Granted. Unfortunately due to a weird genetic quirk, it grows out of the middle of your forehead rather than the end of your spine.

I wish I had better penmanship.

Granted. Unfortunately the reason you're running is because you've been falsely convicted of a mass murder spree, and the police are chasing you.

I wish I had a chili dog.

When I was younger, I loved those little ramen cup-o'-soups, and was very sensitive to sugar. No cookies for me, except sugar cookies, and then I might have one cookie and that was it.

Now I can't stand the cup-o'-soups, and any cookies that don't have peanutbutter or ginger/nutmeg/cinnamon are of in danger of going extinct in this household.

Often the LEGO Star Wars games; the ability to mix and match characters in different levels leads to all kinds of potential plots. Like this one time when I accidentally picked Darth Sidious for the level where you're trying to smuggle the Death Star plans off of the Tantive IV. Sometimes it's impossible to justify how stuff like that could happen, but other times you end up with some really interesting ideas.

Occasionally I am inspired by other fanfics, but I try not to be, if that makes any sense. I actually made a fic based on someone else's idea by accident... I hadn't read their story in years, forgot all about it, and so it seemed like I was just coming up with this idea off the top of my head. So I incorporated it into the plot for my fic thinking all was well and good. I only realized it wasn't mine when I rediscovered their fic, and had to try to find a tactful way to ask the author for permission to write the story even though I was already working on it. Yeesh.

I also have a ton of stories I've never written down. A couple are based on other peoples' fanfics, since I obviously can't publish those anyways. I had a very long and involved story arc about a crossover in which a character goes crazy, manages to wipe out all of Cybertron by invoking Yog-Sothoth, hunts the few surviving Transformers across the Star Wars galaxy, and ends up championing equal rights for Chao under the guise of a Batman-like figure. This includes raising a Dark Chaos Chao who eventually develops amnesia, forgets he's a Chao, and is adopted by the Mandalorians, but then... okay, you know, I think it's obvious why I wouldn't publish that one.

Hey, I like your characters! Doca and her little brother are really cute.

Lol oh no.

I haven't had any recent embarrassing incidents. I don't know if that's because I'm more careful, just extremely lucky, or because I've mentally blocked those memories.  :


I did have a few horribly embarrassing incidents in my middle school years though. Like this one time in second grade (ish). We were going to paint a banner or mural of some kind, so the teacher got out this huge sheet of paper and laid it out on the table. Passed out baskets of those little plastic paint containers and asked me to "put some paint on the table".

I was like, um...  :unsure:  ...I can't possibly have heard that right. So I asked her, you really want me to do that? Paint? On the table? Surely on the paper, not the table itself?? And she'd only just asked us a minute earlier to not start painting right away so that she could explain what we'd be doing, so telling me to randomly start painting didn't seem right.

She said something to the effect of "would you please just do it!"

So I was like, um, okay. I swear that can't be right, but you're the teacher here. :blink: Took a brush and slathered some of the paint on the paper. Immediately in trouble for it. "I'm incredibly disappointed in you! Can't believe you just did that!" yadda yadda. And I really had no clue what had happened--I'd done exactly what she'd said, but for some reason everyone thought I was being a smart-alec. She told all the other teachers, my parents, et cetera what a troublemaker I'd been in class. Sooo embarrassing.

I wasn't familiar with the term "literal thinking" at the time, so I really didn't have any explanation for what had happened--from my perspective it seemed like the teacher had just suddenly lost her marbles that day and started asking ridiculous things. Although I can see now why I took to programming so well--it fit my thought process like a glove.

The Dark Knight Rises

Artistic license aside, CG animals don't usually move or sound the way live animals are supposed to... I almost wouldn't mind seeing them anthropomorphized, a la Raptor Red, if only they moved naturally. You see a lot of dinosaurs walking around with their jaws gaping open like they got stuck that way, roaring and growling seemingly just for the heck of it... or just standing there kind of staring off into space like they're daydreaming.

