For various reasons, I've swapped shifts with a co-worker for this Friday, and instead of my usual 8-5 Eastern I'll be working 10-7.

This means I can stay up a little longer than usual on Thursday night.

Can It Be Ninja Nite Now Plz?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Antonio E. Gonzalez was kind enough to post the list of the AX 2008 AMV-contest winners to Usenet. I'm re-posting it here, with his comments and typos... No links yet, to YouTube or animemusicvideos.org - let's all look for them together!

Quote:"Be a Man" - Winner of Best Action, also a surprisingly funny video, but just well-made above all. It's a Gurren Lagann video to Donny Osmond's "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan. IMHO, shoulda won Best in Show.

"The Harassment of Kyon" - Winner Best Comedy, Best in Show. Ever notice the way Itsuki looks at Kyon throughout the Haruhi series? Yeah, this video takes that, and blows it completely out of context, in hilarious fashion to Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend." Well, if one had to win BiS, this one worked, down to the twist ending.

"Bustin'" - Another good comedy one, thojugh it might've worked better in Action. The editing was perfect, but I coudn't get into it. Oh, FF: Advent Children to Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters."

"Farewell" - Winner of Best Drama, unfair usage of Saikano; hell, not only Saikano, but James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover." Anyway, those wouldn't have mattered had the editing not worked, but it did, so this one was a guaranteed victory; and guaranteed to leave about half the audience in tears . . .

"Fat Friend" (?) - Gudam 0083 to Stephen Lynch's "Big Fat Friend." I almost felt guilty about finding this one funny . . . almost. Still, while the editing wasn't quite up to par, it was very funny . . . in a horribly un-PC way . . .

"Anime Girls Need Mood Rings" - Quite a few to Relient K's "Mood Rings."

"Sousuke's Changes" - FMP to Army of Me's "Going Through Changes."

"Ouran High School Never Ends" - Ouran High School Host Club to Bowling for Soup's "High School Never Ends."

"Endless Frontier" - Outlaw Star to Star One's "Set Your Controls."

"Lovestruck Radiance" - AMG to Michael Mansion's "Let Me In (Darwin's Hemstock Remix)."

"Condemned Memoir" - Elfen Lied to The Birthday Massacre's "Blue." Bloody, seriously bloody.

"Falling Dreams" - Kingdom Hearts to Within Temptation's "See Who I Am."

"FREEDOM" - KARAS to Blood Stain Child's "FREEDOM." Not quite as bloody as the Elfen Lied one, but still . . .

"Catch Me If You Can Zenigata" - Lupin III to Brad Paisley's "Fifth Gear."

"Redeem Us!" - S-Cry-ed to Within Temptation's "Our Solemn Hour."

So here is the first bit of backstory for Smoldering Decay. I have at least 2 more planned.
I'm envisioning these almost as journal entries, recorded to make sure that she doesn't forget, that what happened to her world isn't lost should she die.
So without further delay, onto the story:

Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 1)

I write this in hopes that I won't forget what drove me here. And that should I fall in battle this will serve as a warning of what may come for others.

I'm not sure what the difference is between the Ritki I know and the ones the heroes face here. All I know is that this place seems to be spared from the scorched earth policy we faced back home. Terra Volta isn't a radioactive slag pile, The Faultline dam still stands, the hospitals aren't smoking husks.

Brickstown was the first to fall, I still remember first tense few hours following the raid. At first we thought it was just a power failure, even the redundant generators in the basement have problems occasionally. Then the stories started to filter in. The heroes had managed to take down one of the raid ships. It was a purposeful crash. A pyrrhic victory. A spiteful loss. We never found out the cause behind it, all we know is that Brickstown turned into a blood bath that day. While the Ritki couldn't shut down the teleportation network, they could interfere with it enough to prevent long distance transports. Every hero in Brickstown who fell and didn't have a med station in their base, who weren't part of a supergroup, or couldn't be reached in time by fellow healers became one more statistic.

Oh we hit them back hard, one whole section of the mothership was reduced to a smoking skeleton the next day. But they saw the effect the loss of the hospital had on battles in Brickstown, it wasn't more than a week before Independence Port was hit. This time there was no question about the intent behind it. Even after the ship had been holed several time through by Statesman it kept going on pure inertia alone. The shields around the hospital didn't stand a chance against a few hundred tonnes of alien spaceship. It was all downhill from there. It didn't matter how hard we hit back, every blow they hit us with hurt more. Sure, the bombing runs weren't nearly as bad with fewer warships floating above us, but every one hurt that much more. The other hospitals quickly became overrun trying to pick up the slack. I even heard rumors of the same thing happening in Cap Au Diable, but I never had the free time to track down the truth behind that statement.

It was the fall of the Kings Row hospital that changed things. I don't know how it started, or if an official order was ever given, but the thugs and criminals just stopped showing up. I don't know if they were left to fend for themselves or if they were never given the chance, I never bothered to ask. All I know is that the drop in incoming bodies, and the freed up room in what used to be the secure ward, meant that the survival rate in the ER went back up. Not to it's pre-agression levels, but better than the 60% we used to be at. And things were looking up. Especially when the vanguard shot down two ships attempting to kamikaze into the base in the war zone.

