So I just got to work and when I picked up my tea thermos and my lunch bag I noticed the seat was a bit wet. Occationally my thermos leaks a little, nothing a few hours in the sun won’t fix.
When I got to my desk I noticed my lunch bag was wet…
Turns out the garden pickles I packed with my lunch leaked. God I hope my truck doesn’t smell like a douche bag!
Faaaaaaak!
Found this video of a whole bunch of anti-gun shills whining about Minnesota’s redundant harassment law.
In the video you’ll see Brady Board Member Joan Peterson, but note in this video her meek, fact-free testimony is done on behalf of the Joyce Foundation, not the Brady Camp.
Note how they were in a gun shop for the footage, but didn’t feel the need to actually talk to anybody who might be pro-gun. Thankfully stories this biased are on their way out…not to mention that more people are giving up on print and TV and using the internet.
Often people talk about YASD (Yet Another Stupid Death) in Nethack, some deaths are just Nethack kicking your ass. Bumping into a Mumak before you get your AC up. Failing your poison save from a dart trap, or bump into a Chameleon while he’s polymorphed into something wayyyy to big for your britches. Hell I have a certain aversion to Giant Bats because they can be generated in the first few levels, and they’re fast, hard-to-hit, and can do a fair amount of damage. Those bastards frequently stop my game before it even starts.
But this recent game got me thinking about the big one. Its what the NAO players call “Team Ant” or “Team a”.
It gets it name from the ants. The big killers are the soldier ants (which took me in the above linked game), they travel in packs, they are hard to hit, fast-moving, and have a poison attack that deals additional damage, and possibly death if you are not resistant to poison. Slightly less deadly are the fire ants which lack the poison attack, but have a fire attack that can burn you, and your items. At the bottom of the totem pole are the giant ants, which are wimps compared to their bigger but they appear higher in the dungeon, and still they can deal a lot of damage, and are hard to hit, and they also travel in packs.
Also another “a” but not an ant but are very similar in both their behavior, as well as their deadliness are the killer bees. Again, packs, small, fast, poison!
So what do you do if you encounter these bastards? First up RUN! Distance is your friend, they can’t attack at range so as long as they aren’t beside you you’re safe. Use ranged attacks to thin their numbers before they make contact.
Second, Bottle-neck these guys! They attack in packs, so don’t let them swarm you. If you get completely surrounded you’re likely soon dead, so bottle-neck them in a hall or a doorway. At this point if you know an attack spell or have a wand, this might be a good time to attack multiple monsters at once, while you can only get attacked by one-at-a-time.
And of course if you get killed, don’t be too upset if you lose…many before you have been there before, many after you will as well.
So what can you do proactively to limit your death-by-ant?
-Have a ranged attack. Daggers, bow-and-arrow, attack spells, wands. Anything that can knock a few off their numbers before they can throw their first attack.
-Speed. Drink a potion of speed, zap yourself with a wand of speed monster, eat a quantum mechanic while you have normal speed, or wear speed boots.
-Have poison resistance. Besides being a class that has that innate intrinsic, or wearing a ring or amulet of poison resistance, or a alchemy smock. The best way to gain the intrinsic is to eat corpses that can grant poison resistance. Go read that list, and note which corpses are safe to eat, and also look at corpses that are “Unsafe”. Eat corpses that are acidic if you have lots of hit-points and can take the damage. ONLY eat corpses that are poisonous if you have the resistance (if you are wearing an item that grants resistance you won’t be harmed by the poison, but you can still gain the resistance. if you read “You feel especially healthy”, it means you can feel free to ditch your item at your convenience. If you don’t have poison resistance, but DO have a Unicorn Horn (BTW one of the most useful items in the game, a blessed Unihorn is a MUST have for all adventurers). Eat poison corpses, take damage, then apply the Unihorn to regain lost strength. When you read “You feel healthy” , you’re set.
-Have a low AC. The harder you can make it for them to hit, or hurt you the better. ‘Nuff said.
-Have a good weapon. When you go toe-to-toe with one of these guys the faster you can end it, the better a chance for survival you have. Damage of course is the king, but the level-drain attack by Stormbringer can kill many of these beasts because of their relatively low hit-points.
