So I reserve the right to cut this short at any moment I feel like and rush off to my home where I will eat a to-go box full of chicken, pasta, and love. I did that last night. Then I tried to type up a blog entry at home. For some reason I typed it up in note pad and the whole thing god lost because I am a moron. So first order of business? Reconstruction!
It is prolly for the best though, last night, for whatever reason I was fucking exhausted so my though process just sort of collapsed in on itself and refused to go fowards. As it turns out I have underestimated the metaphysical complextities that pornography has to offer. Yeah who would of thunk? See on a superficial level it is easy to work with. However, as soon as you start getting more in depth with it all superficiality falls apart into a pile of dust and ashes. Or like a lead rake, as has become one of my new favorite phrases.
So tearing it down and working my way back up again. I want, for the first essay, to look at how pornography and reality jive within the metaphysical constraints of Baudrillard. The short answer is that it isn't very nicely. The thing is though that the long answer is long, not just long but it is this cascading fail spiral that shoots outwards into the sky like some glorious fail beacon. I think I got it though so lets see if I can get it done this time without melting down.
Generic Hardcore straight porn is a spectacular example of the real's ability to slip into the hyperreal. See in ordinary media there is a barrier between the real and the hyperreal. Yes there is. I am putting it there deal with it. Okay I guess it isn't much of a barrier but something is there. When a media crosses from they hyper real to the real it is the viewer that acts as a conduit. A piece of media isn't inherently hyperreal. Nor is viewing the media an inherently hyperreal act. However, viewing the media, taking away inpressions and then forcefully imposing those impressions over the real regardless of what the real is? Now that is how we get people living in a hyper real state. See everything that happens on TV is staged, especially most reality tv shows. So looking to a sitcom for advice as to how to ask a girl out is a bad idea. Better yet go read Being There. It sums up this point with righteous perfection.
Soft core porn also falls into the above example because the elements within softcore porn nessistate that the actual sex act is faked. The thing about hard core porn is that the actual sex act is real. You know that shot. THe extreme closeup shot of the penis going into the vagina over and over again, relentlessly until you are so bored and turned off that you idlely wonder if star trek is on? Yeah that shot doesn't really excist for any direct erotic value. They do excist however to show you the viewer that the sex you are seeing is real. This is actual sex. The image on the screen isn't what is important. Its actually kinda gross. No what is important is the real sex that is happening. Along similar lines, the money shot excists to demonstrate to people that here is a man! And his orgasam happened. Ironically, with the exception of female ejaculation, the precariouse reality of the female orgasam is ignored. Sometimes they are visable, most times they simply pass by without any real concern. Since there is no visible way to prove she had an orgasam or is faking it we just let her make those awful moaning sounds and go with it. The money shot though? You see that, it happens. It is actually called the money shot because that is what people are paying to see. It is the irrefutable proof that what was just seen was sex, the man has just recieved maximal pleasure, and now some jizz covered girl would like a towel and that camera out of her face.
The thing is that while the sex is real, the actual portrayal of the sex act is so wildly staged that there is no way to call it anything other than hyperreality. More so than reality television which shares more aspects of sitcoms and game shows than anything actually real. Pornography takes a real act and turns it into this bizzarely staged hyperreal construct. When porn tries to shakily add a story, it gets even worse. Worse to the point where you are left wondering what the hell did they even bother for.
Oh then there is the "sex video" porn where couples send in thier sex videos to this site and this helps supposedly to short circuit the sterilized hyperreal approche that mainstream porn takes. Because, the people involved in the movie are actually undergoing the physilocial effects of sexual intercourse, and the point of the hardcore porn is to demonstrate this as much as possible it removes the barrier that most media has between the viewer and the real. Everything that happens in porn is possible. Why? Cause it just happened.
Now the results of that? I dunno. That is where I am stuck. HUNGRY. Okay so I am going to lay out some things and then I am going to fucking eat because I really really want to. Well lets start with something easy and go south. I don't beleive that pornography is the cause of rape, rape culture, sexual repression, deviance, or anything like that. Hell I don't even believe in deviance. Wow I just realized that. I make up deviant... later. Okay so lets move onto pornography addiction, unhealthy sex as a result of porn, and hilarious emergency room stories. Now that is a grayer area which I think gets at the heart of the situation a little bit better. I can fame pornographic addiction within the terms of hyperreality in a couple of diffrent ways depending on the severity and type of addiction. This is good. The only way to be unaffected by pornography though is to either be specificly examining it on a metaphysical level and that' iffy. Or to understand the entirerty of what I am saying and to know that while everything depiced in the porn is possible, pulling my dick out of her mouth mid blowjob and jizzing in her face is more likely to get me punched rather than to just have her sit there smiling like she is a series of wet holes that excists for my pleasure.
