Estil

In another twist of irony, it wasn't that long ago that things like cell phones/car phones/smartphones were seen as luxury devices that only rich and/or business types bothered with. But today it seems more of a luxury to be able to choose not to have one, at least not all the time. No really, many (perhaps the majority?) of people nowadays feel obligated to keep themselves "on call" for work and/or personal reasons. So they might not be able to "keep the phone off" for any real length of time even if they really wanted to. I remember when the smart phones first came out and wasn't so sure if they'd catch on because at the time they cost about as much as a regular desktop computer and at least with that (then and now) you get to have a much bigger screen and a regular keyboard/mouse...and how are you supposed to be able to play games on it without proper buttons? Maybe you guys think I'm nuts but it's always been so much easier for me to just use a regular desktop (still could use a bigger hard drive though) with a nice big screen so I can say, two windows side by side or something for example and it's so much easier to type with a keyboard/mouse. Not to mention all those contracts and plans and such with smartphones are so confusing Don't misunderstand me though, I've nothing against smartphones at all...on the contrary I think they're kinda like electronic Swiss Army Knives and in the case of iPhone/iPad Mini/iPad, you can get it small, medium, or large just like fries/soda at a fast food place! They just personally don't do me much good I don't even like taking my 3DS-XL or DS-XL anywhere because I'm scarred I'll drop it or lose it or whatever. I really hope you guys don't think I'm too much of a weirdo for thinking this way...

Ah but that's not the way it works exactly. According to most every Christian religion/denomination, one of the if not THE main beliefs is that one must be a Christian in good standing upon death...or else they are damned for eternity. I just cannot go along with such a cruel God who would just fry people for eternity just because they didn't believe a certain way. And suppose I did get to heaven, what about all the loved ones and such who were sweet kind people....but nevertheless are burning for not believing a certain way? I mean, how could I not feel sorry for and terrible for them? I mean one of the other basic Christian beliefs is to follow the example of the Good Samaritan (who helped someone of a hated rival nation get back on their feet after a priest and a Levite (a politician of sorts in those days) walked right by him) and help people and be kind to people even and especially if they're not exactly like yourself or your own country/views/beliefs/whatever. So in the afterlife, all of a sudden, are we supposed to be like Ivan Drago and have the attitude like, "If they burn, they burn"? This is why I'm not at all comfortable with not just organized religion but any sort of organization/group/whatever that expects you to just play along with their platform. I mean c'mon, I'm just a regular guy in a regular apartment in a regular community with a (to hear Cat Forum talk!) regular cat; I mean does what I think/believe make much of a difference at all in the grand scheme of things? In any event, I have to be my own individual; I have to be able to think for myself and draw my own conclusions about things; no strings attached. Given we live in this modern day and age of instant access to all this knowledge and such and knowing there are so many different beliefs and such; I just can't get behind any sort of notion that any one way is the only right way and all the others are evil/false/whatever.

Here's the top afterlife question I have more than all the others put together. How can someone in heaven be happy if they have loved ones in hell?

