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October 27, 2005

Intelligent Design: an Admission

As the argument over whether ID should be taught in public schools begins to wind its way through a labyrinth that belies the very existence of intelligence, the US legal system, I feel it is time for me to come clean about the truth about the Power that guided the growth and diversity of life on Earth.

I did it.

There have been many complaints about My work; that it is not quite up to par with what is expected of a superior being. But to those who know Me, My revelation undoubtedly explains many of the quirks and holes in evolution. For everyone else, I hope to explain below why some things turned out apparently sub-standard. This is not meant to be a complete list by any means but, rather, a look into the mind and the situations that guided evolution.

The Dinosaurs: One word: octane
The Platypus: Sometimes you just want to see if it can be done.
The Blind Spot: I was simultaneously designing the human female breast, so I was a little distracted. This also explains two things: 1)why when you look at a pair of breasts, they seem to be staring right back at you and 2) why men's eyes naturally become fixated on those wonderfully soft bags of fun.
The Appendix: Like putting together an entertainment center that you bought at Ikea, you always seem to wind up with a few pieces left over. Looking back over the plans now, I think it was supposed to go on the end of the nose. Given humanity's penchant for those cute little button noses, I think the tradeoff for a slight chance of sudden painful death would be a welcome thing.
Sexual Reproduction: People needed something to do until the Playstation was invented.
The Female Orgasm: A practical joke gone horribly wrong. This one screw-up has probably led to more suffering than anything else inflicted on humanity, culminating in the contruction of the M3. I later tried to make up for it by allowing for multiple orgasms, but this turned out to be the origin of the phrase "too little too late."
Menstrual Cramps: After My above attempt at recompense were rebuffed, I admit to feeling a little bitter. I then tried to make up for this by balancing the equation with...
Male Pattern Baldness: I thought the trick of moving the hair off the head and down onto the back was a nice touch.
Homosexuality: Hot lesbians. I can happily watch an entire parade of gay men frolicking in dental floss for the chance to see two (or more) smoking chicks go at each other.
The Penis The main complaint about this piece of anatomy is that it is not aestetically pleasing. All I can say is wait a few thousand years for some of the more "colorful" features to kick into action. Hint: you'll be able to ask your partner to "taste the rainbow".

I believe that covers some of the highlights of the main questions people have about My work. However, if you have further questions, I will be more than happy to answer them for you. But to give fair warning, it's not likely going to match any preconcieved notions you hold dear.

And once again, I offer my sincerest apologies for any inconviences My work may have caused you. At least I'm not responsible for Battlefield Earth. That was Xenu's doing, so blame him.

Posted by Skayhan at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

Jack Thompson is a Crazy Fucker

I'm not sure if you're aware of the existence of Jack Thompson. He is most famous as an anti-video game "activist", aka another cowardly lawyer attempting to find a scapegoat for the problems of children, and he is one crazy fucking bastard.

Yack's been on the radar lately because some stupid crazy fucker teen killed two people and claimed that video games made him do it. Yack went on to claim that games like Grand Theft Auto 3 are actually "murder simulators" designed to allow players to kill cops. Obviously the man has never played a single one of these video games he's decried as violent and immoral, but that won't stop ol' Yack, who fights against the evil of pixellated blood with his crazy bastard sword and his trusty old Bible.

Did I mention that this crazy bastard appears to be one of those puritanical fascist Christian types?

So, ol' Yack is on a crusade against violent video games, which leaves one to wonder if he's taking care of his children (hell, if he even has any children; I don't know who'd marry a crazy fucker like Yack Thompson). His latest stunt was a hypocrisy-laden offer of $10,000 to the first game developer who made a game that targeted the video game industry - i.e. a videogame where the player hunted down and killed video game industry professionals, much like his claims that GTA3 is a cop-killing simulator.

Soon after, one of the fine men who run Penny Arcade, Mike Krahulik, fired off an email criticizing Yack's comparitively paltry offer, a fraction of the sum total of money and toys that the PA charity Child's Play raised for children's hospital all across the country.

Yack then betrayed his hypocrisy yet again by calling Mr. Krahulik and offering vague threats: "My email sig had my phone number in it. Jack actually just called and screamed at me for a couple minutes. He said if I email him again I will 'regret it'. What a violent man." Further details of their "conversations" are available here - along with the rest of the whole sordid affair - but let me just say that it ended with him calling Gabe a "pissant".

How ironic. The crazy fucking bastard on a crusade against violent video games is himself a violent, unstable crazy fucking bastard. Is anyone surprised at this?

Of course, someone took him up on his fucking disgusting challenge. Predictably, Yack declined to release the promised $10,000 - promised to charity, mind you - and called the whole thing "satire". Jerry Holkins put it best: "Thompson now claims that his repellent suggestion was "satire," and we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire, some new breed of satire apparently that I'm sure is just hilarious to people in need."

And in a perfect example of why these two guys are better people than Yack Thompson the Bullshitter could ever be, they donated the $10,000 that Yack reneged on, and they did it in his name, which is just the icing on the cake.

Yack responded in the only way he knew how: vague legal threats, followed by a fax to the Seattle Police asking them to arrest Gabe and Tycho - of course, claiming a "campaign of harassment", which as a lawyer he should be familiar with - especially in terms of perpetration.

I can't believe this sort of shit is happening. This jackass claims to be such an upstanding, moral person, fighting against the videogame industry for what's "right" - i.e. what's right as defined by those in power - yet he's willing to sling around terms like "computer geeks" and "moral midgets" at these people whom he considers to be killers in training.

