Tuesday, December 20, 2011

I have things I want to write. However, I think my rage about Martyrs has run its course so I don't think it will be about that. I might briefly touch on my views of horror, what it can be, and why it isn't that most of the time but maybe later. Its sad because there was once a time where the greatest film makers believed that the camera could be used to make people see anything, not to see the truth. Sometimes I wonder about that. However, the basic schizophraina of movie lore is one of the things that pleases me to no end and to loose that lack of focus would be to loose something basic, and precious about movies. If that means there will be yet another Transformers movie so be it. It isn't like I've seen any of them after the first one. Not even pirated.

Piracy. Now there is a topic. I am at work and someone restarted the anti fun wall thingy so I can't go link up the story for you but GOG.com and the makers of torchlight have gone on a sueing spree the like of which haven't been seen since 2008. Ugh. These were largely considered the good guys. They didn't include any drm in their games and they both provided some pretty badass services. The sudden sueing spree is sudden and in every country that isn't the US these sorts of things are frowned upon. So why is it happening? Yeah who knows. The weird thing about the situation is that everyone is wrong. Piracy is wrong. That doesn't stop me from doing it of course, and I've never once felt bad while comminting my various acts but I don't candy coat my actions with phrases like, "Post scarcity society", "freedom of information", and "Down with the corporate overloads". Though in the case of the movie companies I firmly believe that. No I do it because when I want something, I want it, and since I can get it for free why not. Also it isn't like it is actually stealing. To use the tired old "you wouldn't download a car" analogy, of course I would download a car because I would just be making a 1:1 copy of your car, often times I wouldn't even need to go into your driveway or use any of your resources to do so. It would leave your car fully functional and it would come as no cost to you.

This doesn't make it right, or even justified. But it does put things into perspective. So when a company is all like "blargus this one game u priated you owe us all the monies you make for all your life" it is idiotic on the face of it. At most I cost the company 100 bucks more than the wholesale price of the game. But whatever. They need a better legal resource to deal with us. A good way to look at it is, if they really gave a shit they would call the cops on us and have us thrown in jail instead of doing the scary lawsuit thing.

On a different but related topic I don't get people who defend corporations or multimillion dollar banking firms. They don't make sense to me. I am not just talking about internet ass hats but like the fox news guys who were looking for socialist messages in the muppet movies. I mean are the oil companies in danger? Would some bad press cripple them? I mean it isn't like BP just folded up its tents and went home after making life even shittier in New Orleans. So what the fuck? They don't need you, your support, nor do they care about your opinion one way or another. I was reading an article in Time about how lots of people are growing dissatisfied with their banks and moving to different institutions. However, the article pointed out that if all you have going with the bank is a checking account and a low yield savings account then the bank doesn't really give a shit if you come and go because the money you are giving to them isn't paticularly useful. That's kind of scary. Oh well I'd like to move on.

Fellowship of the Ring came out ten years ago today maybe? Around this time that's for sure. I remember being a freshmen in college back home and miserable on my christmas break. I remember getting to see it a day before everyone else because I knew a girl who worked at a local theater who decided to screen the movie early for the employees and one guest. That was a good time. I'm glad I'm still around. A great deal has changed since then. It is kind of amazing when I look back on it. I don't feel like going into it now, but it something worth realizing. I've become a lot more bad ass in the last ten years and I am okay with that.

I think I should be the slender man.

I am still enjoying Lost. I am midway through season 3 and man some of those episodes are absolutely outstanding. I miss Eko though.

I really really really want to run Eclipse Phase. Starting next month I think I am going to start generating source material for it. That way when the opportunity does arrive to run it I'll have plenty of things to do and stuff to work with. There is just so much about the game world that I absolutely love and the system isn't something that drives me insane, though I do wish they used normalized stats. Trying to remember which one you use for strength checks is annoying. I don't often times call for strength checks but I know that as soon as I wouldn't be able to it would come up like every god damned game session. Mostly because the players would be all like, "well there is no strengh stat so I'm gonna carry this building around". Then again that doesn't happen in Fiasco. Then again Fiasco kind of encourages you to behave. It is weird. I also wanna try running Exalted again. It is kind of a nightmare to run but far less of a nightmare than Shadowrun or Mutants and Masterminds. Man I love so much about M&M except the system which just plain old irritates me. Like I say about 3.5 playing it is a blast. Running it can be a pain when you are using human opponents. So it can be tough to give the players an appropriate challenge. Exalted isn't so bad, because there is a more limited tool set, but jesus the ammount of bullshit you can do in M&M is a little bit out of control.

Campaign based games are out for the moment though. Everyone's schedules are a little bit to much all over the place. I could try to put a brand new group together but that leaves me with just after work because my Thursdays are taken and I like having one of my days off being completely to myself. Afterwork is fine by me I am good until 2am, but most other people start fading away after about midnight, I don't know why. Even in Fiasco which is always high energy and overly exciting. I dunno.

Where can you go to buy a new briefcase other than the thrift store? I can find them cheaply on ebay but the minimum shipping is ten bucks which means I should just be able to go to a store and get one for about the same price.

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