Ugh this is just the start, The series of wet holes thing is something I am adressing in another essay and it will compare and contrast the way fetish porn and normal porn approch their subject. Essentially they approch their subject in exactly the same way, however the resluts are diffrent due to the fact that fetish porn is just plain diffrent.
Woop.
Okay the hunger pains are subsiding so lets do a little thing with the actual essay proper. I want to finnish reading Simulacra and Simulation. Or at least I want the things I think are going to be relevent read. Then I think we are going to be talking about non fetish hard core porn. I want to focus on two Jenna Jameson videos. One lesbian, one generic porn. I want to focus not on the actual sex act itself, but all the random, bizzare leadup to the actual sex act. So what the hell was all the above about? Yeah that will be in there too, however, the lead up makes the actual sex act seem less real when it is infact anything but. People will end up in these exceedingly bizzare situations which end in sex understanding what is actually going on with the sex in reffrence to hyperreality is nessisary when trying to figgure out what the hell is going on with all that crap that is happening before the actual sex. Cause that whole leadup stuff? Veeeeeerrrrry interesting.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
PPP: Genra
You know the funny thing is that if nothing else comes out of the PPP breaking the monolithic porno superstructure into manageable parts is kind of an amazing step fowards. I am almost sad that I am going to be the one to do it because it really does make sense. When you say pornography is harmful, you are including that picture of some naked chick sitting in a chair making a kissy face. When you say pornography isn't harmful you are including child porn, crushing, and rape videos. So yeah breaking this up a little bit is going to be a good idea. It is also pretty much the place to start so 'ere we go!
Starting broad and working our way down:
Soft Core- Naked chick making the kissy face, skinamax, and all those other things are softcore porn. A good way to measure it, is to ask, is the sex act being depicted real? Hint if there is no sex act and you are just looking at some naked dude then you are kicking it softcore. No actual penatration, pretty much means soft core territory. Oral sex, and other things like that? It doesn't matter what I say because people will argue either way. I'm going to say that actual cock in mouth, to ejaculation is wandering into hardcore territory. Where as hands on upper body private parts, kissing, that sort of thing keeps it closer to soft core territory.
Hard Core- Hard core is the sex act being depicted is actually real. So there is actual penetration, or multiple penetrations, there is lots of real baby batter being slung around. All that fits into hard core. Hard core is massive.
Note that neither of these definitions rely on numbers or genders. So if you have 57 Transexuals all standing around naked...soft core. Where as two women using a double sided dildo is hardcore. There is also no allusion to quality. Hardcore and soft core can all be equally trashy, or refined.
Fetish- Fetish pornography is something that adds an additional element into the mix that sexualizes something that is non sexual. Spanking, insertion, bondage, fully clothed sex, water sports, the use of religiouse iconography, clowns, these all fit into the fetish category. Note that fetish doesn't stand totally on its own. So it is possible to have softcore fetish porn & Hardcore fetish porn. It is important to seperate fetish porn out because it definatly plays by a diffrent series of rules. Note there is a diffrence between Fetish porn and things that just make us squimish. So fisting for example, makes me squimish, however, it is not a fetish thing, it is a hand going into a vagina. Whereas a foot, 4 Zucchin, 1 Squid, a stump left by an amputated limb, or a barbie doll would all be consindered fetish porn because it is taking something non sexual and turning it into something sexual.
Art- This one is going to be controversial. However, there is porn out there, that is still very much porn, but it tries to do something else other than just be straight up porn. This is a result of either production values, them doing something exparamental, or just trying to make a statement with the porn itself. This category will make more sense when I do the art/porn venn diagram in a lil bit. This is prolly also a very small genra at the moment. Lots of softcore porn fits into the this area. People who like to tastefully photograph nudes? Art porn look at that. Whereas the destricted project, is an example of hardcore art porn. This is also here to purposly confuddle the art/porn divide. Cause why not?
Finally there is:
Bad Porn- Bad porn is porn that just about everyone can agree is bad. Bad bad bad. This includes things like childporn, rape porn, crushing, and snuff. Yeah yeah the fbi claims that they have never found a real snuff film. Right, cause they did such a bang up job uncovering the 9/11 plot, as well as the amazing work they do curbing the drug trade. Really? The fbi hasn't found something? Holy shit you don't say.
Rant on the fbi's failures aside this pretty much covers everything. It feels weird breaking things into genras it isn't something I am good at, nor is it something I paticularly agree with. See people get way to fixated on genras and they start coming up with all these strange micro genras that really aren't nessisary. I mean look at meatal, you have black metal, speed metal, doom metal, drone metal, goth metal, as well as a whole bunch of others when in reality each of these genras only covers a small handful of bands. I've kept each genra loosely definied and it is OKAY to have something fit into more than one genra. Some people like the ultra specificity of micro genras. I would talk about these people dismissivly but sasha is one of them and she can beat me up. It is one of those things we disagree on but don't argue about because really? At the end of the day I have people for that sort of thing. New genras will be developed and that's all well and good. Getting the ball rolling is the most important part.
