Battra92

Closeted Chubby Chaser? On an on-topic note. Duke Nukem Forever is $5 at Worst Buy At least, I assume that counts as a deal.

I always thought Return of the Joker was one of the best Batman films of all time.

You do realize the Salvation Army is a church ... right?

At what point is something a "fair share?" If you want to help someone, donate to the Salvation Army! They have done more for the people of this and other countries than all our tax Government has never created any good for anyone. How's the War on Poverty doing? How about the trillions thrown down the shitter in TARP? Or if you're that dead set on paying higher taxes, nothing is stopping you from making a donation to the treasury. http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Amendment 1: Constitution of the United States. This also applies to stuff that you disagree with. It also applies to stuff that I disagree with. The answer to speech you don't like is more speech. Banning "hate" speech (who decides it anyway) is an abridgement of our basic Liberties. Unless you are inciting a riot or spreading defamation ALL speech ought to be protected.

Obama to America: You suck. I understand this plays well to those outside of America or those who feel that America owes them something but to people like me who go to work daily and try to do the best I can to support my family. Replace working or middle class with prolitariat and replace "the rich" with bourgeois and you have something straight from Marx and Lenin. Jonah Goldberg said that if you woke up out of a coma from 3 years and heard that speech you'd have no idea this man was our president. Seriously, this man's disdain for his fellow citizens sickens my stomach. On the flip side, I guess Obama can no longer deny being a socialist. He's the bonafide reincarnation of Huey Long.

Just tell them how much you love the game and then return it. Bring up how much you love Super Mario 3D Land or Mario Kart and show them your mad skillz playing it. They won't be any the wiser if you play your cards right.

Not quite. A roll usually prefers to a small round piece of bread that has not been cut from a larger loaf. It is almost always a yeast leavened bread. A biscuit (and Southerners can get pretty defensive on this) is a small chemical leavened bread (as in, no yeast) that is either dropped from a spoon or pressed out and rolled. Making these is an art form as you want to produce as little gluten as possible. The term biscuit comes from the Middle French bescuit, which means "Twice Baked." This is because biscuits were originally baked once and then dried out (for long storage) in a slow dry oven. Which segues me into another food related difference: Hardtack, Seabiscuits, Hard Crackers, Pilot Biscuits, a.k.a food from Hell itself. These are unleavened bread squares (sometimes circles) that are simply flour, water and salt. They were often infested with maggots yet strangely had an obscenely long shelf life. There is an unconfirmed story that the US Government had leftover hardtack from the end of the Civil War and issued it to soldiers in the Spanish-American war ... some 35 years later! The best thing is that those begat these little yeast leavened treats. We call them Saltines here or occasionally "soda crackers." What do you guys in the UK call them? Do you even have them? I didn't see any in the markets (mostly Sainsbury) during my trip.

They are similar but graham crackers are made with Graham flour instead of plain old white or even whole wheat flour. They get their name from Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister who thought eating spicy foods lead to lust. Interesting guy ... The original crackers weren't much like the new ones. Graham Crackers are also a full half century older than their English cousins. I'll have to try making them sometime. I'd report that in the food thread, of course.

Add Contra 4 to the mix. VERY hard but VERY fun. I had only 2 lives and no continues left. Now to face the challenges!

Well, the French Fries thing was a joke that got out of hand. Most people I know call them just plain old fries. On a side note, French refers not to the origin but to the cut (aka the Julienne cut*.) *The French didn't so much invent everything as they did name everything. It's interesting that you mention Clam chowder too. New England gets the credit for American chowder but there are those (like my sister) who are die-hard Manhattan clam chowder fans. Well, barbecue (that is, to dig a pig and cook by smoke) actually goes back to pre-Columbus America in the West Indies. The Spaniards brought it back to the old world and then it spread to the Southern colonies where it took hold. Southern style barbecue is wholy different from barbecue up north and even Texas is different from say Georgia BBQ. In New York BBQ chicken almost always refers to the Cornell Chicken I referred to above. Tonight I'm making pork chops, a tossed salad and mashed potatoes. I found it interesting that in the UK mashed potatoes are simply called "mash." We think of mash as something else.

