I am going to do a weekly upload to Smashwords with Vexations titles – basically so that people get to read various versions in different formats. Also, if they’d like to support me in some way, they can buy them. Since they’re on sale for only 0.99$ it shouldn’t be that much of a burden.
Plus, if you’d like those ever-so-awesome PDF formatted stories, this is a way to get them for whatever device.
You can, of course, read this and more on Mill Avenue Vexations.
I’ll create a much more clever headline for when I’m much more awake.
I just hope that anyone who happens to live in or near Tempe reads this and goes to check this out, but the first ever Mill Avenue Vexations comic book, “The Deal”, is now available at Pop Culture Paradise store in Tempe, AZ. It’s on the shelves.
I think it’s being sold for $2.99! I am quite proud of it being there too, so if you have anyone interested in buying it; send them over to get it.
I am also looking for more places who’d like to sell them so if anyone knows any places trustworthy to do so. I’d love to hear it.
Let me know if you see it yourself, also give them some visitors just because they’re nice enough to give me a space.
When speaking in front of the Arizona State University Secular Free Thought Society, Brother Jed approached his solution to the Euthyphro Dilemma:
“Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious; or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”
This is the presentation for Jed:
(1) Is it moral because Jed’s god says it; or
(2) Does Jed’s god say it because it’s moral.
According to Brother Jed, he ascribes to the latter. Jed’s god says things because they are moral.
This interests me because it suggests that not only is morality external to Jed’s god—fundamentally meaning that Jed’s god is capable of saying/doing immoral things—but it also means that Jed suggests that he has a moral litmus test to apply to Jed’s god’s sayings to determine that they are moral according to this external standard.
I wonder if Jed would be willing license out his moral litmus test; because it may come in extremely handy to the rest of us. Also, I’d like to see other people apply Brother Jed’s moral litmus test to moral situations so that its limitations and capabilities can be studied. And, I include, that this might preclude the possibility that Brother Jed’s moral litmus test (1) does not exist; (2) does not actually function in any sense that can be corroborated with reality; or (3) has so many limitations or failure states that it’s rendered useless involving practical situations.
Someone out there should ask Jed to license the technology he’s using to determine the moral certitude of Jed’s god’s commandments.
After another spate of bad-acts, VenomFangX has left YouTUBE once again. This time permanently, if anyone is to believe him; perhaps even if he does return someone can claim that VenomFangX did not return, as he has chosen to escape from his past by divesting himself of that name like removing a wet coat upon entering a house. So we'll call him Shawn.
Shawn has shut down his VenomFangX channel in the wake of community outrage about his filing of more than two dozen false DMCA notices to various other YouTUBE channels in a transparent attempt to stifle their speech. His false-concern replies noted that he was choosing only those videos that mocked and harassed him unduly and put he and his family in danger. This is a behavior which he basically showed he already knows is illegal from the last time he was caught doing this, in fact he said as much in his apology speech to Thunderf00t from the original Venomgate Scandal.
Then, after several of his targets moved to defend themselves and several retained legal aid, Shawn went ahead and posted a video calling DPRJones a pedophile. A demonstrably false accusation based on bad information and in bad faith – and directed at his primary adversary when it would come to his upcoming legal troubles for filing false DMCA notices.
As he has since shut down his channel, his new apology is posted on the DPRJones channel.
People have mentioned that he sounds contrite, apologetic, as if he intends to get help for his apparent mental problems and criminal behavior – and understand, filing a false DMCA notice is perjury (knowingly and willfully making a false statement for legal purposes), a felony in the United States. Shawn is a Canadian citizen, so I don't know what criminal laws bind him there, but it's likely they also frown at individuals lying on legal documents.
As we well know now, Shawn is a snake. He is a brilliant manipulator of emotions, a plagiarist, a liar, and a known fraud (see: Venomgate and Sick Children Hospital.) In spite of his apology and attempt to escape from his bad behavior as VenomFangX is manages to fail to actually stop this behavior.
