Farscape was barely sci-fi. It verged hard into science fantasy, where the science part was essentially magic in space.

Doctor Who is pure science fantasy. But it’s science fantasy more akin to star wars (which is part space opera, part science fantasy) where there’s a certain degree of internal continuity, even when canon is thrown out the window or just retconned. For Dr who, the consistency is in the fact of time travel, and the doctor being a much more potent creature than they seem on the surface.

The absurdity of the doctor is that it’s an excuse to run around, utter technobabble, and tell some surprisingly interesting stories that would otherwise be unrelated. That patchwork is likely why you can’t/won’t accept the absurdity of it the way you can with farscape where it’s more ensemble character driven.

Doctor who relies on the doctor/companion characters being your “in” to the story. The farscape characters are the story itself. It’s closer to more firmly sci-fi sci-fi like Babylon 5, or the second Battlestar Galactica in that regard. But it also does the situational drama the way star trek did it, to some degree. That is what gives farscape its charm; it pays homage to science fiction tropes, with puppets lol.

Now, modern Who does a bit more character work here and there. There’s a little less of the one-off episodes, sprinkled with the usual recurring villains, and the long term story arcs are centered more on each companion/doctor grouping than the older Who.

Sometimes, even as a Who fan from the eighties, watching Tom Baker grin and give his wink-and-a-nudge joy to the silliness of it all, the absurdity can be hard to accept. Not impossible! I do accept it, but there are times where I have to choose to do so lol. But Pertwee was peak absurdity, imo. Even K-9 can’t match that era.

Where the absurdity of modern Who falls a little flat is how all the companions end up having a portion of their run basically being part of a comedy duo that tells inside jokes. They become fast friends with the doctor, and the writers have them riffing off of each other like Abbott and Costello, no matter what the rest of their personality is like. You could probably pick a more accurate comedy duo with some thought, but that’s the best my tired brain can do lol.

Point being that the absurdity is sometimes shoe-horned in as a way to make it feel like the companions and the doctor have spent all the time in between episodes having other adventures. But it’s off screen, so it feels forced too often.

It’s the prices being a joke even after the discount that’s absurd.

I’m almost always an earl grey drinker. For that, Harney & sons is pretty much my favorite, with Taylor’s being almost the same for my preferences, depending on which is fresher. The key difference that makes Harney better is the bergamot rather than the tea itself. It’s just a tad more aromatic and that matters a lot. However, if it isn’t fresh, Taylor’s matches the flavor profile very closely for me.

Choice organics is a close third place. The tea is just a tad less aromatic, and the bergamot is flatter. Still miles better than the stuff at the grocery store, even if you ignore freshness.

For breakfast teas, the only other hot tea I really drink, it’s Taylor’s mostly. I have some Harney’s on the shelf, but I like how the Taylor’s tastes with lemon better, and that’s how I like breakfast teas.

Iced tea, it’s tetley’s or GTFO if I have a choice. My wife is kinda swinging around to that now that she’s drinking southern style iced tea. She’s a Lipton’s fan, but tetley holds up better at the strength we make iced tea. Lipton gets bitter in an unpleasant way with the strength we brew at. Tetley also holds up better sweetened to the degree that southern style iced tea tends to have. I make mine way less sweet than anybody I know, but it’s still sweeter than my wife or her family ever did it.

Kinda funny. Hot tea, I barely add sugar, just a level teaspoon for a double cup. Coffee I go a little higher, but not much; a heaping teaspoon. But iced tea? It would work out to about 4 teaspoons per cup the way it’s usually made around here, with mine being a tad under 3. You grow up with that thick, strong, syrupy tea, and iced just doesn’t work without high sugar levels lol. Hell, I know some folks that add 3 cups of sugar to a gallon of tea and that’s just barely sweet enough for them.

Hence, we don’t have iced tea often because damn, you can’t drink like that regularly. It’s a rare treat.

But I’m an earl grey guy for the most part now. And I’ve tried something like twenty brands? I used to have a file with my notes in it, but deleted it by accident. I never drank hot tea until my wife moved in before we got married. She’s a tea drinker all day, but isn’t picky. I tried her bigelow stuff and was meh about it. Then I had some at her mom’s house during a visit I yankee land that was Taylor’s, and the experience was totally different.

When we got home, I used some savings to order a bunch of brands, and tried them all over a few weeks, taking notes and all that crazy crap. It just blew my mind that there was that much difference in brands, even knowing that it could be somewhat different in iced tea.