This is the worst sort of scapegoat tactics, hypocrisy and radical Puritanical censorship that I have ever seen, and it sickens me. And it should come as no surprise that Jack Thompson, the Crazy Fucking Bastard, has used such vicious attacks in the past against Janet Reno, when she defeated him for the position of Dade County State Attorney.

This should be news. This shitbag should be smeared across the headlines and labelled as the crazy fucking nutbar hypocrite that he is. And I wonder why it's not happening.

Good luck to the guys at Penny Arcade. The crazy fucker is at your doorstep, and I'm not as optimistic as you are as to the eventual outcome. It's going to be a tough battle, because this guy will inspire a lot of support from his fellow crazy puritan assholes.

Editor's Note: No doubt the efforts of Thompson and his ilk will be buttressed by this little gem. If this were my child, he'd be getting mental blocks for Christmas.

Posted by Dalton at 09:18 PM | Comments (5)

October 03, 2005

Loungechairs On The Edge Of Forever

There are some things in the world I wish were untrue, and I'm putting aside the obvious. Certainly there is a long list of tragedies and attrocities which could have been prevented. The disaster in New Orleans was predicted, but when Katrina was on the way nobody saw it coming. When the people of China brought a communist government into power, no one saw it was going to lead to the slaughter of millions of Chinese by that same government. And I'm sure I don't have to point out that absolutely no one expected the Spanish Inquisition.

But aside of those kind of unpleasant truths, I'm actually referring to something else, to those true events that would be better served in the realm of human imagination rather than reality. Take feng shui, for example. This is a concept so bizarre, so clearly absurd in its entire concept, that it is almost impossible to imagine that anyone can take it seriously, nevermind shovel huge truckloads of money into it. Feng shui is the science of improving your good fortune through re-arranging your furniture. This makes Terry Pratchett's headology seem possible. It makes Douglas Adams' theory on achieving flight by throwing onesself at the ground and missing seem practical. This is an actual position people have adopted that, side-by-side with fictionalized nonsense, is hard to pick out.

I know my audience (assuming any are still there), so let me remind you of the key point before someone brings up religion. Feng shui is supposed to be a science. There are any number of flakes out their in religion who assert the science of their beliefs, but that's just what they are: the fringe. Every movement has the goofballs who gravitate towards cameras and microphones. Most religions and members of religions know the things they believe in are not scientific... that's why it's called "supernatural" rather than "natural." No one tosses an egg off a roof and tries to quantify the degree to which prayer will impact its, er, impact. If feng shui were a religion, or a matter of taste, or just a fun superstition, that's one thing. But there are people who actually hold to the position that feng shui, that moving your furniture to improve your good fortune, is a quantifiable activity. This is because it's one of those ancient things that came out of China, and therefore must be true. Let's just hope that the ancient Chinese science of foot-binding doesn't become popular again.

Am I picking on the Chinese? No, not really. It's a human culture, and it has flaws like many human cultures do. It's twenty-first century romanticism that wants to see the ancient teachings being more advanced than scientific truths of today. Which kind of makes you wonder about the Chinese people I mentioned at the start of this article. You'd think if anybody would have their furniture aligned for maximum fortune according to Chinese science, it would be people in China.

(As a bit of an aside, I just Googled “feng shui” to make one hundred percent sure I spelled it correctly, and came across the American Feng Shui Institute, “Center in the West that is dedicated to teaching the practice of Feng Shui as a scientific discipline.” Click on the link and right there on the front page is an astrology guide. I was already skeptical when I clicked the link, but damn! That’s like being told that magical crystals can cure you, and when you check with a consultant, are greeted by a witch-doctor.)

That brings me to another thing that I wish was confined strictly to the realm of human imagination, which was a recent appearance at a convention between the irresistible force and the immovable object. I'm now about to bring up Penny Arcade for the second time in this column's history, which is admittedly odd, but what the hell. Gabe and Tycho, creators of that strip, are pretty strong representative of the Generation X smartass. I should know, I see them at the meetings all the time. Funny, but with a bit of a cruel streak; they seem to enjoy it when they have an anemic opponent they can slap around mercilessly. They do not fear authority, as their confrontations with fellow cartoonists have shown. In short, they're a couple of self-confessed assholes.

Now take one Harlan Ellison. A popular opinion is that Ellison is a hotheaded, acerbic personality. I've also heard that he is one of those friends that will stick with you through thick and thicker. I'm just presenting both points of view here, since that's all I have to go by. Depending on who you talk to, he's a wonderful human being or a disturbing, Gollum-like creature. But it's at least agreed he's intelligent and could probably kill a man with a sample of well-refined wit.

Now, think about it: wouldn't it be funny to stick these three up on the same stage at a convention and let nature take its course? Oh, hell yeah! It's easy to imagine the kind of exchanges that would take place as things escalated, with the two Penny Arcaders tag-teaming Ellison, and Ellison holding both back like some verbal ninja. It would be an epic verbal fight. But like many things you know would be funny, you shouldn't actually do it. So, yeah, someone put Gabe and Tycho on the same stage as Ellison, and things happened. So far it's only been from the PA point of view, because let's face it, if I mixed it up with Walter Koenig, he's going to be far less likely than I to bring it up. But even PA's rendition makes the whole affair far less funny then it would seem on paper. It was one of those fights that would have been better served in the imagination.

So ASVSers, maybe we should keep arguing and hope they never do make that movie. The stories we ourselves craft may be better than any studio could ever achieve for real.

Posted by Chuck at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)