Lafitte

Fucking Bike Laws...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:45:57 GMT

Some laws are really stupid. Some laws are based on logic so backward and ridiculous that the only possible response is screaming. When you see the Goldberg-machine results of these laws finally collapsing into the real world the fury increases exponentially. I imagine someone is going to think I'm stupid for this, but...

Riding bicycles on the road is the worst idea any lawmaker has ever had.

Maybe in ye olden days when cars went, like, 20 miles per hour and bicycles had one giant wheel in front this seemed logical. Engines were a new concept so every wheel not strapped to your foot counted as a real vehicle, or something. But now that the lowest speed limit a road will have is 25, seriously, having bikes on the road is a mixture of a death trap and the alchemical formula for road rage. Bikes aren't fast enough for the road, and they're not too fast for a sidewalk.

Let's examine this. We put a bike on a road and you're a small, swerving obstacle for cars. You move at, like, 1/20th the speed of a car and you aren't getting out of the way any time soon. You're easy to miss, cars trying to get around you accelerate quickly in small windows of traffic, often in areas where passing isn't allowed, but for fucks sake, if they don't, you build up a line of traffic half a mile long behind your fucking bike. Plus, spending ten minutes going 5 miles per hour because someone is trying to pedal up an incline will turn the Buddha into a murderer.

Of course, there's a perfectly good sidewalk right over there. Or hell, even the grass. Bikes are ok on the grass, but really, the sidewalk is a great place for a bike. But oh no, it's illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk! Why? What, are they afraid we'll run down pedestrians? Because, you know, bikes are SO fast you can't possibly react in time, and the damage they could cause is mind boggling! Plus, they have such terrible maneuverability and stopping distance! It's not like they're so tightly controlled you can direct them without hands and do skateboard-style tricks with them. Much better to force the bicyclists to use share ground with one of the leading causes of death in America.

Seriously, go try and figure out how many bicyclists are killed and injured by cars every year, and then try to find a report of a pedestrian being killed by a bicycle. I'll wait. And no, the bike helmet won't help when a car hits you. It'll only help if you crash while in a safe place, like a sidewalk, where two tones of steel isn't smashing into at 25+ miles per hour.

Ok, no I won't, but whatever. The only logic for this law is that it's a law so you have to follow it.

This came up because earlier today I spent, like, four blocks stuck behind a bicycle pulling one of those bicycle baby carriers, ridden by a giant sack of potatoes posing as a human being that apparently works as a crosswalk guard going by his bright orange and yellow outfit, traveling at about half a mile per week. I seriously am not sure how he didn't fall over he was going so slow. I assume the baby thingy was holding him up or something. There was too much traffic coming the other way to pass him and he was having a hard time moving in a straight line. I'm pretty sure he was a troglodyte or something. There must have been a dozen cars behind me, inching along at about 5 miles per hour, before I finally had a chance to pass him. I haven't been so furious on the road since someone in Chicago pulled onto the freeway past me on the shoulder, cut me off, and slammed on his breaks a few feet ahead of me in the space of a couple seconds.

Rumors of my death have been greatly exagerated

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:42:26 GMT

... but not fabricated. I'm definitely a little bit dead now.

So, remember months ago when I said I was back in graduate school? No? Well, trust me on it. I totally said it. Maybe. I don't actually remember. Anyway, right about the time I also sent my laptop to a friend in California to do some repairs and upgrades. I figured it would be a few weeks. Instead, it was close to three months. Then when I got it back the last USB drive had gone bad, so I sent it to another friend who's so rad he can fix that sort of thing. Well, he accidentally fried the board in freak occurrence, so he had to get a broken version of the laptop for parts and repair it. So I got my laptop back earlier this week. Right as I started having my finals due.

There is a desktop here I was able to use, but it's out of the way so, unlike, the laptop, I can't use it casually. Hence I almost completely stopped using the internet. At the same time grad school started taking up ALL of my time. So yeah, I've barely been on here. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Earlier today I finished my last paper for the semester and am now made up of free time until next semester. I look very forward to using the internet again. Yay! So for those of you who didn't just stop watching me in the interim, thanks a lot! I'll get back to trying to be active on here right away. I've been working on a big side project I'm really excited about that I want to share soon.

School was totally fun this semester, too. I had a class on Race in horror films, for which I wrote a pretty ambitious paper (George A. Romero's zombie films as symbolic racial upheaval. I can explain better if anyone cares.) and the other was on women in Nazi Germany, for which I wrote a paper on transsexuals in Nazi Germany. with a little luck I'll be presenting both at conferences this coming year, so keeping my fingers crossed!

So, how's everyone been?

New Cat

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:26:52 GMT

For those who don't also watch Gerumple, we got a new kitten. We adopted her from a vet that had picked up her mother and was looking for adopters. She's a little gray-and-white tiger, and stupidly hyper. She's also very sweet, of course. Her and Gawain have only seen each other from a distance a few times, so we'll see how they get along: she's being kept in one room for a week to get used to the place before she gets access to the whole apartment.

Anyway, her name is Uschi.

Health Care for Republicans

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:13:37 GMT

Well, it's been a while... a few days at least. I meant to post more but, oddly enough, I've been really fucking busy lately. But here I am, back again, and to talk about politics... I know it's usually a bad idea, especially when it's making you angry, but anger is also what gives one the most need to talk about something.

So yeah, after decades of poor people looking at every other country in the world not run by a totalitarian dictatorship and wondering how they managed to have socialized health care while America didn't, even though America is supposedly the richest and greatest country in the world, we finally have a president making a big issue out of it and pushing for America becoming a real, modern country. We don't have to pay the fire department to put out our house (last time I'm aware of that was in Rome. Go privatization?) or pay the police to pretend they'll investigate crimes (though that would help the private eye industry. Go privatization?) but we do have to pay doctors to keep us from dying horribly. In fact, we have to pay so much that we have to take our insurance policies on ourselves as if we're fucking cars or something. It is, apparently, a radically evil and Stalinist, anti-American notion to think basic necessities for living should be guaranteed to all citizens.

