The Random Thread

Topic

We need a group name for people who post on The Carrier.

In the old days we were Millarworlders – what are we now?

Carriers?

Carrierers?

Carrierists?

Replies

Anonymous wrote:

He’s presented as a “Persian” poet, and I’m not sure lot of Americans realize that Iran was Persia

That’s also pretty funny (and entirely believable).
.
Although (at risk of sounding elitist) I would have expected anyone buying poetry to be reasonably intelligent and well educated.

See what I said that even those who know the fact probably have a subconscious break in continuity between “Persia” and “Iran” either due to the name change under the Shah, or the Iranian Revolution, or (and most likely) both. It’s subconscious, and definitely not rational, but I think it exists.

Americans may know the connection better than Europeans. I know American coverage of various incidents in the region frequently uses the ‘Persian Gulf’ as a description but it’s not used anymore on British TV or the ‘international’ channels like BBC World, CNN International and Aj Jazeera English. You’d only hear it on there in quotes from US politicians.

I’d assume it’s not in their journalistic ‘style guide’ as it’s technically out of date.

Yeah, I think there’s a difference in perception there not just in America, but in general. Persia is connected with Aladin and Sinbad, with all the Orientalist stereotypes of enticing and magical exoticism. Whereas Iran makes people think of burkas and islamic theocracy only.
.
If people weren’t able to seperate those two places that are actually the same, I doubt Disney could’ve successfully released those Aladin movies.

Christian wrote:

Whereas Iran makes people think of burkas and islamic theocracy only.

Although interestingly Iranian women don’t dress particularly conservatively for the Middle East. The norm is a simple headscarf where they let a bit of hair peak out at the front, in the cites at least.
.
It’s quite an interesting place as I think the theocracy rather happened by accident, being the most organised group to fill a power void.
.
I know quite a few Iranians, they like to come to Malaysia because it’s an ‘approved’ country from the Iranian government but is comparatively very relaxed, so they’d join for a night out drinking (technically it’s illegal to serve alcohol to a Muslim but it’s a bit unenforceable). None of the women kept their heads covered when the authorities didn’t compel them to.
.
They won’t be representative of the entire population but chatting to them about wider Iranian society it doesn’t seem particularly devout other than the government setup. Most are a few years younger than me too so would only know life under theocracy.

garjones wrote:

They won’t be representative of the entire population but chatting to them about wider Iranian society it doesn’t seem particularly devout other than the government setup. Most are a few years younger than me too so would only know life under theocracy.

Yeah, that is the impression I always get (from Marjane Satrapi’s comics, and from movies like Taxi Tehran or A Separation) – that the population at large is actually pretty secular, and that the officers of the state have to work quite hard at enforcing the rules of an extremist state.

I played a really interesting – though ultimately not particularly good – game about the Iranian revolution a few months ago. It was written from first hand accounts of the uprising and uses real home movies, recordings and photos from around the time, and it’s pretty clear from that the religious regime was never the sole driving force of the revolution, merely one of many factions of it that managed to come out on top after the Shah fell. That they’ve held onto power so long is surprising. (The game is 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. It was intended as the first episode of a Telltale style episodic story but the successive episodes didn’t materialise leaving the story far from finished. The publisher simply rebranded it to make it seem like it was a complete game).

Persepolis, book and film, as Christian mentioned covers it very well. Her family are all basically middle class liberals who opposed the Shah to get more freedom but they had no leadership structure. If there’s one thing it can’t be argued religion is very good at it’s organisation and structure.

Similar things happened in the Arab Spring where discontent about the regimes came from many disparate groups but the religious groups in most cases were primed to take over.

I’d love to go to Iran some day but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Some Central Asian countries recently dropped their visa requirement though, if I had the money for the airline ticket I’d love to go to Bukhara or Samarkand in Uzbekistan whose history is intertwined with Persian history.

A friend of mine went to Iran last year. It’s still a country you can visit very well as a Western tourist, apparently.

You can go there but it is not very comfortable as you can’t use ATMs to get money, because of the sanctions they are not connected to the banking infrastructure. So you have to take a whole bundle of cash instead. Otherwise it’s not really unsafe or anything, you can definitely go there, it would just be a bit too much of a hassle for me, I tend to avoid countries that come with things that would stress me out.

Anonymous wrote:

I tend to avoid countries that come with things that would stress me out.

I wish I could do the same. Unfortunately, I live in the United Kingdom :(

DavidM wrote:

arjandirkse wrote:

I tend to avoid countries that come with things that would stress me out.

