Pour L'Amour et Liberte: 2015

We will be serving Sushi and Sake at 7:00 pm

Raxxon Global would be delighted if the gentlelady and the gentleman did them the honor of joining us for the event.

The concierge will tell you everything you need to know:

Oh, no!

It's him...

The vid's already gotten nearly 6 million views in less than 24 hours.

Remember, remember!

The fifth of November...

Today is Guy Fawkes Day.

It is also National Men-Make-Dinner Day.

I kid you not !

You know what to do…

Ingress: Rule of acquisition number 7

CMU, Ingress's in-game store currency, stands for "Chaotic Matter Units."

At $9.99 for 15,000 CMU, Niantic is bound to make quite a profit, if enough players go for it. And you know what the saying is about a fool and his money.

I guess, it was just a (chaotic) matter of time before it happened. I am just surprised they didn't do it sooner. Perhaps Niantic was just waiting to become independent from Google (which happened just about 3 months ago.)

Now that Niantic is an independent company, Ingress has to make it on its own as a profit-making game.

Being an exploratory and promotional tool for Google can no longer be its "raison d'être" now, can it?

Or did you really think that Chaotic Matter was real, and that some benevolent aliens were really out there to help humankind out of the goodness of their hearts?

It's called rule of acquisition number 7.

Look it up: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

Goat Head

Oh yah?

You'd better believe it!

Out of my way, foolish mortals!

Ordinary Reality?

Whatever do you mean?

There is nothing ordinary about reality.

May the flow be with you

The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room

The truth of the matter is that for all the mystic associated with Martial Arts, when it comes down to it, there is very little that is glamorous about the arts.

It all depends on what one means by artistic, of course.

While the use of the word art in this context owes more to definition number two (Martial Art, as a technique), than it does to definition number one (Martial Art, as relating to the philosophy of aesthetics, the theory or set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place), we wish it were not so.

We wish, in fact, that it could be as easy as that:

Or as aesthetically pleasing as this:

Or this glamorous:

But it is neither.

THIS is what the true face of Martial Art looks like (and the true face of Ronda Rousey, when she is in the ring, that is):

This is no flower bending in the breeze, this is a bulldozer.

There is a reason why martial arts like Kung Fu or Aikido do not cut it at the UFC (Yip Man and Morihei Ueshiba are rolling in their graves).

It has been argued, of course, that the techniques taught by the various Kung Fu schools are too hardline a style, which, in practice, ultimately renders them useless in a ring because many of those schools most effective moves would be banned by the UFC due to the fact that such moves are specifically designed to cripple or out-right kill.

Some of those techniques can be categorized as follow:

I don't know...

I mean, such arguments are difficult to disprove, of course. Such a demonstration, one way or the other, would require nothing less than a UFC champion to face a Kung Fu or Aikido challenger in a no-holds-barred contest.

Somehow, I can't help but feel Ronda Rousey would be more than a match for any potential would be challenger.

Including even, perhaps if it came to the event, has it been argued, of a mixed martial arts (MMA) contest with professional boxer Floyd Mayweather.

The Head Apollo is about to return...

Siddhartha sleeps, but is going to awaken.
The time you have waited for has come.
— Phillip K. Dick, Valis

It works!

It really works!!!

I see what you did there

In many ways, the game is kind of reminiscent of the Lone Wolf game-books series. Except that you get to play it with others.

Think of it, if you will, as a gathering of "lone wolves." All howling together.

Basically, Tales of The Arabian Nights is a boardgame that involves reading out loud.

A lot!

Along with some of your friends.

The good people of RPG.net do an excellent job here of describing some of the mechanics of the game:

And then someone else does some more reading:

And MORE reading:

Don't get me wrong, I think reading is great.

I ♥ reading.

I, too, have even been known, at times, to read a book or two or parts thereof with a dear friend.

But if you are going to be taking turn reading a book aloud along with a bunch of friends, or strangers—not that there is anything wrong with that, no one is judging you—wouldn't you be better off reading from the original (like the unexpurgated 10-volume set of Sir Richard Burton's magnum opus)?