I haven't posted in 4 months because there's nothing I am going to bother with. Things have happened like the Nobel Peace Prize which I am pretending doesn't exist at this point but for the most part I've been being constructive and using my new mission-specific blog. Until this. This doesn't even merit an explanation because if you can't derive from the title and one paragraph alone why I'm absolutely correct, you need to be locked in a padded room.
Saw 6 is coming out in 2 weeks. Um...............Saw 5 didn't even come out one year ago and there's already a new movie. It's a "halloween thing."
I'm guessing Saw 6 will just be Ben Franklin and Abe Lincoln and the Adams and other great Americans locked in a gigantic Hollywood microcosm and each one faces an incomprehensible patriotism challenge to which the expected answer is the antithesis of all that is or ever was good, decent, or American. In the end they all die a horrible death and a movie producer takes the reigns of the New World Order.
Please get rid of any first amendment protection that allows Hollywood to do what they want. I'm sorry, but this is incredibly unacceptable. Words can not describe this.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Empire Total War - F this game
A review for those who actually play Total War.
Oh, god. Where to start with this release. Maybe an intro paragraph entirely unnecessary because the title f the game is self-explanatory . It's the 18th century, a period of colonization and mass emigration, ideological revolution, theological revolution. Revolution, in other words. So obviously the game encompasses the entire western world and leaves the other four continents to serve as land for the raping.
Empire started, in the minds of Total War players at the least, as a dream after Medieval included musketeers and cannons at the end of the game (which i might mention were 100 times more reliable and lethal than any unit in Empire Total War with the exception of quicklime and grenadiers and percussive exploding shells). Everyone went "Oh, hells yes. They should make a game with real guns. And Napoleon." In the mean time, Imperial Glory came out, essentially a carbon copy of total war but with much smaller units, and of course, realtime naval battles, completely identical to the ones later implemented in ETW. Then they showed us pretty screenshots of ships on fire on the high seas and whatnot, showing us that we needed new computers if we hadn't gotten them already. It looked awesome and everyone thought it would be great because, after four successful total war games and and four expansion packs, how could they possibly go wrong this time?
Oh.....creative assembly. I used to believe in you. To put it briefly, I wouldn't buy this game if Sega sent a truck full of games, girls, energy drinks, Pocky, enough materials to build a BD's on my street and staff it from which I would receive all profits, and my own personal contingent of Creative Assembly developers to both a) Give me a job as either a programmer or a game media designer with their company and b) stand gaurd while i play the game and endure me throwing stones at them every time something pisses me off and c) a sixteen thousand dollar Alienware machine to play it on. Unless of course my friends peer pressure me into doing it so we can kill each other and strangers online, which is granted.
Empire Total War is without a doubt the biggest pile of fail I have ever seen come out of the gaming industry in 20 years, and trust me, I'm including incredibly nightmarishly awful games like ET, Cyberia, Shenmue, Summoner 2, Mechwarrior 4, you name it. And no, it's not because it's a terrible game, it's because it's a horrible misrepresentation of what Creative Assembly is truly capable of, which is to say briefly, far greater than this game.
Don't get me wrong: It's good enough for me to make 15 gb of room to install it, and spend a LOT of time playing it because my game for whatever reason ran as slow as possible, to the extent that as I did in every total war game, I took over the entire campaign map and then purposely incited revolutions and whatnot just to have someone to fight. Having said that, it's a disappointment and it absolutely does not improve over the first four games in any way at all.
There are new features: Naval battles, garrisoned buildings, DLC, the Road to Independence campaign (which is fun after you're finished literally assaulting forts every turn and losing 800 men for no reason), the technology research tree, which rather makes the game a pain in the ass because the only way to learn it peacefully and quickly is through diplomacy, requiring you to have lots of money, meaning you have to take over everything to get money, negating any point in advancing your technology or in being diplomatic if by the time you finally get rifles you already control the world and the only enemies left are your allies, the united provinces, who have supported you honorably for 200 turns, and achievements.
Unfortunately, this game is likely to be infinitely better for newbies to the franchise than it is for die hard TW fans. We've endured the same relatively awful AI and awful glitches for years and years and assumed they would be fixed to make the new game enjoyable. They weren't and they still haven't been in the three month since I wrote this review.
At least 5 times out of 10, your units will entirely ignore your commands. The other five times, assuming they even attempt to follow orders, they'll likely get themselves killed, such as marching towards an enemy you tell them to shoot, but instead of shooting when they're in range, they just keep walking straight into them. Or grenadiers, which although they are an incredibly useful and awesome unit, are retarded all the same. They have to be within 10 feet to throw their grenades, which is fucking stupid, because they lob their grenades 100 feet in the air and drop them down on an enemies head, entirely unnecessary when you can overhand through a grenade at them from 100 feet away and still kill just as many. Because of the arch, trying to throw grenades at units that are running away becomes a pain, although admittedly using grenades on routing units or moving units is just trying to be mean to them.
Equally as annoying is the fact that, just like the Aztecs in MTW2, the natives are insanely overpowered. They run far faster than your units, and do far more damage, and their cannons actually work better than yours a lot of the time. However there fortunately is a bright side to this as they do tend to break morale without too much effort, whether they are your own units or enemies. The natives are way overpowered and too fast, but occasionally so are the other factions. Like the Sarmatians in RTW, the Marathan units easily raped so many of my units the first time I went to India, it got to a point where I literally had sent an expedition to India (as it is a requirement for Britain's victory), three full armies with my two best 10 star generals, full of top level elite troops, thinking they could at least gain a foothold and hold off until I sent reinforcements, seeing as it is a ways away. They all got systematically raped by the AI's new perseverance. The same thing happened in France, but worse. I sent an army to place-hold my position for 1 turn before i could get more armies there to support it, across the English Channel, and as soon as the turn ended, the French attacked me 9 times in a row, losing each battle until they finally killed my army by attrition.
The AI is far more aggressive this time around, though still somewhat retarded. As I said, the same thing happened in India, which finally pissed me off. Losing three 10 star generals and thousands of troops made me rather angry: I literally sent 30,000 men to India after-wards, and trained over 10,000 more after conquering it. The first 30,000 conquered all of available Asia, 10,000 of them dying in the process through battles and through strategic blunders on my part, such as splitting my fleet into multiple single ships to carry so many armies (a strategy that worked well in previous Total War titles, unless there were ships right near your fleet). Speaking of, shipbuilding is an arduous process this time around and you simply can't wait 4 turns for two ships. Unfortunately, as the AI is far more aggressive, it also literally violates the programming of the game.
The AI will, at whatever point, literally spawn armies on the spot if you invade them. You'll march on Paris and you'll be able to SEE the city and see that it only has 2 armies, and then they will attack you the next turn with 10 armies. Granted Paris can train about 5 units at once in the beginning, that's no explanation for 15000 troops coming out of nowhere. It's like Barbarian Invasion except that the entire tribe springs forth from the nitrogen in the air or something this time on the spot.
It's pretty though, that should make up for it, right? Despite the common sense needed to realize how much better the game looks, some reviewers seem to overlook the fact that the graphics engine is very much revamped from MTW2. I play all the Total War games regularly and I can easily tell how much better ETW looks than MTW. The smoke effects, heat distortion, explosions, quick-lime, musket fire, cannon fire, fire fire, shading, and water look beautiful, even on low graphics, which I'm using. However this comes at a price because the performance of the game is notably awful.
For those using AMD processors, I wouldn't even bother installing. You be the judge, as this makes no sense to me: The first time i played the game, and the machine I'm currently using, is a Pentium D 805 dual core running at 2 ghz, with 1 gb of DDR2 667 and a 7950 GT OC 512mb GDDR2 card. The game runs absolutely fine NOW on this machine, but the first time I did my Britain campaign where I took over the world, the AI turns (with ai move turned off obviously) would literally take MINUTES. The battles run fine of course, but the Campaign map is god awful. The computer I'm writing this on is brand new (though by no means a monster) - Turion X2 2ghz, 4 gb DDR2 800 mhz, geforce 7150 with 1900mb ram. The game runs absolutely horribly on this computer, on low graphics. The campaign map however runs perfectly fine - on this machine. Frankly, the campaign map is absolutely stupid in this game. Every single object on the map has a shadow and moves with the wind, that's thousands of trees, making it laggier than hell.
Speaking of the campaign map, it's actually much better this time, from a game-play perspective, ignoring the performance. Instead of everything being in the city, the parts of your region are spread out. Colleges and churches and shipyards and farms and the like are their own towns. and you control everything that develops. Also, new towns automatically grow in your regions according to the growth rate in the region and nation, which is affected by technology and tax policies and your government. The campaign is now two turns per year, i assume it was the only way to make the game last relatively long, since it seems to crash at 1829. The campaign map is the same as always, with the addition of those great changes. There are the same stupid quirks about it, as well as new ones. For example an army will still, instead of marching straight to a spot right in front of them, decide its better to go in a 5 turn march in a circle to get there. Or for instance, when an army gets off a ship, they have no move points, which is also stupid. There are some neat things now, like if a fleet is carrying an army, you can tell that fleet to attack anything on land and it will know to tell the army to do it. Unfortunately, the campaign play seems stifled this time. It is a race to control trade resources and make money and its hard to make money it seems now because everyone already has dibs on the trade theaters by the time you get a trade ship there, and you don't want to declare war on the entire world at once, do you, especially without any money. The first time i played and took over the entire world, by the time I had 50 or so provinces, I was raking in serious money. I make about a million per turn on my old Britain campaign. I don't know how i did it: all i did was gain the colonies first and then capture Paris, which eventually had a population of 200 million. In my new campaign, I'm lucky to make 5000 money in a turn. I have no idea what the deal is.
Also unfortunately and imo, downright stupid, you can't cheat in the game anymore. At all. You don't necessarily need to cheat, but cheating was in the first 4 games and frankly it was nice to be able to increase the population of your towns in less than 500 turns, or actually have an army. Another stupid thing missing since MTW2 is AI controlled reinforcements. Granted that in RTW the AI would often get your 10 star generals and elite troops killed, the fact that you could have EPIC battles with tens of thousands of men was amazing. That's how i played all of RTW. I actually used realistic legion sizes of 12000 men and marched several armies around as one army, the way it went in real life. It's so retarded now that your reinforcements WAIT for your first 20 units to die before they enter the field, when the enemy can have 30000 units or more if they want.
The absolute worst part of this game is the fact that it's based entirely on Steam. Valve and their quest to control the gaming market is frankly pissing off everyone I know very quickly, and now I'm pissed off too. The only purpose Steam serves for this game is to piss off those people who pirated the game, as all patching and xfire use is done through Steam. Total War players have downloaded their own patches and taken care of their own game for over a decade, we don't need steam. Fuck steam. Also, the Special Forces pack became available for free, as did the Elite units of the west pack, like a day after they announced it. Or it will be free when the new patch comes out. They didn't think it through when they put the game on the steam network, especially if DLC becomes free after people paid for it.
If you have a 5000 dollar computer with three way SLI each using a 2000 dollar video card and liquid nitrogen cooling and 12+ gb of DDR3 then I recommend this game. Otherwise, fuck that. Wait till it's like 15 bucks on Steam sometime. In 2011. After Napoleon has come out and thoroughly disappointed everyone again.
Oh, god. Where to start with this release. Maybe an intro paragraph entirely unnecessary because the title f the game is self-explanatory . It's the 18th century, a period of colonization and mass emigration, ideological revolution, theological revolution. Revolution, in other words. So obviously the game encompasses the entire western world and leaves the other four continents to serve as land for the raping.
Empire started, in the minds of Total War players at the least, as a dream after Medieval included musketeers and cannons at the end of the game (which i might mention were 100 times more reliable and lethal than any unit in Empire Total War with the exception of quicklime and grenadiers and percussive exploding shells). Everyone went "Oh, hells yes. They should make a game with real guns. And Napoleon." In the mean time, Imperial Glory came out, essentially a carbon copy of total war but with much smaller units, and of course, realtime naval battles, completely identical to the ones later implemented in ETW. Then they showed us pretty screenshots of ships on fire on the high seas and whatnot, showing us that we needed new computers if we hadn't gotten them already. It looked awesome and everyone thought it would be great because, after four successful total war games and and four expansion packs, how could they possibly go wrong this time?
Oh.....creative assembly. I used to believe in you. To put it briefly, I wouldn't buy this game if Sega sent a truck full of games, girls, energy drinks, Pocky, enough materials to build a BD's on my street and staff it from which I would receive all profits, and my own personal contingent of Creative Assembly developers to both a) Give me a job as either a programmer or a game media designer with their company and b) stand gaurd while i play the game and endure me throwing stones at them every time something pisses me off and c) a sixteen thousand dollar Alienware machine to play it on. Unless of course my friends peer pressure me into doing it so we can kill each other and strangers online, which is granted.
Empire Total War is without a doubt the biggest pile of fail I have ever seen come out of the gaming industry in 20 years, and trust me, I'm including incredibly nightmarishly awful games like ET, Cyberia, Shenmue, Summoner 2, Mechwarrior 4, you name it. And no, it's not because it's a terrible game, it's because it's a horrible misrepresentation of what Creative Assembly is truly capable of, which is to say briefly, far greater than this game.
Don't get me wrong: It's good enough for me to make 15 gb of room to install it, and spend a LOT of time playing it because my game for whatever reason ran as slow as possible, to the extent that as I did in every total war game, I took over the entire campaign map and then purposely incited revolutions and whatnot just to have someone to fight. Having said that, it's a disappointment and it absolutely does not improve over the first four games in any way at all.
