Plenty, though I tend not to dwell on it.

The biggest thing though in my life that I would like to change is a deep rooted long standing proclivity of dismissing the validity of others.

Though, I may be doing it again, because I am calculating the problem in a personal cost/benefit context. *shifty eyes*

I hear that the groundhog can accurately sense the approach of your mom.

I'm pleased. My packages came today.

I got Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. The PS2 version of the PC classic. Mostly I got because it has high poly rendered cutscenes instead of the especially ugly machinima in the original. Even so it was a completely retarded purchase that I didn't need.

The other thing I got, was Transhuman Space, a GURPS supplement. It is out of print, and I got a pretty good quality paperback for about 11 bucks on half.com. The only other place I'd seen it was Half Priced Books, and it was a thoroughly abused copy for twice that. WTF HPB? Upon opening and reading it, I realized that it was okay that I got Deus Ex, because Transhuman Space was a purchase I needed times 2 :P

It is excellent. In addition to playing it, I don't doubt that it will be a creatively expanding read.

One thing I am pondering though, after reading a couple friends' journal entries is how I managed not to become dramatic. I don't think I am anyway. I feel as if I have a pretty good head around things. My old journals are dramatic though, so maybe I payed my dues as a teenager? It's the kind of thing that I want to devote more thought and talk about, but I think I want to work on a writing project just a bit more, so I will do that.

Lastly: The title comes from a text message I just received. Regarding Punxsutawney Phill, I will bet.
Good. I am ready for winter to get out of here.

PS. Be in awe of my manly music :P


Time for Guiness number three, and bit of writing. :D

I don't see human cloning as inherently wrong or anything.
It's ethically debateable whether one should clone a person if they have a horridly painful ailment, and subject the clone to similar suffering, and it will most certainly confuse forensic law enforcement a little bit (what to do if there are say, seven individuals with the same DNA?). However, unless the clone has exactly the same life experiences as the base, they will be different individuals, and just as likely to be productive or counterproductive as a "trueborn" person.

Cloning oneself to prolong life would be a sticky matter, and rather unprofitable without mastery of some kind of consciousness transfer. Suppose they did have a consciousness transfer, that raises the ethical conundrum for dooming another individual to the last few years of a life, assuming they didn't just toss the consciousness that was in the body yours is now going to out the window.

Freelancer

Is a game. You play a spacepilot who sort of get a chance to start a new life.
It's a pretty damn fun arcade dogfighter, but with a simplistic (though enthralling) element of commodity trading. A lot of it tries to be procedural, and it does alright, but it's limited by technology so it becomes repetitive. You spend a lot of time alone.. freelancing.. but throughout the story missions you work with a couple partners, whom in addition to helping you will make jokes, talk about whatever - that is scripted - but creates a sense of character and relationship with the player character. All told it is a very engrossing story that you can completely ignore should you choose to. Thats not what I specifically meant to talk about though. A procedural element that some people complain against but worked very well for me is that you can hail and scan npc ships. They usually respond something like "I'm $WHATEVER, transporting $CARGO from $PLANET to $PLANET" sometimes it's escorts. It's semi random but has an element of ritual which seems pretty convincing for an interstellar commerce paradigm. You also can see them scanning one another, or listen to their radio chatter. One particular thing that impacted me was once I came up on a couple ships that were just chatting with eachother. Once they noticed me, they wanted to pirate my cargo, which of course I was having none of. The ensuing dogfight resulted in one of the characters trying to say something only to scream in fear which was terminated by an explosion. I had dealt the killing blow, and her friend, went "Noo! You bastard!" before I nearly killed him too. After he ran off, I had my cargo still (and her salvage) but felt terrible. I find it very impressive when a game can evoke an emotional response like that. It's a very fun, and engrossing game, which I recommend to all.

Mass Effect

I am often quite hard on Bioware, and the reason for that is simple and legitimate. Since Baldur's Gate, they have been reproducing the same core game over and over. What gets changed is the graphics, tech, story, or something setting. BG, BG2, Icewind Dale (all of them), Neverwinter Nights, Kotor, etc, etc and now Dragon Age. That pisses me off. It doesn't do anything for the state of the industry. One thing they did right though, was Mass Effect. That is perhaps because the RPG team was busy with Dragon Age, which is the same fucking thing as the previous RPGs. Mass Effect has elements of an action/shooter cover-based game, and an RPG. Your character can change gear, upgrade his or her skills, engage in forked dialogue, etc. The shade and lighting engine is exemplary. It looks kind of naturalistic, but very stylized. I have never seen anything that looks quite like Mass Effect. All that stuff is well and good, but what is really the best element of it, is you get engrossed in the story of the character you play, Commander Shepard. Typical old elite space-soldier kind of guy (or gal, depending on how you configure it) but what I think really does it is the dialogue system. The choices you can select are generalized versions of what your character says. The voice acting and subtle difference really sells Shepard as a real character, and they aren't as starkly contrasted as the usual good/evil/netural elements of most conversation in this sort of game. Your team has separate and clear identities too, that are blessedly not clear archetypes. It is a case of the sum of the parts exceeding the whole. As you progress through the game, your character's dialogue, that of the team, and the shared experience really comes together as compelling story of a body of experience. More so than many other games, somewhat subtely. It is also a recommendation.


