"So we got out into space, and we spread throughout the cosmos in our kickass looking spaceships, and blah blah blah, we began to find archaeological traces of an ancient human civilization that had been far more technologically advanced than us millions of years ago."
"Right right, everybody knows that."
"Ancient shopping malls and space stations and the wrecks of luxury space cruisers drifting about in space, the ruins of mining operations and research outposts on strange planets, stuff like that."
"Yah yah."
"And we studied all that junk, just like you and me been studying these ruins now, 'cause we wondered who the heck these guys were, and what happened to them, if anything did, I mean, they coulda just moved deeper into space and left all this garbage we were looking at behind in their wake."
"Right, who knows, they may still be out there somewhere, they might've gone to another galaxy or something with better junk, and left all this crap behind."
"And we eventually came to understand that they had had a robot apocalypse, their technology eventually evolved into a bunch of sentient robots, and the Ancient Humans had been destroyed in the survival of the fittest competition that took place afterwards, y'know, pretty standard stuff."
"Yah that one never gets old, we were doing that one back in the days when we were still making shit out of wood heh."
"And as we continued to explore and discover new ruins, farther and farther out into space, we began to uncover archaeological traces of the Ancient Sentient Robot Civilization that had replaced the Ancient Human civilization, mixed in with the Ancient Human Stuff."
"Yah right, that's what we're doing here."
"Well, I just finally finished translating some of the latest data we've been pulling out of their ancient database, and apparently, just like humans, the Robots began to worry that the bizarre new kind of technology they were creating would eventually become sentient and replace them in an evolutionary way somehow, just like they had replaced their creators."
"Haha so the Robots caught the Robot Apocalypse Bug too."
"Yah, some of the Robots started becoming very anti-technology."
"Hah so there were like, Amish Robots or something!"
"Yah, and these Amish Robots used their technology to make themselves more and more human, to go back to the old god-fearing ways, and thus become invulnerable to technological attack like computer viruses and stuff."
"Ahhh..."
"And they made themselves human enough that they could even die and reproduce, just like humans did."
"Whoah, that's weird."
"And then there was this totally kickass and humongously awesome space battle between the Anti-technology Robots and the Pro-technology Robots, and the Anti-technology Robots won."
"'Cause they were all specially designed to kick technology-based stuff's ass, that's awesome, I hope we find some footage of that in the data mine."
"So then, according to this, the Anti-technology Robots settled on a nice little planet, and terraformed it, and they got rid of the last of their awesome technology, after getting rid of all the annoying dinosaurs, and they began to live simple lives, like dudes in an Amish Farming Village, not teaching their robot kids anything about all the awesome spaceships and technology they knew about."
"Okay..."
"And they created a nice holy roller anti-science belief system, so that their kids would be afraid of science and stuff and not want to rediscover it, after the last of the Old Robots that knew the truth about things had died."
"Uh..."
"And they were totally fascinated with a bunch of shallow shit like sex and death and raising kids and their feelings and personal psychology and the meaning of life and everything 'cause that was really all a bunch of new inventions to them."
"Hey, wait a minute..."
"Yah."
"Holy shit man."
"Yah."
"Dude, no."
"Yah."
"Shit man, what the hell are we gonna do with this junk? We're gonna get excommunicated!"
"Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
"Well, they're gonna figure it out if they ever bump into some Ancient Humans that survived the first Robot Apocalypse somewhere."
"Yah but then it'll be someone else's name on the shit heh."
"Haha yah."
Monday, April 7, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Mysterious Ways
Man oh man I bet Charlton Heston, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gary Gygax are playing the goddam Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Game of the Millenium right now.
Romantic Hearts
Y'know how some movies are like, produced by a guy that runs a strip club, starring all the strippers that work for him and the bouncers and some of his pals and the pals of his pals?
I'm not talking about porno, I'm talking about monster movies and stuff, like, the strip club guy wants to get out of doing strip club stuff, he's sick of the rough trade and dealing with the nastiest side of humanity, he wants to get into something more high faluting, something that'll restore his faith in humanity, something that'll restore some of his own humanity, after the beating its taken.
But he's got all these hot chicks laying around, and he knows how to make money with that, so he does a monster movie.
'Cause that's all there is to monster movies, some hot chicks, and a rubber monster, or something.
And you can tell right away that's its a Strip Club Monster Movie, y'know, within the first few seconds of the movie, the sound is bad, there's no appreciation for film, the dialogue is exactly as heartfelt and soulless as the dialogue in a porno, none of the glassy eyed actors and actresses have any hopes that this might be their big break or something, none of 'em have any aspirations beyond their next dose of medication, all they want is to get it over with and get their cash, etc. etc.
There's like, no getting away from it, for the guy that runs the Strip Club.
And the movie will get one star, even though it really doesn't even deserve that, compared to some one-star movies that are really great in comparison to a Strip Club Monster Movie, y'know, I'm pretty sure that one star is the minimum, you gotta give the movie one star or people will think the movie hasn't been rated or something heh.
And it doesn't make the Strip Club owner guy happy, either, y'know, 'cause Strip Club owner guys are smart, he can see whats going on, but he'll fool himself into thinking its okay, as long as it makes some money, right?
