Hamstersss

Well, it was bound time for you to upgrade from sheep, anyway.

Yes, and so are sports cars and housing developments and Sesame Street and clans and every other contrivance of civilization, that is, unless you're the one on the inside. You think the Pope thinks that, and his cardinals. Of course not, they think church is the greatest ****ing invention ever. Trust me, you walk into a bar with that red cap and you can't keep the ladies of you.

Pah! The sun's a myth, perpetrated by people who go outside our beautiful cave. And that's it. That's the only thing anyone said that was worth responding to. I hope you bastages are happy... I can't believe the only person who liked my Pope idea was that damned gnome. Come on, people, get your heads outta your asses and into the Church!

Wow, it was only 46 short years ago that they built you out of leftover bits from the toaster revolution, eh, Rune? Happy birthday, thanks for giving us all the present of a pissed-off Hiram showing his teeth. And is that what TGD is? I thought the idiot's membership was revoked on account of all the goat porn he was sending and, being a Kiwi, he figured that by putting some stupid brackets and caps-locked lettering, he'd be able to hide from Moon and the bald one. Probably right, considering the quality of the constablary... constulabury... consolitaberary... cunnilingistary... police force.

So, besides ignoring Iosef's desperate attempts to get us to pay attention to his Nerd's Gold, I wonder what else we should be doing with our time here. We is, after all, a trust, and I doubt that the Pool can survive much longer without a proper shakeup (Which is to say, bugger whether it survives or not, let us shake, Mr. Bond, until the whole thing comes to pieces). I have no idea what shakeup it requires, except that we'll need more than a bilabong to figure it out (Perchance, a gigabong?). Ergo, ipso, therefore, it stands to reason, that right now, since I still cannot kill those filthy Italians using tanks with two guns, that I shall begin a walk... down memory lane. Ahem. Pool (And Peng-related) reminiscences that make-a me happy: The Pool is now much like the Church and its faithful maintain it but, looking back to the MBT, it was amazing how organic and unstoppable it was. This isn't to say, "Oh, it was sooo much better back then" which, come on, would be like some whiny Calvinist saying, "Pshaw, it was so much better when J.C. was around". Inner Crodas. Scrolling the bar over to see the post on page 101 The thing imploded and took everything with it. The short-lived Cesspool cartoon. ---- Thusly, I have deteremined, already: We need a Pope. Positive subclause Alfa: We can, after all, name him. Positive subclause Barrio: He (Or she, natch) can be evicted. Well, not can, but should. Perhaps a new Pope with each thread. Positive subclause Catalina: The position, like that in real life, has no actual authority and thusly suits. Positive subclause Demeter: The Pope's only strength is to issue bull. We knows our bull here. Positivee subclause Effluence: Pope is one of only many titles and perchance we may see Caliph's and Patriarchs and such. Positive subclause Ganymede: It's my idea, which assures it some measure of validity. Ganymede subclause deficiency Implicit: Joe Shaw will be agin' it with much vociferocity. Ganymede subclause deficiency Impious Idiot: Various noobs and boobs shall be agin' it. Ganymede subclause deficiency Insane Island Imp: Any serving Caliphs will be subject to monitoring by our beautiful, soviet-sounding Department of Homeland Security. Ganymede subclause deficiency Intra-Veinous: INSERT WHATEVER PETTY ATTACK AGAINST MY BEAUTIFUL AND BRILLIANT IDEA HERE YOU ROTTEN SONS OF MOTHERLESS GOATS Positve subclause Horatio: Silly hats. I nominate Croda as Pope Peng II. I yield the floor. [ January 27, 2005, 12:24 AM: Message edited by: Elijah Meeks ]

Trend? No-no-no-no-no, my dear, sweet, brain in a jar, tis a sign.

Hiram?

Wanker.

MBT grog. Oh yes, back in the good old days, when only The Thread was worthy enough to be bolded, and not, mind you, its sad denizens. Weak, we've grown, and puffed up with self-importance. I can only hope that weakness is one day wiped away by the brimstone of the Almighty. After all, it's Him or me, and He's not nearly as busy as I am. Or Her, Seanachai, you tree-worshipping whackoloon.

Wha?! Ignore!!! ME!?!?! Geh, geh and geh! Hey, Andreas, when I finally get back in the swing of things, wanna reprise our 'Night in the fog where the guy defending has a bunch of machinegun positions and the guy attacking has nothing but rage'? I'd be happy to play the rage-filled one, this time...

Do Re Mi! Ahem, Da da da da da da da. (I prefer to sing Wagner, you crudites) Flight of the Valkries, Flight of the Valkries, Flight of the Vaaaa-alkries!! Um, those're the only words I know.

Tee hee hee, innated. Oh yes, MufflyHumptyDump, yes, let us fight to the death you amazing wordsmith. But not yet. Not for some time. Don't worry, no more time than it takes to make the Kessel Run.

