...is the pose a homage to anyone or anything in particular? (I have the nagging feeling it is, but I can't recall what.)
Intriguing CCS fanart
-Rob Kelk
"Actually, my goal is to write neat stories. The money just makes it possible for me to write them faster and then buy neat toys."
Ryk E. Spoor, 7 November 2007
--
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

You know the Two Cows guide to Politics, right?
COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
...and so on.
So. I was thinking about this, and...well, I'm not sure if this has been done before, but what the hell. =)
I now give you:
The Two Cows guide to City of Heroes
VAHZILOK: You have two cows. You kill one cow and put its organs into the other cow. The cow explodes.
KHELDIANS: You have two cows. One of your cows is actually a squid.
LOST: You have two cows. They are slowly mutating into elephants.
RIKTI: You have two cows. The cows take over your farm.
HELLIONS: You have two cows. You kill one cows and use its blood in Satanic rituals. The other cow gets made into a purse.
SKULLS: You have two cows. You kill a cow and wear its skull on your head. You call the other cow 'daddy'.
5TH COLUMN/COUNCIL: You have two cows. One cow takes over the other cow. That cow is never seen again.
SIDEKICKING: You have two cows. One of the cows is smaller than the other. But you can't tell the difference if they're standing close together.
EXEMPLARING: You have two cows. One cow is bigger than the other cow. You pretend they are the same.
INSPIRATIONS: You have two cows. Your cows eat some grass. Your cows are now more powerful.
TROLLS: You have two cows. Your cows smoke some grass. Your cows turn green.
DEVOURING EARTH: You have two cows. The grass eats your cows.
ARACHNOS: You have two cows. You work for the cows. You eventually gain cow powers.
BADGES: You have two cows. Your bar is not full. You must kill two hundred cows.
RIKTI WAR ZONE: You have two cows. You force them into the same herd. But they do not share grass.
PVP: You have two cows. One of the cows was a stalker. You now have no cows.
NEMESIS: You have two cows. Or do you? Maybe they aren't really cows. Or is there a purpose behind these cows? The cows are proceeding according to plan.
COSTUME CONTEST: You have two cows. You line your cows up with a bunch of other cows.
FAMILY: You have two cows. The boss takes one cow. You find the head of the other cow in your bed.
MALTA: There are no cows.
MALTA TITANS: You have two cows. They combine into a bigger cow.
KNIVES OF ARTEMIS: You have two cows. Not bulls. Definitely not bulls. Your cows have cowtrops.
CIRCLE OF THORNS: You have two cows. Nobody wants to kill your cows. Beef becomes very expensive.
PRAETORIANS: You have two cows. They look identical, except one cow is mad.
OUROBOROS: You have two cows. No, wait. You had two cows. Or...are you supposed to have two cows, but not yet? Damnit...
WENTWORTHS/BLACK MARKET: You have two cows. You sell one cow for half its value. You sell the other cow at a ridiculously high price and retire on the proceeds.
OUTBREAK: You have two cows. Your cows are very sick. Yet everyone wants your cows.
SHIVANS: You have two cows. You only bring out your cows when faced with a bigger cow.
CLOCKWORK: You have two cows. You build more cows.
FREAKSHOW: You have two cows. One of them is self-milking. The other has a built-in cattle prod.
PARAGON PROTECTORS: You have two cows. You take their genetic material and clone an army of cows.
CREY: You do not have cows. There are no cows on your farm. You only have sheep. You do not know where the manure came from.
...
More later, but...c'mon, folks, I'm sure you can help me out here. =D
(I'll probably wanna crosspost this to the official CoH forums when we hit critical mass.)
-- Acyl

So. I'm getting nagged by my father to "create a WEBSITE! MAKE OODLES OF MONEY!"
My big problem? No idea what to do. Blog? Find some sort of tchochke to sell?
Or any advice for how to get started on a blog and let the chips fall where they may?
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Peg and I did, and while it wasn't Oz, it wasn't too bad.
Anyway, I've been amusing myself the last couple days by trying to work out a list of all the explicit shout-outs to the famous 1939 Judy Garland version that I saw. And I was wondering if anyone else watched it and spotted something I didn't.
And when I say "shout-out", I don't necessarily mean something that was the same in both because they were paralleling the same plot (although one or two of mine are kind of close to that). I mean something that explicitly invokes a memory a viewer would have of the earlier film. Check the list, you'll see what I mean.
* DG's waitress uniform is all but identical to Judy Garland's costume; likewise for the hairstyle when she's wearing it.
* Sheriff Elmer Gulch, who wants to arrest DG, references Margaret Hamilton as Elmyra Gulch, who had a grudge against Dorothy and Toto
* DG's house is numbered 39
* When running across the meadow to the entrance to the Realm of the Abandoned, Glitch stumbles in a manner similar to Ray Bolger's rubber-legged Scarecrow
* In the illusion used on DG by Azkedelia, DG "wakes up" the next morning to discover her adventure in the O.Z. was "just a dream" -- which she described as being "in Technicolor"
* DG's line "And Toto, too"
* During a flashback, Azkedelia and DG's shared "Lions, tigers and bears, oh my" lines just before the encounter with the bear.
* The spinning tornado sculpture in the Mystic Man's theatre
* The Mystic Man's brief appearance as a giant head floating in the air, heralded by gouts of flame
* The Queen calling out for DG in Azkedelia's viewing tank echoes the image of Aunt Em in the Wicked Witch's crystal ball, and uses some of the same dialogue
* The longcoats marching in front of Azkedelia's tower echo the Winkies in front of the Witch's castle
* Cain, Glitch and Raw's strategem for entering the tower to rescue DG is the same as that used by the Tin Woodsman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion to get into the Witch's castle