Even though he wanted so much more from it than that.
Even though he knows there's something missing, something that he was trying to get to that he missed somehow.
The world isn't exactly the way he tells himself that he thinks it is, to make himself feel better with his lot in life, it isn't all about money, and it definitely isn't all about titties.
Especially for him, y'know, 'cause he's totally immune to his own poison, he might play along with everybody else, to keep up appearances, he's a showman, after all, with something to sell.
But cookies turns to crackers pretty damn fast when all you got to eat are cookies day after day after day.
And he can see there's good stuff out there, all over the place, stuff he appreciates that he would never admit to appreciating to the folks he's surrounded himself with, unless he could use it to get 'em to do something.
But he just can't seem to escape from his own personal black hole, even though he knows exactly how to, even though he's smart enough to realize that he's used his super powerful brain to surround himself with a bunch of idiots who are blocking him from the place he wants to go, he's used his super powerful money making brain to build his own prison.
And that brain is starving for something else, better things, maybe.
That brain isn't happy with the doings of all the idiots he's surrounded himself with.
And the doings of his customers are even worse.
But his customers can come and go from his world any time they want.
And his customers will go home, and they will see his movie on On Demand, and they will read the quick review of it, and it'll say "its a ghost story," or "its about a group of kids that get lost in the woods and fight a monster in a log cabin," or whatever, and they'll turn it on, and they'll sit through the ads at the beginning, and all the cheesy production company credits.
And as soon as the first couple of seconds of the movie plays, they'll hear the hum of the bad sound quality, and the first few bits of horrible porno dialogue, and they'll see all these idiot actors who aren't even interested in acting, and its even more annoying than watching their kids practice for some totally annoying and horrible school play.
And they'll know its a Strip Club Monster Movie, and they'll turn it off.
'Cause if you are gonna watch a porno, you can watch a porno, y'know?
Why put up with all the half-assed crappy monster stuff?
That's even worse than "soft" porn and "easy listening" music heh.
And nobody wants to hang with the strip club people after you've got what you wanted out of the strip club.
Nobody wants to be stuck in that grim, lowest common denominator universe, after they're done getting their rocks off, or done getting their money out of it.
Not even the guys who created it.
I mean, that's why they're trying to make monster movies, right?
Not that I actually care about strip club guys and all that shit, that's the shallow end of the pisspool as far as the bottomless pit of shit goes, its almost hilarious to me that those guys with their brightly colored outfits and cosmetics and personal oblivion prescriptions, fueled by the cash of practically Victorian folks who still think that looking at nipples and fucking is naughty or art something, would even register on my misery-meter.
Yah, naw, what I'm actually trying to say is that maybe we should make a monster movie heh.
I'm not talking about porno, I'm talking about monster movies and stuff, like, the strip club guy wants to get out of doing strip club stuff, he's sick of the rough trade and dealing with the nastiest side of humanity, he wants to get into something more high faluting, something that'll restore his faith in humanity, something that'll restore some of his own humanity, after the beating its taken.
But he's got all these hot chicks laying around, and he knows how to make money with that, so he does a monster movie.
'Cause that's all there is to monster movies, some hot chicks, and a rubber monster, or something.
And you can tell right away that's its a Strip Club Monster Movie, y'know, within the first few seconds of the movie, the sound is bad, there's no appreciation for film, the dialogue is exactly as heartfelt and soulless as the dialogue in a porno, none of the glassy eyed actors and actresses have any hopes that this might be their big break or something, none of 'em have any aspirations beyond their next dose of medication, all they want is to get it over with and get their cash, etc. etc.
There's like, no getting away from it, for the guy that runs the Strip Club.
And the movie will get one star, even though it really doesn't even deserve that, compared to some one-star movies that are really great in comparison to a Strip Club Monster Movie, y'know, I'm pretty sure that one star is the minimum, you gotta give the movie one star or people will think the movie hasn't been rated or something heh.
And it doesn't make the Strip Club owner guy happy, either, y'know, 'cause Strip Club owner guys are smart, he can see whats going on, but he'll fool himself into thinking its okay, as long as it makes some money, right?
Even though he wanted so much more from it than that.
Even though he knows there's something missing, something that he was trying to get to that he missed somehow.
The world isn't exactly the way he tells himself that he thinks it is, to make himself feel better with his lot in life, it isn't all about money, and it definitely isn't all about titties.
Especially for him, y'know, 'cause he's totally immune to his own poison, he might play along with everybody else, to keep up appearances, he's a showman, after all, with something to sell.
But cookies turns to crackers pretty damn fast when all you got to eat are cookies day after day after day.
And he can see there's good stuff out there, all over the place, stuff he appreciates that he would never admit to appreciating to the folks he's surrounded himself with, unless he could use it to get 'em to do something.
But he just can't seem to escape from his own personal black hole, even though he knows exactly how to, even though he's smart enough to realize that he's used his super powerful brain to surround himself with a bunch of idiots who are blocking him from the place he wants to go, he's used his super powerful money making brain to build his own prison.
And that brain is starving for something else, better things, maybe.
That brain isn't happy with the doings of all the idiots he's surrounded himself with.
And the doings of his customers are even worse.
But his customers can come and go from his world any time they want.