It also helps make the whole subject become so much less monolithic. I mean jesus christ, do people know how silly they sound when they say pornography is/does/says X? Hell the first part of the project was going to be on the pornography pattern, but I've changed it up to be the pornography checklist because people keep doing it in diffrent order. Good. Well looks like this is just about wrapped up. Barns and Noble totally lost my order so I am not able to go do things like read Simulacrum and Simulation. Though I realize that at some point I am going to have to address Foucault. I. Don't. Fucking. Want. To. I'm going to do it anyway. It is such a miserable chore though and he doesn't really adress anything I am writting about. He uses endless historical examples that go on FOREVER to make relativly minor points. Also the whole knowlage/power thing? I dunno it doesn't really seem to fit in. Not when I am doing real people like Bauldillard and Lacan. Since I am returning the discussion of porn back to its actual basics, by looking at actual porn then writting about that the way I would a novel, Foucault doesn't seem all to paticularly applicable.
Oh well. I might be able to do something with the panopticon and voyerism or something like that. That has some promise, but it isn't really postmodern, it is panotpicomics which is something I consider to be diffrent. If I do anything with Foucault it will be power relations in BDSM. Though ultimatly I would rather do somehting about how the bdsm porn enforces power relations, whereas most bdsm relationships have a symbiotic relationship to them. My source texts would be some generic bdsm pornos, Venus in Furs, and Secretary. I'd flip that mother fucker on his ear I would. See though, it doesn't really fit into my project though so I guess not. Eh whatever fuck Foucault, sure he makes some valid points but only in very limited situations.
Whatever that chick that tackled the pope, she should of grabbed Foucault while she had the chance.
See Bauldillard is directly useful. He talks about the dangers of putting our ideas of what the real is before the real itself. He also talks about how things are so fake that they make the rest of the world seem super real. These two ideas, right there? Yeah 15 page essays easy. See take the idea of putting ideas of the real before the real. Women have cosmo, men have porn. You put the two of them together and it is no wonder why people's ideas of what actually happens during sex is so fucked up.
Oh well back to work I'll get back to this some more later.
Starting broad and working our way down:
Soft Core- Naked chick making the kissy face, skinamax, and all those other things are softcore porn. A good way to measure it, is to ask, is the sex act being depicted real? Hint if there is no sex act and you are just looking at some naked dude then you are kicking it softcore. No actual penatration, pretty much means soft core territory. Oral sex, and other things like that? It doesn't matter what I say because people will argue either way. I'm going to say that actual cock in mouth, to ejaculation is wandering into hardcore territory. Where as hands on upper body private parts, kissing, that sort of thing keeps it closer to soft core territory.
Hard Core- Hard core is the sex act being depicted is actually real. So there is actual penetration, or multiple penetrations, there is lots of real baby batter being slung around. All that fits into hard core. Hard core is massive.
Note that neither of these definitions rely on numbers or genders. So if you have 57 Transexuals all standing around naked...soft core. Where as two women using a double sided dildo is hardcore. There is also no allusion to quality. Hardcore and soft core can all be equally trashy, or refined.
Fetish- Fetish pornography is something that adds an additional element into the mix that sexualizes something that is non sexual. Spanking, insertion, bondage, fully clothed sex, water sports, the use of religiouse iconography, clowns, these all fit into the fetish category. Note that fetish doesn't stand totally on its own. So it is possible to have softcore fetish porn & Hardcore fetish porn. It is important to seperate fetish porn out because it definatly plays by a diffrent series of rules. Note there is a diffrence between Fetish porn and things that just make us squimish. So fisting for example, makes me squimish, however, it is not a fetish thing, it is a hand going into a vagina. Whereas a foot, 4 Zucchin, 1 Squid, a stump left by an amputated limb, or a barbie doll would all be consindered fetish porn because it is taking something non sexual and turning it into something sexual.
Art- This one is going to be controversial. However, there is porn out there, that is still very much porn, but it tries to do something else other than just be straight up porn. This is a result of either production values, them doing something exparamental, or just trying to make a statement with the porn itself. This category will make more sense when I do the art/porn venn diagram in a lil bit. This is prolly also a very small genra at the moment. Lots of softcore porn fits into the this area. People who like to tastefully photograph nudes? Art porn look at that. Whereas the destricted project, is an example of hardcore art porn. This is also here to purposly confuddle the art/porn divide. Cause why not?
Finally there is:
Bad Porn- Bad porn is porn that just about everyone can agree is bad. Bad bad bad. This includes things like childporn, rape porn, crushing, and snuff. Yeah yeah the fbi claims that they have never found a real snuff film. Right, cause they did such a bang up job uncovering the 9/11 plot, as well as the amazing work they do curbing the drug trade. Really? The fbi hasn't found something? Holy shit you don't say.
