I’ve been neglecting to post here for a while.  Let’s see, a couple weeks ago I went to see The Ruins.  It turned out to be a surprisingly good horror movie, maybe not an instant classic, but very good all things considered.  On my scale of 1-5 I’d give it a 4.  The story is about four college kids vacationing in Mexico who decide to take a quick side trip to a Mayan pyramid “off the beaten path.”  There they find themselves trapped by a mysterious and lethal force.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The monster in this movie is very unexpected.  It actually turns out to be the plants (or is it one plant?) that are growing all over the pyramid.  One of the best, creepiest scenes is when the blond girl with the injured leg wakes up to find a tendril from the plant growing into her wound and down through the vein.  But not only have these plants acquired a taste for flesh and a degree of mobility, they’ve also developed the ability to mimic certain sounds with their blossoms, such as the ringing of a cell phone.  This is probably the first killer plant movie to actually work, to actually be scary.

SPOILERS END

I’ve finished with Half-Life and the expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Force, and am now playing through my all-time favorite game, Half-Life 2.  There are plenty of game sites out there that do a better job of praising it than I can, so I’ll just say this: If you haven’t played this game, go buy it.  Even if you don’t usually play first-person shooters, this game is worth it just for the story.  Yes, the story really is that good.  GamesRadar has an excellent analysis of how and why it works so well.

The Sprint Cup race was tonight, and it looked as though Dale Earnhardt Jr. would finally win again, but just 2 laps from the end, he was deliberately spun into the wall by Kyle Busch.  Thus, Busch has earned my extreme ire, and I wish medical malfunctions upon him that would give an oncologist nightmares.

A strider stalks insurgents in City 17.

As of Tuesday, I am out of the IMBC.  There was no catastrophic computer failure, nor did I simply forget to post, and I wasn’t abducted by aliens and taken to Blargon VII to serve as advisor to the Great Zoo of Humanity.  I felt the time had come to withdraw from competition, nothing more complicated than that.  I found myself dedicating an hour or more to posting every day, and that was starting to feel too much like work.  I didn’t have time for gaming or other projects in my limited workday schedule, so I “took a dive” if you will.  I don’t think of it as giving up; on the contrary, I entered this contest just for the satisfaction of being a participant, and never intended nor expected to win.  Last year, Hank of Upsidasium had to blog for 146 consecutive days to win, and I just don’t have that much free time.

My only goal was to not be the first eliminated.  I figured I would last 3 to 5 days.  But after five people were eliminated over the first weekend (including my good friend Jones), I resolved to last more than 10 days.  But then two of the heavy favorites, Hank and Beefy, were eliminated, and I decided to try and make it into the top 10.  However, I later felt I had proved myself enough.  I had outlasted all of my friends from Washington, and so decided to make it to 2 weeks and then stop.  I’m now ranked 11th out of 19, which is more than I had expected, so I’m satisfied with the results.  I’ll let the 10 remaining bloggers fight it out for the next five months.

And to those of you who actually enjoy reading this tripe, fear not.  I may have abandoned the IMBC, but that doesn’t mean I’m abandoning this blog.  I just won’t be undating daily or writing quite so much each time.

Am I a terrible person for finding this funny?

Today’s Topic of the Day is Drugs.  What a great, rich topic for someone rapidly running dry on topics to write 300+ words about.  For the sake of controversy and to incite tremendous anger and profanity for my own amusement, I’ll focus on illegal drugs.

First off, I believe the use and sale of all drugs should be legal.  All of them.  This will cause a few existing problems to get worse, but more problems will be solved in the long run.  If, for example, the sale of marijuana was legal, a new industry would be created: the cannabis industry.  In all likelihood, tobacco companies would expand their product lines to include cannabis cigarettes, which could actually reduce tobacco use.  With no legal restrictions on the importation and sale of such substances as cannabis and cocaine, supply would increase dramatically, dropping prices and increasing availability.  This would almost completely eliminate drug dealers, from the street pushers to the kingpins, since there would no longer be any money in it.  No one’s going to spend 200 dollars on a gram of cocaine of questionable quality and content from some loser on the street when they can go to the pharmacy and buy a pack of cocaine smokes made by Marlboro for 5 bucks.  And Marlboro’s products are far less likely to contain arsenic, dishwasher detergent, or any of the other hazardous substances that are cut with street cocaine to increase profits.