Oh no, no, no, no, my friend, it is you who are stuck in your ossified castle of orthodoxy. No, a true artiste writes whatever he damned well pleases in the quote box but still responds to the original content of the post. I expounded on this once, back in the one, the only Mutha Beautiful Thread, and I believe your response was something along the lines of awe, love, respect and requests for matrimony. Well, I just made up that last part, but not the first! And that's how you should've responded, you ungrateful dealer of mish-mashed religiosity packaged up in a dour facade of Mormon wivelihood. Take that Shaw, and the thousand more that follow.

But you see, my dear Iosef, a rhetorical question is no question at all, but a statement--in the same way that the killer whale is no whale at all, but rather a dolphin. Question marks are reserved for questions, not statements, just as Englishwomen are reserved for nursemaiding and stacking, not bedding or lusting after. But I wouldn't expect a baby-stealer and white slaver like you to know those things.

Eh, eee, I, oh, you see, Coventry came into prominence during my abscence (I whole-heartedly endorse it, of course, wonderful idea, I don't know what poor bastard Joe Shaw stole it from, likely some good-natured, God-fearing single mother whom he took advantage of (First legally, then carnally and finally, culinary) by promising her some help for her poor, crippled little daughter (He must've killed the local Shriners or, knowing Shaw's type, sued them into penury) and then, he rifled through her drawers (Sit down, Bauhaus!) and stole the plans for Coventry!!) and so it's still not part of my Pool consciousness. Sorry, guys. So, so sorry.

Europhile Hobgoblinate-consistenciophile boldius loseriophile Yes, Iosef, I happily phile you away, yet again. Touche and rapier, sir, how do you like a waste of your own medicine. I only recently found out that rhetorical questions do not end in a question mark. Amazingm hunh, from that book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Written by an Englishwoman, incidentally, so Shaw probably wets his bed just thinking about it, but, as The New Yorker says, English folks decrying bad grammar are like French folks decrying body odor. Speaking of good books, I've been re-reading The Gulag Archipelago. Freakin', amazin'.

Okay, kid, look: The cave thing, pretty good. Plus, you just jumped right in there and showed disdain for the opposition, that'll work. But... You've gotta get rid of that sig. It's, well, bad. Yep, bad. Maybe even worse. Now, with your sig rewritten (Or just lit on fire and danced around) you should be on your way. Because, really, we can't do anything about how hopelessly dumb you are. Nosiree, that's pretty much inherent. Genetic, even. I mean, a member number under ten-thousand and you're asking what goes on in the MBT. AND you're still a junior member? What're you, that retarded guy from the Goonies? Rejoice, everyone, we might get Mufflehump! And then, if we're good, he'll post once every three months!! And he won't have any idea what's going on!!! Yee-haw!!!! !!!!! Oh, and Geier, I don't get the thing with the Guardian. Is this some kind of European joke? Because I'm still having a hard time with biscuits and chips, which're apparently fries and cookies.

Page 3!!! Three. That's so sad.

Oh, lookee, it's one of yours, Shaw.

Egg-zachery.

Without me, you'd be swinging on the vines, contemplating Intelligent Design and wondering when, oh when, Lord, it'd be your turn. I didn't have to gift the Pool with another step in evolution, you sorry sot, I could've made the frickin' Cheery Waffle thread walk on two legs if I'd wanted. But there was no Cheery Waffle thread back when I felt munificent, no, so it was either your homage to beats (or leaks, or whatever) or some grogfest between Andreas and JasonCrawdad and, frankly, if I'd given one of those things life it would've wiped all of us out, by now. The MBT wouldn'ta made it past 1250 without me. ME!! And what're you wafflers doing looking at this?! No, that doesn't mean a thousand, kajillion tons of TNT and a buncha angry, stoopid faces is even a microscopic invertebrate in comparison to the glorious and all-encompassing Cesspool. I'm just saying that if I'd spent an ounce of my crystalline potency on your sorry excuse for a tailgate, I coulda made ya more than several thousand pages about late-model Nash Ramblers and sore kittens. Okay, so maybe you had something to do with it. Okay, I'll grant you and your lot'll always be the Olde Ones and that you'll always meet at some firepit in some misbegotten corner of some derilect property in some red state. But. BUT! But, without me, you'da just been talking about that bloodless Gaius Geier and his silly antics with some hapless noob. Remember, without me, no Croda and without Croda, I tell you, the world stops spinning. So, yeah, you deserve a bottle a booze, but I'll be damned if I'm the one sending it. You get that earless one to buy your liquor, I don't contribute to the delinquincy of gnomes. Oh you sad slave to the polls. (Hmmm, sad Slav to the Poles?) Eight lessons to be learned for all you lot: 1. Never listen to nobody. Unless, UNLESS, they've got feminine charms (SIT DOWN BAUHAUS!) and being a slimy sprite ain't one of 'em. 2. Never, ever chat with any Pooler. I did it once, ONCE, and I ended up with Hiram running around like a lunatic, YK2 making noises about the Pelopernesian and PawBrooooom pawn-tificating about the glory of Napoleon. Oh. Quite right--carry on.