Rant on the fbi's failures aside this pretty much covers everything. It feels weird breaking things into genras it isn't something I am good at, nor is it something I paticularly agree with. See people get way to fixated on genras and they start coming up with all these strange micro genras that really aren't nessisary. I mean look at meatal, you have black metal, speed metal, doom metal, drone metal, goth metal, as well as a whole bunch of others when in reality each of these genras only covers a small handful of bands. I've kept each genra loosely definied and it is OKAY to have something fit into more than one genra. Some people like the ultra specificity of micro genras. I would talk about these people dismissivly but sasha is one of them and she can beat me up. It is one of those things we disagree on but don't argue about because really? At the end of the day I have people for that sort of thing. New genras will be developed and that's all well and good. Getting the ball rolling is the most important part.
It also helps make the whole subject become so much less monolithic. I mean jesus christ, do people know how silly they sound when they say pornography is/does/says X? Hell the first part of the project was going to be on the pornography pattern, but I've changed it up to be the pornography checklist because people keep doing it in diffrent order. Good. Well looks like this is just about wrapped up. Barns and Noble totally lost my order so I am not able to go do things like read Simulacrum and Simulation. Though I realize that at some point I am going to have to address Foucault. I. Don't. Fucking. Want. To. I'm going to do it anyway. It is such a miserable chore though and he doesn't really adress anything I am writting about. He uses endless historical examples that go on FOREVER to make relativly minor points. Also the whole knowlage/power thing? I dunno it doesn't really seem to fit in. Not when I am doing real people like Bauldillard and Lacan. Since I am returning the discussion of porn back to its actual basics, by looking at actual porn then writting about that the way I would a novel, Foucault doesn't seem all to paticularly applicable.
Oh well. I might be able to do something with the panopticon and voyerism or something like that. That has some promise, but it isn't really postmodern, it is panotpicomics which is something I consider to be diffrent. If I do anything with Foucault it will be power relations in BDSM. Though ultimatly I would rather do somehting about how the bdsm porn enforces power relations, whereas most bdsm relationships have a symbiotic relationship to them. My source texts would be some generic bdsm pornos, Venus in Furs, and Secretary. I'd flip that mother fucker on his ear I would. See though, it doesn't really fit into my project though so I guess not. Eh whatever fuck Foucault, sure he makes some valid points but only in very limited situations.
Whatever that chick that tackled the pope, she should of grabbed Foucault while she had the chance.
See Bauldillard is directly useful. He talks about the dangers of putting our ideas of what the real is before the real itself. He also talks about how things are so fake that they make the rest of the world seem super real. These two ideas, right there? Yeah 15 page essays easy. See take the idea of putting ideas of the real before the real. Women have cosmo, men have porn. You put the two of them together and it is no wonder why people's ideas of what actually happens during sex is so fucked up.
Oh well back to work I'll get back to this some more later.
DF Fortress Layout Final
Noble Bed rooms! I love noble bed rooms you get to fill them with all sorts crap. There is nothing really to say about this so much. Noble bed rooms work best when they are big and you just shove tons of crap in them.
This is how I layed out the bed rooms. Nothing really much to see. One importnat thing to note is that the center stairs are the ones that go through the rest of the fortress. Sound is a big problem, and is the cause of many negative thoughts for sleeping, and everyone sleeps. Even with one Z level between the workshops and the bedrooms it is still a problem. Annoyance! Oh The 2 leads down to the mining layers. This way I don't have all sorts of crazy amounts of traffic going through the bed rooms.
Man this is going to take some explaining. Okay first the width of the hallways. This is important because while dwarves can move through each other it screws with pathfinding and inevitably makes the game go slower. So it is much easyer to just have the dwarves go around each other. Hallways 4 wide greatly increases traffic flow through congested areas.
1)The butcher bin. Doors can be set so that pets can't get through them. So I build some cages, stick the animals inside the cages, then when I am ready I let the animals out of the cages. I let them run around, breed a bit maybe, or I just set them up for the slaughter. Either way the workshop directly below is the butchers workshop so it will be nice and convient for him. Also I really want to get a soap manufacturing cycle started so this will be a basic lynchpin of that operation. Fat comes from animals after all. The area below that is all dug out has obsidian in it. Obsidian is the only stone which can be made into weaponry, weaponry that is as powerful as steel, which is the second most powerful material in the game. NICE! I use them to outfit weapontraps.
2) The dining room. This is both near the kitchens, the brewery, and the food stockpile is right above it. This creates a nice smooth traffic flow through the eating process. It is also essential to have a really nice dining room. Seriously, it isn't hard, get that thing up to lengendary as fast as possible. Eating in the legendary dining room will give dwarves happy thoughts, and since every dwarf eats it is a quality way to ensure that every dwarf recieves happy thoughts on a regular basis. There are things called tantrum spirals where one dwarf flipping out causes other dwarves to flip out. It is much easyer to get negative thoughts than positive ones so get them when and where you can.
