Okay seriously, SERIOUSLY that was one of the worst weeks I've had in a long time. It wasn't so much that anything happened or even that I got depressed. Instead I was in a great mood that was slowly pecked to death by thousands of tiny annoyances that just sort of wore me down and more or less crippled me. Essentially, this is what happened. My lenses on my glasses got scratched pretty badly. I am not even very sure as to how it happened but it totally did and that's lame. Okay. As a result I started getting really nasty eye strain headaches. In general eye strain headaches are just long dull throbbing pain that is focused around the eyes, the more you use your eyes the worse it gets. They also make you feel really tired because all you wanna do is just close your eyes. Okay fine. This sucks. This also started last Friday, so I figgure I'd tough it out, wait a bit, get my eyes examined on my day off.
That...well that didn't happen. See Eyeglass world used to be walk in get your eyes checked and be done with it. I like going to them, they are open 7 days a week and they don't cost an arm and a leg. Well no I needed to make an appointment, for Friday. I went in on Tuesday early afternoon. I was not happy about this. See I couldn't read, and I can't write, movies started to hurt my head after awhile, so that leaves low impact computer games.
This is also the week that my computer became crippled by a virus. I still don't know where it came from, which offends me. I don't mind getting viruses I mean I consider it part of the territory. I do like to know where they came from though. No dice. So I back some things up wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows. I didn't have to do this. But by the time I had gotten rid of the virus my operating system was in shambles and it would of taken more time to fix than would of been worth it.
Throughout all of this I had eye strain headaches that were getting steadly worse as the week went on. These headaches made me distracted and even more abscent minded than usual so I would be constantly leaving things places or loosing things. For those of you who know me well, loosing things causes me to genuinely freak out. So while my computer was down my baby laptop became reduced to a paperweight because I had lost the charger cable. Charger cables are expensive holy fuck. I was looking around at buying a replacement and jesus, 40-100 bucks. It turns out I left it at Books a Million.
So I couldn't use my back up computer to help me back things up or to look up solutions to my problem. Awesome.
Then moving back onto my computer began. First I had to wrest control of my computer back away from Vista and into my hands. Then I began redownloading all the things I need, which is actually a lot of shit and nothing was working right at first. Like my computer wouldn't recognize my cable modem. Okay fine I'll just go download one...FUCK. So I had to actually go down to the Cox digital media place and ask them for a driver disk. Once that was overcame I started installing things left and right, and then it came time for the windows up date. Yeah an 8 gig download that would take forever because microsoft servers are slow. So I start it before I go to bed at night. Before I leave for work the next day it is still chugging along. I come home from work and it has progressed exactly 5% and there is a dialouge box explaining that windows had just downloaded new printer drivers and if I wanted to get the full Lexmark printer experience then I would need to download their special software. It stopped my entire fucking download for that? Seriously? This is about the point where I started cracking up. Then Feast of Boris happened in KOL, I had it set aside where I would be able to do over 200 adventures, mid hardcore on feast of boris. I spent an entire week setting that up. But because of my computer problems, getting off work late, and server lag I didn't get to spend any adventures on FOB. Not only that but I ended up wasting 60 adventures or so.
Whatever, basicly something I was looking foward to and planning for didn't fucking happen for stupid reasons. Oh and there is still the pain.
Its now sunday. I have my new lenses. I have the cord to my baby lap top. I have resighned to not visiting sasha next week, my eyes need another day of rest then they should be fine, my stomach really hurts, and I am just unable to maintain a good mood anymore.
So big black cloud activate. It should hang around for a couple of days then fuck off. In the mean time I will play dungeon fighters a lot and generally relax. Unless some more stupidity happens, in which case I will send it directly to fucking hell. Like this stomach thing going on, it better be messed up because of the fact that it is a stomch and it does things like that and it better have nothing to do with the stomach virus going around.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Purple Figments
This might spontaneously end much like the last one. If it does I don't really feel bad about it. I am in a good mood though, a good enough mood that I don't feel like dealing with people. I just sort of want to play my video games, read, and I dunno something else. Its sunday and I hate sundays because everything is closed by the time I get off of work and there are "things" I want to buy. No matter I'll deal with it tomarrow, which is a better time for me anyway. I have a not present present to give to someone. I like giving presents! I don't need a lot of things, just some blank dvd cases and what not. Other people give music or things, and I give out movies. Glorious movies. You know what? Fuck the -ous sound.
Oh so I really want a copy of "A course in modern linguistics" I was flipping through it the other day and it looks neat. I've always wanted a copy of it but every time I see it, it is around 20 bucks which is a large chunk of money that is primarily could be use for a cooler piece of theory. Of course all the books on amazon are really expensive so I don't know what the deal is. Oh well. I'll pick it up someday on a whim and vaugely regret it but not really.
Moving on. People who fry moonpies have problems. Just sayin.
I've been wanting to play through a big clunky roleplaying game. I really want to play persona 3, holy shit that game is so cool. I just don't think I want to devote the 80 hours it would take to beat it into the ground. That is some seriouse time to devote to a game. Of course I say that while spending at least an hour a night on kingdom of loathing, or a couple of hours on dungeon fighter, but it is diffrent with persona. There is a lot of extended concentration involved, and to be honest? The whole time limit thing sort of stresses me out. That is the main thing that is holding me up. That's kind of a lame reason but whateva.