Going into this discussion, it seems the conservative angle is that it's necessary to let poor people bleed to death in front of hospitals so that rich people never, ever have to wait in a theoretical line to get a checkup, while the liberals took the constitution's "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" line at face value, and assumed the constitution was guaranteeing those as inalienable rights or something.

But getting back to the present day, besides the usually bickering about those lines rich people would rather you die than wait in, we have two new insanities making the rounds.

First, we have the Canadian horror stories. Canada, held up as liberals as a shining example of how the American continent doesn't naturally banish socialized health care, is then held up by conservatives as an example of a distopian hell-scape where even the most easily treatable of diseases gets you put in a line behind seven million scraped knees and on the way you get cancer and then when you get to the end the euthanize you. To hear a Republican senator or talk show host tell it, Canada is a real life Kafka novel where no one ever gets treated for real.

There's a funny thing, though: the conservatives have first hand accounts to tell us all about, and half of them end with "and then they came to America and paid for our super amazing health care!" but there's a trick here... they never mention when these stories took place. They'll give you the names of those involved, but never the date. That's because the majority took place in the god damned seventies. History lesson time!

In the 70's, the socialized health care system was still pretty new. And the government didn't really like giving it money, either. As a result, lines were long and necessary care was often put off indefinitely. It was terrible, just like the stories sound. Then the Supreme Court told the government they had to fix it or else, and so they did. Now there's little waiting, health care shortages are covered by paid visits to other provinces or even America, the Canadian length and standard of life are higher than Americans, and they pay, on average, half of what Americans do. All this and the only downside is talking funny and having shitty beer!

What makes this whole situation even worse is that it's a moot point: we're not looking at making a Canadian style health care system! Even if the conservatives found a real flaw to whine about, it still wouldn't apply to Obama's proposal!

To step up the stupid to outright crazy, the walking punchline Sarah Palin has brought us a new plot for a new Mad Max movie: a world where you're forced by the government to tell a panel of doctors how you want to die! It's like Logan's Run meets The Running Man! Except instead of pitching this idea for a Schwarzenegger movie she claims that Obama's bill would make this a reality. She calls it a Death Panel.

Looking through the proposal you might find yourself confused about where those dastardly democrats hid the Death Panel proposal. Well, that's because it's one line. And it's nothing like that. All it does is allow the elderly to, once per year, consult their doctor about whether they need a living will or not, and medicare will pay for it. One old person asking one doctor if their health is poor enough that they should make a will. That would be a boring Mad Max movie....

I'm sure someone will come back with some bullshit about how neither party is good and they're both the same, deep down, and the democrats politics are just as dirty and blah blah blah.... but during the eight years the Republicans were in power, their lies were the most notable thing about them, while the democrats weren't exactly known for lying. For instance, the democrats never claimed the war in Iraq would end in Iraqis being shipped to America as slaves (no, that's not going too ridiculous, look what Palin is saying!), and now that the democrats are in power... the republicans are telling purposeful, bold faced lies while the democrats aren't.

What this comes down to is the democrats wear their agenda on their sleeve: they are, and always have been, the common people's party, based purely on populism. The Republican party, in all of the several inceptions it's had, is an elitist party for a wealthy, plutocrat class. But they still want the common people's vote, so they bill themselves as the party of down home values, farmers, simple folk and other things they wouldn't touch without first applying disinfectant. The democratic party may not be perfect, but they aren't built on lies.

Bad Timing

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:15:49 GMT

Alright, so I've been in Texas now for... three days? I think so. It's been ok, haven't done a whole lot: ate out a few times, saw a couple movies and suffered the horrible, burning god-damned sun. Which is killing me. It's flat out murder.

But, right before I was leaving, we took one of our cats to the vet. Ada, the little one, had been not eating, getting dangerously thin and hiding a lot. Ends up she has severe liver disease. The vet wanted to do some exploratory surgery, but... a few hundred dollars to cut up an already small, weak, sick cat to see if it has a likely untreatable cancer? That we can't afford to treat anyway? It was hard, but we had to make the decision to have her put to sleep.

But I'm in Texas for all of this. Snake managed to get the date put off until I'm back, and we're now looking at having her cremated. I am glad I'll see her before she's gone, but I also feel bad she's still suffering because of me....

Going to Hell

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:00:44 GMT

And by Hell I mean Texas. It's south, it's hot, it's full of Republicans (Oh snap, I so went there) and they love Jesus. Trust me, that last one applies to Hell. For serious.

My dad and my stepmother moved to Texas for his job a few years back, and I go visit them once or twice a year. Usually just at Christmas, and maybe once during the summer. Well, I discovered that work owed me 5 paid vacation days that I hadn't known about that had to be used by the end of this month. It's not like they were hiding them, my boss just didn't think I would have enough hours to get any. So anyway, my dad got me a plane ticket and now I'm going to get paid to go on vacation.

Also, we took one of our cats (Ada, the little one) to the vet today. We'd noticed she was getting very, very thin and not eating much, and lately she's been shy and sluggish. Ends up she's jaundiced and the vet's running blood work to figure out why. We'll find out tomorrow morning. Obviously, we're pretty worried. The possible causes include infectious diseases (Gawain isn't jaundiced, so that seems less likely, but not impossible) and scarier things like cancer. Here's hoping.

