Raiyuu

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]Sanzo had got tired of slaughtering mindless Minus Wave youkai the [b]last [/b]time around. Nowadays he tended to let his gun hand do the work on autopilot, while he wondered irritably why the brains behind the latest upsets in Shangri-La didn't come out and dispatch them itself, instead of sending minions that couldn't put a scratch on the team. [b]"Next town we come to, we're getting bull-bars installed on the jeep," [/b]he growled at Hakkai, ducking to avoid a clumsy slash of claws and jamming his Smith & Wesson in the assailant's mouth. [b]"Then we can just ram through the mobs." [/b]He leaned backward to avoid another strike, his gaze turning upwards to take in Kougaiji's party, regarding the fight coolly from astride their dragons. [b]"This'd be over a lot quicker if you joined in!" [/b]A sly grin tugged at the corner of Kougaiji's mouth. [b]"Can't handle it on your own, Sanzo?" [/b]A vein pulsed in Sanzo's forehead. Hakkai, landing lithely from a backflip, noticed it and ran towards the monk. [b]"Sanzo, I wouldn't -" [/b]Sanzo's gun arm was pointing square at the Kougaiji party. [b]"I'll kill you!"[/b] [/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]At my university's Hallowe'en night, I saw someone dressed as a [b]dead cheerleader. [/b]It was ace. She'd worn her cheerleading uniform, and then cut a rugby ball in half and stuck one half to either side of her head, and covered herself in fake blood. So it looked like she'd been cheerleading and the ball had hit her and gone [b]through [/b]her head.[/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]Discmen are all very well and good, but I've just moved from home to University Halls of Residence, and I far prefer having a tiny MP3 player sitting on my shelf than a Discman and seven massive piles of CDs. Having it all on the MP3 means less things in my room to get stolen, and less luggage when I move in and out.[/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS][quote name='Sage Kaley][/font][/color] Do you have a weird snack or just a slightly odd snack that everyone thinks you are crazy for liking?[color=DarkSlateBlue'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] I like to use Thousand Island dip as a sandwich spread. I have large sanwiches with cheese, ham, different cheese, and then Thousand Island instead of spread. No one can beat Orihime from [i]Bleach [/i]with her ridiculous sweetbean paste and cheesecake sandwiches. [/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS][quote name='Lrb][/font][/color][color=#333333] And on that note, what's so bad about the ear phones?[/color][color=DarkSlateBlue'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] Quite apart from the problems everyone else has pointed out, white headphones scream [b]"MUG ME, I'VE GOT £200 WORTH OF ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT IN MY POCKET!"[/b][/font][/color][color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS] [quote name='Retribution][/font][/color][size=1][b]Don't. Ever. Buy. A. Creative. Product. Ever. Never. Never. Ever.[/b][/size][color=DarkSlateBlue'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] Oh, shoot. But hey, my dad got one before I did and his has lasted about five months now without any problems. But I'll probably handle mine with a lot more care from now on... [/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]Uhhh ... I don't know what 'active backgrounds' are, neither have I ever heard the term 'backgroup'. But I'm taking a wild guess that this thread would be better off in Tech Support.[/font][/color]

[b][color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]Name: [/font][/color][/b][color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]Genjyo Sanzo [b]Gender:[/b] Male [b]Race:[/b] Human [b]Appearance:[/b] [u][url="http://www.saiyuki.com/sanzo2/14.jpg"]Sanzo[/url][/u] [i]Question! Since this is future Shangri-La, do all the characters wear more 'modern' clothing? I assumed 'yes' and chose my picture on that basis. I can change it if I'm wrong. [/i][b]Personality:[/b] Sanzo is not what you'd expect of a holy man. He's brutal and worldly, and makes no attempt to cover up his atheism - strange for the highest-ranking priest in all Buddhism. He's quick to anger, his favourite phrases being "die" and "I'll kill you". He's sworn never to become attached to anything, but deep down he's quite attached to his companions. [b]Character snippet "Stupid monkey!"[/b] [b]"Nympho kappa!"[/b] A vein twitched in Sanzo's forehead. Those two had been wrestling in the back of the jeep for three hours without changing insult. He looked sidelong at Hakkai's slightly fixed-looking smile. [b]"Kill me now." "I'm sure that won't be necessary." [/b] Sanzo growled to himself and shook out a Marlboro. A drag on it started to relax him a little. He could just about begin to block out the incessant jabbering - [b]"Baby monkey!"[/b] A flailing foot caught Sanzo a glancing blow. His cigarette flew out into the jeep's slipstream, ground into the desert dust by the tyres. [i]Whap![/i] [b]"Both of you, die! I don't know why I ever bring you along on these things!"