As part of his apology he grovels, simpers, and attempts to show contrition by saying that he will get help (which he may) but then he continues on to ask people to remove videos mocking him and outlining his bad behavior as VenomFangX. Claiming that the existence of this history will make it difficult for him to move on.
There are those who will be quick to point out that he isn't welcome to escape his history. What he's done has been done and if he did get into legal trouble there would be court cases and public documents of his actions. That much of his history is now in video form which can be removed does not mean it should be removed at his request.
My issue is altogether different.
VenomFangX has committed a series of crimes. The fruits of these crimes was to remove videos outlining his past, mocking him for his bad behavior, and otherwise documenting his terrible acts. He got caught in the commission of his crime and failed. In his apology – in an attempt to escape justice according to his crimes – he asks people simply hand him the fruits of his criminal behavior. To me this is exactly like the executive caught embezzling $10M who gets caught, but escapes imprisonment through an apology and while apologizing asks people to just give him the $10M he tried to steal "out of kindness."
Don't give Shawn the fruits of his criminal behavior.
Anoxia finally hit her 77th level this weekend after a marathon run of quests with the trolls in the fallen city of Zul’Drak. The city is so large that it literally takes up an entire zone of Northrend, filled with trolls of every imagining (mostly the frost variety) who have turned on their own gods to fight the Scourge.
Their predicament is terrible and it saddens me greatly. It’s stupid of them to turn on their own protectors for fleeting power, but this is troll culture: not just cannibalistic but deicidal. The trolls there have taken to themselves to cannibalize their own gods for the might to repel the Scourge which has led to a bitter internecine war. The trolls eating their gods aren’t doing so well either, as some of them have run into a disagreement from those gods themselves.
For example, the healer goddess – a winged serpent – yanked her and hers into an undead nightmare vale upon her death and is now exacting terrible revenge on them for their transgressions. And the mammoth god, who seems to be quite stubborn, detonated himself rather than be quaffed the hungry trolls.
Needless to say, the city is in various states of smoldering ruin.
And it’s been great fun.
Also, in other news:
I am seriously thinking of doing some WoW videos, directed at newbie players to elaborate the various classes in their early roles. Especially now that I’ve been playing a warlock repeatedly from early levels. They are such a fun class.
Talk about grinding.
For those not in the know, Anoxia has been burning hard and bright attempting to get her wings. Netherwing-wings, with those dragons out in Shadowmoon Valley of Draenor. It involves a series of up-ranking quests via reputation to rise up among the ranks of the fel orcs of the Dragonmaw clan.
To put it short: she has her dragon.
The quests start by the netherwing dragons giving a disguise so that you can visit their island without being detected. In Anoxia’s case she became a rather wide, red orc male with a huge netherwing dragon to ride on. Of course, when she arrived with papers they smacked her down to peon.
The quests are interesting and start at the fel orc peon level, requiring that Anoxia run around and collect dust from bushes, and cut down animals for their nethercite crystals (if she was a miner this would come from mining nodes.) All of the other orcs also treat you like a peon.
Then came Overseer and with that rank came the booterang. BOOTERANG. A weapon that I had to fashion myself from a bunch of leather (provided by Spearmint) and the hide of a beast which was found in an Ecodome. A huge tyrannosaur who went down under the not-so-gentle blades of our dearest rogue. The booterang worked pretty much as expected: it’s a pair of boots strung together that boomerang at a disobedient peon’s head, wack him (sending him back to work) and then return. Quite funny.
The next rank is a commander. With each new rank the orcs treat you differently, with more respect, they stop requesting and start asking. Eventually you’re giving commands to take down portals, to fight giant demons, and to lead attacks—one of which Anoxia tipped off the target and assisted in the defense of said target.
The final stage felt so much fun after turning in 40 netherwing eggs. To explain eggs. They’re worth 250 reputation (about as much as a standard mission) and they spawn all over the Dragonmaw fortress and island. They do have specific places they appear so pretty quickly you end up with a patrol route to find them. As you can guess, collecting 40 eggs took some time (a week) and a lot of patrolling.