I'll admit that I'm definitely not the best animator, but I do know that animals tend to keep an eye on their environment, and don't just stand stationary for long periods of time unless they're dozing. Predators don't typically "babble" to themselves, because prey IRL won't stand there staring off into space if it realizes there's danger around. But then you see a big predator in a CG documentary bearing down on some small prey animal, jaws agape and roaring its head off. It breaks suspension of disbelief for me because all I see is an attempt at being theatrical.

The question isn't how plausible it is for them to attack each other, or whether it could have happened in real life. One could argue the same about superheroes duking it out. I'm freely disregarding the specifics of what happened in JPIII, just because it's obvious the specific way it happened in the movie is unrealistic. (And not the only inconsistency--the raptors' legs dislocated when they walked, the Pteranodons had teeth...)

I find it annoying just because it seems like most people who prefer Spinosaurus, do so because Jack Horner says it would happen that way. I mean c'mon... really? But the number of other paleontologists who disagree with him apparently means nothing. I've yet to see him address many of the points brought up in Tyrannosaurus's favor, which frankly smacks of personal bias.

* One of Horner's favorite arguments seems to be that T. rex was just a wimpy scavenger, and so couldn't possibly win. Hunting behavior does not matter in this kind of scenario to begin with, but for the sake of the argument let's think about this for a moment. It almost seems like Horner has made the mistake of assuming that an inclination to scavenge == devoted scavenging behavior == weakness. Even animals that are normally considered scavengers tend to be opportunists... even turkey vultures will snatch squirrels out of trees. The really ironic part is that Spinosaurus is probably *more* suited to scavenging than T. rex. That long, low snout with the nostrils set back on the face would be excellent for digging around in dead dinos' guts, as some paleontologists (eg. Darren Naish) have suggested in the past.

* Ecology and basic logistics support this. T. rex was the only really big carnivore in its environment, so for all intents and purposes it should be the apex predator. The German Shepherd-sized raptors that lived alongside it certainly weren't taking on elephant-sized hadrosaurs and ceratopsians on a regular basis, but something had to be keeping their numbers in check. T. rex was the only animal that really fit the bill.

* In contrast, Spinosaurus lived alongside other large predators, eg. Carcharodontosaurus and various abelisaurs. How do you fit multiple very large predators in the same environment? You stick them in different niches so they won't compete for the same resources. So which seems like the more likely all-around apex predator out of this bunch? It must be either Carcharodontosaurus, which is a dead ringer for South America's own apex predator Giganotosaurus, and uses the same body plan as the stegosaur-slaying Allosaurus. Or it would be Spinosaurus, with the crazy long snout and other peculiarly specific adaptations, whose best-known relative was found with half-digested fish scales and juvenile dino bones in its gut.

* Then there's just basic morphology. Spinosaurus's neck--if it was anything like its close relative Baryonyx--was long, slim, and not very flexible. Its jaws had inferior leverage given their length and thinness, and its jaw muscles just wouldn't have had the same amount of crushing power. T. rex's feet were about twice as big as those of same-sized Acrocanthosaurus (another relative of Carchar). It was the bulldog of theropods. Its smaller dimensions only mean that it had a lower center of gravity, which would actually have been an advantage. Its worst weakness would probably be its tiny arms. Maybe a Spinosaurus could win if it managed to pin the T. rex down. That WAS one advantage Spinosaurus had, was that it had pretty hefty forelimbs. It certainly couldn't have used them the way it did in JPIII, but it would have been able to pick itself up off the ground if it tripped, or break a fall. Tyrannosaurus, not so much. But of course, Spinosaurus would have to be able to get Tyrannosaurus on the ground in the first place.  :

I haven't seen it, though I saw several commentaries online from biologists who had participated or just wanted to add their own thoughts. Wish I could find them again--it's nice to see the visuals but it's also great to hear what some of these people say when they don't have time limitations and editing to consider.