No drug dealers means no drug-related violence.  Without the lure of huge amounts of easy money, the entire drug trade would evaporate.  This would also trigger a precipitous drop in crimes committed by drug users, since their drugs would cost a fraction of what they once did.  There aren’t a lot of smokers stealing TVs and snatching purses to pay for their drug of choice.  Which brings me to my next point.  Where is the logic in permitting the use of one mind-altering substance over another?  Alcohol is okay but marijuana isn’t?  Why?  Potheads are far less violent than alcoholics, and no more likely to drive under the influence.  And is marijuana any more dangerous to the human body than tobacco?  Actually, no; tobacco is much more dangerous, causing cancer of the lungs, throat, and mouth, emphysema, yellowed teeth, and wrinkled skin among other things.  The worst cannabis will do is cause sterility, which sounds like a great way to purify the gene pool.

Increased availability means increased use, but federal regulations will keep the products safe, which will actually reduce the number of deaths from drug abuse.  There’s another good reason to legalize drugs–if drugs are legal to use, laws can be written to restrict their use.  No one under 18 can buy cannabis, cocaine, etc; driving under the influence of alcohol or any other mind-altering substance is prohibited, public stoning carries the same penalty as public drunkeness, and so on.  Arresting someone for driving while high on pot makes much more sense that arresting them simply for having pot in their possession.

So, am I advocating the use of drugs by all?  No, I simply believe everyone has the right to do whatever they want to with their bodies.  I do not drink or use any mind-altering substances (other than a prescription medication), simply because I like my mind the way it is and have no desire to change it.  But I should have the right to do so if I want to.  It is no one’s responsibility to protect me from myself, and what I choose to do with my life is my business.  So go get stoned if you wish, just keep your distance from me.  I hate the smell.

Today’s Topic of the Day is Superpowers.  I think it would be supremely awesome to possess some sort of superhuman power or ability.  That is my greatest wish, to one day discover that I have the power of telekinesis, or invisibility, or mind control, or…well, pretty much anything that only I and maybe three other people on the entire planet could do.  Even something as simple as never needing to sleep would effectively increase my lifespan by 35%.  Since someone will inevitably ask the question, “If you could choose one super power, what would it be?”  I’ll go ahead and provide an answer: telekinesis.  The ability to manipulate objects with the psionic power of the mind alone has so many useful applications that it’s a standard power of superhuman and supernatural characters in fiction.  And at high levels it becomes particularly powerful.  Who wouldn’t want to effortlessly toss cars and semi trucks through the air like Magneto?

Back in my Gurps days, I always wanted to run a character with some sort of special power, whether he was a mutant in the style of X-Men or Heroes, a supernatural being like a vampire, an experimental creation, a mage, or something else completely.  I’ve always felt different from other people, apart from society, as if I didn’t belong in this time and place.  As such I identify strongly with the mutants of X-Men and others who are separated by unique abilities.  In Gurps I could become someone like that.  I could never understand the point of view of the empowered characters of movies and television who rejected their powers, who didn’t want them and would remove them if they could.  I would sacrifice almost anything to have some special power.  If I were a character in Heroes, I’d want to be one with a super power.  If I were a normal in X-Men, I’d be looking for a way to become a mutant.