I wish I could do the same. Unfortunately, I live in the United Kingdom :(

Maybe you could ask asylum in Iran…

Actually, given what Arjan was saying about Uzbekistan, the Jews of Uzbekistan spoke a language that is to Farsi what Yiddish is to German, though now it’s mostly spoken in Queens, in fact my college was the only one in the world to have a class for learning the language, but it’s not offered anymore due to lack of enrollment

My 8 year old son in the car today:
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“Daddy, if we’re stuck in a remote wilderness then I’ll take care of it”.

“Is this because you did the Bear Grylls ‘choose your own adventure’ thing on Netflix? Did you finish it”

“Yes, I did die twice….. but let’s not talk about that”.
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Yes I am like the letters page in Take A Break with the ‘funny things kids say’ but that last line genuinely had me in stitches.

The name of the foam toy line Nerf is actually an acronym: Non-Expanding Recreational Foam.

Hmmm, that has a bit of a whiff of backronym to me.

Dave wrote:

a whiff of backronym

Sorry, that was me; I had a plate of beans for lunch.

Did you know they’re called “beans” because they cause a Buttock Expulsion And Nasty Smell?

Dave wrote:

Hmmm, that has a bit of a whiff of backronym to me.

One of my coworkers used to work for them. I’ll have to ask him sometime.

So, Ronnie, you’re going to ask a scruffy looking nerf herder?

I regret Nip/Tuck

SNL tried to come across as this cool, happening kind of show but is it really?

Certainly not as cool and happening as SFL was.

Al-x wrote:

SNL tried to come across as this cool, happening kind of show but is it really?

Not since Eddie Murphy left, really. It abandoned any music cool cred it had when Doumanian left and Michaels’ personal taste in music became old hat. As Chris Rock said in Live From New York, SNL always gets musicians, especially black ones, just after they’ve peaked (his example was MC Hammer after he’d rebranded as just Hammer and did the Addams Family song).

Al-x wrote:

SNL tried to come across as this cool, happening kind of show but is it really?

Not since the times of James Belushi and Bill Murray.

Christian wrote:

James Belushi

? cool?

maybe you were thinking of his brother John

Rocket wrote:

maybe you were thinking of his brother John

Very much so. Ironically, I was very much aware of the danger of confusing the two of them, but still convinced that Jim was Joe and the other way round. Tsk.

but still convinced that Jim was Joe and the other way round. Tsk.

I’ll have some of what Christian is drinking, please.

 

You can be Jerry Belushi.

 

Rocket wrote:

James Belushi

Rocket wrote:

maybe you were thinking of his brother John

Jim and I graduated from the same university (obviously several years apart).  It used to be known as a big party school.  The story goes that John used to visit him and they would hit frat parties together.  Those parties and that time spent with his brother are supposedly the origin of the “COLLEGE” sweatshirt and the idea behind Animal House.

RonnieM wrote:

Rocket wrote:

James Belushi

Rocket wrote:

maybe you were thinking of his brother John

Jim and I graduated from the same university (obviously several years apart).  It used to be known as a big party school.  The story goes that John used to visit him and they would hit frat parties together.  Those parties and that time spent with his brother are supposedly the origin of the “COLLEGE” sweatshirt and the idea behind Animal House.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_House
Development[edit]
Animal House was the first film produced by National Lampoon, the most popular humor magazine on college campuses in the mid-1970s.[6] The periodical specialized in satirizing politics and popular culture. Many of the magazine’s writers were recent college graduates, hence its appeal to students all over the country. Doug Kenney was a Lampoon writer and the magazine’s first editor-in-chief. He graduated from Harvard University in 1969 and had a college experience closer to the Omegas in the film (he had been president of the university’s elite Spee Club).[6] Kenney was responsible for the first appearances of three characters that would appear in the film, Larry Kroger, Mandy Pepperidge, and Vernon Wormer. They made their debut in 1973’s National Lampoon’s High School Yearbook, a satire of a Middle America 1964 high school yearbook. Kroger’s and Pepperidge’s characters in the yearbook were effectively the same as their characters in the movie, whereas Vernon Wormer was a P. E. and civics teacher as well as an athletic coach in the yearbook.

