'Thinking' is not yet a scientifically measurable phenomenon, so scientifically 'proving' something in this realm is a load of nonsense. Of course, it's good to watch for and be aware of patterns, but don't tell me you've 'proven' something through 'science'. That just screams 'Ego' and 'Fear' and a clawing for respectability in your observations so that people will listen without laughing at you.
Which is, of course, what this is always about. Those who most fear being scorned are the ones who most often scorn and laugh at others.
As such, I find that many of the bits of popular 'science' which are used to marginalize people tend to themselves be grounded on flakiness.
Yes, as with any group of people, a percentage of Bloggers are going to be air-heads. 90% crap rules, and all. . . But the idea of citizens discussing important subjects without censorship in public forum is bad. . , how exactly?
I measure the degree of underlying social importance a subject bears by the degree of ridicule it receives from the media.
Pretty pictures, pretty girls, and entirely empty. At least The Matrix was filled with something which captured the imagination; was filled with human reactions.
They presented a flow chart to explain the politics in the story? Oh dear. That sounds like an exciting time.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of Shirow's art and design. I loved the early Appleseed books, (which actually HAD some story and some interesting characters. For a little while, anyway. ..) But honestly! Shirow is clearly trying to make up for some percieved self-lack by pretending that he spends all his true higher thought upon "very clever", "very important," "very adult" political bullshit which, BTW, is none of the above.
Frankly, he isn't fooling anybody, and his shyness at just openly loving the stuff which he clearly loves, (Pretty picture of Pretty girls and Big Technology), without trying to justify it through important sounding horseshit, is the very thing which is going to make people look down upon him.
One should leave the ego alone. It'll take care of itself when you follow the things you love without worrying about how others judge you.
And most interestingly. . . I think Shirow actually likes story and character most of all! --Yes, I know, there's virtually none of either anywhere to be found in his work. But I remember reading an old, old interview where he said that when he was young, he preferred reading girl's manga over the boy's manga. And then he quickly promised that there would be no drama or love in his work, as though that were something shameful.
The guy grew up in Japanese society and he's got a repressed personality? Well, there's a shock!
One of the best insights into human nature I ever heard was this:
"Judge the potential by the inhibition."
I hope Shirow grows up soon. He's spent an entire career so far avoiding himself.
"Dull characters"? "Uninvolving plots"? "Mediocre production values"?
It'd be curious to know which one or possibly two episodes you saw in order to form such balanced and informed insights.
Funny part is that you'll probably end up seeing Firefly properly through anyway and grudgingly really liking it. Something of such high quality doesn't die easily; it'll be around for a while.
Heh. --Yeah. You'll see it unless you posses true stubbornness, which I somehow doubt since that would take a timbre of character which your brand of 'insight' seems to suggest you completely lack.
Anyway, good luck with the 'cool' attitude you're working on, there. I'm sure your friends have just suitcases full of respect for you.
I have dealt with many business professionals at all levels of the spectrum, from university professors to government employees.
Proficiency in spelling and grammar are by no means prerequisites for using an email program, no matter where you happen to work.
And anyway, this would be a consultant hired by SCO. Nobody involved with that scam can be a highly advanced human, I would think. Greed kills brain cells.
which milked Buffy. Virtually all of the moments of 'lame' in Buffy can be attributed to other people getting their chance at the control stick.
Joss withdrew the bulk of his influence long before Buffy finally wrapped, and he had very little to do with 'Angel' other than its launch and a small handful of episodes. (The really good ones). I found beyond the Joss episodes and a few sparks here and there, that most of 'Angel' was of very middle-to-shit grade, and so -gasp- didn't waste my time with it. But that's TV in a nutshell.
Firefly was different. You should see the DVD set before you judge. It's a real step up in terms of Whedon's growth as a creator; much more complex and refined than Buffy in many aspects. I found the most of it quite compelling and felt as though he was just getting rolling before the series was unfairly axed.
As Joss was quoted as saying, "If the movie is a success, then maybe they'll give me my own series!" I hope this turns out to be the case. Films are far too small to give the kind of space required by a cast of such interesting character puzzles as those in Firefly.
Detailed planning requires detailed planning, and these guys can't even write a logical press release. There's a whole lot of wishful thinking going on over at SCO.
While the Beast overall might seem complex and baffling in its motives, each cell is pretty straight forward in it's wiring. Two layers of complexity are all which are required for them to play their roles. --Layer One being the Objective, (Greed), and Layer Two being the lies to smooth it over.
You may be right in that the Lawyers at SCO are probably grinning at the big piles of Microsoft cash rolling in to help them, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if a portion of that money were being skimmed. But I doubt such an outcome was their original objective. Greed just wants to take. Greed always prefers the route of least resistance because having to think and plan and work are forms of giving. And, yes, I believe it's that simple.
"...and Hitler attacked Russia in the frickin' winter time!"
Erm, no - Adolf attacked Russia in early July.
'Erm', yourself, fool. I know when the attack was launched, thank you very much! And it was a moronic battle decision. The Nazi soldiers didn't have the proper supplies or plans or anything to mount an attack on Russia. They didn't even have cold weather clothing prepared in stand-by. Winter generally follows summer, and only a chowder-head like Hitler is full of wishful thinking enough to not realize that to fight Russia is to fight Russia in the snow. Period. Just look at the results of the battle.