Someone once asked me whether I would rather have the power of flight or invisibility.  It’s actually a personality question, though I’ve not yet been able to find a conclusive analysis of the two answers.  I can imagine nothing more exhilerating than being able to fly, to soar through the air untethered by gravity (which would be possible with sufficient telekinetic strength!).  The freedom to move in three dimensions, to see anything you want, to feel completely unrestricted–that’s what I imagine it would be like to fly.  Perhaps I’ll live long enough to see personal jetpacks.  Invisibility is much more useful from a practical perspective, since flying around would tend to attract a lot of attention, most of it from unwelcome sources.  Ninety percent of human sensory input is visual, and leaving only an average aural sense and a very poor olfactory sense renders a person very hard to detect.  Such an ability is incredibly useful, as one could spy on naked people (you know you were thinking it!), avoid trouble from thugs or authorities, obtain nearly anything you want for free as long as it turns invisible along with you, find out what everyone else really thinks of you, and scare the life out of people by appearing right out of thin air.

But there is a down side to having a super power.  Aristotle said that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Spider-Man’s uncle said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  This is very true.  You will need a very strong moral compass and be certain of your sense of right and wrong, lest all others think you a tyrant.  People fear the unknown already, there’s no need to give them a good reason.

To my astonishment, I discovered that Beefy of Beefington Enterprises has been eliminated from the IMBC.  Very surprising, as he was one of the heavy favorites (no pun intended, big guy!)  That leaves 11 of 19 still in contention.  Anyway, on to today’s topic.  As promised, I’m going to relate a Gurps story; whether this entertains or not depends on your sense of humor (mine is as black as the inside of a cave on the dark side of the moon).

As usual, Hank was GMing.  The five of us were running philosophy professors who had come to the conclusion that there was an “artificial world” that everyone was trapped in, sort of like the Matrix.  This was the predetermined premise of the adventure, not a decision by the players.  After careful consideration of the best way to escape, we came to the conclusion that a massive disruption of the normal flow of events would force the unseen operators of this system to “reboot” and erase the damage we had caused, which would hopefully force us out of the system.  Since the game took place in early March, we decided on a commando-style assault upon the Kodak theater during the Oscars, hereafter known as the Oscar Night Massacre.

As philosophy professors, we had no combat or weapons skills, and so chose the simplest of weapons and tactics.  We would use rifles, shotguns, and molotov cocktails as our armaments.  In Gurps, rifles grant a very large to-hit bonus when aiming, and shotguns are hard to miss with at close range.  And molotovs require very little skill to use–just light the wick and throw it.  Through a combination of clever schemes (such as dressing as maintenance personnel), successful fast-talking attempts, and sheer dumb luck, we managed to infiltrate the theater with our arsenal of guns and fiery bombs and take up strike positions.  Two people on the catwalk, one with a rifle and the other with molotovs.  Two in the wings, one with another rifle and one with a shotgun.  And the fifth with a shotgun at the main power switch.

Just as Billy Crystal took the stage for his opening monologue, we killed the lights and opened fire.  The first molotov started several seats and people burning, and provided light for the barrage of shotgun fire blasted randomly into the audience while our sniper made precision executions of whoever happened to stumble into his crosshairs.  After the initial assault, we moved down to the stage and began taking prisoners.  Poor Tobey Maguire was forced onstage by Phil (a former member of the old group), who ordered him to “Suck my gun!”  That was meant and taken literally, as Spider-Man started to suck the barrel of Phil’s rifle.  Then he pulled the trigger.  My own victim was Sylvester Stallone, who was shot in each leg by my shotgun, before being fed a third shell.  Billy Crystal was the unfortunate recipient of a direct molotov hit, and other victims included Jack Nicholson, Leslie Nielsen, and Judi Dench, among about 20 to 30 others.

Our party was ended by a SWAT team raid, forcing our surrender.  The game concluded on a humerous note.  To quote Hank, “There’s no artificial world, you guys are nuts!  You all serve life sentences.”  I still don’t know whether he intended for that session to be a one-off game, or if he aborted an actual campaign for his own reasons.  Now if you’re not scared yet, just imagine the stories I won’t share on this blog!

