Shit I Overheard (or If It Wasn't For My Horse, I Wouldn't Have Spent That Year In College)

Removed for poor taste.

I miss Gus.

Someday this board will be divided between people who remember Gus and people who don't. The people who don't will still invoke his name, they just won't understand why.

Today, Broken Forum. Tomorrow, the OED!

Gus_Smedstad was last seen:
Yesterday at 1:01 AM

I DON'T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND HOW HAPPY THIS MAKES ME

Well, its great to see him swing round again, though I'm not sure he'd appreciate his name is being used as verb here...

Yeah, look, I wasn't going to post on this subject because I don't particularly enjoy the idea of becoming seen as a wet blanket, and also because Gus is a big boy and if he had the desire to do so he could tell people himself just how much he didn't appreciate something, but here goes nothing:

I messaged Gus the day before yesterday to let him know that I understood if he would never be coming back but that I would miss his presence anyway. He told me, flat out, that he would not be coming back. Again, I understand this, I told him such, said that I was not going to attempt to convince him to return, but that I will miss him all the same.

Why do I understand it? Isn't it obvious to anyone paying attention? Cormac obviously sees it. While the initial sting of jerri's very funny parody might have worn off - the type of parody I've been guilty of in the past and that I can't quite say is indefensible because, hey, we all take our turns here, it's all in good fun - turning Gus's namesake into a pejorative is indefensible. I especially find it to be in poor taste when wielded by the person who is first in line to cry foul when she gets even a hint of the LP group being maligned.

An argument could be made that Gus brought all of this onto himself by being Gus but that doesn't hold water with me. As far as I can tell the only person who has been given the Homer treatment is Dawn Falcon and rightly so. Does exercising what was an arguably poor choice in threads to be pedantic in make you as bad as Dawn Falcon? I'd argue not.

The unfortunate bit is that it was a fairly harmless joke that was unfairly ran with. If Gus is gone forever, that's his choice and I won't defend it because I don't think it is defensible, either. Anyone continuing to run with it, especially in close-tag hit and run form, knowing full well that the guy isn't coming back, might as well be saying that they have no intention of continuing the clean slate, good intentioned nature that this board was founded on.

</Bryce>

I agree with Bryce. Once it became obvious that Gus didn't like the joke (and maybe it wasn't obvious to some people until this very moment, and I accept that) continuing to do so is basically bullying. Especially with him having since decided to leave. That's just cementing that you're okay with him having gone.

Hey, Gus, I'm sorry my parody (and all the likes) hurt your feelings. Now strap on your big-boy pants, come back in and stop taking yourself so goddamned seriously. I am living proof that you can lighten up. I am the original humorous lesbian, after all.

I just found out about him leaving yesterday as a result of this thread. I looked in his posting history and couldn't figure out what happened.

Was there a specific thread where the Gus-bullying came to a head that someone can link to or was it all over the place?

I guess I'll have to unsubscribe from the Space Rangers 2 threads now.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about :(

This is the post Elyscape is refering to and its probably (part of?) the reason Gus decided to take a break from BF.

I'll admit, I didn't realize Gus had left primarily because of the joke. You're right, Bryce, and I apologize to Gus_Smedstad for bringing it back up again.

Hopefully the time Dean mentioned of the split between people who know and don't know Gus will be a long time coming?

Channeled my inner Creole Ned (and it is fabulous).

Everyone Loves Gus.

"Well he was emotionally abusive, but at least he didn't rape me regularly. I miss him."

I am honestly saddened to have heard this today. How low can one's standards go?

I think it counts if you instill that feeling of "wait, what" in other people, right?

Speaking with co-worker Abercrombie at work:

Abercrombie: You know, I have a plan for when I turn 40 and I'm done paying child support, I'm going to law school.
Nute: That's assuming you don't acquire any more kids in the interim to pay for.
A: Hey, I had a vasectomy, that ain't happening.
N: There's a failure rate for those.
A: Not happening! The bridges are down!
N: Yeah, but have you ever seen Speed? Even if the highway's blown up, if you get the bus going fast enough, it can jump the gap.
A: (after a long pause) ...really?

I would have thought you'd mock him for going to law school (reason enough alone) in his forties! Now that he's done paying child support time to start paying student loans while looking for a job in a horribly overcrowded field!

"What's the female equivalent of a douchebag"?
"A baguette!"