I'm a Terrible LJ Friend

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:29:11 GMT

Yeah, it's true. A big part of it is how long it takes to actually come and read all of the posts here, so I've gone and removed a few people I was watching that mostly just clutter my friend's list (Mostly people that I watch elsewhere too, and no one that was also watching me), and I'll have to make a better effort. Because unlike every other time I'd say I'll post more (which is always Gerumple bugging me about it RL, and he actually stopped watching me because I don't post enough, despite being my roommate and the only reason I made a new Livejournal), I actually feel bad about it and want to post more.

The reason I haven't been posting is that I just have a hard time thinking that anyone would care. I don't consider my life very interesting, and no one ever seems to be interested in the things I talk about and care about. I'm going to try and get over those feelings and actually talk about my life, though, because it dawns on me that the people watching me here know essentially nothing about me.

To start, I'm nearly all the way through a Masters in English Literature. I've been out of school for a few years because my Assistantship (paid assistant teaching) ran out and I couldn't get a job to cover summer expenses, resulting in constantly growing debt which I'm still trying to dig out of. I'm just inches from getting back in, though... I'm fighting with financial aid shit lately, and it's real close to the line, but it looks like next week I should be able to be a student again. So here's hoping. Later I'll post more about my specific studies.

I mentioned once before I'd started watching an anime called Le Chevalier D'eon, which is amazing, but I hadn't said much after because, well... Gerumple got interested and wanted to watch too, but only wants to watch anything when the stars are right, so for months I'd only seen two episodes. I finally watched it on my own, figuring I'll rewatch it with him later, and can now report that it is mind bogglingly awesome.

It's very, very heavily based on real history (leading up to the revolution), with even most of the characters being real people (or so close they might as well be their inspirations) but the world contains a little known form of magic drawn from Biblical verse. As it plays out the history follows the broad strokes, and is very similar in the fine strokes, but could never, ever be confused for how history really played out if you know the history, but it's close enough to be intriguing from the intellectual standpoint. I highly recommend it, especially if you like the time period, the revolution, western fantasy, or swashbuckling. Even if not, I still think most people would enjoy it.

I've also been spending a lot of time with a comedy website called Cracked.com lately that has gotten pretty well known. Despite being a comedy website (and their fact checking admittedly not being the best) the fact that all their humor is based on reality makes it ideal for people who like intelligent comedy... that still mentions dick fairly often. They'll have articles like lists of modern animals that were ruined by evolution (as in, they were way cooler in the ice age), or ridiculous presidential races that put the bullshit campaigning of today to shame (things haven't gotten worse, memories are just short), or examinations of how insane Japanese mythology is. You'll learn things and laugh at the same time.

I also want to give a shout out to a friend of mine whom deserves more credit for a very clever move he made that Gerumple and I have been enjoying. Kjorteo put up http://kjorteo.net/comics.html which is a collection of comics he made at the age of 11 with commentary. It's quite funny and also kind of touching how he's willing to lay bare some embarrassing parts of his childhood that, really, we can all relate to. It's also pretty funny how he mercilessly tears about his own comics. I know your mileage may vary as to how funny they are, but I hope at least someone will enjoy them.

My Friends are Dicks. And so is Nature

Wed, 20 May 2009 05:16:12 GMT

Some friends of mine that work with me on the previous shift wanted me to run a D&D game. We've been doing this for about two months now. In that time, we've played twice. We had one session at the beginning, also, for making characters. I canceled one day when I was out of town. The other four sessions were all canceled by them. And by canceled, I mean they just never showed up.

I don't think I'm asking for a lot... prior notice is the first thing I want, and the second is to occasionally actually play the game they asked me to run for them. Is that really so hard? I'd think they just didn't like the game, but really, it's been two sessions. Anyone who could denounce a campaign after only two sessions is almost as big a dick as someone who could string along their friend, pretending they still want to play each week and standing up repeatedly instead of saying something about it. Even worse, two of them make comments about what they want to see in the next session. Well... I've got three fucking weeks of planning behind it now!

All I can think is that they really are all that big a bunch of dicks, or they're so God damned thoughtless it doesn't even dawn on them that they should let me know they aren't going to come! Both, I think, qualify my friends as dicks.

In related dickishness, this is at least sort of amusing. It always amazes me when environmentalists and nature lovers support things like vegetarianism and seem to believe that nature is full of sunshine and happiness, or is even just passive toward bad things. Well, here's a good place to start never trusting nature again: http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_5-most-horrifying-bugs-in-world.html They have other articles like that, too. Most horrifying parasites and shit like that. Reading these articles will convince you to never, ever travel anywhere ever again. For real. Sure, these suggest that there is no loving God (seriously, guys) but they also suggest that if there's anything real behind a concept like "natural", it should be likened to a fucking James Bond Villain, not an earth mother.

I was already under the impression that the vast majority of the world is a terrible place for people to live. I mean, we've got places like Florida, where it's full of man eating lizards and on fire underground, and the whole state just burst into flames occasionally, which is not even as bad as when a hurricane comes by to fuck up your shit. That alone is compelling evidence that humans are stupid as shit, but then we think it's a great place for a vacation! And it's not even that bad, all things considered!

Ancient peoples rationally took a look around and said things like "That frozen hellish tundra of murder bears and lethally cold water looks like a nice place to live, but get your funny shoes and primitive sunglasses or you'll go blind and fall right through what you're walking on and die" or how about "What a nice jungle! It's full of frogs that kill you by touching you, literal walls of webbing from giant and/or lethal spiders, man eating beasts, and hordes of giant ants that will disassemble you if you stand in front of them!" This is the world we live in, and some people decided that living in temperate areas, where the dangerous animals are really only moderately dangerous and the weather only occasionally attempts to murder a small area with wind just wasn't as nice as the burning hell scape over the next mountain, or the arid wastes where nothing grows.

Want more proof you should live in a nice, temperate area? Parasites, viruses, mind altering worms, giant and murderous insects... just to name a few of the more obvious. This world is terrifying and I'm staying fucking put.