There are new features: Naval battles, garrisoned buildings, DLC, the Road to Independence campaign (which is fun after you're finished literally assaulting forts every turn and losing 800 men for no reason), the technology research tree, which rather makes the game a pain in the ass because the only way to learn it peacefully and quickly is through diplomacy, requiring you to have lots of money, meaning you have to take over everything to get money, negating any point in advancing your technology or in being diplomatic if by the time you finally get rifles you already control the world and the only enemies left are your allies, the united provinces, who have supported you honorably for 200 turns, and achievements.
Unfortunately, this game is likely to be infinitely better for newbies to the franchise than it is for die hard TW fans. We've endured the same relatively awful AI and awful glitches for years and years and assumed they would be fixed to make the new game enjoyable. They weren't and they still haven't been in the three month since I wrote this review.
At least 5 times out of 10, your units will entirely ignore your commands. The other five times, assuming they even attempt to follow orders, they'll likely get themselves killed, such as marching towards an enemy you tell them to shoot, but instead of shooting when they're in range, they just keep walking straight into them. Or grenadiers, which although they are an incredibly useful and awesome unit, are retarded all the same. They have to be within 10 feet to throw their grenades, which is fucking stupid, because they lob their grenades 100 feet in the air and drop them down on an enemies head, entirely unnecessary when you can overhand through a grenade at them from 100 feet away and still kill just as many. Because of the arch, trying to throw grenades at units that are running away becomes a pain, although admittedly using grenades on routing units or moving units is just trying to be mean to them.
Equally as annoying is the fact that, just like the Aztecs in MTW2, the natives are insanely overpowered. They run far faster than your units, and do far more damage, and their cannons actually work better than yours a lot of the time. However there fortunately is a bright side to this as they do tend to break morale without too much effort, whether they are your own units or enemies. The natives are way overpowered and too fast, but occasionally so are the other factions. Like the Sarmatians in RTW, the Marathan units easily raped so many of my units the first time I went to India, it got to a point where I literally had sent an expedition to India (as it is a requirement for Britain's victory), three full armies with my two best 10 star generals, full of top level elite troops, thinking they could at least gain a foothold and hold off until I sent reinforcements, seeing as it is a ways away. They all got systematically raped by the AI's new perseverance. The same thing happened in France, but worse. I sent an army to place-hold my position for 1 turn before i could get more armies there to support it, across the English Channel, and as soon as the turn ended, the French attacked me 9 times in a row, losing each battle until they finally killed my army by attrition.
The AI is far more aggressive this time around, though still somewhat retarded. As I said, the same thing happened in India, which finally pissed me off. Losing three 10 star generals and thousands of troops made me rather angry: I literally sent 30,000 men to India after-wards, and trained over 10,000 more after conquering it. The first 30,000 conquered all of available Asia, 10,000 of them dying in the process through battles and through strategic blunders on my part, such as splitting my fleet into multiple single ships to carry so many armies (a strategy that worked well in previous Total War titles, unless there were ships right near your fleet). Speaking of, shipbuilding is an arduous process this time around and you simply can't wait 4 turns for two ships. Unfortunately, as the AI is far more aggressive, it also literally violates the programming of the game.
The AI will, at whatever point, literally spawn armies on the spot if you invade them. You'll march on Paris and you'll be able to SEE the city and see that it only has 2 armies, and then they will attack you the next turn with 10 armies. Granted Paris can train about 5 units at once in the beginning, that's no explanation for 15000 troops coming out of nowhere. It's like Barbarian Invasion except that the entire tribe springs forth from the nitrogen in the air or something this time on the spot.
It's pretty though, that should make up for it, right? Despite the common sense needed to realize how much better the game looks, some reviewers seem to overlook the fact that the graphics engine is very much revamped from MTW2. I play all the Total War games regularly and I can easily tell how much better ETW looks than MTW. The smoke effects, heat distortion, explosions, quick-lime, musket fire, cannon fire, fire fire, shading, and water look beautiful, even on low graphics, which I'm using. However this comes at a price because the performance of the game is notably awful.
For those using AMD processors, I wouldn't even bother installing. You be the judge, as this makes no sense to me: The first time i played the game, and the machine I'm currently using, is a Pentium D 805 dual core running at 2 ghz, with 1 gb of DDR2 667 and a 7950 GT OC 512mb GDDR2 card. The game runs absolutely fine NOW on this machine, but the first time I did my Britain campaign where I took over the world, the AI turns (with ai move turned off obviously) would literally take MINUTES. The battles run fine of course, but the Campaign map is god awful. The computer I'm writing this on is brand new (though by no means a monster) - Turion X2 2ghz, 4 gb DDR2 800 mhz, geforce 7150 with 1900mb ram. The game runs absolutely horribly on this computer, on low graphics. The campaign map however runs perfectly fine - on this machine. Frankly, the campaign map is absolutely stupid in this game. Every single object on the map has a shadow and moves with the wind, that's thousands of trees, making it laggier than hell.
Speaking of the campaign map, it's actually much better this time, from a game-play perspective, ignoring the performance. Instead of everything being in the city, the parts of your region are spread out. Colleges and churches and shipyards and farms and the like are their own towns. and you control everything that develops. Also, new towns automatically grow in your regions according to the growth rate in the region and nation, which is affected by technology and tax policies and your government. The campaign is now two turns per year, i assume it was the only way to make the game last relatively long, since it seems to crash at 1829. The campaign map is the same as always, with the addition of those great changes. There are the same stupid quirks about it, as well as new ones. For example an army will still, instead of marching straight to a spot right in front of them, decide its better to go in a 5 turn march in a circle to get there. Or for instance, when an army gets off a ship, they have no move points, which is also stupid. There are some neat things now, like if a fleet is carrying an army, you can tell that fleet to attack anything on land and it will know to tell the army to do it. Unfortunately, the campaign play seems stifled this time. It is a race to control trade resources and make money and its hard to make money it seems now because everyone already has dibs on the trade theaters by the time you get a trade ship there, and you don't want to declare war on the entire world at once, do you, especially without any money. The first time i played and took over the entire world, by the time I had 50 or so provinces, I was raking in serious money. I make about a million per turn on my old Britain campaign. I don't know how i did it: all i did was gain the colonies first and then capture Paris, which eventually had a population of 200 million. In my new campaign, I'm lucky to make 5000 money in a turn. I have no idea what the deal is.
Also unfortunately and imo, downright stupid, you can't cheat in the game anymore. At all. You don't necessarily need to cheat, but cheating was in the first 4 games and frankly it was nice to be able to increase the population of your towns in less than 500 turns, or actually have an army. Another stupid thing missing since MTW2 is AI controlled reinforcements. Granted that in RTW the AI would often get your 10 star generals and elite troops killed, the fact that you could have EPIC battles with tens of thousands of men was amazing. That's how i played all of RTW. I actually used realistic legion sizes of 12000 men and marched several armies around as one army, the way it went in real life. It's so retarded now that your reinforcements WAIT for your first 20 units to die before they enter the field, when the enemy can have 30000 units or more if they want.
The absolute worst part of this game is the fact that it's based entirely on Steam. Valve and their quest to control the gaming market is frankly pissing off everyone I know very quickly, and now I'm pissed off too. The only purpose Steam serves for this game is to piss off those people who pirated the game, as all patching and xfire use is done through Steam. Total War players have downloaded their own patches and taken care of their own game for over a decade, we don't need steam. Fuck steam. Also, the Special Forces pack became available for free, as did the Elite units of the west pack, like a day after they announced it. Or it will be free when the new patch comes out. They didn't think it through when they put the game on the steam network, especially if DLC becomes free after people paid for it.
If you have a 5000 dollar computer with three way SLI each using a 2000 dollar video card and liquid nitrogen cooling and 12+ gb of DDR3 then I recommend this game. Otherwise, fuck that. Wait till it's like 15 bucks on Steam sometime. In 2011. After Napoleon has come out and thoroughly disappointed everyone again.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Windows 7 Fail
I've always been a supporter of Microsoft. That's not to be confused with a fanboy. I frequently curse and wish death upon Microsoft and it's employees when their shit goes wrong, which, when it's happening, seems like all the time, but in reality it's not. However there is an underlying network of stupid decisions and bullshit that Microsoft and other major IT companies have done that all comes together so beautifully to make you angry enough to say, smash your head through an LCD display, or break your keyboard in half, or whatever.
So when I get fucked out of responding to the Windows 7 RC survey 2 days after the beta ends, that royally pisses me off. I had good and bad things to say about 7. Very good things. And then literally an hour ago Seven decided to take a shit on my pc and now I am utterly pissed off in multiple different ways.
First and most egregiously, the schedule Microsoft sent us was wrong. Not just the dates were wrong, the information was fallacious. First of all, the beta did not warn us 2 weeks in advance that it was ending. Second of all, the beta does NOT shut down every 2 hours. It stays on, whilst incessantly warning you that there are 0 hours left in the beta. Then without warning, without asking, it simply bluescreens your computer in the middle of whatever you're doing. There's a difference between blue screening and shutting down, please learn it Microsoft. I'm trying NOT to smash any of my computers or equipment right now so I'll be kind and I won't go on a brutal rant about it. Needless to say, it is fucking stupid that you would close down the survey 2 days after the beta ends. Do you honestly think we have all the time in the world on the 4th of July, or, ANY weekend, to immediately devote to the survey? I didn't even get to use Seven for but 7 days because my old laptop wouldn't cooperate with it. The first thign I did when i took my new laptop out of the box last wednesday was install 7. I had that much time to use it for real; off-line computer usage....theres no such thing. A computer is worthless without a network.
Part II
Dear IT Industry: Stop EPIC FAILING AT LIFE
Microsoft is largely to blame for this, but the smaller companies are definitely not innocent. I don't care how much money it costs, how much paperwork, if you have to sell your soul. Make your shit work with Windows. Microsoft, make your operating system work with other peoples shit.
Now of course when you buy a computer from a company, which is mandatory if you get a laptop unless you actually want to build your own, which is still from a company, or you have too much time and access to hard to get materials, you get your OS preinstalled and the drivers already work. So, in the event that you have to reinstall or install a new OS, you are probably completely fucked, like I am now. They don't offer recovery CDs anymore because you are expected to use upgrade features and all this complete bullshit, which no one is doing. I'm not putting Vista and Seven on different partitions, I don't want Vista. So now I either install Vista and use it offline until Seven comes out (AKA NOT ACCEPTABLE) or use RC 7 until I end up breaking my laptop from the bullshit that I put up with. Because HP is too cool to provide functional wireless drivers for their products. And wireless/network drivers are the only drivers that matter; once your net works windows will do the rest for you.
I hate you Microsoft. I really do. Scratch that, the entire computer industry.
So when I get fucked out of responding to the Windows 7 RC survey 2 days after the beta ends, that royally pisses me off. I had good and bad things to say about 7. Very good things. And then literally an hour ago Seven decided to take a shit on my pc and now I am utterly pissed off in multiple different ways.
First and most egregiously, the schedule Microsoft sent us was wrong. Not just the dates were wrong, the information was fallacious. First of all, the beta did not warn us 2 weeks in advance that it was ending. Second of all, the beta does NOT shut down every 2 hours. It stays on, whilst incessantly warning you that there are 0 hours left in the beta. Then without warning, without asking, it simply bluescreens your computer in the middle of whatever you're doing. There's a difference between blue screening and shutting down, please learn it Microsoft. I'm trying NOT to smash any of my computers or equipment right now so I'll be kind and I won't go on a brutal rant about it. Needless to say, it is fucking stupid that you would close down the survey 2 days after the beta ends. Do you honestly think we have all the time in the world on the 4th of July, or, ANY weekend, to immediately devote to the survey? I didn't even get to use Seven for but 7 days because my old laptop wouldn't cooperate with it. The first thign I did when i took my new laptop out of the box last wednesday was install 7. I had that much time to use it for real; off-line computer usage....theres no such thing. A computer is worthless without a network.
Part II
Dear IT Industry: Stop EPIC FAILING AT LIFE
Microsoft is largely to blame for this, but the smaller companies are definitely not innocent. I don't care how much money it costs, how much paperwork, if you have to sell your soul. Make your shit work with Windows. Microsoft, make your operating system work with other peoples shit.
Now of course when you buy a computer from a company, which is mandatory if you get a laptop unless you actually want to build your own, which is still from a company, or you have too much time and access to hard to get materials, you get your OS preinstalled and the drivers already work. So, in the event that you have to reinstall or install a new OS, you are probably completely fucked, like I am now. They don't offer recovery CDs anymore because you are expected to use upgrade features and all this complete bullshit, which no one is doing. I'm not putting Vista and Seven on different partitions, I don't want Vista. So now I either install Vista and use it offline until Seven comes out (AKA NOT ACCEPTABLE) or use RC 7 until I end up breaking my laptop from the bullshit that I put up with. Because HP is too cool to provide functional wireless drivers for their products. And wireless/network drivers are the only drivers that matter; once your net works windows will do the rest for you.
I hate you Microsoft. I really do. Scratch that, the entire computer industry.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Honestly when this movie was being promoted I completely disregarded it and I gave absolutely zero craps about another Street Fighter game or movie. Obviously Street Fighter was a good game and it's the only one of their game franchises Capcom hasn't betrayed utterly yet, but a second, unrelated film wasn't really an obvious choice for any Street Fighter fans. So I didn't actually watch it until now, because of that, and because even as a miniscule Street Fighter fan as I am, I was disappointed they didn't choose someone Chinese, or with giant thighs that could crush my entire body like a steamroller, or bigger breasts, as she is illustrated in every game and picture that has ever existed.
