For years they travelled and searched for those to share their songs with, dazzling audiences and inspiring many heroes.

But the lives of man are but the twinkling of a thought and the echo of a dream, as the years past the man grew ill; growing to understand that he would eventually die, leaving his beloved behind and alone, and that no magic which he could wield would prevent this. The man sought out a wise seer, of whom it was said of that knew everything. The seer, after hearing of the tale, knew of only one solution, bitter-sweet as it was. The man heard the seer's words and knew it was the only way his love would endure his mortality.

The seer's words were thus: "No man can defeat fate, nor battle time. A human life cannot be extended past the will of the gods. However, the minds of all peoples are not so stalwart as time or fate. If you truly wish your love to not to suffer your demise then there is one alternate path. There exists a magic of memory, a magic which can change a man's heart and a magic to make a person forget."

The man went back to his love and held her one last time, playing one last lullaby for her, and then, though it broke his heart to do so, he departed forever from her. His love shed not a tear by the man's leaving, for his last sorrowful song to her caused her to forget him forever.


...

A man takes pride in his writing with a DON!

[Eldpollard]

D:
Shame though because I'm not signing up. But our college has a similar thing but on a college level size.
But from the sound of one of the threads I have Chronic Book Buying Syndrome or at least am desparately fighting it. Oh well, might as well get on with it:
"Hi, I'm Curly and I've had CBB since I was eight, but it's escalated in the past three years. Currently I have to wrestle with my ever weakening concious (and wallet) to not buy anything.
I probably need help; but I have no wish to get it."
A thread should be set up to help the forumites who suffer from this.

And our public transport doesn't suck but its quality is . . . undesirable.

Libraries can be a partial answer to CBB. Not full though. I work in them and I still keep buying them. I'm more of a chronic book borrower and never returning person.

[PhallicWarrior]

And now for a truly random question: I just got a big crate of those new Tiger Woods gatorade bottles, and I want to pick one for dance class tomorrow. Has anyone here tryed them, and if so, which one should I pick?

[CurlyKitGirl]

Libraries can be a partial answer to CBB. Not full though. I work in them and I still keep buying them. I'm more of a chronic book borrower and never returning person.

Ummm.
I've definitely ranted about this. My local library is awful to the point where I have more books than the fiction section in the actual library.
And I'm not going forty miles to the next library which isn't in the county's Hellhole.
Besides, I've been in there and it doesn't really impress me much. The books that are good are books I have or have read to death.

[Eldpollard]

That does indeed suck. Can't your library order in books from other libraries in the council though? There's usually only a nominal fee.

[CurlyKitGirl]

As a person suffering from acute CBB I vastly prefer to buy or mooch them off people I know.
Besides, two weeks (while being more than long enough for me to read a book) only whets my appetite for rereading it over and over.

[Phase]

That's a sad story, Player_Zero. I have one I just wrote as well:

Once upon a time there was a great lord. He spent his life in a greedy sort of way, ordering his serfs around, harrasing women, eating lavish amounts of food as the people starved, and generally spending his money on disgustingly obnoxious things. As a result, all the people of the land despised the lord.

On the eve of his forty-fifth birthday, the lord called his personal servant to his chamber. "It is my birthday," said the lord. "And I must know something. I have spent my life indulging myself to no end, but do the people still find me to be a benevolent ruler?" the servant, being a kind and gentle sort, and not wanting to do the lord wrong, answered truthfully. The lord sunk in despair and become sullen and deathly. He soon set out to perview his land, in order to get a confirmation of the feelings of the people.

He visited a small farm, disguised as a traveller, and begged the farmer and his wife to allow him in for something to eat. They offered him food and shelter for the night. As the lord was eating, he noticed that the farmer and his wife were not eating. "Why are you not eating, good people?" the lord asked. "Have you not worked youselves all day? You must be hungry." The farmer nodded. He explained that they were in the midst of a famine, and that they had spared what little food they had to aid him. The lord was touched, and he asked why the famine continued. "It is our lord." The farmer's wife began. "He indulges only in himself and allows us to starve! A curse upon his head!" The farmer and his wife spat on the ground. The lord was deep in thought.

The next morning, the lord thanked the farmer, and he set out. He came upon a blacksmith. The lord questioned him on his state. The blacksmith informed him of his position in the famine ravaged land. The lord listened intently, and became horrified. He offered to stay with the blacksmith for a short time to help. the blacksmith whole-heartedly accepted, and introduced the lord to his daughter. The lord saw the blacksmith's daughter, and immediately fell in love. In the following weeks, she grew to love him as well.

The lord then revealed his true identity to the blacksmith and his daughter. The blacksmith was outraged that his friend and helper for so long had in fact been the source of his troubles. He beat the lord, and threw him out into the road. The lord, bitter and angry, set back to his manor, hating the people of his land as much as, if not more than, they hated him.

Two alternate endings:

Counter-Storybook ending:
The lord, having not learned the error of his ways and continuing to be a greedy, bitter man, lived a life of luxury. He didn't care about what the people thought of him, he was happy. About a year later, he passed away in his sleep, being on the very edge of the conceivable longevity of feudal europe.

Realistic ending:
The lord, on returning home, realized the error of his ways. His love, the daughter's blacksmith, came to him and revealed her intent to marry after the lord had made good with the people. She kissed him, and left to await him in her home. He was about to organize an announcement to his vassals, when he began to feel ill. It started with a headache. Then chills and fever, which left him exhausted and prostrate. He began to vomit, feel back pains. The light of the sun was blocked from his chambers, as it caused him pain. He lay, pained in his bed, for two days when the swellings appeared. They were hard, painful, burning lumps on his neck, under his arms, on his inner thighs. Soon they turned black, split open, and began to ooze pus and blood. He bled internally. His every breath was pain beyond pain. It culminated in the fatal excersize, his blood vessels burst, his misery was extinguished, his room torched to eliminate contaminants. He had contracted the black death. Meanwhile, the blacksmith's daughter became ill. The disease spread. Over four million innocent people died across europe due to the lord's greed, though indirectly. Over two-thousand years later, two-thousand, four-hundred, and seventy years after the start of the common era, a peice of ice was exposed, revealing a remenant of that plague. The world, having been disease free for over one-hundred years, was ill-equipped to counter the plague, and it quickly extinguished of all mammalian life.