I feel retarded

Mon, 11 May 2009 12:34:43 GMT

So you know how sometimes there's the movie and you thought it was awesome, and you tell people about it, and then when you show it to them the thing is fucking retarded? Mostly this happens with things from our childhood that we view through the nostalgia goggles, so everyone understands and it's all cool. Well... I did it with a movie less than a year old.

First I want to say this: If anyone I know gave The Spirit a chance because I said it was a funny, clever comedy that was confused for a serious movie by many, I apologize. I still think it was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek comedy, but I also think, now, that it was god damned awful. I rented it to show Snake, and wow... I really don't know how I ever managed to enjoy it in the theater.

To be fair, while some aspects of the story were total shit, and the ending was an anticlimactic, pointless shit-fest, 90% of what's wrong with the movie is dialogue and acting. There's a half decent movie in there, and it does have some good moments, but they're all too rare. Instead we get Samuel L. Jackson repeating the same line, like, four times in a row. Emotional scenes with all the acting talent of a cold, emotionless robot that was programmed to never, ever know love, and a script that should be considered a god damned crime it's so poorly written. That dialogue... couldn't have been saved by good actors, and there none of those to be found.

Well... the guy playing the Spirit was actually doing a decent job, but with that material, he couldn't help but sound like a tool. And can you imagine being given acting directions like "So you sneak up behind this guy with a gun, so you... throw a snowball after his head, and after loosing the element of surprise, you jump on him! Then get ready to throw another snowball at another guy!" What the fuck, man?

Maybe it's because I was with family members when I saw the movie... unless it's my mom, my family has pretty lame tastes... and they may make me dumber when I'm around them.

Self-Importance

Thu, 07 May 2009 12:11:40 GMT

Snake and I just got back from our friend Jae's last night and I had a long night of work, and now that I'm home I'm feeling the need to talk about things. I guess I'll be a consumer whore and talk about the media I've consumed since my last post. Well... I don't really pay for any of it, so I'm not sure it really counts as being a consumer whore... quandries!

So yeah, Snake and I have watched the first two episodes of "Le Chevalier D'eon", and really... why aren't you watching it right now? Put it in your eyes. Now. It's levels of rad are immeasurable. It's about a real world cross-dressing secret agent for the King of France right before the revolution, and in the anime he's getting possessed by his dead sister to fight alchemical/papal-magic zombies and shit. And its history is spot on, not just in its perfect presentation of clothes and styles, but even minor real life people are there. If you can't get excited about this, I'm not sure we can be friends.

I read the manga "King of Thorn", loaned to me by a friend, and I must say I really liked it. It's six books, and the first four were pretty much survival horror. A bunch of people are put in cyrogenic freezing to survive a disease that turns people into stone, and wake up in a ruined future full of man eating dinosaurs and shit. It has some very interesting twists, but all of a sudden in book five it stops being survival horror and just becomes crazy-ridiculous-sweet, but I don't wanna say how. Last panel is just dumb, and there's a small section near the end that is only bearable because it doesn't actually impact the plot at all, but over all, great. Especially because the series is essentially the cover to a heavy metal album in story format. Seriously. Worth the read.

I got the book for the comic Lackadaisy, available online here: www.lackadaisycats.com and it is easily one of the best comics you could be reading. It's about cats... being 20's gangsters. It's even more awesome than it sounds, and even the biggest furry haters prove unable to resist the comic's brilliance.

I also started reading the webcomic Cat And Girl, which is often darkly funny, but it's not something I'd insist you all must go see right now.

That's all I can think of right now... maybe I'll remember more and post again later. Or maybe I'll, GASP, post about my actual life for a change!

Much love. Peace.

Furry Connection North

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:01:50 GMT

Well, this con was sort of mixed...

Snake and I went with our pal Mindy, and it was rad to see her again. Mindy and I were the mostly for a fun, relaxing con, while Snake was dedicated to business, as usual. As such, Mindy and I at least enjoyed ourselves a little bit. We got to see Tracy Butler (she's published her comic Lackadaisy in English [it's second language] and was the guest of honor), we hit her two panels (one really great one on advise for doing comics on the web) and found out she's an art director for a video game company currently working on an MMO. She was awesome, and a sweetheart. Also got to see a lot of my favorite people there, like hbruton and djinni (sorry to both, whom I really wanted to get some stuff from, but more on that later...) Also got to see my old pal krahnos again, which is always nice.

Then on the second and third days of the con, we tried to do artist alley and make some scratch. I don't know what it was with this con, but no one was spending money. Even though attendance was way up, anywhere that shit was being sold was deserted. I'd blame it on the economy, except that when the economy was way worse sales were great. So, in the end, we lost money on this con.

We also did Sponsor badges (an extra $30) because it gave access to the snack room (at most cons, everyone gets to use this room) and they were having free beer there in the evenings (that's not standard at cons), but the beer was incredibly bad. Mind numbingly bad.

Finally, the con was 1920's prohibition themed (due to the Lackadaisy thing), but the con seemed to forget all about that. The con book had a little art by Butler on it, (the room keys also did, which was awesome), but besides that... nothing. They called the room with the beer a Speakeasy, but the con dance didn't even do Swing (last year they had a swing dance, but not this year, when it would have made sense) and nothing anywhere in the con even bothered to go with the theme. Not the roleplaying games, not the room decorations, not even the staff uniforms (for instance, at Colossalcon a couple years back the security had soviet themed badges. They could have done something like that here, with like ATF badges, but instead they had baseball caps). It's a theme I was really excited about, and then they just swept it under the rug....

On the upside I drank, like, three-quarters of Dan's rum on the first night.