Oh oh oh, I need to remind myself to go to the eye doctor on wensday, or maybe tuesday afternoon. Hell I should totally wake up early and just do that. Since I am reusing my frames it shouldn't be all that expensive. Its been an expensive month for me and the glasses thing is kinda unanticipated. I also need to get an oil change and some general maintenance stuff. Oh well. I guess no new toys for the next couple of months. Huh it isn't often I write about money. Most times I have more than enough and it is nothing more than an abstract concern to me. I don't really spend that much money on STUFF. It is just that by not spending money I don't even have to think about it. Now that I have to I am annoyed.
Oh well my battery is about to die, I left my power cord at home, and I am nearly out of things to say. Well that is not true at all, I have all sorts of things I just not for embloggery. Ah well, like I said earlyer I am in a GOOD mood! And hopefully I won't have to deal with a crippling headache tonight.
Oh so I really want a copy of "A course in modern linguistics" I was flipping through it the other day and it looks neat. I've always wanted a copy of it but every time I see it, it is around 20 bucks which is a large chunk of money that is primarily could be use for a cooler piece of theory. Of course all the books on amazon are really expensive so I don't know what the deal is. Oh well. I'll pick it up someday on a whim and vaugely regret it but not really.
Moving on. People who fry moonpies have problems. Just sayin.
I've been wanting to play through a big clunky roleplaying game. I really want to play persona 3, holy shit that game is so cool. I just don't think I want to devote the 80 hours it would take to beat it into the ground. That is some seriouse time to devote to a game. Of course I say that while spending at least an hour a night on kingdom of loathing, or a couple of hours on dungeon fighter, but it is diffrent with persona. There is a lot of extended concentration involved, and to be honest? The whole time limit thing sort of stresses me out. That is the main thing that is holding me up. That's kind of a lame reason but whateva.
Oh oh oh, I need to remind myself to go to the eye doctor on wensday, or maybe tuesday afternoon. Hell I should totally wake up early and just do that. Since I am reusing my frames it shouldn't be all that expensive. Its been an expensive month for me and the glasses thing is kinda unanticipated. I also need to get an oil change and some general maintenance stuff. Oh well. I guess no new toys for the next couple of months. Huh it isn't often I write about money. Most times I have more than enough and it is nothing more than an abstract concern to me. I don't really spend that much money on STUFF. It is just that by not spending money I don't even have to think about it. Now that I have to I am annoyed.
Oh well my battery is about to die, I left my power cord at home, and I am nearly out of things to say. Well that is not true at all, I have all sorts of things I just not for embloggery. Ah well, like I said earlyer I am in a GOOD mood! And hopefully I won't have to deal with a crippling headache tonight.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
And the box hits the floor!
I like these types of posts they serve as a nice clearing house for my brain meats. So lets see.
1st) I decided what the new SLA game session I want to write is going to be about. It is going to be a game session that will be disighened for a larger group of people. I think it is going to be neat. It is also going to be one of those things that they will horribly horribly fuck up because they are all kinda dumb. I love them but god damn.
2nd!) I am going to start writing the shadow run game sessions. They are fun! I figgure if I get through two then I am totally getting myself some of those books. I want to have cybernetic hands that crawl around and do shit! That is to cool for school. I am pretty excited about it. I also kinda want to start getting up on the whole world building thing for the summer D20 game. That will be nice because something like that will be able to support a larger player base. I kinda have some ideas as to how I want the world to work and I have some other ideas as to how I want the game to work out but I suppose I should get a jump on getting shit written down. Like I need to get things like goblin/orc encampments written out and all that other stuff. Neat!
3rd) I want to get back into doing the chinese calligraphy thing again. I was going to start back up last night but my brain just was...oh hey go watch this http://ow.ly/19gj1. I am perfectly aware that I can embed videos but whatever I don't feel like scrolling up to the top of the screen to make that happen. I don't care. So yeah chinese calligraphy. I am totally ready to start that again, for real this time. I still need to pick up some ink though. I am not adverse to grinding my own ink, I find it very relaxing, almost medatative. But when I just want to practice brush strokes for an hour or so it gets pretty fucking irritating.
4th) I am not sure why I number these things it always seemed pretty wierd to me. I just realized how insanely inaccurate my typing is. Oh well. I am kinda sad about that and I suppose I should just blame my tiny keyboard rather than my own personal faults. I'm okay with that though.
5th) The geek writting is taking over. This is due to a number of factors. 1, my subscription to Time Magazine has run out and I changed my credit card information because that is easier to do than it is to call them and tell them I don't want to give them money anymore. I kinda wanna switch to Harpers and the Atlantic either way the influx of political discourse is at a low.