Being a rogue came in very handy since most people don’t like to brave the mines to extract eggs. However, being invisible things became a great deal easier.
It’s a beautiful black winged netherdrake who ferries her place to place wherever is flyable.
Fun times.
Of course, that dragon isn’t the only goal here. Anoxia wants her albino drake for its 310% flight speed and that’s only available via an achievement—namely the achievement for having 50 mounts.
Mag’har, here we come!
Ogres, watch out, I need War Beads.
“Hi, I’m Kyt… And I am an altoholic.”
To an extent, I don’t even have an 80 yet and the alts that I’m working towards that point happen to not be my main… However, this goes even further than that, since I have friends trying to experience WoW and level on other servers, I have been going to the great over there and experiencing all that I can.
Foremost the title of this post is about warlocks. The demon-wrangling, chaos-casting firestarters that everyone loves to hate.
Since I have a friend who joined up on a random server, I ran over there and made a new undead warlock—Blume. People might know about my blood elf warlock on Thunderhorn (Sybrwyd) who happens to be a Demonlogy ‘lock, so I am taking Blume into the depths of the Destruction tree. I’ve already played the hell out of the new LFG system with her, and she’s run a few dungeons every night to meet and greet people to have fun.
To list what dungeons I’ve seen with LFG so far, and generally see at least three a night:
The Deadmines (x2)
Wailing Caverns (x3)
Shadowfang Keep (x2)
Stormwind Stockades (x1)
An interesting fact here is that two of these instances, Deadmines and Stockades happen to be Alliance controlled. This means that under normal circumstances I’d never want to brave the Allied lands in order to even try to reach them (point in fact, the Stockades is in Stormwind Castle!) So seeing that instance did happen to be fun and interesting, and Anoxia is going there at some point on her lonesome.
My friend, Ryan, is rocking a rogue (making Anoxia proud) and Blue is supplying fire support. I will have some instancing adventures to write up at some point, I am sure. These cross-shard groups sometimes go well, something bad, sometimes VERY bad. My experience so far has been exceptionally good.
Four levels in two days doing instances and quests in them.
What a way to experience content.
So, as anyone has discovered by the time they hit Northrend: flittermounts cost a femur and an ulna. That is to say, I need 4,000 gold just to learn to fly my quick flittermount; and then 1,000 more to make it fly in the icy steppes of the north. That doesn’t include the 200-ish to buy it.
Well, thanks to Trichoderma and Spearmint, Anoxia is 3,000 gold closer to getting her riding skill for the quick flittermount. This through daily grinding of words and shoveltusk by Spearmint across the freezing climes. If it weren’t for Winter Fur drops (which make almost 75g a pop) this would take forever.
I’m not exactly one of those who knows too much about how to make money in WoW, so here I am making it in chunks of 200g a day or so trying to reach that infamous 5,000 gold just so that one of my characters can ride in style.
Also sadly, one part of the winter event cannot be run without a flying mount.
On what’s left of Draenor, Shadowmoon Valley to be exact, there’s some see-through dragons called the Netherwing. Basically they’re a clusterbomb of quests and reputation that give you (eventually) a dragon mount. They’re also a good way to make a little money while trying to get to the point you can ride one. (Remember that 4,000 gold?)
I don’t know if I even want one, but I do want to try out the experience at least once.
So Anoxia leapt to their aid. First, she had to go kill some critters that eat the crystals that grow in the ground. The critters aren’t all that tough, they just come in packs of two or three—and it takes five small ones or one big one to get the items we need. Namely: carcasses of size enough to feed a netherwing dragon. After getting a carcass, one can be placed on the ground so a dragon can come down and om nom nom; after which they say something cryptic in Draconic and leave.
Next, I she got a quest to go visit a floating island upon which draenite crystals are being mined. There’s peons everywhere, and also some sort of nightmare vine that has crystals on it—probably nethervine with nether crystals. (See a naming convention arising?) These, she took back to the big dragon in the sky who enchanted them up.