And then of course the excrement already stuck to the fan had to fly off and hit me. I don't remember how many double shifts I ended up pulling, or how much caffeine I had running in my veins. But I know I was covered in more things than I could name and trying to trying to grab a few minutes of rest when the invasion alarm went off. We immediately started to port the long term patients to other hospitals. The ER got transformed into a relay center, if the arriving heros weren't going to die in the next minute they got relayed to another hospital.

Those few minutes of frantic activity will always stand out in my mind. Pulling people out of the teleporters, spraying them with disinfectants and derma-bond, and shoving them in the teleporters at the other side of the room. There weren't enough people to keep up with the influx, but we tried anyway. None of us were required to stay once we got the long term patients out of the hospital. We were even encouraged to go with them to one of the other hospitals; help them deal with the impending chaos. The other nurses and doctors didn't try and convince those of us that decided to stay behind not to. We all knew that someone had to. I always figured that I could do more good at ground zero, and hop in the teleporter at the last second if the ship was incoming. The truth is that in the chaotic mess of the teleporter room we didn't have a clue the ship was coming until half the ceiling caved in.

The collection of kinetically inclined heroes on the roof did the best job they could, unfortunately there was only so much they could do against several hundred tonnes of alien warship. Their efforts meant the warship careened into the side of the hospital instead of dead center. The sound was deafening, just this rumbling crunch of concrete and steel being forced in ways they were never designed to go. It was punctuated by pops and flashes of light as the two teleporters nearest the wall catastrophically failed. In some ways I'm happy I almost lost my vision to the exploding teleporters, it saved me from seeing what happens when a teleport goes very very wrong. The other two nurses were bringing the next hero in when the hospital got hit. By the time I got back on my feet, the fires and emergency lighting conspired with my damaged retinas to made everything look like it was covered in red smears.

The groans of the hero at my feet brought me back into focus. I had been patching up the worst of his bleeding before the crash, and now I couldn't see straight enough to finish the job. So I did the next best thing: get him to people who can. I had dragged him a little more than half way to the least damaged of the teleporters when I heard something that made me forget about everything else. The crackle of the fire in the corner turned into a screeching hiss of rapidly escaping gas. My adrenaline flooded brain quickly put 1 and 1 together and came up with a very unhappy 3. I hit the ground with my hands curled around my head as the 02 tank lit. There was a roar of flame and wash of light and heat as the fire suddenly got much worse.

After a few seconds I realized I wasn't dead yet; the tank didn't blow. I got back up and started to drag my patient to the teleporters again. By the time I got there I was glad I had to hunch over to pull him along. Standing up would put me head and shoulders deep in smoke. I tried not to think about way his suit was dark and sticky as I manhandled him into a rough fetal position in the center of the teleporter. Once I was assured he wouldn't lose a leg in transit I crawled to the control panel and the big breaker switch that had been grafted into the side of it. The switches were recent additions, along with the fast acting chemical batteries they were hooked up to. Once thrown it would dump enough power into the teleporter for one last use. You got sent to the last coordinates programed in, and you prayed that batteries hadn't been damaged.

I pulled the handle down and prayed to whatever deities were listening that I would make it to the other side.
----------
Good? Bad? Indifferent?

ETA: heavy warships, not musical ones
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

Something I just noticed, there now appears to be a listing of Moderators for each forum on the site here, any my question is, just who is this
'Offsides' that appears to be a moderator of every forum?
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

Fuck it. I give up. Since my ISP has decided to DICK with me tonight, I've lost all patience for dealing with it. I can't keep hopping back on every
fucking 10 minutes.

Sorry Ankh. I decided to bail after this last disconnect. I'm sick of the stress.

The bitch of it is - we had a technician here a few days again. He swore up and down it was fixed. *SIGH*

I KNEW this was going to happen. We're going to be going round and round and round all summer on this shit with my ISP.

T-Man,

I scored major in the last few ITF - nailed a Hecatomb: Damage and a Numina's: Regen/Recovery. I sold the Numinas, but I'm debating about what to do
with the Hecatomb.

I'm carrying one Melee attack at 6 slots, and one at two slots (durrr, what?). I'm considering respeccing to move those around and end up with 4 and 4,
at which point I'll have room for a pair of Hecatomb x2 (for the +4% recovery), and with the Numina's sold, I'm pretty close to the cash to buy a
second Hecatomb for that two-piece bonus right now..

You available to talk tank spec anytime soon?
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

Seen on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/08 ... r_newbies/]The Register, and direct link http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords08.htm]here, Merriam-Webster is looking for examples of mondegreens now that they've added the word to their dictionary. Submissions are open until July 25...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I thought Bob was paying to avoid having ads in the forums, but I see Google ads beside the first posts in each thread.

So, shall we boycott whatever's advertised over there? ----->

Edit: Looking through some of the longer threads, I see it isn't just the first post that has an ad next to it now...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

A movie version of the first JoJo's Bizarre Adventure arc, "Phantom Blood," was supposedly released last year.

I can't find a torrent for it anywhere. It kinda boggles my mind that it could have escaped fansubbers' notice completely. Has anyone had better
luck?

--Sam

"Yare yare daze..."

It's called The Last Theorem, it's co-written by Frederick Pohl, and it's coming out in August.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/07/last_theorem/]More detail here.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.