However, Kenney felt that fellow Lampoon writer Chris Miller was the magazine’s expert on the college experience.[6] Faced with an impending deadline, Miller submitted a chapter from his then-abandoned memoirs entitled “The Night of the Seven Fires” about pledging experiences from his fraternity days in Alpha Delta (associated with the national Alpha Delta Phi during Miller’s undergraduate years, the fraternity subsequently disassociated itself from the national organization and is now called Alpha Delta) at the Ivy League’s Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. The antics of his fellow fraternities, coupled with experiences like that of a road trip to University of Wisconsin-Madison and its Delta Chi Fraternity, became the inspiration for the Delta Tau Chis of Animal House and many characters in the film (and their nicknames) were based on Miller’s fraternity brothers.[6] Filmmaker Ivan Reitman had just finished producing David Cronenberg’s first film, Shivers, and called the magazine’s publisher Matty Simmons about making movies under the Lampoon banner.[7] Reitman had put together The National Lampoon Show in New York City featuring several future Saturday Night Live cast members, including John Belushi. When most of the Lampoon group moved on to SNL except for Harold Ramis, Reitman approached him with an idea to make a film together using some skits from the Lampoon Show.[7]

Screenplay[edit]
Kenney met Lampoon writer Ramis at the suggestion of Simmons. Ramis drew from his own fraternity experiences as a member of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis and was working on a film treatment about college called “Freshman Year”, but the magazine’s editors were not happy with it.[6] Kenney and Ramis started working on a new film treatment together, positing Charles Manson in a high school, calling it Laser Orgy Girls.[7] Simmons was cool to this idea so they changed the setting to a “northeastern college … Ivy League kind of school”.[5] Kenney was a fan of Miller’s fraternity stories and suggested using them as a basis for a movie. Kenney, Miller and Ramis began brainstorming ideas.[7] They saw the film’s 1962 setting as “the last innocent year … of America”, and the homecoming parade that ends the film as occurring on November 21, 1963, the day before President Kennedy’s assassination.[5] They agreed that Belushi should star in it and Ramis wrote the part of Bluto specifically for the comedian,[4] having been friends with him while at Chicago’s The Second City.[8]

The writers were new to screenwriting,[5][4] so their film treatment ran to 110-pages; the average was 15 pages. Reitman and Simmons pitched it to various Hollywood studios. Simmons met with Ned Tanen, an executive at Universal Studios. He was encouraged by younger executives Sean Daniel and Thom Mount who were more receptive to the Lampoon type of humor;[6] Mount had discovered the “Seven Fires” film treatment as Tanen’s assistant, while investigating projects left by a fired studio executive.[4] Tanen hated the idea. Ramis remembers, “We went further than I think Universal expected or wanted. I think they were shocked and appalled. Chris’ fraternity had virtually been a vomiting cult. And we had a lot of scenes that were almost orgies of vomit … We didn’t back off anything”.[7] As the writers created more drafts of the screenplay (nine in total), the studio gradually became more receptive to the project, especially Mount, who championed it.[9] The studio green-lighted the film and set the budget at a modest $3 million.[6] Simmons remembers, “They just figured, ‘Screw it, it’s a silly little movie, and we’ll make a couple of bucks if we’re lucky—let them do whatever they want.'”[7]

To be fair to Christian both Jeff and Jack Belushi were cast members on Saturday Night Live.

No, you’re thinking of Jeremy. Common mistake.

No it was Jasper Belushi. Jeremy and Jasper were the twins. Jordan was the step-brother.

Ohmigod Dave you have 1000 Karma!

Thats amazing!

We should celebrate!

Dammit I was going to tell everybody to stop upvoting him when he got to 999 but he snuck under the wire before I had chance

 

 

Anonymous wrote:

Ohmigod Dave you have 1000 Karma!

Thats amazing!

We should celebrate!

Great idea. I’ll compile a playlist for the party.

 

Gareth

Please deduct 1000 karma points from Dave

(Except add 100 for Karma Police)

Gareth,

Please don’t add any points for Radiohead, the worst prog band in history.

Gareth, please deduct 400 karma points from Meadows for not liking any band formed after 1971

Dave wrote:

Great idea. I’ll compile a playlist for the party.

Ohmygod, Dave!! I just listened to those four songs, in that exact order, on my commute to work today. It’s like…what’s the word I’m looking for…?

Perrenium sunning?

njerry wrote:

Dave wrote:

Great idea. I’ll compile a playlist for the party.

Ohmygod, Dave!! I just listened to those four songs, in that exact order, on my commute to work today. It’s like…what’s the word I’m looking for…?

Ironic. Don’t you think?