6th) I have been really interested in the idea of the enfleshed mind. Last night I went and took some of my view points for a spin. Being as tired as I was I am not even sure I made sense and I am kinda afraid to go back and read it. Terrifying. Still though, it is something I am interested in. It seems to me that it is something that gets down to the core of how people precive the world. Not so much the mind being in the body but the concept of the body itself. The idea that the body is whole, and that the mind is a unified part of that whole. It isn't. Here is the thing though, should it be? That is where one of the major stumbling blocks are. How far should we modify the body to the mind or the mind to the body, which do we privalage and why? I am one of those people who privalges the mind over the body. It isn't
1st) I decided what the new SLA game session I want to write is going to be about. It is going to be a game session that will be disighened for a larger group of people. I think it is going to be neat. It is also going to be one of those things that they will horribly horribly fuck up because they are all kinda dumb. I love them but god damn.
2nd!) I am going to start writing the shadow run game sessions. They are fun! I figgure if I get through two then I am totally getting myself some of those books. I want to have cybernetic hands that crawl around and do shit! That is to cool for school. I am pretty excited about it. I also kinda want to start getting up on the whole world building thing for the summer D20 game. That will be nice because something like that will be able to support a larger player base. I kinda have some ideas as to how I want the world to work and I have some other ideas as to how I want the game to work out but I suppose I should get a jump on getting shit written down. Like I need to get things like goblin/orc encampments written out and all that other stuff. Neat!
3rd) I want to get back into doing the chinese calligraphy thing again. I was going to start back up last night but my brain just was...oh hey go watch this http://ow.ly/19gj1. I am perfectly aware that I can embed videos but whatever I don't feel like scrolling up to the top of the screen to make that happen. I don't care. So yeah chinese calligraphy. I am totally ready to start that again, for real this time. I still need to pick up some ink though. I am not adverse to grinding my own ink, I find it very relaxing, almost medatative. But when I just want to practice brush strokes for an hour or so it gets pretty fucking irritating.
4th) I am not sure why I number these things it always seemed pretty wierd to me. I just realized how insanely inaccurate my typing is. Oh well. I am kinda sad about that and I suppose I should just blame my tiny keyboard rather than my own personal faults. I'm okay with that though.
5th) The geek writting is taking over. This is due to a number of factors. 1, my subscription to Time Magazine has run out and I changed my credit card information because that is easier to do than it is to call them and tell them I don't want to give them money anymore. I kinda wanna switch to Harpers and the Atlantic either way the influx of political discourse is at a low.
6th) I have been really interested in the idea of the enfleshed mind. Last night I went and took some of my view points for a spin. Being as tired as I was I am not even sure I made sense and I am kinda afraid to go back and read it. Terrifying. Still though, it is something I am interested in. It seems to me that it is something that gets down to the core of how people precive the world. Not so much the mind being in the body but the concept of the body itself. The idea that the body is whole, and that the mind is a unified part of that whole. It isn't. Here is the thing though, should it be? That is where one of the major stumbling blocks are. How far should we modify the body to the mind or the mind to the body, which do we privalage and why? I am one of those people who privalges the mind over the body. It isn't
Friday, February 19, 2010
Chicken!
Okay, so I was going to deal with the problems caused by the idea of the enfleshed mind. Ie the idea that all of us is contained within our bodies. It doesn't paticularly nix the idea of the soul but rather it focuses more on the fact that we have this interconnected web of biochemical reactions, electrical impluses, and a whole bunch of other stuff that we don't even know about and that is pretty god damn cool. It focuses less on the mechanical aspect and or on the fact that we are an organism and that the mind machine analogy is just that an analogy. Bringing it to far is retarded, and ultimately, harmful. I don't know if the idea of the soul and the enfleshed mind are truely compatible. However, I don't feel bad about throwing religion in people's faces and just sort of brushing it off. I mean you don't know what a soul is really. If I were to believe in one I would totally make it all about something that excists outside of our corporeal excistence. After all the idea of the soul and the idea of the body have nothing to do with each other. THey just happened to be connected because no one thought to disconnect them. Strange no?
I mean really though it we place the entiretly of our minds, our personalities, our ablity to be cognative thingies, then there is no reason that the soul can't be all of these things but outside of the body. How can it do that? Well through god's infinite power, duh. Its strange though because people put a lot of stake in the wholeness of the body. Try getting into a discussion about trans issues with people who are very body oriented. A lot of them can't do it. They can't see how it is possible sor someone to feel out of place in their own body. This is because to them the body is a unit, mind and all.
This is the danger of the enfleshed mind. Lets not dance around the issue or try and brush it off or anything like that. Nope no. The danger of the idea of the enfleshed mind is the fact that there will be people who are insistent that there is a certain way which your mind is supposed to work, any deviations from this baseline averageness is a disorder.
In all honesty this is where I am stuck. This is because people associate the idea of mental disorders with the crazy, and to be fair to a certain degree they are correct. So I guess I this would be the point where I would take a stand on trans issues. BUT I AM TIRED. I am tired enough that I will keep rambling away at this thing though instead of easting pasta noms and doing something else. Right so trans issues. How to get things going... well okay first of all the mind is capable of acting independently of the needs of the body. The mind is also capable of acting independently of the needs of itself.
