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Get off my lawn! (Formerly "Greetings, hello, and welcome!") Ordinarily this area is devoted to "a few words about me", but I am 25 (formerly 24) years old and I did not get this far by not telling people to get off my lawn (formerly "by telling people about myself"). Instead, you can go on an exciting voyage of non-self-discovery (unless you're myself - and I know I am!) by reading my posts. They date back to February of 2004 - that's more than a shit-ton (formerly three) years of quality!

I love blogging. I love this joint. And just as I predicted, this blog was ten gallons of fun in a one gallon jug. Then the jug split and burst, forcing me to find another one, and since I was unable to find a suitable replacement, I have a bunch of cups sitting around, full of fun. And one of the cups is full of scorpions! So if you decide to have a look around, watch your step.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present: Drawing Blog v2.0. (It has nothing to do with drawing, please stop sending me angry e-mails about that.)

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Multiple hours of mine that have been finest (at special request):

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Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Scene V

EXT. SCENE - A verdant European countryside.

Our heroes trudge across the countryside in someplace which can only be Europe. It is late afternoon, and the sun is a few hours from setting, lighting everything in a deep orange light. Arminnius, at this point pretty obviously the party leader, is in front, followed closely by Ahmed, who is then followed by Mikhail Gorbachev. All are wearing brown monk's habits. In a distant shot, one can see that no people or towns or even roads are anywhere within several miles of them. They are heading east.

AHMED: Remind me what we're doing again in a fashion which is certainly not to provide a summary of the events thus far as a sort of convenient recap to avoid forcing people to nobly re-read the last four installments?

ARMINNIUS: We're going to Russia. For some reason. A very important reason. Which will probably not be adequately explored because it doesn't matter. But we're going there.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: In Soviet Russia, reason explores you!

AHMED: ...yeah. Okay, that's not getting old.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: In Soviet Russia, old not gets you!

Ahmed and Arminnius both sigh. Suddenly, they see before them an exceedingly fat, balding man dressed in green tights and suspenders, wearing a white shirt. He has a tuba. Around him are four others, all armed with various big brass instruments.  The fat man smirks.

FAT MAN (with a German accent): You are trying to reach Russia, Ja?

ARMINNIUS: Ja. Um, yeah. Where the hell did you guys come from? It was totally clear we weren't anywhere near people, let alone five fat guys with tubas. Who... wait, I know who you are! Ahmed, do you remember our incredible adventures on Kalrulon 5? When we definitely weren't with Mikhail Gorbachev? Or Father Grigori?

AHMED: Ummm... you mean Sweden?

ARMINNIUS: Yes!

AHMED: I... guess so. Is this relevant? And not idiotic?

ARMINNIUS: Yes! And no! Why, this is none other than the pasty balding fat villain with a tuba we faced there! My one-time arch-nemesis...

AHMED (gasping): Keeping of the sacred Tuba of Infinite Sausage! Defender of the defendable! Eater of fine cheeses! The Thrilla of Manila, at least in the underground oompa band scene!

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (getting an actual line): It is beink Oompa Loompa and His Four Man Oompa Band!

Arminnius and Ahmed give Gorbachev strange looks.

ARMINNIUS: How could you possibly know that? You've been clearly established as not having been there when we met him!

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: I am beink big fan of Manila underground oompa band scene.

AHMED: Uh...

ARMINNIUS (turning back to Oompa Loompa and His Four Man Oompa Band): You must have been sent by... well, I guess there are two options. The--

AHMED (speaking into a microphone and reading off of a gameshow host's note card): Option number 1! He's a sinister master of every form of combat with a penchant for sounding like a 1920's mobster and looking like a 1910's villain, commander of hordes of ninja zombies as a result of an unholy alliance with an arch-tyrant, and likes long walks on the beach, tying blonde-haired virgins to railroad tracks, and twirling his waxed mustachios while cackling evilly! Give it up for... THE SINNNNNNNNISTER NINJAAAAA!

The Sinister Ninja appears in a burst of smoke, twirling his waxed mustachios and cackling evilly. He whirls his black cowl about his shoulders and strikes a villainous-looking pose. The sounds of wild applause can be heard.