I've been thinking of making this topic for quite awhile, and while it may be a bit long (TLDR: We live in a modern "future" age, yet ironically I mostly use "future tech" to relieve the past, and some ways I do so) I figured what better time than as we approach a whole new decade, the 2020s! Okay, picture this. Little nine year old me back in 1989 being so excited about the second Back to the Future movie because I want to see what "the future" may be like! Of course 2015 or even 2000 for that matter seemed like an eternity away for a child like myself then! So now here we are, really in "the future" (next year it'll be "the future" in the Turtles in Time and Super Baseball 2020 sense! I don't think we'll see anything like Super Baseball 2020 anytime soon though), yet ironically, I use most of "the future" tech we have now to relive the past!! Sure we don't have the expected flying cars nor have we yet gone back to the moon, much less any human trips to Mars...what we DO have in terms of "future stuff" is just as if not more awesome and some of it is thing we couldn't have possibly dreamed of back in the 80s/90s! Okay so by now most of us know what Back to the Future 2 got right in terms of future predictions; flat screen/wide screen TV with channels in three digits (now you can have four digit ones) which you CAN have drop down from the ceiling if you really want, 80s nostalgia being just as popular by the 2010s as 50s nostalgia was in the mid-to-late 80s, "Cubs Win World Series" only off by one year (and in 2003 nearly having "Cubs Win [NLCS] Over Miami"!) as well as having "the casino guy!? Who was on wrestling!?" becoming President less than a week later! And Doc Brown thought the idea of an actor being President was crazy...speaking of wrestling we ended up with a wrestler becoming governor, a SNL guy becoming a Senator, and a Dukes of Hazzard guy becoming a Congressman! But above all else, the movie trilogy's signature feature was of course, the time machine. And all of us have dreamed about the idea of time travel (without the butterfly effect sort of possible complications of course!) from time to time. But guess what? We already have a time machine! No really! Hear me out... For what do you guys think we do just on this forum alone? That's right we get together and discuss video games past and present; and we can do so 24/7 without having to leave our house/apartment/bedroom/whatever. Even just that very basic Internet feature (indeed the Internet as we know it!) was unheard of back before the mid 90s for most people (other than those really primitive BBS's I suppose; but most people (like myself) had no clue there was such a thing). Another thing I greatly appreciate is that while we live in a day and age where most people have touch screen phones and such...I remember not too long ago when just regular long distance was fairly expensive (remember the 90s long distance wars?) and now we (mostly) don't have to worry about that; whether that be calls or texting! As for the time machine thing, what better real life time machine is there than YouTube as well as modern streaming video? I mean I can literally relive any time period I want, anyway I wish at the click of the mouse without leaving my home! You often hear people in the comments about people "wishing they could be in that time or relive that time"...well now we really can! Another thing I appreciate VERY much being able to do is reading my local paper's archive over at newspapers.com...and you don't even have to manually load microfilm reels to do it either!! And of course there's some magazine archives out there too we can read from our screen/computer...and what I hope is that some of my old favorites (especially Highlights for Children and SPORT magazine) will someday get a fully readable archive of some sort. Archives.org has some good stuff there as well I hope will continue to grow. And remember how I like reference books (especially the yearbooks/books of the year)? Well sure I do the whole using google/wiki to find "quick easy knowledge" like everyone else but I like having the best of both worlds! As for video games, I appreciate that we get to have readable archives of the "big three" gaming magazines (Nintendo Power, EGM, GamePro) and most of the old manuals and strategy guides (and you can easily buy them off Ebay too; yet ANOTHER modern convenience I appreciate; online shopping!) and that there now exists Everdrives/SD cards that allow us to have a "master key" of sorts for retro video game consoles...being able to play whatever game from that system we want (even hacks/translated/foreign games) that work just as good as the real cartridges (because it's played on real hardware) and there's no need to constantly change cartridges! I just hope at some point there will be a way to to that just as easily with PS1 games as we currently can with the GC/Wii games off a Homebrew Wii. So as much as we often hear about "future" gadgets nowadays (I can think of two off the top of my head clearly inspired by Star Trex: Next Generation; touch screen tablets inspired by PADDs, and Amazon's Alexis inspired by the talking to the computer thing...though it's not the same without Majel Barrett's voice responding though ) as well as 3D printing being the first baby steps towards the idea of replicators...I am most grateful more than anything else about this modern day and age, ironically, being able to relive the past so easily in so many different ways. So as we approach the 2020s (and who knows what it might bring us?), I offer a toast *holds up "Cat Dad" coffee mug; (I'm a boring teetotaller, sorry)* here's to ya fellow gamers, and to the future!

Are you Sirius?

I still think it's mostly just regular generational bias. Except for Miley Cyrus; she's just a freak show (especially that creepy tongue thing). *shudders*

This says it all right here; and IIRC in the 90s retro stuff was especially ridicule worthy among the youth of those days. Thank God we now have Internet/YouTube/social media now! (and BTW radio DJ, that's pronounced (short A sound)-ba!)

I pretty much stick with 20th century stuff; both pop and country; and for games I'm mostly a 3rd-6th gen person. Maybe it's just generational bias though (I was born in 1980). I mean, isn't a sure sign of "getting old" when you no longer really identify or understand today's pop culture/music the way you did when you were younger? I mean I don't really have nothing against it as such, it just...isn't the same as what I'm used to. It's got to be nothing but generational bias; I'm sure of it... And OP, you want some old skool hip-hop/rap? Well you don't get any more old skool than this!

