Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

I have massive production artist envy. I gush at the emensity of all the cool brick-a-brack that people had to do to bring this beheamoth off. Me like the movie. Me really like the movie. Finally somebody poured a can of Wup-ass into the Jedi food bag. Acting is still pretty stilted, but far better than SWI. It is fitting that Jar Jar Binks, as I forsaw, would spell the doom of the Republic. It is ironic that the entire destruction of a civilization could be tracked to that watery fart smeller.

Best part of the movie:
Yoda kick'n sith butt. No medi-chlorian crap

Worst part of the movie:
The credits. They came too quickly

Biggest Question:
"Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in our struggle against the Empire....." Father? Well it certainly ain't the big DV. So Amidala must end up shacking up with the king of Alderan. And pretty damn soon after the intital coitus with AS that lead to the twins. Boy that is really going to piss Anakin off.

Suspension of disblief required for this movie: (1-10) 8.5
Coolness Factor: (1-10) 9.95
Character quality: (1-10) 7
Story quality: (1-10) 8.5
Want-to-see-it-again-factor (1-10) 10
Overall: 8.79 out of a possible 10

Hlaf-Life: The show so far

So the clumsy Mr. Freeman finally gets up the stinking ladder. He tosses a grenade and goes through the hole. Bang bang bang and the bad guys are dead. He sneaks up to a broken girder and puts a dart in the head of each of two thugs who want to kill him. He jumps his way across some busted shit and send another two thugs to Valhalla. Then he is at this silly landing pad thing with this Ospray that comes down and starts dropping more thugs. He caps both dudes then drops a demo pack and runs for cover. The osprey comes in again and just as the two slimes touch down they are blasted to jelly. Now Freeman finds this cannon and blows open a door.

Q: How much more of this poop is there?

The Cave

To: Osama

From: Cave Clan

Chill out and loosen the diaper on your head! Nobody took your stupid crackers. Can you say "Rat Infestation"? It's gotten so bad that Wakeem made a cell phone call to Termenix. Suffice to say the rats at that end of the tunnel are history. Of course that wasn't due to the Termenix people but to 2 15,000 pound daisy cutters!

Important notice: I know this sounds like beating a dead horse but please refrain from using the cell phone. The great Satan can pick up calls on his radio. Even calls to exterminators. Tin can and string is still okay.

Back at ya

The Clan of the Cave

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings

Okay boys here is the review of Lord of the Rings:

The Lord of the Rings is a technically brilliant film, eye-candy equal to all sorts of other big-ass films. Dramatically the film is good too. I like Frodo and Gandalf, and especially Bilbo. I liked the wood elf queen lady too, only because she was the scariest thing in the
film....BUT:

The human characters were nearly all stereotypical. They were unshaven, and almost all uninteresting. Unlike Star Wars Episode-I, where I wanted the non-humans to get the hell off the screen before Iblew chunks. Lord of the rings made me want to see more of the creatures and less of the angst filled Lucy decendants.

I can't wait to see the next film!

On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give it a 7. I will give it more points when the next film comes out. Until then I am holding them hostage.

Darwin award nominee 2001

I nominate Osama bin Hide'n...er...Laden

I would wager he will be dead before the year is out. He desreves the Hitler trophy for suicide since he will go down in the history of the new 21st century as committing suicide by pointing a super power at his head and pulling the trigger. His death will also be one of the most expensive suicides in history. Though on a per/capita basis Hitler still reigns supreme as the committer of the most expensive suicide.

Making more fun of Osama:
Osama is a master of disguises as well as a master of...well... I guess being a cave man.

Currently he is in the guise of Osama bin Hide'n, though he has been spotted as Osama bin Run'n, General Frank suspects he will soon take on the persona of Osama bin Bleed'n followed by Osama bin Die'n. Later on he may apear as Osma bin Rotten and finally, in the future. he will be known as Osama bin Forgotten.

A Knight's Tale

Comparing this to it's romanesque counterpart "Gladiator" I would have to say that this films was much.....

Well it wasn't as artsy-fartsy. It wasn't a drama. It wasn't particularly well acted. It had an appallingly simple story.

In short it kicked Gladiator's sinewy buttocks. Gladiator is a ponderous, meledramatic, old movie copying, cliche' battle scene, gumbo of doom. A Knight's Tale is a funny, exicting, fastpaced, doesn't take itself seriously at all, chutney of sublimity. I thought the use of Queen in the opening joust scene was superb. I thought "this is actually going to make me laugh."

A Knight's Tale is right up there with the original Robin Hood, Robin And Marion, Henry V (both versions), and Beckett as grand medieval films.

