Jumbie

*I* liked Planetary.

A lot.

First off, lemme apologize for totally misunderstanding the rules of blargh.

For some reason I got it into my head that consecutive posts weren't allowed.

Next, lemme say that the posts where I basically pointed out Spunky and others consecutive posts were borderline in so far as the blargh rule in direct reply. It wasn't quite a direct reply, but it was more than just a random comment.

I'd be quite ok if those two posts I made got crapshacked or moved to blargh-reply.

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As for blargh posts getting moved, I think Spunky's perhaps not taking blargh in the spirit it was meant.

Blargh, to me, is a game thread, like Word association or 'say something about the last poster' or werewolf, where the game IS the topic.

Now, in POlitics if the abortion thread gets sidetracked into a feminism debate, for instance, the mods will split that thread into two, where the discussion can continue in separate threads. That's not censorship to me.

(Crapshacking a post for being off-topic is censorship, to me, however.)

With Blargh we've come up with a system where direct replies are basically 'off-topic' so we split them off into the blargh-reply thread where the discussion can continue.

I therefore see no problem with moving posts from Blargh to blargh-reply if they violate the one rule of the game (not a rule of Hondo's, mind you, but a rule of the blargh game)

And once again, lemme apologize for getting on people's cases for infringements that never existed.

Goddammit!

More sacrilege.

No consecutive posts in Blargh! You're going to unravel the fabric of the universe if you and Spunky keep this up.

Had a friend of a friend who worked at a tv station that pirated American satellite for rebroadcast, back in Guyana.

THing is he could access all the channels simultaeously, even though his boss only broadcast shit like Matlock and Lifetime.

So he taped Sci-fi channel's anime week on VHS for my friend and we had a fullout festival.

Demon City I think was the name of the one that made the biggest impression on me, though we did see some Armitage, I think as well as other stuff.

Got to university and ended up rooming with an anime freak (Hi Spiffytee), so my fate was sealed. Fucker made me watch Fushuugi yuugi and Escaflowne and Ranma til my eyes bled and I begged for more.

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AAAHHHRRG!!!

A travesty.

Blargh rules say no consecutive posts. Shame on you Spunkymonkey.

This interview with Stephanie Myer just makes me madder and madder as it goes on.

Hey, Baytor, I got some awesome Bella/ Edward fanfic that I came across if you want it. Some 12-year old named Lily wrote it and posted it ALL OVER the net.

The sad fact of my life is that I teach 7th grade and I have to smile and be encouraging every time one of my girls gets all starry-eyes over this series. Because reading anything is preferable to reading nothing. Right? Even Twilight?

Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and he's not a twat or a bad writer, so that can't be her excuse.

Your overall point stand, but...

He has turned into a bit of a twat in recent years. Have you seen his political/ social rantings?

The Romantics - What I like about you.

The more I listen to this song the more respect I have for the Romantics. They sound like the Kinks, almost. (which was the idea, I've come to understand)

I love XKCD.com

I play every position on the field.

According to the gay test...

I'm straight.

actually, the answer is 'NO', Jumbie. 'Your rights end where mine begin' is a staple of libertarian philosophy.

Except that your right to view Hondo's doesn't exist in the way you're framing it.

I mean, we aren't talking US constitution, we're talking Hondonian 'Law'.

There is no right to view Hondo's explicit or implicit in the operation of the forum.

Hondo's is like cable TV: access to the content is a choice that the user makes, so the content does not have to be suitable for every potential user and is thus not subject to restriction in the way broadcast TV is.

Now that probably makes me seem like an asshole who doesn't care that his fellow members have access problems, but I'm very sympathetic: I had tons of access problems back when the user signatures used to take forever to load through my dial-up. I understand the frustration of not having access. But I never campaigned for a restriction on signatures, because I wouldn't want to have access to a place that had to change to allow me in.

but is ASC's (or anyone's) 'right' (as sig pointed out) to post whatever NSFW material anywhere and everywhere on this board greater than my right (or anyone's) to actually access this place? that's been my fundamental question this entire time.

Short answer... yes, the right to post is greater than the right to access.

(and don't think I didn't notice that ASC's right went into scare quotes and yours didn't.)

Here's the deal as far as I'm concerned... This place was founded in the Drunken Deities era as a place of free expression and new members joined up knowing that. (It wasn't as clear cut as that, I have to admit. Even in those days we had vigorous debates on what could/ should be posted. But the debates then always ended on the side of anything goes.)

Now, I'm not against having NSFW shit posted in an appropriate place (that's the way I'd prefer it), but I *am* against legislating it.

