Megalomaniac

Title: Megalomaniac
Style: Realtime / Turn based game of global domination and overlordship Number of Players: 1+ human and 1+ai

Setting: Real and or vitual worlds generated by editor or random generation.
Description: You select a nationality to belong to. You select your sex. The computer generates some specs for you and your character apears in the ranks of a regiment of skirmishers. The view of the coming battle field uses the Half-life engine. You can see your other cohorts. They all seem hell bent on marching off to attack an enemy you spy to your front some 100 yards away. The battle ensues and you must fight your way to survival. If your side wins then you advance to the a new rank in that army. If your side looses, but you live then you are enslaved and have to escape a camp. If you escape then you advance to the next rank in your army.

Next you are given the choice of infantry or cavelry. The cavelry gives you great speed and increases the damage you can inflict on the enemy, but reduces your manuverability and the types of weapons at your disposal. Once you choose you are put in the ranks of a like regiment of either infantry or cavelry. If you choose a Pike then you are part of a pikemen regiment etc. You fight another battle. If you live and are victorious you are advanced again. If you live but are captured then you must escape from the dungeon of a castle.

If you live you are put in command of the regiment inwhich you have been serving. Now you have control of how the regiment attacks. There are nine other npc's to order around. Now the game takes on the AoE engine accept closer up. You can equip your fighters with varioius weapons and armor depending on availability in the location and the type of regiment you command. Before the next engagement you can go to the lord general and get a map of the area and see where your regiment fits into the overall battle. The battle begins and you must acheive your regiments objective with at least yourself serviving. If your side looses you are put in the tower to and you must escape.

To live is to be rewarded! The lord general makes you a brigade commander. Now you have three regiments under your control. You can select the type of the two new regiments; infantry, cavelry, skirmishers, archers, seigers. The next battle is for you to fight alone. Your brigade is sent into a distant march to acheive a goal. Once the goals is achieved you are sent to your next assignment. Each one is slightly different requiring you to use different tactics and skills. As you achieve goal after goal your brigade recieves new equipment, skills, and renown. The renown level will become very important in the near future.

After ten or so campaigns, if you have lived, your brigade has become famous throughout the kingdom as a kick-ass oufit. You recieve word that the king is dead and that three sons of the dead king have split the kingdom and are waring with each other to claim the crown. You are given three letters, one from each prince, begging you to fight for their cause. You must choose which to fight for.

Once you choose you are put into the army of that prince. Each prince has a different demeaner and this changes for every game. Because you are the most notorious lord general in the land you are put in charge of the entire army of said prince. You must fight and defeat each of the other princes. You must also build units as they are lost, develope technology to serve them, and keep them supplied. Your view of the kingdom is broader now resembling the AofE engine.

The other princes are fighting not only you but also one another so you can use this to your advantage. Since you are the lord general now you have brigade commanders to deal with. You must order them to move their own mini-armies into position and fight. The more you are victorious the more they listen to you. The more you loose the less likely they will be to perform.

After you are victorious, of rather if you are, then the new king gives you a domain of your own to govern. You can take your old brigade with you. It is a remote location that you are expected to develop and defend. You must build some towns and fortifications and fight off the nasties that try to attack you. After your domain reaches the status of State, you can go and try to win over as many troops of the kingdom as you can and then try to dislodge the old king from his throne. IN short you can revolt! From a strategic standpoint the deck is stacked against you. The king has lots of troops and castles. However there are "other" options. You can use an assasin to rid the kingdom of it's monarch. If you have enough doe you can try to bribe the troops to your favor. If your really loaded you might try to bribe the king himself. The more succesful you are as an administrator of your domain the more easily you can grab power. You can even use allied lords from other kingdoms to help you in your quest for power; beware of using too many mercinaries they need doe to keep working for you and they don't like hanging around doing nothing.

If you revolt you better do some daring victorious fighting or the troops you have won over will defect back to the king. Should you loose your revolt you will be put back into your state. Your state will be plundered and you'll be poor and without troops. You'll have to rebuild all that to fend off the nasties that want to take your lands. You can always revolt again since there is no time line here.

If you should be successful in ousting the king, the crown is then thrust upon your head. You now are the king! but the king of what? A pimple of a kingdom on the world stage. The world map beckons and you see your kingdom as just a tool. A tool you can use to build an empire that will span the globe! You see those neighborning states who dislike you and those you have good trade relations with. How do you start? Do you build a mighty invasion force and attack? Or do you launch trade missions and build alliences through commerce? Unlike AofE the economic power of your domain has a direct impact on your ability to through your imperial weight around. In the Megalamaniac world there are dozens of other states, some small, some vast, all striving for the same thing. Your state always has a rating. The higher the rating the closer your kingdom comes to being seen as the seat of empire.

Should your kingdom flourish and gain wealth and military might you have other options given to you. You can order a neighboring kingdom to attack another kingdom and fight to the death. You can tell them what to build. Be wary of sending another naiton to it's doom. Your power also comes from victory. If your commands result in failures then you kingdom's rarting will fall and you might get ordered around yourself. Should this happen you can always say no. But then you will have to be prepaired to fight that king who did the ordering or suffer sanctions or blockades.

When your kingdom reaches the summit of power and it is seen as the seat of a world empire, and you are seen as the emperor, things do not stop. The world needs structured government in order to advance. You could systematically genocide your enemies out of existance but that would leave the world in a barborous state that would cease to be under your control. Your empire can only exist as long as the nations that make it up continue to exist. Yet empires are not nation-states. They are an ensamble of states each with competing voices and goals. Your task as emperor is to maintain the glory of your domain and keep the states in line. A never ending task?

Well sort of...You see, although the game has no time limit your character does have a lifespan. And when he or she is old, and scared up, they will eventually die. Another task you have is the choosing of a successor. If you do not do this intime your empire will be ripped asunder by civil war and one of the petty kings will be thrown up as the new emperor, the seat of government will move to that region and you will be faced with dealing with things from that standpoint. The wise thing to do is go to the list of kings and generals and choose the one who you like the best and move them to the imperial seat before you die. The civil unrest will still happen, but war might be avoided.

As your empire continues forrests are harvested and regrown, as long as you don't cut down too many trees. Fisheries will also recover should you not over fish them. And the population can get huge as long as you maintain a balance of people to resources.

Somethings to worry about: If you choose to lead the armies of the empire yourself your army will get a big bonus in strength and damage infliction. However if you are killed then the empire will devolve into civil war and the next strongest lord will be the new emperor. Once you are emperor you can, at any time,. choose your successor. This is something that should be done prior to your death but not to much in advance. If you choose to far in advance the person may be killed in a battle and you can only choose once. This means instant civil war upon your death. The other problem with choosing a successor to early is that the guy instantly gets a big head and if you faulter in your managing the empire he of she might decide to attack you and take the royal purple for themselves, ergo civil war. Try not to choose a successor until your old and gray. Once chosen you choice is made and cannot be undone.

As the empire keeps the level of civilization steady things progress and new technology and society will develop. After a long period of time your kings decide to tell you that they want to meet in a capital of some kind to better govern the empire. This is the begining of a senate. YOu can choose the location of the captial. The senate will start sending bills to you for approval. These bills establish law, army barracks locations, new weapons, advisements on wars that shouldbe fought etc. You can always say no to them and some of them you should say no to. But if you thwart their will too often you may face civil war. As the senate continues to develope the emperor will have to spend more time dealing with them. You can always kill them all but you better have a huge personally glory rating. Each emporor has one and it increases with good decision making etc. However even if you kill the senate it will simply reconvine with a new bunch.

After another long time interval the kings begin to relinquish power to a new class of leaders who, up unitl now have been weak little snot balls. The class is town mayors. Each town has had a mayor since its inception with a town center. Spontaneously the empire has an election and the senate gets bigger as these mayors are elected. The kings still command your armies but are now nolonger involved with infrastructure. The civil senate gives you bills far less concerned with military matters and more concerned with benifits for society establishing university systems, graineries, hospitals, civil police forces, and most ominously, restraint on the powers of the nobility. Right now you can order a king to take his army and attack another king and nobody, as long as you have a high glory rating and you kingdom has a high power rating, will thwart you will. If you aquiess to this bill to regulate the king's power they will tell you no more often and when they do say yeas it will only be after a vote by their populations. This makes for even more intrigue. You can send in your own army and terrorize the poppulation into follwing you. But terror is a double edged sword. If you do this too often you will be on the road to civil war.

Another landmark bill to come to you is the civilization of the army. This puts building of arms and armies under the control of the senate and as emperor you must get senatorial approval for war. This may stick in your craw and hence will not be a bill signed soon by a typical megalomaniac. Should you aquiess to the senate your personal power in the senate will fall, ergo they will be able to now overide your vetoes. Yet civilization rating of the world increases so that your empire gains more stuff and culture. If yo usay yes to this in order for war you must get a majority vote in the senate then get your commanders to get their kingdom's assent to your request. You can avoid the second vote by leading the troops yourself but watchout for the unlucky arrow in the head. Your old brigade, long considered the preatorian gard, can still be lead by you without any such voting though in this empirial world a single brigade is mighty small. The significance of this bill cannot be overstated. The relinguishing of power by the emperor to the senate means the begging of the end of your dynasty as a real force. It will benifit the world but not you.

The last bill you will see is a bill ending the title of emperor. This bill is triggered, as are all the bills, by the level of civilizationi of the world. At this point there is no need for a dictator any more. By this time you, as emperor, are advising the senate on what to do not the other way around. You are given three choices. You can say no and try to hold on a little longer, you can auger in and give up the throne entirely, or you can ask for a general election on the viability of your throne. If you are a glorius emperor you may pull off the coup of coups and become a constitutional monarch. You will have the palace, the gold, and the respect, but none of the stress of governemnt. At this point the music swells and the game is at an end. If you choose total abdication you are lionized as the father of the new world and eventually will be the focus of a new religion. If you choose the first course you will be asked again, in a year, if you still hold on there will be war. This war will pit you against your enemies and most likely will lower the civilization rating to the point where there is no senate. However your death will be the main goal of the war and if you die and your empire has a low civilization rating a civil war will ensue.

This game is not a single night game. It could take weeks if not months. The game time is quite slow compared to AofE. But the rewards are huge. As the game progresses you go from a petty skirmisher to the hights of empire and then death. Then you will be personified by numerous emperors, each with names and character, you will face struggles in war and at peace. You will plot and face plots. In the end you will face your own
dynasties oblivion and how you deal with that final struggle will tell the ages that will come what kind of an empire it really was.

