A movie I saw (which degraded into Star Trek talk...)

[Allan_ecker]

Rule 20 is also a good way to transcend extradom and become a regular. Barclay got his start as the "poor bastard with holodiction".

Is it wrong that I find him attractive?

[Hat-Kun]

Rule 20 is also a good way to transcend extradom and become a regular. Barclay got his start as the "poor bastard with holodiction".

Is it wrong that I find him attractive?

No, not at all. In fact...

*Hands Allan a toffee*

[Nitwit]

Rule 21: Never be the only person who knows exactly how something works. Dying before you can explain it to create dramatic tension sucks if you're the person dying.

[DetailBear]

Rule 22: Get the writers to give you a regular job every episode, like getting the manifest signed or operating the docking bay. You're less likely to become red shirt #2 if they're used to writing. "Cycle the air lock, Smithers."

[Hat-Kun]

23 - When someone asks if you're a god, you say YES!

[Fallwind]

23 - When someone asks if you're a god, you say YES!

thats great!

24- They may not have warp drive, but a rock upside the head will ruin your day just as effectivly as a phaser.

[Cyril_Dran]

25 - Don't bother to run preliminary scans. They won't be conclusive. Period. You're wasting your time with anything but a full sensor sweep looking for a specific anomaly.

26 - Don't bother with Phasers if the ship is comparably equipped. They won't work. Ever. Use Photon Torpedos right off the bat.

[Nyamaza]

27 - If your ship has a new dramatic feature, be prepared to use it the first time you leave spacedock.

[Hat-Kun]

27 - If your ship has a new dramatic feature, be prepared to use it the first time you leave spacedock.

Or to have it disabled before you leave, as the case may be.

[Fallwind]

28- always, always have some kind of robot onboard to control the ship because its not a matter of 'if' but rather 'when' the entire crew will be knocked out by some death ray/space virus/anomaly.

[Maximuscoolman]

We're getting off topic here, 27 doesn't really help you to survive as an extra, but nevermind, this is supposed to be a topic about soem flash animation anyway.
29: Have more than 1 infirmary, if you only have one, it only takes one malfunction and every extra on screen gets killed.

[DetailBear]

We're getting off topic here

And this is unusual, how?

but nevermind, this is supposed to be a topic about soem flash animation anyway.

To be specific, we're getting off-off-off topic here.

[Candide]

I have to step in here and bust some myths...

And erm... male sexual abilities are supposed to be accompanied by emotional attraction?

"You have much to learn, padewan."

But seriously, sex is great. Sex with emotional attraction is tremendous. Sex with love is unbelievable.

Sex without love isn't fun at all, and certainly not great or tremendous...

Sex without love CAN be great.

Sex accompanied by negative emotions is one of the worst things there is, though.

In my (admitedly limited) experience of my (not so long) 35 years of life, sex is sex. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I've been with the same man for 11+ years now. Our sex life ... well, let's just say my parents have a better sex life than us. We're still trying to work out sex. How each of us functions in bed separately just doesn't mesh together.

The most intense, most awesome, most passionate sex I've had was during a 3 day visit from a guy who'd been an acquaintance until then. (Though after that, I discovered that: 1. sex can lead into love; and 2. polyamory isn't a myth, and I was capable of it.) In fact, with most of the other guys I've had sex with, the sex was better than what I've had with my spouse. So was sex with the one girlfriend I got intimate with.

Nevertheless, I love my spouse dearly, cannot conceive of life without him, and miss him terribly whenever one of us is on a business trip for a week.

Sex is simple. It's a physical act. It can be done well. It can be done poorly.

Sex can lead to greater interpersonal connection to someone else. Sex can enhance an existing interpersonal connection. But the interpersonal connection exists independently, of its own accord.

I cannot stress the latter enough. At my previous job at That Horrible, Horrible Place (I start my new one next Monday *whee!*), I heard guy after guy complaining about his ex-wife. The common theme in-between the lines of all of these conversations? These guys each seemed to confuse sex with love, as if good sex somehow would create a good relationship, or romance would cause good sex. It didn't.