The sanctions for posting NSFW in the shoutbox should be socially policed, not administratively. As much as possible. From what I can see, NSFW hasn't been a problem in the shoutbox since the initial over-exuberance and now that the issue has been raised, I don't see it coming up again.

If NSFW in the shoutbox remains a problem even with a warning on it, then I am prepared to change my stance and back a rule about it, but I want to see that we have an actual problem before I got that far.

The Lord says, "Answer the fucking question."

Can we try a real request and see if it works?

Also, do we know for sure that the shoutbox can't be set to 'closed' be default?

wait... 'Queen of Stark'? Is that something Osborne put in place since he took over Tony's company or what? I shudder to think what the responsibilities are

...but right of the bat, I'm thinking: goblin juice

No dissonance whatsoever.

I believe that people do good out of self interest not altruism. BUT that means I still believe that people do good, and they do so far more often than not.

I believe that the members will honor a request to keep the shoutbox clean for the same reason people honor a request to keep NSFW stuff in NSFW threads, because they aren't looking to get people in trouble at work.

IN any case, My proposal still stands. Place a 'Keep it clean' request on the shoutbox. A real one, not some snarky, sideways, Nick request. See if people violate it and THEN we can move to discussing actual censorship.

OK, so I accept that the shoutbox can't just be turned off, so I'm looking for alternatives to straight out censorship.

If the shoutbox can be set so that it's closed by default, then that's the best thing in the world and we should definitely go with that.

Failing that, If the shoutbox can be moved to the bottom of the site, that'd be something I would support, even though it does kinda seem to defeat the purpose of the shoutbox...

If those two aren't possible, I'd favor a note on the the Shoutbox that says, "Please keep the shoutbox clean, since some members view this site on public computers."

That would be a REQUEST, not a rule, and it would be without penalty.

I am 99% positive everyone would respect that and we won't have to make the move to RULES about it, because no one here is a big enough asshole to go against that request.

It has to load before you hit the button, if there's a picture up on the top it comes through before you have time to minimize.

Are you sure about this? I remember when I was on dial-up, the '5 most recent posts' box would slow my shit down so I kept it off. Can't be sure but I think my comp would remember my last setting and the box would be minimized by default every visit.

We should look into this to make sure.

Shoutbox has a minimize button. People got along just fine without the shoutbox before, so there's no reason you can't get along without it now, if you feel it's too NSFW or NSFK (k for kids).

Just turn the damned thing off.

Tim, when was the last time you read a Batman comic?

The Joker hasn't been portrayed as stupid in a long, long time. You may be thinking of the cartoon version which had to be de-psychofied for the kid audience.

For me, this movie version of the Joker was better than the comics version. I've never actually liked the comics Joker that much. But this Joker was a spectacular villian.

The comics are still kinda stuck on the Joker being motivated by money etc, but they've been drifting away from that for a while now.

They're essentially the same character, except the Joker has excepted his psycho-ness.

NO.

I reject this. It's something that gets said a lot, but makes no sense to me. (that "The Joker is Batman's dark reflection")

The only similarity is that they operate outside the law. You could set them up as polar opposites maybe on an 'order vs chaos' line. There is nothing, however, that makes the Joker stand out more than any other villian as Batman's dark reflection. Catwoman or Ra's al Gul could both make the claim with equal invalidity.

The villian Hush is probably the best candidate for an opposite to Batman, but I don't like that character. Seems too contrived.

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On a separate issure, I don't think the concept of his own psycho-ness ever even occurs to the joker. He seems like the kinda person who thinks he's actuing on secret truth rather than a person who thinks he's insane.

Did anyone else get the feelings that the assassin villian in the movie was a rehash of the assassin villian from the series?

Also, I have to say that when I saw the movie, I loved the hell out of it, but I agree that as a standalone, it doesn't work.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as tto say the dialogue and characterizations were weaker, though I can see how that would be likely with the extra emphasis on action in the movie.

heh heh. I just peeked at Spiffytee's profile and it says, 'Gender not set'. I'd have to agree...

I read my first Transmet comic about 2 weeks ago, after finally downloading it.

I finished the series off in less than a week, extras and all.

First off, Spider Jerusalem is a classic, unforgettable, character. I can't think of anyone who's like him. It's too easy to use obvious words to describe him like 'funny' 'unpredictable' or 'outrageous', but I thought about it and I think that one of the things that sets Spider apart is his honesty or sincerity. I don't think there was ever any doubt from issue one that Spider cared about the people in the city. He wasn't a journalist in the business for accolades or for an ego trip. He's the most believable idealist you'll meet. THe ideals he has are very few, granted, but he's basically living the golden rule: "Don;t treat people like shit". So, yeah, we love him because of the Bowel Disruptor and kicking people in the balls and for the Chair-leg of Truth, but none of that would work the same way for another character. It's because the reader feels that Spider is being genuine at the most basic level that the humor works.