AHMED (speaking into a microphone and reading off of a gameshow host's note card): Option number 2! He's an immortal being from beyond the bounds of time, the very physical embodiment of evil and the master of all the unholy arts, let's give a big eternal round of applause for... AAALYREDDDD!

Alyred appears, a gash of pure mindless horror being rent through the local fabric of space-time in a fashion altogether putrid. The anguish of a million million tormented souls given so intense and exquisite a torment that every pain known to every mortal form throughout all eternity combined would be as but a grain of sand on an infinite beach next to this. With a sudden snap, the rift closes, and where once it tore asunder all that is logical and good in the universe stands Alyred[male incarnation of evil], looking stylish and... well, evil. He gives a bow.

ALYRED: MWAHAHAHA!!!

No applause greets him; instead, the resounding chorus of the anguished damned lends its wretched kiss to the ears of all around. Well, six of them. One of the members of Oompa Loompa's Four Man Oompa Band can be seen to be on fire, rushing about in a blind panic and waving his arms about unhelpfully. By the next line, he is somehow miraculously back to normal. Arminnius looked torn between choosing which of the two villains sent Oompa Loompa. Calls of "Number 1" and "Number 2" are intermixed as the various people around, including Oompa Loompa's Four Man Oompa Band and Oompa Loompa himself. They are split in the options they are calling. Finally, Arminnius turns to Oompa Loompa.

ARMINNIUS: Is... is it option 2?

OOMPA LOOMPA (with a German accent): No! You chose poorly, ja! Ze correct answer vould be "bosz of zem!" Now ve must fight to ze desz! OOMPA STYLE!

ARMINNIUS: Ahmed, handle this! Non-oompa style!

AHMED (making videogame-style special move gestures): Middle-Eastern-Only Special Attack! Swarm of Muslim Warriors!

Suddenly, swarms and swarms of sixteenth-century Islamic warriors come swarming out of nowhere in particular in great swarms, because they're being very swarmy. They swarm at Oompa Loompa and His Four Man Oompa Band, and nothing can be seen amidst the sheer volumes contained within the swarms of warriors. After a few moments, they swarm off to wherever Islamic swarms swarm off to. Oompa Loompa and His Four Man Oompa Band are unharmed. Arminnius turns to look with a puzzled expression at Ahmed.

ARMINNIUS: That's your special attack? A swarm of Islamic warriors who don't do anything?

AHMED: Hey! It's low-level! Besides, they're supposed to do something, I just think this is a boss battle - I'd like to see you do better!

ARMINNIUS: Well... I would... but...

AHMED: What? Out with it!

ARMINNIUS: My special attack is... "Swarm of German Warriors."

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: My special attack is beink "Swarm of Soviet Warriors". I be usink it now!

Mikhail Gorbachev makes gestures similar to Ahmed's, apparently counting on surprise or something. Swarms and swarms of Soviet soldiers come swarming out of nowhere in particular, just like Ahmed's special attack. This time, though, Oompa Loompa simply chops one of the soldiers with the blade of his hand, destroying them all. Our heroes look on with mouths agape. In the background, one member of Oompa Loompa's Four Man Oompa Band can be seen unscrewing the lid of a gasoline container. As he does so, the can shatters, covering him with gasoline. He looks dejectedly down at his clothing.

ARMINNIUS: ...he just destroyed your special attack! That's totally backwards! That's the worst special attack I've ever seen! At least Ahmed's looked impressive!

OOMPA LOOMPA: You are ready to fight ze proper way now, ja?

ARMINNIUS: I suppose we've got no choice.

AHMED: Don't do this, Arminnius! You don't stand a chance! This is an oompa band we're talking about here! Only one thing can stop them!

ARMINNIUS: I have everything I need right... here!

As Arminnius says this, he casts off his monk's habit to reveal clothing very similar to Oompa Loompa's. Arminnius points at the tights.

ARMINNIUS: These pants belonged to my father!

Everyone gasps as this tiny fragment of Arminnius's Mysterious Past™ emerges.

ARMINNIUS: And they aren't really pants - they're lederhosen!

ALL: HOORAY!

ARMINNIUS (eyes slitted in a dangerous glare, speaking grimly to Oompa Loompa): Let's dance.