Over the past several days I’ve been contemplating the ramifications of moving back to my hometown of Pasco, Washington.  I must carefully weigh the benefits of living there with the benefits of living here in Orlando, Florida.  Either decision will be difficult.  The primary reason for me to return is my friends.  My two oldest and best friends still reside there, and I can’t help but think back to the many good times we had in the last few years before I left.

Probably my fondest memories are of past Gurps games.  There were six of us then.  Hank was the designated GameMaster, with myself, Jones, Paige, Beefy, and Hanwool as players.  Our campaigns didn’t usually last more than a couple months, and often ended with an in-party dispute escalating to violence and resulting in most if not all of the characters dead.  Still, it was great fun.  I took a morbid interest in keeping careful records of the casulties in our games, and also took pride in contributing to that list as often as possible.  Eventually it became a bit of a competition as to who could accumulate the largest death toll, with Jones and myself the most enthusiastic participants.

In one campaign, Hanwool was GMing and Hank was a player.  The five of us were running superpowered villains in 1920s America and Europe.  Jones had a character called Chaos Knight who could create a spherical force-field of annihilating energy and had a tendancy to use it to shred people at the slightest provacation.  My character was called Nightmare, and had the ability to induce tremendous fear and occasionally fatal heart attacks in anyone who looked at me.  The two of us made quite the duo of destruction, as my ability would incapacitate large groups at a time who were then ground up like so much beef in a wood chipper by Jones and his flying green ball of death.  I don’t recall too much else about that campaign other than that it sort of tapered off after the massacre in a French hotel.  I think we were planning a diamond heist or something.  According to my records, Jones won that particular contest 46-17.

There are so many stories of past games I could tell.  Here are a few highlights: An enormous black guy with enough strength to bench-press 750 lbs (a world record, we later learned) dropping said 750-pound barbel directly on his neck after being flashed by Hank’s character, a parasitic lifeform currently using an attractive young woman as a host.  Jones running over a man and woman making love with a snowmobile after failing his driving check.  The incident in which an old west town of 30 was massacred and burned to the ground by the group after the local veterinarian panicked and shot Jones (a native American) when we appeared at his door in the dead of night seeking medical help.  Hanwool’s character dying of internal bleeding after being groin-kicked by a horse, prompted by the inexplicable act of Jones shoving Hanwool’s face into the horse’s sphincter.  (The memory of Hank deadpanning “The horse doesn’t react well to that action” still cracks me up.)  And my all-time favorite, The Oscar Night Massacre.  I think I’ll save that story for tomorrow.

Today’s Topic of the Day is: Why did you sign up for the IMBC?  Good question.  I guess I’ll have to use that tired old cliche of “All my friends are doing it!”  Which is pretty much true, about half of my 8 or so friends are or were participating in the IMBC.  I honestly never expected to last this long.  I figured I’d go about three days and then take a dive, but I’ve managed to hang on for 10 days, assuming this post isn’t disqualified for an infraction of some obscure rule.  Seven people are already out, which means I’ll be finishing 12th out of 19 at worst.  Pretty good for someone who’s never blogged before.

The room remodeling project is going slowly, which is no problem for me.  My sister and brother-in-law have decided that the house needs to be repainted, and as much as they procrastinate, my sister’s unborn belly larva will be celebrating his/her/its first birthday by the time my new room is complete.  That’s right, my sister is three months pregnant.  I intend to be a fearsome and tyrannical uncle, but will probably end up being known as the eccentric recluse uncle when the little curtain-climber is making his/her way through school.