Kristin Kreuk, as everyone remembers, is the slutbag from Eurotrip that sex's everyone, including Matt Damon, so I don't think anyone believed she can act, but she's definitely hot. Well that's me I like girls that look like her. Legend of Chun-Li definitely proves otherwise though. Admittedly none of her lines or scenes are deep, sincere examples of a great actress but in comparison to the original Street Fighter movie, it's definitely good. The movie holds together well and with a believable plot and characters, and even throws in the good old hadouken, though they made her fireball reddish instead of blue. Speaking of that, the movie definitely includes her signature moves: the jebus kick, the fireball, and others that I remember from Street Fighter II. As far as other SF characters go, Bison is of course the enemy, and this time he's played by what's his name from Band of Brothers, who did a good job in my opinion. Vega as well is in the movie, though he's kind of a punk assassin and not too good at his job (I'm not sure what his character is supposed to be really because I'm not a fan), and Ryu makes a cameo in name at the end of the movie.
Action scenes in this movie, unlike the first Street Fighter, actually seem feasible and are believable to people watching, at least to me. I didn't feel like I was watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Physics Book , which makes me happy. And at the same time I didn't feel like it was a nonsensical video game where people throw fireballs constantly. Plenty of guns and shooting and killing are abound in this movie, but not at a retarded Punisher rate, and there are definitely some surprisingly disgusting parts, though they aren't shown fully. All in all, Legend of Chun-Li is definitely a legitimate movie and far better than the original 90's Street Fighter live action film.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Fuck American Companies
This economy and the American corporate culture and environment is WORTHLESS. If you didn't realize that yet I'm sorry to be the bearer of shitty news but it's been the truth since before I was born.
There is NO corporate responsibility in this country anymore. I'm not even talking about major important shit anymore. Fuck that. Fuck Ken Lay, Enron, Tyco, GlobalCom, Adelphia, AIG, GM, all of these assholes. Let's not even necessarily focus on you worthless wastes of semen anymore.
The American product is worthless and useless. We live in a consumer environment with no accountability whatsoever anymore. You can't even use software because the nature of multi-threaded (aka good) software programming necessitates that there are entirely random and practically inexplicable bugs in the code that an entire team of programmers that wrote it cant even figure out.
Not only that but then there isn't even an ATTEMPT by the firms to support their products and offer the slightest bit of help to end-users. Are you fucking kidding me? If a google search, the documentation, and the companies technical support fail to even ACKNOWLEDGE the existence of your problem, than what the fuck is the point of your company? What the fuck is the point of your tech support when it doesn't even exist?
And why the fuck are you people not upgrading TEN YEAR old software to work with Photoshop CS4? ITS NOT EVEN NEW ITS BEEN OUT FOR LONGER THAN CS3 WAS BEFORE THEY UPGRADED.
There is NO corporate responsibility in this country anymore. I'm not even talking about major important shit anymore. Fuck that. Fuck Ken Lay, Enron, Tyco, GlobalCom, Adelphia, AIG, GM, all of these assholes. Let's not even necessarily focus on you worthless wastes of semen anymore.
The American product is worthless and useless. We live in a consumer environment with no accountability whatsoever anymore. You can't even use software because the nature of multi-threaded (aka good) software programming necessitates that there are entirely random and practically inexplicable bugs in the code that an entire team of programmers that wrote it cant even figure out.
Not only that but then there isn't even an ATTEMPT by the firms to support their products and offer the slightest bit of help to end-users. Are you fucking kidding me? If a google search, the documentation, and the companies technical support fail to even ACKNOWLEDGE the existence of your problem, than what the fuck is the point of your company? What the fuck is the point of your tech support when it doesn't even exist?
And why the fuck are you people not upgrading TEN YEAR old software to work with Photoshop CS4? ITS NOT EVEN NEW ITS BEEN OUT FOR LONGER THAN CS3 WAS BEFORE THEY UPGRADED.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Alestorm – Captain Morgan’s Revenge
Alestorm – Captain Morgan's Revenge
Originally I had seen and heard of this band "AleStorm" through iTunes and CDNow's (I refuse to refer to it as Amazon as the original companies URL still navigates the page, obviously for customer continuity reasons. Don't get me wrong I love Amazon) respective "related artists" and "customers also bought"features. And every time I saw it I said to myself "Well it's related to bands that are most certainly good and indefinitely worth purchasing and listening to, do I really need more motivation?" Regardless, due to being pre-occupied with something or other or just lazy, or a combination of both in addition to other things, I never got around to buying or downloading their first album until the last two weeks. Captain Morgan's Revenge, their major label debut with Napalm Records came out in January 20008, it's now April 2009. As odd and shallow as it may seem, at the point when I discovered this album, I was literally basing music purchases and downloads upon the quality and appeal of the album's cover art, which isn't necessarily a fallible strategy when it comes to metal artists because most metal artists have beautiful artwork on their albums, and those same artists typically end up being the most worthwhile to listen to.
I won't go into the band's history as this is a review of this album, not of the band itself, but as a debut album review I must discuss as much of their style and a brief history of the artist as is required to establish a familiarity. Alestorm hails from Perth, in northern Scotland above Edinburgh and Glasgow, and were formerly known under the name of Battleheart, the original title of the band when it was formed in 2004. As aforementioned, iTunes and Amazon (I use these two because they're the only mainstream music services worth trusting. Don't get me wrong, there are many free music services that are quite astounding.) associates Alestorm with bands such as Firewind, Mastodon, Tyr, Turisas, which all play a genre of music that reviewers are calling "battle metal", and considering it's the name of one of Turisas' albums as well as several metal compilation albums featuring these bands, in combination with their actual musical style, it seems to work for me. Also, I'm not sure if the major music services make this assosication, but I would most definitely associate Alestorm's musical style with that of Korpiklaani and similar bands like Eluveitie.
Unfortunately to anyone who doesn't necessarily listen to those specific bands or metal in general (though I don't know why you would be reading the review instead of just listening to it first if that were the case, I'm glad you are trying) that doesn't necessarily tell you anything. Hopefully the following comparisons will give you a clue but if all else fails I may just resort to some actual descriptive abilities. Alestorm, to me, sounds like Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, Metallica, Blind Guardian and Korpkilaani had a cross-over dream with each other and it turned into a band. If you ever wanted to hear the inherently cheery and entertaining sound of Flogging Molly or the Murphys set to a faster, metal, exclusively fictional (Pirates aren't fictional obviously, though at this point the popular European kind are) rhythm, I'd have to say Alestorm is exactly what you're looking for.
Musically, Alestorm is exactly as complex as you would come to expect from underrated and less mainstream metal artists these days. Like Blind Guardian, In Flames, Iced Earth, Korpiklaani, Hammerfall, any metal band you can think of that doesn't play the "death" metal style, every song by Alestorm is rich with sound. Their actual instrument line-up isn't any more erudite or versatile than the standard metal band, featuring the typical three instruments and a keyboard, but it doesn't stop them from making each song sound distinct and different enough to be memorable. Their songs range from Dragonforce-style epics (minus the absurd amount of intertwining guitarists) replacing tales of Dragons with accounts of plunder, sailing the high seas and booty, to less serious modern day pirate sea shantys that wouldn't feel too out of place on a Flogging Molly album.
In an age where pirates are romanticized in Hollywood films, video games, novels, and inaccurately used to refer to distributors and illegal acquirers of copyrighted material, debuting to the world with the concept of Scottsh pirate metal is actually a rather intelligent commercial endeavor. Most people in our age group (18 -25), including those younger and older, are quite fond of pirates. Whether because of Disneyworld's ride, its' awful movie trilogy, or because of their strong ideological convictions about file "piracy", people identify to some extent with piracy or are at the very least entertained by it. In addition, with their second album coming out, the recent international Somalian pirate incident and the ensuing South Park parody have done their share to keep pirates fresh on the public's mind.
Other reviewers have mentioned the two potential problems with Alestorm's success and future as a musical artist. I think most legitimate of these two concerns is the Dragonforce scenario, or what some people believe to be the case with Dragonforce. They came out and they were awesome and then almost immediately people said "Okay that's enough, shut up, just shut up with your three guitars and your dragons" and as soon as Dragonforce was "popular" they were immediately "crucified" by public opinion. Maybe that is the case, I don't pay attention to trends in the music audience, I just listen to music I like, because that's what music is for. Second, others have stated that they feel Alestorms style is built too much upon their colleagues in the power/folk metal genre, which honestly is quite irrelevant because that happens with every new band. In time they were chisel out their own unique style, their second major label album hasn't even come out yet.
All in all I absolutely love their first album and as I wrote this I listened to their second album, and loved that just as much. The song that stands out the most to me from Captain Morgan's Revenge is "Wenches and Mead", for its jovial tone and in my opinion absolutely hilarious subject matter. Not because I objectify women and I think it's funny to refer to them as wenches (though you have to admit it's funny to hear the word wenches in lieu of the more offensive bitches, come on) but it's just a funny song when you consider that even though it's supposed to be a pirate thing to head to a tavern for mead and wenches, it stands the test of time both a thousand years before the height of piracy and today, centuries after the supposed extermination of piracy. Could we as males ask for much more? It's quite simple.
A wench by my side and a jug of mead,
these are the things that I most need,
so I sit back and sing this song
and drink and party all night long.
Hey hey, I want more wenches,
hey hey more wenches and mead,
hey hey I want more wenches,
lots of wenches is what I need".
Yarr, ye be buyin this cd, ya hear me landlubbers!
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Resident Evil: The Review of Death
R\Grenadeh's Reviews
Resident Evil: The Review of Death
Part One: resident evil
(2002)
I will preface by saying two things in regards to reviewing in general as well as reviewing these specific movies. It's been eight years since I've written a review of anything, as well as it has been eight years since I've written a public review of anything, as I used to do in the entertainment section of our high school's news magazine. I am not a professional writer, I do not work for the media in any way, I do not run an entertainment-review devoted blog that I think somehow empowers me and qualifies me to have an opinion. I'm a student, a civilian, a technologist, a gamer, a nerd, a liberal, and Jewish. Just an everyday normal person that, like most normal people, actually have a brain in their heads, as opposed to the monkey suits we are expected to listen to in the mainstream media.
That having been said, I will preface this review by stating two things in specific about the first movie: No one's opinion on this movie or this movie series matters to me even if you agree with me, in the slightest bit, though I'm sure most reviews will label these films with similar results as my own, though certainly they will be significantly less scathing or enlightened.
Obviously reviewing a movie several years after it came out, even several years after it came out on DVD/ HD-DVD/Blu-Ray seems quite retroactive, but I am prompted by my recent acquisition of the Blu-Ray of the series to finally start writing reviews again, starting with my opinion on the dramatization of the best video game franchise in the history of video game franchises. Either way, I feel I should give this film series the review it deserves from someone who actually knows what they're talking about. One thing I will admit off the bat: I've seen all three movies at least twenty times, so no matter what I say, obviously the movies were enjoyable (though most of the views are the result of a combination of procrastination and intense boredom). In fact, I'm watching the first movie right now and I have it minimized, because I know the script for the movies so well I don't even need to look at the video.
In 2002 when the first movie was released, Resident Evil was still in it's youth, though growing at dramatic speed. Only four years had passed since the first amazing game was released on the Playstation, and in short order RE2, RE3, and Code Veronica had been released ( admittedly Code Veronica being the last public review I had written). In light of all this, I and my friend among all of our other colleagues were greatly pleased by news of this Hollywood rendition of Resident Evil coming to our theaters in the summer. However, this review is not about the Resident Evil games, which in my opinion don't necessarily even merit any criticism of significance.
Obviously it was established immediately that the Resident Evil movie was not a Hollywood rendition of the video games (no video game movie ever has been, with the exception perhaps of Mortal Kombat), but it was instead based upon the universe created in the Resident Evil games. Technically that doesn't really please any fans of the Resident Evil series. No matter how much anyone, including me, loves the lore and the fictional universe developed by Capcom®, it's easy to say we'd rather see a live action rendition of the events we had to suffer through in the games rather than a Hollywood (and inherently ludicrous) version of different events.
The movie begins and a guy spiels about Umbrella, speaking of lore which matches very accurately that established in the video game universe, fans rejoice. We are introduced through the eyes of a wall to the Hive laboratory complex, getting an up close and personal look at the Tyrant virus, a cute bunny, and its involvement in testing the anti-virus vaccination. Then we are personally introduced to a virus containment apparatus which seems is being loaded with all the available samples of the virus and anti-virus from this cute bunny room. So far, so good, everything is as high tech as expected from Umbrella, and the colors of the viral strains are accurate to the game. Then the shit appears to hit the fan as our friend Spence can be somewhat identified tossing the virus on the floor , indicating to all Resident Evil gamers that the shit has just officially knocked the fan over and turned the fan itself into more shit.
The following events detail to us (as much detail as any Resident Evil gamer or person with an imagination needs) the ensuing viral outbreak and sanitation of the Hive laboratory complex, ending with a woman assumedly being decapitated by an elevator. Funnily enough, later on her head is nowhere to be seen at the elevator bank, assuming it was chopped off, which you would only logically deduce if a woman were put in a computer controlled guillotine with a blade (the solid steel floor) travelling at her head at x miles per hour , the only conclusive deduction judging by how concerned they all are that the elevator next to them has just murdered a plural number of people by free falling about a thousand feet. Insert retarded part number one, they could easily have pulled her back into the elevator or similarly pushed her out of the elevator. Those doors don't get stuck, they're designed to be manually opened in the event of emergency. Ridiculous, excusable, but unforgiveable.