Oompa Loompa gets a dangerous glint in his eye, and he and the band strike up oompa music. Arminnius dances to it in a fashion I cannot describe as I don't actually know how one dances, let alone how one dances to oompa music. Clips are taken from various Oktoberfests and inserted unexpectedly in various places. Things quickly begin to make absolutely no sense whatsoever. A three second clip of kittens playing with goofy non-oompa music played over it suddenly plays. When it terminates, we find Arminnius, looking weary and sweating but victorious, standing near Oompa Loompa's collapsed form. Nearby, Oompa Loompa's Four Man Oompa Band stands around looking unimpressed. One member non-chalantly smokes a cigarette. These are truly the worst extras ever.

ARMINNIUS (breathing heavily): This... round goes to... me, Oompa... Loompa...

AHMED: That was amazing!

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: Da.

AHMED: Amazingly ridiculous that is! You looked like a complete idiot! And how you managed to beat the stuffing out of Oompa Loompa just by dancing to his ludicrous oompa music utterly escapes me. This doesn't even make sense. This scene is stupid!

Arminnius takes Oompa Loompa's tuba from him. In the background, one member of Oompa Loompa's Four Man Oompa Band flicks some ash from his cigarette. Right onto the member with the recent gasoline canister accident. He bursts unceremoniously into flames. Time-travelling flames. Laced with pure plasmatic Spookium. No one notices.

ARMINNIUS: At last! The Tuba of Infinite Sausages is ours! The entire reason we came out here possibly! Now then: onward to Russia!

The three heroes continue onwards to Russia, apparently travelling on foot from Rome to Moscow or Saint Petersburg or wherever. What happened to the 80-story tall giant nuclear-powered robot with laser beam eyes, rocket launchers for shoulders, and fists made of pure crushium stuffide? And what about the fact that the main villains were summoned in this but had, combined, one line? What happened to them? And what's with the time-travelling flames? And the Tuba of Infinite Sausages? The hell?

Stay tuned for more! ...sometime!

Posted at 10:54 pm by Saladin
Comments (4)  

Monday, August 01, 2005
Early To Rise

So, since today I was in to work at 6am (and therefore awake at 5), I wasn't planning to update. Then, just now, on my break, I found something at once worrisome and completely adorable. And that thing is: this. Awww... kittens!

Also, this woman is my hero. Don't get me wrong, I don't support animal abuse - far from it, as well-cared-for animals are vastly more delicious - but some day I'd like to become a crazy cat guy, which is, of course, the male equivalent of the crazy cat lady. And though she didn't die and leave her 4.7 million dollar fortune to the cats, she's still my hero because she dramatically exceeds every other qualification for a crazy cat lady.

Then, finally, I saw this article. Though the contents are fairly mundane, the headline is just awesome. I'm thinking: feral combat hamster. From Ohio.

Posted at 08:43 am by Saladin
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Thursday, July 28, 2005
Did You Know?

I was working on another update which should have been posted yesterday, but after working on it for ninety minutes longer than I had actually planned to do so and thereby sacrificing sleep for this damned place I decided to let it slide; it's very frustrating to me that Google returns zero hits for the search phrase "'crab wearing a monocle'". I'll post that one later, I guess, hopefully after someone such as myself or possibly not myself provides me with a bit of monocled crab (lobsters would also work, I guess) clipart. It'll be about terrorism!

Anyway, for today I decided to repost something I received through my work e-mail account. I've actually been meaning to do this update (as in, an update about this thing, not the July 28 update) for about four months, I'm simply very lazy. So, in the fashion established when I mocked this disaster area, I will now present to you something that is almost retarded enough to cause anyone viewing it to, by simply association, also become retarded.

IRAQ - VERY INTERESTING - DID YOU KNOW?

These aren't things to be "known" - that implies some degree of factuality. These are basically pieces of bullshit nonsense that someone might believe, but aren't to be known.

1. The garden of Eden was in Iraq.

The Garden of Eden, if it is an actual physical location (as opposed to, as some theologians claim, basically a suburb of heaven), may have existed in the region of modern day Iraq, true. This does not mean that it "was in Iraq". The country wouldn't even exist until circa 1919.

2. Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, was the cradle of civilization!

What could this possibly have to do with anything? Africa was the birthplace of the modern human - how does this even slightly influence modern African states?