With these crystals she went to the Dragonmaw orc clan and tried to free the baby dragons they’d enslaved. However, the baby dragons are terrible at escaping—they feel the need to attack whomever happens to be standing around. So, after freeing one from the mind control, she had to take down everyone nearby in several cases. Be careful only to free netherwings that have handlers, otherwise they charge into the nearest (largest!) group of foes and aggro all of them.
Finally, after freeing a bunch of these dragon kids, the big dragon gave her the quest equivalent of a smack-down: go kill this clan leader, oh, and by the by, bring four of your friends. Well, that’s not happening today. Hopefully there’ll be some very bored 80s on tomorrow to help out with that and we’ll see how it goes.
Monday again and it’s time for another issue of Around Azeroth, at least that’s what I’m going to call my little semi-daily updates about my adventures in the World of Warcraft.
Oh, a hunter by any other name would not be Hemet Nesingwary.
Anyone who has actually leveled a character into their 30s has probably made their way into the dreaded Stranglethorn Vale. Dreaded why? Mostly because it is literally unavoidable, large, and full of quests that send you to all corners of the entire zone. Oh yes, it also has Nesingwary.
Everyone’s favorite Azerothian reincarnation of Hemmingway—right down to the book he wrote (excuse me: books.) Anoxia and Spreamint have already had their fun with him in Stranglethorn, but of course, he went to Outlands and Northrend as well. So now Anoxia is meeting him again, for the first time.
And just like the quests from the Stranglethorn, Nesingwary and his safari … expedition … or whatever he might be doing has a million small, fuzzy forest creatures for me to kill. Kill them until not a single one stands. Killing in the morning. Killing in the evening. Killing all night long!
I am surprised there’s a single species left on the planet for us to hunt—or on Draenor for that matter.
So. Anoxia hits Nagrand, fishing pole in hand (I’ll talk about this later) and talks to Nesingwary and his safari. Kill clefthoof! Kill birds! Kill elk things! If it moves make it die, die, die, dead, die!
And so, now here we go scything through the wildlife like a hot orc through scantily clad elves.
Wish me luck.
Have I mentioned that reputation is my most-hated aspect of all Azerothian endeavors?
Perhaps I didn’t mention that the good Lady of Venom, Anoxia, has just gotten her first big rep reward: “Ambassador to the Horde.” An achievement gained by getting Exalted reputation with each of the major Horde racial factions.
She now wears it proudly.
Ambassador Anoxia.
The story starts humbly, Anoxia wanted a raptor mount from the Darkspear Trolls, but being a blood elf she couldn’t have one until she Exalted with them. Unwilling to wait, she threw herself with wild abandon into the battlegrounds—Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, and Arathi Basin. After cutting down hundreds of scores of Alliance she earned enough marks to buy herself a raptor.
Next thing she knew, while wandering aimlessly through Zangarmarsh, she noticed she had Exalted with two factions—and nearly there with the other three. Well, everyone except the cows; Thunder Bluff couldn’t be bothered and had its reputation bar half-way while the rest were nearly on the red line.
So, after gaining Exaulted with her own city and the undead, Anoxia went on a grand world-trotting quest to get the cows to like her. It ended with turn-ins on the Hunter Rise of Thunder Bluff after hunting and killing a zeppelin-load of rare and endangered animals.
Ping!
Cows like you now, Miss Ambassador.
Those who have spent enough time in the Zangarmarsh know about the fungus-men of Sporeggar. No, I am not making a reference to some obscure H.P. Lovecraft text, it’s all about Warcraft again. This time, I saw a nice little reputation reward dagger in the hands of the fungus critters and Anoxia wanted one for herself.
The problem? It requires Revered reputation with the spore people.
Reputation in Warcraft is perhaps one of the most time consuming and job-like aspects of the game. Many quests deliver it like coin, allowing users to slowly become more favored with particular factions. Some factions are utterly worthless, some have become obsolescent (see Old World factions like the Argent Crusade) while others are most beloved by level 80 characters because they have upgrade gear.
So I went out farming for rep.