Another film that could be showhorned into this lot is the Thirteenth Warrior. This film was another pleasant surprise.

The Amazing Mezmo

From T.A. Mezmo
TO: Friends
RE: New Vice President
Mezmo speaks the future:

Dick Chenny will resign in less than six months.
John Ashcroft, former senator who lost to a dead guy, and current Attorney General, will be chosen to succeed him.

Moral? If you are so unpopular that you can loose an election to a dead man you too can be Vice President.

Potential? If Bush needs to be replaced, say because the helium ballon that is his head comes undone from his body and floats away, then the looser to a dead guy will be President.

I love dis' Country!

Dufus is...well a dufus...but there is hope

George "let me be the Hurbert Hoover of my generation" Bush has just handed his buddys more doe to waste. At least we married couples get a break too...right???? A reduction in the so called marriage penalty won't take effect until 2011. In fact most of the tax cut that would benefit the most tax payers won't happen until the BIG DUFUS isn't even in office; as if that guy would get elected again. Oh sure we all will get a little check, big deal. The only thing keeping me from vomiting every time I see the, illiterate, verbally disfunctional, simple minded cobb-salad head, is that his energy policy will cause the good ol' US to throw him and his fellow cobb-salad heads out on their ears. Please note that all the people with any amount of brain power in DC are stepping, quickly, away from this dude. McCain, for instance, sees the 16 ton weight hurtling toward Bush's head. Jeffords is already gone. Only the blind Trent Lott and his ilk, like automatons, are robotically receiting the useless mantra of their dead religion. On the foreign policy front the Dufus is on his way to another Palestinian train wreak. With no agreement in hand, and a cease fire that isn't really happening, his team is going to try and stop the violence in the mideast. Sure they are. I really hope this dude doesn't get us in a war. It may just be paranoia but look what the dufus has been able to accomplish in such a short time. Nuclear destablization due to his uncoherrent and disjointed attempt at a missle defense sheild. Ignoring Russian economic problems (5,000 nukes and thousands of tons of bio and chem war agents up for grabs). Alienation of US military by keeping them out of the decision making process. Alienation of NATO by claiming, ignorantly, that US is sholdering the brunt of Balkan burden and will pull out. Alienation of UN by his party's unwillingess to pay our dues, causing the US to be ousted from the Human Rights Commission. All I can say is that if a Democrat was responsible for all the bull shit that the Dufus has done there would be more impeachment hearings.

On a good note the state of Washington's supreme court decided that it can still have an open primary. This is good since it might prove to be a precident for other states to become open. The importance of this should not be underestimated. If all states had had open primaries in the last general election we might be talking about what President McCain is doing instead of Dufus. Aside from financial reform the biggest hinderance to thrid parties and or outsiders is the closed primary where, as a voter, you are mandated to vote for only members of your own party. With an open Primary you can vote for who you want. Closed primaries benefit big party politics. With soft money reform a small victory can be acheived but we really need electoral reform to bring about a fairer system that is more truely representative of the will ofthe people.

As far as JM is concerned the last six months should leave little doubt as to who is the more politically astute. Acting as if he had won the presidency with a mandate for reform JM quickly assembled a winning coalition to move finance reform through congress. Relegating the Bush supporting conservatives to the sidelines, JM has pointed the spotlight squarly on himself and his agenda and now Dufus will have to pony up. Who is courting the Democratic Leadership? Who is the one man Bush seems to have to have in order to advance any of his agenda? God I wish the US would have got this guy as the President. If Bush is a Hoover wating to happen the J McCain is a Roosevelt. Remember that ol' FDR, that consumate political gamester, the guy that owned the smoke filled room, was a republican right up untill the time he ran for President.
PS: Angienva@aol.com thank you for all the info and keeping us McCain supporters together. I have forwarded all your mail to Donna, my wife.

Earth future

Using the concept that the entire universe (meaning all that is) is basically a giant fractal equation I predict the following for the future of the Earth.

What is the Earth? This is a question that many people just don't ask. They, in my opinion, wrongfully call the Earth a rock, a planet, or simply a body floating in space. I think this is a wrong description. That description, if accepted as a true and complete answer to the question, sets us on a very wrong course for defining our roll in the cosmos. Remember the universe is a fractal, at least in my own mind. That is if you look at all its parts it basically resembles all its other parts. You cannot really get to the "fundemental foundation" of the cosmos since it doesn't exists only an ever deepening fractal rabit hole.