And his customers will go home, and they will see his movie on On Demand, and they will read the quick review of it, and it'll say "its a ghost story," or "its about a group of kids that get lost in the woods and fight a monster in a log cabin," or whatever, and they'll turn it on, and they'll sit through the ads at the beginning, and all the cheesy production company credits.
And as soon as the first couple of seconds of the movie plays, they'll hear the hum of the bad sound quality, and the first few bits of horrible porno dialogue, and they'll see all these idiot actors who aren't even interested in acting, and its even more annoying than watching their kids practice for some totally annoying and horrible school play.
And they'll know its a Strip Club Monster Movie, and they'll turn it off.
'Cause if you are gonna watch a porno, you can watch a porno, y'know?
Why put up with all the half-assed crappy monster stuff?
That's even worse than "soft" porn and "easy listening" music heh.
And nobody wants to hang with the strip club people after you've got what you wanted out of the strip club.
Nobody wants to be stuck in that grim, lowest common denominator universe, after they're done getting their rocks off, or done getting their money out of it.
Not even the guys who created it.
I mean, that's why they're trying to make monster movies, right?
Not that I actually care about strip club guys and all that shit, that's the shallow end of the pisspool as far as the bottomless pit of shit goes, its almost hilarious to me that those guys with their brightly colored outfits and cosmetics and personal oblivion prescriptions, fueled by the cash of practically Victorian folks who still think that looking at nipples and fucking is naughty or art something, would even register on my misery-meter.
Yah, naw, what I'm actually trying to say is that maybe we should make a monster movie heh.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
EVE Gearhead Newbie Junkyard
So I've been playing EVE Online for about a week now, as a Minmatar newb guy.
I've got a couple other accounts that are still turned off, guys that could fly gallente and caldari battleships before I quit on 'em, one of 'em from when the game first came out (both Ex-b and me played it all the way back then), so I'm not a total newb or anything, but I'm not any kind EVE expert or anything either heh.
Anyways I've just been running level 1 missions to make the money I need to do everything else a newb needs to do, like buy skills and the equipment I need to fix up my money-making operation, since pvp and everything besides the annoying-ass training timers in EVE basically boils down to being able to throw money at shit.
Its pretty cool, I love the warp-to-zero thing, insteada all that goddam bookmark shit we used to have to do.
And this new salvaging thing is kickass, at least as far as making money goes.
I've got two ships I use for my missions.
The first one is a Rifter, which is like the Harley Davidson of EVE Online's Cheap Ass Frigates, set up with close-range high-dps autocannons and a rocket launcher and an oversized passive shield/speed tank (its got a medium and a small shield extender in the mids, and a power diagnostic system, a shield power relay, and a Reactor Control Unit in the lows).
And an Afterburner that I never gotta turn off 'cause I don't use cap for anything else.
Its all junk a newb Sebiestor Special Forces guy can fit into a ship without much in the way of training.
And its quick as hell.
And that's what I use to actually fly through all the missions and kill everything.
Ammo is fusion and phalanx rockets for Angel Cartel missions, EMP and gremlin rockets for drones, and phased plasma and whatever-the-hell-the-fire-rockets-are-called for everything else.
And then I got a Thrasher (which is the Minmatar Destroyer), set up for salvaging the wrecks of everything I kill with my Rifter, and its got a shitload of cargo space, compared to the Rifter, so it can loot whatever I gotta leave behind in my first pass.
Its my garbage truck.
Its got the same medium-and-small shield extenders on it as my Rifter but since it ain't really set up to fight anything (it ain't got any guns heh) I just threw some nanofiber hull mods in its lows and gave it an afterburner to bring its speed up to something more respectable heh.
I prolly average somewhere around 500k to a million bucks a mission, with salvaging, I mean, sometimes I'll get a dud, and then sometimes I'll come back with like four mill worth of crap.
And those are just level 1 missions.
I could prolly do level 2 missions already but it wouldn't be too efficient with my crappy skills, I'd have to go long range artillery in a slow-ass cruiser 'cause I ain't got hardly any tanking skills, and that means the loot would be spread out all over the goddam place, and I ain't got the reqs for tractor beams yet to make the clean-up quicker (but I'm working on that, 'cause I want 'em for my salvaging garbage truck).
I already can fly cruisers, I bought a Rupture on the fourth day I was playing, but after taking a look at it I decided to just keep doing what I been doing and not split up my training time in order to get the skills I'd need to make flying it not suck so much heh.
Anyways that's all I been doing, games you can play while watching TV and whatever are cool sometimes, y'know, and its brain kindling for scifi junk, too, well, every once in a while.
And I ain't bugged Madjack yet just 'cause I'm a poor newb and I'm lazy and I don't wanna get stuck in low-sec as some ghetto-ass newbie suicide-tackler guy with no future and no prospects.
Plus I got some expensive (to me, at least) cybernetic implants I been using to make up for the fact that I ain't got jack for Learning skills, and I don't really wanna get 'em podded out of me just for shits and giggles and have to run all the goddam boring missions it'd take to replace 'em either heh.
I've got a couple other accounts that are still turned off, guys that could fly gallente and caldari battleships before I quit on 'em, one of 'em from when the game first came out (both Ex-b and me played it all the way back then), so I'm not a total newb or anything, but I'm not any kind EVE expert or anything either heh.