Where I live

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:35:07 GMT

So, on my last journal, I said I was currently located deep below the sea. I didn't realize the site would give you a google map to my location (Boy I'm glad I never give real information on the internet....), and apparently it gave a map pointing to "Deep Below The"... Seattle Tacoma Airport. I guess the airports code is SEA. Anyway, if you want to see where my home is, go to http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Deep+Below+the+Sea but be warned, You'll have to find the secret entrance into my underground lair, deep below the airport.

In other news, I guess I could post about things I'm actually doing. I just watched the first season of Heroes. I guess I'll probably watch more, but I was... sort of underwhelmed by the ending of the first season. And by that I mean the last several episodes, not just the final. I also finished the anime Toradora, and again... it got a lot less fun about half way through, and the last few episodes got so overly emo.... It also basically dropped most of the characters, and the ending was predictable in the first episode. Still, it wasn't a bad show, and I generally find the endings of romances to be cliche and dull. I also still really like Taiga. A lot. And for once, the male lead was actually interesting and likable!

Next I'm launching into La Chevalier D'eon, which is a fantasy version of actual pre-revolution French history about a real dude (!!!) Anyone who knows me will realize that this is essentially my sexual fetish. Even though it, presumably, contains no sex. Literally every word of that statement makes me more excited. Well, except "of"....

Edit: I forgot, started reading a manga Snake pointed me to, but I found a more up-to-date source, so I need to post it for Snake: http://www.mangafox.com/manga/billy_bat/

It's a Naoki Urasawa comic about a Japanese American comic artist in the post-WW II era. Very interesting and tripy.

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:09:22 GMT

So, I haven't posted in a while and couldn't think of anything to talk about, so Snake told me to take this meme he did for a bunch of my characters. So... I'm doing that, for now. Characters will be pirates and cowboys, so it should be pretty rad.

Anyway, the meme :
1. Choose a few of your own characters. Five at the most.
2. Make them answer the following questions.
3. Then tag three people or more. Do what you want.
4. Feel free to go ahead and add some questions yourself.

My Characters:

Lafitte (I'll be nice and not write her lines in dialect)
Flynn
Everret
J.D. Merwin
(Yeah yeah, they're all furries)

Who/What are you?

Lafitte- I'm a lizardfolk pirate from a fantasy world comparable to the Elizabethan period.

Flynn- I'm a Red Panda Pirate from a furry version of India during the golden age of piracy.

Everret- I'm an Opossum sharper, huckster, safe cracker and all around cheat from the late American Old West.

J.D. Merwin- I'm a pistolero and outlaw ex-confederate from the late American Old West.

How old are you?

Lafitte- Thirty-five. I've been around.

Flynn- Thirty-two. I've been all over, but a good man doesn't age; he ripens, like a fine wine.

Everret- As far as you'll ever know, I'm 25....

J.D. Merwin- Twenty-one. Though, the confederate army thought I was twenty-one three years ago.

Do you like yaoi or yuri?

Lafitte- ... what? Drawings of gay sex? What, like, how to books? I don't get it... just go and hire a prostitute.

Flynn- I don't know what Yaoi is... but yuri? I love flowers AND Japanese contraband! Oh, wait, you mean porn? Yeah, porn is good.... Gay, straight, lesbian... whatever. Variety is the spice of life!

Everret- Seriously, man... that sort of thing is meant for privacy! Or a bawdy house's stage. Well, whatever, the ones with the girls are ok, but Everret aint no dandy!

J.D. Merwin- ... shut the fuck up.

Are you a boy or a girl?

Lafitte- Wouldn't you like to know! I'm female, though. Seriously. But you're just going to have to trust me on this. Lizard girls got nothing to show off.

Flynn- Is there some word that means 'boy' but more so? 'cause that's me. I guess I'll just have to capitalize and bold MAN to get it across.

Everret- Any lady who wants twenty bucks can get some proof I'm a guy.

J.D. Merwin- I'm a boy. Question me again and I'll put some pretty new holes in you.

Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Lafitte- I hatched from a cluster of eggs, so I guess, but lizardfolk are raised communally, so it doesn't really mean anything.

Flynn- Several, of which I was a middle child, but I barely knew any of them. I was shipped off to a British run boarding school at a young age.

Everret- Nope, only child here. Just me and my pa.

J.D. Merwin- When I ran away from home to join the war, I had an older brother and a younger sister. I might have more now... I don't know. I just know I can't go back to them, anyway.

Who's your mate/spouse?

Lafitte- Any pretty boy I can force into a dress. I have a few favorites in different ports, though....

Flynn- I have never had a relationship, merely many nightly moorings with many lovely people.

Everret- We're hardly exclusive, me being a traveler and her being a fallen dove, but if I did ever settle down it'd be with Lucille.

J.D. Merwin- No one. I don't need anyone.

Do you have any kids?

Lafitte- Hell no! Last thing I want is a fucking egg! I won't even mate with my own kind, just to avoid that!

Flynn- I am... unaware. I'm afraid it is fairly likely, though.

Everret- Shit, I sure hope not! I adopted a boy named Cody, and he's all I can handle.

J.D. Merwin- Don't be ridiculous.

What's your favorite food?

Lafitte- People. I guess part of it is eating what I've killed, but knowing it was an intelligent person with a life ahead of them, and I snuffed that out and turned them into just a bit to eat... that's heaven, right there.

Flynn- My favorite food is fine, local cuisine I've not yet experienced. Variety and all that rot.

Everret- Bacon. Cheap, easy and delicious!

J.D. Merwin- Whiskey.

Have you ever killed anyone?

Lafitte- What, like, today?

Flynn- It is a part of the business, I fear, and often the only way to resolve a man's disagreement.

Everret- No, no and no. I'll take your money, I'll take your property, I'll even take your dignity, but I have never taken a life, and I hope I never will. A life is the one thing you can steal that a person can't get back.