Who makes the game?

Nobody does. It needs to be made. For now it resides in the software of my own brain.

The big Dufus Caves again

Our dimwitted, fart smelling, Dufus of a president has now caved to the meat industry and relaxed testing of school lunch meat for samonella poisoning. According to the Big Dufus, and those pitchforked imps who advise him, our kids can drink more arsenic and consume more bacteria and breath more pollutants. But hey the corporations that bought our Dufus of a president will get a break. I hope all those idiots out there who were moronic enough to waste their vote on Nader realise how much he fucked things up. Was it really necassary to allow our nation to ingest more poison just so the green party could prove a point? As lacklustre Gore would have been, all this shit that has gone down in the last few weeks would not have happened. I hope all the Naderites enjoy their arsenic. What the greens need to do is infiltrate both the democratic and republican parties. Not waste their time and votes in lofty circle-jerks that accomplish nothing. A divided opposition to corporate power is the surest way for them to walk over us all. We need leadership that moves us in the right direction. This takes time. The greens seem to think that revolutionary change will happen if only their side would be listened to. Clap-trap! In a country of 280 million people and opinions it takes a long time to move the naiton in any direction. Millions agree with Bush?! Does this make for watered down laws and national direction changes? Yes but even though these bits of legislation are watered down and murky they were at leasst moving in the right direction. Now, with leadership who should where NASCAR like jackets with all the corporate sponsor logos, we are seening 12, and in some cases 20, years of right-direction legislation dulled down even further and stopped or reversed. Opposition to this power cannot be divided again no matter how illustrious the candidate for the green party happens to be. I hope these people see that there was a clear difference between Gore and Bush. I'll toast Nader with the arsenic.

Rant now finished.

Notes from afar: Interesting thing about living in the sticks

At night it is fucking dark. I mean holy crap it gets black out there. On a cloudy day where there is no moon the metro area is nothing but a really faint gray haze to the west but around our house night is seriously good in its attempt at earasing reality from view. I guess thats why so many farms have those damned anoying vapor lamps. Yet even when you stand in the light the surrounding area is as dark as the inside of "W"'s empty head. One hartening sound you hear is the din of hundreds of frogs all hoping to get layed. What I can't figure out is how all ofthem start and stop at the same damn time. MY two dogs find the area a bit of a mystery. "Where is our turd filled backyard?" they yelp.

So far so good.

Bush is so @#$ Stupid and so are the Excite freaks

To those of you who might agree with the freaks in the Excite forum I do not apologize for the following rant:

I use Excite as my news service and the place I go to to answer stupid polls. I have to say that I am almost diametrically opposed to almost every poll result on Excite. The latest poll is "Do you favor the air strikes to uphold the no fly zone in Iraq." You are given the 'yes' 'no' or 'not sure'. I answer no because I think that the airstrikes are bogus and nothing but saber rattling from Bush II "son of Bush". Going to the forum to discuss this stupid poll I find that all the turds in it are tape recorders playing back the one-liners and non-policy-positions of Bush and his lame assed staff or the non-policy of the jerk that was in the office before him.

How can America choke down the nonsense that Iraq, or for that matter at little saudi terrorist Binlawden, are real threats to us. If anything they are nats, anoying but hardly worth the trouble to swat at them. Meanwhile we have real trouble brewing when Russia fires off a missle that could contain a multi-cluster warhead. Of course we don't have a response to that now do we. We can't send a carrier task force to rattle our sabre at
Russia. Here we have a nation whos military hasn't been paid in years. A nation that is racked with nazi-like nationalism and xenophobia. Compared
to Russia, Iraq is a sublime and steady rock of predictability. So what do we, the Super-power, do? We opt to forget about the anti-balistic missle
treaty and toy with the idea of igniting an arms race with the very county who's population blames us for it's troubles. Back in the soviet days the Russian people harbored no hatred for us. They hated their government but not us we were the good guys. Now, after having their economy ruined via disasterous foreign intervention, and a load of anti-american propaganda fed to them by the old authoritarian socialists, who are now saying "we told you so." they don't like us much and won't take to listening to America when it tells them what to do.

It was a nice thaw while it lasted, at least for us.

As for the dunderheads who are devout believers in the golfwar credo of "make my day" foreign policy, they are going to be in for a very rude
awakening when the power they rattle their sabre at just stairs at them and rattles back. In my opinion the cold war is an unwinable and unstoppable
war. We thought the enemy was soviet Russia but the real enemy is oblivion. It might come out of Russia or China or out of the US itself. We will forever be struggling to keep ourselves from falling off the edge of sanity and ending the world. I hope the struggle lasts forever, because if it ever ends we will have fallen off that edge.

Continuing onto another topic: Schools

"Do you favor school vouchers to allow kids to go to private schools?" No fucking way. Vouchers are little piddly-diddly amounts of money that will not send an east LA latino to private school. Vouchers will only help rich people. Do they really expect me to believe that a $500 dollar voucher is going to help me send by kid to St Mary's? Hardly. That might pay for one weekend school retreat but that's about it. Bush is a skankhead for pushing the lie on people. Give my district a voucher of 100% funding and I'll support it. Bush is for schools what Tonya Harding is for good-sportsmanship. Keep your goddam tire iron off our school's kness you texas small-peckerd bastard.

The dunderheads online want good schools but think that they shouldn't pay any property taxes to support them. They want to go to the store and get all their food free, and they get cranky if they lose a board game, and their development has been arrested at the age of fifteen and has been scentenced to life, and they are pissed because they have to pay $1.55 for unleaded while the world pays $4.00, and they eat 25% of the worlds resources, and they want to live forever, and they all want to be the emperor, and they all want to have the deathstar,and they all are puzzled why the rest of the world is sick of them.

fini

Age of Empires

[4]

Game scale (1-5) 1 being totally sucky and 5 being Il Magnifico

I load game and skillfully leave the documentation in the box since I know how to rule the world and don't need any rule book to tell me how to do it better. I quickly grasp the concept of fornicate more pesants to do all the grunt work. I make all the mistakes a would-be ruler makes. However I learn form them. Soon the turd slurper CG-enemy comes-a-knockin on my town's door. A cute little regiment of briton infantry from the evil Aethelfrith. I spent about a nano-second trying to be freinds with this scumbag only to have him rebuke me. Since my town is amply protected by multiple gard towers most of the enemy is dead before they get to my town center. The morons that do find their way there are horrified to see a castle defended by a dozen or so longbowmen. I guess the CG Aethelfrith considers them the lost regiment since none of them return alive.

Meanwhile, not very far away, I have my army corps of engineers. This is an army of nine peasents surounded by heavy cavelry, crossbowmen, and pikemen. This corp specializes in shock construction. Since I am trading with two other CG idots, one of whom is stupid enough to be freinds with me, I am roling in gold. I cant spend the stuff fast enough. Stone is trading at the 4 to 5 gp's per stone and I don't really care. I buy it by the 100 stone. My engineers mercilessly begin to encircle CG Aethelfrith's town with a dozen towers and a castle or two. He freaks and launches ilconsidered attacks against all the fortifications but it is no use. He's doomed. I send in me occupation force in and slaughter all the peasents and monks, blast down the churches and the pathetic CG Aethelfrith gives up. The Black Prince sends in some monks to pick up relics that are now up for grabs.

The Black Prince is my bro. He's been my freind and we have made a happy alliance for a long time now. So what do I do? Change my status with him to enemy and kill his monks and take the relics for myself. Then I go back to being freinds with him. His kingdom is richer than mine but it is harmelss so I don't worry about him. After thrashing one CG enemy I take my ACE south into more enemy territory. I build a couple castles on two opposed escarpments and then wall off the region. The little green pukes down there are like locusts chopping down trees. I decide to make them the new enemy of the moment and send an army in to hurt them.
There is a big battle around their town cetner, wich is destroyed, but I have to withdraw to the saftey of my to forward castles. By the time my army has regrouped I have created more troops to repalce the dead. I then run into the population limit. I need a bigger army so I go to my own town and kill peasants. I then build seige engines and send them south to serve as artillary support for my invasion army.

Meanwhile the green fuckers are attacking me and I loose a castle. So what! I build another one. I discover, to my fiscal horror, that two of my trade carts are missing. That little green fucker killed'm. I build three more after killing another lumberjack peasent, and send them to the green turd to trade. My town is practically a ghost town. About half the peasents are with my invasion army as engineers.

The artillary has arrived at my marcher castles and I imediately launch my strengthened army in two divisions at the green gothic enemy. I order all units to stand ground. I find this to be the best offensive order of all. It forces the dickwad computer into attacking you and, like the civil war battles of old, the battle hardware favors the defender. Each division splits into two wings and creartes a kill zone about the size of the enem town. My two huge divisions keep good order. Gothic attackers are killed by the knights and swordsmen while the longbowmen sweep the town of villagers. The artillary blasts down another town center and then a barraks and a stable. The computer, being the stupid bastard that it is, cannot get it into its head that might makes right. All it would have to do is mass it's own forces and drive north around my army and it would force me to abandon the attack so I could save my own city. Or it could, as general James Longstreet used to say, hit me "on the end" and break my fomration apart.

What does the might dual PIII 750 do? It sends irregulars to slap at me as if to say, "icky human go away and stop hurting me." I am grossly disappointed in the lack luster tactics of this green foe. I break off the attack and retreat to give the PIII time to regroup and come at me. I want a more interesting battle. Nope. I finally give up and move my army back in.

When I deam the moment right I order all the knights and infantry to be as agressive as possible and they sweep though the area killing things. I
order the artillary to cease fire so as not to hammer my own troops into the dirt. I box them up in longbowmen and move one division back to the
marcher castles. Then I move the other east, and in a moment or two the green dude gives up.

Now it is noly the dufus Black Prince. My bro, compadre, commrade in arms (thats a joke I asked for his help once and he didn't do squat.) So what do I do with him? I send in the ACE with seige engines and blast open a big space in the center of his domain. I build a big fortress with two castles and I garrison half my invasion army inside it. I Shut the gate and leave it alone. I turn the diplomatic status to enemy for a moment or two and let the garrison and casltes, spew arrows all over the place killing the princes peaseants and soldiers. Then I go back to being freinds with him. He starts to build more soldiers and every once in a while I go in and teach him who's emperor.

So do I like this game? Hell yes I like it. However I would change it to make it better in a couple very important ways.