But, yeah, I found a few favourites and stick with them. One sugar, splash of milk and that’s my earl grey. One sugar, splash of lemon for English and Irish breakfast teas.

Man, you be illin’

Neither, and also all of the above, plus the list isn’t long enough.

Seriously, it’s not the only two options.

Sometimes cool people do drugs. So do people with mental problems. So do all kinds of other people. But, doing drugs can’t make you cool if you aren’t already. And you don’t necessarily have to have mental problems to use/enjoy any given drug, though some drugs may change that for you eventually.

Well, yeah. Me, my wife, and my kid live with my dad. I’m almost 50.

Mind you, I bought the house from him. But the whole “can’t have a family home” thing where you have to live separate from parents or grandparents to be an adult is utter bullshit. It is often easier to navigate the interpersonal stuff when it’s the classic nuclear family and the kids move out to start their own, just because relationships and the work of them is exponential based on the number of people and the number of relationships between them. If you’re the parent and the landlord to an adult offspring, that’s two complicating factors in making things work peacefully and (hopefully) happily. Add in another generation, especially when grandparents are part of the child rearing, and shit can get messy fast.

We make it work by the framework of: my house, our home, your room.

The house itself is mine, I have final say in structural changes, repairs, etc, because I’m the one on the hook for any legal issues that derive from such. But the running of the household is by consensus of the adults, and input from the kid, with agreed on boundaries. Within those boundaries, if you’re in your own room, you do what you want. The kid is aware of what the boundaries are, and that they won’t be changing when they become an adult, and they’ll have the freedom of choice to stay or head out, knowing there’s a safety net here they can rely on.

They ever have kids, those kids would have the same choice.

Yeah, a house can only hold so many people before it becomes a chaos that isn’t bearable. No matter how big the house, that remains true. But a family home is still a very valid and good choice where life makes it useful/necessary.

Shit, on my end, if the kid stays here until they’re in their fifties, I’m happy as hell, as long as they’re here because it works for them. They’ll be inheriting the place if I get it paid off before I die anyway.

I moved back here as a temporary thing in my late twenties. Left the city I had been working in and was looking for a place of my own. My best friend came with me, and when my mom finally moved out post divorce, it just kinda worked until I had to buy the place. After that, it still worked, and the people involved have changed a few times, but there’s this wonderful sense of connection and security knowing that we all have a place to be if we want it.

Me too, tbh. Just remember it being interesting and friendly

Do you have access to any healthcare services?

A good CNA can help you figure out how to manage hygiene as long as you have some degree of upper body mobility. I mean, obviously, an occupational therapist or physical therapist is going to be better, and be able to offer a wider range of options, but without a way to pay for those, it can be out of reach for self pay. But an hour or two of CNA time is usually within budgetary reach. Other pros can help too, but again, they’d be more expensive.

You can sometimes find a local disability support group, and the difficulty with tasks like bathing, brushing teeth, etc is a pretty common topic. You don’t automatically get trained advice, but you do get practical tips from people that may well be better.

No kidding? That’s kinda cool since I recognize your name too. Had a great conversation.

Thank you :)

Shhh, I snuck out while anyone was high

My first threeway.

Holy shit, never, ever try and play with a bi/lesbian couple if you’re a straight guy lol.

This was ages ago. Back in the eighties still, if only barely.

I met a girl. We became friends. She got flirty, and I returned it. Now, she was honest pretty early on, once we both realized there was some sexual energy there. She told me she was with someone, and that the someone was also a girl.

I figured that was it. End of story, right?

Nope, the girl is bi, though her partner wasn’t exactly into non monogamy. But we were first, and was cool with it not going anywhere.

So, we hang out. Turns out her partner is pretty damn cool. Butch as hell, but not prone to the machismo you sometimes run into. Which, the partner ended up being trans, but back then that wasn’t a thing in anyone’s awareness. At the time, she was a butch lesbian.

Anyway, ignoring that, we all get along well, so I become their beard. When they needed a guy to “date” to keep their family off their backs, or whatever, I would step in. Went to prom with the partner even.

Turns out, we all got along well enough that the partner was willing to open things up and see if a guy in the bedroom could satisfy the bi girl, without bothering the partner. And, I was the one they both trusted. So, it happened.

I guess the easiest way to cover it is to say that there’s only so many things you can do when one person out of the three simply can not handle contact with a penis, and is also not willing to have anyone go down on them. It meant there was always someone left out. I mean, we tried. But it amounted to taking turns, and the partner couldn’t really handle watching.