J.D. Merwin- Several. You looking to add to that list?

What kind of music do you like?

Lafitte- A good sea shanty to lift the spirits can't be beaten!

Flynn- The sea shanties are all well and good, but I love to listen to the folk music of the island peoples.

Everret- Stephen Fucking Foster.

J.D. Merwin- I guess Old-time music is ok... but I don't really care about music.

What do you do to relax?

Lafitte- ... sit? Force pretty boys to pamper me while I sit?

Flynn- Whenever I hit port I check into an inn, have a good meal, and find a pretty young lady or lad.

Everret- A nice bath in a fine hotel is my favorite, but that's pretty rare....

J.D. Merwin- I like to read.

Do you constantly get hurt?

Lafitte- It comes with the territory.

Flynn- I do my best to avoid bloodshed, my own or others, but all to often it happens, and yes, sometimes I take a wound. I must not that a wound taken for a lady can hardly be said to hurt at all, though.

Everret- Not if I can help it, and I usually can!

J.D. Merwin- Not often, no... but one must always be ready, and accidents do happen.

Do you like your creator?

Lafitte- Complete weakling. I don't like competition, though, so that's fine.

Flynn- They need no justification from me; if one has confidence, then they are justified.

Everret- They're a naive rube. Far too easy to take advantage of.

J.D. Merwin- I'm not interested. If they make a nuisance of themselves, I'll put one between their eyes.

Whats your favorite season?

Lafitte- Warm weather is best for sailing, and spring brings too many storms, so summer.

Flynn- Every season can be charming, but the seasons that bring storms can be dangerous....

Everret- Not summer. Christ almighty, this place doesn't need help being hot!

J.D. Merwin- Seasons are something you deal with, not that you love.

Have you ever had sex?

Lafitte- Oh, sure! Sex and violence are my two favorite things! It's just always hard choosing....

Flynn- I know I can't share my passion with everyone, but I'm damn well trying.

Everret- What are you, Mormon? Of course!

J.D. Merwin- ... Mind your own business!

Have you been violated/molested/raped before?

Lafitte- I guess most people would consider my first lover to be molesting me... I was young even for lizardfolk, and he didn't really ask permission, but I dunno... I don't really think about it like that. It was, what... a learning experience? Since then, definitely not.

Flynn- What? No! I mean, I'm sure the older boys at the boarding school did that sort of thing, but all of my liaisons, even back then, were quite willing.

Everret- Of course not. And I aint never raped anyone either!

J.D. Merwin- No. And it's not going to happen, either.

Who's your best friend?

Lafitte- Goatboy and Fire guy are my best friends! Why don't they ever want to hang out anymore?

Flynn- Too many to count!

Everret- Lucille, and Cody, and J.D. Merwin.

J.D. Merwin- Everret's my first real friend in a long time. Lucille makes me... uncomfortable, though. Cody is a good kid.

Got a crush?

Lafitte- I don't really get... emotionally attached to people. That's sort of a mammal thing. I like people, and I want to fuck people... I guess if it's both for the same person, it's a crush? Maybe?

Flynn- Oh yes, mon cherie... you.

Everret- Lucille's got my heart!

J.D. Merwin- I've never been the romantic sort.

Do you like hugs/kisses/cuddles/etc.?

Lafitte- Whatever.

Flynn- It's pity one ever has to stop.

Everret- Only if I'm not getting charged by the minute.

J.D. Merwin- Don't touch me.

Are you gay?

Lafitte- If it feels good, do it. Girls are less fun, usually, though.

Flynn- I'm will-let-me-stick-my-dick-in-it-sexual.

Everret- What? No! Keep away from me, you dandy! This is all for the ladies!

J.D. Merwin- ... that's complicated.

Play any sports or...anything?

Lafitte- I've heard fencing called a sport, but I find it odd to call a method of killing people a sport. I mean, why isn't knifing a sport, then? Or back-alley strangulation?

Flynn- I have no time for games, my dear... only love. And love is very, very serious.

Everret- Oh, I run games all the time at county fairs... and they're not rigged or anything!

J.D. Merwin- I hear sharpshooting and quick draw is called a sport by some... but where I play, you only get to loose once.

If you had a chance to kill your creator would you do it?

Lafitte-I'd do it for the kicks.

Flynn- It would be needless and wanton.

Everret- I'm still not killing anyone.

J.D. Merwin- Maybe. I dunno. If I felt like it.

How I Would Hollywood-ize Pokemon

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:42:45 GMT

I know I mentioned once that I love to take terrible ideas for movies and such things and plot them out. One day, I would really like to get some scripts written out. These are, of course, meant to be the sort of lovable trash you'd see on MST3K, so bear that in mind, because Yuki, Snake and I were talking about one last night and I want to share it.

One of those phenomena that can make a terrible movie really memorable is Hollywood-ization. Like Street Fighter the movie, from the '90's, or Super Mario Brothers the movie, or Masters of the Universe (a live action He-man movie). When you take something with a passionate, niche following to the '90's era Hollywood, and they both want to cash in on the fame of the original, but also have no faith in the original or its audience, instead trying to tailor it for a mass audience. Occasionally this could actually work out, like the first Blade movie, but you're much more likely to end up with something terrible. This phenomenon was particularly common in the '90's, the current geek takeover of pulp culture giving niche works a lot of leeway now, but this still happens, like Dragon Ball the movie (I haven't seen it, but look how Goku is older, Roshi is younger, and the Nimbus is a car. Clearly aiming for a traditional action movie audience that isn't familiar with the original) or G.I. Joe the movie (where they're a secret organization of the military that back flip over missiles down city streets, which regardless of what you think of it, is not even slightly like the original. They're giving it the Matrix treatment, plain and simple. You decide if that looks good or not. I hate it). The assumption is that the original's story isn't just liked by a niche, but is only likable to that niche, and presenting the story to regular folk would be a complete flop. Sometimes it's true (again, Blade, which is a silly to dumb comic), but usually it's not (Silent Hill was a decent movie, but the plot didn't need dumbed down. It just made the story faster to tell, not more palatable to the audience. After all, changing the cult to a fundy Christian cult doesn't really ease understanding much, but leaving in the whole 'magic evil girl splits herself into two people' thing is confusing even to fans).