Basically, I just grabbed Spearmint and took her on a massacre of anything made of fungus: Bog Lords and sporebats. Since I wanted as many [Bog Lord Tendril]s and [Fertile Spores] as I could get my little rogue hands on. Little did I know that the tendrils would only end up working once (I was left holding a huge bag of them) and that it would take forever with spores.
So I went the next best route: I grabbed Trichoderma.
Being the near-goddess she is at almost level cap, she teleported into Zangarmarsh in the North West—an area that if Zangar happened to be a map of the US would have been the west coast of Washington and Oregon—and proceeded to beat down anything fungus-similar with the shadowy power.
I spent over two hours burning Greater Spore Bats into the cracked grey rocks and distilling them for spores. I received almost 96 fertile spores and almost 100+ [Unidentified Plant Parts] (all of which went to Spearmint—I almost want that hippogryph for her. Yes, another grind-for-rep reward!)
Bah.
I hate rep.
Oh, but check out my shiny new dagger: [Hardened Stone Shard].
It's a lost/found story with a good ending for an evening of darkness and freezing rain in the cold, wet north.
I get a call at about 9pm AZ (midnight MI) from my roommates who have lost their Internet connexion because Comcast made a mistake. My roommate, Djenna, who got a cat to keep me company while I'm indoors during the day without anybody to spend time with tells me that Pullo – the rogue cat – has been missing all day. Nowhere to be seen in the house, and he hasn't eaten. And he eats like a horse.
TV weather warns that it's going to be a heavy snow.
About 1am MI her husband calls me to tell me that while casing our neighborhood for likely bushes, a cat-shaped shadow detached itself from some foliage and followed him home.
Pullo arrived wet, shivering, covered in mud, and not at all upset by his experience out in the icy-cold. Fortunately for me his time missing amounted to about an hour or so, my roommates, though, had to suffer through not knowing where he was for about a day.
This is the same cat who likes to try to chase squirrels and once got herded, cornered, and pinned against the house and a stand of firewood by a small troop of the fuzzy buggers and had to be carried out (by me) to get him back inside because he didn't want to go anywhere near them.
This morning, flying across the cracked and parched wasteland of the Hellfire Peninsula I realized that I am having bag space problems. Both my rogue and my hunter constantly run out of space to keep their flowers and pelts – this is discounting things like the skulls of the fallen and other bling.
So, I started looking around for some of the larger bags. Mine are all 16s right now, good ole Netherweave; however, with the introduction of Northrend there’s new cloth! Frostweave. And Frostweave Bags are 20s. So I now am the proud owner of eight new Frostweave Bags. Although, it would be nice to get a Glacial Bag or two (if they didn’t cost 1,000g a piece for those 2 extra slots.)
Spearmint went back to Hellfire and Zangarmarsh after a brief stay in Terokkar Forest. Mostly because she felt like painting the steppes red with the blood of brown fel orcs; and she’d left some big game in Zangarmarsh un-hunted. Positively fun, this one, looking for a giant hydra in Serpent Lake; and then she had to cut down a gargantuan crab-man waiting with his parking brake on in the middle of an island north of Zubra’Jin.
Oh, and Boglash.
Fun and games with Boglash. ‘Mint and her red-bug-of-death took him on and did the usual hunter song-and-dance with the flabby, pale menace, downed him and went home; but when it came tie for Anoxia to take him on…everything went a little differently…
She snuck up behind the thing, holding her breath against the marsh gases. Her fingers twitched, daggers rising and falling with the soft sigh of the water as the tripod’s legs slashed wakes from the otherwise somulent murk. She opened up with an ambush, both blades poised into the thing’s Achilles tendon—or at least what she expected was—it wobbled dangerously, spinning to face her. She twirled, blood, blade, and venom leading the way, slicing and dicing tentacle and tendril alike. It struck out with lightning, she kicked it in what she hoped might have been a kidney.
It seemed mere moments later, cool downs all burning, ‘Nox stood over the fallen blubber of the pale monstrosity.
“Oh, glowing spores. Gee,” she said. And then trekked home for the reward.
…and other snide comments about daytime soap operas.