[/b] [b]Weapons: [/b]a [url="http://chibisanzou.haisoft.net/sanzo/solistuf/small/RELOAD2_reload_by_chibi_r86_solitude_P.jpg"][u]snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver[/u][/url] and a paper fan for idiots. [b]Powers:[/b] Sanzo carries the Maten Sutra, one of the five Tenchi Kaigen scriptures used to create Heaven and Earth. It has the power to bind darkness (practically speaking, he can seal the movement of enemies), but takes a few seconds of chanting to work. [/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]The Creative Zen Micro is an incredibly nice player for less money than an iPod. But in the end I think it comes down to how much memory you want. The 6GB of the Zen were plenty enough for my entire CD collection with room to spare for new stuff off Napster. But if you want to store massive videos, or have a really extensive CD collection, you might actually [b]need [/b]the iPod's 40GB. If you do go for the iPod, never go for the latest model. They always release a new one, find something wrong with it, then fix it. So it's worth going for the older models, because they've already found and corrected any problems. Examples: the first iPod had battery issues, and the Nano is so skinny that the screen tends to cracks if you put it in your pocket and walk around. [/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS][quote name='DarkStar666][/font][/color] if you had to choose between being invisible or being able to fly which would you choose?[color=DarkSlateBlue'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] Invisibility has always been my superpower of choice. It has so much more potential and flexibility than, for instance, explosive bolts from the hands (which seems to be the power Marvel give new characters in X-Men when they run out of original ideas). But [b]permanent [/b]invisibility would be The Lame. And I'd want it to extend a couple of centimetres from my body so I didn't have to be naked to make use of it. I was talking with an Australian friend of mine in a supermarket today, and as we walked past the mince pies she told me how she'd felt really cheated the first time she was given one; she'd been expecting [b]mincemeat, [/b]i.e. actual meat from an animal, and was very surprised when she got dried fruit and suet instead. So my question is: [b]does anyone know why the mixture in mince pies is called mincemeat?[/b] [/font][/color]

[color=DarkSlateBlue][font=Trebuchet MS]For Christmas, I would like [b]some people who post detail, instead of lists with no explanation. [/b]This thread will have far more discussion value if you go into a little more detail about why you want these things. Thirty-odd posts with lists of five items do not an interesting thread make. (This isn't addressed to everyone, some of you aren't guilty of this at all.) And I'm sorry, but I just get really needled when Christmas starts coming up in conversation so early in the year. I don't even nearly know what I want for Christmas and I likely won't start noting things down until Advent. I die a little inside when I go into Marks and Spencer at the end of the summer holidays and see a Christmas tree hiding amongst all the Back 2 School merchandise. [/font][/color]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Thanks a bundle![/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS][quote name='SaiyanPrincessX][/font][size=1]Did you want a matching avatar?[/size'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] I'd love one, if it's not too much hassle. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]I have a lab coat in my wardrobe, so I thought I might get some red food colouring, splash it liberally over, mess my hair around and go as a mad scientist. Then I had a lazier idea. Put on a light grey hoodie, roll up my sleeves and scrawl [b]"28.06.42.12." [/b]up my inside left forearm with a black marker. If you don't get the reference, [url="http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=149402&p=57&g=72&pa=sr"][b]click here[/b][/url] and buy immediately! For £5.99 you can't afford [b]not [/b]to own it.[/font]

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[font=Trebuchet MS]The extra effects are pretty awesome - that's why I wanted someone who actually knows their way around Photoshop to do this. But if you still have the PSD, do you mind editing the text slightly? The formatting's fine - exactly what I had in mind - but it should read [i]FATE'S CRADLE, [/i]not [i]FATES CRADEL. [/i]Just swap the [i]l[/i] and [i]e [/i]in [i]cradle [/i]and whack an apostrophe in before the [i]s [/i]in [i]Fate's.[/i] Thanks! [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]As you can see, I've already had a crack at this, but my Photoshop skills aren't what they could be. Anyone care to show me up? [url="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v629/SheriffMatt/fatewallpaper2.jpg"]Wallpaper can be found here.