Cut from the crisis in the laboratory to a rather cute and naked Jovavich laying on her shower floor, covered only by a shower curtain, which obviously she had the foresight to pull from the shower curtain rod and cover herself with lest anyone see her naked, alone, in a mansion. The following shots establish that she is suffering from amnesia, yet she can still navigate her own house quite perfectly. Unfortunately for me, this is where the movie starts its downward spiral , though very slowly at this point. She gets scared of the wind, which is completely understandable. Everything about the Spencer mansion is frightening and unsettling, I might be inclined to run away from the wind as well, though in the game they sought shelter in the mansion after being chased by a whole shit ton of Cerberi (zombie dogs.), so everything in and around the Blair Witch 2 looking mansion and the Arklay Woods is uncomfortable in any rendition. Suddenly, oh my gods! A copper grabs her and apparently intends to rape her back, and then cue in the obnoxiously loud and annoying techno music as an Umbrella special forces team busts through the window and the doors, though in real life as well as the video games they would have used the doors exclusively for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that breaking windows quite conspicuously announces their arrival, as well as simultaneously compromising the security of their position if in fact enemy combatants were within the premises.
Here I must digress from a strict focus on the movie and begin the first of several comparisons to Resident Evil itself, though I will chronologically continue the review in the background with the things I criticize. The Umbrella team is quite professional, not to mention arrogant, and ignorant. In many ways this perfectly recreates the Umbrella Special Forces operatives from all the Resident Evil games, though it is unacceptably illogical and unforgiveable for so many reasons. Paramount of all these reasons is a very simple one, an oversight seemingly impossible for "intelligent" writers, which obviously shows you two things: Writers are morons, and movies are intentionally written as unrealistically as possible for the sole purpose of plot progression and consistency. An Umbrella Special Forces unit sent to contain, or to have any involvement with anything whatsoever (in Resident Evil this almost exclusively means a form of violent combat action), is going to be very well informed of all the tactical details of the situation. Now inherently, as they are higher status employees in most circumstances than actual Umbrella researchers, shift workers, whatever, they are going to know what they are getting into. No company involved in ethical businesses needs it's own professionally trained para-military organizations, so it only stands to reason in the job interview or at some point during the course of their career they would have inquired as to "So uh, why do you Ivy League doctor kids need tanks and marines?" . So obviously, by the dictates of common Eff'ing sense, the Umbrella team sent to the Hive : a) Knew the layout of the Hive beforehand , b) Knew that Umbrella was built solely to research and engineer bio-organic and viral weaponry and most importantly, C) Was informed of vital tactical information such as the fact that the only way to defeat any of the Tyrant virus mutations was a massive trauma to the brain. In fact, this is deductible not only by the logical constraints of the established Resident Evil universe, but in real life by actual police, military, and para-military forces. Ask the S.W.A.T, Delta Force, SEALS, whatever force, it's a very public and well established fact : Two in the chest, one in the head. Subsequently by virtue of all, or any of the preceding facts, everyone not only in the first movie, but every Resident Evil movie, and every zombie move in history, should be aware of how to kill zombies, because they are killed the same away as a human being: the head. Shooting people anywhere but the head is a foolishly optimistic and merciless method of killing them. If you were to be killed by gunshot, would you rather bleed to death from your heart or would you rather just die instantly? Easy fucking decision.
Now that all these facts have established the inherent stupidity and absurdity of not only Resident Evil but all zombie movies, it's time to address the few remaining things of note in the movie.
When they discover Spence on the tram en route to the Hive, behind a forcibly shut door, they don't have the common sense to look in the conductor's chamber of the tram for a nanosecond to notice there's a black duffel bag on the floor. What do they think he was doing? Going on vacation into the Hive at the exact time it went Chernobyl? In addition to that, having established both in this review and in the movie through the dialogue itself the Umbrella teams knowledge of the situation and the facility, they OBVIOUSLY should have realized, considering that the leader knew Alice and Spence were security operatives, married to each other, that this random man in the tram was Spencer. This is what I said about intentional unrealistic writing solely for the sake of plot progression and filming. Now, of course, if there were any tint of reality whatsoever to this movie, an intelligent team of Umbrella operatives would have acted out the following script I have so brilliantly concocted.
Medic : Lie still.
(Spencer groggily fidgets around, lying supine on the tram floor)
Medic: I said lie still!
Medic: Follow the light.
(Spencer follows the light with his head, barely able to lift it, though lying otherwise motionless)
Medic: How many fingers am I holding up?
Spencer: Three
(Kaplan meanwhile steps past the two into the tram conductors chamber, looking for anything of concern)
Kaplan: Found something!
One: Bring it out here.
(Kaplan picks up the duffel bag, moving back into the main room of the tram, and sets it on the floor next to Spencer)
One: What's in the bag?
Spencer: What? ……. I don't know?
(Kaplan exchanges glances with the commander, crouching on the steel floor of the tram over the duffel bag. One nods, and Kaplan proceeds to open the bag.)
Kaplan: What the hell? (he produces a shiny silver lunchbox out of the duffel bag, emblazoned with the universally recognizable biohazard symbol).
One: Open it.
(Kaplan opens the lunchbox because realistically if he had the ability to decode the door locks within the laboratory he could figure out a simple four digit encryption on a temporary biohazard transportation container)
(The lunchbox hisses open, some pressurized gas spewing from within the container like dry ice)
Kaplan: ..it's the virus!
Rain: Alright, pack it up. Fuck this shit let's get the hell out of here.
One: No. We have to find out what happened down here.
Rain: What the fuck did you say? The lab automatically seals in an hour, we don't have to do a damn thing. We have the most important piece of company property down here, let's get the fuck out before that homicidal bitch kills the rest of us, too!
One: Oh, good point.
One: Kaplan, can you reverse the train and send us back to the mansion?
Kaplan: The tram travels automatically to its destination, we won't be able to change directions en route. We'll have to wait until we get to the loading dock.
One: Alright, let's do it.
End of fucking movie.
(Why Kaplan? Because Kaplan is obviously the smartest one in the entire group, being the technologist (though he is initially too stupid to realize his turning the Hive off released the zombies) though in a realistic scenario such as my script his display of such possible stupidity would never have occurred because the situation would have ended while they were ahead)
Obviously for the sake of entertainment and intentional irritation of the viewing public, this is not what happened, otherwise the story would have had too happy of an ending and been 30 minutes long. Which frankly would be only fitting, considering that in order to get an A rank in the game, you have to beat it in under an hour, not shoot anyone, and not waste time and health.
Unfortunately this isn't the only thing that pisses me off about the film, it's just one of many things. I'm going to digress from the review for now and simply list them, hopefully in chronological order of their occurrence.
They try to go through the labs which, when looking at the 3d layout of the hive on his wristputer, was a fucking retarded idea in the first place, even if there weren't zombies everywhere. Going down the stairs through the "dining hall" was obviously the most direct route to the Queen's Chamber, though it may have taken a slightly greater amount of time.
The team approaches the good old laser hallway ( of course not knowing it's a laser hallway because after all it's not like they are security operatives and KNOW intimate details about the Hive facility). Ol' Shiny kills all but five of them. This is inexcusably and inarguably the stupidest fucking scene of any movie ever produced anywhere around the globe and I would go so far as to include the entire universe, assuming there are an intelligent sentient race of beings on a planet or space station somewhere that produce fictional motion pictures to sublimate their subconscious desires and distract themselves from their mortal boredom. I've already established the governing principles of why everything I will list is absurd to the point of insensitivity, but I'll restate it for fun.
How the fuck does this team of operatives not realize, after explicitly stating that the Red Queen has its own defensive systems, that there's a LASER hallway governed by an obviously intensely complex algorithmic program that can readjust in real time to sensory information gathered on its "assailants" so well that it can actually trick them in addition to killing them? Now, ignoring that, because when faced by a fictional and non-existent laser hallway governed by intensely complex algorithms, even an Olympic gold medal gymnast would be most certainly boned if trying to outmaneuver it, let's examine the other absurdities of Ol' Shiny. There are spaces on both ends of the hallway which quite blatantly are not susceptible, insofar as the two movies starring Ol' Shiny are inclined to show us, to the reaches of said laser hallway. Use what little common sense that you (as a person in the movie) obviously don't have and hide your stupid body in the ample space afforded by the blind spots at both ends of the laser hallway. At least two of you can survive to watch the rest of your friends die. Is it possible that the laser hallway could adjust its parameters and manage to project a laser beam beyond the reach of the system of mirrors and googamajigs behind the glass on either side of the wall? You could speculate so, but in the movie it doesn't happen, and judging by what mechanical knowledge I have of nonexistent infallible laser grid hallways, the laser beam requires amplification on both ends of the hallway to be effective (or else the lasers wouldn't be so obviously anchored and "generated" by both sides of the hallway), so I don't imagine that one side of the hallway itself would be able to project a dangerous laser beam on its own, or else they would have made the laser hallway scene far more complex because it is in fact probably the most CG intensive scene in the movie, so they may as well have made it worth the massive sacrifice of credibility and characters.
You may have thought at this point that Ol' Shiny's fifteen minutes were up at the end of that run-on sentence, but rest assured, they aren't. Having established the precedent that Ol Shiny can cover the entire Z-axis with an inescapable laser grid capable of slicing easily through not only human flesh but solid metal, it is interesting that the computer components to the Red Queen mainframe stored in the duffel bags carried by the victims of said laser grid did not get destroyed. They most certainly were passed through by the lasers. There is no differentiation between molecular densities or any such chemical properties of metal in the course of the hallway scene to establish any logical basis which informs the audience that the lasers can only cut "certain metals". Now perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps the combat knives carried by the Umbrella operatives are composed of a carbon fiber polymer that is more malleable than steel or whatever the mainframe components are made of(or whatever the hell they actually are) and that explains why they can be cut. I just love the incredibly large holes in logic we are expected to overlook in movies these days for the sake of entertainment.
On top of that, there is one thing that always severely pisses me off not only in zombie movies, but all movies that feature arms of any kind. Why the fuck would you intentionally discard your arms? Why!? There is NO reasonable excuse for discarding your weapons in any situation whatsoever unless they literally weigh so much it reduces your chance of surviving. In Resident Evil the film this is not the case. The Springfield 1911, the Heckler and Koch MP5K, the Heckler and Koch G36, the Beretta 92FS, whatever .357 looking revolver Kaplan had, NONE of those firearms would have been a burden on them in any situation. Yes, they ran out of ammo (because they're too god damn stupid to aim for the head.) If "people" are coming at you that obviously are walking on broken feet, are missing half their heads, their bodies are decomposed, you aren't stupid enough to have any hope that there is salvation for these mutated creatures. Regardless, in a zombie scenario, you don't drop your weapons. Weapons can always be used as clubs. Clubs may not necessarily be the most effective anti-zombie weapon, but they're better than your body. In addition lets examine the reality and the inherent ramifications in reality of abandoning your weapons. First of all, they're Umbrella employees. If they make it out of there, they have to go back to work afterwards. Umbrella's going to scold the shit out of them , dock their pay, maybe even fire them, for leaving several thousand dollars of company assets half a mile underground in a contaminated and compromised research laboratory. Secondly, it's mentally retarded to drop your gun because in the case of Resident Evil, there is a 100% chance you're going to get more ammunition because , as I will touch on later, Resident Evil is not a zombie apocalypse franchise. Resident Evil is a science fiction franchise about corporate sin, scientific and business ethics, and dirty warfare. Every incident that occurs in Resident Evil is an incident, not a part of a global doomsday. There will be more ammo, unless they managed to use billions of bullets, and at the same time all the workers of all the firearms industries die or go on strike.
Other than those things, there aren't more things I find unforgiveable with the movie itself. However, there are things that are retarded in terms of discrepancy between the game and movies. In the movie, lickers are intentionally manufactured BOWs, as opposed to the licker lore of the games (or so you would assume. They never explain in the movie how the lickers come to be, or call them lickers) . In the Resident Evil series, a Licker is formed by a further mutation of the Crimson Head zombie variant, assumedly by consumption of fresh host blood. This in turn has the potential to mutate Crimson Head zombies further into fullblown lickers. Granted, this explanation for lickers is introduced YEARS and YEARS after Resident Evil 2 came out, after it was already established that the Tyrant virus has no ability to cause further mutation in human hosts after the zombie stage, in contrast to the newly developed G virus which forces severe mutation in mammalian hosts each time they integrate additional DNA into their bodies by feeding on a fresh victim. This part of the movie pissed me off the most because they combined the T and the G virus into one ultra virus, as shown by the licker immediately mutating into a full blown G Imago after it killed Spencer, the G Imago being the first boss in Resident Evil 2.
Before I wrap up this first third of the review, I have to make one more obvious observation on the massive inconsistencies in the movie. When Alice wakes up in the abandoned hospital and she makes it out alive, we are treated to her stepping into an absolutely fucked up Raccoon City and taking a shotgun from a police cruiser. It looks like it's about one P.M or so on a rather dreary day, and the entire city area you are shown is derelict and destroyed. Now, we have to put this in a time frame, because obviously the second movie rewinds an unspecified amount of time to show us how the city becomes a wasteland, though it does a terrible job. When she steps out, it's most definitely early in the day. When Resident Evil Apocalypse picks up, it's obviously at some point early in the day (as established by Angela still being at school and one of the researchers being in a bath robe, assuming these are somewhat respectable citizens and they don't sleep all day (obviously overlooking their involvement in incredibly unethical and illegal research when we label them as respectable citizens)). However, in the shots you see afterwards the city seems quite uninfected during the day and it seems that by nightfall a vast amount of the civilians trying to escape through the Umbrella quarantine check point at the Ravens Gate Bridge are still uninfected. It is not until late at night we are informed through the reflection of a motorcycle cop/umbrella special operatives reflective helmet visor that the entire city has finally become the Necropolis. However, it is important to interject that the establishing scene of Jill Valentine is during the day and a zombie outbreak *seems* to be ubiquitous. Either way, the last shot of Resident Evil is of a terribly wrecked, congested, and abandoned street (assume it's main street and that the streets which are navigable are less important) is during the day. It is NOT possible for this shot to have happened the day after the outbreak (outbreak in terms of citywide) because at that point the city has been nuked. Now, it is possible to suppose that Alice was kept in the Hospital facility for a few days after the Hive (it seems odd that they would intentionally wait a long period of time to reopen the Hive), so perhaps as in the game it actually took a few days for the entire city to become infected, which would explain Jills familiarity with how to kill the zombies. Of all the bothersome things in the first movie I'll concede that this one is just convoluted as opposed to absolutely absurd and impossible, but nonetheless it's a plot hole that's rather annoying.