What is the Earth? The Earth is a life form, not a planet. It has come into existance through cosmological procreation and has gestated for 4.5 billion years. It started as a signle cell life form. It went through a state of non-self awareness where all the cells developed, multiplied,
developed specilaization. It is a not a prepetual motion machine but it is very good at existance. Certain cells provide oxygen so that the other cells can exist and do their work. Other cells provide a caloric source for self absorbtion. Imagine that you only ever needed to eat once. Then you live only off your fat cells. Same concept. Earth was born with all the nutrients it needed to keep going for a very long life span. As with any life form the central nervous system and becoming self aware is the last stage prior to birth. Quite recently the Earth has become aware of it's own existance and is now pondering what it is for. At the moment it is wrong in its assumption but that is only a momentary lapse in judgement. Its nervous system is still trying to define it's existance relative to the body inwhich it lives.

As a fetus the Earth is aware of itself, but unware of the outside world. It has no idea of the future that awaits it. I predict that the Earth will be born into a larger cosmos and will have to mate with another life form such as itself in order to breed. The qeustion is where Earth lies in the larger lifefrom? Is it, like a bryne shrimp destined to be a fat cell in the cosmos? Only to be utilized as food. Or is Earth, once self aware, part of a larger cosmological nervous system? How this breeding occurs is open to conjecture. It cannot be denied that it is self aware. This being agreed to the fractal equivalent is a higher life form on Earth. Plants are life forms but they are not selfaware so we cannot use that part of the fractal equation as a guide to what the earth is. But the Earth could be the fractal equivalent of any animal with a central nervsous system. Is it a Brine Shrimp or a Human? Is it going to be used, like fat cell, or is it going to be used to define the cosmo's existance in a greater, and as yet unkown, creation.

Just some thought by a weirdo

SW II

From Yoda:
Bust a gut, I do, laughing at your mirth
As old as time I may already be. But Christopher Lee too is as old.
Check out the paste-job of his head on young punks body as he does his Jedi break-dance.

From Jar Jar:
Mee-sa been promoted to Grand Moff Yes-man of the soon-to-be emperor.
Lucas says hee'sa gonna clone me into the imperial crowd in Return of the Jedi.

From Anakin "Cry"walker:
Didn't you get it?!? Nobody understands my character!?! I am the chosen one! No I'm not I am full of pain because my little braided hair thingy is too tight. My eyebrow ridge is huge too. Is that a pimple on my nose?! Ah Fuck! Where's Amidala I gotta bone her. Oh no!
Now I have an erection at an inoportune time!?!? Ahhhhhhhhh I'm so confused! And to top it off I got my right arm cut off. Now How am I gonna....never mind.

From Obi Wan:
Shut up young one. You make me want to hurl. I, on th other hand, look like way more like a stud muffin in SW2. Though I think I need a tie- dye head band. Peace man!

From Palpatine:
I am evil be my boy toy! You know the only reason I am evil is that I havn't got any since...

Shmee:
At least my death seen lasted longer that Yoda's

Yoda Again:
A dumb desert scank, you are. My death scene? Significant it was.

Shmee:
At least I was a real person you silly wrinkled Kermit frog.

Amidala:
I'm not really into the whole "Star Wars" thing. I just do it for the money. Kinda like Alec Guiness.

Alec Guiness:
Don't compare yourself to me you American slack-ass.

R2D2:
Beep Pong Twitter

Translation: I'm a fk'n millionair and I have never had to speak a single line. I rule!

C3P0:
I seem to live a very circular life. Tatooine, space battles, back to Tatooine, space battles...Do you notice that when R2 gets shot he never just explodes, doesn't even loose a leg. Me? I loose feet, arms, my head...all the friggin time!

Boba Fett:
I am a puddgy faced kid!!!!!! Too much 4% milk.

Lord Dooku:
I kicked ass in Lord of the Rings and again in SW2. Pretty good for a guy who's older than most of the cast combined.

Smoke Hole

Say I found a real cool thing out about my property! I was covering up a pile of compost and turned around to see a smoking hole in the ground. I thought "hmmm? Firey opening to Satans bedchamber? Or severed burning power line?" I bent over to look at the little volcano to find a cable as fat as my thumb molten in color and smoking as the rain hit it. It was expertly placed so that a barefoot human could step on it.

I called PGE. They came out, four guys in red coveralls and gloves and hats, two trucks. The foreman scratched his head. "Yeah thats a big fat killer that is. Look at this thing Frank (name changed). " Frank, "Damn. So wheres it connected to?" Frank asked me. I told him it was connected, so I guessed, tothe barn braker box. They went over to shut it off.