[/url] Text as per my own effort. Because the words 'Fate's Cradle' are kind of a logo, it'd be good if those could be formatted the same way as I've done them (all caps, Arial, two spaces between each letter, left aligned). Cheers in advance. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]This is kind of creative-writing-orientated, so I'm going to go ahead and move it to the [b]Anthology[/b].[/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]In the interests of clarity, can everyone please follow Lafleur's example and quote the relevant question before answering it? It'll save confusion if people answer questions from three pages ago, which they are quite welcome to do. [quote name='celestialcharm][/font][color=DarkOrchid] My question, why do dogs sniff everything?[/color'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] Dogs' sense of smell is their dominant sense; in the same way as we rely heavily on sight, they rely heavily on smell. They remember locations and objects more by their smell than, say, their colour or shape. Dogs probably think 'why do humans go around looking at everything?' [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]This thread has been balancing precariously for a [b]long [/b]time now. I kept thinking it was going to descend into a flame war between 'alchemists' and those naysaying them. But it didn't, and it passed away peacefully... Until someone resurrected it, and now we have flames. Disbelief at what people are claiming is not an excuse to call them names, and rising to the bait and flaming back[/font][font=Trebuchet MS] is equally unforgivable. I'll just emphasise that [b]no one is in the right here[/b]. [b]Thread closed, [/b]before this can escalate further. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Okay, this doesn't exactly contribute to the discussion, but I thought it might provide some light relief in the midst of what is becoming quite a heavy debate. [u][url="http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-676.png"]Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics[/url][/u] just featured a comic about Intelligent Design. Ryan, it seems, is of the opinion (as are many posters in this thread) that ID belongs in the Religion Department, not the Science Block. Also, I love the image of [spoiler]God dancing in his underpants...[/spoiler] [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS][b]Lunox, Al-araaf[/b] and [b]TribalofChaosDJ,[/b] I'd like to refer to you Panda's earlier post (page 1), where she pointed out her pet peeve: [quote name='Panda]...[/font][color=Red]lists of pet peeves that don't explain why the listed peeve is annoying to them![/color'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] That's one I share. Along with [b]people who don't read the thread before posting. [/b]Too many times I've had to berate people for either repeating exactly what someone else said three posts beforehand, or for utterly failing to grasp the point of the thread. Case in point: the old [b]"What does your sig/avi/username say about you?"[/b] thread, anyone remember it? n00bs used to jump in in with "my siggy means XYZ!" when reading the first post would have told them that the idea was to analyse the previous poster's details, not their own. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]It's weird the difference two extra legs can make. Ants, no problem. Cockroaches, well, bleurgh, but not [b]scary.[/b] Add two more legs - spiders, scorpions, any arachnid - and I'm suddenly hyperventilating. I think I can trace my hatred/terror of spiders back to my early childhood. I remember my dad pointing out of the kitchen window at a spider that had made a web on the washing line. Thinking rationally now, I'm sure it must only have been a common garden spider - the type that's about the size of the circle you make with your finger and thumb, with a bulbous body and spindly legs, and is a sort of mottled brown colour. But in my memory it's disorted until the thing in my mind's eye looks to be the size of my head. I can deal with tiny spiders. I'll let them crawl over me - partially because it's supposed to bring wealth. (This actually worked recently - I worked on a farm over the summer and had tiny spiders on me a lot of the time, and then I won fifty pounds on my Premium Bonds.) But anything bigger than my little fingernail, be it spindly, fat, fast, slow, smooth, hairy, whatever, scares the living daylights out of me. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]As Corey and 50 Cent have said, Google is, and has been since it's existed, the best search engine out there. I'm sure you'll find something on there. For future reference, Howlingvampire4, try and make sure your threads actually have some conversational value, as opposed to posting a question to which the only relevant reply would be the answer. (Did that make sense?) What I mean is, try and make threads that can continue living after the original question has been answered. In future, why not try placing queries like this one in your signature, so people can simply PM you the answer? [b]Thread closed.[/b] [/font]