I think part of the value of Mass Effect is that though you are a super elite space marshall, more or less, who pretty much saves the galaxy, more or less, it is presented as the sum of missions, and most of the npcs you interact with in the field are plain old military types, so you don't get this conquering hero cult of personality in the way that say, Gordon Freeman does, or the Champion Of Tamriel. Gordon particularly is practically a folk hero inside his gameworld, and to many who have played Half-Life2, outside as well, so instead of the game being about YOU or about your CHARACTER, Mass Effect seems to be more about humans in a galactic civilization, or your team. Or so I thought.

Fable 2

This will be brief, because I've waxed poetic about related details in an earlier entry. It goes back to evoking emotional response, like above. It's about Fable 2, which had one of the most strikingly effective situation that did just that. For those that don't know, you're main companion in Fable 2 is your dog. Dogs are simple characters, in the sense that we don't expect them to have convictions about what is going on, or dialogue, or anything like that. So it makes it easier to make them convincing, I think. The dog in Fable 2 didn't do much. He sniffed out buried items. Found items. Sometimes helped with combat. Could learn tricks and perform them in conjuction with the player character's emotes. What they got nearly dead on though, was dog behavior. He moved and frollicked like a dog, barked at things, like a dog (obviously), did dog things. Begged for food when you had it and just stuff like that. Through the course of the game, the dog dies. Depending on particular choices in the game you can bring him back, or let him remain dead. It's a tough choice, more or less. Go the selfish route, or the selfless route. I went with the selfless route, and the dog remained dead. The game is open ended, so you can complete the story and still gallavant around the world, and it's terribly lonely, I though, without the dog after you'd grown so used to him. At one point, I found my way into this mystical shrine thing, and heard my dog. It was weird, then suddenly a ghost dog bounds up and wants to play. He sticks around inside the shrine, or can go a short distance around the entrance to the shrine. It probably doesn't get effectively communicated in words like this, but holy crap, it was like a ton of bricks. I don't even know how to articulate it. It was so sad though, (and vaguely bittersweet) that I had to stop playing, and I think will cut this entry off here. Fable 2 is lighter less mature faire that Freelancer or Mass Effect, but good in its different way.

There are a few things I've been thinking about lately.

Paragons

A while back there was an episode of CSI, which is not as important as the unveiled references to Star Trek it was making with a paralell show that existed in the episode, AstroQuest. The guy that got killed was a film maker that made an alternative interpretation, intended to be more realistic. He showed it, railed against the kind of larger than life unrealistic paragons that shows of that nature depict. He was shouted off the stage, of course, much like what would probably happen at a real Star Trek con.

I think though, that there is something to be said about it. Unrealistic paragons... possibly, though kirk is no jesus or anything. I think it ties into the superhero/supervillain paradigm. I was bred on the stuff, I will admit. I remember watching superhero cartoons before anything else on tv, and I still do watch them. As a result though, my worldview is highly influenced, at times, but the stark black and whites of good guys and bad guys (though, I would be a much better Lex Luthor than Clark Kent. Maybe a good bruce wayne if i was truly driven by something). I think though, that larger than life paragons are a good thing. It gives us, the common churl, something to aspire to/a good example. Though, when dealing with real life I see things with a little bit more cynic's salting of weariness and misanthropia, I tend to go for the larger than life paragons in less limited arenas, like the fantasy of a video game. Sometimes I'm a shining good guy, sometimes i'm a good guy that does bad things for good reasons, but always, I like to be the good guy. Not that I make an effort, but I'm drawn that way by my proclivities (even when I'm trying to be the bad guy).

What do you all think of these larger than life paragons? What kind of hero would you be?

Moderation

This is a lot shorter, but there is a commercial out about high fructose corn syrup, it's drawn some ire, and some youtube parodies. I don't have a very strong opinion about HFCS or sugar, but I do avoid it. Generally, where I can, I will favor natural ingredients (as in.. you find them in nature, like cane sugar) over the alternative. Not because I'm some all organic hippy necessarily, though I kind of am, but because I am an emphatic fan of simplicity and elegance. One of the sell points of HFCS in this commercial was

"like sugar, it's fine in moderation"

that's true. but it's a ridiculous statement with any meaning solely ilusory.

fucking bullets can be fine in moderation.