So for example, the mind could produce a want/reward chain that leads to over eating. That might not be clear so to clarify... you are not hungry. But a plate of cookies is set in front of you. You like the taste of cookies. The desire for the taste of the cookies overpowers the fact that you are not hungry, and the health hazards involved with unessisary eating. You then eat the cookies, the cookies taste good and as a result you feel good encouraging you to eat more cookies. This coninues until you are either out of cookies or the thought of not being hungry/wieght gain prevents you from eating more cookies.
In short the mind is more than capable of working contrary to our best interests. We convince ourselves of bad ideas, or to belive in fictional concepts all the time.
The mind can also work in contrary with itself. I can't think of anything better so I am going to throw out clinical depression. Depression works in such a way that despite the fact that there is actually nothing mechanically wrong in your life, or more tenchincally there is no stimulus that should logically produce the responce of sadness, you become sad. In myself my mind would then search for a stimulus capable of producing that level of sadness like my signifigant other, my parents, or something abstract. However, that is mearly my mind putting a stimulus to an empty responce.
Woah okay now I totally need to go home and do something else. I'll come back to this eventually though because it interests me.
I mean really though it we place the entiretly of our minds, our personalities, our ablity to be cognative thingies, then there is no reason that the soul can't be all of these things but outside of the body. How can it do that? Well through god's infinite power, duh. Its strange though because people put a lot of stake in the wholeness of the body. Try getting into a discussion about trans issues with people who are very body oriented. A lot of them can't do it. They can't see how it is possible sor someone to feel out of place in their own body. This is because to them the body is a unit, mind and all.
This is the danger of the enfleshed mind. Lets not dance around the issue or try and brush it off or anything like that. Nope no. The danger of the idea of the enfleshed mind is the fact that there will be people who are insistent that there is a certain way which your mind is supposed to work, any deviations from this baseline averageness is a disorder.
In all honesty this is where I am stuck. This is because people associate the idea of mental disorders with the crazy, and to be fair to a certain degree they are correct. So I guess I this would be the point where I would take a stand on trans issues. BUT I AM TIRED. I am tired enough that I will keep rambling away at this thing though instead of easting pasta noms and doing something else. Right so trans issues. How to get things going... well okay first of all the mind is capable of acting independently of the needs of the body. The mind is also capable of acting independently of the needs of itself.
So for example, the mind could produce a want/reward chain that leads to over eating. That might not be clear so to clarify... you are not hungry. But a plate of cookies is set in front of you. You like the taste of cookies. The desire for the taste of the cookies overpowers the fact that you are not hungry, and the health hazards involved with unessisary eating. You then eat the cookies, the cookies taste good and as a result you feel good encouraging you to eat more cookies. This coninues until you are either out of cookies or the thought of not being hungry/wieght gain prevents you from eating more cookies.
In short the mind is more than capable of working contrary to our best interests. We convince ourselves of bad ideas, or to belive in fictional concepts all the time.
The mind can also work in contrary with itself. I can't think of anything better so I am going to throw out clinical depression. Depression works in such a way that despite the fact that there is actually nothing mechanically wrong in your life, or more tenchincally there is no stimulus that should logically produce the responce of sadness, you become sad. In myself my mind would then search for a stimulus capable of producing that level of sadness like my signifigant other, my parents, or something abstract. However, that is mearly my mind putting a stimulus to an empty responce.
Woah okay now I totally need to go home and do something else. I'll come back to this eventually though because it interests me.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Woah woah woah, okay A/R/F
Abort, Retry, Fail. If you are an Alpha Centrui fan then you know the correct answer :). FYI if you ever want to impress me the answer is retry always retry.
Okay so now then moving on. So I was sitting at home earlier playing dungeon fighter and I was having a grand old time with myself. Then something clicked, I wanted to have a grand old time tomarrow night too, and I could. All I had to do was stay home and everything would work out the way I wanted it to. Then I realized I had been spending more and more time alone. Heck ever since I got back from New Orleans I have been paticularly withdrawn. So breaking the cycle, I am now here in Books a Million writing. This may not really look like a big deal to you but whatever. Getting myself to leave the house is a major event for me. Its funny, once I am home it is equally difficult to get me to say run an errand as it was the first time I went up to New Orleans at the drop of a hat with no prior planning or knowlage on my part. It is all difficult and sometimes, just sometimes I wish a few of those basic mundane things weren't still so bloody hard. No matter. I know that if all those normal things were easy for me then there would be so many things about my current life that I would find just impossible.
I've never written a love letter. Tonight I change that.
I also want to start doing chinese calligraphy again. I want to do both of these things, if I suceed at one well enough I'll be able to intergrate one into the other! That's exciting. I am having trouble concentrating, and I think I know why. Onwards to purification! It is the only way.
This is a box of cockroaches kind of night tonight. This doesn't bother me though, I like seeing where my mind goes.
So today I finally got around to watching "The Host". I have this amazing fascination with seeing how the rest of the world precieves Americans. Take "In Bruges" for example. The three Americans in that movie were a herd of elephants, agressive, and generally pretty american. In The Host however, they were something very diffrent. See the host is a giant monster movie. Okay well more accuratly it is a medium sized monster movie. The point is this monster just flies up out of the Han river (that's in Korea for all you non geography freaks) and begins eating people. This is within the first 15 minuts of the movie. The thing is though America forms the movie's second monster. And jesus, they had us nailed down to a T. I really don't know where that saying comes from and upon typing it out it looks really stupid. Nailed down to a t what is that a crucifixion reffrence or something? Man I hope so that would be hilarious.
