Post a picture, entertain me!

farley3k wrote:

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Cocaine Bear: The True Story Behind the Ultimate Party Animal

Backpacker wrote:

The story of Cocaine Bear starts with a body in a driveway.

Andrew Carter Thornton II had been a paratrooper, a police officer, and a lawyer before turning to drug smuggling, moving loads of cocaine into the U.S. from Colombia in his Cessna 404. That ended on September 11, 1985, when police discovered Thornton’s dead body in a driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was heavily armed, wearing a bulletproof vest, and carrying thousands of dollars in cash and about 77 pounds of cocaine (later valued at around $14 million) in a duffel bag strapped around his waist. He had apparently died when his parachute failed to open after he jumped from his plane, which authorities later discovered about 60 miles away and identified using a key found on Thornton’s body. Thornton had directed the aircraft toward the Atlantic Ocean and set it to autopilot before making his ill-fated jump.

But Thornton, as it turned out, wasn’t the only casualty of his final smuggling run. In November 1985, a hunter discovered a dead 175-pound black bear in Chattahoochee National Forest. Nearby was a duffel bag that had originally contained roughly 75 pounds of cocaine; the unfortunate animal had apparently gotten into the blow and overdosed. As the authorities later deduced, the sordid scene lay directly in the Cessna’s flight path.

Soon the bear’s story will be immortalized in film. This summer, Elizabeth Banks is set to direct Cocaine Bear, which is described by Deadline as “a character-driven thriller inspired by true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985.”

The hunter who found the movie’s title character did not inform authorities of the discovery; in fact, three weeks passed before a game and fish agent learned of the bear and informed the GBI. When authorities finally discovered the bear’s body on Dec. 20, all 40 bags of cocaine were opened and empty. The chief medical examiner at the Georgia State Crime Lab told the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall, which currently exhibits the bruin, that the bear’s stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” though he estimated the bear had absorbed only 3 to 4 grams of the substance into its bloodstream at the time of its death. (While we couldn’t find much scientific literature on cocaine and bears, a fatal dose for a human being of the same size is about 7.5 grams.) Some law enforcement officers questioned whether the bear—later dubbed “Pablo Escobear” or simply “Cocaine Bear” had really destroyed or consumed 75 pounds of cocaine, or if some enterprising local had taken it.

In an unusual coda, that wasn’t the last mystery Cocaine Bear would be involved in. The chief medical examiner at the GSCL thought it a shame to waste the bear, and had a friend taxidermy it. Initially, they gifted the bear to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. However, when the bear was moved to storage to protect it from the threat of wildfires, it disappeared. It eventually turned up in a pawn shop, from which country singer Waylon Jennings bought it. Cocaine Bear’s earthly remains eventually made their way to the Fun Mall, where they reside to this day.

Feeank wrote:
gewy wrote:

Sad thing is, I recall one of my dad’s friends just photocopied every position of the wheel.

When there's a wheel there is a way

That pun was wheel bad.

Hrdina wrote:
Feeank wrote:
gewy wrote:

Sad thing is, I recall one of my dad’s friends just photocopied every position of the wheel.

When there's a wheel there is a way

That pun was wheel bad.

Getting tired of these.

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gewy wrote:

Sad thing is, I recall one of my dad’s friends just photocopied every position of the wheel.

I admit I made my own copy of the Their Finest Hour wheel, since my dad was the owner of the game and I wanted a copy.

I'm going to jail.

-BEP

Mixolyde wrote:
Hrdina wrote:
Feeank wrote:
gewy wrote:

Sad thing is, I recall one of my dad’s friends just photocopied every position of the wheel.

When there's a wheel there is a way

That pun was wheel bad.

Getting tired of these.

I'm guessing you spoke too soon; someone will roll in here and post another.

-BEP

Cleaning day at a church in Leipzig, Germany (1920)

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Stevie Nicks and bodyguard Bob Jones, ca. 1983.