3. Noah built the ark in Iraq.
4. The Tower of Babel was in Iraq.

IRAQ DIDN'T EXIST! The Tower of Babel was supposedly located in Babylon - in Babylonia or Persia! Just because the native Americans lived in the region now called the United States doesn't mean that their accomplishments happened in the US!

5. Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq!

I can't technically argue with this one on the grounds given above, since Ur really is located in Southern Iraq, and Abraham is supposed to have come from Ur - though there's some dispute as to whether this refers to Ur, Urfa, or Urkesh.

6. Isaac's wife Rebekah is from Nahor, which is in Iraq.

She is, is she? You know, there's this funny thing called the past tense which we use when referring to, you know, THINGS IN THE PAST. Besides, Nahor was Rebekah's grandfather, not something in Iraq. Cretin.

7. Jacob met Rachel in Iraq.

Not Iraq. Persia, maybe. Chaldea or Sumeria, maybe. Babylon, maybe. Iraq - and just let me stress this point - is about 85 years old. Not 8500. Not even 850. 85. The timeline's a bit off there.

8. Jonah preached in Nineveh - which is in Iraq.

And so? It's in Iraq now....

9. Assyria, which is in Iraq, conquered the ten tribes of Israel.

Assyria? What, you mean the Kingdom of Assyria? That kingdom which hasn't existed for 2600 years? There's a distinct difference between the Kingdom of Assyria and the modern region of Assyria.

10. Amos cried out in Iraq!

Much as I'm doing now, only in the great nation of Hunting Grounds of the Cherokee!

11. Babylon, which is in Iraq, destroyed Jerusalem.

Babylon the city has been ruinous for 2150 years. Babylon the empire hasn't existed for 2330 years. The empire, with capital at the city, did destroy Jerusalem; but the city, which is what is in Iraq, did not destroy it. Your grasp of geography and part-to-whole relationships is lacking for someone trying to expound factual information.

12. Daniel was in the lion's den in Iraq!
13. The three Hebrew children were in the fire in Iraq (Jesus had
been in Iraq also as the fourth person in the fiery furnace!)
14. Belshazzar, the King of Babylon saw the "writing on the wall" in
Iraq.

Not. Iraq. Maybe - maybe - Jesus, since he's a time-travelling superwarrior from the year 207X.

15. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, carried the Jews captive into Iraq.

No. No no no. BABYLON. He was the KING OF BABYLON. YOU SAID IT YOURSELF. How can you possibly continue being so wrong? Do you just lack the ability to distinguish between political and geographic regions? Were you dropped on your head into a can of leaded paint as a baby?

16. Ezekiel preached in Iraq.
17. The wise men were from Iraq.
18. Peter preached in Iraq.

You know the drill. Political regions are not geographic regions.

19. The "Empire of Man" described in Revelation is called Babylon, which was a city in Iraq! 

Oh wow! What a retarded connection to make!


And you have probably seen this one. Israel is the nation most often mentioned in the Bible. But do you know which nation is second? It is Iraq! However, that is not the name that is used in the Bible. The names used in the Bible are Babylon, Land of Shinar, and Mesopotamia. The word Mesopotamia means between the two rivers, more exactly between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The name Iraq, means country with deep roots.

How does this make sense to you? The reason Iraq is not referenced by name in the Bible is because IT ISN'T REFERENCED IN THE BIBLE. These other names refer to fundamentally different states which existed in roughly the same geographic region!

Indeed Iraq is a country with deep roots and is a very significant country in the Bible. No other nation, except Israel, has more history and prophecy associated it than Iraq.

Besides, that is, every other nation (and that's kind of the wrong word to use there) which has been around more than 85 years. Even the US has more history and prophecy associated with it! If you want to talk about a region, use the word "region".

And also.. This is something to think about! Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages...

The best part about that last sentence is that this "Koranic passage" doesn't exist in the Koran. It's utterly fabricated. Whoever wrote this should have read up on his Not Being A Retard passages.

The following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible)
Koran (9:11) - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.
(Note the verse number!) Hmmmmmmm?! God Bless you all Amen !

I'd prefer it if Allah - no, wait, if SHIVA - blessed me! Or Odin, God of Thunder and trees! It's true because I used the name Odin!

