| on ME3 and "the Indoctrination Theory" |
[May. 23rd, 2012|08:44 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  disappointed | ] |
(yeah, this one's a bit old/overdue, but I've had it for a while and just haven't bothered committing it to pixels until now)
"Seriously? Look, I get that you're majorly invested in this narrative, but... you're saying you'd rather accept that Shepard spends the final act, and maybe a good portion of the game, as a brainwashed puppet with no actual agency. You'd rather go with that than what Bioware has set before you. ... That's #%$@ed-up."
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/399842.html. |
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| Childhood's end |
[May. 21st, 2012|08:43 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  ... | ] |
This morning, I dreamt that my mother and I were teaching a kindergarten class; I was also the oldest student, in an honorary sense. It was very much like a live-action educational TV show: everything brightly colored, lots of little skits, camera tricks in reality, and so on.
Then I caught one of the girls finding/stealing cigarettes and trying to light up. And so we had to get all the kids together and put on a skit where my mother got sicker, and weaker, and finally had to go away forever. And how this made me very sad.
Processing continues, I suppose.
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/399542.html. |
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| Better now |
[May. 17th, 2012|12:31 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  okay | ] |
I'll happily take a cold, which runs its course in two days, over a flu - which hits me just as hard or harder, often resulting in a couple of miserable sleepless nights and/or at least one incident of nausea, and then lingers on for weeks of sniffles.
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/399258.html. |
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| ugh |
[May. 14th, 2012|03:35 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  sick | ] |
Home sick with a cold today, which I apparently caught out of nowhere on a day with an 80 degree high. Not how I wanted to start this week.
Reported to work, was sent home, got groceries (lots of soup, orange juice, yogurt, etc), and have slept from 10 to 3:30. Will lay down again if I feel tired.
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/398878.html. |
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| Genius |
[May. 10th, 2012|08:38 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  impressed | ] |
Consider this, of Richard Daystrom: for all his pride and hidden insecurity and instability, his goals were noble (saving lives) and his moral principles rock-solid - to the point that a machine, imprinted with those same principles and confronted with evidence of having betrayed them, chose to die. Believed that it should, that it must die for its crimes.
(And what an achievement for the time, when Roddenberry had to fight to keep one black person on the bridge, to give such a role to William Marshall.)
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/398830.html. |
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| Tropes Are Not Bad |
[Apr. 22nd, 2012|10:52 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  awake | ] |
Dreamt this morning of your standard incredibly luxurious and decadent post-scarcity "crystal spires and togas" future society. Such is their decadence that the favorite pastime of many citizens is plotting and carrying out murders. The protagonist, as it were, of this little drama was someone who was notorious for his skill and elegance in this field, and who thus naturally had many jealous admirers trying to do him in. (At the end, their brains or personality engrams or whatever are installed in silver masks in a special trophy room, which applaud him for evading their machinations and getting them first.)
It was also of some amusement that I imagined composing this very entry at least a half dozen times, only to wake and find myself still pleasantly drowsing in my bed.
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/397549.html. |
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| Acid for blood |
[Apr. 13th, 2012|05:30 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
A lot of people, especially those who've never taken chemistry, don't realize that water is a solvent - the purer, the better. A little water and a bit of mechanical action (ie, scrubbing) will quickly dissolve most organic compounds. And on this planet, it fills vast oceans and falls from the sky! If we weren't already made out of it (and stuff dissolved in it), it would be pretty terrifying. Even so, drinking distilled water can make you sick, as it rips stuff you need right out of you.
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/396809.html. |
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| OpenID - help? |
[Apr. 9th, 2012|10:16 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  frustrated | ] |
A site I sometimes browse has recently changed to a new commenting system, which requires a login from one of the major social networks (which I don't have) or OpenID. I've used the latter in the past, but some link in the path between this site, OpenID, and LJ (I'm betting it's this one) is not working/timing out. I've tried changing browsers (Firefox, IE, Chrome) and disabling AdBlock, but no joy with any of them.
I'd rather not sign up for one of the big networks, even with a "disposable" account (and my reluctance to do so may end up covered in another post, probably whinier and friends-locked), so first I'm wondering if anyone out there uses one of the alternative OpenID authenticators that they can recommend to me.
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/396664.html. |
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| "Gentlemen, it's been a privilege flying with you." |
[Mar. 28th, 2012|04:17 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| | impressed | ] |
I was thinking about Apollo 13 today - one of my favorite movies, not least because most of it really happened (with allowances for the screen) and it still manages to make a foregone conclusion tense and exciting, plus I'm a huge fan of the space program and have been since I was very young. One sequence I particularly like, and wanted to comment on, is the re-entry. Not so much the long, tense radio blackout, but the shots just before that.
Most atmospheric (re)entries I've seen in fiction are relatively gentle, even serene: the ship is suspended in the foreground while a bow-shock forms around its nose and/or belly and the heat shielding acquires a cherry-red glow. Maybe there's a little buffeting in the interior shots, like turbulence on an airplane. Apollo 13 was the first thing I saw that conveyed the reality of a capsule slamming into a wall of air at supersonic speeds and punching a flaming hole through it.
This entry was originally posted at http://cmdr-zoom.dreamwidth.org/395868.html. |
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