It won't. The two are orthogonal.

(And note: "orthogonal" neither requires nor implies "non-interacting". A 2-D linear vector space has *far* more points off-axes than on.)


I write all of this not to dishearten you, not to disillusion you, but to de-illusion, to remove the rose-colored glasses. Seeing reality clearly helps you make better choices, helps you avoid the "sex accompanied by negative emotions" described by Allan.

Look, more often than not, everything won't line up in your relationships. You'll be physically attracted to each other, your personalities will mesh... and the sex will be infrequent and lousy. So? Or you'll have great sex, you'll have an intense emotional bond, but you won't both be physically attracted to each other (at least not very) and you'll have one or two intellectual areas that the two of you cannot ever see eye-to-eye on. So? Or you two are a perfect fit in every other way, but you each have one or two personality traits that irritate the hell out of each other. So?

Some couples have sex with anyone but each other, because for them, having sex with each other would cheapen or damage the relationship.

Some couples have "open relationships," where both partners negotiate when & how they'll have extramarital sex.

Some couples jointly fall in love with additional people, and form group marriages. Who has sex with whom in those polyamories ... is irrelevand and nobody else's business.

The vast majority fall for the "sex is only great in marriage" lie because they're afraid to be different, afraid to be "not normal", and especially, afraid to face up to and own the reality: that human affection is complex, messy, difficult, and requires constant work.

[Allan_ecker]

30: Study late twentieth and early twenty-first century human history. All moral conflicts will have some precedent from this time, and, should you be sucked into any kind of temporal vortex, this is where you're headed.

[Randyg]

I suspect we'll never agree on this. :)

(although it's probably me that's different, as I've noticed I tend to think about sex far differently than most people do)


For you, that post may be true. But for me, sex with someone I'm not in an intimate emotional relationship with just doesn't work.

Sex, itself, holds remarkably little value. Sure, I have a physical need for it, and I've probably done things that would squick even people here (mmm, strap-on dildo enema nozzles...), but I have no desire to have sex with people I'm not already emotionally invovled with.

And sex that I have no desire to have can hardly be described as great, as it's not even enjoyable.


(semi-off-topic jump here) I'm getting remarkably fed up with the guys at work... all of them have an attitude towards women that I completely can't relate to. All day I have to put up with people yelling "check out the legs/tits/ass on that chick" when someone walks in front of the office, and every head in the office follows said legs/tits/ass, except mine. then they all look at me since I didn't. they're crude, uncaring, unthinking, and not interesting in anything other than someone to stick their dick into. Whenever they have a conversation about women, not a single word they say can I relate to. And I have to work with them. sigh.


--Randy

[Zavion]

I agree with Randy, mostly because, as a male, all my orgasms are pretty physically satisfying (sure some are better than others but rarely I'm like "Well, that sucked" and if I do it's because of a very discernable reason like coming just as I think someone has woken up or something like that).They're just that. 'Eh'. Not great, but not bad. But the emotions I feel with other people are just, outstanding. The mental feeling I get far surpasses the physical feelings I get. But then again I have a mostly mental libido anyways. I rarely find myself looking to sexual areas of a female or male, I never had problems looking at the eyes of a pretty girl and listening to what she was saying just because she was pretty.

I'm in agreance with you about your collegues at work too Randy. I can't stand people thinking of women as walking sex objects. I guess it's because I would hate being thought of that as a woman too. I'm attracted to people physically too, but my physical libido is negligable to my mental one, and I think it's disgraceful to think of a woman as just an breathing set of ass/breasts.*Gah* That just irritates me. I hate when people point out things like that to me too, because I frankly don't care.

And not caring doesn't make you asexual or gay or bi, it just means you are more than a pair of gonads that reproduce. And I don't mind oogling people showing off purposefully (Hey, at they want the attention at that point) but most people on average *don't* want that, as far as I can tell.