Anyways I've just been running level 1 missions to make the money I need to do everything else a newb needs to do, like buy skills and the equipment I need to fix up my money-making operation, since pvp and everything besides the annoying-ass training timers in EVE basically boils down to being able to throw money at shit.
Its pretty cool, I love the warp-to-zero thing, insteada all that goddam bookmark shit we used to have to do.
And this new salvaging thing is kickass, at least as far as making money goes.
I've got two ships I use for my missions.
The first one is a Rifter, which is like the Harley Davidson of EVE Online's Cheap Ass Frigates, set up with close-range high-dps autocannons and a rocket launcher and an oversized passive shield/speed tank (its got a medium and a small shield extender in the mids, and a power diagnostic system, a shield power relay, and a Reactor Control Unit in the lows).
And an Afterburner that I never gotta turn off 'cause I don't use cap for anything else.
Its all junk a newb Sebiestor Special Forces guy can fit into a ship without much in the way of training.
And its quick as hell.
And that's what I use to actually fly through all the missions and kill everything.
Ammo is fusion and phalanx rockets for Angel Cartel missions, EMP and gremlin rockets for drones, and phased plasma and whatever-the-hell-the-fire-rockets-are-called for everything else.
And then I got a Thrasher (which is the Minmatar Destroyer), set up for salvaging the wrecks of everything I kill with my Rifter, and its got a shitload of cargo space, compared to the Rifter, so it can loot whatever I gotta leave behind in my first pass.
Its my garbage truck.
Its got the same medium-and-small shield extenders on it as my Rifter but since it ain't really set up to fight anything (it ain't got any guns heh) I just threw some nanofiber hull mods in its lows and gave it an afterburner to bring its speed up to something more respectable heh.
I prolly average somewhere around 500k to a million bucks a mission, with salvaging, I mean, sometimes I'll get a dud, and then sometimes I'll come back with like four mill worth of crap.
And those are just level 1 missions.
I could prolly do level 2 missions already but it wouldn't be too efficient with my crappy skills, I'd have to go long range artillery in a slow-ass cruiser 'cause I ain't got hardly any tanking skills, and that means the loot would be spread out all over the goddam place, and I ain't got the reqs for tractor beams yet to make the clean-up quicker (but I'm working on that, 'cause I want 'em for my salvaging garbage truck).
I already can fly cruisers, I bought a Rupture on the fourth day I was playing, but after taking a look at it I decided to just keep doing what I been doing and not split up my training time in order to get the skills I'd need to make flying it not suck so much heh.
Anyways that's all I been doing, games you can play while watching TV and whatever are cool sometimes, y'know, and its brain kindling for scifi junk, too, well, every once in a while.
And I ain't bugged Madjack yet just 'cause I'm a poor newb and I'm lazy and I don't wanna get stuck in low-sec as some ghetto-ass newbie suicide-tackler guy with no future and no prospects.
Plus I got some expensive (to me, at least) cybernetic implants I been using to make up for the fact that I ain't got jack for Learning skills, and I don't really wanna get 'em podded out of me just for shits and giggles and have to run all the goddam boring missions it'd take to replace 'em either heh.
Tractor Beams
A lot of hardcore science fiction guys really hate tractor beams, 'cause they're supposed to be super bad fake science or something.
Even though they don't seem that bad to me, as far as making up voodoo to explain how they work, with energy and matter being the same thing, and "gravity" being a bend in the fabric of spacetime produced by large amounts of energy/matter.
I mean, tractor beams seem like they're at least a little less stupid than some kind of artificial gravity plane generator on a spaceship that works Star Trek style, like a boat in space.
Well, they seem like the same kind of stupid, actually, but a simple high gravity beam shape is easier to imagine dealing with than a system that can produce and maintain some kind of gravity field in the shape of a plane floating under a boat-like spaceship.
Anyways, I like tractor beams.
And artificial gravity on boat-like spaceships too.
But its kinda weird how they never get into all the stuff you could really do with technology like that, y'know?
Like, they never have tractor beams inside the cargo bay, moving everything around.
And people still have to use elevators and worry about falling over railings and being crushed under heavy things in Star Trek, even though they'd all be able to fly around and dance on the ceiling with magnetic toe boots or personal tractor beam belt buckles something if they just turned the gravity off.
Yah, I want a personal tractor beam belt buckle or a room decked out with personal tractor beams so I can like, get beers from the replicator without having to get up off the couch heh.
"Computer! Captain needs a refill!" *wiggles glass over head*
And you could use that kinda crap to keep things from getting boring on long space flights, y'know, like, if you switched which direction the gravity plane is coming from every day, or made it into some even weirder shape than a flat plane.
"Its upside down day!"
And they never use tractor beams for fighting, either.
Seems like it'd be pretty easy to lock a guy up with tractor beams, well, as long as you were bigger than him, or the beams were attached to something heavy heh.
Tractor beam grenades would be super annoying, latching on to the closest guy and dragging themselves through the dirt toward him ahaha.
And if you do the old "reverse polarity" gag on 'em (I think all tractor beams come equipped with that setting ahaha), you got a belt buckle that can push grenades and dudes with swords away from you and throw 'em around.