On July 17, 1969, the New York Times published this correction to one of its stories:

On Jan. 13, 1920, Topics of The Times, an editorial-page
feature of The New York Times, dismissed the notion that a rocket could
function in a vacuum and commented on the ideas of Robert H. Goddard, the
rocket pioneer, as follows.

“That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the
countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation
of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a
vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course he
only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of
Isaac Newton in the 17th century and it is now definitely established that
a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times
regrets the error.

Better late than never

One month to go in this decade. It was a pretty crazy one.

Anonymous wrote:

One month to go in this decade. It was a pretty crazy one.

Is it time to start debating whether the decade ends on December 31, 2019 or December 31, 2020?

The only correct answer is “no”.

 

Good work in randomly introducing a talking point and immediately shutting it down.

Andrew will be along shortly to tell us it actually ends on 17 March 2023.

njerry wrote:

Is it time to start debating whether the decade ends on December 31, 2019 or December 31, 2020?

However did that debate get resolved in 2000, again? Does anyone remember?

1 user thanked author for this post.

I think decades are the 0 – 9 years.

Christian wrote:

njerry wrote:

Is it time to start debating whether the decade ends on December 31, 2019 or December 31, 2020?

However did that debate get resolved in 2000, again? Does anyone remember?

I don’t remember anyone thinking that far ahead back in 2000.

Anonymous wrote:

I think decades are the 0 – 9 years.

Yeah well, the Gregorian calendar disagrees with you.

That may be true but I’m not going to call 1970 the last year of the sixties decade.

A decade’s an arbitrary unit of ten years, so your decade can end whenever you want (assuming it’s ten years after you started it).

The decades as we’re talking about them are the ’60s,’ 70s ’80s etc.

So the question is really what the end of those decades is.

Anonymous wrote:

That may be true but I’m not going to call 1970 the last year of the sixties decade.

Hey, don’t blame me, take it up with Pope Gregory XIII.

Dave wrote:

The decades as we’re talking about them are the ’60s,’ 70s ’80s etc.

So the question is really what the end of those decades is.

I don’t think I saw the posts on this second page when I posted.

Anyway, I’m of the certainty that ‘9 is always the last year of a decade, as we generally regard them, because we define them by their tens unit. ‘0 would only ever be the end of the decade if you were calculating them as ordinal groups (so 2019 is the end of the ’10s, 2020 is the end of the “second decade of the 21st century”). But no-one ever does that because it’s stupid and a mouthful but people who were told 2000 was the end of the “20th century” try and misattribute the same logic to decades, to look smart, without really understanding the reasoning, and so look dumb.

Martin Smith wrote:

Anyway, I’m of the certainty that ‘9 is always the last year of a decade, as we generally regard them, because we define them by their tens unit. ‘0 would only ever be the end of the decade if you were calculating them as ordinal groups (so 2019 is the end of the ’10s, 2020 is the end of the “second decade of the 21st century”). But no-one ever does that because it’s stupid and a mouthful but people who were told 2000 was the end of the “20th century” try and misattribute the same logic to decades

Yes, this.

Christian wrote:

njerry wrote:

Is it time to start debating whether the decade ends on December 31, 2019 or December 31, 2020?

However did that debate get resolved in 2000, again? Does anyone remember?

Yes. Basically, all the intelligent people who realised that the decade/century/millennium rightly would end on 31/12/00 won the debate, but the rest of the world ignored us and carried on anyway.

Saying “I am right, you are wrong, I can’t hear you, lalalalala” while dancing and holding your hands over your ears does not constitute winning the debate David.

Anonymous wrote:

I think decades are the 0 – 9 years.

You are correct!

Anonymous wrote:

Saying “I am right, you are wrong, I can’t hear you, lalalalala” while dancing and holding your hands over your ears does not constitute winning the debate David.

I think you’re wrong there.

I’m decimated.

 

What’s up, Miqque?

Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

Ho ho ho.

A man trying to get home to spend the holiday it’s his family? Of course it’s a Christmas movie.

Bruce wrote:

A man trying to get home to spend the holiday it’s his family? Of course it’s a Christmas movie.

In that case Halloween is a Christmas movie too.

If they had cast Tom Hanks in Die Hard we wouldn’t even be arguing about this.

DavidM wrote:

If they had cast Tom Hanks in Die Hard we wouldn’t even be arguing about this.

Yeah, we’d all be talking about how terrible it was that they cast him as Mr Takagi instead.