Having said all the negatives, I must admit as other Resident Evil fans did, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The action was pretty close to the games, the situations were somewhat reminiscent, and they did stay as close to legitimate consistency with the game universe as they could I must say. Additionally, the CG is great, the zombies and makeup and wardrobe are pretty excellent, and the movie is definitely rewatchable. Despite my uber nerd problems with the entire movie series, I give Resident Evil four and a half out of five stars.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I say a lot of libellous things about Conservatives
Sometimes I encounter people who don't understand why I am actually capable of hating the "other side", in this case in regards to politics, which in reality has nothing to do with politics or government, but rather outlook on life. People that are my best friends even, who I know for a fact share my opinions.
Michael Savage, in his idiosyncratic crying ass Jew radio host method, spent his show today crying about things that no conservative can possibly understand, in this case the covering of the Tea Parties today by the "liberal New York communist media" which everyone knows at this point in America is a fantasy. The media is no longer the Left and Right spin machine, it's just a conglomeration of complete dumbasses whose media "direction" is dictated by even BIGGER morons, as IF they existed.
"I've only seen one African American" I paraphrase from Janet (you have a last name, not that I care to Google it's Italian spelling), a reporter chosen by "Mr. Cline" who is also apparently a left Communist, just like everyone else that's not on your side, right America.
Michael Savage continues to SAVAGEly misinterpret the intentions of this report by crying that "African Americans" were not prevented, discouraged, barred from attending these Tea Parties. Take note class because this is one of the major reasons I and the remaining sane people in this world HATE the fascists in this country.
There was no clarified motive for reporting how many African Americans showed, at least not in the out-of-context quotes that the Conservatives like to play on their radio shows. There may have been in real life, but unlike the fascists, I don't take comfort, enjoyment, in actively seeking relationships between nouns that don't actually exist in anyone elses mind.
If in reality 98% of taxes paid are by WHITE people then our tax system is broken and Obama is right to want to reform it. Regardless that has no legitimate authority to explain the demographical composition of angry anti-tax protestors.
And another thing to the mentally retarded, jaded, pissed off angry redneck wastes of sperm that listen to conservative talk radio (thats right I REFER TO YOU, including my own father) and actually have the audacity to LAUGH at the slanderous fucking filth that the FCC allows on the airwaves, and encourages with Marconi awards among other bastardized and empty honors: The "naive college youth" of this country did not elect Obama. Most of the fucking conservative morons ARE college students raised by their parents not to think for themselves or have any measurable capacity to discern the truth amidst the sea of potential information that exists in our time period. There are not 40 million college students in this country that actively voted in any election, ever, regardless of the fact that this is the highest voter turnout in history. For those of us who did vote for him, we did not vote for him knowing, or thinking, that he would pass massive spending bills, in the midst of the magnificent depression, or do any of the things he did. Frankly I don't support a lot of his administrations actions so far and this is not why I voted for him, but you idiot conservatives have to get a clue and understand WHY he's the president. He's not the illegitimate, the annointed, the magnificent, the great, the savior, any of these stupid fucking names YOU in the conservative fantasyland have granted him. He won because his competition was a woman that everyone in America hates and no one can tell anyone why they do, an old dumbass Republican that not even conservatives believed in, and his running mate, a completely retarded, obscenely negative stereotype of the worst possible stereotypical American yuppie citizen. A stupid cunt even less intelligent than GW, who names her children the kind of appellations found in Saturday morning cartoons and old western flicks, whose children are inherently as fucking tragic of an abomination that has come to represent the common American, who in the typical neo-American way doesn't care about anyone, including her constituents, or her gender, or nature.
I love you conservatives, I really do. You're all so incredibly clueless as to the time, the situation that we have lived in for years. America has ALWAYS been arrogant. Only an arrogant nation could slap Britain in the face at the height of their power as an empire and tell them "Bring it, bitch." Only an arrogant nation could sit back and watch Europe, the entirety of the Western world and the Eastern world be used as a firing range, it's people incinerated, enslaved, murdered, used as lab rats for occult and demonic experiments, not once but three times, biding it's time until the travesty had reached a peak, coming in to the war 4 years late, never at all, or over a decade late, and then have the BALLS to allow it's fascist motherfucker right wing celebrities claim that America "saved the day" , that we'd all be speaking German if it weren't for America. What the FUCK did America ever do for ANYONE? We let 10 million people die in WW2 before we ever even lifted a finger. It doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter that we were "regrouping" and trying to be a worthwhile effort instead of charging in and just becoming victims ourselves. We orchestrated the destruction of Europe and Africa and Russia and most of Asia AND the western hemisphere and we have the disgusting audacity to decry the world for ever criticizing us because they may potentially be "slaves" to this day? We have the balls to berate our president, to crucify him on the altar of public opinion, for apologizing for the word which sums up our entire existence?
Did ANY of you tools EVER take a history class? We found this land on accident, looking for India, at which point after overwhelming evidence proving us to be completely incorrect we actively refused to believe science FACT (Sound familiar?), and set upon calling the native emigrants of Russia and Europe and the Iranian plateau to this land "Indians" just to further engrain our arrogance on the world. And we STILL call them Indians to this day! We killed their entire species, we killed their culture, their religion, their society, hunted and butchered them and then forced them to live on government chosen tracts of barren, useless land, and now we bitch and cry and protest and vote no against "indian" casino laws so that they can't at least have some empty monetary reward for surviving and suffering the genocide of their existence because we have attached a criminal connotation to casinos, which in reality is entirely a product of American fearmongering and radical propaganda. On top of that, we killed the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Inca , whether or not it wasn't specifically America instead of other European nations like Spain, forced people off of land they lived on for generations and generations, and the best part of all is the fact that no one even lives on 80% of the land in America. Half of our country still flies the confederate flag, a symbol of criminality, unconstitutional beliefs and behavior, slavery, arrogance, oppression, and stupidity, under the guise of a symbol of decentralization, of pride, of history. And we encourage it.
For anyone too retarded to understand, the South was not right. A confederation of state governments with no central authority to govern them has NEVER worked and will never work as proven by the history of man. The Greek city states had no central government, they were destroyed, repeatedly. The Italian states had no central government. They were destroyed, nay immediately, and united under a central government. The Germanic states had no central unified government. They were destroyed and in turmoil for centuries. The Chinese kingdoms and states spent the time in which they did not have a central unifying government destroying each other and being destroyed.
In stark contrast, the only stability that has ever come for nations in the history of existence has been with strong central governments. The Persian empire of Darius and afterward had a central unifying government. It lasted centuries. The Roman Republic and Empire, in their original and diminutive forms, were the very foundation of a modern government, and lasted 2000 years. The Parthian Empire, the Sassanid Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Bactrian Empire, the dynasties of China, Lysimachian, Cassandrian, and Ptolemaic kingdoms, the Phoenician empire, every successful "union" of nations in the history of ever has been held together (for as long as possible) by a strong centralized government. The evidence is irrefutable. The fact that these empires all fell apart (most by military conquest) is entirely irrelevant in a comparison of American alternate history to pre-American real history. America as a nation is only 2 centuries old, there's no gaurantee it will last much longer if at all.
You're right conservatives, I concede, I'm sorry. A country whose entire existence is predicated upon assassination, murder, deception, unbridled greed, genocide, dissention, treachery, rebellion, slavery, pitiful attempts at diplomacy, unasked for international intervention, social cannabalism, fanatic religious devotion, hypocras, corruption, overconsumption, and coveting just to name a few, is by no means arrogant. How DARE Obama make the slightest insignificant dent in the cave walls that are our massive grave plot as a country by attempting to even ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that we are wrong. How dare he observe the traditions of foreign countries. How dare he change the ridiculous diplomatic relations we have had with Cuba and other unpopular nations for the past sixty years. What a prick.
Here, let me just drop this list of noteable terms that you all need to re-examine.
Yellow journalism
The Gilded Age
World War 1
World War 2
Korean War
Cuban Missile Crisis
Vietnam War
Bosnia Herzegovina
Pakistan
Tibet
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
Tunisia
Italy
Okinawa
Spanish American War
Mexican American War
American Revolution
American Civil War
Treaty of Versailles
League of Nations
United Nations
Israel
Somalia
Afghanistan
Iraq
Lebanon
George W. Bush
Nixon
Johnson
Reagan
Clinton
World Trade Center
Fox News
Seven Years War
War of 1812
Berlin Wall
South Africa
Apartheid
Nurembourg Trials
Geneva Convention
Roman Empire
Gracchus brothers
Julius Caeser
Paul Revere
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
John Locke
Plato
Socrates
Aristotle
Carl Sagan
Stephen Hawking
Rick Santorum
Strom Thurman
Nancy Pelosi
Harry Reid
Tim Geitner
Operation Desert Shield
Operation Desert Storm
al Qaeda
Hamas
Syria
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Haliburton
Tyco
Adelphia
Enron
Ken Lay
Seriously, I could go on for days. Go back to high school, go back to college, and read a god damn history book. Watch a god damn news reel. Go to your library at your university and go to the whatever-ma-jig-newspaper-machine and read articles from back in the day, watch videos. Read interviews. Read the CIA world fact book. You fucking fascist bigot naive zealots would make me sick if your pathetic existence hadn't forced the righteous population of this world to grow such thick skin.
America makes any educated person who has a conscience absolutely sick to their stomachs. Yes, we're not the only country with a crime rate. We're not the only country that murdered people in the name of expansion, freedom, god, money, vengeance, whatever. We're not the only or the first nation to lie, to deceive, to invade, to turn a blind eye. But you know what we are? We're the best at all of those things.
"We're the best, oh whooaaa oh, never gonna evah bring us down".
Being the best isn't a good thing all the time. Excellence, superlative adjectives, are not good things when they modify murder, deception, invasion, coveting, genocide, brashness, refusal, naivete, ignorance, over-consumption, zealotry, inferior products, lack of compassion, social cannibalism, arrogance, stupidity, obesity.
Honestly....can you really think of a positive adjective we can claim a superlative in? Honestly, I challenge you to think of one superlative positive adjective that describes America. Enduring spirit? No. Try Britain, or France, or Germany. Innovation? Try a Chinese dorm room. Educational pursuit? Try any country that isn't America. Personal freedom? Wrong again. Monetary stability? Try Europe. Transportation infrastructure? Europe.
You can't.
Michael Savage, in his idiosyncratic crying ass Jew radio host method, spent his show today crying about things that no conservative can possibly understand, in this case the covering of the Tea Parties today by the "liberal New York communist media" which everyone knows at this point in America is a fantasy. The media is no longer the Left and Right spin machine, it's just a conglomeration of complete dumbasses whose media "direction" is dictated by even BIGGER morons, as IF they existed.
"I've only seen one African American" I paraphrase from Janet (you have a last name, not that I care to Google it's Italian spelling), a reporter chosen by "Mr. Cline" who is also apparently a left Communist, just like everyone else that's not on your side, right America.
Michael Savage continues to SAVAGEly misinterpret the intentions of this report by crying that "African Americans" were not prevented, discouraged, barred from attending these Tea Parties. Take note class because this is one of the major reasons I and the remaining sane people in this world HATE the fascists in this country.
There was no clarified motive for reporting how many African Americans showed, at least not in the out-of-context quotes that the Conservatives like to play on their radio shows. There may have been in real life, but unlike the fascists, I don't take comfort, enjoyment, in actively seeking relationships between nouns that don't actually exist in anyone elses mind.
If in reality 98% of taxes paid are by WHITE people then our tax system is broken and Obama is right to want to reform it. Regardless that has no legitimate authority to explain the demographical composition of angry anti-tax protestors.
And another thing to the mentally retarded, jaded, pissed off angry redneck wastes of sperm that listen to conservative talk radio (thats right I REFER TO YOU, including my own father) and actually have the audacity to LAUGH at the slanderous fucking filth that the FCC allows on the airwaves, and encourages with Marconi awards among other bastardized and empty honors: The "naive college youth" of this country did not elect Obama. Most of the fucking conservative morons ARE college students raised by their parents not to think for themselves or have any measurable capacity to discern the truth amidst the sea of potential information that exists in our time period. There are not 40 million college students in this country that actively voted in any election, ever, regardless of the fact that this is the highest voter turnout in history. For those of us who did vote for him, we did not vote for him knowing, or thinking, that he would pass massive spending bills, in the midst of the magnificent depression, or do any of the things he did. Frankly I don't support a lot of his administrations actions so far and this is not why I voted for him, but you idiot conservatives have to get a clue and understand WHY he's the president. He's not the illegitimate, the annointed, the magnificent, the great, the savior, any of these stupid fucking names YOU in the conservative fantasyland have granted him. He won because his competition was a woman that everyone in America hates and no one can tell anyone why they do, an old dumbass Republican that not even conservatives believed in, and his running mate, a completely retarded, obscenely negative stereotype of the worst possible stereotypical American yuppie citizen. A stupid cunt even less intelligent than GW, who names her children the kind of appellations found in Saturday morning cartoons and old western flicks, whose children are inherently as fucking tragic of an abomination that has come to represent the common American, who in the typical neo-American way doesn't care about anyone, including her constituents, or her gender, or nature.