I guess it comes as no surprise that I don’t want to have any kids of my own.  It’s not that I particularly dislike children (okay, sort of do), but I just don’t have any interest in spawning any offspring.  For most people, a loving family with a spouse and children, living in a nice house in a safe neighborhood and working a decent and well-paying job is the definition of a good, happy life.  Not for me though.  A wife or long-term girlfriend is the only part of that equation I’m looking for.  The rest just isn’t my idea of happiness.  The ideal culmination of my life looks a bit like Batman: stalking various lowlifes like serial killers, rapists and drug dealers while dressed entirely in black, and slaying them with sharp implements.  A vigilante in other words.  You never hear about people like that in real life.  Maybe someone takes the law into their own hands on one occasion, but never as a part-time job.  It would be interesting to see how law enforcement and the media would actually react to someone like that.

Only fits this post in a very general way, but I found it funny.

This afternoon I watched No Country for Old Men.  Very good movie, worth seeing just for Javier Bardem’s psychotic assassin Anton Chigurh, whose weapons of choice are a silenced shotgun and a custom-designed captive bolt pistol (a weapon commonly used to kill cattle in slaughterhouses) used primarily to blast locking mechanisms out of doors.  He also uses it in on at least one occasion to blast a human brain from a skull.  The character is one of the best villains I’ve ever seen in a movie or television show, as utterly remorseless and empty as the Terminator.  He even blows up a car just to steal some medical supplies from a pharmacy.  Any further descriptions would reveal too much.

According to a new law passed by the Florida senate today, businesses are prohibited from banning firearms on their property so long as the weapons are kept in a locked automobile, excluding federal buildings, power plants, and a few other high-risk terrorist targets.  Well isn’t that great!  At least the inevitable surge in workplace shootings will be hard to blame on violent video games.  In other news, some court has ruled that Princess Diana’s death was an unlawful result of a high-speed paparazzi chase or some such thing; I wasn’t really paying much attention to the details, but the ridiculously long time to come to that conclusion (12 years!) stuck in my mind.

Okay, what else?  Oh yes, Hank of Upsidasium is out of the IMBC, shocking as that may be.  If you’re reading this old friend, you may want to invest in an atomic clock.  Technically, it’s actually only a receiver for a transmission from the actual atomic clock at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado.  It updates daily, and has been an excellent standard to use when adjusting my watch and other clocks.

My last subject of the day is Knights of the Dinner Table.  For those unfamiliar with it, it is a gaming comic/magazine put out by Kenzerco and created by Jolly Blackburn.  The comic strips focus on a group of role-players sitting around a table, playing a Dungeons & Dragons variation called Hackmaster.  This very simple concept is surprisingly funny, and easily worth the four dollars per monthly issue.  I’ve been reading through my compilation issues lately (called Bundles of Trouble), and discovered one with a few errors.  One entire page was absent, and about 10 pages were double-printed (that is, the contents of two pages were printed on a single page).  Hopefully this was only a fluke, and not indicative of a downturn in quality control.  Also, I hope to have a more consistant topic tomorrow.

Today is my Saturday (being a relatively new hire at Disney severely limits my choices of days off) so I spent the day wasting time on the computer as I usually do, avoiding social and solar interaction.  As I was perusing GamesRadar I discovered a link to something new and very amusing.  A British guy in Australia calling himself Yahtzee operates a site called Zero Punctuation, where he reviews video games and game systems in a very humorous fashion.  The drawings are crude, animation is almost non-existent, the voice-over is very fast-paced, and the whole thing if definitively R-rated, but it somehow manages to be remarkably entertaining.  Take a look and just see if you don’t get hooked.

While I’m in a praising mood and on the subject of video games, I’d like to comment on the best game ever made.  This game, or more accurately, compilation of games, is The Orange Box by Valve Software.  First off, it is a $200 value spread across nine discs condensed to just 2 DVD-ROMs priced at only 50 bucks.  If you don’t already own Half-Life 2 and/or the expansion pack, Episode One, this bundle includes both in addition to the second expansion, the creatively titled Episode Two.  This alone is worth the price of admission, as the story is a brilliant and original work, the characters are masterfully rendered and voiced to seem more real than just about any game character ever created, the graphics and physics are still cutting-edge, the gameplay is flawless, and technical problems are almost nonexistent.