And it's also for that reason that when we see Spider slump against a wall in despair, we can buy it completely and feel how much it kills him inside.

Spider's also pretty libertarian as far as I can tell. He doesn't really give much hint into his economic views, but he seems to respect privacy and individual rights pretty deeply, so I find it easy to go along with his attitude to life.

Ellis is pretty inventive too. There's so many places in the comic where I just ended up stunned by something that Spider says or does and I just have to stop until by brain recovers.

The Fiilthy assistants are fun. When Channon shows up for the assistant's job and you realize she's one of the dancers from the rooftop scene, it's a bit gimmicky, but it also gets your attention and makes you feel like this is a city that's full of interesting people.

The City of course is a big part of the reason this book works. I love that Ellis didn't just create an oppresive stereotypical future city where everyone's a slave of some kind (social, mental, economic etc) There's a lot wrong with the city, but it seems that the people are mostly living well and living happily. I especially like that Ellis makes technology something that creates possibilities for people. The makers get credit for making life easy. The Solar station on Mercury also.

And the way people use tech in their personal lives is much more positive than we usually see in scifi. Think of the grey transitives. Ellis gets into why these people choose to escape their human bodies and he never makes the tech the villian. Bodily tech modification is just a neutral thing here, like human cloning. I love that.

Eating cloned human meat... When Spider interviews the two streetkids and they ask to go to the human fastfood joint because they have toys, I had one of those moments I was talking about where, I was just stunned by how outrageous and still natural it all felt.

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The social commentary is pretty sharp in the book too. There's an issue that focuses on the people from the past who wake up in the future and walk around all shellshocked. Ellis was making a point about homelessness, using the parallels but never preaching about actual homelessness. I did think that the point could have been made a little less obviously but that's probably because I've been trained by 4 years of English Major education to be alert for allegory and symbolism far more than the average reader.

When the book focused on the elections and you had candidates arguing about 'the Real America' I had to double check the publication date of the book. THose scenes were written 10 years before Sarah Palin.

The way the book targets today's soundbite/ talking points journalism is somewhat uneven, but it's a point I hardly ever see being made consistently in popular culture, except for maybe Stewart and Colbert. Ellis does identify the problem but I don't buy some of the ways he portrays it in the comic. Like when he has none of the journalists investigate President Smiler's wife, that seems far fetched. Considering that pictures of Obama with his shirt off get to be on the CNN front page, I don't think that the journalists of Spider's time would be as simplistically lazy and lacking in curiosity as Ellis makes them.

Of course, half the time I can't believe the journalists of OUR time are as lazy and lacking in curiosity as they are.

I also think that Ellis over estimates the ability of journalism to inspire public action and change.

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Some other things that didn't quite work for me:

Spider attacking people all the time and never getting stopped. I mean, the attack on the President in the bathroom was funny as hell, but I couldn't help thinking the Secret Service would never have allowed it. And how come no one ever has real muscle around? I mean, the bodyguards we see Spider beat up are kinda cartoonish and it's hard to believe that good help doesn't exist, especially since Spider himself has such a good bodyguard.

And I keep thinking that President Smiler, who can fuck with and kill people in so many different ways, could have easily gotten Spider and everyone he cared for kidnapped and tortured in a way that would be easily covered up.

The book's social commentry may be still up to date, but it's views on technology do show their age. Like when Spider shows off his digital Camera like it's some kind of miracle. To someone in 1998, I'm sure it was, but we already have better looking cameras today.

Same goes for the Hole website that Spider uses later in the series. It's basically an underground blog, which we've got entirely too much of as it is.

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But overall this book works really well and it's entertaining and makes a point or two about how people shouold live and think and it's good literature because you'll be thinking about it long after you arent' reading it anymore.

Of course, there's tons more I could say about this book, but those are some of my main reactions.

he's a dot, not a feather.

That whole anime thing with the delicate bishonen swordsmen and their pretty hair flowing in the wind never worked for me.

I've always prefered western style art for guys. THIS guy was never more than a minor villian at Marvel, but he kept me up nights quite a bit:

Aloba Dastoor AKA Monsoon from X-factor 99. Oh Man, I wanted to unwrap him so bad... Still do in fact.