Of course be mindful. If you see one, assume there are others, and be VERY proactive about the battle!
Happy ‘Hacking!
I heard about this story in the news. College Basketball player drops dead on the court.
No guns there. Does it matter?
BTW really sad case. And a bit scary when you see somebody in peak health like that just keel over dead like he was hit with a bolt of lightning. My heart goes out to the family and the team.
h/t Wallphone
So Sebastian links this NPR Expose
Money Quote:
In the long run, we would be better off without federal funding.
Good, we should shut off the tit TONIGHT to you bigoted, mooching assholes!
Also I love how in one breath he calls Conservatives and the Tea Party a bunch of racists…and in the next breath talks smack about the Jews.
These people should not receive a DIME of public funds. If they can raise their own scratch to peddled this shit, go crazy! But not on MY back!
**UPDATE** looks like the jerk in the video is getting pilloried. I wonder how long he’ll have a job.
First up, Dad emailed me another good epilepsy joke. there are precious few of them so I cherish the ones I find!
A drunk walks into a veterinarian’s office with a goldfish bowl.
“I Think my goldfish has epilepsy!” Sez the drunk.
The Doctor peers at the fish and says: “The fish looks perfectly healthy…”
“I know,” says the drunk, “But watch when I take him out of the bowl!”
LOL!
Also FYI I’ve decided to start calling my Boss “Tiger Blood” đ
Stories like this should be getting you to think harder about how our justice system works.
A day after The Providence Sunday Journal reported the scheduled early release of child-slayer Michael Woodmansee, hundreds of outraged readers called the offices of the state attorney general and Corrections Department on Monday demanding that the killer who shellacked the little boyâs bones remain behind bars….In 1975, Woodmansee, then 16, stabbed to death 5-year-old Jason Foreman who lived on the same Peace Dale village street in South Kingstown.
Authorities found the boyâs shellacked bones and skull in Woodmanseeâs bedroom seven years later after Woodmansee tried to strangle the local paper boy and ended up confessing to killing Jason.
But in 1983, as part of a plea-bargain arrangement, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. A judge ordered him to serve 40 years of a 50-year sentence. (As part of the plea arrangement, Woodmansee also received 10 years for assaulting the second boy. That term ran concurrently with the longer sentence.)
Ok here’s the first hint of bad justice. 50 years for stabbing a child and preserving and keeping the bones? And all this after attempting to murder another boy he got a concurrent sentence? What’s the point to concurrent sentences anyway? That sounds a little two much like a “Buy two for the price of one” coupon. What do you think will be different with a monster like that 50 years later? Also, while maybe somebody like the Boston Strangler, or Ted Bundy who preyed on young adults and killed with brute force, maybe those creeps might lose a little speed off their fastball, with age and chose to “retire” from their grim lifestyle….somebody who stabs and strangles children? I suspect he’ll be a danger to society until he’s infirm. But that’s not the end…
Because of a long-standing âgood timeâ law, Woodmansee is coming up for release 12 years sooner than many people might have expected ââ or seem willing to accept.
Under the earned good time law that Wall says has been on the books since 1960, Woodmansee regularly had 12 days a month subtracted from his sentence: 10 days for good behavior and 2 days for holding a prison job.
I wonder if he’d have been as well behaved if they housed children in his prison? I wonder how well-behaved he’d have been if he wasn’t surrounded by pipe-swinging gang-bangers who know he’s a child killer, and a pervert?
Still nice to see a violent monster being released to freedom, isn’t it? Obviously the solution to this problem is to make it harder for me to buy a gun. That will prevent this asshole from stabbing another kid.
Now comes the heartache.
Meanwhile, as John Foreman, the father of 5-year-old Jason Foreman, reiterated his intention to seek revenge ââ telling a radio audience that if given a chance he would kill the âmonsterâ who âate the flesh of my sonâ
Frankly, as much as I hate the idea of vigilante justice, the father is right. This monster should have been killed for his crimes, and this beast is STILL the same monster that was locked up years ago. Given opportunity this beast will kill another child. If the father murders this shithead he should be charged with murder…but I’ll be deeply conflicted about that.