Also included is Team Fortress 2, a very entertaining multiplayer-only shooter that dispenses with the ironically unrealistic emphasis on realism found in most other multiplayer shooter (such as, say, Counter-Strike) by portraying the characters in a cartoonish form, and emphasizing gameplay over realism.  The result is much more fun as a result, and less likely to induce streams of profanity and childish displays of violence.  You remember fun right, back before you took that second job playing World of WarCraft?

Anyway, the shiniest gem among the other shiny gems is a little game called Portal.  The concept of this game may leave you skeptical: a shooter without weapons and almost no enemies, where the biggest obstacle is the environment and you must use your head to solve complex problems.  The only “weapon” you have is a device that opens portals, essentially a linked dimensional doorway that completely changes how you must approach navigational problems and even basic movement.  For example, opening a portal directly above you and one beneath your feet causes you to fall an infinite distance.  You can also open two portals right next to each other and chase yourself for as long as you are amused by these shortcuts through the laws of physics.  But setting aside the completely unique portal mechanic, the game also features some of the funniest black humor I’ve ever heard, as well as a “final” boss that will stay with you long after you complete the game.  You may even find yourself feeling bad about killing…uh, him/her/it.

You could waste your 50 dollars on much crappier games.  Like the avalanche of overhyped mediocrity that is Halo 3.

First, a warning.  Today’s images are very graphic, and should not be viewed by those weak of stomach.

After yesterday’s foray to St. Petersberg, I now resemble the result of a gene-splicing experiment between a human and a tomato.  I’m not looking forward to the next few days, when I begin to resemble a victim of Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis.  (If you are unfamiliar with this condition, it is a particularly revolting bodily malfunction wherein the skin sloughs off in large sheets, leaving something resembling a character from Hellraiser.)  Due to this unfortunate overexposure to ultraviolet radiation, I’m going to talk about pain today.

Many physical instructors such as P.E. teachers, personal trainers, and drill seargents (who seem to differ only in job title) like to spout that old cliche “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  Well, no.  What doesn’t kill you often leads to your admission to a hospital, the loss of 20 to 50 pounds, extensive muscle atrophy, a chronic shortage of blood, a few strokes, paralysis, disfigurement, and possibly even some missing limbs or other valuable parts.  Being taken to the brink of death is generally bad for your health.  What doesn’t kill you may eventually make you stronger, but it will leave you much weaker for a damn long time.  Or it may just kill you anyway, but gradually rather than outright.  This approach also overlooks the fact that being taken to the brink of death usually results in actual death.  And lastly, this philosophy sounds more at home in a slave colony, where the rule of thumb is, “If the amount of labor doesn’t kill the slave, it isn’t too much.”

Another mistaken belief unfortunately held by many people is the notion that “No one ever died from too much pain.”  This is incorrect.  Extreme pain can cause cardiac arrest.  If the brain is under tremendous stress from trying to manage excruciating pain, it could become overloaded just like any other complex system, and in effect “forget” to keep the heart pumping.  This may sound ludicrous, but it can and has happened.  If fact it happened here in Florida.  Last year there were three cases of Amoebic Meningoencephalitis, an infection of the brain by amoebas that attack the pain center of the brain, rendering painkillers useless in any dosage.  The stagnant swampwater prevalent here in the form of ponds of varying sizes is very dangerous to swim in, and not just because of alligators.  The amoebas that cause the aforementioned disease are common in stagnant water, and enter the body through nasal passages.  The disease is almost uniformly fatal due to the rapid progression (death occurs in about three days), and is rarely diagnosed in time.  I could go on at length about unusual but fascinating diseases, but I’ll conclude today’s post and revisit that topic another time.

WARNING!  The following images may induce vomiting and necessitate a new keyboard.

Two cases of Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis.

 The organism that causes Amoebic Meningoencephalitis.