So, I got back into World of Warcraft again. I’ve been playing up my rogue and hunter up to higher and higher levels—read: level 63. Both are drumming away in Outlands at the strange landscapes of Hellfire Peninsula and the Zangarmarsh.
Hunter grrl, Spearmint, has been slumming it in Zangarmasrh mostly. This is where she got herself her first pretty bug—a pretty bug who happens to be named “Blacksting.” (Something about trolls and their ever growing hunger for strange and unsettling aphrodisiacs.) I renamed it Dahlia, just to see if anyone would get the reference. I then got the quest to kill Blacksting and killed him with himself for some poetic Hunter style justice.
Rogue chickidee, Anoxia, has been wandering Zangarmarsh also but just recently trotted out into Terokkar Forest instead. She needed some fresh forest air and spiders and less mushrooms.
Both of them just got their normal flying mounts. Mounts which are way less expensive than I expected. I saved up 1,200g between them (600g each) and then discovered that the riding skill sells for only like 250g right now. Although, looking at it. Artisan riding (to get the swift mounts) costs like 4,000g so I still have one hell of a grind ahead of me for both of them.
Anyone ever gone for a Nether drake? I mean, wow. How long does that take for someone who has < 2 hr a day to burn?
I’ve finally gotten out and put in some time on Mill Ave proper since my visit. We didn’t see much in the way of anything, such as it is, the Ave is still in decline…and by decline I mean the stores that appear are lackluster, determined to breathe stale extruded culture instead of anything remotely clever.
Most of the street came covered in gold sweaters with people showing off their allegiance to ASU in the game taking place—American football likely—against some unknown college named USC (likely Southern California.) Amid them, here and there, I also noticed maroon jerseys, which mixed interesting effects with the USC shirts which were also red. Although far fewer on the street.
I also noticed a number of U.S. Marines in full dress uniform. Strutting their well pressed and tailored outfits along the red bricks. Every one that I saw a male, often escorting a female, who often wore less elegant attire. It’s been supposed that they might have been part of the ASU game, acting as color guard (guarding the US flag when it was taken onto the field as part of a ceremony.)
Apparently, Phantom of the Opera was also showing at Gammage Auditorium.
Very few rats that I’ve interviewed in the past came by Drum Circle. In fact, the drum circle barely existed today with a bunch of new people I didn’t get a chance to talk to and only one drum (however, a drum is very, very good.)
Mill is not dead, but its certainly not in a good place.
Vexations is coming along. Not quite how I want to … but it’s been good, and lovely, and here’s an image to leave everyone with.
And for more information about the upcoming volume go to the Mill Avenue Vexations blog.
Well, I thought it was just a DS, but every time it talks about itself, it says DSi.
Needless today, it’s been painless in the installation and it can even see my home wireless. I got a Zelda game. We’ll see how far this goes.
It is updating its software wirelessly right now.
There, I fixed the article title for them.
Maybe we’re looking at an altogether different problem than what’s being presented in this article and no amount of playing to bogus emotional appeals is going to slide these eyes away from recognizing it. Feast eyes on this AP article about the backlash against Mormons over the passage of California Prop 8, which banned gay marriage in the state: “Mormon leader: religious freedom at risk.”
“The anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil rights movement, a high-ranking Mormon says in a speech to be delivered Tuesday.” Really? Mormons are actually a group of people unaccepted by society due to their reduced social class and abused by the scions of those who benefited from the division of power and labor. Mormons, after demonstrably perpetrating civil rights abuses are in fact those abused of their civil rights. Sure they are.
When, exactly, during the civil rights movement did blacks (as some sort of organized group, I mean, religion) get together to block the civil rights of another social class? They didn’t? Silly me.
The backlash that Mormons are looking at right now isn’t about religion—certainly religion plays a part—it’s about politics. Politics such as political groupings and identity. The Mormon Church, that entity which is the Mormons gathering together in an organized fashion, decided to take a political position on a matter of civil rights. By doing so they placed themselves as an enemy of everyone who would work towards enlightening society to those civil rights and now are in the crosshairs of angry people. They could have been the Snuffupagus Society and the exact same thing would happen.