We ended up trying what I’ve seen called a Roman chair, and that kinda worked okay, but it was so damn awkward with me and the partner kind of looking at each other as the bi girl was between us. Like, if we’d been able to touch each other, maybe the awkward would have been gone, but we tried kissing and it was a hard no for the partner, and not fun for me. Any kind of gentle shoulder touching was out too.

We could hug each other with clothes on, even give pecks on the cheek when we’d say goodbye after hanging out, but with the clothes off, neither of us was down for much in the way of contact. I would have been fine with casual touch, maybe some hugging, or even a high five lol. But I didn’t want to grope him (fuck it, the dude transitioned, and trying to not call him him is annoying, even though this was ages ago), no matter how nice his tits and ass were. It just felt wrong to grope my buddy. And I had zero interest in his vag, which was still more interest than he had in it.

So me and him were just each in a hole (him via strap on) kind of wanting the whole thing to be over lol. The girl had some fun, but after I had to admit there was no way in hell I could come, she started feeling awkward too lol. Like, there I am in her ass, doing my best to stay hard so she can have this experience, and her partner is just going through the motions for the same reason, and once she realized that, she felt weird as hell.

Tbh, I’ve never liked threesomes. We tried a couple of other times, and it was better than that one, if only by virtue of knowing what was absolutely not worth trying. But even with other people over the years, they all end up disappointing unless it’s two people taking care of one, without trying to mix things up.

But holy shit, that first one was just horrible lol. I’ve seen guys talk about the fantasy of being with that kind of couple, and I can’t help but laugh. The chances of a lesbian being all chill with a guy in the situation are pretty damn low. And there’s no such thing as good sex when one out of three people would rather it not be happening the way it is.

Which, gods damn, my buddy there tried so hard to do what he thought was right by his girlfriend. Later on, he tried to be open for some contact with me, even tried going down on me. Neither of us could handle that lol. I couldn’t stay hard, and he couldn’t do more than take in just the tip for a second. It was kinda hilarious after the fact. We still joke about it.

He couldn’t handle either of us going down on him. We didn’t have a word for it then, but the dysphoria was just too powerful. It wasn’t about me being a guy, it was him being so out of connection with his genitals because they were the wrong genitals that any contact was just pure distress. Even hands were too much.

We only tried a few times as a threesome before calling it a failed experiment. Then a couple of times with just me and the girl, with him having done some preliminaries and then just watching. That was almost as awkward for me because it felt like him being left out was wrong, and it didn’t work well for either of them.

But none of the other fails were as bad as the first lol. I’d call it a clusterfuck if any of the fucking had been worthy of the word.

There’s a handful, yeah. Some folks are prolific posters. Others just have altered text I’m their name, which makes it stand out enough to recall easily.

But generally, it takes extended interactions to remember a user name for long.

Nah, that’s part of the point of granular control. Sometimes you want/need a decrease in a given band without an increase in the rest.

Perfect example is the Metallica album St Anger. If you fiddle with the eq in a good player that allows for per-album or per-sing settings, you can dial back the over mixed high hat and partially dampen the tin can snare. You end up with a better sound (particularly in headphones) that doesn’t fatigue the ear as much.

If you took those attenuated bands and upped the others, you’d just have muddy mids and you’d lose the clarity of James’ low end.

That album is so over drummed that it’s hard to listen to without eq tweaks. With them, it’s a much better experience.

Plenty. Music and books in particular. I’m usually behind on making legit buys, but I treat piracy partially like a library where I can try before I buy.

That isn’t saying I buy everything I pirate, I don’t. But if I like it enough to keep the files, I’ll wait until I find a good sale and eventually get a legit copy in some format.

I also do it in reverse, where I’ll buy something, but pirate a digital copy when it’s more convenient. That’s typically for paper books and music on vinyl. Sometimes I’ll even pirate a copy of a CD if I’m not up to dealing with the ripping (disability means I don’t always have stamina for everything, so stuff like ripping a cd is low priority).

It’s a shame the r/sharpening community moved to discord for the most part.

That being said, the average person, with the average knife, only needs one stone in the 1k range. Anything else is personal preference, or window dressing.

The general consensus is to use what’s called a “splash and go” stone. Shapton, particularly their “glass” stones, is one of the more popular brands. Water stones, as opposed to oil stones, tend to be a fairly gentle learning curve. You do eventually have to flatten them, which isn’t difficult, but by the time that happens, you’ll likely have picked up enough skill to have a better idea of what you’ll want, so don’t jump into that yet. No need to buy up all kinds of stuff to get started. Hell, it’s better to only get one stone and nothing else to get started.