3) These are the stairs that connect direct to the trade depot. I dunno I like having a nice engraved entrance for my fortress. This area also has THE ANIMAL CAGE! The animal cage is important for three reasons. One it is a fantastic place to generate happy thoughts from. See pets are kinda good because they will generate happy thoughts within their owners. Animals in cages will generate happy thoughts in anyone who stops by the cage. You'll start seeing the thought, "Comforted by a wonderful animal in a cage" fairly often and you will love it. Two, it helps ease up on the whole path finding problem which does indeed kill your processor. Lastly the centeralized location means the animal can be scooped up and stuck in the cage before it adopts a dwarf and then becomes ineligable for cage dudy. That sucks. In other news displaying wealth is great, dwarves will stop and appreciate armor racks, states, doors, beds, and all sorts of other things. So having nice things in one area that everyone passes though is a good way to ensure good thought generation.
4) The Magma forges. When planning out magma forges I always try to make sure that I have more room than I need rather than less. This is mostly because expanding magma forges is an epic fucking pain in the ass and I hate doing it. The wiki does a good job explaining how to do this, and I really like this set up here. The centeral area is a large bar stockpile, the area to the right are the magma forges and the actual metal stockpile is located just above. Of everything this is prolly the most streamlined production chain in the entire fortress. It also has the added benefit of the haulers having wide open access to the actual workshops which is nice. It reduces the number of traffic jams.
5) Over here is the glass making section. This is the least streamlined part of the fortress, currently. This is due to a couple of things, one, the sand gathering point is way the fuck over on the other side of the fortress, and two just the nature of glass making. Oh well, I stuck it out over on the side, because it really is only going to be important for the aborrarareum and nothing else. It does its job moderatly well.
6)&7) I am not sure why I made two numbers for this. I doesn't need it. Huh. Anyway here are my main manufacturing wing. Ordinarly, there would be a couple of more crafts dwarf workshops here for me to make stone products out of but because of the retarded amount of iron on the map it isn't particularly necessary. Here are the mason, leather works, cloth works, mechanics, gem cutter, and everything else. The leather, gem, and cloth stock piles are all directly above the workshops, and there are stairs in the center leading up. The center is a large stone stockpile and over to the left there are stairs leading down. The reason for this is Dwarf pathfinding is more than a little retarded. When craft dwarf is looking to use a chunk of stone for werking on it will grab the nearest one. Good right? Well it when making this descision it will also take into account things like Z levels. So something 4 Z levels down would be counted as much closer than a stockpile that is 5 steps away. Of course exploritory mining isn't desighened to be easily walked through so a stone crafter will end up walking hundreds of steps out of the way for one piece of stone. That sucks. It is also what haulers are for. So I designated a nice large stone stockpile. It is quickly filled up by the inintal fortress and then the rest of it gets easily replaced as it is used by my army of haulers. So far it has worked wonderfully.
DF Layout Stockpiles 1 and 2
In a stroke of luck I got two layers of soil which is ideal for using in stockpiles. Stone walls leave behind, well stone, and that needs to be cleared in order for a stockpile to be set down. So the soil layers provide me with an ideal place for me to put down storage.
1) Here is the finnished good stockpile. This thing gets huge later on. Those X's are up/down stair cases. Above is trade depot and below is another layer of stockpiles, followed by a centeral meeting area. If you look above the 2, you will see some downward leading stairs. These lead directly to workshops which manufacture goods. This way the dwarves won't have very many steps to travel from workshop to finnished good stockpile. Depending on the stockpile it is somewhere between 25-40 steps which isn't bad at all.
2)This is a farm plot. The other benifit of soil layers are farm plots. A 5X5 farm plot, assuming you embarked with a competent grower, will produce enough plump helmets to keep all your dwarves drunk and fed. The amount of food grown is based on the actual skill of the farmer, so one square can produce something like 25 plump helmets which can be eaten and brewed into alcohol.
3) Funrinture stockpile! These things get massive. There are so many things that count as furniture and they tend to get produced enmasses. Ultimatly it is smart to break these things into a billion diffrent smaller stock piles. However, I don't feel like it. So they all just go in one place and if I feel like it later I'll seperate them, however, I don't see it as being to much of an issue.
4) Here is where the dwarves gather sand for my glass making empire. Making glass kinda sucks. You need bags, these bags get filled with sand, and then they use the filled bags to make glass. The problem is that my glassmakers inevitably work faster than the sand gatherers. More on this latter.
Not to much to explain here.
1) Food on top and drinks on the bottom
2)Metal stockpile, all that stuff will turn into iron which is pretty exiting! YAY!
3)Glass also consumes the bags in question so I need to be constantly making bags. The top one is for empty bags the bottom one is for full bags.
