Lawnmower Boy

I saw Apocalypse the other morning. It got off the bus, looked around, saw that it'd been recognised, walked over, told me that we didn't deserve to be put out of our misery. As it got up onto the next bus, it told me that it was going to follow the Grateful Dead until we got our stuff together enough to be worth apocalypsesing.

Or, on the other hand, we might find that a point of diminishing returns in the one technology we've pursuing with any enthusiasm is a signal to put our money somewhere else.

Chris Carter was awfully young when he was coaching Henry Ford about his "doubts" about Pearl Harbor. Just saying. Fun show. As a teen-to-adult in the 80s, maybe I missed some of the easter eggs, but I just about laughed out loud when I was introduced to blonde-wigged Eleven as Will's (Mike's?) second cousin from out of town, there to attend the memorial service for not-Laura Palmer. And she didn't even end up getting golf-clubbed to death by uhm, spoilers I guess. Although now that I think about it, that distinguished mane of white hair. . .

'Cuz the bigger booms were a bit counterproductive. The basic fusion-fission-fusion-fission bomb gets a lot more megatons out of a given chunk of U-235 than the bombs the big powers chose to design. With Project Orion, you're not really reaching full efficiency until you get to the 1MT interstellar design, and it looks as though 1MT bombs are easily scalable up by a factor of ten or so by wrapping them with depleted uranium to get the final fission stage, complete with bonus fallout. We can build starships. The details are engineering, not basic science. An unimaginable and insanely expensive amount of engineering, of course, but that's the way people tended to think about a manned moon shot in 1960.

Note, however, that we produce and consume energy in inefficient ways. Nuclear fusion is the way to go, and while nuclear fusion is, in general, not practical as yet, it's the one application where existing methods of producing fusion (blowing up deuteurium with an atom bomb) is actually practical. Dyson's interstellar Project Orion is still a bit gobsmacking --300,000 1 megaton bombs to propel 50,000t of structure and payload to Alpha Centauri in 133 years, but it's not impossible The scaled up worldship using Tsar Bomb-sized propellant units? Now that's impractical.

I'm game for it! In the mean time, you may not be hearing from TheQuestionMan for a while, as he's due for a visit from someone representing the King of Ivory.

Pfft. Project Orion will get us to the stars just fine. Like every sane human being, I have my reservations about using it as a single-stage-to-orbit platform on a regular basis, but with orbital industry, you could easilly build it in orbit. No need for waving your hands at nebulous future tech. The rub here is the "orbital industry." That sounds hard. And expensive! So we're not doing it. Well, here's the catch. Everything sounds hard and expensive when you don't put the resources into it. Even the stuff we used to do! That's why we're here, after all, sniffing the last bit of powder from the baggie of a dead industry. Does that sound like defeatism? It is! It's also a completely chosen defeatism. Spend the resources, and the problem will solve itself. (And, yes, that means that getting to the stars will incidentally be a boost to Hero Games.) We'll get to the stars. If we choose to do so. Also, the Renaissance Man thing needs to die in a fire. There are plenty of Renaissance Men around. Go to your local prison and talk to the guys there. At least half of them know everything, and a good share of them will tell you so as convincingly as your average "Renaissance Man" of three hundred years ago. And with as much reason.

Yeah! This thread is . . .Uhm. Never mind.

No problem! We'll just build a battery that can store 56x40 Gigawatt-years and charge it from the grid until we have the "starwisp" technology. Which, at a Moore's Law doubling every 18 months will be . . . real soon now. Okay, maybe we have a problem. Build a few more fusion plants? (This snark brought to you by frustration at the latest global warning redirection, the old "We'll get right on stopping global warming as soon as we've invented storage batteries that can hold the entire national grid's weekly output" trick.)

They don't even have 11 and a half foot poles!