I love you conservatives, I really do. You're all so incredibly clueless as to the time, the situation that we have lived in for years. America has ALWAYS been arrogant. Only an arrogant nation could slap Britain in the face at the height of their power as an empire and tell them "Bring it, bitch." Only an arrogant nation could sit back and watch Europe, the entirety of the Western world and the Eastern world be used as a firing range, it's people incinerated, enslaved, murdered, used as lab rats for occult and demonic experiments, not once but three times, biding it's time until the travesty had reached a peak, coming in to the war 4 years late, never at all, or over a decade late, and then have the BALLS to allow it's fascist motherfucker right wing celebrities claim that America "saved the day" , that we'd all be speaking German if it weren't for America. What the FUCK did America ever do for ANYONE? We let 10 million people die in WW2 before we ever even lifted a finger. It doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter that we were "regrouping" and trying to be a worthwhile effort instead of charging in and just becoming victims ourselves. We orchestrated the destruction of Europe and Africa and Russia and most of Asia AND the western hemisphere and we have the disgusting audacity to decry the world for ever criticizing us because they may potentially be "slaves" to this day? We have the balls to berate our president, to crucify him on the altar of public opinion, for apologizing for the word which sums up our entire existence?
Did ANY of you tools EVER take a history class? We found this land on accident, looking for India, at which point after overwhelming evidence proving us to be completely incorrect we actively refused to believe science FACT (Sound familiar?), and set upon calling the native emigrants of Russia and Europe and the Iranian plateau to this land "Indians" just to further engrain our arrogance on the world. And we STILL call them Indians to this day! We killed their entire species, we killed their culture, their religion, their society, hunted and butchered them and then forced them to live on government chosen tracts of barren, useless land, and now we bitch and cry and protest and vote no against "indian" casino laws so that they can't at least have some empty monetary reward for surviving and suffering the genocide of their existence because we have attached a criminal connotation to casinos, which in reality is entirely a product of American fearmongering and radical propaganda. On top of that, we killed the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Inca , whether or not it wasn't specifically America instead of other European nations like Spain, forced people off of land they lived on for generations and generations, and the best part of all is the fact that no one even lives on 80% of the land in America. Half of our country still flies the confederate flag, a symbol of criminality, unconstitutional beliefs and behavior, slavery, arrogance, oppression, and stupidity, under the guise of a symbol of decentralization, of pride, of history. And we encourage it.
For anyone too retarded to understand, the South was not right. A confederation of state governments with no central authority to govern them has NEVER worked and will never work as proven by the history of man. The Greek city states had no central government, they were destroyed, repeatedly. The Italian states had no central government. They were destroyed, nay immediately, and united under a central government. The Germanic states had no central unified government. They were destroyed and in turmoil for centuries. The Chinese kingdoms and states spent the time in which they did not have a central unifying government destroying each other and being destroyed.
In stark contrast, the only stability that has ever come for nations in the history of existence has been with strong central governments. The Persian empire of Darius and afterward had a central unifying government. It lasted centuries. The Roman Republic and Empire, in their original and diminutive forms, were the very foundation of a modern government, and lasted 2000 years. The Parthian Empire, the Sassanid Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Bactrian Empire, the dynasties of China, Lysimachian, Cassandrian, and Ptolemaic kingdoms, the Phoenician empire, every successful "union" of nations in the history of ever has been held together (for as long as possible) by a strong centralized government. The evidence is irrefutable. The fact that these empires all fell apart (most by military conquest) is entirely irrelevant in a comparison of American alternate history to pre-American real history. America as a nation is only 2 centuries old, there's no gaurantee it will last much longer if at all.
You're right conservatives, I concede, I'm sorry. A country whose entire existence is predicated upon assassination, murder, deception, unbridled greed, genocide, dissention, treachery, rebellion, slavery, pitiful attempts at diplomacy, unasked for international intervention, social cannabalism, fanatic religious devotion, hypocras, corruption, overconsumption, and coveting just to name a few, is by no means arrogant. How DARE Obama make the slightest insignificant dent in the cave walls that are our massive grave plot as a country by attempting to even ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that we are wrong. How dare he observe the traditions of foreign countries. How dare he change the ridiculous diplomatic relations we have had with Cuba and other unpopular nations for the past sixty years. What a prick.
Here, let me just drop this list of noteable terms that you all need to re-examine.
Yellow journalism
The Gilded Age
World War 1
World War 2
Korean War
Cuban Missile Crisis
Vietnam War
Bosnia Herzegovina
Pakistan
Tibet
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
Tunisia
Italy
Okinawa
Spanish American War
Mexican American War
American Revolution
American Civil War
Treaty of Versailles
League of Nations
United Nations
Israel
Somalia
Afghanistan
Iraq
Lebanon
George W. Bush
Nixon
Johnson
Reagan
Clinton
World Trade Center
Fox News
Seven Years War
War of 1812
Berlin Wall
South Africa
Apartheid
Nurembourg Trials
Geneva Convention
Roman Empire
Gracchus brothers
Julius Caeser
Paul Revere
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
John Locke
Plato
Socrates
Aristotle
Carl Sagan
Stephen Hawking
Rick Santorum
Strom Thurman
Nancy Pelosi
Harry Reid
Tim Geitner
Operation Desert Shield
Operation Desert Storm
al Qaeda
Hamas
Syria
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Haliburton
Tyco
Adelphia
Enron
Ken Lay
Seriously, I could go on for days. Go back to high school, go back to college, and read a god damn history book. Watch a god damn news reel. Go to your library at your university and go to the whatever-ma-jig-newspaper-machine and read articles from back in the day, watch videos. Read interviews. Read the CIA world fact book. You fucking fascist bigot naive zealots would make me sick if your pathetic existence hadn't forced the righteous population of this world to grow such thick skin.
America makes any educated person who has a conscience absolutely sick to their stomachs. Yes, we're not the only country with a crime rate. We're not the only country that murdered people in the name of expansion, freedom, god, money, vengeance, whatever. We're not the only or the first nation to lie, to deceive, to invade, to turn a blind eye. But you know what we are? We're the best at all of those things.
"We're the best, oh whooaaa oh, never gonna evah bring us down".
Being the best isn't a good thing all the time. Excellence, superlative adjectives, are not good things when they modify murder, deception, invasion, coveting, genocide, brashness, refusal, naivete, ignorance, over-consumption, zealotry, inferior products, lack of compassion, social cannibalism, arrogance, stupidity, obesity.
Honestly....can you really think of a positive adjective we can claim a superlative in? Honestly, I challenge you to think of one superlative positive adjective that describes America. Enduring spirit? No. Try Britain, or France, or Germany. Innovation? Try a Chinese dorm room. Educational pursuit? Try any country that isn't America. Personal freedom? Wrong again. Monetary stability? Try Europe. Transportation infrastructure? Europe.
You can't.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Piracy, 9/11, Hillary Clinton
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,514039,00.html
Let me start off by saying that I believe the people on the left, or near the left of the middle, in the Libertarian or Democratic party or maybe even on the fence, are quite aware in their every day mental lives that Conservatives are among other demonstrable and derogatory qualities, completely bat shit insane.
Having said that allow me to point out what any person with a developed brain, even third graders, can explain more clearly to you than factual scientific concepts. Piracy and terrorism are the same fucking thing. There is NO difference. I wish I had the clairvoyance, the extra terrestrial knowledge, to understand the psychoses of the conservative mind. What do you honestly think makes piracy and terrorism two separate categories of criminal activity, of criminal lifestyle? Pirates INVENTED terrorism. There is no difference. NONE MICHAEL SAVAGE. NONE. In fact, it wasn't even Michael Savage that said it when I heard this putrid nonsense on the airwaves, it was some stand in, because like the great Americans, all the "popular" on-air media personalities are taking Good Friday off, though every real American worked their ass off today.
What makes me even more irate is the overall puzzle of how to poison America's mind and fuck the Democrats out of office, and how they attempt to fit all these little pieces into it. For example, Fox news, Savage, Limbaugh, all these morons, have the audacity to berate Hillary Clinton for laughing at the fact that there's piracy in Somalia. Do you know why she's laughing? Because she had the faith in humanity to believe that after three thousand years PIRACY HAD FINALLY STOPPED. You fucking IDIOTS. She's not laughing at "terrorism". She's not laughing because she finds criminal activity humorous. She's laughing at how god damn ridiculous is the fact that after three thousand years, we haven't managed to eliminate the threat of piracy not only on the high seas, but on land as well.
Yes, conservatives, that's right, I said 3000 years. That's why she's laughing. She thought the Barbary wars, and the destruction of the Carribbean sea pirate threat as well as around the coasts of Africa, Brazil, Argentina, the East Indies, and the Mediterranean sea had long come to pass as a solid fact in world history textbooks and SHOULD only exist in Hollywood and Disney World in the 21st century. Realistically she realized before and certainly realizes now piracy is still popular and dangerous, and she's ashamed at how ludicrous and retarded it is that there are pirates in an age of nuclear weapons and jet engines. However, I have digressed.
Any teenager, nay, any elementary school kid who cares about history or war or culture or the history of economics can elucidate the concept of piracy to you. It's been around as long as sailing. Julius Caesar built his early pre-political career upon eradicating the pirate threat of Cilicia. He spent over a month in the captivity of pirates and threatened regularly to crucify every last one of them when his ransom arrived from Miletus. Eventually it did, and he crucified every last pirate involved. Before Caesar and after Caesar pirates still sailed the Mediterranean sea, and dealing with pirates became a pre-occupation of every nation to bear a fleet.
We thought in the United States in the 18th and 19th century we had finally broken the back of pirates, with the aforementioned Barbary Wars and the "justice" administered to the pirates of the Carribbean sea as well as other vital colonial trade centers. They existed before the rise of Rome, they existed during, and they still exist centuries after not only they thought to have eliminated the problem, but centuries after America, after the United Provinces, Portugal, the British Empire, the French, the Moroccans, and countless other nations thought to have eradicated piracy from the world.
As I said before, it must be made painfully clear to you idiots that terrorism is not a new concept. Radical Islamists did not invent terrorism. Hussein, bin Laden, Iran, Iraq, Hamas, al Qaida, Somalia, South Africa, none of these people directly invented terrorism fresh out of the criminal laboratory in the 20th century.
ter⋅ror⋅ism
[ter-uh-riz-uh
Origin:
1785–95
Let me start off by saying that I believe the people on the left, or near the left of the middle, in the Libertarian or Democratic party or maybe even on the fence, are quite aware in their every day mental lives that Conservatives are among other demonstrable and derogatory qualities, completely bat shit insane.
Having said that allow me to point out what any person with a developed brain, even third graders, can explain more clearly to you than factual scientific concepts. Piracy and terrorism are the same fucking thing. There is NO difference. I wish I had the clairvoyance, the extra terrestrial knowledge, to understand the psychoses of the conservative mind. What do you honestly think makes piracy and terrorism two separate categories of criminal activity, of criminal lifestyle? Pirates INVENTED terrorism. There is no difference. NONE MICHAEL SAVAGE. NONE. In fact, it wasn't even Michael Savage that said it when I heard this putrid nonsense on the airwaves, it was some stand in, because like the great Americans, all the "popular" on-air media personalities are taking Good Friday off, though every real American worked their ass off today.
What makes me even more irate is the overall puzzle of how to poison America's mind and fuck the Democrats out of office, and how they attempt to fit all these little pieces into it. For example, Fox news, Savage, Limbaugh, all these morons, have the audacity to berate Hillary Clinton for laughing at the fact that there's piracy in Somalia. Do you know why she's laughing? Because she had the faith in humanity to believe that after three thousand years PIRACY HAD FINALLY STOPPED. You fucking IDIOTS. She's not laughing at "terrorism". She's not laughing because she finds criminal activity humorous. She's laughing at how god damn ridiculous is the fact that after three thousand years, we haven't managed to eliminate the threat of piracy not only on the high seas, but on land as well.
Yes, conservatives, that's right, I said 3000 years. That's why she's laughing. She thought the Barbary wars, and the destruction of the Carribbean sea pirate threat as well as around the coasts of Africa, Brazil, Argentina, the East Indies, and the Mediterranean sea had long come to pass as a solid fact in world history textbooks and SHOULD only exist in Hollywood and Disney World in the 21st century. Realistically she realized before and certainly realizes now piracy is still popular and dangerous, and she's ashamed at how ludicrous and retarded it is that there are pirates in an age of nuclear weapons and jet engines. However, I have digressed.
Any teenager, nay, any elementary school kid who cares about history or war or culture or the history of economics can elucidate the concept of piracy to you. It's been around as long as sailing. Julius Caesar built his early pre-political career upon eradicating the pirate threat of Cilicia. He spent over a month in the captivity of pirates and threatened regularly to crucify every last one of them when his ransom arrived from Miletus. Eventually it did, and he crucified every last pirate involved. Before Caesar and after Caesar pirates still sailed the Mediterranean sea, and dealing with pirates became a pre-occupation of every nation to bear a fleet.
We thought in the United States in the 18th and 19th century we had finally broken the back of pirates, with the aforementioned Barbary Wars and the "justice" administered to the pirates of the Carribbean sea as well as other vital colonial trade centers. They existed before the rise of Rome, they existed during, and they still exist centuries after not only they thought to have eliminated the problem, but centuries after America, after the United Provinces, Portugal, the British Empire, the French, the Moroccans, and countless other nations thought to have eradicated piracy from the world.