Oh, good, Seanachai's here, maybe he can bless me with the spirit of the goddess. Christ and Buddha in a canoe, when did you people become such pale caricatures of yourselves? You makes me sick, and not in the good, kinda dizzy sorta way. At least dear Emma's here, even though she doesn't like me (SHE NEVER LIKED ME!!) but at least she's here, to take the edge off the impending showing of Mr. Wankers hisself, that damned bloated old Southern rock star who only shows up long enough to ooze onto the carpet and then flee, like the Hound of the Baskervilles, to some maiden's far-off latrine where he spends the next thread's worth of time lapping up an ignomanious cask full of regret and sorrow, only to look in the mirror and see the kind of unshaven, misbegotten wretch that thinks Hiram's worth a pat on the back, jogging loose some old memory (Likely of me loosening his sanity through liberal application of defeat after defeat) of an old life, nearly worth not swallowing a couple pounds of molten lead over, so that he can ride back, ooze in, and yell 'Wankers' just in time for the beginning of the next thread. Makes me sick. Makes me want to post guards. Speaking of which, fresh back from Tsunami relief: Soft. You've all grown soft, and thorny, especially you, Emma, who once gave poly-vinyl chloride a shimmering life of its own (Where's old Frenchie, by the by?). I still dislike that pixish thing, but I think I shall buy it from its owner once I return in full (Currently, like the Dark Lord of old, I still lack the power to assume form, I can only influence and corrupt). Then I may teach it some tricks, or maybe just kick it whenever I feel small (Which is never! NEVER!!! Alexander the Great, conquered the entire world, and he was only 4'11"!!!!!). I see you've gone back to rules. Hmmm, makes me want to say it OGSF-style... Ach! Ah say ye've gun bach ta rrr-ules! I don't like them, not one bit, though I do like the occasional sea-bee who doesn't know who I am (I'm the Tooth Fairy, dearie, I'm the Easter Bunny and Jiminy Cricket and the cardinal-himself all rolled into one. I'm your friend, you see, your only and dearest and not at all crazy as any flora infested with rodentia, no ma'am), they amuse me. Not enough, though--tell them to dance.

Steve, how do you foresee handling the issue of motivation in the face of loss of assets? Maybe my co. commander's great and my fellow platoon commanders, as well, but I just watched my platoon get chewed up in the first three turns. Do you plan to have dynamic adjustments within the scenario (Allow the overall commander to detach and form an ad hoc group for the player) or, if he drops out of the game (either because of a lost connection or because he no longer wants to play two broken squads and a zook) will his units fall under human control or AI control? I think, though, that the inclusion of AI controlled units opens up a great possibility for a campaign game, wherein you control a company (Or perhaps platoon or batallion, but it seems like a company allows the most variety with the most control) that is thrown into the battlefield alongside other units. In this way, you could have players who've built up their favorite 'Band of Brothers' through various battles with the possibility of meeting another, enemy player's company on a battlefield in a similar situation (That is, among a larger unit of AI-controlled enemy forces).

Peng, you rotton SOB, don't you dare vomit at my return--it's so... gauche. I tell you, man, I walked through pits of hell and climbed across miles of barren dessert (And even ate hectares of barren desert) and swam through the festering gobbiness of a hundred tons of rusty scaffolding just to be here, with you, right now! !! And this is the thanks I get?! A couple of malignant growth references (Real original, guys; proving again that Boo Radley is just OGSF when he takes his sanity medication*) and some vomiting and a goddamned monologue by the ice-blooded one about my goddamned failings**? I mean, Christ, you people and your psychological need to torment and destroy people, to flay open there psychic flesh and play chopsticks on their very soul, to corrupt and wallow with such single-minded, robotic adandon. It makes me want to weep at the beauty of it all. It's so good to be back. Well, except for that sticky thing, I don't likes it, not one bit. It smells like YK2 covered in a glazed sauce made of bad earth-worship. Soon, soon it'll be a time of reckoning, when all the old debts are called in, with interest, compounded against and back-dated and with a couple a oh's tacked on, one for OGSF, another for "Oh ****, I wish I'd appreciated my time in the Pool when I, but a little fish, was not constantly reminded of my inferiority by that great shining beacon of ubermenschitude known as Meeks was around". Speaking of Mormon-wife-whoring, genetic retrograding, pea-eating, horseshoe-ing, wumpus-hunting, cretinous rectors of anal rectitude, where's Iosef Shaw'in? *Sane away the day with Insansity. Brought to you by the helpful scientists at Merck, who have yet to be proven to have been inspired by Mengele and those crazy Japanese doctors in Section 227 (or somefink). Insansity, it'll clean up that nasty Scotch-type head injury in a second. Warning: Insansity has been known to cause bovine spongiform encephalitis, irritable bowel syndrome, syphaherperhea, poor posting and dementia precox. **So, Gaius Geier, when did you become my own personal Freudian accountant, you evil-minded, soft-fisted son of a motherless goat.*** ***Meant with all due respect, sir, please note that on my sentence.

Oh, and I will continue to fail, and quite heartily, too, in providing you with your one last desperate sense of illusory peace!!! And in providing you with a long-term, low-rate mortgage!!!!!