So, with all of this in mind, while explaining the apparent changes to Dragon Ball to our Japanese friend, we compared it to making a Pokemon movie, and just giving the main character a dog named pikachu. This led to a discussion of what the movie would actually be like, after '90's Hollywood got ahold of it.

First off, magical animals? Well, now that would work, though it'd still be WAY different from Pokemon, but in the 90's? Hell no! The kids can be competing, in a game that may or may not be secret (never clearly defined, with evidence both ways. Wouldn't want the plot to make sense). The main character has an inexplicably yellow dog named Pikachu. The script originally called for a CGI Pikachu, but there wasn't enough CGI budget. This is just a kids movie that can't figure out what its target audience is, so why put money into it? In an effort to make the story Darker and Edgier(!!!) the game is done with guns. Big, sci-fi looking guns with a name and possibly some appearance of the pokemon on them. And by beating other kids (the guns don't really hurt people, of course, even though they'll frequently cause huge property damage) gives you points, and with enough points... your gun evolves into a bigger gun! And, of course, the guns don't fire bullets... oh no. They use pokemon powers that translate easily into sci-fi gun abilities, like force fields, fire balls, and lightning bolts. The main character, despite no one ever being seriously injured by these guns, will nearly be killed by one.

Team Rocket will be the villains, adults who have these guns, too, and are a '20's style gang, and use the guns to rob banks. They're recruiting kids into their mob, and the hero is going to bring down their leader, who's called Giovanni but is pretty much a rip off of Al Capone, and will be totally worthless and a let down at the end. Maybe he was secretly running the whole game in the first place, to get recruits, and maybe... TAKE OVER THE WORLD??? I dunno, might not be predictable enough for a shitty ending.

This isn't too well thought out... and the most important thing in a bad Hollywood-ization is that you can't think it out too well. The ambiguous plot made up of more holes than substance is pretty much what makes it Hollywood-ization.

I'm not dead. Duh.

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:51:50 GMT

I don't think anyone fell for it anyway (and you weren't supposed to) but I don't want someone checking their journals a week late, seeing that post claiming I'm dead, and taking it seriously because I haven't put anything up. So yeah... I'm not dead. Everything in that post was a lie. Including the part about Snake deciding not to dissect me. THAT FUCKING HURT!

He sewed me back up, though, so all good.

So I ran into this blog where a doctor is doing reviews of House each week, rating it on the quality of its medical mystery, the quality of the final diagnosis, the medicine, and the soap opera. I think I should stop looking at it, though, because even though it's good natured and all, it's making me sad to see how much they do get the medicine wrong. Not just dumb things like not using a mask when they scrub or not aiming their needles that they jab brutally into people, but proposing diagnosis that don't fit the symptoms at all, including fake symptoms to the final disease, and leaving out other real symptoms, or running the wrong tests.

I LOVE House and I want to be able to suspend my disbelief and believe, for the episode at least, that this is real medicine. The more of this I read, the more I watch new episodes and doubt... and that's making the show harder to enjoy for me. I don't even think the realism is important, I just want that nagging doubt to get out of my fucking head!

FUCK!

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:01:35 GMT

I don't know what to say. Today is just. It's a terrible story, but I must relate it to you, because you have a right to know.
First of all, this is Snake ( <lj user=geruempel> ), Lafitte's partner, posting instead of Lafitte.

Lafitte had the night off yesterday, so, as we are wont to do, we got some alcohol from the store. The usual-- rum for her and beer for me. I was tired, though, so I didn't really have much to drink and went to bed early. Lafitte assured me that she would follow shortly thereafter, she just wanted to finish reading an article on TV Tropes and her drink first.

When I woke up in the morning, Lafitte wasn't in the bed next to me. I didn't think anything of it because I'm used to her waking up a lot earlier than I do when we go to bed at around the same time. I need 12 to 14 hours of sleep... she only needs human hours. So I just assumed that she'd gotten up and was probably on the computer or playing Bioshock or something.

So I got up, got dressed, and wandered out into the front room. And. Fuck. There she was. On the floor, in a pool of her own vomit and urine. I hoped that she was only unconcious, so I went to check her pulse, but there was none. I can only assume that she choked on the partially digested refuse, asphyxiating and greeting death in only the most shameful of ways.

I didn't really know what to do. I thought about digging out my dissection kit and testing the tools in various ways, but thought against it as it would be too many questions to answer after the inevitable autopsy.

So I called the police, using the emergency number, and they came to take the body away. It was somber, but not the least bit ceremonial.

I'm still unsure as to what happened. I'm certain that she'll come walking through the front door, that she'll be back, and everything will be normal and right with the world again. This has yet to come to pass.
She was my whole world. I didn't really talk about it much, she mattered more to me than anything else. The way she laughed, the way she smiled, the way she'd make the most amusing faces when upset or disgusted. The way she'd snatch up Gawain, cradle him in her arms, and yell as he struggled, YOU ARE A BABY.

But she is gone. This is certainly the twilight of my life, now that the brightest star has faded from view and plunged everything into shifting greys and darkness.

Steampunk Western is Ridiculous

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 09:45:46 GMT

So, a friend of mine has gotten me to start making a Steam-punk Western RPG with him. Hmmm, that intro needs an intro.