4)On top of the 4 is an animal stockpile which is the only way to store cages, to the right is variouse stockpiles wood, gems, ammo, weapons, leather, cloth things like that.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Dwarf Fortress Fortress Layout thesurface1
This is mostly for James' benefit but who knows this might attract the atension of some other dwarf fortress players out there. The general purpose of this is to give a demonstration of fortress layout as well as some other general tips for fortress building. Okay so here we go.
Ahh the surface. So the map I embarked to is compleatly flat. I didn't really mean for that to happen it's just how it worked out. I wanted a magma pipe and to much elevation variation kills your processor, but none at all? Oh well we make our own fun! I decided that keeping a trade depot on the surface and constructing a castle around it would be the best rout. So above is the start of it.
1) An archery range is planned to go here. The most dangerouse piece of opposition in a siege are the archers. Hence the point of the hallway of certain doom. I once had much more ambicious plans, which included elevators and ballistas. However, ballista ammo is annoying to make and I just know that there will be many accidental deaths. So the second best thing is I am going to put the archery range down on point1. This way any archers who are practicing can form a nice little ambush.
2) The corner. As stated earlier enemy archers are the most deadly piece of opposition you are going to face in an ambush/siege. Thus I came up with the ultimate defense! The corner! The green carrots are cage traps, which will take out the first wave of invaders. The white carrots are stone fall traps and are very helpful for defense. The idea is to plant the archers on the archery range and my melee dwarves right on the otherside of the corner. This way when the goblins/elves round the corrner my melee dwarves will be able to attack without suffering from massed archer fire. BRILLIANT!
3) This is a mistake. See I though locking the doors would keep invaders out. As I found out during my second siege some time later. They do not. I have a solution in the works but that will show up more in the evolution of the actual castle.
4) This is one of the military barracks where the military dwarves train and chill. It's important to keep these places close to the impending action, and you don't get much closer than this.
5) The Aborroarium! Okay so I got a little ambitious when channeling this thing out. To explain. If you build something with a glass roof it is still considered outside for crop purposes. So I've dug out a channel which is like a tunnel except there is no roof. Now if I build a glass roof I can grow out door crops safely from ambushes and the other varying dangers of the outside world. I also plan on making it an upscale gathering point for dwarves, as well as some other things. I dunno. I just think it is neat to have an undergound outside world.
Ahh the surface. So the map I embarked to is compleatly flat. I didn't really mean for that to happen it's just how it worked out. I wanted a magma pipe and to much elevation variation kills your processor, but none at all? Oh well we make our own fun! I decided that keeping a trade depot on the surface and constructing a castle around it would be the best rout. So above is the start of it.
1) An archery range is planned to go here. The most dangerouse piece of opposition in a siege are the archers. Hence the point of the hallway of certain doom. I once had much more ambicious plans, which included elevators and ballistas. However, ballista ammo is annoying to make and I just know that there will be many accidental deaths. So the second best thing is I am going to put the archery range down on point1. This way any archers who are practicing can form a nice little ambush.
2) The corner. As stated earlier enemy archers are the most deadly piece of opposition you are going to face in an ambush/siege. Thus I came up with the ultimate defense! The corner! The green carrots are cage traps, which will take out the first wave of invaders. The white carrots are stone fall traps and are very helpful for defense. The idea is to plant the archers on the archery range and my melee dwarves right on the otherside of the corner. This way when the goblins/elves round the corrner my melee dwarves will be able to attack without suffering from massed archer fire. BRILLIANT!
3) This is a mistake. See I though locking the doors would keep invaders out. As I found out during my second siege some time later. They do not. I have a solution in the works but that will show up more in the evolution of the actual castle.
4) This is one of the military barracks where the military dwarves train and chill. It's important to keep these places close to the impending action, and you don't get much closer than this.
5) The Aborroarium! Okay so I got a little ambitious when channeling this thing out. To explain. If you build something with a glass roof it is still considered outside for crop purposes. So I've dug out a channel which is like a tunnel except there is no roof. Now if I build a glass roof I can grow out door crops safely from ambushes and the other varying dangers of the outside world. I also plan on making it an upscale gathering point for dwarves, as well as some other things. I dunno. I just think it is neat to have an undergound outside world.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Post Modernism Pornography Project opening shots
This is where it is all going to begin. Right here. I still have a lot of reading to do, luckily I actually ordered a copy of Simulacrum and Simulation along with Ecrits, so they should be coming in the mail any day now. I hope to be elbow deep in them soon. 1000 Plateaus, while it is something I love dearly, is not something I can use as a foundational step in my writting. So it has gone back to the shelf temporarly because it was really forcing me to get off track. Rizomatics will work best for extreame fetish pornography not, your baseline Jenna Jameson stuff which is where I am starting from.
Still getting some foundational thought work done will go a long way twords making thins whole thing go smoothly.
And so, what is pornography?
Oh fuck. Project over.