1. To make this game live up to its name I would allow for a CG enemy state to be terrorized into surrender but still have it's own troops. If your own domain loses to many troops then this enemy ceases being under your thumb and revolts.
2. As your territory increases you should automatically be given the opportunity to appoint NPC governors to regions. These governors would do your bidding. You give them an order such as: Defend region from any incursion. They then use the regions resources to do jsut that. Or you could say: Attack neighboring region. The governor will do it. However if the empire becomes too weak they me split off and become enemy states that you have to reconquer.

Familyman

This film should have been the crowning turd in the waterpipe but it was not. I liked it. It was an idea that has been done to death but was done so well that I just came out feeling good. When he woke up in the messy bed and the kids were screeming and running through the house that was great. That was real. I thought "man would I want to stay in that world?" Then I remembered that I do live in that world. The guy chose it over the millionaire lifestyle. I guess I like the movie because of just that action.

Big Kahuna

[6]

You know this film had great acting and terrific dialogue but salesguys jsut don't get all cerebral when they are out in the field. Sorry that is bullshit. They don't postulate on the existance of God or their own lives meaning. All they do is sleep, sell stuff, eat food, go to bars, shit and go bakc to sleep. Taking this film on face value you'd think that sales guys are fucking monks in polyester, their eye's trained heavenword. Not so. This film was a pet project by one of my favorite actors Mr Spacey. Remember I think Spacey should be a Jedi. He'd kick ass.

Castaway

You know this film is so sucky that I wish I could cast it away. What a waste of film, story, actor, etc... It didn't show me anything I have seen before. My idea for a castaway story is that the guy ends up on the island and all he has is one fedex package. he opens it and finds college text books for a physics professor. After burning a couple he decides that he might as well read them since he might go nuts. So after 4 years he has read and re read them. They range from Max Born's book on Einstien's Theory of Relativity and textbooks on quantem mechanics to cosmology. In the package there is a treatise, written by a cambridge mathamatician. It is an attempt at a Grand Unified Theory, a theory linking quantem mechanics with general relativity; a theory of everything. It is unfinished. After four years of solitude the castaway is now, not only an expert spear fisherman but a phycisist. Without the external nonsense of the modern world his brain has adapted into a hunter gatherer / physicist of the highesrt order. Then he stubs his toe on a rock. This seeming trivial injury is fatal in his current surroundings. He knows it. So he does what he can to write down on his cave wall the equations necassary to describe the workings of the cosmos. As he finishes the camera tracks back out accross the ocean and out into space and you are left with the irony that the secret to the future of the universe is housed in a cave on a southpacific island.

Gone in 60 Seconds

[2]

Dull dull dull or god it was dull. I kepts waiting for the KR500 and you had to wait all the way to the end and then they CGI'd it over a bridge. Sucks.

The Perfect Storm

[3]

As soon as I finished the book I knew this was going to be a film and I knew it would suck. The Book is written in a very journalistic way and reads more like a magazine article than a novel. It is a great book. Junger goes into ocean mechanics, history, and fishery detail that is totally lost in the movie. For instance his anecdotal info is riveting as well. Take the time a rogue wave blasted out the bridge windows of the Queen Mary, that's 90 feet above the water line, and she came within a degree or two of capsizing. Or the time, in the 1850's when a fishing boat came across a note in a bottle with the last words of a crew that hadn't been heard from in a year. One of the more interesting twists in the book is Junger's description of how the people left behind have to willfully extract the men from their lives. It is just a mater of faith that the men are dead since no boat, or bodies were ever recovered. The film also plays fast and loose with the facts. First of all there was no distress signal sent from the Andrea Gail. The rescue helicopter that picked up the crew from the yacht was not enroute to the AG but to a japanese fisherman when it went down.

But despite all that the film just wasn't interesting. The characters were dehumanized. The filmmaker had a clean slate for dialogue since none of the men survived. Yet all he could do was bullshit lines that weren't memorable at all. There could have been much made of the fact that, aside from Tyne, all the other men didn't much like fishing. It was a dead end job that they wanted to get clear of as soon as they could. Bob Brown's character was accurate but his animosity toward Tyne is not. Most sword boats are only in port for afew days at a time anyway.

Vice Presidents

Ford: pardon's Nixon and loses to Carter.

Bush: wins war against a dumpy little nobody and loses to Clinton.

Gore: Comes off as smart during VP-hood but reverts to Og the Cave man in Florida.

Andrew Johnson: Follows assasinated Lincoln and is Impeached.

Lyndon Johnson: Follows assasinated Kennedy and wins big against Goldwater, but blows great society with Vietnam.

Truman: Okay he's a nice guy and a straight shooter but his lack of attention to the details of the founding of Isreal has lead to fifty years of the crap that is going on over there. And bombing Nagasaki!? Not to mention the 50,000 troops killed in Korea.

Probably the best VP to take the helm from a President was Theodore Roosevelt. But even he gave us a legacy of overseas intervention that is dubious at best. He almost got that thrid term as an independant. What is it with them Roosevelts?

Usually VP's make lousy Presidents or, at the very least, one-termers. Early on it was the secretary of state that was slated to follow his boss. But look at ol' John Adams. What did his federalists contribute? He gave us the Alien Sedition Act making it a federal crime to criticize the government. Thankfully that dead waterbuffalo was repealed.

Even when they come back form the dead they usually cause problems. Look at Nixon, the zombie of American politics. For a while it looked as though not even a silver bullet could rid the nation of that dude.

I don't think we should allow members of the current Executive Branch the ability to run for office for at least eight years after their term ends. Frank Roosevelt hadn't been in an administration since he was secretary of the Navy under Wilson.

Washington...well...there was no administration for him to follow.
Lincoln was not a part of any administration.
Jefferson: Okay so this guy was minister plenipotentiary to France but he was Jefferson. And he didn't have an easy time either.
Andrew Jackson was just a war hero.
Ike: Just another war hero.
Grant: war hero
TR: yeah he was a VP but he was also a war hero

X-Men

As far as I can tell this movie is totally historically accurate. Interesting effects, though I feel sorry for the poor bastards in any effects lab. No effect is cool anymore. They're so predictable that your brain just says "oh thats an effect...now what" This movie is okay. I guess I give it a 6. One of the better comic book movies.

Gladiator

[6]

Okay so this is a remake...sort of:
1964 "Fall of the Roman Empire" gets an 8

This movie starts out with the final vitory of Marcus Aurelius over the germans and the untimely death of Marcus Aurelius. The hero of this film is the general Livius. Livius vows to carry out Aurelius' wishes to reform the empire. Commodus shows up and fucks things up and the two end up in a duel in Rome, surrounded by praetorian gard. Commodus dies as does Livius. In 1964 things are more pragmatic for after the duel a new emperor is proclaimed and the so goes rome. The art direction for the 1964 flick is awsome and is probably better than Gladiator.

Truth: Commodus was chosen by his father to succeed. Commodus was as much a fighter as his father and had taken part in numerous battles. He was not the eldest of Marcus' sons but he was the only one left alive at the time of his father's death. At nineteen he was not very experienced at statecraft. He fell victem to his position and, like a later Nero, let the power go to his head. He did fight many gladiators and killed all of them. He was a powerful warrior but rather simple minded. He was murdered but not by a gladiator . He was drowned in his bath tub by a hired assasin. Despite his murder he was a very popular emperor. The commoners loved him. The Senators hated him. His reign signified the end of the golden age of the Roman Empire. The five good emperors that preceeded him spanned 84 years. I think there was around a 25 or 30 in the next 100 years. I would fault Marcus Aurelius for this. He, alone of the five good Emperors, chose his son to succeed him.

The movie: Rome never looked so good. Nice costumes, cool fight scenes, good acting, awe the glory of Rome! I just wish the story was more interesting. Once I new it was a remake I new the end. A few months back I read the Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus and there is so much material in that book that would make a great movie....oh yeah...I forgot....They made I Claudius. But still there is a lot that could be done with that bombastic, hauty, splendid Empire.

President Who?

I don't want to tell you who to vote for but just let me say that if you want:

Drilling in the arctic.
No increase in the minimum wage.
No tax cut.
Increased regulation against organized labor.
No progress on national healthcare.
No progress on inner city poverty.
No attention payed to developing alternative fuels.
Money taken away from public education and given to the rich to offset their private ed costs.
No reform of campaign finance laws.
No vision of national community IN short no leadership.

Then, by all means, vote for Ralph Nader.

I am voting for Gore. Why? Well the answer is clear. Subterfuge. I do not like Gore much, although he is superman compared to the dickwad Bush. Witchever candidate wins the man is going to be a very weak president. He will have to deal with a deadlocked congress and will have no mandate to do jack shit. However if Gore wins then in 2004 I can confidently predict that John McCain will be the parties nominee of choice. If Bush wins then, no matter how badly he sucks, and he will suck, he will be the nominee in 2004. Who will apose him? ON the democratic side I see no fire or intelligence. Monkeys would be flying out me ass if Nader some how became a viable force. No it would be a D vs Bush race and it would produce nothing, just another lost opportunity. So I am wanting Gore to win so I can have the pleasure of ousting him in 2004.

Vote Gore for McCain in 2004 !

Magnolia

[6]

Really long and well acted. Did I mention this film is long? Another dark little movie. It's long too. I don't know how to take the ending. It has one of the most truely surprising and bizzare endings of any film I have ever seen is it a good ending? I am not sure about that. This film is really long.

Orphans

I don't know what I detest more, films that truely suck or films that are merely lame? The former gives me more ammo to hurl at it, but getting that ammo mean actually watching it. The latter gives me little ammo but is damn boring that it might be a worse experience that watching a really bad film. Well whqat have I got to tell you this week about the cinematic epics I did watch?

Orphans: A Scotish movie so scotish it needed subtitles.
(1-10) gets a 8. The scotish dudes just know how to make good dark-humor.

Survivor

I was hoping for squadron Air Cav gun ships to fly over the beach and pepper the last bunch of incipient freaks to death with settling rounds. "Survive this you backstabbing scum bags!" the gunner would scream over the rotor wash. CBS Videobroadcast van explodes as two missiles hit it. Kafooom! Survivor cast runs for cover in rat infested forest only to be nap'd into foamming, firey goo balls. Choppers land and the air cavelry commander gets out. "I love the smell of Survivor in the morning. It smells like......the end of the series."