When I was young, going through a gof' stage, I used the handle sinister_contrivance.
In fact, it still may be attached to my yahoo.

When I made bad_machination, I was going for a synonym, because sinister_contrivance didn't fit in the LJ user space. It turns out I was misinterpretting the definition of machination, and in actuality the name "bad machination" is much closer in meaning to "poor planning".

Considering the cicumstance though, it worked. :P

When I wake up, the stuff in my head is either base, reptillian, considerations (I'm hungry! cold! horny! etc) or swirling debris left over from sleep and dreams. The debris though is never coherent without the context of the dreams.

When going to bed, inevitably my thinking spirals away from whatever I'm thinking about into more of that debris. I know I am getting close to sleep when my thoughts make No Fucking Sense. Many times though, I am thinking about a story of some kind, or project.

What get's you fired up, LJ?
A high [to you] ideal that you're so passionate about that you get good and mad over?


I used to get good and mad over a lot. I used to get beligerent over a lot too, but not just high ideals, dumb shit too. An unhealthy, unrighteous level of fury, simply because I was a juvenile retard.

For years, I did my best to bleed out that bad blood, and I've done really well. I'm a much better person for it, but I am mentally reaching out to see if I can get a tentacle around something I feel like I need to fight for, and I can't. I just can't find anything. A lot upsets me, but nothing gets me up and stamping my feet.

I don't want to get in to trouble or anything, I just want to channel it into some art, but this river is too chilled out. Share what gets you going, and maybe it will remind me.

What an incredibly stupid and inane question.

Also: Chocolate.

A dark room, a dark porter, a night that seems like it will last forever and music from the early 90s. Not much better than this. <3

English, and a good foundation of german, though my vokabeln is schlecht. A few words of spanish. A bit of some programming languages too. Do those count? :P

They would probably just think I used LJ excessively, or that I forget passwords a lot.

Thats a difficult ethical conundrum. I don't know. Life is the only thing anybody really has, so it's not to be ended lightly. On the other hand, since it is so valuable, is it possible that ending pain would provide potential enrichment?

Hard to say. I would probably politely decline, and let it be someone else's problem.

I don't know either if I would want to be present. It is pointless to fear death, but would my presence provide any benefit to them? Would it benefit me? Again, hard to say.

I reflect and analyze. Find the root, diagnose, try a solution, lather rinse repeat.
Or sometimes, just good old-fashioned escapism.

Regarding the latter, I generally prefer a repetitive, meditative sort of escapism that allows me to focus on the task at hand, only passively considering the problem between brief mental respites. Otherwise I will gnaw on the thing like an exceptionally obsessive-compulsive dog with a bone.

in a carnal frenzy, hopefully.

Luke Skywalker.

Another desktop meme. Seems I can't resist these things.

Nothing much to say though. The last couple days I have been hanging out at a friend's pretty much constantly. He got Assassin's Creed II which is okay to watch, but he plays it too slow paced for my taste (my style is to fling myself around trying my damnedest to nigh-die, until I find guards, then I start the biggest fights I can), so I have been watching that, or playing Guild Wars. Speaking of things I can't resist.

The last few days I have just been putzing around doing stuff that would make no sense to anyone who doesn't already know what I mean, pushing my Dervish through GW: Eye Of The North, and also collecting materials and money for awesome furry armor for him.

Little did I know, the particular armor I chose (Norn, for anyone in the know) looks like a furry strapless dress in the absence of it's hood which I could not afford at the time.

My poor derv looks bishy enough as it is. With the armor, he looks like he needs to go find a drag show.

Win.


---------------------------------------------


Now for another equally less important thing:


MEME:

→ Take a screenshot of your desktop.
→ Take a screenshot your media player (if you have one up).
→ Take a screenshot of another program you have up.
→ Pick a tab you have up and take a screenshot of it.
→ YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO CHANGE ANYTHING BEFORE TAKING A SCREENSHOT OF IT.


( memes are retarded. you're retarded, BMACH )

I would have some sprawling labyrinthine amalgamation above and below ground. It would be a senseless jumble of different ideas of dream houses to suit whatever whim I was on at the time.
The only thing I know for certain, is that it would have a giant library den half in a hill, with a huge ornate window in the wall facing outside of the hill. The interior would be kind of old world with a lot of dark wood and such.

Probably adjacent I would have a utilitarian room with racks of computers networked into a cluster. I have always wanted one of those, even though I didn't really need the computing power. If I had it though, I bet I would find a use.