Several people have thought I was homosexual in the past because I don't make passes at every female that walks past me. Which in itself is a personal irritation because most of them can't comprehend an existance past work and sex anyways, let alone my personal feelings on it.

I'm sure there are some people who can freely have pure physical sex, and enjoy it. I can not. That doesn't make me monogamous (although I would say I am)because I'm not limited to having such feelings for one person. Every relationship needs to be a personal choice. But it's not one to be taken lightly or with a view of 'Got to get this over wish as quick as possible' either.

Oh, and I don't want to incenuate being bi/asexual/ or homosexual is a bad thing. Just saying that not hitting everything that moved doesn't make you any of them either. A lot of people can have fun being loosly promiscuous. Which isn't bad either. I just don't think most people are mature enough, mentally, to take that sort of attitude and act on ithealtily and maturely. Some are. Some enjoy it. More power to them. I just don't think I personally can, and I think that it takes a very steady mature mind to be able to do so healthily anyways. And mature minds is something most people don't have.

Edit/Note: I also don't really see a point to marrage because a legal or religious marrage doesn't automatically make a commitment. I think the commitment is vastly more important than the paper that goes with it. If someone needed that paper to make them believe I was faithful, I'd give it to them, but it's not like that paper changes who you are. So I don't see sex before marrage as bad, personally, as long as the relationship commitment is truely there. (I also have a lot of fears of rejection or being cheated on. Not like, paranoia I am being cheated on, just a fear that if I was, I'd break like a china doll, and knowing how I feel about it would easily keep me from intentionally cheating on someone (although I might accidentally if said person I was with thought that kisses/hugs were cheating.))

[Randyg]

You've worded things far, far better than I could.

I could go through it and agree with every paragraph of it, but I think there wouldn't be much point. :)


--Randy
(who has a hard time explaning things like this nearly as cleanly as he'd like)

[Candide]

And not caring doesn't make you asexual or gay or bi, it just means you are more than a pair of gonads that reproduce. And I don't mind oogling people showing off purposefully (Hey, at they want the attention at that point) but most people on average *don't* want that, as far as I can tell.

Now, see, I've never been able to oogle women. I could only oogle men.

And admiring can be fun.

Several people have thought I was homosexual in the past because I don't make passes at every female that walks past me. Which in itself is a personal irritation ...

...but can work to your advantage. You could take on the "gal's best friend" role that gay men do, but without being sexually unavailable. Good way to land emotionally-fulfilling relationships.

[Zavion]

...but can work to your advantage. You could take on the "gal's best friend" role that gay men do, but without being sexually unavailable. Good way to land emotionally-fulfilling relationships.

Eh, I'm not really looking for a relationship right now. It's something I've never been comfortable searching out, because then I feel like the caveman with a club. I'd rather be someone's friend and then fall in love later than start out their boyfriend.

[Candide]

I suspect we'll never agree on this.

(although it's probably me that's different, as I've noticed I tend to think about sex far differently than most people do)


For you, that post may be true. But for me, sex with someone I'm not in an intimate emotional relationship with just doesn't work.

You misunderstand my post.

1: Sex is a separate, orthogonal axis to human relationship.
(What I glossed over: the human relationship "axis" is really a full subspace with its own rich, complex set of orthogonal axes. But we don't know what many of those axes are.)

2: We are fed a myth about sex. The reality is far, far more complex.

3: Beware denial, for it will return to bite you!


BTW Randy: We already know you're a rare bird, and being a guy with absolutely no interested in sex for itself just fits with your being so different.

then they all look at me since I didn't. they're crude, uncaring, unthinking, and not interesting in anything other than someone to stick their dick into. Whenever they have a conversation about women, not a single word they say can I relate to.

Yeah, but if they question your "manliness," you can just respond with a great big grin, and say, "Yeah, but I know the secret to what women really want." Then turn back to your work and refuse to say anything more.