Just kidding. Seriously though pornography is something that needs a definition to it. And it needs to be better than "You'll know it when you see it" though I do bless the supreme court for that decision. No worries though I am not 12 people 7 of whom must agree with me, I am an army of one. I am army strong as well.
The inhenent problem with coming up with a deifination of pornography is the art porn divide. See art and porn share a one way binary relationship. Something is either art or it is porn. Porn can never be considered art, and art can never be considered porn. Even attempts to confuddle the barrier like the Destrictided project which is a series of short art films which all feature real sex acts, is hailed as an art film and doesn't make the pornographic rounds the same way as...well porn does. Once we understand this binary opposition it becomes very easy to break down. Why is there such a clear opposition? Simple! Pornography has sevearly negative conotations to it, whereas art has a protected status in our, ie american, mindset.
So when coming up with a definition of pornography they only real descision is what bullet do we choose to bite?
I've come up with 2 analogies to help make this work, the horror movie analogy and the action movie analogy. We are going to start off with the horror movie one because it is the bad one.
Saw. Getting a good solid definition of porn can be easily done through Saw. When most people are dismissing the saw movies, they will dismiss them as torture porn. That is to saw that the plot is nothing more than a thin veneer for getting people trapped in ludicris situations and watching them try to escape as they inflict horrible amounts of pain on themselves and others. Hostel is another great example, as is House of 1000 Corpses. These movies excist in only the flimsyest sense of the word. They have the bearest trappings of plot and setting just so that the gore effects have a vehicle for which you can ride in. There is actually a genra of extreme German gore film which is nothing but an endless repitition of gore effects. They are really boring to watch. Never the less we continue onwards.
This definition fits porn extreamly well, however, it has sevearly negative conotations to it. Also despite several attempts by many directors horror movies have yet to really breach that art/entertainment gap. They still fit neatly into a sort of dull turgid genra of exploitation, even with offerings such as Inside, Eyes Without a Face, and The Devils Rejects, the genra itself is poorly regarded. Which is all porn will ever be. Poorly regarded, and that's not the point of this project. I want porn to be more than its set peices. It isn't most of the time but I see nothing wrong in demanding higher quality porn. I'll go into it more later but I am running out of time so lets get to its flip side.
The flip side is the action movie. Action movies are a diverse genera. It has its share of trash. Okay let's face it most of the genra is trash. However, it does have some highly entertaining entries, 5th Element, Con Air, The Rock, and Die Hard 3: Die Hard with a Vengence. Man that movie has a long title. Oh I forgot Leathal Weap... never mind. Then there are some entrants into the genra that are actually quite clever, Fight Club is an amazingly intelegent movie that breaks the third wall, has a non linear narrative, all without the movie goers really noticing. You'll even have people arguing that Fight Club is more of a Drama than an action movie because they don't want that action movie association. It is though deal. There is also Crank, Crank is one of the most visually clever movies in years, it gives all sorts of nods to the audience regarding the fact that the main charecter is kinda dumb but that's okay cause we like him anyway. Crank also beats up on the third wall showing off the fact that it is a movie and we can all relax.
This is where pornography needs to be. Instead of dismissing it as we do the horror genra, sorry horror genra, we can maintain a more healthy relationship to it. I am not shooting for the stars here, but to put it on the same ideological level as the action movie. They have the potential for greatness, they have the potential to be meaningless acts of entertainment, and the genra is mostly crap.
Right now, we see pornography as something that is directly wrong. We have laws about viewing it, and I can't get a couple of paintings I needed to illustrate some other points I was going to make because my work has banned sites with nudity, including...art nudity. So when I get back to this again on... Wendsday? Maybe? I'll start breaking down the art/porn barrier I'll also make those analogies make more sense as I go along. You'll get it. The idea is to make porn not so strange and alien.
Oh I also want to break porn down into gereas because right now when I say porn I am emcompassing everything from softcore to crushing and that's just a little to broad. Yar I want my books damnit I am excited!
Still getting some foundational thought work done will go a long way twords making thins whole thing go smoothly.
And so, what is pornography?
Oh fuck. Project over.
Just kidding. Seriously though pornography is something that needs a definition to it. And it needs to be better than "You'll know it when you see it" though I do bless the supreme court for that decision. No worries though I am not 12 people 7 of whom must agree with me, I am an army of one. I am army strong as well.
The inhenent problem with coming up with a deifination of pornography is the art porn divide. See art and porn share a one way binary relationship. Something is either art or it is porn. Porn can never be considered art, and art can never be considered porn. Even attempts to confuddle the barrier like the Destrictided project which is a series of short art films which all feature real sex acts, is hailed as an art film and doesn't make the pornographic rounds the same way as...well porn does. Once we understand this binary opposition it becomes very easy to break down. Why is there such a clear opposition? Simple! Pornography has sevearly negative conotations to it, whereas art has a protected status in our, ie american, mindset.