Moving back to the topic, before the actual monster shows up, the movie opens up with a lab tech talking to a lab supervisor. The tech being Korean and the supervisor being extra American. The supervisor, who hates dust, demands that all the dusty formaldehyde bottles be dumped out into the sink. This sink leads to the sewers which in turn leads to the Han river. The movie never connects this scene to the rest of the movie which is good, otherwise I would of hated it. It was more like an aside, a commentary. Here we have waste, pollution, both of with are unessisary being dumped by a larger power onto a smaller one, and the smaller one having to deal with it.
It is a nice elegant little scene. So when later the giant mutated fish comes stomping out of the water you know it isn't just the formaldehyde but our tradition of waste doesn't help. I love the fact that it was an american who ordered the polluting, after all we are one of if not the biggest source of waste in the world. Its good stuff.
It doesn't end there, though it could of. There is also a moment where an American serviceman dies as a result of a conflict with the thing. All the sudden, America swoops in like an ocean of red white and blue declaring the Korean government's inability to deal with the problem intolerable and decides to dump Agent Orange, a biological weapon on the monster. That last sentence either needs semicolons or it needs to be broken up. However, I forgot my mouse at home and I don't like the touchpad. I just thought that you would like to know that I know about some of the mistakes I make.
Of course the Korean people protest, AS THEY SHOULD, I mean we are dumping a majorly toxic biological weapon on their city because one American died. The thing is though? That is how it goes down. Right there. See I get it.
From an american view point we don't get it. When someone dies overseas the average person doesn't even register it. All we know is that there will be some sort of increased military presecense in the area. In the movie though, that man's death represented a major turning point. All the sudden it was "Oh shit America is coming". Its an effect that I don't think any of us living on the inside could ever really understand. I guess, try to imagine some Chinese nationals getting iced over in Boston and all the sudden we have the Chinese army in our country demanding to know whats going on and where their money is. See its scary. It is a reality we don't live with, but countries under our thumb do and it is all well and good until someone dies.
The sad thing is that I would of missed this. All of it would to tottaly gone over my head and I'd be writing about something else right now. The only reason why I caught it is because I was reading The Loosers earlier. It is a comic book, essentially it is a comic book action movie. It has just enough intelegence to it to keep my interest and just enough action to make it awesome. I've read it three times now. Anyway there is a moment when they are in Quatar and the King asks the Loosers to go save a group of CIA agents from some terrorists. See if any one of the Americans died then all of america would be up Quatar's ass and everything would be impossible for everyone. Essentially it was a set up where the good guys had to go shoot at bad guys for while. It was fun! It wasn't until a little bit later when I am watching a movie and I see what happens when someone dies that I got the picture. I mean we were the secondary fucking monster in that movie. Jesus.
It is quite an amazing movie, stupid sad though. What the fuck.
The thing is I didn't even start to emcompass just how big of dicks we come across in that movie. It is pretty intense though. I almost want to get a bunch of post colonial theory out and write about it. I might actually, that sounds really neat. I wish I knew how to get in touch with professor Braun. She would love this movie. I don't miss many people but I do miss her. She was so happy when I handed her a copy of Ziezek's A Pervert's Guide to Cinema. She started off telling me about how it might take her awhile to get it back to me, but then when I told he she could have it her voice just lit up. Made my fucking day.
She would like the movie.
Okay so here we are reminising about the past. I guess it is time to move on.
Okay so now then moving on. So I was sitting at home earlier playing dungeon fighter and I was having a grand old time with myself. Then something clicked, I wanted to have a grand old time tomarrow night too, and I could. All I had to do was stay home and everything would work out the way I wanted it to. Then I realized I had been spending more and more time alone. Heck ever since I got back from New Orleans I have been paticularly withdrawn. So breaking the cycle, I am now here in Books a Million writing. This may not really look like a big deal to you but whatever. Getting myself to leave the house is a major event for me. Its funny, once I am home it is equally difficult to get me to say run an errand as it was the first time I went up to New Orleans at the drop of a hat with no prior planning or knowlage on my part. It is all difficult and sometimes, just sometimes I wish a few of those basic mundane things weren't still so bloody hard. No matter. I know that if all those normal things were easy for me then there would be so many things about my current life that I would find just impossible.
I've never written a love letter. Tonight I change that.
I also want to start doing chinese calligraphy again. I want to do both of these things, if I suceed at one well enough I'll be able to intergrate one into the other! That's exciting. I am having trouble concentrating, and I think I know why. Onwards to purification! It is the only way.
This is a box of cockroaches kind of night tonight. This doesn't bother me though, I like seeing where my mind goes.