And I'm sorry, but I didn't realize we were supposed to be working with first names when it came to, 'Adolf'. Are you one of those sick fucks, or just a jack-ass?
Sorry to repost this, folks, but in under ten minutes, somebody nailed the following thoughts all the way from a +2 moderation rating down to 'Flamebait', which I cannot comprehend the reasons behind at all, other than perhaps 'Fear'.
Please judge for yourself. ..
I wonder how exactly those idiots at SCO, (and they ARE idiots), managed to pull something this brilliant out of their asses.
Here's one possible way this can go. ..
Who does the Auto Industry tip its hat to? That's right. Big Oil.
Who controls Big Oil? That's right. Evil Government.
Does Evil Government like Open Source?
No. They Do Not. In fact, Homeland Security is very deliberately run on Microsoft, because Gates is willing to play ball and put Big Brother code into Windows.
All these people are in bed with each other, and the unwritten rules of conduct and old croney secret winks makes this whole scenario look dangerous to me. All the Auto Industry has to do is put up a half-assed show and then deliberately take a fall, allowing SCO to win, thus setting huge legal precedent in regards to the legality of Linux.
Still, I have faith in Evil's tendency to be run by a bunch of coke-heads. One favorite quote from Colin Powell. ..
"So do you use sleeping tablets to organize yourself?" Al-Rashed asked.
"Yes. Well, I wouldn't call them that," Powell said. "They're a wonderful medication -- not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien."
Yeah. The White House is run on sleeping pills. (As compared to Jolt Cola and Mountain Dew driven code monkeys where Linux found its birth. --I think Caffeine is one of the very few 'good' drugs in the world; peps up brain activity without altering awareness or screwing with perception.) So, really, there's all kinds of ways SCO's big play can go wrong. Plus there's the unexpected random factors which control freeks can't deal with and never take into account exactly because they are control freeks.
Still. . . with a suddenly visible mechanism in place which can vault SCO to the top, I am at once feeling a lot more attentive!
I wonder how exactly those idiots at SCO, (and they ARE idiots), managed to pull something this brilliant out of their asses.
Here's one possible way this can go. ..
Who does the Auto Industry tip its hat to? That's right. Big Oil.
Who controls Big Oil? That's right. Evil Government.
Does Evil Government like Open Source?
No. They Do Not. In fact, Homeland Security is very deliberately run on Microsoft, because Gates is willing to play ball and put Big Brother code into Windows.
All these people are in bed with each other, and the unwritten rules of conduct and old croney secret winks makes this whole scenario look dangerous to me. All the Auto Industry has to do is put up a half-assed show and then deliberately take a fall, allowing SCO to win, thus setting huge legal precedent in regards to the legality of Linux.
Still, I have faith in Evil's tendency to be run by a bunch of coke-heads. One favorite quote from Colin Powell. ..
"So do you use sleeping tablets to organize yourself?" Al-Rashed asked.
"Yes. Well, I wouldn't call them that," Powell said. "They're a wonderful medication -- not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien."
Yeah. The White House is run on sleeping pills. (As compared to Jolt Cola and Mountain Dew driven code monkeys where Linux found its birth. --I think Caffeine is one of the very few 'good' drugs in the world; peps up brain activity without altering awareness or screwing with perception.) So, really, there's all kinds of ways SCO's big play can go wrong. Plus there's the unexpected random factors which control freeks can't deal with and never take into account exactly because they are control freeks.
Still. . . with a suddenly visible mechanism in place which can vault SCO to the top, I am at once feeling a lot more attentive!
I always thought Defender was too edgy and 'cocaine'. My hockey-player friends liked it. I thought Pac Man and Donkey Kong were much nicer. Heck, Asteroids was a much better deal. But this guy doesn't like GTA? Well, neither do I, but his reasoning is so fear-based. "Bad People Breaking the LAW!"
Where do these people come from?
He believes terrorism is a real thing? Here I am thinking that people are finally beginning to wake up, and along comes a creative type like 'Defender' guy, and he's out there merrily helping the whole media con-job along with idiot anti-terrorist games.
Come to think of it. ..
"Defender". . ? "Robotron". . ?
He's creatively geared to thinking in terms of worlds of violence closing in on the good guy, who fortunately, is armed to the teeth with superior technology.
Public Relations is about social engineering. You are witnessing this in progress. Same with that dual comet story. The public, in the view of Upper Management, is weak, stupid and prone to panic attacks which might lead to economic disaster and people not paying their taxes.
There are certain realities which are going to become painfully self-evident over the next few years. ..
1. We Are Not Alone, (and that aliens are not good guys. Not by a long shot.)
2. Comet disaster is something we are going to have to start living with fairly soon.
These realities, which I have talked about at some length in the past, are well understood by Upper Management, and they seem to feel that maintaining careful control of how public awareness develops is vital to their 'plans'. (Plans, which, btw, are doomed to fail simply because that's one of the most reliable features of the dementia known as, 'Megalomania'.)
Anyway. . , I hope everybody continues enjoying the show. NASA puts on a pretty good one, even if their whole operation is littered with idiocy and decay. --Again, the features of Megalomania loud and clear. Bush is a coke-head and Hitler attacked Russia in the frickin' winter time! This does not mean, unfortunately, that masses and masses of damage cannot still be the result.