In an interview Monday before the speech, Oaks said he did not consider it provocative to compare the treatment of Mormons in the election's aftermath to that of blacks in the civil rights era, and said he stands by the analogy.
"It may be offensive to some — maybe because it hadn't occurred to them that they were putting themselves in the same category as people we deplore from that bygone era," he said.
Mormons vs. gay rights isn’t “Mormons as black people” vs. “gay rights activists as Southern segregationists.” It’s the exact reverse. And yes, I suspect people will find this analogy offensive—Oaks may have just managed to piss off not just gay rights activists but anyone who saw the plight of people with a different skin color as a necessity for civil rights activism. Insulting? No kidding.
After the emotional firebomb that happened to be Surrogates, starring one of my favorite action-hero actors—Bruce Willis—I didn’t quite know what to expect from District 9.
One thing that I must absolutely say is that I am thoroughly pleased with that movie.
Shot a little bit gonzo, rogue documentary style in the beginning, it manages to weave a narrative out of the videography and into pure storytelling with seamless ease. It tells a story of a not-so-empathetic main character who exhibits numerous, severe character flaws in the romantic-hero department, but is still very much a person. Albeit an otherwise callous and naive person at the beginning trying to cope with extraordinary circumstances.
The movie does an excellent job of not preaching or shoving ideas in the face of the audience while portraying scenes of what could best be described as racial violence, racism, classism, and population clashes. Displayed especially prominently because instead of setting the scene over a well-known, large US City (like Alien Nation with Los Angeles) it instead uses Johannesburg.
The aliens themselves, aka Prawns, happen to be both cardboard cutout ideological stand-ins for every minority; but have a compelling, and extremely evocative protagonist who comes across as a much better, more emotionally capable human being than the main character.
In the time allotted, the movie doesn’t manage to explore some of the problems as deeply as it could—especially noting the secret-government parts of the story. The fact that it’s not set in the US resolves a lot of cultural issues with government and racial divides (the use of mercenaries in lieu of military and civilian oversight) and it also provides a backdrop to juxtapose the treatment of the prawns vs. the external community, without actually invoking the outside community as a preaching point.
The action scenes are active, heart pounding, and I found myself caring what happened to both prawn and human—worried not just for the humanity of the human characters, but for the very life and love of the alien characters.
I’d love to see this again.
Perhaps it just resonates too much on the tuning fork of the dark side of human behavior.
So, I’ve been neigh addicted to this wonderful casual game by Popcap games. It’s a good way to burn some time when there’s nothing to do. Plants vs. Zombies. And a couple weeks ago I found a live action video of the credits on Boing Boing. For anyone who hasn’t seen this yet, it’s a must see; for anyone who hasn’t played the game yet, get the trial.
Zombies…are coming.
…for brains!
Sure. Only Apple makes the iPhone, but they don’t make every cellular phone in existence and never would be able to. Wouldn’t there be the i-surrogate and every other surrogate made by other companies? Somehow all surrogates are made by one corporation and one alone in an extremely unlikely coup d’etat.
Ignoring anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, the existence of this technology, the networks that must run it, the technology, software, and components to them a great deal of how the capitalist world works would have to be swept away for it to function in this manner in the first place.
Where are the accessories and software upgrades written by other companies anyway?
While the networks that drove the surrogates seem to have some sort of wireless technology, apparently it’s all together on exactly one interpolated system. Even in modern day with technologies like cellular this is not just difficult, it’s near impossible. Multiple carriers would be vying with each other for customers, they’d be paying each other to run time on each other’s lines. But this isn’t the worst part about the scenario.
Jurisdiction.
Why exactly would a single computer in a remote city ever be permitted the ability to subject its will outside of its own bounds, and what sort of software would be required to allow it to do that in a physical sense anyway? This refers to the ability for one computer, in a remote city, to affect every surrogate everywhere without even hand waving to explain why.