Well, as long as you are bigger than whatever it is that yer trying to toss around, I think if yer smaller than whatever you've latched on to, then its you that gets tossed all over the goddam place, because THIS IS SCIENCE AND NOT MAGIC AND YOU ALWAYS GOTTA DO STUFF LIKE THAT TO MAKE IT SEEM REALER heh.
Even though anything that could produce artificial mass/gravity/telekinesis/whatever would be able to sorta "anchor" you, too, either to the ground or to another invisible (but not magickal goddammit! ahaha) and artificially produced mass or something.
Bunch of guys wanna kick your ass, you should just have your ship make a gravity plane with like ten times earth gravity underneath 'em to knock all their asses out, 'cause that's the same as pilots trying to do high G turns and stuff.
Or velcro yourself to something and just turn the artificial gravity on and off over and over again until all the bad guys on your boat are beat to shit and glued to the ceiling or something.
Being able to reconfigure artificial gravity on a ship can turn that long hallway that leads to your pilot chair into an elevator shaft you can send all the bad guys tumbling up and down over and over again to suit ones taste heh.
And in ship to ship combat, you could always produce another artificial gravity field at weird angles to their own artificial gravity field, or aligned with their gravity field in order to increase the gravity produced, y'know, so everything in the ship would slosh all around as you created artificial gravity slopes to the front and left and right and back.
Yah sure, once you add junk like this, then there's all sorts of ways you compensate for it and create countermeasures against it too, your ship might detect all that crap and automatically produce another field that cancels out whatever they're trying to do to you or something like that.
And you could probably use a tractor beam to cancel out somebody else's tractor beam, too.
And you would probably have beer glasses that could tractor beam themselves to your dashboard and tractor beam their liquid contents to prevent spillage during intense combat situations heh.
I guess gravity combat stuff like that would eventually boil down to whichever ship was capable of producing the most powerful gravity fields, and as long as you were pretty evenly matched, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but gravity fights run the spectrum from mild extra-gravity annoyance to knocking everyone unconscious to crushing your ship down into a singularity.
Anyways its kinda funny that they never do any cool stuff with it.
Y'know, 'cause Tractor Beams and Artificial Gravity has a bad rep, as something produced not on purpose, but by the necessity of filming scifi television shit really cheap in the 60s or something, I guess heh.
Even though its really no more lame than any of the other things we've turned into realities over the years imho ahaha.
And nowadays with computer graphics, you can do all sorts of fun and cheap Three Stooges crap with it, though, y'know?
And you coulda always done stuff like that if you were just writing scifi stories, or playing a scifi rpg or something.
Makes boarding a hostile ship as a space pirate way the hell more risky, you'd need to be ready for what amounts to some pretty crazy telekinetic flypaper traps and mountain climbing type shit, you'd have to be all quick as hell with your Batman Utility Belt and stuff heh.
Or you'd need to blow out whatever systems keep their artificial gravity running before you boarded, and deal with 'em all in Zero G, or by whatever your own ship could produce for them for gravity, but even if you killed all the power on a ship (which would probably take a lot less technology than producing an artificial gravity plane and tractor beams heh) you'd still have to deal with "personal" tractor beams and tractor beams inside the ship that may be able to run on backup power or something.
See, that's what Science Fiction shit is supposed to be all about, a bunch of magical traps and super powers and weapons and toys that make just enough sense that you can apply the Scientific Method to 'em and argue with your friends about how they'd work in different situations during a diamond robbery and have somebody be "right" in the end heh.
Even though they don't seem that bad to me, as far as making up voodoo to explain how they work, with energy and matter being the same thing, and "gravity" being a bend in the fabric of spacetime produced by large amounts of energy/matter.
I mean, tractor beams seem like they're at least a little less stupid than some kind of artificial gravity plane generator on a spaceship that works Star Trek style, like a boat in space.
Well, they seem like the same kind of stupid, actually, but a simple high gravity beam shape is easier to imagine dealing with than a system that can produce and maintain some kind of gravity field in the shape of a plane floating under a boat-like spaceship.
Anyways, I like tractor beams.
And artificial gravity on boat-like spaceships too.
But its kinda weird how they never get into all the stuff you could really do with technology like that, y'know?
Like, they never have tractor beams inside the cargo bay, moving everything around.
And people still have to use elevators and worry about falling over railings and being crushed under heavy things in Star Trek, even though they'd all be able to fly around and dance on the ceiling with magnetic toe boots or personal tractor beam belt buckles something if they just turned the gravity off.
Yah, I want a personal tractor beam belt buckle or a room decked out with personal tractor beams so I can like, get beers from the replicator without having to get up off the couch heh.
"Computer! Captain needs a refill!" *wiggles glass over head*
And you could use that kinda crap to keep things from getting boring on long space flights, y'know, like, if you switched which direction the gravity plane is coming from every day, or made it into some even weirder shape than a flat plane.
"Its upside down day!"
And they never use tractor beams for fighting, either.
Seems like it'd be pretty easy to lock a guy up with tractor beams, well, as long as you were bigger than him, or the beams were attached to something heavy heh.