I can't convey just how massive the difference between the re-release and the original is. I'm hoping to make DVD copies of the laser disk version just so that they are available for my friends.
It's astonishing to think that such a good film is actually generally not available except in its current variety of crappy forms. Your reaction to Star Wars was almost EXACTLY the same as mine until I saw a rare original cut.
Script, acting, direction, etc., these are not the problem, though they appear to be so on the surface. There's something much deeper at fault in the normal copies available to the public.
Ep 1. Of the two new ones, it worked. (Though I much prefered the Phantom Edit. Much, much better with those 40 minutes removed!)
Ep 2. Horrid. Not good. Tepid. Grueling. --The only true success, in that Lucas FINALLY achieved his goal; a return to the old serials, but with a big budget. Congratulations, George. You did it. Now can we please get back to the medium at hand?
Ep 4. Wonderful. This was the largest grossing film, (next to Gone With the Wind), for a reason. People went nuts over this film in 1977, and I among them. If you can't remember why, then you're probably watching some crappy version. Get the laser disk version, if you can. Believe me. Wide screen, original cut, no extra bullshit added, color and sound restored to original glory. The re-release put me to sleep. The laser disk version had me on the edge of my seat.
Ep 5. Yes Awesome in all respects. Yoda done right. No question.
Ep 6. Yes, weakest of the original three, but strangely enough, I thought the re-release was a big improvement. There were subtle edits to the Ewok battle which made it far more believeable. Though, the extended Jabba's Lair stuff blew.
The metaphors fly fast and thick, and probably without intention on the part of the creators. It is certainly a shame that Lucas has lost his creative balancing mechanism, --which I believe, consisted of several people who had both the ability to argue with him and the power to make those arguments stick. That's not the case anymore.
I wonder what moral is like over at the Ranch. . ? There are some really smart people working on these films. It must be frustrating to be tied into serving a broken machine.
Still, I am certainly looking forward to the next film. It'll be neat to see how it all plays out. You can map the rise and fall of the U.S. and the world on the parallels presented in the Star Wars prequals.
Has anybody ever tried a Phantom Edit of the second film? I might give it a shot; although, I have a sneaking suspicion that I'd only be left with about 50 minutes of footage after all the chops necessary in that monster of a mistake! I'd chop whole battles, like that idiot thing with Yoda and whoever the hell that guy was with the bent saber. What the heck was that scene even there for? Too bad it's not possible to change Anakin from a weenie girli-boy into an actual figure of threat and power.
Hmm. . . Maybe I'd only be left with 30 minutes. Still, it's amazing what can be done with a pair of scissors. The Phantom Edit of the first film was an amazing tribute to the power of good editing!
Perhaps if one were to combine the 'Attack of the Clones' with the upcoming film, there will be enough material to hybridize into a whole feature.
We'll see.
Wouldn't it be weird if the third one does suck at all?
Whoa. . !
-FL
Sensationalist. As usual. Thanks Australia.
on
The Virus Squad
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The uninitiated computer user who owns and updates a copy of, "_______ Anti-Virus," must be just shivering!
"You mean, there's nearly 800 new viruses a month? Wow! I'm sure glad I have my copy of '_______' to protect me from having to know what's really going on in the dark and chaotic world just beyond my telephone/cable connection! And now those terrorists are recruiting psychologists, too? To know what I think in order to get me to click on the activate-virus button? Oi, Crikey! The FEAR!!!! Somebody should bomb somebody! Somebody should take away my rights! I'm sure glad I live in Australia which has the back-bone to support our two other brothers in the Axis of Assholes; the U.S. and the U.K.!"
I also noted that the article neatly throws the whistle-blower under the umbrella of suspicion;
"The first point of contact with a new virus may come from an end user - someone bitten by a bug or suspicious of an odd-looking file. "We may hear of it when some victim sends it into a lab, or the virus writer himself - and it's almost always a him - will send it in," Ducklin says.
Marvelous. If this meme gets out, the public will then, not be allowed, to police itself. Who wants to be the target of an anti-terrorist investigation, after all?
Modern Media is a joke. It takes a conscious effort to remain calm and light-humored while reading this kind of garbage.
We've gone how long without a great disease? Interesting that all these bad illnesses are coming along right now, when certain parties are trying every means possible to control everybody through fear.
So the big bad secret government asses lost control of their little SARS scam. (Toronto wasn't in the plans, was it? You fools. Of course you don't have control. You never did. You never will. But don't let me stop you from telling those sweet lies to yourselves. ..)
Avian flu, my ass. Thanks for making all the chickens sick. You twits. I'm sure you have that all under control, do you? All going according to plans, eh? Get everybody all scared so that they won't worry so much about whatever idiocy is due around election time. Make sure they'll all welcome whatever insane measures Bush/Kerry/Fearless Leader will implement. Mercury laden, prosecution-protected Eli Lilly vaccines administered at gun-point, while plans for the Draft kick into high gear. All the while strictly trying to ignore the countdown to the Rain of the Comets due, well, right about now actually. But that's okay, cuz coke-head Bush can duck into a hollowed-out mountain in the hopes of riding out the whole affair. (The man has a sponge for a brain. He could give BSE to a cow!)
Yeah. I can't WAIT to see what you silly twits have planned.
