Ironhold

I was working on my undergrad when the recession hit. I had a spot reserved for me in a local MBA program, so I went with it even though my job outlook was questionable. I figured - wrongly - that my degree alone would be enough to give me an edge over the competition for what jobs there were.

Some manufacturers *deliberately* produce figures and material that range from "Victoria's Secret" to "Vicky ain't got any secrets left". As a consequence, there is in fact a stigma around collecting certain types of product, even among collecting communities. For example, consider the "Transformers" franchise. Hasbro and Takara-Tomy have joint ownership over the franchise, the agreement being set up in such a fashion that T-T has sole control over the franchise in specific markets. T-T has, over the years, allowed the release of product and fiction that has raised eyebrows internationally. This includes product that was the result of them giving blank checks to the wrong people, people who turned around and produced material - primarily comics - that, in whole or in part, depicts the female characters in questionable or even compromising situations. One might be forgiven for thinking that there was some sort of bizarre running gag surrounding one character being perpetually bereft of her clothing. Every time T-T fires someone over this, someone else starts in on it.

As far as the recession goes - The area I live in is in a bubble thanks to the local military base. As a consequence of the bubble, the effects of the recession were time-delayed. There was some initial pain at first (hence my financial plight), but it was about 20 months after the start before things hit us. And just as the worst of it was delayed, so to was the bulk of the recovery delayed. Functionally, we're still only a year or two removed, and even then a few industries are still distressed. We haven't fully shaken it off.

Again - Every time I get a nest egg built up, something comes along and cracks it. I'm in a pretty bad spot, and it's really slow going getting out. That's why I'm doing what I can to get things going on the side so I have the extra cash.

Hard to afford the associated costs if you're broke. Only reason why I didn't head for greener pastures (re: North Dakota) once the recession hit. My car's in such rough shape that it couldn't make the trip, and I'd have had to choose between getting a vehicle that could make the trip and having money to settle once I get there. You're not the first person we've had this argument with.

Again, you're just looking at numbers, not the direct landscape. You have a lot of other factors at work as well. Example from my life - I have an MBA. I was training for a career in insurance when the recession hit. When that happened, several insurance companies that were looking to expand to my area cancelled their plans, while those that were in the area froze hiring... meaning *two* job offers that were dependent upon my finishing my undergrad work were rescinded. Hence my having to start at a newspaper: there were jobs, but none in the industry I trained for.

Also - I'm making money on the side by doing paid surveys and E-Bay. It's not much, but it's helping.

As far as dating goes, you're not alone. When I was a teenager, the stake priesthood leadership sounded the drum beat of missionary work. All young men were to serve missions, and all young women were to reject any potential romantic interest who hadn't served. No questions asked. When my maternal grandmother developed Alzheimer's, I stayed home - even ignoring an offer from a fairly prestigious school - to help my mom take care of her, going to local colleges instead. Remember what I said about no questions being asked? It very quickly became apparent that even though I chose to help my family in a time of crisis, I was untouchable. Given the presence of a major military base in the area, dating non-members wasn't much of an option, either; there was a steady pool of young grunts with paychecks, and I wasn't earning enough to keep up. Not helping matters any is the fact that like everyone else on my mom's side of the family, I got hit with the family "curse" and so started going grey at 27. My last real girlfriend was 13 years ago. I screwed something up, and we drifted apart. I've been by myself since.

Your response was so acidic as to effectively take away his humanity. You presumed the worst of him and let him have it. It may be 4.1% nationally, but various areas still have their own regional quirks when it comes to employment and so those factors should be considered. In my area, for example, I could make double or even triple my newspaper wages if I took up as a security guard at one of the local prisons. Why haven't I? I blew my knee in an accident a few years ago; I'd never pass the physical. Office jobs are tight around here unless I want to spend all day in a call center, and so the newspaper it is.

Darth - Let me tell you a bit of my personal story. I come from a military family. For the first eight years of my life, I moved constantly. My action figures quickly became my best friends as a result; real friends would come and go after a few months, but plastic was forever. I continued on collecting toys well past the age most people were supposed to grow out of them, meaning that many people - including my own family - had rather unpleasant things to say to and about me. This included people questioning my mental health. Things changed when the first live-action "Transformers" movie came out in 2007. Suddenly, I went from being "the freak people were ashamed of" to "the guru who understood what their kids were going on about and knew how to get it at a fair price". Many of the very same people who had said such hurtful things to me in the past suddenly wanted my help. I had to forgive a lot of things in the name of helping their kids and grandkids, things that still burn a bit. A part of me actually wonders what would happen if I finally had it out. So what am I doing now? I'm the entertainment critic for a local family of newspapers. I have an opinion column every Tuesday and a movie review every Friday. Yes, I do still live at home... because I had an extended series of financial setbacks. The recession cost me a good entry-level office job, leaving me doing odd jobs for 13 months. Right when I finished rebuilding my finances from that courtesy of the newspaper, a snafu beyond my control cost me my financial aid; I had to pay an entire calendar year of grad school out of pocket. The laptop I was using for work died at an inopportune time, and I had to take one of my accounts down to get a new one since I had a deadline. Obamacare's eating me alive financially; I'm now paying about 60% of my pay each month to an insurance policy so terrible that the kidney stones I had two years ago cost me $2200 out - of - pocket. My finances are a mess right now, such that I simply can't afford rent on my own. If you really are, indeed, saving up for a new house, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Just make it clear to people that you're indeed looking. Say, for example, make it a point to look at real estate listings from time to time so that you know.