Tractor beam grenades would be super annoying, latching on to the closest guy and dragging themselves through the dirt toward him ahaha.
And if you do the old "reverse polarity" gag on 'em (I think all tractor beams come equipped with that setting ahaha), you got a belt buckle that can push grenades and dudes with swords away from you and throw 'em around.
Well, as long as you are bigger than whatever it is that yer trying to toss around, I think if yer smaller than whatever you've latched on to, then its you that gets tossed all over the goddam place, because THIS IS SCIENCE AND NOT MAGIC AND YOU ALWAYS GOTTA DO STUFF LIKE THAT TO MAKE IT SEEM REALER heh.
Even though anything that could produce artificial mass/gravity/telekinesis/whatever would be able to sorta "anchor" you, too, either to the ground or to another invisible (but not magickal goddammit! ahaha) and artificially produced mass or something.
Bunch of guys wanna kick your ass, you should just have your ship make a gravity plane with like ten times earth gravity underneath 'em to knock all their asses out, 'cause that's the same as pilots trying to do high G turns and stuff.
Or velcro yourself to something and just turn the artificial gravity on and off over and over again until all the bad guys on your boat are beat to shit and glued to the ceiling or something.
Being able to reconfigure artificial gravity on a ship can turn that long hallway that leads to your pilot chair into an elevator shaft you can send all the bad guys tumbling up and down over and over again to suit ones taste heh.
And in ship to ship combat, you could always produce another artificial gravity field at weird angles to their own artificial gravity field, or aligned with their gravity field in order to increase the gravity produced, y'know, so everything in the ship would slosh all around as you created artificial gravity slopes to the front and left and right and back.
Yah sure, once you add junk like this, then there's all sorts of ways you compensate for it and create countermeasures against it too, your ship might detect all that crap and automatically produce another field that cancels out whatever they're trying to do to you or something like that.
And you could probably use a tractor beam to cancel out somebody else's tractor beam, too.
And you would probably have beer glasses that could tractor beam themselves to your dashboard and tractor beam their liquid contents to prevent spillage during intense combat situations heh.
I guess gravity combat stuff like that would eventually boil down to whichever ship was capable of producing the most powerful gravity fields, and as long as you were pretty evenly matched, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but gravity fights run the spectrum from mild extra-gravity annoyance to knocking everyone unconscious to crushing your ship down into a singularity.
Anyways its kinda funny that they never do any cool stuff with it.
Y'know, 'cause Tractor Beams and Artificial Gravity has a bad rep, as something produced not on purpose, but by the necessity of filming scifi television shit really cheap in the 60s or something, I guess heh.
Even though its really no more lame than any of the other things we've turned into realities over the years imho ahaha.
And nowadays with computer graphics, you can do all sorts of fun and cheap Three Stooges crap with it, though, y'know?
And you coulda always done stuff like that if you were just writing scifi stories, or playing a scifi rpg or something.
Makes boarding a hostile ship as a space pirate way the hell more risky, you'd need to be ready for what amounts to some pretty crazy telekinetic flypaper traps and mountain climbing type shit, you'd have to be all quick as hell with your Batman Utility Belt and stuff heh.
Or you'd need to blow out whatever systems keep their artificial gravity running before you boarded, and deal with 'em all in Zero G, or by whatever your own ship could produce for them for gravity, but even if you killed all the power on a ship (which would probably take a lot less technology than producing an artificial gravity plane and tractor beams heh) you'd still have to deal with "personal" tractor beams and tractor beams inside the ship that may be able to run on backup power or something.
See, that's what Science Fiction shit is supposed to be all about, a bunch of magical traps and super powers and weapons and toys that make just enough sense that you can apply the Scientific Method to 'em and argue with your friends about how they'd work in different situations during a diamond robbery and have somebody be "right" in the end heh.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Make Great Pets
The aliens that were smarter than us came along one day and they made us their pets.
'Cause to them, we were like smart animals, with way more powerful senses and better instincts and brute strength, but only capable of understanding what amounts to "simple" commands.
And we were super easy to keep happy and take care of from their perspective.
And they let us keep our own pets, so we were sorta like guard dogs with our own pet guard dogs.
Which looked really cool when they took us and our dogs out hunting for fresh dolphin and monkey meat.
Anyways, then these even smarter aliens came along and they made our alien masters their pets.
'Cause to the even smarter aliens, our alien masters were like smart animals, with way more powerful senses and better instincts and brute stength, but only capable of understanding what amounts to "simple" commands with their limited intelligence.
And its turns out that the even smarter aliens were just the pets of an even smarter bunch of aliens, who were even worse off in the physical world, with pitifully weak senses and barely any strength at all, almost entirely blind to the nitty gritty details of the universe, but way the hell more powerful on the mental side of things.
Intelligent wisps of highly organized time-space energy patterns that simple animals like us could only understand from their actions as themes of nature like "things tend to come in threes" and "when it rains it pours."
And I think that those guys might just be the pets of something even more vague and less physical with even greater understanding, something beyond my capacity to imagine.
But then at some point, those intelligences approach total understanding of the universe, and they seem to just become a part of nature itself, they might let everything happen the way it wants to happens, 'cause they understand why it should happen that way, or it may happen however they want it to happen, but there's not a lot of difference between those two things, from our perspective.