Jeezus. Why can't you just get over your pathetic fears, get out into the world and start living instead of trying to control the heck out of everything? The big shift doesn't have to be a frickin' nightmare military lock-down, you know! The world may bite from time to time, but some of us have these things called, 'Spines'.
The dusty silver oil Lamp is very old. There are some words engraved on the side of the Lamp.
>Read words
You cannot read them. They are covered in dust.
>Wipe lamp
As you wipe away the dust, the lamp shudders and grows warm in your hands. But then it makes a wheezing sound and a thin trail of smoke sputters from the lamp. Nothing else happens.
> Examine lamp
The shiney silver oil Lamp is very old. There are some words engraved on the side of the Lamp.
And I think that 2D provides a more vivid, broader canvas for animators to work upon than 3D, which, while it can achieve much visual flash and wonder, is nonetheless, self-limiting in very fundamental ways.
It has its place, as all things do, but I cannot get very excited by the prospect of 3D eating up all the funding and the talent which was once reserved for 2D works. --Not when the change is to increase the superficial elements at the expense of flexibility and imagination. Technically, a 2D animator can do anything a 3D animator can do. The reverse isn't true, though. Think about that! And this has an effect upon the viewer as well. Watch enough of 3D stuff, think in 3D enough, and certain possibilities begin to fade from one's awareness. Fading possibilities is a scary thing to me. It's not so much about taste as it is about limiting our ways of seeing and thinking!
Now, I admit, I don't really have any stake in the matter as it sounds as though you may, so I'm just shooting my mouth off whereas for you it probably means your livelihood. But that doesn't change the fact. And the fact is that after having grown up watching animations which were not limited, I do not like viewing something which makes me feel so suddenly contained. It always feels as though something is missing, not added with 3D.
Perhaps the answer can be found in a hybrid of the two. I've seen some movies which incorporate the strengths of both. Those seem to work. But pure 'Pixar'. . ? Fine. Whatever. It is what it is. But it isn't a replacement for a proper animation.
Appleseed, the first book anyway, was a cool comic with a wonderful feel. The 'video game' version, from looking at the trailer, looks like pure surface to me. Cold.
Anime should be driven by people who can draw. Cool pictures are something I can't make; it's a skill. Cool pictures to me and most people are a sort of magic which enthralls and excites. They have spark! By contrast, I or anybody else can sit down at a PC and with half an effort make our own "Red v.s. Blue" stuff. Poof! The instant you can make the magic yourself, the magic is no longer magic.
Welcome to the world of souless video game cut scenes. If you can afford the graphics card, then you too can make movies. Hooray.
Let me dig up a quote here, from "Thieves and Kings" guy, Mark Oakley's website here where he uses a 'Matrix-ism' which stuck in my mind to get his point across. (He was griping about exactly this stuff, though regarding Disney's move in the same 3D direction. His editorial is still up. Oakley's work is scorchingly good, but he's bloody slow! I can't tell if he's got actual talent or if he just gets there by taking his time.) Anyways:
"Rather like the, Matrix as described by Lawrence Fishbourn's character, the world of 3D animation must obey rules, and as such, it creates its own limitations. --Whereas 2D animation is limited only by the imagination.
Think about that crazy 'baby and rabbit in the kitchen' cartoon at the beginning of, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Unless you start animating via Photoshop or Flash, (both 2D tools), you will simply never get a computer to achieve those same kinds of effects. Remember? --Black and white kitchen floor tiles soaring over the screen at ten thousand miles per hour, flying babies and rabbits, kitchen implements, irons and creamed carrots hurtling through a universe which a 3D animation program couldn't even begin to rationally comprehend. --But which the human mind can embrace as easily and as naturally as understanding laughter. Human minds are so much more!"
Shirow's work always seemed kind of souless to me, so maybe this move is appropriate.
1. The bulk of anime DOES suck. You're not the crazy one in the room. The truth is that 99% of the crazed fans in the West have their pleasure centers jacked directly into the Eastern cartoon design philosophy. It's like crack.
2. Studio Ghibli. Look them up, watch their movies. "It's so good, it's no longer Anime." Disney distributes their works.
3. Perspective. When you're a highschool kid there's something very exciting about the kinds of stories and the lives of the characters presented in Anime. Role models in the West are idiotic and depressing. "Friends" "Survivor" "Britney Spears". Limiting garbage. Anime, by contrast, presents entire worlds, and whole fleets of characters exploring every issue under the sun, and all from a Saturday Morning Cartoon level of maturity, which is entirely appealing and appropriate for young teens, who are by definition, immature. Think Saturday Morning Cartoons but cubed, done with a budget by people who can actually draw, and zero breakfast cereal tie-ins. I'd have loved to have had access to that when I was 10! Best I got was G-Force and Macross, both of which were awesome at the time, but don't hold anything useful for me as an adult.
Honestly? Anime has its place. If you don't immediately 'get it', then you probably never will and probably aren't supposed to. If that's the case, then Studio Ghibli will serve you just fine.
Appleseed was fantastic in the beginning. And then. ..
How far did you read? I found by the time it got into book 4, Shirow had descended into bullshit politico-speak, seemingly in the hopes of sounding as though he had something important to say.
All I cared about were Deunan and Bri and what would happen in their lives, but the story slipped away from that, and they seemed to lose their spark. Shirow got lost in the world building and forgot that the average reader doesn't care AT ALL about the back-room gear-workings of his environment. It's the difference between reading the "Lord of the Rings" and the "Silmarilion." --Except that the Silmarilion wasn't a half-assed mess.
