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That's ok, it earns me more pompous points.

damn, and I'd already fallen way behind parm. Maybe if I started speaking French?

You need to let your nostrils flare a bit more. And turn your head slightly to the side while you're looking at someone, with an arrogant frown. Going "hmph!" as you do so is allowed if you're not already talking, but that might be overdoing it in some circumstances, you'll get pompous points docked for that.

Try growing a beard!

Bear this in mind, however.

[edit: failed phpBB-fu check]

Perhaps even more pompous would be to merely post in French using Babelfish to translate for you so that you give appearance of knowing French but are lacking the ability to truly do so...

That'd work, if I didn't have a passable working knowledge of French and a wife who lived there for a year to pick up on any of my mistakes. Next!

No-one out pompousesseseses the parm.

I have tried the beard thing but unfortunately on me the image it brings to mind is more "lumberjack". (I never got over that whole mid 90's flannel fad.)


(and no, that's not me.)

Anyone up for some more pomposity? If not, we're binning this.

You might leave it a bit. If you get any wandering horsemen, they are likely to stop by, if only to mock parm's beard for a bit.

I call it "tramp chic". It goes especially well with my shaggy mop of hair and cardigan with a hole in the elbow.

Incidentally, I'm slowly working my way through Ficciones, and it is Blowing My Fucking Mind. Top recommendation, cheers.

Just finished JENNIFER MORGUE by Charles Stross, which I enjoyed hugely, (but then I've enjoyed all of his other books too). Highly recommended to everyone else who likes a blend of eldrich Lovecraftian horrors, industrial strength nerdism and light espionage.
The basic plot is that magic exists, abit, as a function of fractal multidimensional giggerypookery, and that solving the wrong high level equations will end up with your brain being eaten by something squamous from the nth dimension, but it's ok because the government have a department specially to cover it all up. Unfortunately it's still part of the civil service so they still need to get a form signed in triplicate just to get some more paper clips.

Anyway, should appeal to those of you with a warped sense of humour and a love of obscure references, of which there's a few round about here. Oh, and don't start with JENNIFER MORGUE, start with The Atrocity Archives, it's make (slightly) more sense.

Now you know what would be very pompous? Bragging about reading every official training guide for Maya 7. Thankfully I haven't done that, so I'll just be all pompous about not being able to stomach the first two pages of "Empire" simply because it was that bad. Seriously, read it yourself. It's agonizing.

I've been meaning to check those out... I loved Stross' take on the Mythos in 'A Colder War'.

THREAD BUMP!

Yes, I have all of Richard Morgan's books. Very good writing and one of the few writers who can combine a heavy philosophical subtext with savage violence, graphic sex and clever dialogue. Don't get me wrong: I like philosophy and brilliant characterisation but it helps keep my attention if the characters do something else apart from sit around talking about stuff for hundreds of pages.

Just finished reading "Black Man"; another superb bit of writing although I felt it lost it's way a bit towards the end.