Toolkit systems are generic and bland. I've got Fantasy Hero Complete, and where do I go from here? Oh, sure, the product can explain different fantasy settings, but unless it makes one official, they're not, you know, real. They're not-real. They're fantasy fantasy. And also I have to do more work. Games that combine generic rules with full-fleshed genre settings for every imaginable kind of gaming are dumb and stupid and they suck. Toolkit systems that grow organically from their setting and which have long-lasting and loyal support just suck and no-one should ever care about them. In fact, even the author should just go off and redot things. "Generic," that is, D&D-type systems are boring. Look, elves! I want a system that says, "No elves," because I only liked elves before they were cool. Systems with lots of idiosyncratic races and stuff are stupid and weird and probably secretly boring, and have dumb names for stuff. I think maybe their inventors aren't real PhDs and get their programmes decertified. Systems that take off from incredibly vivid reimaginings of common settings with a perfect balance of idiosyncrancy and popular culture are --well, who cares about them? They may or may not be boring, but I wouldn't know, because I choose not to play them. Because reasons. Besides, they'll probably just run out of steam halfway through, and that's a totally excellent reason to never bother with them in the ffirst place. All science fiction games/settings are lame. The only thing worse than lame science fiction settings is people who try to tell you that they're not lame. You know it's true. The only thing lamer than science fiction settings are revised versions of those settings that aim to get rid of the restrictive, lame stuff and open them up. No-one cares about modern settings. Not even if you get the best ruleswriters in the business to design a million-dollar product around the best-known license in modern adventure. Lame! Superhero roleplaying is stupid and childish, not like killing dragons that live in dungeons at all. (Relevant Onion article.) In my long years in the hobby, I have seen a deliberately generic D&D setting turn into a sweeping comic epic. I have seen men who I will insist to my grave were second-rate hacks take the simple question, "What are those evil, dark, underground elves all about?" and turn the answer into one of the most successful products in the history of the industry. I've seen the most straitjacketing, imagination-numbing mechanisms of the first and dumbest RPG turned into the foundation of the modern computer gaming industry. I have seen just one of those millions of alternative RPG settings become popular in its own right, but because it allowed gamers to play vampires, it overtook D&D itself. (Largely because Pathfinder turned into the new D&D, but whatever. Dumb old Wizards of the Coast, thinking that their audience wanted an enjoyable and well-crafted development of the gaming system.) I've also seen follow-on popular culture crazes fail to catch that lightning in the bottle. I don't think there's any easily-discerned lessons here, except that "generic" is a perfectly good place to start, and that there's plenty to be mined out of elves and dwarves and such, and, no, I don't mean that making them evil-n-stuff. I can critique Tolkien perfectly well on my own, thank you very much, R. Scott Bakker. Combining generic settings with universal rules looks like a great idea, but it has failed enough times that even the most hardened gaming entrepeneur might want to rethink things. As it happens, I think the problem is that the most popular trends in RPG-dom have tended to begin by munchkinning the system, and for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, universal toolkit systems are down on munchkinning rules expansions. Steve tiptoed up to the line with the Ulronai, but didn't quite step over it --that might have been the mistake? I'm not sure.

Darn it! Who do I have to troll around here to get a distraction from doing useful stuff? By the way, thanks for maintaining this thread, GhostDancer!

Yeah, but no.

Truly, comics have gone downhill since the scene in Marshal Law Takes Manhattan with street people roasting a child molester over the flames of the eternally-burning-alive Human Torch parody wasn't enough to win the character a major distributor sequel. Now there's a comic book universe that needs some movies! Sorry, that probably sounds like trolling, which is not my intent.* Lots of good stuff did come out of the 80s and 90s, including many of the better deconstructions of the genre. The problem is the people who can't do it right, trying to do it. Even there, I've just re-watched Everything Great About Ultimate Batman v Superman, and while I cannot get behind the idea that it's a "great movie," it's certainly on the money on the problem of studio recuts. It's beginning to look like Warner Brothers' problem is that it's giving off the flop sweat of desperation, and it's drawing assorted script doctors, like sharks to blood, etc. I'm sure that someone smells money to be made from getting themselves into the middle of Jenkins' Wonder Woman, and there are probably people angling for a purge in the Warner Brothers' C suite at this point, too. *Aquaman, Commander Ryker, Chris Pines, etc., etc.

http://laughingsquid.com/ranch-dressing-soda-tasted-and-reviewed-on-dont-put-that-in-your-mouth/ Because you just can't leave a Simpsons joke alone.

Oh, I see your problem. Actually, he was going for Ambush Bug.