Perhaps if Shirow focused more on developing the souls of his characters and his world rather than on illustrating a bunch of poster-girls, he'd have become a real story teller. As it is, he's just an exhibitionist who probably knows deep in the night just how much he sucks.
It's you who give them their power if you keep looking up whenever you hear Apocalypse, Stonehenge or Kabbalah (thanks Madonna for getting my niece fall for silly mysticism...) mentioned. Don't play along.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't "playing along" entail maintaining an irrational fear of the 'evil' 666 number? I certainly don't do that. I DO, however, maintain a very rational awareness of groups who feel the need to pull 9-11 style stunts, or who engage in genocide because they believe they are the 'chosen' ones. I'm talking about reading massive social trends which are often, at their roots, based on irrational ideas. To pretend that those trends do not exist or that they will have no affect if only one pretends hard enough they do not exist is not only ineffective, but endangering.
Ignore Madonna, and look what happens to our kids. Whereas if people were to openly examine things and discuss them without fear or reactionary hostility, then the box of knowledge grows bigger, we have more to work with and the situation changes. The 'Ignore it' system only works if everybody young and old, decides to ignore Madonna. That's not realistic. Further, the 'Ignore it' system won't stop other groups from actively organizing along their lines of belief, and possibly, eventually affecting your life. The Palestinians are learning this as the Jews did before them.
The simple trick is to remain objective. To be a skeptic in the truest sense, (which I should add, is not the same breed at all as the hostile, "Skeptic's Dictionary" type, which is simply the other end of the scale of irrational belief).
Shutting things out only reduces the amount of available knowledge one has regarding the surrounding world. This limits options and reduces the ability to make informed actions.
It always pays to look and to gauge all aspects of the world if one wants to act responsibly within it.
You think all those edifaces in Washington being built around masonic symbolism happens without some string pulling and behind the scenes influence?
It doesn't really matter if the symbols and magic numbers themselves mean anything. Not when the cold, hard fact of the matter is that there are hidden people with gobs of wealth, power and access to knowledge which rest of us only gets through a filter, if at all. When people like that are running the show, then hell yes, I'm going to stop and look up when I hear the number 666 added to an asteroid name or such.
Chicken or the Egg; after a while it doesn't matter. When it comes to broad metaphoric symbols, they still always tend to add up to the same thing. Self-fulfilling prophecy may be silly, but it remains a big deal when the people fulfilling it can affect everybody's life through their antics.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is, of course, what this is always about. Those who most fear being scorned are the ones who most often scorn and laugh at others.
As such, I find that many of the bits of popular 'science' which are used to marginalize people tend to themselves be grounded on flakiness.
Yes, as with any group of people, a percentage of Bloggers are going to be air-heads. 90% crap rules, and all. . . But the idea of citizens discussing important subjects without censorship in public forum is bad. . , how exactly?
I measure the degree of underlying social importance a subject bears by the degree of ridicule it receives from the media.
-FL
Pretty pictures, pretty girls, and entirely empty. At least The Matrix was filled with something which captured the imagination; was filled with human reactions.
They presented a flow chart to explain the politics in the story? Oh dear. That sounds like an exciting time.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of Shirow's art and design. I loved the early Appleseed books, (which actually HAD some story and some interesting characters. For a little while, anyway. .
Frankly, he isn't fooling anybody, and his shyness at just openly loving the stuff which he clearly loves, (Pretty picture of Pretty girls and Big Technology), without trying to justify it through important sounding horseshit, is the very thing which is going to make people look down upon him.
One should leave the ego alone. It'll take care of itself when you follow the things you love without worrying about how others judge you.
And most interestingly. . . I think Shirow actually likes story and character most of all! --Yes, I know, there's virtually none of either anywhere to be found in his work. But I remember reading an old, old interview where he said that when he was young, he preferred reading girl's manga over the boy's manga. And then he quickly promised that there would be no drama or love in his work, as though that were something shameful.
The guy grew up in Japanese society and he's got a repressed personality? Well, there's a shock!
One of the best insights into human nature I ever heard was this:
"Judge the potential by the inhibition."
I hope Shirow grows up soon. He's spent an entire career so far avoiding himself.
-FL
Yes, of course you did.
"Dull characters"? "Uninvolving plots"? "Mediocre production values"?
It'd be curious to know which one or possibly two episodes you saw in order to form such balanced and informed insights.
Funny part is that you'll probably end up seeing Firefly properly through anyway and grudgingly really liking it. Something of such high quality doesn't die easily; it'll be around for a while.
Heh. --Yeah. You'll see it unless you posses true stubbornness, which I somehow doubt since that would take a timbre of character which your brand of 'insight' seems to suggest you completely lack.
Anyway, good luck with the 'cool' attitude you're working on, there. I'm sure your friends have just suitcases full of respect for you.
I know I do!
-FL
Thanks!
-FL
Proficiency in spelling and grammar are by no means prerequisites for using an email program, no matter where you happen to work.
And anyway, this would be a consultant hired by SCO. Nobody involved with that scam can be a highly advanced human, I would think. Greed kills brain cells.