I BETTER NOT HEAR OF ANYONE BREAKING THIS ONE OR SEE DELETED This is a ribbon for soldiers fighting in Iraq. Pass it on to everyone and pray. Something good will happen to you tonight at 11:11 PM. This is not a joke. Someone will either call you or will talk to you online and say that they love you. Do not break this chain. Send this to 13 people in the next 15 minutes. Go.

And then, as the capstone of this whole shameful mess, there's this paragraph. This isn't just rife with ludicrously wrong statements, it's also a chain letter which is even vaguely threatening! I BETTER NOT HEAR OF ANYONE ENJOYING THIS OR SEE HAPPY
 

Posted at 05:19 pm by Saladin
Comments (5)  

Monday, July 25, 2005
Ten Months' War of 1914-1915

Probably one of the best known figures in history is Winston Churchill, who is extremely familiar as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the early 1940's. Famed for his fiery, passionate, colorful use of the language and often credited with being the greatest source of English moral sustenance during the dark days of early World War II, few figures in history are so widely recognized or so often quoted.

Less well known, but only slightly, is that Churchill played a significant role in World War I, when, as a man in his early forties (about half a generation younger than his fellows in the Cabinet), he served as the First Lord of the Admiralty. This position, essentially the government liaison with the Admiralty, was a crucial post in peace and even moreso in war, and he acquitted himself fairly well. His greatest failure in this capacity was his support of the Dardanelles Campaign, which would degenerate in the meatgrinder of Gallipoli. Following its profound failure, Churchill spent nearly two decades as a political pariah.

Significantly less well known are the connected facts that not only was the assault on the Dardanelles widely considered (among those who were actually involved in the command of the expedition) to have come within a hair's breadth of success before being thrown away, but that such a success would have profoundly altered the course of the war - and thereby, the course of twentieth century.

Writing in 1934, Admiral of the Fleet Roger Keyes (who was a Commodore during the Dardanelles Campaign and served as Chief of Staff to the commanding officer of the campaign, Acting Rear Admiral de Robeck) wrote that "I wish to place on record that I had no doubt then, and have none now - and nothing will ever shake my opinion - that from the 4th of April [when new mine-sweeping trawlers were made available to address the major problem faced by the navy, namely minefields] onwards the fleet could have forced the Straits and, with losses trifling in comparison to those the army suffered [in the land-based Gallipoli Campaign], could have entered the [Sea of] Marmara [on the shores of which Constantinople rests].... This operation... would have led immediately to a victory decisive upon the whole course of the war."

After the war, Henry Morgenthau, American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913-1916, "declared that the appearance of an Allied fleet off Constantinople in March 1915 would have toppled the Turkish government and driven that nation out of the war. 'The whole Ottoman state, on that eighteenth day of March when the Allied fleet abandoned the attack, was on the brink of dissolution,' Morgenthau wrote."

Had the Ottoman Empire been forced out of the war in 1915 and the Dardanelles opened again to Allied traffic, the Russian army could have been supplied with Western supplies; so equipped, the constant defeats suffered in the real history might have been prevented or mitigated; revolution, culminating in the real history in the rise to power of Lenin and his fellows, might well have avoided that outcome; and while Germany remained strong, the fall of the Ottoman Empire would almost certainly have brought the waffling Balkan states in on the side of the Allies. Between these factors, Austro-Hungary could have collapsed in 1915 instead of 1918, and we might today talk about the Ten Months' War of 1914-1915 rather than of World War I, the first act of two which combined killed at least eighty million people and set the stage for the horrors of the twentieth century.

Posted at 09:24 pm by Saladin
Comments (2)  

Thursday, July 21, 2005
Misplaced Trust

One of the documents I use to do my job ("stare drooling at monitors akimbo for eight hours a day") is called the Verification Form, which I affectionately call the "Employment Verification Form". As the name, and specifically my little nickname for it, suggests, the Verification Form is where the collation of the employment verification data for the applicant or applicants of a given loan. Usually this involves calling the applicant's employer as listed on the loan application and, well, verifying the applicant's claims. So, on the Verification Form there is a little box entitled "Spoke With", in which the verifier identifies the point of contact in the verification. I've posted a couple of pictures of these.

