Zeke, I demand that I may or may not want answers!

[PointyHairedJedi]

First question. You said there was going to be an announcement regarding signed fivers, which there hasn't been, and given that I've paid actual cash money already I'm starting to get just a little annoyed.

Second question. For goodness' sake, why don't you get yourself another site manager? Or at least fill Marc's position - I know there's a nostalgia/friendship factor going on, but I think by now we can all acknowledge the fact that he isn't coming back in the near future.

Third question. Why is it that I can't remember what my third question is? In fact, why did I even bother typing this if I can't remember? Isn't that just a nonsensical paradox of my own creation?

[ijdgaf]

First question, I'm looking for a ten foot pole to not touch it with.

Second question, do remember that the staff positions were filled. And I do believe we're working on a solution for the "site manager" concept as well.

Third question: The answer is "creamed corn".

[PointyHairedJedi]

Second question, do remember that the staff positions were filled. And I do believe we're working on a solution for the "site manager" concept as well.
Ooh! Is it a robot? I bet it's a robot.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Ooh! Is it a robot? I bet it's a robot.

With teeth like claws, and claws like marlinspikes. It actually mauled Scooter rather severely during testing. We're still picking bits of sheet metal out of his spleen.

[mudshark]

Look, that robot's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!

[Nate the Great]

Hey, kudos. If you can't come up with a clever response, it's always in good taste to resort to a Monty Python/Princess Bride/Spaceballs quote.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Curses! He's discovered one of my Core Principles of Fiving.

[Nate the Great]

I think that's one of everyone's Core Principles of Fiving. I think we all resort to our own tactics while fiving that may or may not be considered funny by anyone else. Here's a short selection of mine:

1. The always appropriate Guy A: This is not the time for sarcasm. Guy B: It's always time for sarcasm!
2. The infinitely malleable "I'm a ________, it's what I do."
3. The broader "that sounds like a good idea, too bad it'll never work."
4. Jadzia and slang. Always a personal favorite.
5. Julian's blatant egotism. Ditto.
6. The more subtle 2293/2305 bloodwine and fat-free gagh joke. Does anyone else really find this amusing?

[mudshark]

Hey, kudos. If you can't come up with a clever response, it's always in good taste to resort to a Monty Python/Princess Bride/Spaceballs quote.
Inconceivable!

[Scooter]

I think that's one of everyone's Core Principles of Fiving. I think we all resort to our own tactics while fiving that may or may not be considered funny by anyone else. Here's a short selection of mine:

1. The always appropriate Guy A: This is not the time for sarcasm. Guy B: It's always time for sarcasm!
2. The infinitely malleable "I'm a ________, it's what I do."
3. The broader "that sounds like a good idea, too bad it'll never work."
4. Jadzia and slang. Always a personal favorite.
5. Julian's blatant egotism. Ditto.
6. The more subtle 2293/2305 bloodwine and fat-free gagh joke. Does anyone else really find this amusing?
I thought there was also one about there always being coffee in that nebula. Could be wrong.

Anyway you're forgetting:
7. Always make references that are so obscure that, even if they're not incredibly brilliant or even particularly apt, whoever gets them will feel especially smug about themselves for noticing them at all.
8. And there's always my fallback: Person A: I thought we were doing [Sensible thing]. Person B: Moron, that would mean we couldn't do [Stupid thing]! Person A: My mistake.

[Zeke]

I'm sorry about the signed fiver thing, Jedi. I do have an explanation of sorts, but it sucks, so I'll spare you. I'm working on them now and I'll post here when they're sent out.

I'm not really in the market for a new site manager. The dearth of updates isn't so much because I'm busy as because I'm having trouble focusing lately. Having someone else run the site would be (a) no less work (Kira learned the new site features as I programmed them; anyone else would need extensive explanations, and would be unable to do anything about the guest fiver backlog without my help anyway) and (b) risky on my end, as having someone else to make updates would make it even easier for me to slack off.

Marc is never being replaced. That door is <i>always</i> open if he wants to come back.

[PointyHairedJedi]

No robot? :(

[Zeke]

Nah. Whenever it did something to help, I'd have to say "domo arigato."