Personally I very much prefer the 1998 list over the 2011 list. I think the omission of BoaN is pandering to political correctness but Intolerance does deserve to be on the top 100 films list for its contribution to camera angles and such. BoaN is still striking and engaging even to this day (despite it's rediculous stereotypes and racism.)

Oh were well aware. My wife and I both agree she's hot.

Barbecue (at least what Americans call BBQ) is more cooking with indirect heat and smoking it low and slow. Cooking directly over an open flame is grilling. It is usually treated with a rub first although in other parts of the country people use a BBQ sauce (which is blasphemy down south IIRC) Up here in Upstate New York, barbecue to us is Cornell Chicken (which is quite delicious) http://allrecipes.com/recipe/cornell-chicken-marinade/ Paired with Syracuse salt potatoes and some sweet corn on the cob and you have the perfect summer meal. Everything was so ... bland! I got a chicken sandwich and it tasted something akin to a boiled piece of chicken thrown on a bun. It was just barely edible ... Haché burgers in Camden Town was great, though. There was another place in Euston we liked that served a kind of spicy chicken. It was delicious but I had a reaction that night ;;

My Dad (who speaks fluent French) was a bit pissed when they stopped calling it La vache qui rit around here. Of course I don't remember it ever being called that but whatever. Believe me, after spending a week in England, there is some incredibly HORRID food there (go to the Crown and Anchor in Euston if you need to induce vommiting) In fact, most of the pub fare I ate in England was rather bland and devoid of flavor. That's not to say Americans don't have bad food as well. Americans have created some great cuisine. Unfortunately most are in the form of snack foods (popcorn, potato chips etc.) but I think Southern fried chicken, cornbread and barbecue are the best contibutions of American cuisine to the rest of the world. Unfortunately for me, I can't eat a lot of different foods due to having various food allergies (allum family mostly - except garlic for whatever reason) and because people seem insistant on serving me stuff I won't eat. I wasn't able to eat anything except cake at my own fucking wedding because my in-laws selected disgusting foods for the meal.

John McCain was nowhere near a credible candidate. Most rank and file Republicans hated McCain as their nominee. He was selected because he was the so-called "safe" candidate. He was afraid to campaign against Obama on issues, personal deficiencies (which are all pretty clear now) as well as his strikingly out of the mainstream ideology. I don't know if it was fears of racism charges or if McCain is that dumb. The fact that he married into money didn't help nor did it help that he seemed to try to position himself left of center. Really, the only decent thing McCain had going for him was he was a real genuine war hero. That doesn't make someone presidental. Then again, he was more qualified than Obama but that's not saying much. This election cycle is going to be dirty. REALLY dirty. Obama can't run on his record because, outside of the death of Bin Laden (which I think we can all agree wasn't really his doing) he has had no success in turning the country around finanacially. We can argue about the causes but quite frankly, the American public doesn't want to hear "It's Bush's fault" any more. The so-called "Great Uniter" has spent the last 3 years in office pitting one group against another and it's no wonder there's so much civil unrest in this country. The economy is crappy, the country is deep in debt to the Chinese, Americans are cutting back on Christmas, unemployment hovers around 10% (with the administration changing the numbers for damage control) so people are sick and tired. Since Obama can't run on a platform of peace and prosperity, you're going to hear a countless barrage against whomever the Republican nominee is. The media will dig so far into his past (doing what they didn't do in 2008 to the Bamster) that we'll know what his parents had for dinner the night he was conceived. There won't be much paid to real issues that face us, which is sad as we are in pretty dire times right now. America is at a crossroads and we need some real leadership and a real transformation in government.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovs0fpFgeqw What you've been waiting for. Good old ignoramus Miley Cyrus: born into money thanks to her Achey Breaky father and made an estimated 48 Million dollars last year trying to sell herself as the current princess jailbait. Yet she claims to be part of the so-called 99%. She's just as much a part of the 1% as the big bankers, the politicians, fat-asses like Michael Moore etc. I don't know if she's being opportunist or seriously believes this shit or her agent just told her to record it. The Soviets had a term for people like her: "Useful Idiots"

I would argue that being a good game is reason enough.

I'd like to blame my wedding on why my list is so short but I put it down to apathy and having to work a lot (and a wife who likes to monopolize the TV)