Autumn in New York

The winner of the "Absolutely No Chemistry between leads" Award goes to this little dreadful work. Grew plays himself. Can he play anyone else? Ryder plays role of young dying person who knows everything about life.

Story: Guy who is a homemaker falls in love with dying lady. He cheats on her. She tells him to be a nice person. He says ok. She dies. The end.
Rating: 4 for the cinematic.

This was not a love story since there was no story and no love. Just a bunch of crap that was boring to watch and unrealistic when the dialogue did happen. Yuck I want my money back! I did come across a thought that gave me the shivers. Since seeing the 9th gate and Eye of the Beholder, I think my movie mind has been bucked up so that a really bad movie like this one might not get the lowest rating it should get. The afore mentioned movies were horrible. If my mind compares autumn in New York to those dopplegangers from hell then the rating might not be accurate. Oh who really cares.

Politically corrected into oblivion

Ah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"You should never joke about that kind of thing..." The big fat slob said with extreme, selfrighteous, nose stuck up in the air, she-is-better-than-us, attitude. Donna and I had been talking about fleas and how we do not like them. We then made a crack about either killing the fleas or the dog upon wich the fleas live. Ha Ha Ha. Then the lady flipped her crap at us about how we should not "joke about thaty kind of thing" In Donna's office, about ten feet from the lady in question, Donna said, "I guess she doesn't like our humor." I then said, being the levelheaded watercalmer that I am, in a louder than normal voice "Big deal. If she doesn't appreciate our humor thats her problem. It's not as if I was seriously thinking about blowing the dogs head off or anything. Or stomping in it unitl it was flat! I love dogs! I love to eat'm! On a slice a'corn bread wisom ol #7 and slab a fatback on the side. MMM MMM good!" People who bristle with anger over a couple jokingly discussing flea infestation suck. How much angst can they generate over the billions of fleas that will die as a result of chemical armegaedan? Do they use mouth wash? Fucking a they do. How abou the trillions of bacteria they kill off and then spit out into the sink. Do they mow grass? I am sure they all have fucking gardens full of flowers and you can bet your sweet ass they're out there pulling weeds on the weekend. You know I don't like off color jokes anymore than the next dufus but come on! Can't people mind their own business? Do they have to feel it necessary to stick their hypocritical noses up the ass of life whenever anyone around them spouts off about fleas and dogs? Is this what the greastest experiment in human history has got us? The right to be a pest? To be, in a literal sense, a little anoying bug that bites you and makes you scratch? I will now make another off color remark. Perhaps we don't need bug bombs so much as.....oh hell somebodies probably reviewing the emails today anyway.

Law Suit!

Bail Jumper was and still is under contract with Rotten Banana Films. His appearance in Covert Operatives is a direct violation of his contract and we intend to file suit against him or squash him with a hammer. Even though he was a bit player and was killed in the first few seconds of the film he still should have asked if it was okay.

As for the film Covert Operatives. Animation wise it is not up to RAP standards but what is? Story wise it is a bit plebian too. Art direction wise it sucks. Sound wise it really sucks. Comparing Star Adventures to this film would be wrong but I am going to do it anyway. Our story has much better characters, a deeper script. Better art direction and sound. This film does have technically more blood but there was no scene in it more macabre than the elevator scene. This film looked like it took about a month to shoot.

Finally: If wuch a film is viewable on iFilm.com should not the REAL thing be available as well? It would run 39 minutes but so what. Thoughts?

Milk - It does a body... good?

The stench of milk drying in 85 degree heat can only be matched and surpassed by the following true story:

Two weeks ago Donna and I worked for two days cleaning up the the basement. We hauled out old nonsense we did not need. We vacumed where we had not vacumed in months. We shipped old books off to the Goodwill. And in the end Jessica could have a sleep over in the basement with all her friends. Cool!

To make it easier for us to clean we propped the door to the garage open so we could easily enter and exit from the basement. We used a small board for this purpose. Just a unassuming peice of 1/2 inch pine board. Near the end of the last day of cleaning the door closed. Oops! I went to prop it open again. Board? Couldn't find it. Where had it gone? Who knew. Maybe Donna was using something else. Okay a shoe will do just fine. Party went great.

Weeks passed, (Weeks). Then, four days ago I decided to boil up some ravioli's. I go down into the garage to our freezer to get the suckers out. I open the door and picked up a package of ravioli's. Brain first uses sense of touch to determine that A: package is warm and B since it is warm it cannot be frozen. Sense of smell is then hit by the equivelent of a tsunami. The olfactory center of the brain is wrecked, neurons scrambling for cover as the cascade of stench has to be processed. Nerve impluses are quickly sent to the left arm to slam the door shut as a last desperate attempt to stave off the oncoming horror. Higher neural functions then process the data.

Food not frozen, stink comming from freezer really nasty. All this means a catastrophic event has occured. I check the back of the freezer to see if it is plugged in. Oh...there is the board that went missing. When the door closed, a whopping two weeks earlier, it had propelled the board behind the freezer and uplugged the unit.

After several minutes of extremely nasty cursing, I take a safty breath and open the door. It is like the physical incarnation of an HP lovecraft novel. The call of Cthulu wafts out from that dank coffin of decayed meat. We had about seventy pounds of beef, lamb, and other meats in there. They have all thawed out and created a black lake of moldering blood in the drip pan at the bottom of the freezer. It only take a few seconds for me to mentally right off the entire contents.

We decide to plug the unit back in and refreeze the abominable contents so that when I clean it out the disguto-meter will not be destroyed. The inquest into what happened, and what should be done to make sure that so tragic and accident does not occur and again, determined that the gap between the freezer and wall should be covered. I used the same board for this purpose. The inquest also determined that the plugs should be screwed into the wall so that they cannot easily be unplugged. Gory disguting meat is now languishing in the dump.

The End.

Good Bye Alec Guniess

Oh crap now Alec Guiness is dead. I wonder if he'll be walking around in a blue arua?

2 for None

Okay, I am fucking pissed (Fist slams into wall with blood and plaster) Some ass-munch needs their gray matter exposed to the light of day. Who makes people like the dick wads that made the last two movies have had the grotesque misfortune to have to sit through. No sit through is not the proper term. Remember in A Clockwork Orange when malign McDowell is strapped into a movie seat, his eyes forced open with metal wires. That is how I felt. I was vomitsously sick. I needed a colon's after this mambo-fucking-jumbo nonsensical crap fest. I mighty has well have had my mouth stacked to the ass end of a Mr. Ed all night long. This was horrible, not in the 'oh that was a bad movie' way, but in the "give me the shotgun now!" sort of way.

There is no way I am rating either of these two non-films. They suck so bad that there is no number, or fraction there of, existent in the universes that could rate these bucked up drums of shit.

9th Gate - Johnny deaf

Book slug, who goes after rare books is hired by a total Fuji head to determine if his devil book is the real deal. Okay so far. So what happens? NOTHING! Nothing happens. The story is totally intelligible and useless. There was no bucking script for this hunk of dung. I hate this movie and want to excoriate it's memory from my brain.

Eye of the Beholder - Ewon McGregor

You know what you behold? NOTHING! I beheld the movie trailers before the movie and that was it. This movie stunk even worse than the 9th Grunt. I wanted to gouge the eye of the beholder out of my head. To behold this trash is to behold fly larva living in shit, to behold a pussy wart , to behold the total vacuum outside the universe. It is the total perspective votes in reverse. This was a bad film. I hope that none of you had the near total misfotune of having to sit through either of these abominations, these mental route canals.

Short of drinking a gallon of saline I don't know how I can purge myself from the effects of these squalid events. I feel impure, filthy, mired in some kind of artistic hell, I was shown the seventh seal of Morton picture Amageadan. Yuck!

I kept waiting for the steady hand of teanibopper action-flickism to take over but I couldn't even be allowed that. Not even a cliche' ending with lots of CGI. Only the cold, moldering, oblivion of non-movie. It was as if both movies ended at the end of their opening credits and there was nothing left but the gaseous emissions of the set carpenters and chatterers.
To know that, as Alec guineas lay dying in England, I was sitting and wasting these travesties of sublime mediocrity, is to die a little myself.

Barny Imagination Island

[10]

From the high quality cardboards sets, to the giant foam packed dinosaur suit, this film has it all. Cheesy computer graphcis, kids who sing and dance to songs I have heard millions of times before. A nutty professor who makes toys to play with. Harsh TV stage lighting. This is entertainment for the American masses. Who needs Shakespear!?

American History X

[8]

Edward Norton plays a neo nazi, bashing heads and spewing propaganda. His little bro is quickly turning into him. Their family is falling apart. Then he kills two black men and goes to jail for 3 years. This film is great in that it gives a totally believable picture of nazism. The main character. Far from being ignorant white trash, is smart, articulate, and charismatic. The dialogue is perfect and is so well thought out that you can really see the seductive nature of the white power movement. The arguments that are made by the Nazi's dove tail so well into modern American politics that it is scary. The film is pretty brutal and has a very sad ending. It is simple story done really well.

The "Puzzling" Mr. Ripley

[3]

Puzzling because we are given so little info about this idiot. He lives in a dump in NYC and he makes cash on the side by impersonating people. Okay. So what? His actions in Italy are never put into the context of his life. There are a couple of good things about this film. One is dicks Greenleaf, the American expatriate, jazz loving, rich kid. You'd think his character would be typical and suck but it is actually a great character and it is too bad the movie couldn't have been about him. Matt Damon's insipid little character deserved to be shoved off the back end of the Queen Mary. The visuals are nice too. Speaking of the Queen Mary there was a nice bit of composition of the worlds best liner, at birth at Long Beach CA, sliding through New
York Harbor. The Italian unit had fun shooting at all the save locales and the film did a good job of convincing us that we were in 50's Italy. I just wish the story wasn't so fucked up.

Bicentennial Man

[5]

It is a very nice film and tells one of the great Sci-fi stories of all time. However, unlike Green Mile, it trys to shove the whole story into a digestable 90 minutes. Argh! Not good at all. It made a great story as digestable as white bread that has been sitting in warm watrer for five days. The only redmeaming aspect is the quality of the story, the acting, and the set decoration; music isn't bad either. If your going to tell the story of the life of a two hunred year old robot you better take some time!

