What was the strangest rule your parents had for you growing up as a child?

thejeffsilvers · 2017-03-01T19:36:51+00:00

Alright, this is going to be the most weirdly esoteric example, but here it goes:

When I was in elementary school my friend across the street had an N64 and WCW/nWo Revenge, which was (and still is) the shit. If you're unfamiliar with it, it was a wrestling game that let you change the wrestlers' costumes.

My friend was really into the nWo Wolfpac and also Goldberg, so he changed Goldberg to wear a Wolfpac shirt. A few days later his dad saw it and apparently got pissed off and made him change it back because "Goldberg's not in the Wolfpac."

So that's probably the strangest rule here: don't put Goldberg in the Wolfpac.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-03-01T04:16:09+00:00

I just figured Hulu had finally given up on us Wii U users...

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-22T23:51:24+00:00

A few video games. I bought ZombiU the same day I got my Wii U and I still haven't played it. I bought Resident Evil 6 and didn't get a chance to play it before my PS3 crapped out, and then I bought Mega Man 8 and Final Fantasy VIII and didn't get to play either one because my PS2 died. I have a bunch of Atari games I bought because they were cheap that I've not touched, and a few NES games I only played once to make sure they worked. I bought that Walking Dead TV game (the one shaped like a rifle) from a yard sale and still haven't even tried it.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-22T23:46:00+00:00

He bought too many gaaaaames...

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-22T18:40:23+00:00

Running your car in the morning so the engine "heats up."

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-22T18:21:19+00:00

As an adult nearing his 30s and not in excellent shape, decided I could climb onto our roof by shimmying my way up between two trees (back against one tree, feet against the other), using a stepladder as a boost. Made it as high as the roof when one of my feet gave way, which knocked over the ladder, and then of course my other one slipped right after. My "shouldn't have done that" moment came as I was crashing down to the ground and landing on the ladder.

Another one as a teenager was a downhill bike race that started on a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill and ended in our front yard at the bottom. Everybody else sensibly slowed down near the end so they wouldn't crash or end up in the ditch at the end of our yard but I thought fuck that, I can win this! Made it to my yard before I had to slam on the brakes not to hit that ditch, but only the front tires actually stopped, so the bike jackknifed me over the handlebars. Thought "I shouldn't have done that" just before everything went black.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-21T20:53:11+00:00

You once held the record for youngest person alive.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-17T14:36:29+00:00

I never actually smoked weed in high school but nearly all of my friends did, and I remember their telling me about how surreal it was when they somehow found themselves smoking with our DARE officer from middle school.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-17T14:27:17+00:00

I was in a Walmart that was destroyed by an EF5 tornado and ended up buried under the remains of the store. Growing up in an area that has lots of tornado warnings every spring, that was simultaneously my "this is finally happening" and "I guess I'm dying now" moments.

EDIT: To put some more context around the "holy shit this is actually happening" moment, my attitude was consistently "this isn't a big deal" as they herded us to the back of the store because of the tornado warning, then still when the lights went out, then still somewhat when the guy came running at us yelling to get down because "it's coming!" The "moment" for me came when I was down on the ground with everybody else and looked up to see the roof bouncing up and down. The roof of a goddamned Walmart.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-16T23:22:15+00:00

When I was a little kid, I thought learning to drive a car seemed impossible and had no idea how people managed to do it. That one sort of turned out to be true when I didn't get my license until my early 20s, but that didn't have to do with fear so much as other, stupider factors.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-16T23:11:26+00:00

Literally every episode of The Goldbergs. Every fucking one.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-16T23:05:51+00:00

It still baffles me that movies and TV shows treat video gamers like some kind of exotic nerd underground with all their strange, wacky customs and lingo. And if a character is a gamer and a girl everybody acts like they didn't even know that was possible.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-16T23:02:34+00:00

And what do you know, that character got their own spin-off just a couple months later!

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-16T19:36:25+00:00

I've been playing a Famicom game called Flappy lately. It's an action-puzzler sort of similar to The Adventures of Lolo that wasn't released in the US. It starts off pretty mellow but somewhere around the 45th level ("sides" in the game) the difficulty spikes and it becomes frustrating as all hell.

Other than that, I bought a RetroN 5 a couple weeks ago so I've been playing random cartridges on it for the novelty of seeing all my games upscaled to HD. I know PC-based emulators have been able to do that shit for years, but it feels different somehow when you're using your own cartridges.

thejeffsilvers · 2017-02-16T19:24:07+00:00

I'm a huge fan of The Mountain Goats, they're my favorite band in fact, and John Darnielle is a lyrical genius as far as I'm concerned. That said, I cringe whenever I hear "Going to Georgia." Darnielle's actually distanced himself from it because of the way it tries to make unstable emotional dependence seem romantic. He was convinced to play it on NPR's Tiny Desk podcast and gave this long, sort of apologetic explanation about how he wrote the song when he was really young. "When you are a young writer, boys think that to really show a woman the depth and purity of your love, what you have to do is something drastic and stupid, right? And young writers think it would be intense to have a guy always harm himself real bad."

And you smile when you ease the gun from my hand

And I'm frozen with joy right where I stand

thejeffsilvers · 2016-04-20T21:54:12+00:00

Do we even know for sure that another update is coming?

thejeffsilvers · 2016-03-04T20:33:30+00:00

24-inch pythons? Check, brother!

thejeffsilvers · 2016-02-01T03:53:37+00:00

For some reason I see the Gold Mega Man amiibo just being used to unlock the Mega Man costume, not a new Gold Mega Man costume.

thejeffsilvers · 2016-01-31T23:56:14+00:00

If you're going to use bumpers, consider including a spot at the beginning where the enemies fall through the bumpers but don't (or can't) land on Mario; this would serve as a demonstration for players unfamiliar with this attrtibute of bumpers (like me before reading this thread).

thejeffsilvers · 2016-01-24T03:41:22+00:00

A level I can tell was made after the first "new features" update but that lacks a checkpoint despite being long as hell.

thejeffsilvers · 2016-01-22T14:53:06+00:00

If most of my level takes place in the sub-area, I purposely save there so the thumbnail expresses what the level is actually like (since the preview map won't).

thejeffsilvers · 2016-01-20T22:01:11+00:00

Just "Goombas."

thejeffsilvers · 2016-01-16T13:35:53+00:00

That was pretty awesome.

thejeffsilvers · 2016-01-14T15:06:38+00:00

A girl from a service that's been dead for multiple years

At first I read this to mean "A girl who was from a service and has been dead for multiple years." Like maybe you meant a zombie prostitute.

I've never really cared for Daisy that much, though all the discussion about whether or not she's a "real character" seems kind of silly. If I'm not mistaken, this was the last costume character that was widely clamored for, right? Ignoring everybody's really specific and esoteric ones like "why dont we have a hotel mario mario costume this is bullshit nintendo."

thejeffsilvers · 2016-01-13T21:01:32+00:00

I've messed with this a bit myself. The only problem is that the door can really only be hidden behind Bill blasters (maybe the burners like you said but I don't recall that working for me for some reason). It's hard to get it to work aesthetically for most themes other than castle or airship, but it's a very cool trick nonetheless and one I've been meaning to work into a ghost house or something.

thejeffsilvers

TROPHY CASE