-FL
Joss withdrew the bulk of his influence long before Buffy finally wrapped, and he had very little to do with 'Angel' other than its launch and a small handful of episodes. (The really good ones). I found beyond the Joss episodes and a few sparks here and there, that most of 'Angel' was of very middle-to-shit grade, and so -gasp- didn't waste my time with it. But that's TV in a nutshell.
Firefly was different. You should see the DVD set before you judge. It's a real step up in terms of Whedon's growth as a creator; much more complex and refined than Buffy in many aspects. I found the most of it quite compelling and felt as though he was just getting rolling before the series was unfairly axed.
As Joss was quoted as saying, "If the movie is a success, then maybe they'll give me my own series!" I hope this turns out to be the case. Films are far too small to give the kind of space required by a cast of such interesting character puzzles as those in Firefly.
-FL
While the Beast overall might seem complex and baffling in its motives, each cell is pretty straight forward in it's wiring. Two layers of complexity are all which are required for them to play their roles. --Layer One being the Objective, (Greed), and Layer Two being the lies to smooth it over.
You may be right in that the Lawyers at SCO are probably grinning at the big piles of Microsoft cash rolling in to help them, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if a portion of that money were being skimmed. But I doubt such an outcome was their original objective. Greed just wants to take. Greed always prefers the route of least resistance because having to think and plan and work are forms of giving. And, yes, I believe it's that simple.
-FL
Erm, no - Adolf attacked Russia in early July.
'Erm', yourself, fool. I know when the attack was launched, thank you very much! And it was a moronic battle decision. The Nazi soldiers didn't have the proper supplies or plans or anything to mount an attack on Russia. They didn't even have cold weather clothing prepared in stand-by. Winter generally follows summer, and only a chowder-head like Hitler is full of wishful thinking enough to not realize that to fight Russia is to fight Russia in the snow. Period. Just look at the results of the battle.
And I'm sorry, but I didn't realize we were supposed to be working with first names when it came to, 'Adolf'. Are you one of those sick fucks, or just a jack-ass?
-FL
Please judge for yourself. .
Here's one possible way this can go. .
Who does the Auto Industry tip its hat to? That's right. Big Oil.
Who controls Big Oil? That's right. Evil Government.
Does Evil Government like Open Source?
No. They Do Not. In fact, Homeland Security is very deliberately run on Microsoft, because Gates is willing to play ball and put Big Brother code into Windows.
All these people are in bed with each other, and the unwritten rules of conduct and old croney secret winks makes this whole scenario look dangerous to me. All the Auto Industry has to do is put up a half-assed show and then deliberately take a fall, allowing SCO to win, thus setting huge legal precedent in regards to the legality of Linux.
Still, I have faith in Evil's tendency to be run by a bunch of coke-heads. One favorite quote from Colin Powell. .
Yeah. The White House is run on sleeping pills. (As compared to Jolt Cola and Mountain Dew driven code monkeys where Linux found its birth. --I think Caffeine is one of the very few 'good' drugs in the world; peps up brain activity without altering awareness or screwing with perception.) So, really, there's all kinds of ways SCO's big play can go wrong. Plus there's the unexpected random factors which control freeks can't deal with and never take into account exactly because they are control freeks.
Still. . . with a suddenly visible mechanism in place which can vault SCO to the top, I am at once feeling a lot more attentive!
-FL
I always thought Defender was too edgy and 'cocaine'. My hockey-player friends liked it. I thought Pac Man and Donkey Kong were much nicer. Heck, Asteroids was a much better deal. But this guy doesn't like GTA? Well, neither do I, but his reasoning is so fear-based. "Bad People Breaking the LAW!"
Where do these people come from?
He believes terrorism is a real thing? Here I am thinking that people are finally beginning to wake up, and along comes a creative type like 'Defender' guy, and he's out there merrily helping the whole media con-job along with idiot anti-terrorist games.
Come to think of it. .
"Defender". . ? "Robotron". . ?
He's creatively geared to thinking in terms of worlds of violence closing in on the good guy, who fortunately, is armed to the teeth with superior technology.
How is his new terrorist game any different?
Shmuck.
-FL
Die-offs certainly have happened, and Ice Ages don't come along for no reason.
Academia can be used to either enlighten or to bury one's head. False security is more dangerous than none at all.
-FL
There are certain realities which are going to become painfully self-evident over the next few years. .
1. We Are Not Alone, (and that aliens are not good guys. Not by a long shot.)
2. Comet disaster is something we are going to have to start living with fairly soon.
These realities, which I have talked about at some length in the past, are well understood by Upper Management, and they seem to feel that maintaining careful control of how public awareness develops is vital to their 'plans'. (Plans, which, btw, are doomed to fail simply because that's one of the most reliable features of the dementia known as, 'Megalomania'.)
Anyway. . , I hope everybody continues enjoying the show. NASA puts on a pretty good one, even if their whole operation is littered with idiocy and decay. --Again, the features of Megalomania loud and clear. Bush is a coke-head and Hitler attacked Russia in the frickin' winter time! This does not mean, unfortunately, that masses and masses of damage cannot still be the result.
-FL
You'll be shocked.
I can't convey just how massive the difference between the re-release and the original is. I'm hoping to make DVD copies of the laser disk version just so that they are available for my friends.
It's astonishing to think that such a good film is actually generally not available except in its current variety of crappy forms. Your reaction to Star Wars was almost EXACTLY the same as mine until I saw a rare original cut.