As I said before, it must be made painfully clear to you idiots that terrorism is not a new concept. Radical Islamists did not invent terrorism. Hussein, bin Laden, Iran, Iraq, Hamas, al Qaida, Somalia, South Africa, none of these people directly invented terrorism fresh out of the criminal laboratory in the 20th century.
ter⋅ror⋅ism
[ter-uh-riz-uh
m]
–noun
| 1. | the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes. |
| 2. | the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. |
| 3. | a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government. |
Origin:
1785–95
pi⋅ra⋅cy
[pahy-ruh-see]–noun, plural -cies.
| 1. | practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea. |
| 2. | the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy. |
| 3. | Also called stream capture. Geology. diversion of the upper part of one stream by the headward growth of another. |
Origin:
1545–55; earlier pyracie pīrātīaSee pirate, -acy
The definitions are not exactly the same, according to the dictionary. Dictionaries do not accurately define words in a modern society and certainly do not take into account the reality of their defined members, such as pirates and terrorists. While a pirate may potentially only exhibit behavior only definable as general terrorism, they may only be doing it for fun, for plunder, for loot, and womens. Unfortunately for those that aren't aware, Disney pirates who seek women and booze and gold and a good time are not real. Pirates were brutal criminals. They murdered for no reason, they raped, they plundered, they destroyed property, they killed women and children unprovoked. They were the most violent people you could possibly imagine, and in fact, you couldn't imagine them, because you've never met a true 18th century pirate, and you've never met 21st century pirate. Niether have I.
Unfortunately for you conservatives, niether of us know terrorists either, not foreign ones at least, but it's well established that they are human beings. They have families, they are networked, and although they are violent and brutal and "insane", they exhibit the same normal behaviors we do. Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, all these people, they have families, they engage at times and maybe all the time as far as we know in every day life, albeit potentially removed from normal society in some cases. You don't hear about muslim extremists busting into a grocery store, murderign everyone, and then leaving and not even taking anything.
Get a clue and realize that terrorism is an extremely broad term. In reality, all crime is terrorism. There are no victimizing crimes that don't seek to scare, to terrify, to intimidate. Crimes with indirect or somewhat intangible victims like counterfeiting and file sharing are completely different. Rape, murder, theft, war, molestation, these crimes are all violent, they are all "terrifying" and their only purpose, regardless of motive, is to scare and intimidate the victims. There's no difference between a murderer who shoots someone in the head in brought daylight in an alley and a "terrorist" who helps his terrorist group take over an oil rig and hold it hostage for government money, or someone who flies a plane into a building. Absolutely no difference. The magnitude of the crime doesn't make the crime any different. An American who shoots his neighbor should receive the same punishment as the "terrorists" who "hijacked" planes and blew up part of New York City. They should sit in jail for the rest of their lives, and I won't go into that, because a discussion of capital punishment and the flawed American "justice" system is a whole grocery store full of worms that I'm not going to open up right now.
Pre and Post 9/11 World
It makes me just so happy to hear conservatives throwing around a term as insanely retarded as "post/pre 911 world". Yes, in some circumstances it is convenient, in a strictly textbook and pedagogical sense, to refer to things with temporal prefixes. For example, ante-bellum and post-bellum South in America, though it is highly arguable that in reality, there are very little distinguishable differences between any section of America before and after the second American revolution.
There is no such thing as post 9/11 and pre 9/11 world. These three words serve ONLY as a temporal distinction between the "time" before September 11, 2001 , and the "time" after September 11, 2001. In the big picture, nothing has changed. After 9/11, Ben Franklin would shoot himself in the face with a shotgun if he travelled forward in time to witness the monsterous shit the Bush administration took on the constitution. Other than that, the world is the same. We still have secret military operations involved with corrupt goverments. Our own government is still inept, corrupt, and disenfranchised from it's people. If you consider the blemish of the Bush administration and their perceivedly immense changes to the very fabric of the geo-political sphere and America, yes, some changes have occurred. The government can do whatever it wants now, more or less. Crazy fucking INSANE laws can be passed in , go figure, Bush territory, like in Florida, literally outlawing philanthropy. (A man was arrested and jailed for helping a homeless person.)
The only sense in that the world is any different than it was eight years ago is that now people are not going to take horse shit anymore, or so the conservative propaganda machine would have you believe. After their so coined terrible presidency of Barack Obama thus far, they have yet to accomplish any political achievements. The bill still passed, the administration is still in place. They can have their Tea Parties, they have not accomplished and will not accomplish anything.
If you honestly think 9/11 changed everything (as popularized on Family Guy), you're an idiot. You most likely are waking up in the same bedroom you did that morning, driving the same car, working the same job, living in the same town and country, doing the same shit you did that morning as you will this Easter weekend, and so is everyone else in a first world country. You conservative fascists make me fucking sick. If you gave a shit about anything in the world bigger than your own pocketbooks, you'd shut the fuck up and do something that matters. Dharfur, Somalia, deforestation, the countdown to extinction, humanitarian efforts, the somewhat recovering economy, global climate shifting, supporting personal freedoms, supporting local businesses, preventing the absolute possiblity of Enron, Tyco, AIG, Adelphia, your neighborhood watch, ANYTHING. Stop listening to facist morons like Huckabee, Savage, Hannity, Limbaugh, Pelosi, McCain, Palin, any of them, and think for your damn self. Seriously, try it, it might be liberating.
1545–55; earlier pyracie pīrātīa
The definitions are not exactly the same, according to the dictionary. Dictionaries do not accurately define words in a modern society and certainly do not take into account the reality of their defined members, such as pirates and terrorists. While a pirate may potentially only exhibit behavior only definable as general terrorism, they may only be doing it for fun, for plunder, for loot, and womens. Unfortunately for those that aren't aware, Disney pirates who seek women and booze and gold and a good time are not real. Pirates were brutal criminals. They murdered for no reason, they raped, they plundered, they destroyed property, they killed women and children unprovoked. They were the most violent people you could possibly imagine, and in fact, you couldn't imagine them, because you've never met a true 18th century pirate, and you've never met 21st century pirate. Niether have I.
Unfortunately for you conservatives, niether of us know terrorists either, not foreign ones at least, but it's well established that they are human beings. They have families, they are networked, and although they are violent and brutal and "insane", they exhibit the same normal behaviors we do. Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, all these people, they have families, they engage at times and maybe all the time as far as we know in every day life, albeit potentially removed from normal society in some cases. You don't hear about muslim extremists busting into a grocery store, murderign everyone, and then leaving and not even taking anything.
Get a clue and realize that terrorism is an extremely broad term. In reality, all crime is terrorism. There are no victimizing crimes that don't seek to scare, to terrify, to intimidate. Crimes with indirect or somewhat intangible victims like counterfeiting and file sharing are completely different. Rape, murder, theft, war, molestation, these crimes are all violent, they are all "terrifying" and their only purpose, regardless of motive, is to scare and intimidate the victims. There's no difference between a murderer who shoots someone in the head in brought daylight in an alley and a "terrorist" who helps his terrorist group take over an oil rig and hold it hostage for government money, or someone who flies a plane into a building. Absolutely no difference. The magnitude of the crime doesn't make the crime any different. An American who shoots his neighbor should receive the same punishment as the "terrorists" who "hijacked" planes and blew up part of New York City. They should sit in jail for the rest of their lives, and I won't go into that, because a discussion of capital punishment and the flawed American "justice" system is a whole grocery store full of worms that I'm not going to open up right now.
Pre and Post 9/11 World
It makes me just so happy to hear conservatives throwing around a term as insanely retarded as "post/pre 911 world". Yes, in some circumstances it is convenient, in a strictly textbook and pedagogical sense, to refer to things with temporal prefixes. For example, ante-bellum and post-bellum South in America, though it is highly arguable that in reality, there are very little distinguishable differences between any section of America before and after the second American revolution.
There is no such thing as post 9/11 and pre 9/11 world. These three words serve ONLY as a temporal distinction between the "time" before September 11, 2001 , and the "time" after September 11, 2001. In the big picture, nothing has changed. After 9/11, Ben Franklin would shoot himself in the face with a shotgun if he travelled forward in time to witness the monsterous shit the Bush administration took on the constitution. Other than that, the world is the same. We still have secret military operations involved with corrupt goverments. Our own government is still inept, corrupt, and disenfranchised from it's people. If you consider the blemish of the Bush administration and their perceivedly immense changes to the very fabric of the geo-political sphere and America, yes, some changes have occurred. The government can do whatever it wants now, more or less. Crazy fucking INSANE laws can be passed in , go figure, Bush territory, like in Florida, literally outlawing philanthropy. (A man was arrested and jailed for helping a homeless person.)
The only sense in that the world is any different than it was eight years ago is that now people are not going to take horse shit anymore, or so the conservative propaganda machine would have you believe. After their so coined terrible presidency of Barack Obama thus far, they have yet to accomplish any political achievements. The bill still passed, the administration is still in place. They can have their Tea Parties, they have not accomplished and will not accomplish anything.
If you honestly think 9/11 changed everything (as popularized on Family Guy), you're an idiot. You most likely are waking up in the same bedroom you did that morning, driving the same car, working the same job, living in the same town and country, doing the same shit you did that morning as you will this Easter weekend, and so is everyone else in a first world country. You conservative fascists make me fucking sick. If you gave a shit about anything in the world bigger than your own pocketbooks, you'd shut the fuck up and do something that matters. Dharfur, Somalia, deforestation, the countdown to extinction, humanitarian efforts, the somewhat recovering economy, global climate shifting, supporting personal freedoms, supporting local businesses, preventing the absolute possiblity of Enron, Tyco, AIG, Adelphia, your neighborhood watch, ANYTHING. Stop listening to facist morons like Huckabee, Savage, Hannity, Limbaugh, Pelosi, McCain, Palin, any of them, and think for your damn self. Seriously, try it, it might be liberating.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Stop arguing about science fiction
I seriously hate when people try to have intelligent discussions about "mechs" as viable tools of warfare. Yes, you dolts have the basic arguments down: They are science fiction machinations, based on technology that is not entirely developed at this point in time. The rest of your arguements are not only moot but in the typical conservative fashion, pointless, irrelevant, misguided, and asinine.
Example:
"The M1 Abrahms 70 ton AFV has its mass distributed evenly amongst its tracks, that's why such a heavy vehicle is able to be successful."
Mecha are humanoid. Every last detail of mecha in a decent "mecha" universe (i.e Battletech) is thoroughly explained and dignified. Human beings are able to walk and not destroy things under them that are structurally stable, without falling over or imploding. Sorry, there's no counter argument for that. Increasing the variables on both sides does not change the math, it still comes out as viable.
Combat nowadays is urban? Does that matter at all? No, it really doesn't. If you are too damn stupid to realize, the combat in Battletech rarely takes place in urban environments and when it does it's dangerous and disasterous in the most realistic of ways. Additionally, if you were to presume combat even occurs in an urban environment, bringing with it all the intricacies of a city (sewers, plumbing, electrical wires, roadbed, bridge support, foundations) you have to use the common sense that the majority of 'mechs in the situation are going to be light, in the 20 - 40 ton range. Twenty to forty tons distributed over two humanoid legs will probably destroy a roadbed, yes, it's irrelevant. Building a city requires ground. The ground didn't disappear, it's still there. Trust me, I've seen it.
And just how is height a disadvantage? How retarded of a suggestion is that? This isn't Bag End, it's reality, it's outside. Being 40 feet tall isn't going to do anything but make it easier to see and kill everyone.
Example:
"The M1 Abrahms 70 ton AFV has its mass distributed evenly amongst its tracks, that's why such a heavy vehicle is able to be successful."
Mecha are humanoid. Every last detail of mecha in a decent "mecha" universe (i.e Battletech) is thoroughly explained and dignified. Human beings are able to walk and not destroy things under them that are structurally stable, without falling over or imploding. Sorry, there's no counter argument for that. Increasing the variables on both sides does not change the math, it still comes out as viable.
Combat nowadays is urban? Does that matter at all? No, it really doesn't. If you are too damn stupid to realize, the combat in Battletech rarely takes place in urban environments and when it does it's dangerous and disasterous in the most realistic of ways. Additionally, if you were to presume combat even occurs in an urban environment, bringing with it all the intricacies of a city (sewers, plumbing, electrical wires, roadbed, bridge support, foundations) you have to use the common sense that the majority of 'mechs in the situation are going to be light, in the 20 - 40 ton range. Twenty to forty tons distributed over two humanoid legs will probably destroy a roadbed, yes, it's irrelevant. Building a city requires ground. The ground didn't disappear, it's still there. Trust me, I've seen it.
And just how is height a disadvantage? How retarded of a suggestion is that? This isn't Bag End, it's reality, it's outside. Being 40 feet tall isn't going to do anything but make it easier to see and kill everyone.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Rubicon Rising: Chapter 5
-=5=-
Fountain Square, Gallen's Heights
Pergamus, Sheratan
Prefecture IV
April 14, 3133
Thin wisps of low hanging morning fog spiraled around the plaza, reaching out in the cool breeze to wrap around every object possible. The heavy clouds blocked out most of the ultraviolet rays from Sheratan's spectra-G V class star, casting a dim white light that combined with the cloud cover and fog generated a respectively dreary environment on the planet's secondary capital city. Each wisp of fog systematically reached out over everything, grasping and reaching out like a ghost.
As ghostly arms reached out towards him, MJ lost his focus and, perched high in the cockpit of his Corvis, momentarily lost touch with his current surroundings. He was relatively insulated from the noise of the outside, but the noise recorded by the audio sensors slowly and surely kicked him back into reality.
A cacophonous riot of shouts and clanging gradually tore away the sound barrier from the outside of his squat, bird-legged Corvis 'mech. He and a squad of infantry had been dispatched to Capital City to answer reinforcement requests of the local police precinct. Rather than spare more of the actual police force, the police commissioner had collaborated with Hasek to send one mech and a platoon of ground troops. He supposed if he were in the same situation that would be his decision as well.