Lately, on a small number of occasions, I've encountered Verification Forms in which the verifying source was: the credit application. Basically, the verifier is saying, "Enh, I'll just take his word for it." This is a terrible idea, and the reason it is a terrible idea is because there are lots of people like me out there who are dangerously clever. The only occupation I can see which isn't necessary to verify is basically a stay-at-home spouse. If they're lying about that... um, well, then they're actually out there *making* money, which should actually improve their chances of getting a loan. (As an aside, sometimes people list their occupation as "domestic engineer" instead of "stay at home mom" or "house husband". They think this is cute. It isn't. If you ever list your occupation as "domestic engineer" and you are actually a stay-at-home spouse, and I find out, I will hurt you. Now that's a guarantee my competitors aren't willing to give!)

I can just see some wily applicant taking advantage of this, though it would probably rely on some luck as well. And solid acting skills. For example:

APPLICANT: "Yeah, so, I have an income of a million dollars a month. See, I'm the king of the moon. I own Earth Satellite Corporation. Also I own seventeen yachts, three of which are space yachts. And that building! (Applicant points to a building visible through a nearby window.)

DEALERSHIP REPRESENTATIVE (looking through the window): "Which one?"

APPLICANT: "The tall one. With the spire."

DEALERSHIP REPRESENTATIVE: "Um, sir, that's the Empire State Building."

But one could put some insane stuff down on one's credit application, and if the verifier decided to just use the credit application itself for verification... well, let's just say that Mr. King Of The Moon would soon be cruising down the highway in his brand new, oh, I don't know, Ford Taurus.

Also that gives me an idea for a sitcom for a guy from the moon whose surname is King. It would be entitled "King Of The Moon". Hooray!


Posted at 12:17 pm by Saladin
Comments (2)  

Wednesday, July 20, 2005
This Really Happens

POSSIBLY FICTIONAL PERSON 1: "You spend an awful lot of time online these days."

POSSIBLY FICTIONAL PERSON 2: "I'm talking to my girlfriend."

PFP1: "You have a girlfriend?"

PFP2: "Well, she's an online girlfriend."

PFP1: "An online girlfriend? As in someone you've never met? How do you even know this person is a girl? Isn't that kind of important in having a girlfriend?"

PFP2: "Dude! Of course she's a girl! I'm not gay. I mean, sometimes I run my Barbarian into her Amazon and we pretend we're having sex."

PFP1: "You what? Is that some kind of euphemism?"

PFP2: "We met on Battle.net, playing Diablo 2."

PFP1: "That's... so very geeky I'm almost speechless."

PFP2: "Shut up! We both bring something to the table for the other person. She brings companionship, she's a great listener, and she's really funny. And I bring a Stone of Jordan, which gives a +1 to all skill levels!"

PFP1: "It seems impossible, but I'm closer to being speechless now than I was five seconds ago. ...how long has this been going on?"

PFP2: "Um... for like eight months."

PFP1: "I'm actually impressed that you've managed to keep another human being interested in you for eight months, let alone someone who might actually have a factory-standard vagina. Still, it might be a good idea to kind of ease out of this. It's really freaky."

PFP2: "No way. It's great! A better idea might be to give her a Ring of Engagement!"

PFP1: "What?! That isn't a better idea! That's a terrible idea! And you should be punished for suggesting it!"

PFP2: "Aww. You just wish you had an Internet girlfriend too, don't you?"

PFP1 (looking ashamed): "Yes."

Posted at 09:57 pm by Saladin
Comments (8)  

Thursday, July 14, 2005
Twelve Fingers Means No Terrorists!

I discovered recently two similar but unrelated facts regarding this country's national and local leadership.

Our Gnomeland Defense Secretary



This is Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Defense Secretary as of February. While I cannot claim he is doing a poor job (so far there have been: 0 terrorist attacks on the United States since he took office), he looks an awful lot like a gnome. If his beard were bushier and he were wearing a pointed red cap, he'd look like a very big garden gnome; as it stands, he merely looks like a very tall gnome from more or less any given fantasy setting. It's disconcerting.

My uncle, or the governor of Florida?