So, my friend Kurt and I have a shared love of awful things, and it's long been our habit to come up with terrible movies, comics, etc... and plan them out to minutiae, and then never do a fucking thing with them. My other friend Ben, when he hears about these things, loves them passionately. He likes bad, old games. He desperately wants to make a simple, old-style game out of one of my purposefully terrible ideas.

Sadly, I couldn't convince him to do one of my bad game ideas (almost always a literary classic made into an Atari/Nintendo era video game, the same way movies would be turned into video games. IE, badly. My favorites are "The Scarlet Letter" and "Lord of the Flies". However, as I was working on my Western furry comic concept, I talked to him about how much tribulation I put into deciding exactly what gun everyone uses. He said he'd be useless for help, because he'd say a cowboy should dual wield rocket launchers. Well, I already had some thoughts about Steam-punk Western in my head, so I filed that one away. Well, it came up again, and I mentioned I had actually started working on a plot for a Steam-punk Western using a cowboy dual wielding rocket launchers. He immediately wanted to make an RPG out of the idea.

This is a little tricky in some ways, because we're towing the line between ridiculous and awesome closely, and it'll be very easy to just become ridiculous. We're focusing on making everything extreme and playing it to the hilt, but trying to restrain ourselves. So far it's shaping up nicely, but he's got the programming end, and we'll see if he pulls through. He's VERY excited about this, though, so maybe he will.

I don't want to reveal too much of the plot we've put together yet, but basically, it's a world where Steam technology never got replaced (duh, steam-punk...) but it revolves around a Native American Ghost Dance uprising led by a Shaman whom is utilizing super science versions of various form of science that never really took off in this world, and is using them to simulated miracles, like weather control and working Ghost shirts, to create a super Indian revolt, not just one tribe but all the tribes. I sure hope this doesn't just become retarded.... I'm sure Snake thinks it is (he usually doesn't like my ideas for ridiculous, silly things).

Spent a great deal of time today just naming characters (a process that led to the creation of a great many of the villains). I'm the type of writer that will never use an arbitrary name. The name must be significant. It must be a reference. Every single one of the villains we've made so far has the name of a real person who was involved in the Ghost Dances or other revolts, and the names always make sense for the character they were chosen for. The main character's names are all references, too. It's a lot of fun, and probably my favorite part of writing. The main character names were especially fun. I love the mechanic type character, whose name is the name of the first steam locomotive split into a first and last name (Penydarren = Peny Darren). It's beautiful when something works out that well.

Bioshock

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:44:19 GMT

So, I picked up a new video game today. I probably shouldn't have spent the money, but I've really been wanting a new one lately, and I can't afford a brand new one, like Madworld (which is what I truly yearn for), so I went out and got Bioshock. I traded in that piece of shit Devil May Cry 4 for it (Capcom is good for ruining their franchises every game or two) and got what was a Game of the Year, so it should be good. I at least think it looks very interesting.

I'm not a big fan of first person shooters, but I love things that expand genres, and this expands the genre in very interesting ways that, interestingly enough, don't change the basics of FPS gameplay at all. It's a tad more like Mirror's Edge or Metroid Prime, where it may be first person but it would be folly to label them a shooter just because you have a gun (sometimes, at least), because other aspects are far, far more central. The game is very narrative, and it's actually more like playing a non-RPG version of an Elder Scroll's game (as in, the way you interact with enemies). You don't just find some dudes and shoot until they die, and frequently fighting could get you killed. This isn't saying it's a hard challenge, like an FPS gives you, but that sometimes you just need to avoid the combat all together. That's always great for aptmosphere, especially since you never know when someone will pop out and try to kill you. Adding to this, you can always hear enemies talking and doing things long, long before you run into them, so you have to hunt around and try not to be seen first. You never know how many there are, either.

This game feels more like a survival horror than something like Dead Space could pull off. It's genuinely frightening and nerve wracking, and not because an enemy has arms growing from stupid places or looks dead, but because it's dark, you don't know where they are, and they're always one step ahead of you. You feel painfully vunlerable. It's pretty awesome. I'd probably have to stop playing the game because I'm a wuss, but knowing I'll just revive somewhere nearby, and that most of the enemies I'm actually quite capable of handling keeps me from freaking out too badly.

This game interested me from the first time I saw a video, thanks to Penny Arcade, more than a year before its release (when all the 'sub-normers' heard about it and decided to co-opt it, then found out it wasn't for them and got pissed) because I loved the look of the place, and the idea that it wasn't just a shoot-em-up. It was an exploration game, and you needed to interact to get through it. The deco art, the underwater city... all of it was great.

Plus, I have to love a game with the basic plot line "Ayn Rand is a bitch". Which is basically what the game is about. Suck it, Objectivists!

I have a mix of nostalgia and disapointment, though, from the fact that the game is basically cribbed from an old episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Naturally, these ideas would both have had their own antecedants, but hear me out on some of the big similarities. In this episode, a rich Objectivist is building an underwater perfect city to be free from laws and morals, only for his friends and investors who believe in his vision of a Utopia of ambition, hard work and elitism, and it's all done in an art deco style. Then he blackmails Mr. Freeze into trying to freeze the surface world and kill them all off or something, I don't remember the specifics of the plan, but the start was so similar that I immediately was like, huh... I've seen this before.

Still, hell of a fun game so far.

So I Made a New LJ...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:37:28 GMT

I found the old one sort of embarrassing, so when I decided I should start using LJ again I also decided I should make a new LJ. Plus I was never terribly fond of that old handle, it was just something my friends insisted on calling me, and this name I do care about. Hopefully I won't just up and get bored of this one, but with some certain people I can only get to on here... well, I think there's a better chance.

Anyway, if you have no idea who this is after looking at my page, you can note me to ask, but I think the FA link should clear it up for most anybody.