Best Sci-fi / Futurism films:

1. Star Wars Episodes 4-5-6 - 'nough said.
2. 2001 - mind-blasting even today.
3. Metropolis & Things to Come - (the reigning glory of Deco-Nuvo Futurism, you gotta have both)
4. Blade Runner - (Syd Mead unbound, wholly crap man.)
5. Alien - really dated visual effects, mumbled lines, simple story, fucking scary even now!
6. Close Encounters - Best of the happy-aliens genre, better than ET
7. Forbidden Planet - Captain JJ Adam's finset moment.
8. Planet of the Apes - Charlton Heston inherits the NRA's future.
9. Contact - Should be higher than number 9 but look at its competition!?
10. Gattaca - Nice use of late-FL Wright's buildings housing an interesting story.
11. Lathe of Heaven - Very simple story but very well done.

The Green Mile

[9+]

The best 188 minute long movie I have seen in a long time. It takes a pretty good filmaker to fully utilize 188 minutes of movie to tell a story. I am having trouble marking this film in the 1-10 scale. Many aspects of it were in the 4-6 catagory.

What was the point of the film?

Why have the John Cauffy character super natural? etc.

Yet the whole of this movie is greater than the some of it's mundane parts. It was almost a throwback to a thirties meledrama. Where force of character and dialogue had to carry lame stories and non-existent effects. In this way the movie is amazing.

Even though the story was middle-of-the-road the characters were very well difined and superbely acted. Compared with American Beauty this film kicks ass. Both films are based on subject matter that has been done to death, no pun intended. But where as American Beauty had characters right out of angstfilled-central casting, Green Mile's gards and prisoners were much more interesting. Where American Beauty, in my opinion dehumanized people into unrealistic sterotypes, Green Mile humanized every thing, including the mouse. It was fantastic (Arthorian legend style )

I'd like to have this movie on DVD. I guess I'll give it a....roll on one......a.....roll on two! I'll give it a 9+. Not many movies get that...not from me anyway. I think I thought of giving Shawshank redemption a 9 too. Hmmm?

Best Prison Films I have seen:

1. Shawshank (1994) Redemption
2. Green Mile- (1999) tied with the above, sort of SR part II with more special effects
3. Midnight Express- (1978) ouch!
4. Coolhand Luke - (1968) What we got here is a great movie
5. Stalag 17- (1953) A Billy Wilder Best
6. Papillon - (1973) Oops I almost made this movie 5
7. Dead Man Walking - (1995) Susan Sarandon as a Nun? The world would weep.
8. Gideon's Trumpet -(1980) H Fonda
9. Each Dawn I Die - (1939) Really old Cagney film I saw on chanel 12 when I was a kid.

The World Is Not Enough

(1-10......gets -550 billion on general scale)

Bond Scale( 1-10.....Gets a 5)

If you could view the score I gave for this movie in 3-d it would be so small that you would need a scanning electron microscope to see it. Or maybe that couldn't view it either. Physicists would be using quantem mathematics to hypothesize of its existance based on how it's potential existance may, or maynot, interfere with larger particals, such as..I don't know say sub-atomic nuclei. This film was really hokey. The bad-line-o-meter, back in operation after months of rebuilding thanks to Lost In Space, was instantly vaporized at the end of the film when Bond says to his girl of the moment, named Christmas Jones, " I thought Christmas comes only once a year." Blech! However Bond films can be terrible and at the same time rudely entertaining and this was that.

13th Warrror

[8]

I can't remember if I wrote a review of this movie but I was thinking of both American Beatuy and 13th Warrior so here we goe. This move is one of the best barbarian movies ever made. It is a great story of Vikings. It has an intelligence to it that floored me. If this movie had been a foreign import with sub titles it would have been hefted into the catagory of films by likes of Akira Kurosawa. Visually it had a great primordial look to it. The sets were proper for the period as were most of the costumes, some license being taken with armor. Another nice part about this films was that so many characters were played by people of the proper ethnicity. Old king Hrothgar (Same king as in Beowulf?) was played by Sven Wolter. Antonio Banderas came off well as an arab. The story has mild Beowulf overtones to it; a wayword warrior and his band have to return home to fight off a mysterious force that is terrorizing Hrothgar and his men at night. The force in this fiom is not a single monster and his mother but a host of thousands of canibalistic cave dwellers. This sounds kind of campy but it is pulled off in a scary realistic way. This film is the best Michael Chriton book-to-film thingy that has been made.

American Beauty

"To die, to sleep --
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life."
-William Shakespeare,

Oh crap now John Gielgud is dead. Not many left from that godlen age of English theatre. Not many at all. Here is a photo of the big three. All having "shuffled off the mortal coil" [Image] Gielgud, Olvier, and Richardson.

I hope that heaven has a place for performing arts.

Now onto other matters:

American Beauty, (1-10.......gets a 5)
Why did this film win all those awards? It is a basically just another in a long line of "suburban family goes nuts" movies. The only saving grace was that this film had an end to it. It was unrealistic with cahracters that needed little in the way of passion or ability. The creepy voyer-dope dealer was the best character in the film. Kevin Spacey I really like as an actor, however his character was so badly developed an d thrown together that I had trouble choking down his story. There was no event that lead up to his transformation from dweeb to dynamo; unless you count smoking pot behind the resturant with voyer-dope boy.

Vader aye

How the hell can I be scared of Darth Vader when I am given the knowledge that he is a Canadian!? I can imagine the scene in the Daeth Star in Episode 4 when Vader is talking to Motti and Tarkin:

Vader: "Don't be to proud of this technological terror you constructed..aye"

However if you have a copy of the original art of star wars check out one of the cartoons in the back. The one showing Vader as a goalie in a hocky game, pretty fucking prophetic if you ask me.

The maple leaf that is going to play Anakin MrkII is 19 and so can have legitmate sex with Portman and thus cause all hell to break loose. I am hoping for a couple of NC-17 scene's. I think a couple full frontal shots would really jaz up the whole saga.

Reading some of the QA shit on the star wars sight makes me wonder about the overall sanity of people who dig star wars. I mean, I do, but I could care less about the origins of Boba Fett. Yet this is a big deal. Why? The dude says one line in Empire and gets KO'd early on in Jedi andthere are people who really give rats ass about the guy? I suppose the next QA will be about the origins of the Ugnaut that was playing with Threepio's head. How about Greedo? At least that guy had a decent chat with a major cast memeber.I'd like to think that he was the grown up version of the little one that hung out with Anakin when he was a slave-boy.

Another telling sign in the Episode II stuff I read was that the production was gearing up to get started in the next couple of weeks. In another paragraph there is mention that nobody has seen a script yet. Typical.

In my own story youngSkywakler has just had part of his leg and most of his left arm blasted away in a space battle. He has had to eject after his fighter slammed, kamakazee style, into a supposed alien battleship. His mentor, B. Kenobi is right on target for loseing control of Skywalker's training. Palpatine has just killed a Jedi on Cursicant. Mace Windu is wondering if he is the only Jedi on the council that has not been under some kind of mind control. Amidala is awaiting the certain doom of her miserable little clod. General Penaka is discovering his own latent Jedi ability, he's really the only steady guy in the story. Jar Jar Binks is no where to be found for his character is too silly. The story is taking on a kind of grizzly nightmare nature, sort of a cross between The Shining, Sixth Sense and Saving private Ryan. The lead character, Mandan Telayni, a personage who will not be around in the next story, so to speak, is at the center of it all and hasn't figured out the real problem yet. He know's who the sith lord is, aka palpatine, but he isn't in a position to do much about it. The really scary part hasn't happened yet.

Email Sucks!

I did a little statistical analysis of my current email dilema. Last year I averaged 6 e mail messages a day. This year it is running at about 15/day. Each blessed gem needs to be opened up and responded to. Some require simple replies like "Fucking A!" or "Crap!" More often than not I am sent some fucking eight page Word document done in 6 point micro type that I need to read and resond to. Or it is the e-mail that contains eight links to different web sites that I need to delve into and respond as to which one I liked best. So I have come to the conclusion that in roughly 18 months I will need a personal secratery to handle response to all the email. It is now 9:47am and I am not finished choking all the mail down. It has taken me 2.75 hours to respond to all of it. And that isn't even responding to each message since I know that a couple are magazine companies wanitng me to re-subscribe to Omni global hyper mega net weekly.

John philosophizing

John,

Youth is wasted on the young and life, in general, on the living. Your thoughts are mirrored in almost every observation I have made of those younger than myself. As men we are slightly worse off than women. At least they reach their sexul peak in their mid thirties and are old enough and smart enough to enjoy it. Men are hardon machines until their mid twenties then the ol feller starts to say "give it a rest you midless fuck! What do you think I am? Some kinda godman jack hammer?"

As for those smoking, imortal, teenagers, I would like to judge them damned and be done with them. However they are just trying to be what society in general wants them to be. ("Ve ver just following orders.) part of me thinks we live in a pretty fucked up society where the government has to tell us not to over prescribe prozac and riddilin to our toddlers, and people still argue over the right to carry a concealed firearm. We throw every concievable kind of tawdry image at the kids, deafen them with sex and violence, then tell them to obstain from sex and settle arguments with good natured handshakes. And the idiots who still cling to that moldering mantra that it is the parents responsibility to control what their kids watch and that they are souly to blame when things go awry, obviously don't live on Earth. From a parent's point of view it is getting harder and harder to control what messages their children are getting when the bus driver listens to the morning zoo, when there are pepsi ads on the school tv, and teenage mothers are nursing their babies on the steps of the highschool. As I see it the situation has been brought about by a near cult like beleif in freedom for freedom's sake. Freedom becomes, without responisbility and the understanding of consequence of action, anarchy. Kids in particular have been so empowered as to think that they are incapable of doing wrong and if they do it is because some part of society has led them that way. There is always some kind of justification for unethical behavior. Clinton is an excellent example of this philosophy being carried out in the White house. "Lot's of presidents did those things, he's only human, what two consenting adults do..." It makes me want to vomit blood. First of all we, as humans, have fucking huge brains and the ability to make ethical decisions and if we make decisions that hurt those around us and endangers others, well we better own up to them. If we can't do that and we try and explain away our wrongs then we cease being free at all and become slaves to impluse.

Scott

Bush and his great state!

The latest Internet "gossip" - I don't know if it's true, but certainly worth finding out... has anyone seen this or know if it's factual? --sg

The state of Texas, under the leadership of Bush II son of Bush is ranked:

50th in spending for teachers' salaries
49th in spending on the environment
48th in per-capita funding for public health
47th in delivery of social services
42nd in child-support collections
41st in per-capita spending on public education and ...
5th in percentage of population living in poverty
1st in air and water pollution
1st in percentage of poor working parents without insurance
1st in percentage of children without health insurance
1st in executions (avg. 1 every 2 weeks for Bush's 5 years)

Just think of what he could do for the country if he were president!
This guy is deserves not only to lose the his election but deserves to be bullseyed by a flock of ten thousand canadian geese.