"I already shut that off." I said.
Frank walked over anyway, checked the box, "Say this is already off."
"Yeah I shut it off when I noticed the smoking hole." I said.
"Did you turn this off?" Asked Frank.
"Yes." I said through cleanched teeth.
"Well Thats a good thing. But why is that line still hot?" Frank said.
"I''d say it's probably bypassed. Thats not good. You'll have to take the box apart and removed the wire that way." The foreman said.
"Me?" I asked.
"We only cover the line to the box. This hear line is your own private line." Foreman said with whimsy."

So I get to have a burning hole that can kill you in my yard until I get a private contractor out here? That doesn't sound good to me." i say. Foreman twiddles his waxed mustache and scratches his head, crotch scratching would be pointless in the heavy coveralls. He walked over to the breaker box and flipped another switch, one that was too hot for me to want to touch. The line went dead. PGE squad then left me standing in the gloomy twilight as the rain came down andthe cable steamed to a cold state.

Back in the kitchen, after a dinner of cold pizza and beer (actually it was pepsi but I wish I had a beer at the time) I dug through my evergrowing pile of home owner bull shit paper and found my home warrenty. "Electrical?" I thought. Did it say anything aobut it? Yep! I called the number and was informed that the call would be monitored for quality assurence. What the fuck does that mean. If I don't like the call will some champion of customer service jump onthe line and send the offending rep to the indernal regions? Who could say.

Early in the day, on NPR, I listend to a story about call-centers being relocated to Bangalore India. The empolyees study American accents so they can speak without sounding like their from the sub-continent. I only bring this up since the lady I talked to was difinitely from that region.

I gave her my policy nuimber and then described the problem. " Found this severed power cable in my yard....smoking .....and PGE say it could deliver a leathal dose of electrcity. yada yada yada..."
"Is the electrical line on the inside of your home?" She asked with only a hint of an accent.
I sigh, "No its in the yard."
"It is not inside the home?" She asked.
"My yard is not inside the home no." I said with slight sarcasm, but more with sense of gloom that I belong to such a race of troglidites. How in the hell did we ever get to the moon? Or figure out how to procreate? or breathe?
"Well if the line is not in the home then it is not covered by your policy." She said.
"Okay." I said with extreme minimalism.
"Thank you call again." Said Ms. Napahasapanalan. (not her real name or what she realy said.)

So now I have to pay some jerk to come and disconnect this stinking cable. Some butt-crak showing swine with a pension plan that will allow him to retire to his vacation home on Bermuda. Some fat slob who's gonna get 35$ bucks of my money just for opening his truck door and stepping onto my land. It sucks. The last electrician te be on my land, a slob I didn't haveto pay, was named Tiny. He drove a brand new Lincoln Navigator, had a huge gold wrist band and wore dark glasses like Sam Giancona. He could have been an extra in any one of a number of Gangster flicks.

I think, "Should I call Tiny?" I can envision the conversation this way:
Tiny, "So...tough guy...wah-chu need."
Me relating the cable story yet again.
Tiny, "That cable? Forget-about-it. It's like, you know, it never happened. No trace, no cable, no nothen."
Me. "What will it cost?"
Tiny, "For you? I'l make you an offer you can't refuse............"

Supreme court is full of poop.

Clarence "uncle" Thomas wrote for the majority that pot used for medicinal purposes can't happen. What a bunch of poop-heads. My doctor can perscribe me a bottle of demeral that could kill an elephant but he cant perscribe canabis that hasn't killed anybody. Canabis, unlike codine, valum etc, will cut the pain wiithout putting you to sleep. You may want to eat fifty tacos, but that ain't a bad thing if your under-wieght do to your illness. I guess its more important to those moralistic nazi fuckheads to let people live in pain and suffering so that they can fight their bogus war on drugs. To quote W.S. Burroughs "thanks for a nation of finks where know one's alowed to mind his own business."

While those ivory towered dickwads drink their cognac (a bottle of which is enough to kill some people) they can rest assured that people will live out their lives either doped into delirium or in agony. Thanks morons.

Lowest Common Denominator Continues To Plummet

Perchance did you see the Frontline program on Tuesday? It documented pretty much what the Onion was talking about. They had examples of the current level of sludge being pumped into the empty heads of our youth. I don't know what was more nausiating, the clips of such events as "Poop Diving", a show where a guy dons a snorkle and mask and jumps into a sewage treatment pond, or the neck-tied scum bags who will litterally put anyting on tv for a buck, trying to justify their existance.