So today I finally got around to watching "The Host". I have this amazing fascination with seeing how the rest of the world precieves Americans. Take "In Bruges" for example. The three Americans in that movie were a herd of elephants, agressive, and generally pretty american. In The Host however, they were something very diffrent. See the host is a giant monster movie. Okay well more accuratly it is a medium sized monster movie. The point is this monster just flies up out of the Han river (that's in Korea for all you non geography freaks) and begins eating people. This is within the first 15 minuts of the movie. The thing is though America forms the movie's second monster. And jesus, they had us nailed down to a T. I really don't know where that saying comes from and upon typing it out it looks really stupid. Nailed down to a t what is that a crucifixion reffrence or something? Man I hope so that would be hilarious.
Moving back to the topic, before the actual monster shows up, the movie opens up with a lab tech talking to a lab supervisor. The tech being Korean and the supervisor being extra American. The supervisor, who hates dust, demands that all the dusty formaldehyde bottles be dumped out into the sink. This sink leads to the sewers which in turn leads to the Han river. The movie never connects this scene to the rest of the movie which is good, otherwise I would of hated it. It was more like an aside, a commentary. Here we have waste, pollution, both of with are unessisary being dumped by a larger power onto a smaller one, and the smaller one having to deal with it.
It is a nice elegant little scene. So when later the giant mutated fish comes stomping out of the water you know it isn't just the formaldehyde but our tradition of waste doesn't help. I love the fact that it was an american who ordered the polluting, after all we are one of if not the biggest source of waste in the world. Its good stuff.
It doesn't end there, though it could of. There is also a moment where an American serviceman dies as a result of a conflict with the thing. All the sudden, America swoops in like an ocean of red white and blue declaring the Korean government's inability to deal with the problem intolerable and decides to dump Agent Orange, a biological weapon on the monster. That last sentence either needs semicolons or it needs to be broken up. However, I forgot my mouse at home and I don't like the touchpad. I just thought that you would like to know that I know about some of the mistakes I make.
Of course the Korean people protest, AS THEY SHOULD, I mean we are dumping a majorly toxic biological weapon on their city because one American died. The thing is though? That is how it goes down. Right there. See I get it.
From an american view point we don't get it. When someone dies overseas the average person doesn't even register it. All we know is that there will be some sort of increased military presecense in the area. In the movie though, that man's death represented a major turning point. All the sudden it was "Oh shit America is coming". Its an effect that I don't think any of us living on the inside could ever really understand. I guess, try to imagine some Chinese nationals getting iced over in Boston and all the sudden we have the Chinese army in our country demanding to know whats going on and where their money is. See its scary. It is a reality we don't live with, but countries under our thumb do and it is all well and good until someone dies.
The sad thing is that I would of missed this. All of it would to tottaly gone over my head and I'd be writing about something else right now. The only reason why I caught it is because I was reading The Loosers earlier. It is a comic book, essentially it is a comic book action movie. It has just enough intelegence to it to keep my interest and just enough action to make it awesome. I've read it three times now. Anyway there is a moment when they are in Quatar and the King asks the Loosers to go save a group of CIA agents from some terrorists. See if any one of the Americans died then all of america would be up Quatar's ass and everything would be impossible for everyone. Essentially it was a set up where the good guys had to go shoot at bad guys for while. It was fun! It wasn't until a little bit later when I am watching a movie and I see what happens when someone dies that I got the picture. I mean we were the secondary fucking monster in that movie. Jesus.
It is quite an amazing movie, stupid sad though. What the fuck.
The thing is I didn't even start to emcompass just how big of dicks we come across in that movie. It is pretty intense though. I almost want to get a bunch of post colonial theory out and write about it. I might actually, that sounds really neat. I wish I knew how to get in touch with professor Braun. She would love this movie. I don't miss many people but I do miss her. She was so happy when I handed her a copy of Ziezek's A Pervert's Guide to Cinema. She started off telling me about how it might take her awhile to get it back to me, but then when I told he she could have it her voice just lit up. Made my fucking day.
She would like the movie.
Okay so here we are reminising about the past. I guess it is time to move on.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Nope this is about VTES
So I was doing some neat thinking on the nature of racism, then that lead to the nature of social constructions, non social constructions and people's ablilty to point fingers. Then I started thinking about helpful fictions and the importance of believing certain things in order to strive for something better, like religion without god, then I started thinking about the idea of a middle ground and the way that people seem to specifically avoid it. Then I started thinking about how would I rebuild the world if I were the one to tear it down and still had people listening to me.
I had a suprisingly thoughtful morning. But now I am going to write about Vampire the Eternal Struggle, because I like that game! Also there is a new expansion out and I am excited about it, and let down by it to but that is the nature of excitment. It is a very rare thing to be increadbly, spine tinglingly excited about something and have it live up exactly to your expectations. Wow. I totally need to write a letter to Sasha. Anyway, I got three of the four new starters and about 6 boosters or so. The jury is still out if I am going to pick up a box of it though. I think I might be better off picked up a box of Black Hand or 3rd Edition but whatever I'll figgure that out later.