You didn't listen to a word, did you?

The aforementioned "Fantastic Four" film is pure cheese, such that some folks do in fact want to see Marvel man up and permit an official release. As far as older television shows go, check your local cable or satellite provider. There are a whole slew of channels dedicated to older programming in the US, such as MeTV, Retro TV, Antenna TV, Cozi TV, and others. Most offer a mix of programming from the 1950s to the early 2000s, with anything that might truly be questionable (such as "The Alfred Hitchcock Show") or dated (most anything in black & white) typically reserved for the overnight hours. From there, a few anime bits I can recommend: Lost Universe - Cult classic sci-fi anime from the 1990s. The main characters are a trio of "trouble contractors", heroes-for-hire who handle everything from escort missions to anti-terrorist operations. They're good, but they're also very, very eccentric... and with good reason, as for all three some of their eccentricities are tied to tragedies that happened in the past. Content-wise most episodes are between TV-G and TV-PG, but some of the episodes do deal with dark themes that include death. Nozomi Entertainment, the company that currently has the rights to the English dub, has put all 26 episodes up for free viewing on their YouTube channel. Robot Carnival - Cult classic sci-fi anime anthology from the 1980s. Then-fledgling APPP commissioned this film as a showcase of what they could do, and it's generally regarded as helping fuel the anime boom in North America because of it. It's seven shorts featuring robots book-ended by a pair of shorts about the titular Robot Carnival, an automated traveling show so badly suffering from decades of neglect that the screams it elicits are from fear instead of glee. Discotek did a new release back in 2016, with a Blu-Ray out late last year. Transformers - Karyuudo Fansubs (look them up on YouTube) has been slowly doing subtitles for various Japanese Transformers series. "Car Robots" is kid-friendly burning justice (this version of Optimus Prime transforms into a fire engine), and Beast Wars Neo is due out this fall, but you'll want to skip Beast Wars II due to the juvenile humor in the source material.

What age range / rating range are you looking at? Does it matter what it costs to get them? Any particular genres to favor or avoid? edit - And yes, I have to ask - Everything above board, or wink wink nudge nudge? edit edit - Before anyone says anything... There's a plethora of material online whose legal status is, to put it best, unclear. Many of these items may still be legally owned by someone in some fashion, but the owners aren't enforcing copyright and may have even functionally abandoned the material. For example, the infamous 1994 Roger Corman-helmed "Fantastic Four" movie was regarded by Marvel Comics as so potentially damaging to the brand due to how awful it was that Marvel ordered all of the prints destroyed, but one print survived and the footage was released online. The Fantastic Four as characters are still owned by Marvel, but with the destruction of all but this one print and the lack of effort by Marvel or the studio to suppress copies thereof that are online could be argued as abandonment of the film itself. Or there's the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which was similarly deemed so bad by the powers-that-be that all prints were supposed to have been destroyed; at least one print made it out, and other people still have the videos they themselves recorded when it aired. One doesn't have to do much effort to track it down, either. This is a grey area that some people just aren't comfortable with, hence my asking.

Infinity War Violence? Yes. Heart? No.

My reservation is for tomorrow. Today I'm bracing for that gender-reversed remake of "Overboard" that's set to come out next week by re-watching the original so I have a proper frame of reference. If I'm familiar with previous incarnations of a film, I reserve the right to make comparisons. ...

The original "Civil War" story arc was a lot *worse* than that. The basic plan was "How can we get supers fighting each other?". What things degenerated into was "a whole bunch of writers going off on their own and using the event as a means to voice their political opinions, up to and including declaring that anyone who disagreed with them politically was no better than a Nazi". Most actual honest observers regard it as a massive misstep, and perhaps the first clear sign that the social justice movement had infiltrated the comic industry.

Sgt. Stubby. The studio had to make a kid-friendly film about WWI, and do so on a limited budget, but they more or less pulled it off.

So are we looking at just books, or would this include other entertainment?

Define "fiction". Genre? Format? Et cetra?

Gene Simmons is Jewish. He was born in Israel, and after he and his mom came to the US he spend much of his youth in a religious private school. By his own admission, during the 1970s when the whole "KISS is Satanic!" bit was at its peak, he got a kick out of quoting the Bible right back at the Bible-thumpers who'd go after him. I kid you not.

Rampage (2018) It's a good popcorn flick, but it's not for kids. Among other things, it's a running gag that Dwayne Johnson's character once taught the gorilla how to make obscene hand gestures as part of the sign language training.

Depending upon what part of Austin you'll be in, you could spend that long waiting in line at one of the better restaurants. No joke. Austin is pretty much a "destination" town nowadays, given all of the educational, cultural, entertainment, and culinary destinations in the city. We'd need to know what you're into and what part of town you'll be traveling through.

"A Quiet Place". There's no reason to bother with this movie. I couldn't find a single redeeming bit to it.

As someone who *lives* retro gaming and retro pop culture, the film just left me cold. It tried way too hard, and for minimal results compared to other similar films.

Spirit Halloween has a pre-existing Bob Ross costume, complete with wig and beard. Might want to check out their website.