Why wouldn’t other networks require some sort of negotiation? Other cities, other states, other countries. The information traveling over those wires could be considered subject to different laws, espionage would become a huge issue, Passports and Visas would mean something else altogether. (Or, as the movie suggested, this only occurs in the United States?)
Even with the presence of antiquated surrogates, lorries, loaders, pleasure models, soldier models, from mark one to mark fifteen (or whatever) every surrogate runs exactly the same way, on the same software, and connects to the network in the same way. No popular modern technology works in this way and never has.
Where are the DIY hackers? The people who get their kit out of the box and hack it to their own specifications. Sure, there might be laws that make modifying their surrogates a felony—but why would this stop the most staunch technologists? Apparently they didn’t exist in this society for no given reason. I’d be one of the first people to turn automatic updates off on my surrogate. See: experience with Windows OS. A world without Linux geeks to say the least.
People on the street treated people out of their surrogates as if they’re making a political statement. They have a derogatory nickname for them: Meatbags.
This ignores the possibility that a person is out on the street without a surrogate because of some other reason. Maybe their surrogate is in the shop and they don’t feel like running an antiquated, stuffy model that they’re not used to. Perhaps they’re going to court and cannot be in a surrogate at the time (see below.) What if they have a disability based on brain physiology that makes it impossible for them to use surrogate technology.
Keying into the fact that people as themselves on the street are “meatbags” and treated as if they’re making some sort of political statement: what about judicial proceedings? Why would anyone except perhaps bailiffs and officers who protect the court (but aren’t part of the proceeding) be permitted to wear a surrogate? Certainly the judge, lawyers, defendant, plaintiff, and witnesses must be physically present as people.
What exactly happens to habeas corpus in a surrogate society? How can a witness work if it’s not the actual person on the stand? Sure, it’s a felony to run in a surrogate that’s not registered to you; it’s also a felony to perjure yourself on the stand—but in the case of perjury in our society there’s no weird concern about identity. We have you, in body, on the stand making comments. What complex, weird, and otherwise highly fallible mechanisms would be introduced to have surrogates go to court and reliably make certain that corrupt non-persons attended instead?
People going to and from court would be walking on the street out of their surrogates.
What precisely caused people to suddenly ignore the fact that while running a surrogate a human is essentially a helpless lump of flesh, laying on a couch, in an easily entered room somewhere. Sure, it’s harder to kill someone in a passion when people look at the other form in front of them—another surrogate—and fights don’t end in death. But how many cold-blooded murders, or otherwise passion-to-cold-blood over a jilted lover would go away?
Steal someone’s wife and they show up in your room with a gun, not aiming the lethal bullet at your surrogate—but at your fleshy brain. It happened in the movie, after all.
I just couldn’t be impressed by how far the movie Surrogates made it down the rabbit-hole of identity with this antiseptic premise. It got one foot in, and then got stuck. That screaming is the sound of it spraining its ankle. Surrogates could have gone a lot further, done a lot better, and told a much better story if it had let the world be a bit more messy than it presented. The premise is too clean, ignores too many parts of the human condition, and promotes a foolish outcome.
My final observation: At the end, Bruce Willis’s character decides that while the surrogate operators are now safe the surrogates could be then destroyed to create a human revolution back to the norm society before their introduction. A radio message while every person on the street fell down “deactivated” their surrogates destroyed, claimed there were no reports of casualties. Sure, it would not mean the deaths of millions—probably just tens of thousands.
What happens to people currently in surgery under the care of surrogates? How about all the roads now clogged with crashed and deactivated cars: emergency vehicles certainly cannot reach them—that’s assuming that the hospitals have been brought back online already because everyone in them also fell over “dead.” How about the surrogates currently doing extremely dangerous work on buildings with fleshy people in them? Or, surrogates piloting vehicles in the air (planes crash!) and driving trucks filled with dangerous chemicals colliding in the middle of cities, or near population centers as their drivers are suddenly taken offline.
No. This decision may have been less horrible than killing everyone with a surrogate but it’s equally reckless endangerment and mass murder through reckless disregard for human life.
Burning rubber where angels fear to tread.