Of the three starters one is useless, one is compleatly playable, and other other can turn into a beastly bruise bleed deck should I give it the proper tender loving care. I don't really feel like dealing with either of those things for the moment though. Right now I want to spend a few minuts talking about the Baali. At least I think that is how you spend it. See in competative multiplayer games my favorite thing to do in the world is to take a solid stance where I am well on my road to victory and I cheer relentlessly over how no one can do anything about it. Then I like watching an entire table squirm. Sometimes it works out awesomely. More often than not I get curbstomped but that's fun too at the end of the day.
Now this big boy at the top of the screen. Look at that list of disciplins. See unlike the poor Salmadi who have shit discaplins, Obfuscate, Celerity, Daimoinon, and Presence. Protean is just sort of thrown in there as an added bonus. Of course there is one notable downside, it costs a pool to untap him. Oh...oh, yeah right. Infernal. STILL. He can toss out ranged agravated damage like it is candy, and he gives you two pool every time he bleeds. So you use one of those bonus pools to untap him and life is good right? NO! It is better! There is a card called greater curse which will also give you a pool if you bleed, so that's three. It does a bunch of other crap too but the pool gaining only costs basic Daimoinon. In addition if I use Flurry of Action to bleed he untaps! For free! With no horrible paying one pool to do so. Also I think I Celerity has a couple of reaction cards that will let me block if the vampire is tapped, hell some of them might let me untap him.
It gets even better though. THere is some card called calling the legion or some such thing which I can toss down and slap on three blood from the blood bank on any infernal vampire I want. What I need to do is diverify my crypt a bit. I need to make sure I am able to get my superstar unnamable out of torpor should he end up in it. He more than likely will holy crap. The other downside? Well I am get to be big loud and scary! Its fun! More on this later.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Your Wearing to many belts
And I bet they leave welts. I am feeling highly whimsical today. At some point I got this idea that I was going to scour the internet looking for fabulous pictures that I could use to decorate my blog with. I mean damnit everyone else does it. Then I realized that I don't wanna. Besides it is nice to just sort of have these things come out of nowhere every once in awhile. Also if you know about the Dirty Sanchez song I just referenced I am fucking hilarious!
What is also hilarious is when Olymipic sports casters go off the deep end and just sort of start babbling:
"They call him 'The Cannibal', for his icy concentration."
It was in reffrence to an italian luge person. I am not sure what the announcer was trying to get across but hey everyone screws up sometimes. Which brings me off to today's post, so the olympics are totally happening! Yeah right now. I don't have a way to watch the olympics other than the interwebs, and when I am on the interwebs I have other things I'd rather be doing. So the olympics are just one of those things that gets pushed by the wayside. In a way it is nice because there are all these sports out there that get little to no regognition because they aren't football/soccer/baseball/hockey, and for one brief moment every few years all these weird random sports have a shot of being on tv.
Ballroom dancing is an Olympic sport. Fuck yes.
I'm rather torn about the olympics. I don't paticularly get them myself. Watching sports isn't very interesting to me. Heck, watching people play video games, something I actually care about, is only interesting to me in a very limited sense. I like doing things. There is a lot tied up in the olympics, nationalism, sports, politics, et cetera. For some people it is just a spectacle, for others it gives a sense of national pride, and for me it gives me a sense of vauge befuddlement. There is something about physical motion and action which entrances people. It is why the olympics are such a big deal whereas things like the pulitzer prize and the nobel prize go relativly unnoticed. In a way that kind of saddens me. Then again that is partly the fault of the acedemics.
After all it does seem like they go out of their way to make the way they present information to be as boring as possible. The philosphy behind this is that essays are desighned to present information in a direct economical way. As a result they seem to work extra hard at being as uninteresting as possible. Then they complain about how no one cares. Gee I wonder what that could be about then?
I wonder how I would make it fun, I think I'll start putting my mind to it. Well maybe later I want to finnish up a SLA game session I started last night and tighten up one of the other ones I had written previous.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Alright!
So my brain is back again! I am really excited about it! It only took about two weeks to get it all reset which is actually pretty impressive. W00t! Okay so I have 15 minuts to get some stuff down. First of all I did absolutely no writing for the last two weeks so I have all sorts of things kicking around. Mostly I have all sorts of rpg stuff I need to get down and organized. I LOST one of my SLA game sessions notes which sucks so I need to get back on that. I need to get on that. Also all the shadowrun books ever have been catching my eye, they are expensive, hardcover, and PRETTY. So I've made a deal with myself, if I write three shadowrun game sessions then I am going to treat myself to a couple of the books. I am not sure which ones but I mean I am definatly not going to spend 90 bucks on something that I am not going to use. It isn't like they are good reading or anything like that.
Also, I think I wanna go back and analyze the "Don't taze me Bro" video. I talked down an absolute idiot who was going all skulls conspiracy theory on me. I got him good, fuck I even quoted crimethink which was awesome. I knew reading all that stuff that one morning was useful. But! Just in case I have to go against someone who is mentally competent it would be handy. ALSO I totally don't believe pornography is inherently voyeuristic! So I want to get a at least two maybe three blog posts about that before I take it to sasha in letter format, or perhaps verbally. I am pretty excited about things right now. I also have all sorts of other things buzzing around that are all excited about escaping.