Antoher thing I hate about Bush is that he says such stupid things like this:

actual quote: "I married over my head."
What the fuck does that mean?

He is constantly saying shit like this that is absolutely nonsensical. It isn't just a case of bad grammer or haulting scentances like his daddy. It is pure weirdo shit that brings into question his sanity and whether or not he might be an alien.

My scholarly opinion, steeped in intellectual ellitism, is that he is, as Socratese would say, a big dufus...possibly from another planet.

Super Tuesday Results!

Now its Bush II vs. Gore III. Watch them fumble all over themselves trying to co-opt McCains supporters and his message. The truth is that neither of these dandified princelings has a grasp of what the voters really want. So they have both spent a lot of time looking over McCain's shoulder trying to figure out what they should be doing.

McCain's suppopprter, far from being soft and easily turned, are a tough bunch who are so p'offed at the republicans and sick of the democrats that I doubt, even if McCain were to support Bush, they would do it. McCain, for his part, is a man of integrity and will undoubetly support Bush because Bush is in McCain's party. Yet there is absolutely no love between them. McCain will not actively stump for Bush nor will he accept a VP spot.

At the luncheon I attended there were a lot of Republicans who will not vote for Bush no matter what. There were many independants who told me that if McCain isn't the nominee they would vote for Gore. A few Republicans actually stated they might vote for Gore in protest over Bush.
Bush and the gothic machine behind him has alienated a large sect of Republicans and has belittled the voice of independant voters. When he loses to Albert Gore there will be lots of finger pointing and I will love every minute of it. This whole process has given me a greater respect for the diversity of opinion in the Republican party as a whole. Comming form a strictly Democratic background I find that a good thing. The media tends to want to paint all party people in one color or another. What I have learned, being in both, is that the media is full of shit. The real world wrangling behind the doors of luncheons, comittee meetings and debates is far more intelligent and uplifting than the media will ever admit. They want gossip to report on not issues and character.

I will most likely right in McCain's name in November however that is a protest vote and will not count for much. I like the guy and admire him. Do I agree with him on his social stands? No, not all of them, not even most of them. I am using the lipness test of Character for who I am going to vote for. I don't want a dandified princeling who thinks he's owed the white house.

Political system needs to be fixed!

Should a founding father drop through a warp in space time "like a stone thorugh a wet paper bag". He would be flumexed to note that the current system for electing a President is about the same as in his own day. He would take off his wig, scratch his stubbly head, and ponder why the hell things have progressed in so many areas of life yet not in the electoral process. This would, I think, go for either a federalist or democratic republican.

As lord emperor of the universe I would change things thusly:

1. 1 get rid of the electoral college, an outmoded check on mobaucracy.
2. Force each prospective candidate to vist each of the fifty states and hold a debate in each state. This process would take seven weeks and go in alphabetical order, Alabama to Wyoming.
3. Hold a national primary in May. It would be a paid holiday too. It should be a totally open primary and delegate count would be delved out by percentage not winner take all.
4. The parties can still hold their conventions. There is nothing wrong with parties arguing over stuff.
5. The general election should be moved up to September and held as a national holiday too.
6. Candidates should be graded on their views and the man or woman with the best GPA wins.

I am sure the b'wigged founder would be pleased by that turn of events. However this would screw over the existing two party system pretty bad so it won't happen. At least not until the revolution comes.

For what it's worth I urge you to vote for McCain. I attended a luncheon for McCain and got to know the type of people who are supporting him in Oregon. Compairing them to the bunch I delt with in the Vancouver DP, I would honsetly say they are more intelligent, and thoughfull than the Vancouver bunch. Due to party politics McCain has not had any support by his party in Oregon and they have, infact tried to block him from getting on the ballet at all. Donna and I are the defacto McCain corrdinators for Gresham.

If McCain is not the candidate the choice will then be between Gore and Bush and I find that not at all a happy one. On principal I cannot bring myself to vote for Gore eventhough his politics are more to my liking. Yet Bush is such a slug that to cast a vote for him is like voting for a lump of dog shit. I am sure that there will be other candidates out there from the Green Party or the Socialist party or whatever and perhaps I'll vote for one of them. yet I think that no party is going to change the system unitl the electorate demands it and makes it a lipness test issue. Either you are for reforming the electoral process or I won't vote for you. It's going to have to come down to that. Because there is simply no other incentive for those we select as law makers to change.

Bush Strategy

Bush: Well, my boy, I have some..uhum.. news for you.
Bush II: Yeah dad?
Bush: Yep.
Bush II: What is it dad?
Bush: You suck. I'm sorry, can't sugar coat it for you, you suck. Love to tell you the sun shines out your ass but, can't do it.
Bush II: But?
Bush: Is where the sun doesn't shine, thats right son.

Later that day...

Bush: My little boy here is cut from the same stock as his old man. A man that knows from where the sun shines and where it doesn't.
Bush II: Gosh dad you really can put the right spin on things. Someday will the sun shine out of my ass?
Bush: Don't interupt me boy I haven't fucked up this scentence yet.
Bush II: Don't forget to tout my military background.
Bush: While that limp wrist McCain was relaxing in a hotel in Hanoi, my sonny boy here, during those dark days of the Viet Nam conflict, served his country couragously by garding the strategically important Texas coast from surprise Viet Cong invasion. And hey...Did the commy's invade Texas? I think the facts speak for themselves.

Santa Claus: Speaking for the christmas community I can say that little Georgy was a good little brat..er..boy and got an average lot of presents from me. However any rumor as to money that was past from his father to the North Pole I cannot comment on at this time.

Black man: I tell you he tried to rub the black off my skin when I met him. He didn't seem to understand that, as a decendant from an African my skin has a dark cast to it. The guy sucks.

I Want To Be A Prostitute - Addendum #1

Sounds good to me.

FOX forces the two to stay married. Puts cam's in every room and then follows them on their inevitable downward spiral into marital anarchy.

Through in a couple kids along the way to get abused and we can forget COPS or Scariest chases of the Highway patrol.

Sample show:

Kitchen: Lots of screaming

Wife: I hate you! (Dish flies across room and hits man in head causing severe blood loss)

Child: (Screaming at top of lungs) Mommmmmyyyy!

Man:(Drunk on a fifrth with Blood gushing from above eye) You fucking Cunt!

Wife:I'm a doormat to you! You come home and walk all ov er me. I'm sick of you.

Man: Get out! Take the kids and fucking leave.

Wife: (Spiting the words out while waving an empty bottle of ol #7) Me!? Your the millionaire. Why don't you go to one of those houses you own. Oh yeah there all losers! Loser! I married a...Loser!

Man: ( blood sticking in eyes. Trys to drink last drop in hisown
bottle.) I try godamnit!

Wife: I hate you! (Throughs the bottle against the wall.)

Man takes Colt .32 cal pistol and waves it around while holding his head.

Wife: (Screams and runs from the room.)

Child: (follows)

Man: (Fires the gun.) Bullet goes through the wall of house and kills the neighbors dog.

Man: Oh fuck! Ahhhh, what have I done. (Now sobbing , the tension over)

Wife: Oh baby! Baby baby! (Comes to him and consoles him in her own drunken stupor.)

Child: Daddy alright now?

Man: (sobbing) Forgive me.

Later that night. Bathroom. Sounds of vomitting going on.

Man: (Hugging throne and puking into toilet.)

Wife: (face down on floor of bathroom asleep in her own puke.) Snoaring.

Child: (Sitting on bed waiting for mommy and daddy to come to bed.)

FOX: Oh yeah baby this is gonna sell like hot cakes laced with speed!

What follows is a party political broadcast:

Vote for John McCain.

I Want To Be A Prostitute

My opinionated opinion:

The lady who married a guy on TV just because he had some weird realestate deals worth a million is nothing but a prostitute. Now, after realising she made a "questionaable decision" she wants an annulment. NO shit Sherlock. FOX has sucken to yet another low in its quest to find the bottom of the septic tank. I saw poll in which nearly 25% of respondents said they would marry for money alone. What a bunch of fucking morrons.

AheeAH!

My Dearest Jeffy,

Can't talk now...bowels constricting.....head hurting.....brain brainulating! At the moment I have an iron in the fire that wieghs in at a million pounds and I am having much difficulty manuvering it. Don't know yet if I can heft it to the anvil or not. If so I might be out of club, cashed out that is. Might need all available money for moving the iron. Very complicated now. Brain surgeon deep inside head....steady...steady! Turn that fucking Berry Manilow music off!

Question: Can we dig a 400 foot trench ourseleves? How deep does it have to be? (Mike this is not the hole but infact a trench of the p-line) The term feasability study came swimming up from the depths of the planning office like some black beast bent on eating the flesh of the man child. Can't talk now... bowels constricting.....head hurting.....brain brainulating!

Sincerely yours,
Scott

Timeline - Addendum #1

The top dude would not have come down with the plague so fast. His immune system would have a 600 year jump on the black death. He is from European stock so his ancestors obvioulsy were part of the population that survived the stuff.

iFilm

Check out iFilm. This is where our movie, if we ever make one, should end up. This site got talked about on NPR today. Sony Pictures is cramming 30 million in venture cap into this site alone. It doesn't cost a dime to add a film to the site. And who knows?

IFILM

Politics 2000 - Addendum #2

Cary,

I am not sure if there will even be a NONE OF THE ABOVE area to check on a national election ballot. And again I think this falls into the "not voting at all " catagory for you are in fact not casting a vote for anyone. If there is a catagory for that kind of vote I am sure it will be noted on Comedy Central and other such networks. Yet unless the NONE OF THE ABOVE number is huge, which I would wager 100% of my retirement income that it wont be larger than 1%, then it will be ignored by all parties and politicians.

I wish I could offer a solution to your dilema. I too wish candidates could be more forthcoming as to what their agends areally are. But agendas don't really make much difference in the long run because events tend to dictate the current agenda. Right now candidates have a pretty easy time with economic issues because the overall economic situation is pretty good.

