John

I am by no means an expert (for evidence, see my post in the I Forgot What You Guys Look Like thread), but I actually disagree with this advice. If weight loss is the goal, diet is way more important than exercise, and for most people, it's way easier to reduce your diet by 500 calories per day than to run off 500 calories per day.

Starting things off with a classic:

Ok bear with me, I just thought of this in the shower. We've got these fancy new "like" buttons for each post for some reason, right? So let's put them to use with a game. Here's how it goes: Post anything funny in this thread, be it a video, image, or bawdy epigram"Like" other posts that made you laugh (you can try not to laugh if you're feeling competitive about the whole thing, but be honest)Don't like posts for any other reasonI will maintain and/or neglect a running leaderboard of the users with the most likes in this threadLEADERBOARD: ...

I think OB--and, more importantly to me, myO--were probably the first places where I became deeply aware that there were whole other worlds out there, both real and virtual, inhabited by cool people, and my identity didn't have to be built around wherever I was physically living if I didn't want it to. That was pretty big for me, as I grew up in a series of small, somewhat remote towns where there wasn't much for me to identify or fit in with.

T H R I V I N G

Welp, I'm back at the gym again. Went for a few months last year before my evenings got clogged with freelance work and I couldn't keep up the routine. I love being at the gym and I'm usually pretty excited to go, so busyness is really the thing that I have to fight against more than anything else. Diet can also be a challenge when I'm doing strength training. I really enjoy cooking, and it can be pretty frustrating to have to pore through recipes looking for one that won't **** up my macronutrient numbers for the day, or finding a delicious one and bastardizing it into a healthy version; makes me feel like Morgoth, kidnapping buttery, high-cholesterol elves and warping them through my dark magic into low-fat, high protein, flavorless orcs. It seems like so many people who're into lifting have no problem eating the same joyless meals day in and day out, and that's not me, so I gotta stay creative in the kitchen.

Yeezus is actually the only Kanye album I've listened to, and I think that was just to see how close it was to Death Grips like everyone was saying at the time of its release. It was pretty decent.

Oh man, you don't know the half of it. Apparently, the whole album was written as his way of coping with his death and saying goodbye (this was confirmed by Tony Visconti). The theme runs through almost every song, and it's really affecting to listen to an artist using his medium to stare his own leering mortality right in the face, and we didn't even realize it until it was too late. I mean.. what a hell of a high note to leave on. What a genius.

Alright folks, we're all a hundred years old now and unrecognizable from the fresh-cheeked little star-children we used to be. Let's have an accounting of what life has done to us. This is me and my nephew (I can't believe he let me ride on his shoulders, what a bro).

This is a really common complaint, and the fact that it's so common should bring you comfort. It means there's more people who think the same as you do, and thus there are going to be (already are, really) more games answering your complaint. I think what's easy to lose sight of is that in the last decade or more, the games industry and audience has ballooned like crazy. There's just more games being made, and most of them just aren't going to cater to the hardcore crowd that's been into games all this time. But that doesn't mean we're seeing less games free of shitty payment models, it just seems like it because we're seeing so many more that have that.

My most-played game right now is Dirty Bomb, far and away. Which makes me feel kinda, well... dirty (sorry) because it's basically just another F2P class-based shooter in a sea of F2P class-based shooters. I'm not quite sure what the draw for me is. It could be that you have to unlock classes very slowly (unless you pay money for them), so you kinda cherish each one and learn its ins and outs instead of writing it off after one or two difficult rounds. Or maybe it's just the fairly gentle skill slope. I've also been playing lots of roguelikes in the last few years. I've taken all sorts of 'em around the block: Nethack, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, Sil, Caves of Qud, ADOM, etc. But the one I keep coming back to over and over is Brogue, which is an absolute miracle of emergent gameplay. Eschewing all the cumbersome character stats that most roguelikes use, Brogue only measures you in terms of Strength and Health, and everything else is up to the items you find and how ingeniously you can play them against the various terrain and enemy types. The game's UI has an unheard-of level of polish and usability relative to other traditional ASCII roguelikes as well. If you've been looking to get into the genre but have been too intimidated, definitely try Brogue. It's a great example of "easy to learn, difficult to master". Dude, Downwell looks so fun. I've been meaning to pick it up, and now more so because Spelunky is one of my all-time favorite games.

As we've all been reminding each other over the last several months, OB has been a lot of different things to a lot of different people. One of the things it was to me was a threshold leading into a lifelong love of music. Through people like James, Tony, Shinmaru and Alan, I was introduced to whole new worlds of artistic expression, worlds that to a sheltered 14 year old boy seemed often inscrutable, sometimes dangerous, and always irresistibly thrilling. For me, the supreme leader of these worlds was David Bowie, the human optical illusion, shapeshifting atop his throne with every slight movement of my eyes; always changing, always the same in his shrewd splendor. As you probably know, yesterday he took on a new form that most of us didn't expect and don't quite understand. It's been a lot to process for me today, and since my love of Bowie has its origins so wrapped up in this community, I thought I'd post a thread where we can talk about what the Duke meant to us, or just post our favorite song of his. --- Though I'd read OBers singing his praises for a while before, the first time I actually heard a David Bowie song was in high school gym class, 2004. At that time, gym mostly consisted of lifting weights and listening to the same Lil Jon album day in and day out, which sounds pretty dope to me now but was an exercise in torment for the insufferable zit-golem that was Freshman John. The bog-standard classic rock radio station was offering a welcome reprieve between the "yeahs" and "okays", and as I stood around staring at the clock, the daydreamy opening chords of "Starman" came into the room. It had me from the get. The song was like a foppish, sentimental wind that blew away the mire of boneheadedness and dude-stink around me. I felt about this singer just the same way the song's narrator felt about that man in the sky. As soon as I got home, I got on AIM and asked either Shin or Tony to direct transfer Ziggy Stardust to me (YOU WHIPPERSNAPPERS GOT IT EASY), and looped that album so constantly for so long that I couldn't stand to listen to it for years after.

