Either...

...I just glanced through the window in the fire door and saw a long-haired guy in the next flat returning from the shower, or I saw a girl who was inexplicably wearing a towel around her waist and happened to be at such an angle so that I couldn't see her breasts.

Funny thing; I'm pretty sure it's an all-girls flat.

My reaction was not "NOICE, BRAH" but "Why does she have the towel only around her waist, especially when her room is the closest to the door?"

Because that's the normal heterosexual male reaction to nearly seeing a girl topless.

(no subject)

GOLD: Don't believe me? It's all in the numbers. For a hundred years, there's been a
conspiracy of plutocrats against ordinary people.
JC DENTON: Do you have a single fact to back that up?
GOLD: Number one: In 1945 corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay
about 5 percent. Number two: In 1900 90 percent of Americans were self-employed;
now it's about two percent.

This is dialogue from the end of the first "level" of the award winning game Deus Ex, and when I got to it, I was struck by the similarity of the terrorist leader's rhetoric to that of Occupy Wall Street. The NSF even claims to represent everyone, and attempt a little "wealth redistribution" by redirecting medicine toward people who can't afford it and away from the rich. Oddly prophetic for a game from 2000.

There's a talking point of Occupy that says that the rich pay less taxes than the amount of wealth they have. Like many rallying cries, it is concise, punchy, and factually wrong.

There was a thread in JREF discussing taxes. It went something like this.

A: The 99% of the US pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes. Here's a link.
B: Uh, one of those dozens of charts says that the rich actually pay more taxes than the amount of the wealth they have, while everyone else pays slightly less.
A: Of course they pay the most taxes! They have the most money!
B: It's not just "most", it's disproportionately large.
A: That's not important! It makes perfect sense that the people who have the most money have to pay the most taxes?
B: So you only care about disproportionate taxes when it's not rich people being affected?
Can you even admit you were wrong?
A: Stop trying to change the subject!

Kind of weird how people who are perfectly sane in certain parts of that forum will become completely illogical in that section. On at least one occasion, I was arguing with someone who actually knew more about the subject than I did, but was not thinking logically about the matter. Bizarre.

PROTIP: If you don't want to waste multitools disabling alarm panels, and don't want to sneak around, then just stick a mine on the wall under it, then lure the mooks to you and wait for them to reach for the alarm. Alternately, just stick it on the wall in a random corridor and let the guard see you, then run around the corner and giggle.

Dear fanfic author,

I don't care how stupid the character is.

I don't care that she's the equivalent of a little girl.

You cannot, with a straight face, have her speak in lolcat.

-J

(no subject)

Someone on my deviantWatch just made a post saying that Olivia from SVU is a stronger female character than Beckett from Castle, who is apparently a Mary Sue.

Okay, it is kind of interesting to look at Beckett in isolation, compared to the way she was "designed"; as Castle's counterpart and Love Interest, and he for her. Both characters are intended to complement each other. Beckett doling out little tidbits actually reinforces her emotional isolation, especially in comparison to how Castle will cheerfully talk about details of his personal life, or accidentally let personal details slip. Beckett is a lot more strategic in her small talk (and yes, I speak from experience). As for her heels, she's a fashion-conscious detective, and we all have our vices. Detectives don't actually do that much running.

She has been used as a distraction, but she's an attractive women and knows it. The team has no problem using Castle in exactly the same fashion. "Hey, famous playboy good-looking writer, go over there and distract people!" Most of the time, IIRC, Kate is the one who decides to be a distraction, and on one occasion her sexy act saved Castle's life. And most importantly, she's the head of a three-man detective team, and had a deeper backstory than the title character of the show. The show plays fast and loose with "realism" in the first place; just ask someone with relevant knowledge about the steampunk episode.

The funny thing is that they really like every other female character on the show, but somehow missed the point of the female lead. If they're doing such a good job on everyone else, maybe you're just misreading the character. I mean, TVTropes can't find anything really objectionable about the show. TVTropes.

Speaking of which; yes, the female characters on Everybody Hates Chris tend to be irritating jerks. Just like the male characters.