I think that the current pantheon of Presidential wannabies is quite varried. Of course as time goes on and the money runs out the wierdos drop away. Forbes won't drop because it's his money and what the hell else is he gonna waste his time at? The three that will go the distance are Gore, Bush, McCain, Bradley. If you just look atr the money then Bush is the winner because he has the bucks. But I beleive Bush won't win shit because...well...the guy just isn't that likeable a person. He looks, acts, and talks like his daddy but has none of his daddy's freindliness and that, I hope, is saying a lot.

Gore might win just because the voters are so damned lazy and want to believe that him and Bubba are responsible for the current state of economic affairs, which of course they are not. IF it is Gore vs. Bush then Gore is going to win. If however it is Gore vs. McCain then I think that Gore is outta there. McCain can talk better than Gore, is more animated than Gore; this isn't saying much since the Pirates of the Caribean are more animated than Gore.

Bradley is too dumpy looking to be President. I am sorry but appearance coutns too damn much these days. His ideas aren't bad, I am all for a better healthcare system. But unless he's..I don't know...God or somebody like that he's nothing but a monkey fucking a football. The Healthcare industry is still too powerful to allow any real reform. Let the class action suits come against the HMO's and see what the fall out is going to be over that. Besides the solution will have to come from the ground up, fromhe people getting screwd over. A President has to simply wait in the wings and charge in after the problem is solved by the people. And that is okay since the people usually come up with good solutions.

Of all the dudes running McCain is the only that comes accross as a regular guy. I like his humor, I like the fact that he takes politcally risky stances on issues. He has as much as said that he wants to reform the Republican party and doesn't think much of the narrow minded conservatives that have tried, in vain ha ha ha, to keep him off some states ballots, like NY. The guy is running against the dolts in office and at the same time against enemies in his own party. And still he is going at it. In the early 1900's the Democrats were the party of the old south, they were reationary, biggots that supported Jim Crow laws and poll taxes to keep blacks from voting. They didn't want women to vote. What happened to them? Franklin Roosevelt that's what happened to them. Here is a guy who wanted to run as a republican in NY but was told that he'd be slaughtered so he registered as a Democrat. It was from his time on that the Democrats went ass over tea kettle from reactionary biggots to lefty's demanding the end to segregation and the implementation of Affirmative action. This is of course grossly simplifiying a complicated set of circumstances but there you go. I am not saying that John McCain will be another FDR. I am saying that if a candidate can win in McCain's position it shows remarkable political skill on his part. The Ronald Regan annalogy also springs to mind.

Now ol' Ron is not doing to well but hell he was Pres so I don't feel ashamed of saying that the guy sucked. But his campaign was also not given much chance early on either. It was personal power that he eminated that got his machine working. It wast spin or money it was his own desire and determination. In the end that is what gets people elected. Clinton was the same way, however with him he took window dressing to a knew height. I fell fot it. But I am not falling for false shit this time. I have determined that I have to look at the guy's actions, past and present, to see if he has my vote. How does he react when the ckips are down? What's he done with his life? McCain is not a movie star, he isn't slick. He thinks the defense budget is too big and there are too many wastful programs in it. He, at the very least, is talking about campaign finance reform.

I think that if I had paid a little more attention to what Bubba had done in his past life I would have htought twice about voting for him. Howeve I glossed it over as "ancient history" forgetting the fundemental truth that the present is built on the past. How a man acts when he is twenty or thirty goes a long way toward tellling me how he will act now. If he was a back stabbing political opportunist when he was young I doubt if he has under gone any soul altering since then. Beware a polotician that tells you he is so sorry about what he did to his wife and family when he was younger.

I hope you actually vote for a real person. YOu have to big of a brain to let it spill it's cyber seed on rocky ground.

Politics 2000 - Addendum #1

The fact is that the guy the majority of people vote for will be President. Making unilatteral statments about all of them being evil and then doing litterally nothing about it is rather silly. However you are doing exactly what the large parties want you to do. They would love nothing better than to have as few people vote as possible. It makes things much easier for them. For a mater of fact that is why so many candidates talk about issues that you don't think are important. They count on the party faithful to come out and vote, not you. If more people voted then they would have to pay more attention to what those people want. By not voting you, and millions like you, are not helping the cause of broader political debate. It is as if you think that by not participating the governement will stop one day and say "By golly those people are mad. We should do somethin about that!" Except that they won't listen to you because you people aren't saying anything. By not voting you are telling them that you are pleased as punch with the way things are going. No changes neccessary. The only people they listen to are people who write letters to them and vote and are politically active enough to get in their faces at rallies and party meetings. Oh sure money helps a lot in this nation, the more money the better the message gets through. But in the end, after all the doe is counted, it is the vote that they really need. If you are running for President and you end your race with a million in the bank and only 20% of the vote while your rival is broke but has 60% of the vote then you are not going to be President, the broke guy is. You won't be implementing tax policy, the broke guy will. So a vote counts.

The only way to get these guys to talk about issues you are interested in is to vote and get politically involved. It is a self fullfilling prophecy not to vote. By not voting you are gaurenteed to be presented with leaders you don't like. It makes you mad so you don't vote, and so on. As for them all being evil that is a sophomoric attitude to take. All the people running are just that, people. They have all the emotions you have, all the lusts, flaws, and desires for acceptance and love. The one thing they all have that most of us don't have is a giggantic ego. But that is no sin. I would put it to you that there has NEVER been a president without at a heurculean ego. In order to seek national offfice you need an ego that is big enough to allow you to think that you can do the job, and thick enough to take all the pounding by your political rivals. As far as the Presidency is concerned, no soft spoken shy dudes need apply. I am voting for John McCain. I do not agree with all his stands but on the whole I think he is the most honorable man for the job; Cetainly more honorable than Bill Clinton or GW Bush, the billion fat cat Forbes, or the moralistic looneis to the right.

Politics 2000

Okay so where do I stand on the Presidential race for 2000? Here goes:

1. Under no circumstances will I vote for GORE. He could be anonted by angels fromon high and I would not vote for him. The guy is part of the Clinton machine and I see no use of keeping that thing in power. I like Gore, I think he is ethical and a good man. His politics, though not very activist, are not bad. I think the country would do fine with him. But him and his party won't get the time of day from me since they collapsed into an ethical black whole deffending that peice of shit I voted for. That poor decision-making, bad-judgment, very-big-liar.
   
2. Third party candidates. Until we have real campaign finance reform these parties mean, no disrespect intended, absoultly nothing. It would be a cold day in hell when a thrid party candidate wins a national election. Furthermore third party candidates run the gambit too, from weirdo wrestlers and billionaire oil men, to fascist Hitler wanabies. That is not to say there aren't loads of good people out there running under thrid party banners. On local, township and state level elections third party people can win. But on the national level they might as well stick their heads in a pig. We need 100% public financing of elections with equal air time mandated by law. This ain't gunna happen anytime soon.
   
3. In my opinion personal integrity is important but more so is the ability to sacrifice ones own self interest for the good of others. The only candidate who has shown that he is cabable of such behavior is John McCain. Though I do not agree with all his political stands he is the only person running who has, through action, shown me that he is capable of leadership. It is not just that he was shot down, tortured and spent five years as a POW. It was that when he was offered the chance to leave, he chose to stay a POW until all the men he was imprisoned with were released. That is courage.

So my pick for 2000 is John McCain.

Million Dollar Dufus

Tatooine you big dumbass!

The man has no business being on Earth. He should be banaished to the arm pit of satan to smell the vapors of hell sweat. This show sucks! Only stupid people need apply. And Regis is a dickwad for always wearing that fucking mafioso suit.

Timeline

---warning for those who have not yet finished or read Timeline----- Read on at your own risk.....

On the brither side I finished Timeline and, to say the least, it was exciting. However, even though it was very exciting, the characters were typically shallow, cardboards nobodies. The medieval period was portrayed at first as a very different palce than had been expected by the historians but that only lastyed a few seconds. After a bit it devolved into the same meldramatic nonsense that they were cranking out in the days of Erol Flynn.

The medieval period was very complicated and the personalities in it were equally complex. Knights were seldom the mindless killers that they are made out to be. Ceremony and ritual had deep routes and were not window dressing. The level of piety, by our standards, was extremely high, even by those nasty knights.

The author seemed to want it both ways. He wanted authenticity of culture but not the real emotion that brought that culture about. Again the religous aspect of the book was downplayed into near oblivion, where as in real medieval Europe, particularly in the 14th century, Religious issues dominated politics, social life, and warfare.

He did bring up some interesting points. The fact that nobody really knows what the inside of a 14th centruy castle looked like. Or the fact that people bathed more often than we want to admit they did. Yet all these things do is make me mad that the authior didn't follow through on his apparent desire to show the medieval period for what it was.

His knights were evil in the manner of Freddy from nightmere on elm street. Darth Vader, for all his cardboard nature, is a far deeper character than any of the villains of this story. The only character that was believable was the Lady Claire. All the rest, moderns included, were stock.
As far as the science involved, puke! It sucks. First of all the idea of quantum foam is cool. But the author trys, stupidly, to make quantum foam out to be this bubbly stuff on the floor of the lab, instead of what it really is, which is part of every atom in all directions. We are, right now, moving through quantum foam, we are made up of it. It may be the reason we have TIME. We may be, at this momment, transsioning through countless universes like a moive where each frame is multidemensional yet static. I guess I wish I didn't know as much about quantum foam so that I could be awed by the concept of traveling through it like the dudes in Fantastic Voyage. But since I have seen it done before, in that movie for a matter of fact, it was not very exciting or original.

Critten falls again and again, into the worst trap of science fiction; the trap of technology. The best sci-fi books I have ever read have little to do with technology. When you try and base your story on an emerging technology you better get it right or you are going to look like a dufus. The best advice is to keeps things as vague as you can get away with. A matter transporter is just that, it needs no explanation as to how it works. Therein lies the trap for no matter what you say your going to get it wrong and you will instantly date your story. Critten falls into this trap big time. But I am not going to let him off the hook. He attemtps to tell us how the machine works to get people back in time but fails to tell us anything aobut how they are able to accurately pinpoint the exact time the traveler is going to.

And, since you are dealing with quantum foam, the answer to that question is that you can't. Because on that level there is only uncertainty, nothing can be accurately predicted. Certainly not navigating a traveler to a specific universe and a specific time in that universe.
And the contrivences of convinience made me a little sick too. The big glass!? tanks to shield the transit booths from stray rays? Why glass? Oh yeah, so they can conviniently break when things explode. And the silly babble-fish ear-peice that can translate middle french and english on the fly. Nothing like a computer that can translate multiple dead languages that have no written dictionay so nobody knows exactly all the words used in them. Remember we base our knowledge of these languages on a pitifful few manuscripts compiled by a very narrow segment of the population.