[Nate the Great]

That was a list of MY fiving techniques. It's hardly conclusive. Coffee in the nebula is a classic "fiving in general" technique. No doubt if I ever had the honor of fiving a Voyager ep--

Eddie: Hi, I'm Eddie your shipboard computer! I'm here to make your life more and more bearable! What can I do for you?
Nate: I need--
Eddie: An improbability forecast?
Nate: Based on improbability data, yeah.
Eddie: Sure! Did you know that the odds of a Voyager episode being unsaved is negative infinity minus one to one against?
Nate: Yeah, I knew that.

Ahem. Anyway, if I did five Voyager the coffee in nebula joke would be a given if at all possible. There are any number of "fiving in general" techniques. That would really be the topic of another thread.

Anyway, rule seven is something I try to do whenever possible. I still reread older fivers and find stuff that falls into that category that I hadn't noticed the first time.

[evay]

Nah. Whenever it did something to help, I'd have to say "domo arigato."
thanks for the earworm, Z.

[mudshark]

Nah. Whenever it did something to help, I'd have to say "domo arigato."
Argh. Will that be "pelted with overripe seafood", sir?

[PointyHairedJedi]

Nah. Whenever it did something to help, I'd have to say "domo arigato."
You really took that obscure references thing to heart, eh?

[Chancellor Valium]

Curses! He's discovered one of my Core Principles of Fiving.

Prophet #1: It is pacific.
Prophet#2: Sociable.
Prophet #3: It must be destroyed!

[Nate the Great]

Hey, obscure references are our bread and butter around here. Maybe it's just showing off how clever we are, narcissism in the joy of knowing a joke that goes over everybody else's heads.

[mudshark]

Prophet #1: It is pacific.
Prophet#2: Sociable.
Prophet #3: It must be destroyed!
Unmutual!

[Nate the Great]

Which fiver is "general protection fault! Gak!" from? Mudshark's post reminded me of that.

[mudshark]

Jeez, Nate, don't you believe in Google? :rolleyes: (Here (http://www.fiveminute.net/startrek/fiver.php?ep=imudd).) :p

What I put in my last post doesn't have anything to do with that, though.

[Derek]

Sadly, I had no idea what fiver that line was from until I clicked mudshark's link.

[Nate the Great]

But why use Google when you can exploit your forummates? :)

By the way, I still use Yahoo for most searching.

[mudshark]

Sadly, I had no idea what fiver that line was from until I clicked mudshark's link.
Eh, so it's been a while...

[Nate the Great]

See, you can't expect all of us to keep track of every line from every fiver. I have no idea how many fivers there are, but let's be conservative and say five hundred "fiver-hours" exist on the site. A fiver-hour is the fived equivalent of a "one-hour" show. TAS fivers are a half fiver-hour; movies are two. Say twenty scenes per fiver-hour and four lines per scene on average. That's 40,000 lines. We can't possibly remember all of them. Not a chance. When we complete a series (include TAS and movies with TOS), maybe we could create an off-line database with them, so that we could read them at our leasure, maybe set up a screensaver with our favorite lines.

[PointyHairedJedi]

See, you can't expect all of us to keep track of every line from every fiver.
Not with that attitude, no. :rolleyes:

[Nate the Great]

Oh sure, bypass the logic and go straight to the personal evaluations. Next thing I know you'll be kicking me out of the Lower Decks Poker Tournament. Too bad, I have a great poker face...

[PointyHairedJedi]

Oh sure, bypass the logic...
Bypass the whatnow?

[Nate the Great]

Oh sure, go all Bones on me... :)

[PointyHairedJedi]

And now I feel the urge to see if you've got green blood. Purely out of curiosity, you understand.

[Nate the Great]

Nope, it's red. Rounded ears too, if you were asking. Oh, and I stink at chess, which you weren't even wondering about...

[PointyHairedJedi]

Are you sure it's red? I feel I should check, for veracity's sake.