I did a Christmas good deed today.

I was in Sainsbury’s and I was behind an old lady in the queue. Her bill came to £56.83 but when she counted out all her change she only had £50. I thought she was probably someone’s Nan and I’d like to think someone would have helped my Nan out when she was alive and I thought … well it’s Christmas after all. She didn’t want me to help her but I insisted, and in no time we had all her shopping back on the shelves.

That reminds me of a Tom Waits tall tale.

Looking back on some shows I have watched I said I regretted some shows and
now I say that the Shield was so/so…

I got the words “jacuzzi” and “yakuza” confused.

Now I’m in hot water with the Japanese mafia.

If a stormtrooper shoots at a man in a red shirt, what happens?

the stormtrooper misses, the red shirt dodges and falls off a cliff to his death

Oxymoron… Scientific wrestler

Let’s go Mets!

I’m reading about the tachyonic antitelephone.  This is due, in part, to the discussion about Dr Manhattan elsewhere on the board.

I have been reading about the madeupthingy nonesensewords too!

It is not a comic book…It is a graphic novel.

“That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.”

Guess who?

Oh come on, there’s really no need to guess with that one.

ATTENTION ALL ARTISTS!
No longer participate in #inktober. Jake Parker (person who started the tag) has Trademarked it and their lawyer is shutting down ANYONE who is selling things like sketchbooks of their OWN artwork using the word.https://t.co/qEmCU15pA8

— Kikidoodle & Purrmaids (@KikiDoodleTweet) December 19, 2019

UPDATE:

Gah! Sorry, just saw all the Inktober Trademark stuff. I’m trying to get a hold of my overzealous lawyer. I asked him to send C&Ds to companies selling Inktober merch. It was NEVER my intention to limit anyone’s ability to sell their own work. Trying to get this sorted out.

— Jake Parker (@mrjakeparker) December 20, 2019

DavidM wrote:

Guess who?

It’s not hard to guess but he’s actually wrong on this one. It was coined in the 1960s and used to describe Eirner’s ‘Contract With God’ and then used in marketing by Marvel in the early 80s, long before DC started collecting their prestige books – or doing actual OGN material with Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum.

It’s true though that the impact of Watchmen and Dark Knight probably played a big part in popularising the term in the wider world, definitely a lot more than things like the New Mutants Graphic Novel.

 

4 years ago today.

thanks lads.

Whatever happened to those guys? Did Millar employ them and they’re now floating around on their luxury yachts living the high life as Netflix execs?

Well, except for Abnett obviously

Apart from Mark, Deniz also published his own comic (Maxwell’s Demons). I can’t recall seeing any of the other names again though.

Abnett’s artist on that strip, Ozgur, has done several covers for Marvel (as well as some more for Millarworld books).

 

Bloody howareya!

It’s Chrismo Eve in Oz and so it’s time for the time honoured tradition of beer, banging and bloody gettin inta foights!

See ya on bloody Chrismo day mates!

<p style=”text-align: left;”>

Özgür and I have a 4 issue story Mapped out. Issue one is written(in 2016 🤣) buuuut he’s getting proper Millar and Marvel Money so you never know.</p>
I’m stoked for the guy but gutted as it was going to be my time travel / Cable knockoff story but with Kids.

you never know it could surface some day.

ozgur drew the 2 kingsman 4/5 page stories for Playboy.

his cover work is killing it especially his cover for Prodigy, Loki and Black Panther V Deadpool

 

 

A goat giving birth is just kidding.

Stay away from Instagram…

<p style=”text-align: right;”>You’re not the boss of me, Al1</p>

Stay on The Carrier.

Anonymous wrote:

<p style=”text-align: right;”>You’re not the boss of me, Al1</p>

Todd, stop posting pictures of former agents of ISIS. It makes me nervous. :

If We Drew Modern Animals The Way We Draw Dinosaurs, Based On Bones Alone

C. M. Kosemen always had an interest in dinosaurs but felt something was a bit off.

“We were both dinosaur geeks, but the more we looked at these skeletons, and the more we looked at the pictures, we noticed that most mainstream dinosaur art didn’t look at dinosaurs as real creatures,” Kosemen told Atlas Obscura.

“For example there could plant-eating dinosaurs that had pangolin or armadillo-like armor that wasn’t preserved in the fossil. There could also be dinosaurs with porcupine-type quills.”

So, he made illustrations of modern animals on how they might be interpreted by future paleoartists.

That’s groovy, man