I also want to start writting my rpg again. I think I am going to set that for some time soon. Maybe May or March. I don't know, I also want to get on the Post moderen pornography project. I think now that I stopped writing for a bit and recharged my batteries I'll be doing much better with it. Like I would sit there to write it and stuff would come out very slowly and I kept leaping topics. I started getting really annoyed with it. Now I think I'll be good to go.
Alright well I am going to go write a bunch of rpg stuff. I have no idea if I am going to post it so we'll see.
Also, I think I wanna go back and analyze the "Don't taze me Bro" video. I talked down an absolute idiot who was going all skulls conspiracy theory on me. I got him good, fuck I even quoted crimethink which was awesome. I knew reading all that stuff that one morning was useful. But! Just in case I have to go against someone who is mentally competent it would be handy. ALSO I totally don't believe pornography is inherently voyeuristic! So I want to get a at least two maybe three blog posts about that before I take it to sasha in letter format, or perhaps verbally. I am pretty excited about things right now. I also have all sorts of other things buzzing around that are all excited about escaping.
I also want to start writting my rpg again. I think I am going to set that for some time soon. Maybe May or March. I don't know, I also want to get on the Post moderen pornography project. I think now that I stopped writing for a bit and recharged my batteries I'll be doing much better with it. Like I would sit there to write it and stuff would come out very slowly and I kept leaping topics. I started getting really annoyed with it. Now I think I'll be good to go.
Alright well I am going to go write a bunch of rpg stuff. I have no idea if I am going to post it so we'll see.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Clearing the Decks
So I've tried to write the Superheroics/Transhuman blog twice now and I've failed both times. I've also failed at writting two other posts. So that definatly means break time. Not so much that I will be taking a break from writing period, just the blogging thing, which to be fair, I do more than any other thing under the sun. I have rpgs, letters, and stories to write so I am going to focus on them for a bit. Before I do there are several things I want to say.
1) I am still doing the month in review, I'll do that tonight though.
2) Ghost hunting shows. I honestly can't remeber if I said this before or not but the science behind them seems off. For example they only search the visual spectrum instead of say the infared specturm or something like that. There is also no real study into what exactly happens when they make the room go cold. Lastly, light needs something to reflect off of right? I mean that is how light works. Ergo if you can see a ghost then there has to be something there that is causing the light to reflect off of. If they can speak then they have to have some way of creating soundwaves. Looking into both of these things would actually answer questions, instead of just sticking cameras in haunted houses.
3) The new VTES expansion comes out on Wensday! I am really excited. Tonight I am going to go see if I can find a place to preorder them. Oddly enough I can't do it through white wolf.com. Though they are kind of an idiotic company so who knows.
4) I am so utterly frusterated by the current generation of game systems. The ps3 is a system with more horse power but because it is so annoying to design games for stuff ends up running better on the much older less powerful x-box 360. Then there is the wii. Worst of all everyone thinks that this is the future of gaming when it isn't. It is annoying.
5) Its funny that I like J-music. I mean at the end of the day the pillows is really nothing more than Blink-182 or any other pop punk bands that we make fun of over here. What redeems japanese music is the fact that they cheerfully abandon the need to make sense. If you listen to the english lyrics they sometimes have they...are amazing. But not in a "makes sense" sort of way. The japanese lyrics, when translated to english still don't make sense. Even the songs that make an effort to make sense keep a rather tenuous hold on the whole logic thing. Anyway. One thing that I think the surrealists really failed to account for what the world would look like if they suceeded. Oh well I want to do something special for that.
K decks are mostly cleared.
1) I am still doing the month in review, I'll do that tonight though.
2) Ghost hunting shows. I honestly can't remeber if I said this before or not but the science behind them seems off. For example they only search the visual spectrum instead of say the infared specturm or something like that. There is also no real study into what exactly happens when they make the room go cold. Lastly, light needs something to reflect off of right? I mean that is how light works. Ergo if you can see a ghost then there has to be something there that is causing the light to reflect off of. If they can speak then they have to have some way of creating soundwaves. Looking into both of these things would actually answer questions, instead of just sticking cameras in haunted houses.
3) The new VTES expansion comes out on Wensday! I am really excited. Tonight I am going to go see if I can find a place to preorder them. Oddly enough I can't do it through white wolf.com. Though they are kind of an idiotic company so who knows.
4) I am so utterly frusterated by the current generation of game systems. The ps3 is a system with more horse power but because it is so annoying to design games for stuff ends up running better on the much older less powerful x-box 360. Then there is the wii. Worst of all everyone thinks that this is the future of gaming when it isn't. It is annoying.
5) Its funny that I like J-music. I mean at the end of the day the pillows is really nothing more than Blink-182 or any other pop punk bands that we make fun of over here. What redeems japanese music is the fact that they cheerfully abandon the need to make sense. If you listen to the english lyrics they sometimes have they...are amazing. But not in a "makes sense" sort of way. The japanese lyrics, when translated to english still don't make sense. Even the songs that make an effort to make sense keep a rather tenuous hold on the whole logic thing. Anyway. One thing that I think the surrealists really failed to account for what the world would look like if they suceeded. Oh well I want to do something special for that.
K decks are mostly cleared.
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