John Byrne's MRO (most ripped off)

In case you're curious, the Wolverine-Kitty Pryde would be the original that all these other folks are ripping the hell off. Err, homaging.

Guilty pleasures

While three of the gorilla men secured Tarzan's wrists behind his back with a length of buckskin thong, the others renewed their attention to the tiger. Three or four of them would cast well-aimed cudgels at his face at intervals so nicely timed that the great beast could do nothing but fend off the missiles as they sped toward him. And while he was thus occupied, the other Sagoths, who had already cast their clubs, sprang to the ground and retrieved them with an agility and celerity that would have done credit to the tiniest monkey of the jungle. The risk that they took bespoke great self-confidence and high courage since often they were compelled to snatch their cudgels from almost beneath the claws of the saber-tooth.

Battered and bruised, the great cat gave back inch by inch until, unable to stand the fusillade longer, it suddenly turned tail and bounded into the underbrush, where for some time the sound of its crashing retreat could be distinctly heard. And with the departure of the carnivore, the gorilla men leaped to the ground and fell upon the carcass of the thag. With heavy fangs they tore its flesh, oftentimes fighting among themselves like wild beasts for some particularly choice morsel; but unlike many of the lower orders of man upon similar occasions they did not gorge themselves, and having satisfied their hunger they left what remained to the jackals and wild dogs that had already gathered.

Tarzan of the Apes, silent spectator of this savage scene, had an opportunity during the feast to examine his captors more closely. He saw that they were rather lighter in build than the gorillas he had seen in his own native jungle, but even though they were not as heavy as Bolgani, they were yet mighty creatures. Their arms and legs were of more human conformation and proportion than those of a gorilla, but the shaggy brown hair covering their entire body increased their beast-like appearance, while their faces were even more brutal than that of Bolgani himself, except that the development of the skull denoted a brain capacity seemingly as great as that of man.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan at the Earth's Core

The greatest fantasy writer of all time.

Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth.

The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated back-bone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.

Robert E. Howard

Free speech hating idiots show they are still free speech hating idiots

Leland Yee and his cronies have responded to the Supreme Court ruling:

"What has happened today is that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided it's going to side with corporate America and Wal-Mart against our children," said Yee, as part of a press conference held today in San Francisco. "Because of the rejection of the California law, these games will continue to be sold to our children, these games have a harmful effect to our children."

And here's the best:

"In the past, we've protected them [children] from alcohol, cigarettes and pornography and we felt that this was on that level," said George Fouras, MD, of the San Francisco Medical Society. "We're accumulating evidence that shows that exposure to violence does effect the behavior of children. In addition, we're concerned that the cognitive development of youth and their ability to process and make decisions appropriate doesn't occur at the ages that these children are able to obtain these video games. Unlike Saturday morning cartoons, these video games expose kids to behavior that is not acceptable in reality."

So much crazy contained in so little space.

Ok, first, video games are dead equal with alcohol, cigarettes and porn.

Second, he says "unlike saturday morning cartoons" video games portray behavior not acceptable in reality.

Supreme Court: Video Games protected by 1st Amendment (7-2)

Several years ago, California decided to that violent video games deserved the same, limited free speech protection as pornography.

Not movies and books, though, its perfectly fine for those to be violent. Just video games. Why? Cause they're "interactive"!

I often, just as soon as I get done banging my head on the nearest hard object, wonder if anyone who calls a video game "interactive" has ever played one.

Here's the thing: when I was 13 or so, I saw Godfather for the first time, and saw Sonny get riddled with bullets.

Many years later, when I played Fallout and riddled dudes with bullets, it was not somehow given a huge impact because I pressed "X" first.

Anyway, onto the Supremes decision, which has lots of good stuff idiots like Leland Yee really need to accept:

Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected
books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar
literary devices and features distinctive to the medium.

BOOM. Right out of the gate. These are literally the first words of the decision. There's nothing going on in a video game that isn't going on in a movie. If a video game makes you want to shoot up your school, then Hamlet should make you want to kill your stepdad, and let's not even begin to discuss Oedipus Rex.

But, but, video games are interactive remember?

This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s
access to depictions of violence. And California’s claim that
“interactive” video games present special problems, in that the player
participates in the violent action on screen and determines its outcome,
is unpersuasive.