This is Jeb Bush, the infamous brother of the President Bush and governor of Florida. I recently saw him deliver a speech to the citizens of Florida regarding one of those hurricanes which was on course to devastate the region (which happened thereafter), and I noticed that he, too, bears a striking resemblance to someone I know, and, in fact, am personally related to. This, thankfully, is not President Bush. It also is not their shadowy third brother of whom I have heard very little but who was, to my understanding, arrested in some sort of scandal right here in Colorado. He may not actually exist; my memories on this topic are vague and suitable for a nutball conspiracy theorist. No, the person Jeb Bush resembles, the person who is also a part of my family, is my uncle on my mother's side, Eric. It's not overwhelming, but the resemblance is quite strong.


Posted at 10:52 pm by Saladin
Comments (4)  

Monday, July 11, 2005
Consolation Prize

Recently I had cause to fire up good old Bloodlines, which, if you recall, is a game about which some day I will write a review. And while technically said review is already written, it isn't blog-quality material and so it will have to be revised in light of that.

Anyway, to digress from my point, most games have an internal variable editor called, appropriately, a console. While normally said console is a spooky, tricky maze of non-sequitur commands and dark beige coloration, those who know the console commands can often have a lot of fun with the game. Thankfully, Valve, creators of Half-Life 2 and the Source engine, on which Bloodlines is built, realized the spooky-but-fun factor of the console and built theirs to be, say, user-friendly. It isn't exactly actually user-friendly, but it is a far cry from all previous consoles in that, when one types in a letter, a drop-down listing will open with every command which starts with that letter. As further letters are added, the listing is pared down to include only commands which begin with that string.

While I was playing with Half-Life 2's console, which allows the editing of various physical parameters of the world such as gravity, I discovered, among other commands, that which allows one to edit gravity! Naturally I increased the gravitational constant to be approximately that of a planet thirty times the size of the sun, and watched the fun commence. Sadly (also, awesomely), Gordon Freeman, the main character, failed to be immediately crushed to death. The only practical consequence that I found, while playing around in one early, enclosed area of the game with the gravity set this way was that I couldn't jump at all. Boo.

Then I stepped off of a piece of wood onto the ground approximately one inch below it (as in, the piece of wood was lying flat on the ground), and the falling damage I suffered, due to this one-inch drop and the massive gravity, killed me immediately. It was hilarious.

So I was playing around, a few days ago, with Bloodlines's console, which has the same drop-down listing of commands (seeing as it's the same engine as Half-Life 2). One command was titled, cleverly enough, "money". I, thinking, quite logically in my opinion, that this would impact either the amount of money my character had or the prices of the goods in the game, decided to test my hypothesis. The first value I set the "money" variable to was 1000. My money failed to change; the graphics were horribly altered. There was some kind of unholy graphical abomination as seen here:




However, that icon there in the middle of the bottom of the screen meant that I was near someone that I could talk to (in this case it was Heather, my character's sexy ghoul). Once I started the conversation, I realized just what the graphical anomaly was: Heather's breasts. And, technically, her hair. Thanks to the fact that not only does hair, in this game, often sway realistically with movement, but breasts often do too (and this is, not to submit hyperbole, the finest idea any human has ever devised regarding video games - a jiggle engine), there had to be a set of physical variables to describe, basically, breasts. "Money" just happened to be the variable which controlled the size of said breasts, and, in setting it to 1000 instead of 1, I increased proportionately the size of these jiggling breasts. This is definitely a man's variable.

Playing with it some more, I discovered that if set to 0, women simply fail to have breasts; if set to a negative number, they have concavities in their chests which, at great enough negative magnitudes, cause inverse breasts to come jutting out of their backs. It's kind of creepy. The last thing I did was to go out to Chinatown and set money, once again, to 1000. A hooker just happened to be in sight:


Yeah. That's her on the left. And then on the right, dozens of times her size and extending actually off the other side of the screen, are her breasts. Thankfully, breasts don't clip (that is, they can freely be passed through, which would normally be a non-issue) or else my character would have died when that hooker turned around. Then the game crashed.

I am so finding more stuff with this console. I do believe the finest aspect of this game has gone from "storyline" to "breast physics".

Posted at 10:51 pm by Saladin
Comments (9)  

Friday, July 08, 2005
Was *This* Your Card?