-- Bob
---------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....

he second season is still on-going, but between this season and the last sason, there's enough to make me think that Doug showing up in this dimension might be interesting.
The key point of this world is the "Power of Existence" aka POE. The Tomogaras seek to amass POE for their own selfish needs (most of them) and the Crimson Lords, thru the Flames Hazes, seek to stop thm.
So if a metahuman showed up in this world, he'd probably show up as a klieg light pointed straight up during a Hollywood matinee to both Crimson Lords and Tomogaras.
So, is Doug going to end up being on someone's menu? Or would the they find his chaos field to be just a wee bit toxic?
What would be intersting to me would be Doug's relationships to the older members of the cast..espcially between him and Sadonay.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

What happens when you let D&D LARPers play in a Christmas pagent? This. It's hilarious.
--The Twisted One"If you wish to converse with me, define your terms."
--Voltaire
"If you
wish to converse with me, define your
terms."

--Voltaire

Does anyone here know a way to put mathematical formulae, such as those generated by TeX or similar, into LiveJournal posts?
Sorry about this, but I'm not sure who else to ask (there's been no response to my inquiry on this topic in LiveJournal's support area).
--The Twisted One"If you wish to converse with me, define your terms."
--Voltaire
"If you
wish to converse with me, define your
terms."

--Voltaire

(Excerpt from a book put inside a vault with lots of security precautions)
On Handwaved Movie and Television Props
It's determined that influencing handwavium is like herding cats. One's will influences it a bit, along with the underlying desires of the individual conflicting. If one expects one's will to affect it, then the will of an entire group would affect the handwaved device. A actors's job is to make things look like the person he or she is portraying. A thing portrayed in a movie is made to -look- the part and what's better than looking the part than having the effect that the audience(movie patrons) believe in? As Hollywood objects, they are enhanced to behave like the objects they are portraying as a better prop. Perhaps the more patrons who believe in something the more powerful it is at the time it was waved, i.e a movie prop is more powerful than a television prop and a legendary or historical movie prop is more powerful than a fictional prop?
OOClease comment.
"Evil tends to triumph over good...unless good is very, very sneaky."-Anonymous-

I have found the ultimate tool for online collaboration. It is not a chat client or instant messenger (though these can help). It is not Google Docs or any online service.
It is a beautifully simple tool called CoOffice Tools and it turns your Microsoft Word and PowerPoint softwares into real-time online collaborative tools.
Sit there and watch in amazement as your friend on the internet fixes typoes for you in Word in real-time. Take joy in having an "OH OH OH! How about this!" moment as you suddenly jump in and write in a plot twist.
The only way it can get better would be if your writing partner was right in the room with you.
Here is their website: cooffice.ntu.edu.sg/coword/index.html
SET
CoOffice Tools is a small download, quick to install, and easy to setup. It will work with all versions of Word and PowerPoint (I don't know about 2007 versions, though).
First of all, you're going to need a server to connect to. This is actually not as hard as it sounds. Sure, there is the provided public server, but you don't really want that. You want a secure location to save your stuff.
Luckily, the folks that made CoOffice also made an equally simplistic Server program that lets whatever computer you install it on into the host for the 'Repository' that will hold your files.
Here's the one oddity: in order to work on the same files, two people have to use the same account/login. In that respect, it's kinda like file-sharing in a Windows environment - you need to have so-and-so's username and password to access his files.
Other than that, setting up the accounts is simplicity in itself. Just set the name, password, the rights the account has (which is kind of a moot point I think) and the folder on your machine you'll be working out of.
NOTE: Don't change the name of the folder or else you'll ahve to set the accounts up all over again. Granted, it's an easy enough fix if you only have one or two, but what a bother!
Once you set everything up, all your friends on your LAN or in Internet Land need is CoOffice Tools (They won't need the Server if you're the one hosting the party) your IP address, the account name and password.
CoOffice tools is loaded with useful features like a radar to help you track down where your co-author is in the document, highlights to show who made what changes, and other nifty toys.
I can guarantee that you'll love this wonderful piece of software. I already do and it is proving to be just the thing to help me realize my goal of being part of my own team of writers. ^_^

Funny, but wrong.
Gilbert and Sullivan's Baby Got Back.

-- Bob
---------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....