Huxley didn't care about it though; being in a position of power was not his curse. Fortunately, he was just a simple 'mech jockey. What he did care about, remotely though, was his part in ruining a beautiful town square, and in what was in his opinion a beautiful city. 'Mechs did not belong in cities; they couldn't be piloted in urban situations without at least moderate, and extremely costly, damage. As far as he knew, he had definitely done more than enough damage to necessitate some extensive and costly repair work. Piloting a 20 – ton 'mech was bound to break something; even modern roads were not designed to withstand such an extreme amount of pressure in one specific spot.
He himself had been here for only an hour and the situation seemed to be getting out of hand at a startlingly exponential rate. As far as could be determined by the ground troops and his analysis, none of the civilians present were armed per se. Not in a military sense of the word, they did not have missile packs and portable ant-armor weaponry. They did however have what armament a mob could usually afford, mostly cheap and ineffective interspersed with some respectable equipment. When he arrived they were merely protesting, but now things were getting out of hand. A select few had begun to attack the infantry on the streets trying to keep them civil, in addition to their outright refusal to obey a direct edict from the head of their state.
The 'mech had been assigned to patrol capital city along with a few platoons of infantry and three other light and medium 'mechs by order of Adrian Hasek. No one was really sure why. Although the official mumbo jumbo stated something about heightened security in light of recent "terrorist" activity, most of which referred to the espionage alleged to have occurred at Sheratan's Class B Hyper Pulse Generator station, though in reality no other popularly elected public official had verified the story Hasek's propaganda machine had disseminated into the socio-cultural stew that Sheratan was quick becoming. It had only been a week or two since they had begun patrolling the streets and these people hated them more every day for it. He really wasn't sure why, it wasn't as if they were running around stepping on people and accidentally burning their houses and hangouts.
Huxley was scanning the crowd, watching the infantry and the local police with their riot shields struggling to maintain civility among these blood hungry urbanites without using violence. Suddenly, after it was already too late, he caught a gleam in a fourth floor window of one of Liberty Square's landmark buildings. The smoke trail raced out of the window and before he could finish yelling through his combat neuro-helmet's mic and out of the external speakers to the infantry, the projectiles had done their damage.
Six missiles systematically slammed into a few of the police cruisers assembled to his east, their dark grey smoke trails lingering in the air. A few mercenary infantry and police officers leaning against one of the vehicles instantly erupted in flames, the plasma covering their entire bodies. They were flung to the street bed, screaming in agony as the fuel clung to their burning flesh. Inferno SRMs, shit!
The first car burned briefly before the modern napalm reached its fuel tank and lit it asunder, the hover car exploding in a fireball carcass of the burning car crashing down closer to the crowd than it had been. Although some dispersed, most of the crowd continued their moderately aggressive pacifism. He scanned the window he had seen the missiles launched from, but there was no reading on any of his instruments to tell him anything helpful. The second car sat silently, flames crackling all over and inside, producing thick black smoke that rippled high into the air.
He could hear the screams and chaos ensuing down on the street, men and women fleeing in fear as the riot seemed to be turning into a massacre. Through the external microphones he couldn't hear what had happened, but it appeared as though one of the ground troops had been wounded by small arms fire from somewhere, whether within the crowd or without. The situation was fast slipping from their control.
"What the hell is going on out there!?" Huxley yelled into his communications link to the Sergeant in control of the infantry platoons.
"We're taking small arms and anti vehicular fire from all over the place, sir! Our scouts can't get a lock on them!" the man that answered was Abel Clark, a commissioned infantry officer in Sheratan's standing army whom he had come to be friends with in the short time he had been on the planet. They were frequently finding themselves in these local policing situations.
Finally, he caught sight of something through the mech's cockpit glass, ignoring all of his sensor equipment, which seemed to be inept at finding anything as ancient as the muzzle flash of an assault rifle going off in the crowd. He focused in on the spot he was certain he saw an assailant, guiding his right arm joystick slowly with his hand and peering deeper into what remained of the crowd. The flash danced across his vision again and he was certain he wasn't seeing things.
"Husker, we have wolves in the flock, you are weapons free. Repeat, you are free to engage hostiles at will." Huxley announced to Abel over their radio frequency. Civilians or not, he was not going to let any more of these men die on a bleak crappy morning at a damn civilian protest.
Abel and his two platoons seemed to be fleeing to the protection of his 'mechs legs as he stood his ground. They fired sporadically towards perceived targets, retaliating with laser rifles and heavy-duty taser weapons. A few infantry perched by his 'mechs foot, a few seconds passing before they both launched infantry-sized portable short range missiles across the street at the building from which the two hover cars had been destroyed earlier. The glass walls on the buildings fourth floor windows shattered into what may have been a million pieces, showering down upon the street as the steel frames of the room bent in a billowing fireball that eventually consumed the entire room.
They didn't seem to be having as much luck with the crowd of protestors however, which continued to hold its ground. Every few seconds he would see another muzzle flash, or something get tossed through the air. Most times, it ended up being a shoe or a rock, but now that the precedent for armed protest had been set, he was beginning to notice homemade explosives and Molotov cocktails being tossed towards his position. The majority of the projectiles bounced off of riot shields or fell hopelessly against the side of his 'mech, but more than enough of them hit their mark in his mind. On both of his sides, the Molotov cocktails had ruptured against the ground and set more infantry troops ablaze, who staggered hopelessly around before trying to extinguish themselves on the plaza ground, or jumping into the giant fountain in the middle of the square.
He had seen enough to make his decision.
"Abel, get these men out of here. I'll cover you to the APCs, just get the hell out." He spoke in a flat tinny voice, devoid of emotion. He was in strictly business mode now.
Out the corner of his cockpit glass, he saw the Sergeant salute him and start rallying his men towards the fountain, where they had parked their transports, or what remained of them
The two infantry platoons had come in a hovercraft variant of the old 3060 era heavy armored personnel carriers; twenty ton vehicles that were used to ferry infantry troops and their equipment to the front lines, used extensively by the armies of the Federated Suns. Although the APC lacked any mobility with its machine guns, it was a far safer place for unarmored men to be in this situation than in the open facing unknown aggressors with unknown abilities. Huxley just hoped these terrorists, or freedom fighters, or whatever they were, weren't hiding any bigger anti-armor weapons up their sleeves. There were plenty of places to allow the opportunity: it was a giant intersection and plaza on the west side of the planet's largest city. Every building around was tall and capable of completely occluding any dangerous weapon these aggressors could manage, short of an armored vehicle itself. All in all the situation was one of many flavors of nightmare any military personnel might experience in their career.
Huxley eyed the computer screens flashing all around him, watching through one of them as the last of the infantry squads clambered up the APC's loading ramp. Several of them stumbled terribly, even falling their way into the vehicles seating area. Still others leaned on their comrades, not too horribly injured but admittedly incapable of standing in their current predicaments. He wondered what it was all for. They hadn't done anything, they were simply doing what they had been ordered to do, and it wasn't as if they had been ordered to kill innocent people. We're just standing in for police, for Christ's sake, Huxley thought to himself.
Their targets taking cover in an armored vehicle didn't seem to deter the unidentified assailants in the slightest bit, much to Huxley's disappointment. Another window flashed to his right, an azure beam dancing off the glass side of its building as suddenly a charged beam of particles splashed against the APCs side armor. Caught in the process of starting up its engines, the vehicle lurched violently on its side. Molten splinters of Ferro-fibrous armor and gobs of liquefied concrete sprayed against the legs of his Corvis, as he fumbled with the right hand joystick again.
"Sergeant, I don't like to repeat myself!" Huxley barked over the radio transmitter built into his neurohelmet again.
"Yes, sir!" Abel grunted back into the microphone headset attached to the APCs passenger control panel.
Huxley couldn't hear it but outside the personnel carrier's giant fans kicked on, whirring and whining loudly as they the air cushion they produced shoved the vehicle a foot in the air. The vehicle had taken severe damage, the particle cannons projection literally melting a hole through its thin side armor. He could actually see through one side of the APC and out of the other, which assured him a fair amount of the men he was trying to save had just died. He was on the verge of rage, whatever the cause of this injustice, he assured himself none of his duties to anyone, not to himself, not to the dead, were fulfilled, until he at least was instrumental in the apprehension and downfall of whatever group was responsible for slaying military personnel through terrorist means.
He knew he would regret what he was about to do, that it was in all probability a career ender and the beginning of a war, but there was no choice in their current situation. Surely he would be at the mercy of military personnel if put on trial, they would understand. Huxley dragged his left arm joystick, sliding his thumb to the top and disengaging the safety switch on his lasers. As his thumb found its way back to the firing trigger built into the front of the joystick, he brought the targeting reticule on the machines Heads Up Display to bear over the location of what he confirmed was a Man-Pack Particle Projector Cannon. Even for a small infantry weapon, it had easily torn through the heavily armored personnel carrier that was now struggling to escape the scene. There was no need to wait for his targeting systems to confirm a lock, as there was nothing to lock on to: the target was entirely human. Huxley took no time to hesitate, instead taking a deep breath and furiously squeezing the trigger.
The laser weapons set on the bottom of his mech's left forearm buzzed, stabbing out towards the window with twin streams of rapid-fire light bursts. Like a frighteningly accurate machine gun the emerald lances drilled through the frame of the building, melting structural supports and lighting walls all throughout the specific room ablaze. What was once a beautiful building side was now ruined by a gaping, molten hole that used to be what looked like an office building, though it was too liquefied to determine. He couldn't tell what happened to the aggressors manning the bipod-mounted particle cannon, but from the few red stains that survived on the walls and carpet he was pretty certain he had hit his mark.
With all the pertinent threats eliminated, to the best of his knowledge, Huxley turned his attention to the gathering of armed and violently protesting civilians collected around the fountain and near his mech. With the infantry and police getting the hell out of dodge, the protestors had broken through the barricades and started to outright attack his 'mech. As he visually scoped out the situation through the tinted glass of his cockpit he even saw one brave civilian managed to be on the mech's right arm. Apparently he had climbed up the few ladder rungs he had kept on the mech's legs when he had chosen not to replace the ladder entirely with a rolled steel chain many MechWarriors kept in their machines cockpit. It was a young man, not too far from his own age it seemed, but to his mind the kid might as well have been an insect after what this crowd had chosen to do to good citizens that they didn't even know.
M.J Huxley intended to treat the kid as such: just an insect. His right arm tore frantically at the control stick, the neural connection in his helmet causing the mech's arm to do the same. The giant auto cannon that comprised the mech's right arm flailed around as much as he could allow it, but the kid kept a firm grip onto his 'mech, holding on for dear life. Repeatedly he tried, and repeatedly he failed to shake his uninvited guest. On his last try, whether out of frustration or negligence, he unintentionally squeezed the trigger on his right hand joystick, letting loose a high-speed stream of metal death upon the crowd.
Oh, fuck! Huxley cursed aloud in his cockpit.
The Ultra 10-class auto-cannon that made up half of the Corvis's right arm discharged and let loose ten rounds of terrifyingly huge and high-powered 120mm explosive shells.
They were almost the size of a person, in fact in ancient Terran tanks, even in modern tanks, the 120mm round was still used for anti-armor, the same purpose it served on modern 'mechs. Several of the shells smashed into the marble floor of the fountain square, kicking up chunks of building material and spraying fragmented metal all over the crowd. However, to his horror, some of the cartridges hit civilians. At least he was certain they were civilians, judging by the huge splash of blood that cascaded across the outside of his cockpit. The carnage before him was foreign to most people in the modern age, even with the frequency of so many insignificant battles and wars being fought in the 32nd century. He guessed that something like this must have happened somewhere, the news just never got out. Those civilians who had been lucky enough not to get hit directly merely laid on the ground, screaming in agony at the shrapnel that was slowly draining all of their blood. The true victims of his auto-cannon were already gone though. Several bodies literally laid in pieces on the ground, hemorrhaging profusely at the massive wounds granted them by such a barbarous attack. He felt sure they weren't in any pain, they must have died from pure shock before any true consequences of losing their bodies could come to fruition. Huxley winced at the whole scene.
Jesus Christ, he whispered through clinched teeth, cursing at himself. If he had to guess it, his mech was probably bathed in blood in some spots.
It seemed the only person, other than those that fled immediately when he began shooting, that survived the massacre was his friendly 'mech insect. The kid didn't even seem to have any burns or bruises on his body, neither from the autocannon discharging beneath him and spraying gigantic spent casings all around his body nor from being tossed around his machine like a rag doll. He wondered if perhaps Mr. Bold could be of some more use to them, after getting the entire group of militant protestors killed with his antics.
Huxley spun the 'mech around, his legs finally getting a chance to stretch as he pumped the foot pedals. The Corvis broke into a jog, chasing after the APC at only sixty kilometers per hour. The vehicle seemed too severely damaged to manage its top speed though, and was no match for his fully functional 'mech.
"Abel open the rest of that sardine can up, I have a prisoner." He happily proclaimed to the APCs radio frequency.
There was no audio response, but the APC slowly came to a hovering halt in the middle of the street, and he mimicked the movement with his foot pedals, bring himself to a stop. A He watched a squad of infantry clamber up the ladders on both sides of his 'mechs legs, and through the cockpit saw them forcibly removing the man from his mech. They hit him with stun batons repeatedly until he loosened his grip, and after struggling to get him down the ladder, tossed the guy back in with the infantry in the dilapidated personnel carrier.
As the rear-loading ramp closed again, Huxley opened up a private line to his infantry Sergeant.
"Maybe that guy knows something?" M.J queried him.
"Yea…maybe he knows the size of our jail cell." Huxley chuckled, kicking the throttle back up and escorting the APC back to friendlier parts of town.
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