And that's exactly the kinda shit that my dog deals with for me, 'cause he can detect and appreciate all that natural stuff better than I can, and he understands nature and masters it better than I do.
So those guys are sorta like his pets, I guess.
Anyways, that's why you shouldn't kick a dog, y'know, 'cause that shit will keep flowing downhill throughout the multiverse until eventually some aliens with pissed off bosses will show up and shoot ya with lasers or something.
But at the same time, its okay to punch an alien whenever you get bit by a pissed off dog, 'cause that shit will end up biting the dog in the ass somehow eventually.
Well, if there were any aliens around to punch.
Which there ain't, 'cause them big headed bastards ain't dumb enough to hang around within punching range.
So I guess we gotta just punch the dog whenever he bites us, and act as the shore that the negative shit of the universe from the nature side of the wheel smacks into and reverses itself against, going back up the wheel the same way it came.
And our alien masters ain't really getting away with anything, 'cause they're on the other end of the ocean, shooting their bosses with their lasers or something whenever they get kicked around, but never bothering us.
Unless there's a bunch of guys in the middle that are kicking whatever shit comes at them back the way it came and leaving some natural section of the circle free of punches and bites and lasers.
Man, that would suck, 'cause that would mean we're on a shitty stretch of road, filled with biting dogs that we have to kick and alien masters that get to live bruise-free existences.
But its not all biting and kicking, y'know, there's a good side to things, there's a silver lining, there's love and affection shared between a pet and his master, too, y'know, nature is always trying to kill me and my dog, but it provides us with tasty dolphins and monkeys to eat.
And so our alien masters are missing out on how fun it is to pet our fur and have us lick their gross-ass alien faces, or some shit like that.
So we're caught somewhere between the forces of nature and biting dogs and having to lick alien faces, I guess.
Goddam our spot on the wheel of the multiverse sucks.
'Cause to them, we were like smart animals, with way more powerful senses and better instincts and brute strength, but only capable of understanding what amounts to "simple" commands.
And we were super easy to keep happy and take care of from their perspective.
And they let us keep our own pets, so we were sorta like guard dogs with our own pet guard dogs.
Which looked really cool when they took us and our dogs out hunting for fresh dolphin and monkey meat.
Anyways, then these even smarter aliens came along and they made our alien masters their pets.
'Cause to the even smarter aliens, our alien masters were like smart animals, with way more powerful senses and better instincts and brute stength, but only capable of understanding what amounts to "simple" commands with their limited intelligence.
And its turns out that the even smarter aliens were just the pets of an even smarter bunch of aliens, who were even worse off in the physical world, with pitifully weak senses and barely any strength at all, almost entirely blind to the nitty gritty details of the universe, but way the hell more powerful on the mental side of things.
Intelligent wisps of highly organized time-space energy patterns that simple animals like us could only understand from their actions as themes of nature like "things tend to come in threes" and "when it rains it pours."
And I think that those guys might just be the pets of something even more vague and less physical with even greater understanding, something beyond my capacity to imagine.
But then at some point, those intelligences approach total understanding of the universe, and they seem to just become a part of nature itself, they might let everything happen the way it wants to happens, 'cause they understand why it should happen that way, or it may happen however they want it to happen, but there's not a lot of difference between those two things, from our perspective.
And that's exactly the kinda shit that my dog deals with for me, 'cause he can detect and appreciate all that natural stuff better than I can, and he understands nature and masters it better than I do.
So those guys are sorta like his pets, I guess.
Anyways, that's why you shouldn't kick a dog, y'know, 'cause that shit will keep flowing downhill throughout the multiverse until eventually some aliens with pissed off bosses will show up and shoot ya with lasers or something.
But at the same time, its okay to punch an alien whenever you get bit by a pissed off dog, 'cause that shit will end up biting the dog in the ass somehow eventually.
Well, if there were any aliens around to punch.
Which there ain't, 'cause them big headed bastards ain't dumb enough to hang around within punching range.
So I guess we gotta just punch the dog whenever he bites us, and act as the shore that the negative shit of the universe from the nature side of the wheel smacks into and reverses itself against, going back up the wheel the same way it came.
And our alien masters ain't really getting away with anything, 'cause they're on the other end of the ocean, shooting their bosses with their lasers or something whenever they get kicked around, but never bothering us.
Unless there's a bunch of guys in the middle that are kicking whatever shit comes at them back the way it came and leaving some natural section of the circle free of punches and bites and lasers.
Man, that would suck, 'cause that would mean we're on a shitty stretch of road, filled with biting dogs that we have to kick and alien masters that get to live bruise-free existences.
But its not all biting and kicking, y'know, there's a good side to things, there's a silver lining, there's love and affection shared between a pet and his master, too, y'know, nature is always trying to kill me and my dog, but it provides us with tasty dolphins and monkeys to eat.
And so our alien masters are missing out on how fun it is to pet our fur and have us lick their gross-ass alien faces, or some shit like that.
So we're caught somewhere between the forces of nature and biting dogs and having to lick alien faces, I guess.
Goddam our spot on the wheel of the multiverse sucks.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
April Fools Day
Many people, myself included, don't seem to remember what the true spirit of April Fools Day was really supposed to be all about.