While it's an absolute tragedy (also a tragedy is the fact that the explosion created tremendous levels of spookium particles, the greatest single component of the terror molecule) that so many people died and were injured in the London bombings - and let's get this straight; while civilian casualties are a reality of modern war, this is nothing shy of malicious cowardice - I have to wonder about the target. For one thing, London is not the prime target - Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston... major US cities would be far better targets. After all, at this point the UK is virtually a province of the United States (which is historical irony for you) rather than an ally; and in any case the driving force for the so-called War On Terror (which, much like the Soda Wars and the War On Drugs, has little to do with conventional warfare besides cool, refreshing corporate sponsors) is the United States. If somehow we could be ousted from these efforts, the whole thing would simply collapse.

Then there's the fact that the G8 Summit was taking place only a few hundred miles away. While I'm sure that security must have been tight, it would have made a much better target than any city. Kill all of these world leaders at once, and I suspect we'd be seeing a stronger response among people than we currently are - namely, abject apathy. But we can probably rule that out as a realistic target for sheerly practical reasons. Blowing up a bus and some trains would be way easier than penetrating that security. Were I a terrorist, I could probably manage to blow up a bus or a train. I probably could not even begin to figure out whatever security was around the G8 Summit.

But I think that's kind of the point. Theoretically our terrorist foes are all around us, basically standing over us while we sleep with a packet of anthrax and maybe a copy of the Koran prominently displayed in order to make clear that our enemies Are Not Christians. Why aren't there more of these things in the US? All things considered, it probably would not be that difficult to sneak a bomb or a gun onto a plane, train, or automobile, especially if one happened to own the automobile in question. I know that we have these intensive thirty-minute training courses for our police to help them stop any terror molecules from invading our localities, but still. Our protection is not one hundred percent. I doubt it's even ninety percent. Which suggests that, since there has not been, to my knowledge, even ONE terrorist attack in the United States in four years,  the efforts simply aren't being made to COMMIT these acts.

Now, I don't like Bush. I don't like his style or his administration, and I'll be happy in 2008 when somebody else comes in to office; unless that somebody is Rick Santorum in which case I will destroy the planet. And anybody who can't fathom why clearly has no idea who either I am, or who Rick Santorum is. And since R-Santy has "a frothing discharge of feces and lube which is formed by anal sex" named after him, I can't imagine anybody does not know who he is. But I'm not part of that sect of people who believe that there's a Massive Conspiracy afoot. I think the government has lots of secrets, and I think that there are plenty of conspiracies; but these are essentially harmless other than the fact that they completely hamstring correct functioning of democracy (an outdated value we've hardly noticed for two hundred years anyway). That said, I don't believe, at this point, that one of those copious numbers of conspiracies is some sort of arch-villainy designed to keep us angry at terror.

In any case, the government is pretty transparent about its attempts to maintain the interest of a largely-apathetic public.

With all of that in mind, the London civilian population circa Thursday was the perfect target if one wanted to keep us in the game. Yes, something like fifty people died and 700 were injured. But nothing crucial was affected. Popular support is if anything higher - the UK has suffered an attack, basically, for being our ally, and that really puts our national honor on the line here. But nobody "important" was hurt, no serious infrastructure, and those who have lost loved ones in these attacks are probably more prone to call for blood than surrender. Britishers have historically proven themselves to be tough as nails. Plus, there's a strong chance of a cozy feeling between not just our two governments but our two peoples; this morning I was planning on writing a more hawkish post on the subject in defense of the British who have stood by us and now have suffered this calamity. I still support the central idea there - to support our friends - but I'm more suspect as to the nature of this attack. It just seems awfully convenient to me.

Posted at 09:52 pm by Saladin
Comments (2)  

Thursday, July 07, 2005
Grey

Like kindred spirits, Grey and I are. Too bad he lived a century ago.

"I believe, however busy, however active, however flustered a man may be with the battle of life, he is always looking for some place where he may lay his inner heart, his soft and tender nature, in safety; else there is a danger that he may lose it altogether or find it injured in the rough struggle. Such a place he finds in a woman, and when he really loves, he confides it all to her freely without reserve."

Amen, brother.

Posted at 09:05 am by Saladin
Comments (6)  

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