Script, acting, direction, etc., these are not the problem, though they appear to be so on the surface. There's something much deeper at fault in the normal copies available to the public.
-FL
Ep 2. Horrid. Not good. Tepid. Grueling. --The only true success, in that Lucas FINALLY achieved his goal; a return to the old serials, but with a big budget. Congratulations, George. You did it. Now can we please get back to the medium at hand?
Ep 4. Wonderful. This was the largest grossing film, (next to Gone With the Wind), for a reason. People went nuts over this film in 1977, and I among them. If you can't remember why, then you're probably watching some crappy version. Get the laser disk version, if you can. Believe me. Wide screen, original cut, no extra bullshit added, color and sound restored to original glory. The re-release put me to sleep. The laser disk version had me on the edge of my seat.
Ep 5. Yes Awesome in all respects. Yoda done right. No question.
Ep 6. Yes, weakest of the original three, but strangely enough, I thought the re-release was a big improvement. There were subtle edits to the Ewok battle which made it far more believeable. Though, the extended Jabba's Lair stuff blew.
That's my 5 cents, anyway.
-FL
The metaphors fly fast and thick, and probably without intention on the part of the creators. It is certainly a shame that Lucas has lost his creative balancing mechanism, --which I believe, consisted of several people who had both the ability to argue with him and the power to make those arguments stick. That's not the case anymore.
I wonder what moral is like over at the Ranch. . ? There are some really smart people working on these films. It must be frustrating to be tied into serving a broken machine.
Still, I am certainly looking forward to the next film. It'll be neat to see how it all plays out. You can map the rise and fall of the U.S. and the world on the parallels presented in the Star Wars prequals.
Has anybody ever tried a Phantom Edit of the second film? I might give it a shot; although, I have a sneaking suspicion that I'd only be left with about 50 minutes of footage after all the chops necessary in that monster of a mistake! I'd chop whole battles, like that idiot thing with Yoda and whoever the hell that guy was with the bent saber. What the heck was that scene even there for? Too bad it's not possible to change Anakin from a weenie girli-boy into an actual figure of threat and power.
Hmm. . . Maybe I'd only be left with 30 minutes. Still, it's amazing what can be done with a pair of scissors. The Phantom Edit of the first film was an amazing tribute to the power of good editing!
Perhaps if one were to combine the 'Attack of the Clones' with the upcoming film, there will be enough material to hybridize into a whole feature.
We'll see.
Wouldn't it be weird if the third one does suck at all?
Whoa. . !
-FL
"You mean, there's nearly 800 new viruses a month? Wow! I'm sure glad I have my copy of '_______' to protect me from having to know what's really going on in the dark and chaotic world just beyond my telephone/cable connection! And now those terrorists are recruiting psychologists, too? To know what I think in order to get me to click on the activate-virus button? Oi, Crikey! The FEAR!!!! Somebody should bomb somebody! Somebody should take away my rights! I'm sure glad I live in Australia which has the back-bone to support our two other brothers in the Axis of Assholes; the U.S. and the U.K.!"
I also noted that the article neatly throws the whistle-blower under the umbrella of suspicion;
Marvelous. If this meme gets out, the public will then, not be allowed, to police itself. Who wants to be the target of an anti-terrorist investigation, after all?
Modern Media is a joke. It takes a conscious effort to remain calm and light-humored while reading this kind of garbage.
-FL
So the big bad secret government asses lost control of their little SARS scam. (Toronto wasn't in the plans, was it? You fools. Of course you don't have control. You never did. You never will. But don't let me stop you from telling those sweet lies to yourselves. .
Avian flu, my ass. Thanks for making all the chickens sick. You twits. I'm sure you have that all under control, do you? All going according to plans, eh? Get everybody all scared so that they won't worry so much about whatever idiocy is due around election time. Make sure they'll all welcome whatever insane measures Bush/Kerry/Fearless Leader will implement. Mercury laden, prosecution-protected Eli Lilly vaccines administered at gun-point, while plans for the Draft kick into high gear. All the while strictly trying to ignore the countdown to the Rain of the Comets due, well, right about now actually. But that's okay, cuz coke-head Bush can duck into a hollowed-out mountain in the hopes of riding out the whole affair. (The man has a sponge for a brain. He could give BSE to a cow!)
Yeah. I can't WAIT to see what you silly twits have planned.
Jeezus. Why can't you just get over your pathetic fears, get out into the world and start living instead of trying to control the heck out of everything? The big shift doesn't have to be a frickin' nightmare military lock-down, you know! The world may bite from time to time, but some of us have these things called, 'Spines'.
Sheesh. Kids.
-FL
Ah. Those were the good old days. .
-FL -Plugh
It has its place, as all things do, but I cannot get very excited by the prospect of 3D eating up all the funding and the talent which was once reserved for 2D works. --Not when the change is to increase the superficial elements at the expense of flexibility and imagination. Technically, a 2D animator can do anything a 3D animator can do. The reverse isn't true, though. Think about that! And this has an effect upon the viewer as well. Watch enough of 3D stuff, think in 3D enough, and certain possibilities begin to fade from one's awareness. Fading possibilities is a scary thing to me. It's not so much about taste as it is about limiting our ways of seeing and thinking!