So when coming up with a definition of pornography they only real descision is what bullet do we choose to bite?
I've come up with 2 analogies to help make this work, the horror movie analogy and the action movie analogy. We are going to start off with the horror movie one because it is the bad one.
Saw. Getting a good solid definition of porn can be easily done through Saw. When most people are dismissing the saw movies, they will dismiss them as torture porn. That is to saw that the plot is nothing more than a thin veneer for getting people trapped in ludicris situations and watching them try to escape as they inflict horrible amounts of pain on themselves and others. Hostel is another great example, as is House of 1000 Corpses. These movies excist in only the flimsyest sense of the word. They have the bearest trappings of plot and setting just so that the gore effects have a vehicle for which you can ride in. There is actually a genra of extreme German gore film which is nothing but an endless repitition of gore effects. They are really boring to watch. Never the less we continue onwards.
This definition fits porn extreamly well, however, it has sevearly negative conotations to it. Also despite several attempts by many directors horror movies have yet to really breach that art/entertainment gap. They still fit neatly into a sort of dull turgid genra of exploitation, even with offerings such as Inside, Eyes Without a Face, and The Devils Rejects, the genra itself is poorly regarded. Which is all porn will ever be. Poorly regarded, and that's not the point of this project. I want porn to be more than its set peices. It isn't most of the time but I see nothing wrong in demanding higher quality porn. I'll go into it more later but I am running out of time so lets get to its flip side.
The flip side is the action movie. Action movies are a diverse genera. It has its share of trash. Okay let's face it most of the genra is trash. However, it does have some highly entertaining entries, 5th Element, Con Air, The Rock, and Die Hard 3: Die Hard with a Vengence. Man that movie has a long title. Oh I forgot Leathal Weap... never mind. Then there are some entrants into the genra that are actually quite clever, Fight Club is an amazingly intelegent movie that breaks the third wall, has a non linear narrative, all without the movie goers really noticing. You'll even have people arguing that Fight Club is more of a Drama than an action movie because they don't want that action movie association. It is though deal. There is also Crank, Crank is one of the most visually clever movies in years, it gives all sorts of nods to the audience regarding the fact that the main charecter is kinda dumb but that's okay cause we like him anyway. Crank also beats up on the third wall showing off the fact that it is a movie and we can all relax.
This is where pornography needs to be. Instead of dismissing it as we do the horror genra, sorry horror genra, we can maintain a more healthy relationship to it. I am not shooting for the stars here, but to put it on the same ideological level as the action movie. They have the potential for greatness, they have the potential to be meaningless acts of entertainment, and the genra is mostly crap.
Right now, we see pornography as something that is directly wrong. We have laws about viewing it, and I can't get a couple of paintings I needed to illustrate some other points I was going to make because my work has banned sites with nudity, including...art nudity. So when I get back to this again on... Wendsday? Maybe? I'll start breaking down the art/porn barrier I'll also make those analogies make more sense as I go along. You'll get it. The idea is to make porn not so strange and alien.
Oh I also want to break porn down into gereas because right now when I say porn I am emcompassing everything from softcore to crushing and that's just a little to broad. Yar I want my books damnit I am excited!
Sunday, December 20, 2009
God is an asshole
Through methods unknown I came across this web site. I showed it to my friends, we all had a good laugh about it. Much joy was had. Then everyone promptly forgot about it except for me. It stuck with me. Most people immediately identified with the atheists, crooning how they managed to rip off the moron christians. This is a tempting side to take and the one I had myself inintialy. Then I thought about it for awhile, and I realized that there is this deep down, fundamental belief amongst some christians that god is an asshole. I use that term advisedly to. He isn't all fire and brimstone with raw vengence flowing out of his three headed cock. No not like that. But you definatly get the idea that his great mysterious plan wouldn't quite be so mysterious if you just beleived in the fact that god is indeed an asshole. I mean look our pets don't go to heaven with us. Our unconverted loved ones go straight to hell, and all of this is because Adam and Eve ate an apple. No see look god is a dick.
I don't mean for this to come off as an anti christian rant. But it seems to me that the whole religion goes wildly in one direction or the other. It will either be all buddy christ Jesus be yo homeboy, to god will smite your ass for even uttering anything other than a fervant prayer. There is never really any middle ground. There is almost a thing where god really isn't all that fair, he isn't loving, and the pantheon of god, jesus and the holy ghost is weird. I don't really have to much more to say about this and I want a new desktop.
I don't mean for this to come off as an anti christian rant. But it seems to me that the whole religion goes wildly in one direction or the other. It will either be all buddy christ Jesus be yo homeboy, to god will smite your ass for even uttering anything other than a fervant prayer. There is never really any middle ground. There is almost a thing where god really isn't all that fair, he isn't loving, and the pantheon of god, jesus and the holy ghost is weird. I don't really have to much more to say about this and I want a new desktop.
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