I particularly like the bit about our country not really having as a core tenet restricting children's access to violence. I mean, has Leland Yee ever seen a cartoon or an episode of Power Rangers?

And then, the really awesome nail in the coffin:

Because the Act imposes a restriction on the content of protected
speech, it is invalid unless California can demonstrate that it
passes strict scrutiny, i.e., it is justified by a compelling government
interest and is narrowly drawn to serve that interest.

California cannot meet that standard. Psychological
studies purporting to show a connection between exposure
to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove
that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.

Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced
by other media. Since California has declined to restrict those
other media, e.g., Saturday morning cartoons, its video-game regulation
is wildly underinclusive, raising serious doubts about whether
the State is pursuing the interest it invokes or is instead disfavoring
a particular speaker or viewpoint.

Again, I say, BOOM. Video games are no more harmful than TV (which isn't harmful at all). To attempt this sort of legislation on video games and not TV or movies is singling video games out. Something that's rather frowned upon under the 1st amendment.

Now I know idiots like Leland Yee aren't going to be deterred. We've been down this road before. I mean, the Puritans were wringing their hands over Romeo and Juliet a few hundred years ago.

But once again, the reality-based contingent of society has stepped forward to once again affirm that human beings are not empty vessels, waiting to be filled. They do not see someone shoot up a school and decide, on the basis of that work of art to go do it themselves.

I realize why this idea appeals to politicians- it might just mean that they're not completely full of shit. But once again, we have affirmed that they are.

If you'd like to read the whole thing.

New Look

Ahh, white text on a black background, the way all websites should be.

Edited to add:

Having heard that one reader hates it, what say the rest of you.

Honestly, the old tan background was fine with me too, so if everyone dislikes the new look, speak up and I will revert to the old.

Building the future (or: Why I hate The Road)

As someone who marches in the Apocalypse Pride parade every year, I am frequently met with surprise when I shudder at the mere mention of "The Road", Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalypse novel and the movie based on it.

This came up recently when my dad offered me the SIX HOUR audio book adaptation, to which I replied "do you want me to kill myself"?

He looked taken aback and then said, "this is usually YOUR thing, not mine".

Here's the thing- the Road is nothing like type of post apocalyptic fiction I enjoy.

There's movies like Mad Max or Book of Eli, which show the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

Then there's Terminator and 12 Monkeys, which show time traveling heroes attempting to prevent the apocalypse from ever happening.

And there's the awesome TV show Jeremiah, in which the generation following a pandemic attempts to rebuild society.

And then there's the Road, where your choices are death by exposure to the elements, death by starvation, or death by roving packs of human cannibals (usually following a good rape to liven things up).

There's absolutely no hope- not a single iota of light at the end of the tunnel. Even the appearance of "the Veteran" at the end, leading the family that takes in the boy, is explicitly just another delay.

This is a story where a mother committing suicide is doing her son a favor.

I do not like reading snuff fiction.

To me, the post-apocalypse genre is most decidedly not about that, and so I don't want to read The Road, hear its audio performance or see the movie based on it (again), any more than I would ever watch a "Saw" movie.

And had I fully appreciated what I was in for, I wouldn't have watched The Road the first time.

I don't a trip down the rabbit hole of misery. The post-apocalypse fiction I enjoy is the opposite of that. Terminator is the movie that stresses "there is no fate but what we make ourselves".

It's not a story of robots walking on fields of human skeletons, it's the story of the hero who has defeated them so thoroughly, they have to prevent his birth.

It's the story of a time traveler in love with one image of beauty, a soldier who gives his life for one moment of happiness and a mother who sacrifices everything for the love of her son.

Yes, there is sadness in all post-apocalypse fiction. A sense of what has been lost. Although it's a very gonzo movie, with a lot of hilarious images, including three apes doing the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil", the image everyone first mentions about Planet of the Apes is our hero railing in sadness at the Statue of Liberty.

But that should never be confused with an absence of hope. Life is about loss. People die. Terrible things happen. That's not about the apocalypse, that's about being human.

What happens next is what defines us and the apocalypse provides a stage for heroism. Not the only stage of course, but a very interesting one to me.

However, to interest me there has to be hope. There has to be a chance to carry on. And there has to be a hero.