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Fish life
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bepnewt wrote:
gewy wrote:

Sad thing is, I recall one of my dad’s friends just photocopied every position of the wheel.

I admit I made my own copy of the Their Finest Hour wheel, since my dad was the owner of the game and I wanted a copy.

I'm going to jail.

-BEP

Makes me wonder if anyone has made app versions of them. Be a pretty easy project I think.

IMAGE(https://static.demilked.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/it-humor-memes-7.jpeg)

I'll see your decoder ring and raise you the Spectrum's anti piracy on Elite, Lenslok

That Lenslok tech looks clever! Here's another boring anti-piracy decoder wheel

IMAGE(https://www.c64copyprotection.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Bards3.jpg)

Given how easily those decoder rings could be defeated by a photocopier and two split pins, I wonder if the aim wasn't anti-piracy as much as it making the box more exciting in an infocom type way (was it infocom that had all sorts of weird stuff in the game boxes? It was so long ago)

DudleySmith wrote:

Given how easily those decoder rings could be defeated by a photocopier and two split pins, I wonder if the aim wasn't anti-piracy as much as it making the box more exciting in an infocom type way (was it infocom that had all sorts of weird stuff in the game boxes? It was so long ago)

Yeah but let's remember that photocopiers were less accessible in the 80s if you were a 12 year old. But we all had back to back cassette players in our bedrooms that made copying a tape trivial.

I still have the notebook in which I'd hand-transcribed all the possible combinations from decoder rings for Speccy games I'd copied off the kids across the street.

It was definitely Infocom that had the best Feelies by far. So much stuff was included with every game!

The Ultima 7 cloth map kicked ass!

maverickz wrote:

The Ultima 7 cloth map kicked ass!

I remember using colored stickers (small circles) on my Ultima IV map as I discovered locations.

maverickz wrote:

The Ultima 7 cloth map kicked ass!

As did the ones from 6 and 7 part 2 (and I think 4 and 5, but I didn't get those first-run). 8's was kinda neat but lost a lot of points for being entirely nonfunctional. The only problem with 9's map was it had to reflect what they'd done to the world...

Two thoughts; a friend had the Hitchhikers Guide game in the original box. It came with peril sensitive sunglasses, a demolition order for your house, a very similar demolition order for your planet, a miniature space fleet (empty bag) and if I recall correctly, no tea (and I think some other clever things along those lines).

As for the various decoder copy protection systems, my experience was that in at least some cases, the number of questions the game would ask was much smaller than the number of possible questions; I had one game that used the manual as the code wheel (page x, paragraph y, word z). I could still start the game even when I misplaced the manual; just try starting the game a few times until it asked for page three, paragraph three, word three. Answer was easy to remember; "four".

maverickz wrote:

The Ultima 7 cloth map kicked ass!

IMAGE(https://www.abandonwaredos.com/public/collection/ultima7-cloth-map.jpg)

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A year or two ago I did a complete rewatch of the MCU films (leading up to the home release of Endgame). Maybe I need to do that with the X-Men now.

DudleySmith wrote:

I'll see your decoder ring and raise you the Spectrum's anti piracy on Elite, Lenslok

I had a Firebird version of Elite for my C64 (in the US), but don't think it came with this contraption.

farley3k wrote:
maverickz wrote:

The Ultima 7 cloth map kicked ass!

IMAGE(https://www.abandonwaredos.com/public/collection/ultima7-cloth-map.jpg)

I have one framed and hanging on the wall in my office, thanks to a very kind GWJer. It hangs next to the framed maps from Link to the Past and Baldurs Gate. Video game maps, of games meaningful to me, are my thing.

Sunrise at Grand Teton NP, Wyoming USA

IMAGE(https://i.redd.it/vrqufrz2gjp91.jpg)

Hatcher Pass, Alaska

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Val Müstair, Switzerland.

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Um, where's Teton lake? I went there as a kid and we rented kayaks in this massive lake at the foot of the mountains...

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What’s the joke here? Because that’s not how my cats are.