So I bought Ultimate Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Too Many Semi-colons the other day. Like Fan4Stick, it had a pretty dour (I think they say "somber") tone: people suck, colours muted, heroes . . . Wait, no, that comparison does neither movie justice. Fan4Stick has no heroes in sight, except possibly Doctor von Doom, who is pretty much on the money with his plan to suck the movie through a black hole. Too bad he wasn't the first to think of it. (Thanks, Josh!) Also, I didn't have to restart U:BvS: four times to get through it. It was actually pretty engaging all the way through. Fan4Stick had four very good actors, and still did very bad things with them. Following the source material, and by that I mean the Ultimate series that no-one read or cared about, the writers got rid of the whole, boring, "family" thing, and recast them as horrible teenage science Goths. This solved many problems. For example, people are often upset that Reed Richards is some old, uptight science guy with questionable decision-making skills and a horrific lack of concern for his alleged team mates, up to and including his wife. Making him a teenager sure solved the problem of him being old! Also, when he makes hopelessly irresponsible and reckless decisions while drunk, at least we can remember that he's supposed to be acting like a teenager, because he is a teenager. (Good idea involving him in a trillion dollar project, by the way.) Many people worry that Sue Richards tends to be eye candy, a problem that raised its head again when they decided to cast an attractive person as the new Sue. Making her an anomied Goth who can barely be moved to like her brother, never mind Reed, sure solved whatever problem that actually existed. Meanwhile, making her the team seamstress who doesn't even get to go to the Negative Zone was a great tribute to the original Sue, always shopping and getting taken hostage. Heh. Chicks. You know what I mean? An interracial Storm family gets you your diversity. (Not like making Reed black.That's just too much diversity. Like, it's a 7.28 on the diversity scale, where we're aiming for a 6.37.) The racists will complain, and that's why Johnny becomes a truculent street racer who gets to be included in the project because he can weld or something. I'm pretty sure he uses food stamps to buy steak and lobster in the original, long cut. Balance! Ben Grimm, I vaguely recall, was once a test pilot who had a reason to be involved in the project. Making him a glum, silent, child abuse victim who basically waits by the phone in Oyster Bay waiting to be summoned by Reed to do more heavy lifting is definitely a choice that a writer could make. At least the parts where the Grimms beat each other up is super-excellent for tone-setting, plus also closest this movie gets in any way to being "super." Plus I love the way he silently endures Johnny's verbal abuse. A great call back to the "everybody sucks" tone-setting we got with his brother beating him up to the ringing declaration that it is "Clobbering time." Also, it really brings out the fact that this is just Johnny's horrible personality venting in naked verbal aggression --probably displaced from his sister-- and not, you know, "banter." Then he kills 42 people on a single mission for the US government (which sucks --did I mention that this was a theme?). This is the kind of awesome stuff that I like seeing superheroes do, and really comes back to bit the sucky US government in the butt in the end when the Fan4Stick threaten to unleash him against the nation unless they're given their own private science city to do science in. I really liked the last part, where the group is shown the science city and told by the people who work there that they are . . . Actually, I'm pretty sure that what comes next in my memory is a super-pervy, kinky dream, and not something that was actually screened, but ever since the disappointment of the Gor movies, I've been ---I'm sorry. Too much information? Moving right along, Fan4Stick had four great actors who really sold the tone that the movie was trying to present. Or maybe there were all drugged. Either way. Also, can I say how totally immersive it was to see Reed towering over a diminutive Ben Grimm in the adult scenes?Super-excellent casting, guys! U:BvS: was a lot less concerned with getting great young actors. Instead, it had old, established great actors, who did pretty solid work. For example, Jesse Eisenberg was told "Give us Lex Luthor if Lex was Zuckerberg, only psychotic," and he delivered! Now, as for who the person was who decided that what he delivered needed to be shared with the world, I think from internal clues in the movie that it was probably Darkseid? Aside from that, though, good work on Ben Affleck's part, good work from Jeremy Irons, good. . . Henry Cavill. That's what I'm saying now, instead of "Good God." "Good Henry Cavill." 'Cuz I'm an irony guy. Also, and I don't know if anyone else caught this subtle subtext, I think they might have been reaching for some kind of Jesus imagery in their casting. (Except that Superman dies in the end, unlike Jesus. Well, okay, Jesus dies and then comes back in the sequel books, but . . Wait. Do you think they might bring Superman back in the next movie? Because that would be awesome!) The irony part of saying "Good Henry Cavill" is that I'm not sure that he is good. Either he was told to play Superman as pretty glum chum, or he was doing a hilarious Kate-Mara-as-Sue-Storm impersonation through the whole movie. Only with better hair. Like every normal person who saw the movie, I thought Gail Gadot was an excellent Wonder Woman who managed to breathe life and personality into a role that is more iconic than character-driven. Quite a contrast from Cavill, who seems petrified of putting anything into Superman, at least in this movie, unlike when he gets to play Clark Kent. (By the way, having Clark and Lois in a relationship isn't a bad choice, but I wish some serious writer would take on the Clark(-who might be Supereman)-Lois-Superman(-who might be Clark)-Superman (who isn't Clark)-Clark (who isn't Superman) relationship pentagon and give it the heat it deserves.) Finally, a point about plot coherence. Fan4Stick notoriously went off the rails, and the results show, painfully. :BvS:U isn't the best place to start with a comparison, since it is the "Snyder cut," and not the "incoherent mess that was shown in the theatres," but you can definitely see the latter in the former. The story is composed of a lot of discrete chapters, and following along smoothly from one to the next is a bit of a challenge. There was kryptonite in the Indian Ocean? And Lex needs to get it into the United States? And so he needs an import license, because he is all about the law? Only he is only doing this so that Batman Wayne will steal it? Because Lex is manipulating Bruce Batman into stealing it? So that he'll kill Superman with it, without being aware that it was actually Lex's plot? Because if Bruce Man knows that it was Lex who wanted him to kill Superman it would change his mind? Only instead of saying, "Oh, I am getting an import license to bring kryptonite into the country, and it is a big secret, and totally don't come to my headquarters dressed as a giant bat and steal it," he leaks the information through his criminal associate, KGBeast? Who, because of Lex's limited budget, is also the guy who is in charge of, uhm, framing Superman for the murder of Jimmy Olsen, would be the best way of summarising it? (Great tone-setting, Zack!) I'm sorry, that's a bit hypercritical. I just wanted to work the killing of Jimmy Olsen into my rant, in much the same way that I wanted to work the Ben Grimm-as-victim-of-child-abuse bit in, earlier. Just strange, strange choices. In an interesting way, that goes to the plot coherence. Given the amount of story that Snyder wants to cram in, the fact that you have to follow the kryptonite along through chapter after chapter is hardly fatal. The fact that you have four(!) this-is-actually-a-dream-sequence revelations isn't fatal, even if it is a bit repetitive. The problem is that by the time all is said and done, your changes of missing a key point are, like, a million percent. I guess Lex sends aides to their death is to ensure silence about an earlier episode in which he lets Bruce Wayne get away with some vital information? Maybe? Because otherwise it seems like a pretty, casually, awful move. Which is in character for this Lex, but makes it hard to understand why the Goverment is letting him indulge his kink with General Zod's dead body, as opposed to arranging for him to be bought out of Lexcorp. Seriously: there's a scene relatively early in the movie where Eisenberg's Lex has a well-sold, public psychotic breakdown at a charity function. The consequences of this sort of thing in a movie are the consequences the writer needs to move the story forward, and since I kept watching, I guess I have no grounds for complaining that "This isn't realistic." But still. That's a bit choppy, but I will defend myself on the grounds that that's my point. It is very hard to say anything coherent about the long succession of events-that-happen that set up the not-climax, followed by the more-not-climax, followed by the climax, followed by the sad ending with the funerals. The critics who went to see the movie in the theatres probably sound exasperated because they were distracted by something, at some point. Having lost the thread of the story, they were just waiting for easter eggs, which dropped in a spectacularly unsubtle way, and for the pretty lights to stop. So I guess that the studio should have trusted Snyder more in terms of putting a story together out of all those chapters? Wow. That sounded like a defence of Zack Snyder. And an interesting comparison with the complete sidelining of Josh Trank at Fan4Stick, the difference being that I think that Trank probably lost the actors. Whereas Zack's indulgence of Eisenberg came close to ruining his movie. Given the consequences flowing from the two approaches, I am left defending Zach again. Now there's just the question of tone to be resolved. The word is that Warner has dictated the somber tone of the DC universe, and maybe Zach was just complying with corporate? Fox, on the other hand, pretty much went out shopping for the tone they wanted, and got it. Marvel Studios makes it look easier than it actually is, maybe?