We all go around thinking crap like, "man, practical jokes are for assholes, April Fools Day is like some sort of totally fucked up holiday where all the pitiful dweebs that delude themselves into thinking that they're clever and hilarious celebrate their assholerly by making themselves feel better at someone else's expense, and then they go around telling their victims that they don't have a sense of humor."
But last night I was visited by three ghosts, the Ghost of April Fools Day Past, Present and Future, and so now I'm like all Merry April Fools Day and shit.
Yep, the Ghost of April Fools Day Past took me back in time to the village where April Fools Day comes from, this place where everybody had a sense of humor and pranks and practical jokes were an artform.
Yah it was really kinda interesting.
But then these Inquisitor guys showed up, and they had no sense of humor, and they had them all burned at the stake for witchcraft.
And that's why nobody remembers the true spirit of April Fools anymore, y'know.
Its sorta like a holiday belonging to a vestigial strain of folks that lost the Survival of the Fittest competition.
That us folks with no sense of humor just keep dragging along with us out of nostalgia or something.
Which is what the Ghost of April Fools Day Present taught me.
And then the Ghost of April Fools Day Future showed up, and he was this gruesome Grim Reaper looking skeleton dude in a black robe, and he took me to the future and showed me all these people moping around, because we'd finally killed off all the prankster bits of our genetics and nobody had a sense of humor for practical jokes anymore.
And I was all like, "oh my god! this is horrible, man! we can't let this happen! tell me we can still do something to avert this terrible catastrophe! tell me that the future isn't set in stone!"
And the Ghost of April Fools Day Future was all like, "really? Have you seen the light and the error of your no-sense-of-humor ways?"
And I was like, "haha naw man, I'm just kidding, I mean, sure, these people are all moping around and shit, but all a bunch of pranks and practical jokes would do is make shit even more annoying for them, y'know, 'cause its all like, making yerself feel better at somebody else's expense, you might as well have a holiday about giving people purple nurples and shit."
Well, the Ghost of April Fools Day Future didn't think that was all that funny, apparently, although it was sorta hard to tell from his expressionless skull-face, I could hear him grinding his teeth.
So he took me to see my grave and we stood there for a little bit looking down at the stupid thing and then I finally couldn't take it anymore so I blurted out "uh, what the hell does this have to do with April Fools and teaching me to have a sense of humor?" and he was all like "nothing" and then he took me back to my apartment and left.
That little skeletor bitch can't take a joke, man.
Anyways I guess after all that time travelling ghost stuff I finally understand the true spirit of April Fools Day!
Haha just kidding!
Yah naw I still don't get it.
We all go around thinking crap like, "man, practical jokes are for assholes, April Fools Day is like some sort of totally fucked up holiday where all the pitiful dweebs that delude themselves into thinking that they're clever and hilarious celebrate their assholerly by making themselves feel better at someone else's expense, and then they go around telling their victims that they don't have a sense of humor."
But last night I was visited by three ghosts, the Ghost of April Fools Day Past, Present and Future, and so now I'm like all Merry April Fools Day and shit.
Yep, the Ghost of April Fools Day Past took me back in time to the village where April Fools Day comes from, this place where everybody had a sense of humor and pranks and practical jokes were an artform.
Yah it was really kinda interesting.
But then these Inquisitor guys showed up, and they had no sense of humor, and they had them all burned at the stake for witchcraft.
And that's why nobody remembers the true spirit of April Fools anymore, y'know.
Its sorta like a holiday belonging to a vestigial strain of folks that lost the Survival of the Fittest competition.
That us folks with no sense of humor just keep dragging along with us out of nostalgia or something.
Which is what the Ghost of April Fools Day Present taught me.
And then the Ghost of April Fools Day Future showed up, and he was this gruesome Grim Reaper looking skeleton dude in a black robe, and he took me to the future and showed me all these people moping around, because we'd finally killed off all the prankster bits of our genetics and nobody had a sense of humor for practical jokes anymore.
And I was all like, "oh my god! this is horrible, man! we can't let this happen! tell me we can still do something to avert this terrible catastrophe! tell me that the future isn't set in stone!"
And the Ghost of April Fools Day Future was all like, "really? Have you seen the light and the error of your no-sense-of-humor ways?"
And I was like, "haha naw man, I'm just kidding, I mean, sure, these people are all moping around and shit, but all a bunch of pranks and practical jokes would do is make shit even more annoying for them, y'know, 'cause its all like, making yerself feel better at somebody else's expense, you might as well have a holiday about giving people purple nurples and shit."
Well, the Ghost of April Fools Day Future didn't think that was all that funny, apparently, although it was sorta hard to tell from his expressionless skull-face, I could hear him grinding his teeth.
So he took me to see my grave and we stood there for a little bit looking down at the stupid thing and then I finally couldn't take it anymore so I blurted out "uh, what the hell does this have to do with April Fools and teaching me to have a sense of humor?" and he was all like "nothing" and then he took me back to my apartment and left.
That little skeletor bitch can't take a joke, man.
Anyways I guess after all that time travelling ghost stuff I finally understand the true spirit of April Fools Day!
Haha just kidding!
Yah naw I still don't get it.
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