Swords: Yes they were heavy but unlike the ones in the story, they were expertly balanced so that they could be wielded with only moderate effort.

War: Yes things sucked pretty bad in the year 1357. But most battles did not happen at castles. They were hardly ever attacked. As Critten accurately noted in the book, a siege took too much time. A free company wanted quick loot. But if a castle was attacked the attacker almost without acception, layed a long term seige that could last six weeks or six months. Look at Harflur, the king of England seiged that town for months before it fell. And the seige cost Henry V half his men to disease. The seigfe cost more lives than the battle of Agincourt! At that was a town! Big castles, built high on rocky outcrops didn't usually get attacked.

Court: Feudalism was almsot totally overlooked in the book. The relationship between Oliver and his knights would have played a much larger role in the book if the reality of feudalism had been incorporated.

Jousts: The typical medieval trournament took weeks and there was little excitment for the masses. There was, if anything, even more cerimony and ritual here. Knights fought with squared off swords and lances that, again were expertly balanced. Tournament armor was also different than combat armor. It was a money making endeavour for the lord who held it, He didn't really benifit from having a knight get killed. And most knights didn't want to get killed in a joust. It was a violent sport for sure, but not a leathal sport. High nobbles put a heavy penelty for knights who got out of hand and killed their opponent. That was a no no punishable by death? No just a steep fine.

That brings up another point that could have been made and that is that medieval justice on average was mainly delt out by way of stiff fines and confiscations, not torture and death.

Time paradoxes: If not totally glossed over it is almost tottally glossed over. The CEO's explanation that one man could change history sucks. But I guess in the book it is true. Yet look at the last scene at Eltham Castle...

Best part of the book: The very beginning and the very end. I was touched by the final scene at the castle of Eltham. That was how the whole book should have been.

Bear Warning

Part II

Water system:
The problem as I see it, is that a cictern on the roof is A: too heavy and B: too prone to fill up with bird droppings. So I think we either take the water we want to use or have access to a filtering system. Taking the water up is the more pathetic of the two ideas. but it is less problematic in that no gizmos are required, the water comes up fresh and clean to drink. If each person brings up a 2 gallon jug that should be plenty for a few days. In the kitchen-pod there would be bays to store the water supply. Each person would use his or her own jug of water. Bathing would be done using rainwater. It doesn't have to be as clean and you wont drink it.

Power:
As I stated earlier we can have a gas generator for emergencies, but otherwise we don't got no power. We could try wind power or solor power, but those sytems are too expensive and you are at the mercy of nature. I think the best system is a shit pot load of insulatory substances and a roof that is black as the ass of the devil. The southern exposure could also be painted black to aid in radient heat absorbtion. At night we would crank up the wood stove. This unit has to be small and sheilded from th woody parts of our hovel.

Vermin patrol:
We don't want our shack to be ruined by rats, snakes, coons, etc. So we need to practice pest control with extreme predjudice. We'll need to have bait stations under the floor of each pod for rodent control. Furthermore we'll need to use steel screen buried a foot deep to prevent snakes from coming in a biting us to death. Insects are the most insidius of pests. If we are away from the shack for a long period of time the first thing we should do upon entry is bug-bomb the place inside and out. I know this is not eco-freindly but I don't really give a shit. Those lousy insect fuckers don't need to exist anywhere near us. I want them to look upon our domain the same way medieval Eastern Europe looked on Mongolia. "Fuck that shit I ain't go'in in there."

Bears:
This is potential the worst pest. It is fucking huge, strong, evil smelling, fury and can bite your leg off if it is pissed. So we'll need to protect ourselves with a weapon that can do in a five hundred pound beast. I think that we should find a 12mm elephant gun, saw off the barrel for close range. A shot gun wouldn't do. Since the pesky little pelletts woulde nd up all over the place and a bears fir and fat are tough. But a nice solid shot 12mm slug will make ungentle Ben into a rug with one shot.

How old are you?

Me: How old am I?
Young person: Unh?
Me: When was I born?
Young creep: 1965, that makes you 35.
Me (Slamming my fist into the young creeps head) Older than you'll ever be.
Young asshole: (Gasping for air as I try to stangle him) True...very true..Gag
I fling him into a recycling truck and try to punch his face in.
Yeah I am feeling a bit on the old side. So what? I tell you this ain't nothing until thsoe college age freaks start running the world. Then all bets are off.

Stuff 2k

Now that we are living in the YEAR 2000 we have to start dressing and acting the proper "year 2000" way. First we all need to wear tight fitting suits with our colors turned up. The ladies can start by squeezing into tight spandex jump suits. Next big primary color lounge chairs! Our houses need to be really clean and devoid of anything that might add humanity to them. Our cars have to have big bubble tops and sound like hoover vacume cleaners.

As far as how we should act we should start by, acting supior to everything around us...oh yeah...we already do. Next we need to be smug about our technological sublimity...almost there now. Smugness will be big in the 21 Century. Speaking of 21st Century...what the hell is Fox going to do with their film leader now that it is no longer the 20th Century? Anyway once we have the smugness and superiority thing nailed down we need to be bland. And I mean blannnnnnnd! Monochromatic moods galore! If your not bland your banned! That'll be the mantra of the new age. We need to strive to maintain and even strain no matter what is happening.

So once we can achieve the Zen of being a smug, bland, fascist, and dressing the part, we can safely begin making all the same mistakes we made in the 20th Century. And here's the cool futuristic part, we can make them all in a gleaming, brand new, Century!

General's Daughter

[0]

This movie stinks like a whale that had a sadomasochistic love afair with a general's daughter only to end up beached in the movie Jaws 2. Stiiiiiiinky! It sucks like a chest wound! And another thing. Travolta's neck is too damn thick. Get a stair master you big fat freak. And what is it about that skinny dude who also played the cheif in LA Confidential. The guy looks half dead all the time. Get a fucking blood transfusion! I am also tired of the fucking fog mahine. Turn it off! Any film maker who rents more than one fog machine should have his balls stapledto his forehead. The movie made me want to spend the whole two hours in the bathroom and brew a hemeroid. I didn't like the type style used in the credits either. And the video cassette had a scratch on it. And the night was too cold and rainy when I went to the movie store so over all I had a very non-enjoyable time with this crappy flick. Gets a 1 only because...oh fuck it it gests a 0.

Blast from the Past

[6]

What the hell is wrong with me? I like this movive and I think that Branden Frasier is a good actor. Gets a 6 only because it is filmed in LA.

Anna And the King

[7]

Fat rocks as a king of Siam. Jodie Foster gives passible brit-performance. Scenery, though not Thailand, is magnificent and gives Phantom Menace a run for it's artistic money as most beautiful film to watch. Story is sound and interesting.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

[7]

Terry Gilliam made one hell of a drug moive. This movie makes Train Spotting seem like a Captain Kangaroo show. Gilliam, if the not the king of wierd, is deffinately a Duke or other such higher mucky-muck. Johnny Depp a most enoyable dope fiend.

Finding Graceland

[8]

What the fuck is going on here? Two good movies? Yeah I know. Harvey Keitel as Elvis? But this movie really work. The mark of it's coolness is that it takes that most contrived and over-used vehicle, (American road movie) and actually ends up by being a good movie. It is a highly recomended movie on my list.

Lock Stalk and Two Smoking Barrels

[8]

I really liked this movie. Nobody had any redemaing qualities but it was funny enough to make me forget about that. Makes me want to stay away from delapidated Enlish streets. I wish I had more funny thingsto say about this movie but I liked it so much that I can't think of any.

Tea With Mousillini

[7]

This was a very nice movie that kept you on your seat without any people getting wacked by Nazi or Italian fascist bastards. It just kept plugging away. It felt very much like a movie out of the forties, you know, before all the special effects and such-crap.

LA Confidential

Saw the movie again and it still kicks ass. I never revied this flick.

1-10 rating 9! The only thing that makes it less than a 10 is that ....well I sat here for about five minutes trying to think of a reason it shouldn't be a ten and I can't think of one. So I retracked the prior rating and bequeath to this film the most hallowed rating of 10. Let it be known
hencforth that LA CONFIDENTIAL is a film worthy of being ripped off and copied by lesser film makers, and that it can justifiably become a cultural icon with complete ubiquity.
Ye veryily this film hath achieved hights that few other flicks have attained. Let the makers of this film be forwarned. Others that have tread upon such lofty scales have tumbled from the sumit of cinematic glory to oblivionic ruin. Most recently Quentin T., who made such a
fine film as Pulp Fiction now languishes in film Gehenna to be gnawed on by satan until he realises that he is just a guy who makes movies. Another man who came close to destruction is George Lucas. He was only saved at the last minute by falling into the purgatory of executive producership. So be wacthful and let not your sucess go to your head.

Stuff

As we end the all the birthdays in the 1900's (21st century doesn't begin until 2001...duh!) I look back and to my amazement I see that all of us have lived through:
Vietnam War (Director's cut with added violence)

• 7 Presidential Administrations
• MLK Jr assasination
• RFK assasination
• All of the Apollo space program, plus Skylab, space shuttle stuff etc
• The invention of personal computing
• Numerous genocides around the world
• The fall of South African apartide
• The fall of the Soviet Union
• The fall of the Berlin wall
• he world population doubling in our life time from 3 billion to 6
  (gigabeings)
• The near total eradication of smallpox

And this is just a smattering of stuff. I have often thought about how much the world changed in my grandmothers life. From a world with no phone, car, radio, movies, tv, refridgeration, electric appliances, pandemic plagues of influenze that killed 40 million people and no reliable drinking warter and sewer to the world of today. If our world changes this much by the time we all start hitting 80+ years. Holy crap man! And right now we are running things so it all seems to make sense. But wait until we are in our fifties and my kids start running the world and inventing stuff and not bothering to tell us how things work. They'll take it forgranted that all of us old folks know everything about the world and how it works; wich we won't. We'll watch 4-d hypervision via the global-mind-net, or whatever, and be mistified by the complexity. We'll fake it for our kids. Pretending to know how we fit into the new world. And it'll work for a while. Until they catch us swimming amoungst changling sharks in our naked ignorance and then they too will wonder about how they will see the world when they grow old and are nolonger at the wheels of control.