Yeah, but will I get my royalties?

Objection, your Honour! The "Ancients" in Known Space are clearly the Slavers, who rule a peaceful utopia of total galactic mind control. Well, the tnuctipun, I guess. . . .

LOL you don't like verbal tics, bro smh

You gotta dance with the one what brung ya. Trump is clearly the candidate that the Republican primary process prefers. That didn't just happen.

Yeah, I was just going to say that the whole "the critics might be wrong, I'll check it out on Netflix" thing led me to rent Fant 4 Stick last night. Ugh. Glah. Blergh.

The He-Man Shark Haters Club Plan of Action For Totally Burning All Those No-Account Sharks That Have It Coming i) Write an antishark manifesto; ii) Send out the police to drop bleeding corpses of fat, delicious fish in the water to attract lots of sharks; iii) Cut yourself with razors, get the cuts bleeding good, rub yourself with barbecue sauce, Old Bay; iv) Jump in the water and start reciting your manifesto

Commerce Secretary. His name was also bruited in1920, so I wandered over to Wikipedia and discovered that Wonder Boy put his name on the California primary ballot in 1920. Like some other Presidential candidates of note, Hoover never had any doubts about his own abilities --however much his contemporaries urged him to reconsider.

So Comics Alliance has a review of Suicide Squad up. If you haven't the precious time to read it, just check the thread title.