Now, I admit, I don't really have any stake in the matter as it sounds as though you may, so I'm just shooting my mouth off whereas for you it probably means your livelihood. But that doesn't change the fact. And the fact is that after having grown up watching animations which were not limited, I do not like viewing something which makes me feel so suddenly contained. It always feels as though something is missing, not added with 3D.
Perhaps the answer can be found in a hybrid of the two. I've seen some movies which incorporate the strengths of both. Those seem to work. But pure 'Pixar'. . ? Fine. Whatever. It is what it is. But it isn't a replacement for a proper animation.
Appleseed, the first book anyway, was a cool comic with a wonderful feel. The 'video game' version, from looking at the trailer, looks like pure surface to me. Cold.
-FL
Anime should be driven by people who can draw. Cool pictures are something I can't make; it's a skill. Cool pictures to me and most people are a sort of magic which enthralls and excites. They have spark! By contrast, I or anybody else can sit down at a PC and with half an effort make our own "Red v.s. Blue" stuff. Poof! The instant you can make the magic yourself, the magic is no longer magic.
Welcome to the world of souless video game cut scenes. If you can afford the graphics card, then you too can make movies. Hooray.
Let me dig up a quote here, from "Thieves and Kings" guy, Mark Oakley's website here where he uses a 'Matrix-ism' which stuck in my mind to get his point across. (He was griping about exactly this stuff, though regarding Disney's move in the same 3D direction. His editorial is still up. Oakley's work is scorchingly good, but he's bloody slow! I can't tell if he's got actual talent or if he just gets there by taking his time.) Anyways:
Shirow's work always seemed kind of souless to me, so maybe this move is appropriate.
-FL
2. Studio Ghibli. Look them up, watch their movies. "It's so good, it's no longer Anime." Disney distributes their works.
3. Perspective. When you're a highschool kid there's something very exciting about the kinds of stories and the lives of the characters presented in Anime. Role models in the West are idiotic and depressing. "Friends" "Survivor" "Britney Spears". Limiting garbage. Anime, by contrast, presents entire worlds, and whole fleets of characters exploring every issue under the sun, and all from a Saturday Morning Cartoon level of maturity, which is entirely appealing and appropriate for young teens, who are by definition, immature. Think Saturday Morning Cartoons but cubed, done with a budget by people who can actually draw, and zero breakfast cereal tie-ins. I'd have loved to have had access to that when I was 10! Best I got was G-Force and Macross, both of which were awesome at the time, but don't hold anything useful for me as an adult.
Honestly? Anime has its place. If you don't immediately 'get it', then you probably never will and probably aren't supposed to. If that's the case, then Studio Ghibli will serve you just fine.
-FL
How far did you read? I found by the time it got into book 4, Shirow had descended into bullshit politico-speak, seemingly in the hopes of sounding as though he had something important to say.
All I cared about were Deunan and Bri and what would happen in their lives, but the story slipped away from that, and they seemed to lose their spark. Shirow got lost in the world building and forgot that the average reader doesn't care AT ALL about the back-room gear-workings of his environment. It's the difference between reading the "Lord of the Rings" and the "Silmarilion." --Except that the Silmarilion wasn't a half-assed mess.
Perhaps if Shirow focused more on developing the souls of his characters and his world rather than on illustrating a bunch of poster-girls, he'd have become a real story teller. As it is, he's just an exhibitionist who probably knows deep in the night just how much he sucks.
-FL
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't "playing along" entail maintaining an irrational fear of the 'evil' 666 number? I certainly don't do that. I DO, however, maintain a very rational awareness of groups who feel the need to pull 9-11 style stunts, or who engage in genocide because they believe they are the 'chosen' ones. I'm talking about reading massive social trends which are often, at their roots, based on irrational ideas. To pretend that those trends do not exist or that they will have no affect if only one pretends hard enough they do not exist is not only ineffective, but endangering.
Ignore Madonna, and look what happens to our kids. Whereas if people were to openly examine things and discuss them without fear or reactionary hostility, then the box of knowledge grows bigger, we have more to work with and the situation changes. The 'Ignore it' system only works if everybody young and old, decides to ignore Madonna. That's not realistic. Further, the 'Ignore it' system won't stop other groups from actively organizing along their lines of belief, and possibly, eventually affecting your life. The Palestinians are learning this as the Jews did before them.
The simple trick is to remain objective. To be a skeptic in the truest sense, (which I should add, is not the same breed at all as the hostile, "Skeptic's Dictionary" type, which is simply the other end of the scale of irrational belief).
Shutting things out only reduces the amount of available knowledge one has regarding the surrounding world. This limits options and reduces the ability to make informed actions.
It always pays to look and to gauge all aspects of the world if one wants to act responsibly within it.
-FL
It doesn't really matter if the symbols and magic numbers themselves mean anything. Not when the cold, hard fact of the matter is that there are hidden people with gobs of wealth, power and access to knowledge which rest of us only gets through a filter, if at all. When people like that are running the show, then hell yes, I'm going to stop and look up when I hear the number 666 added to an asteroid name or such.
Chicken or the Egg; after a while it doesn't matter. When it comes to broad metaphoric symbols, they still always tend to add up to the same thing. Self-fulfilling prophecy may be silly, but it remains a big deal when the people fulfilling it can affect everybody's life through their antics.
-FL