[Nate the Great]

You're welcome to fly out to Minnesota at your own expense and punch me in the nose, but then I'd be welcome to hit you with a very large pun at your own expense. :) Oh, and then I'd chuck you into the snow naked and make a Jedisicle. ;)

[Nate the Great]

Oh, and there is no snow, even though it IS November in Minnesota. It's actually quite nice out. Brisk enough to stop you from sweating if you jog outside, which I don't.

[PointyHairedJedi]

It's lucky for you, buster, that I'm actually a total wimp who couldn't manage to punch someone if they tried. :mad:

Besides, I have people who do that sort of thing for me.

[Nate the Great]

People to try or people to punch?

Laaaaaammmmmeeeeee........

[PointyHairedJedi]

*Adds Infinite Improbability to The List*

[Nate the Great]

"The List?" Sounds ominous....

[Chancellor Valium]

It's sort of like the Index, only he doesn't just ban you from being published...

[Nate the Great]

Okay, it sounds oh so much less ominous now....

Pop Quiz: name the book that the powder Ever So Much More So comes from. Good luck. Answer after this word from our sponsors...

[mudshark]

Heh. This one (http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product//0670377295/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/701-1586595-6487551).

[Nate the Great]

Did you look that up, or did you really know that? It's important to me.

[evay]

OH MY GOD I LOVED THAT BOOK!! I had completely forgotten about it! Everyone gets rhyming aphasia -- and the forty-foot-tall ragweed -- okay I have to go put a copy on my wish list right now this second.

[Nate the Great]

Has anyone read the sequel Centerburg Tales as well?

I have a special fondness for turn of the century America. The days of transition from horses to cars, barbershop quartets, the whole Music Man/River City mystique.

Probably my favorite Homer Price story is still the doughnut machine. It combines the best of the endless-machine genre (gotta wonder if the Lucy Show chocolate assembly line had this in mind), the friends-from-crisis genre, the kid-knows-more-than-the-adults genre, and the "how many times can the author up the stakes" genre.

At the Mall of America Krispy Kreme there's a visual assembly line for the doughnuts, but even that can't compare to the elegant simplicity of the Homer Price story.

[mudshark]

I read all of them. All these years later, nearly every one of the names and situations is as familiar as if I'd read it... oh, last week. I could probably have drawn the doughnut machine from memory and still got it about 90% right. Super-Duper. That record in the jukebox. "Labor-saving devices" -- hee. :D

[Nate the Great]

"All of them"? There are only two. That would be "both of them," right? At least Wikipedia says two, and I trust them almost implicitly.

Along with being a great author Robert McCloskey is a favorite children's book illustrator of mine, up there with Mercer Mayer. Anyone remember the story of the guy who lost his head, so he tried replacing it with a carrot, parsnip, pumpkin, etc. before carving a new one out of wood?

[Nate the Great]

Oh, and I hope you enjoy my new Kataan probe avatar. I found it someplace and knew I had to use it eventually. I did write the fiver, after all.

[Scooter]

OH MY GOD I LOVED THAT BOOK!! I had completely forgotten about it! Everyone gets rhyming aphasia -- and the forty-foot-tall ragweed -- okay I have to go put a copy on my wish list right now this second.

I read Homer Price 15 times when I was a kid, but I'd forgotten about it too. For some reason the main thing I remember is that it was the first time I encountered the phrase "nothing new under the sun" (it was a chapter title).

[Zeke]

Scooter! Where ya been?

[Nate the Great]

He was backstage grooming his three felt hairs. Too bad Gonzo stole all the conditioner. :)

[Scooter]

Scooter! Where ya been?

Two words: Grad. School.

[Nate the Great]

Oh, and how are you liking that? I intend to go back for my master's one of these years, and I always appreciate input.

[Scooter]

Oh, and how are you liking that? I intend to go back for my master's one of these years, and I always appreciate input.

It's great if you're not also working full-time and teaching. I love teaching and I love being in grad school and I kinda wish those were the only things on my plate.

[Nate the Great]

Oh yeah, I would definitely stay on campus. It'd be kinda fun to be a TA, I'd think. Having my own office (figuratively speaking, of course :)) and all that. My biggest conundrum is whether to go back to my alma matter or head to a church school halfway across the country.

[PointyHairedJedi]

Um....

Signed fivers?