I'm just trying to get the Hiragana/Katakana memorized...apparently my memory/recall really sucks!! I mean you'd think it'd be no different than learning your times tables...

As long as you don't have a black stove they can hide on!!!

While we're on that subject... Wow, I guess being a black cat can be bad luck!!! >_<

I don't think that's your typical orange tabby!

As Omochao from Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle) would say, aren't kitties cute? And they are adorable creatures, are they not?

Fire challenge. Need I say more?

Well, they expect you to be there, though That really doesn't make sense. In situations like this if your local meteorologist/weatherperson/whatever says not to be out in it if you can at all avoid it, DO SO. After all it's not just me and my wife I have a little kitty to keep warm and safe too! I really do feel sorry for all those homeless kitties though...

What took them so long? Sort of like what took so long for Ronnie Milsap to finally make the Country Music Hall of Fame or Bert Blyleven to make the Baseball Hall of Fame?

"us versus them"? I was under the impression that the NA forum would be gone completely after the end of them month? Hence why we're now here.

Well you better "just be funnin"!!

I like doing complete sets of baseball/football/basketball/non-sport cards...I kid you not I have at least 100,000 cards all as complete sets and in binders/pages (including Topps baseball sets from 1974-2015, Topps football sets from 1980-2000, most of the other major sets in the 1980s-90s, and I'm also trying to get all the mid 90s insert sets, especially Fleer/Ultra). And I also like doing vintage reference books (especially World Book yearbooks; I again kid you not, I got all of them from the mid-1920s to 2013...ironically it's quite hard to find those! And i have the Britannica yearbooks for 1960-98 as well) as well as Peanuts books (I got all the Complete Peanuts, Peanuts Every Sunday, all the big anniversary books, both 1980 and 1990 Charlie Brown's Cyclopedia among others) and of course Kentucky Wildcats books, such as Cats Pause Yearbooks (I have 1985-2019) and basketball Media Guides (I have 1973-2010). And I'm also really into reading my local newspaper's archive over at newspapers.com -- I'm currently reading the 1990 issues because I turned ten years old at the time and I would live in one particular place for the next ten years before going on to UK right before the turn of the millennium (that would be 1999-2000 of course). If your local paper happens to be included there, get a subscription! It's worth every penny, honest.

I don't how you guys are gonna feel about this, maybe you guys might think this is weird or stupid or something...but my wife really likes hearts, so whenever I get a Heart Container or a Heart Piece, I like to tell my wife I found or won her heart (whichever the case may be). Or if I'm having trouble with a mini-game I'll lament, "I'll never win your heart..." Of course she tells me that I already won her heart

But kitties are so cute though

I was in fact bringing back this topic but I guess someone beat me to it! But yes indeed, kitty cats are in fact man's REAL best friend. And always remember that a cat's place is in the home. And of course be sure they are spayed or neutered, just so Bob Barker doesn't get mad at you. And truly one of the most beautiful, loving things in this world is the special bound between a boy and his kitty cat...

So like it says on the can, eh topic...this is about what is the most disappointing video game commercial or trailer you've ever seen. I'll never forget the first time I ever saw this commercial... Now the way the ad plays at first, it makes it look like this has to be some sort of major epic fantasy quest, RPG, strategy game or whatnot with a beautiful badass woman as the star of the game or at least one of the main members of the party. Like this would be the kind of game like FF or DQ where you'd need maybe 30-40 hours just to get through the main story, plus maybe twice that for all the sidequests and other goodies! But no, alas...it's just one of those cheap bush league phone games Talk about a MAJOR let down when I saw at the end it was not for PS4 or something So what about the rest of you? What is the one video game commercial or trailer that made you think this game was gonna be super awesome...but you were severely and flagrantly let down by the final product (for whatever reason)...or in my case I already felt that way at the end of the commercial!! PS: Is there anyway I can make embedded videos like the one above smaller? I mean it doesn't really have to be this huge.

Soooo...this is the successor forum to the old NA one? I'm still kinda sad to see the old NA forums go though...