Knives are a half measure. I prefer true security.

I've been listening to a lot of pop punk and melodic hardcore lately because apparently I'm trying to caulk up all the spots I missed in my adolescence.

Whoa, whoa, ok guys stop blowing up my Facebook with hundreds of messages, I get it, everyone misses John. I'll do the thing, but really, the begging and the nudes are unnecessary. EDIT: #thriving

Thriving.

Fried cabbage, dawg.   Coarsely chop about 1/4 head per person, sautee in olive oil with salt, pepper, garlic power (put away the fresh garlic Chef Fancypants, this is lazyfood), worcestershire sauce if you have it. Slice up about half a link of sausage per person (I like andouille) or chop up some bacon you fried ahead of time, and add that in after about five minutes. Sautee for about another five, serve immediately.

  Stopped reading there. New golden age, James confirmed.

I dunno what you guys are talking about, OB is thriving.

Abby sounds great. My girlfriend wishes Angus were a lot more like that, cuddly and playful. He's fairly reserved and low-key, but I love him all the same.

It looks fun as hell but I'm reticent about buying an online multiplayer game for a Nintendo console. It's like... having your dry cleaner do your taxes.

Alright guys, enough talking, postulating and theorizing. I'm calling an audible: OB is officially alive again because why the hell not. Post frequency and membership numbers are no longer relevant metrics; this is a new, slimmed-down model where OB's life force is measured only by whether or not this thread still exists. Since it exists now, OB is thriving. It will continue to thrive until this thread no longer exists.   Now post your cats. (Other animals are acceptable in a pinch, but you gotta promise that they're cool.)   This is Angus. He contributes nothing to the world.

Formally petitioning to make addseo1119 a mod. He is the hero OB needs.

As with everything, I go through phases. Some months I'll keep up on every new video from my favorite channels, others (like lately) I'll have a backlog of dozens if not hundreds that I won't bother getting to.   Nardwuar the Human Serviette: A legendary love-him-or-hate-him kind of music interviewer. But if you hate him you objectively suck. As a rainbow is God's promise that he will never subject the earth to another great flood, so Nardwuar is his promise that rock and roll will never die.   The Needle Drop: A music review channel whose steadily rising success is owed to the work ethic, professionalism and entertainment value of its host, Anthony Fantano. I often disagree with his taste, but he's useful as a tool for finding out what albums are worth pursuing or sleeping on because he's so consistent. Fun to watch, too.   King Ceasar: Some dude with a mental health issue who uploads multiple impenetrable videos every day. He has at least hundreds of videos over the last 2 years. I subbed to him a few days ago and he subbed me back. Dope.

OB was the last forum-based internet community I was a part of, I think; since then, I've been involved with a small, close-knit game streaming community for several years now. And although there's something about message boards that I miss, an itch that remains unscratched, every time I find a new one that I think I might like to take part in, I'll sign up, browse the boards, look for a thread I might like to participate in, and... eh. I just kinda lose the motivation to participate. Is it because message boards used to be more or less the only way to be social online, and now that need is filled by a newer generation of shallower, more immediate social networking services? Is it because I found OB in my more vulnerable teenage years and I just don't need that kind of community in my life anymore? Is it because OB back in the day really was just a lot more lively and special than these other places I've tried out since then? I dunno.   Maybe we don't come back because observation has taught us that nostalgia is a siren song, and if we try to rebuild the special thing we once had we'll only find that we can't just reach into the ether, grab the spark of meaning that once imbued it, and shove it back in again. I'm different, you're different, the world's different, and they can't ever be the same again.   But that's just what observation has taught us, and sometimes observation is wrong. Like AmbyCakes referred to (excuse me, AmbyCakes. Almost forgot all the old post styling conventions!), the magic of forums is asynchronous communication. It's actually not a big deal for us to get back togetherâ??no commitment, no co-ordination, no planning. Just gotta hop on, make a post, and hop back off until someone else replies. We like to think that "life got in the way", but you know what? Most of us are probably twenty-somethings with ten or a hundred times better internet connections than we had back in the day, and desk jobs with plenty of hours to slack off during. And yeah, we've all changed, but guess what else: most of us have probably become way cooler and more interesting than we used to be. Because guys, I love you, but have you gone back through any old threads lately? A lot of that **** we posted back then was pretty cringe-worthy. I don't really want to be an anxious teenager talking about the Matrix again. I'd rather be an adult talking about the Matrix.   And I'd rather hear about the new things you guys are into, too, and the interesting lives you led when you were away from OB. Did you guys know Sara got married? Ok a lot of you probably did because of Facebook, but isn't that cool?! We should talk about stuff like that.   I think forums probably ended because they stopped being what we thought they had to be: our online homes. Maybe this one can live again as something else: our online neighborhood bar (yeah, you know what that is before you even click). A place that doesn't fill our deep emotional needs, it just greets us with warmth, familiar faces and good conversation whenever we feel like popping in.   And if, like Boo expressed, we wanted to do this somewhere without the ostensible focus on anime, maybe we could goad Tony into re-establishing Orange Lazarus; that was the real cool kids' club anyway.