But avoid the double sided, at least for now. They can be a pain in the ass over time. Just get one good stone and practice as you use your knives.

Now, if the chipping is bad, you might need to find someone local that does hand sharpening to grind those out, but minor chips and dings come out fine over time. But never, ever machine grind a good knife, and definitely never trust anyone that claims you should let them do so unless you know for a fact they use a water cooled device. Seriously, just don’t.

Grinding out heavy chips is a bit more difficult, so it takes more experience to do right on a good knife. You don’t want that to be your first project. A cheap knife, that’s fine, nobody really cares if they screw a cheap knife up while learning. But minor chips, say something under an 1/8 inch at the biggest, you just sharpen and let the chip get eaten away as you go. You waste more metal than necessary otherwise.

The exception to that is something that you’ll be using for professional cooking. And it would need to be pretty fancy restaurant cooking at that, where perfect presentation is mandatory. Little chips won’t show up in the results for a home cook. Being real, even fancy chefs usually can’t see the difference, but they’ll freak out despite that. Only time I’ve ever had a chip that small be a problem was doing food carving. And you ain’t doing that with a bigger knife, it’s kinda specialized.

One stone. Practice developing a burr on the blade, and removing that burr via the stone itself. That’s it, that’s the recipe to a very sharp knife. You don’t need high grits, you don’t need some kind of magic guide or whatever. Just your hands, one stone, and a knife.

It’s a tie tbh.

Between “the bells” for sheer joyous onomatopoeia, and “oh captain, my captain” because of the flow of it.

Both of them are poems I read out loud to myself, and there’s not many of those. They both resonate inside me in different ways, and both are associated with my initial exploration of poetry.

I’ve never been able to pick one over the other.

And yeah, they’re pretty basic poems rather than some more deeply personal things. It isn’t an emotional connection to them, it’s more of a sensory thing, if that makes sense (pun intended).

But, they both represent the way words can affect us, move our minds. They’re an experience when you hear them. They’re immersive and fulfilling, though in different ways.

I mean, everybody?

I was a nurse’s assistant as my real job. So, whether it was in a facility, or doing home care, all my patients were patients. Short term or long term, me being present meant they were in the right place.

Now, there were a few patients in home care that I was their first caregiver, and holy shit did they need a ton of work. Part of the job is maintaining a healthy and safe environment, within reasonable bounds. We aren’t housekeepers, but there’s a certain amount of housekeeping that we do because it’s necessary. And, very often, you’ll find NAs doing more housekeeping than they have to do because it otherwise doesn’t get done.

But when you’re the first on the case, it isn’t unusual to find a home that’s fallen apart. Even with younger patients that have family, the way illness can disrupt life doesn’t always leave time for the little things. So there were times I’d walk in the door and find chaos, even to the point of it being dangerous (mold, infestations, etc).

And yeah, the thought would cross my mind that I wish someone else had gotten to open that door, but the patient was sure as hell in the right place in terms of having help finally. So it was more that I was glad they got me to come there, but the spirit is similar.

Now, my not-a-real-job jobs were not at all something where people came for help, so nothing related there. But I worked as a bouncer for a while, did some personal security work, did some custom fiction writing, had a little knife sharpening service, and other minor stuff over the years. But they weren’t real jobs in that I didn’t give a fuck about them beyond the paycheck, at least for the most part. I always did my best, but I wouldn’t put up with any bullshit because I could walk away and not have any regret about doing so

Only place I would have regretted quitting before I wanted to was the drag club. A lot of good folks on staff, and good customers that I would have hated to walk away from without a solid goodbye.

Nah, once I like something enough to listen to it in purpose the third time, I don’t get burnt out.

Now, I do end up decreasing the frequency of listening after a few days because there’s other stuff I like that’s already had the new worn off.

Like, right now, I’m semi obsessed with this dude that started on YouTube, Carson McKee. I’ll end up listening to my favorites every day for about a week, then his stuff will go into an ever widening rotation of the genre/s he’s in. I just came off of a series of metal kicks, with some of the more recent releases by Judas Priest being the most recent.

I still regularly listen to stuff going back to when I was a little kid. I just never burn out on music I like.

Legit, in the real world, wolverine’s healing factor is the most useful. Other stuff is about tricks. His kind of healing means no cancer, no Alzheimer’s, no strokes, no heart attacks, nada. A long, healthy life free of disease of almost any kind.

The only drawback is the semi-immortality. A long life watching others die would suck hard. It’s already bad enough with a regular life span.