I hadn't read this thread in a while so seeing this post

followed immediately by this post

really made me wonder what the fuck was going on.

My NaNoWriMo 2007 project involved the concept of "Good Guy Hitler", so I can understand the weirdness.

"I don't think people should talk foreign languages when I'm around because they might be talking about me. So what's with this Feliz Navidad nonsense? Why are we playing carols we can't understand?"

?!? MUST READ

He was very kind to dogs and taught his niece to drive.

I never actually finished it. The concept was "World War 2.0" where across multiple universes, the conflict known as World War II was one that changed history in every different reality. Except that every time it ended differently, it created too much multiversal chaos, so a group of ineffable cosmic entities decides that there'll be one WWII, involving all the known universes, and its outcome will be reflected in every universe. So units and people get grabbed from all these different realities and plunked down in a blank-slate Earth and they get to fight WWII to decide its outcome for the entire multiverse. You had fun characters like Josef Stalin as the head of the largest werewolf clan in Russia, and mecha-suit FDR, Emperor Hirohito who actually was the living descendant of Amaterasu, and Germany led by Adolf Hitler, demon sorceror-fuhrer of the Thule Society. One of the catches is that only one version of an individual person can exist in this shared war, and their fate gets echoed through every universe.

As a supporting character with the hodgepodge squad that was the viewpoint group, you had "The Kraut", a soldier in the British army who'd come from a universe where Poland, not Germany, started the lebensraum that kicked off WW2. The Kraut was a decorated veteran of the Great War who'd escaped Germany before the purges, and wound up in England. He goes by 'Polzl', which you find out is his mother's maiden name. The Kraut was born Adolf Hitler.

But wait, if this guy - who's on the good guy side - is Hitler, who's leading the Thule Society? Turns out that "Hitler" is really a demon that's masquerading as the fuhrer.

The climax was set to have Polzl kill Demon Hitler, but in the process see the potential outcome of the war - in every other reality, he's history's worst villain and his legacy after the war keeps fanning the flames of chaos across the globe. Even if the Axis loses, Hitler's presence still causes war after war.

So Polzl draws his Walther, puts it to his temple, and ends the war with one shot.

When I gave that section to one of my editors to read, her response was "Wait, did you just have Adolf Hitler make a heroic sacrifice that saved the universe as we know it? I don't know whether that's evil or brilliant?"

.....you must finish that.

Holy fuck, Nute. Write that story.

If it's a short story submit it to Black Gate (if they are still around) they love character driven stories.

(I usually hate when my delightful thread is less Shit I Overheard and more Retarded Conversations In Which I Participated, but at least these aren't examples of Supposedly Hilarious Things I Said That I Wanted To Figure Out A Way To Share.)

Yesterday:

Coworker: Make sure everyone wears clean underwear tomorrow, because if the apocalypse happens we'll be meeting Jesus in the afternoon!
Me: Well, if the Mayan apocalypse happens we probably won't be meeting Jesus. Maybe Uacmitun Ahau.
Coworker: What is that?
Me: Mayan death god.
Coworker: But he isn't real!

(This is the same coworker who thought Diwali was stupid and Indians believe in dumb things.)

Today:

Coworker (a different one): Well, if the world is ending it's stupid and doesn't make sense because it's already tomorrow in Australia and the world hasn't ended there yet.
Me: I don't think the Mayans knew about Australia. Also, that's not what the calendar means anyway.
Coworker: Yeah. This Mayern end of the world stuff is nonsense.
Me: Yep.
Coworker: The Rapture's comin' soon, though! One day we'll be here doing our jobs and then, poof, the good people will fly off the Heaven and the wicked people will burn!
Me: Okay.

Not true. The wicked people will mill around aimlessly for a few years first.

Also, where the hell do you work, Bahimiron?

Why does Jesus care whether I'm wearing clean underwear or not?

My scouser mother in law always says you only need three things when you go somewhere: Your passport, your knickers and your money.

Yeah, this whole Mayan idiocy happening around Christmas is hilarious to me. "Hah, those stupid Mayans with their calendar. Now let's get back to the perfectly sane birthday worship of our zombie carpenter god!"

I didn't realise Harrison Ford was a zombie?

Did you not see the last Indiana Jones?

I suppose drinking from Jesus' chalice could turn you into a zombie.

Did he drink that stuff from the Serpent and the Rainbow? That would explain a lot.