This is my problem, when child-eating killers are set free, while people like myself who have done nothing worse than a speeding ticket are punished and restricted.
This is BAD JUSTICE and it needs to be fixed!
OK this has got to sting!
The White House did not receive enough applicants in a contest it launched for schools to win a commencement address by President Obama so it extended the deadline and made the application process easier….A Feb. 28 memo then reported that there were 68 applications, compared with more than 1,000 schools in the 2010 contest. The memo says, according to CBS, âSomething isnât working,â and it urges White House staff to ask legislators and other public officials to encourage schools to apply.
Everybody is learned that President Obama is the latest incarnation of Nixon or Carter. He’s gored everybody’s ox, and has shown inexperience and stupidity whenever given the opportunity. Of course I’m a Liberty-Loving Conservative, so I’ve NEVER liked him, but can you get a more liberal venue than our Public Schools?
If they don’t like him anymore, then he’s in HUGE trouble.
I’m going to quote Joe’s comment on his quote of the day.
I remember the concealed carry fights of 15+ years ago. There were a lot of people that wanted âVermont Carryâ rather than licensing. It was believed there was no path to âVermont Carryâ once we had âShall Issueâ carry. It was believed that we were giving up too much by allowing the government to license a right. That we now appear to be on a roll to âConstitutional Carryâ in many states proves that fear was unfounded. We are winning because were willing to accept what we could get rather than what we believed was due to us.
Now of course I have another grim angle. The anti-rights lobby still exists because they have all but abandoned their true, but losing goal, to ban the sale and possession of all firearms by civilians. Instead they have a litmus where if it inconveniences or restricts lawful gun owners in any way, they approve of it.
Magazine bans won’t ban guns or their sale, but it inconveniences and restricts lawful gun owners.
Micro-stamping won’t ban guns or their sale, but it inconveniences and restricts lawful gun owners.
Making private transfers illegal won’t ban guns or their sale, but it inconveniences and restricts lawful gun owners.
etc etc etc
We need to do the same. I think sometimes we can be our own worst enemy by wanting something perfect at the expense of something better, or getting complacent with gun laws in your permissive jurisdiction while lawful Americans rot in Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, California, and other 3rd world dictatorships.
This is one of the reasons why I support national concealed carry. I linked Say Uncle just so you can see the comments. Yeah national concealed carry might turn into some hideous boogie-man, but that would require the anti-rights people to initiate that, and we can fight them and stop them. Meanwhile imagine your carry permit holding the same weight as your driver’s license? If you by chance are traveling on the boarder of two states you don’t have to worry that maybe the winding interstate you’re driving on may occasionally meander onto the wrong side of the fence. You can travel to other states and not be forced to engage in multiple safeguards or paranoid acts because you’re traveling through a restrictive state.
Think about it this way. How would it make you feel if the Brady Campaign or the Joyce Foundation ONLY proposed and supported legislation that called for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment?
They wouldn’t last long, would they?
Many of the anti-rights jerks cite domestic disputes as a reason to restrict gun rights.
A witness, who claims to have recently started dating the victim, claimed he got a call from their cell phone from a man named Hank, in which Hank stated, “She’s done and you’re next. I’ll find you.” The witness then called 911 to report the call.
Another witness, a friend of the victim for 20 years, claimed Hickman had been violent with his wife and she had recently filed for divorce.
The Star Tribune reported Cynthia Hickman was granted a protective order less than two weeks before her death, but Henry Hickman reportedly returned to live in the basement of the house after he ran out of money while living in a hotel.
A lot of good all that did for her.
The charges allege Hickman beat his wife to death with a bat and then shoved her body beneath a mattress and lit it on fire. The attempted second-degree murder charges stem from Hickman instructing his two young sons to stay in the basement while the house filled with smoke…The autopsy showed the victim died of blunt force trauma and not as a result of the fire.
Seems the killer didn’t need a gun to kill his wife, nor did he need any special tool. I think most of us owned at LEAST one baseball bat as a young child, let alone as grown adults.
But wouldn’t a gun have been nice in the hand of the victim?
This is why I do the “Gun Death?” files. To show the violence that will exist in a world without guns, but also to show what can happen when victims are disarmed.
h/t Maddmedic