I want to poke another hole inthe flimsy Dufus machine

Dufus wants a missle defense system. The question that nobody in the media or alive on earth seems to want to ask is why? Why have it? If the answer is to protect against small nuke states like Iraq then the system is not needed since no nation, no matter how idiological or extreme, is goingto accept itself being completely wiped from existance. A missle would be the stupidest way to deliver a nuke to the US. A missle is traceable. We would know exactly where it came from and take the appropriate, if terrible, action of destroying the offending nation. In otherwords Iraq would have to be led by complete idiots and as much as we would like to think we live in a cardboard world we do not. It would be national suicide to launch a missle at the US. No nation is going to do that. So what is the other answer to that question? To prevent a full scale strike by a large nuke power? Well lets say that the, for lack of a better term, Nuclear Bush, that we deploy is 99% effective at catching all incoming missles. That's a pretty effective system. I can't imagine a globally based system of anything being 99% effective but lets pretend. For some reason, that I can't imagine, Russia fires a full scale strike on the US and Europe. Thats about 2000 missles. The Nuclear Bush catches 1980 missles! Holy cow that is effective! Bush is vindicated! The system works flawlessly! Only 1% of the nukes make it through! This means total destruction and pretty much the end of the world, as far as humans are concerned. That 1% can pack up to 200 H-bombs. Remeber the multi-cluster warhead? Thats 10 H-bombs per missles. The US will take 175 and Europe 25 direct hits from 100 megaton H-bombs. Does any rational person think that we, as a nation, could survive being hit with that much firepower? That 1 % Is more than enough to totally wipe out every major American and European city. And lets not forget the 7000 nukes that we fire at the ol Russians and the other dudes we don't like. Closing time for the human race. A missle defense is not needed to contain the threat form little powers and is useless against super powers. I don't think the Dufus is that dumb. I think he's doing this to provide much needed boondoggle projects for General Dynamics, Lockheed/Martin, and the other players in the offense industry. One thing the missle Bush will do effectively is make Russia and any other power with semi large arsenal think about making it larger. The best counter to a expensive US missle Bush is a lot of cheap missles with as many warheads on them as possible. I really can't stand this jerk of a President. Oh to have the leacherous scumbag back in the white House or hell bring back Nixon! I can't see how destablizing asia with his nonsensical China policy and putting in jepoardy 30 years of nuclear treaties is helping make the world safe for anything. Besides the easiest way to do nuclear damage to the US is to ship a bomb in on a boat and blow it up in a harbor. Or ship in the parts and assmble it in an Apartment building. Missles are expensive, for poor terrorists, and big and hard to hide. They are traceable. Stick fon on a boat or in a van, it's way cheaprer. Once it goes off it automatically erases all traces of where it came form. Who would do we retalliate against? "Oh come on own up! Who did that?" Defending against that is something we need to be working on. Not some floating fart gas missle-bush.

We are idiots

Human beings are pretty much organic tape machines. We hear something and then play it back over and over again. Unlike a tape or CD we tend to garble the play back so, after main iterations the message is almost unitelligable. Such as this:

Original message: John's Dog has flees

Repitition: This guy I knows dog has flees

Repitiion2: That guys freinds dog has flees on its nose.

Repitition3: You know that reminds me, Johns got some flee bights on his nose too.

Repitition4: Flees tend to hang out on the noses of dogs and people. They like it (poor content being embelished with made up information)

Repitition 999: Today Congress has enacted landmark legislation banning certain types of chemicals thought to bring flee born viruses to the nasal cavity.

I listen to people talking to each other at work and I can tell if they are getting their info form a tv show. Most people try to pass off this info as some deep college induced knowledge that they had to struggled to attain. They spout off about all sort of shit. Experts on the Cuban missle crisis and Jazz abound. Funning thing is that the experts usually change their area of expertise just about a week after the latest round of PBS or Hitler Channel documentaries. If I bring up some other topic that hasn't been on tv inthe past week people get that 1000 yard stare and search their tv memory banks for info they don't have. If your going to talk about something you've seen on tv then just say so. Instead of trying to co-opt Ken Burns.

Worst Actor of the Universe Awards

What do I mean by that? The universe is somewhere between 15 and 20 billion years old. That is kind of a long time. In that time period certain actors have arisen that should never have been allowed to be on the silver screen. I do not consider the masses of lesser known actors and bit players. Only those that, through some fantastic failure in cinematic judgment, were allowed to play leading or semi leading roles in films tht were widely distributed. And there are many of them that have strove to rise to the level of worst actor i nthe history of the universe. I am sure that there are countless billions of other lifeforms that too have nasty thespians who should be squashed under 16 ton weights, but I can only concern myself with those that belong to the Homosapiens of Earth.

So without further mumbo jumbo here he is for all to recoil from and vomit at:

Joe Don Baker has no business being affilated with Humanity. In truth Humanity and the planet Earth itself should distance themselves from this being. No selfrespecting planet, solor system, or for that matter galaxy, should be seen in the company of this puffy, bejoweld, no-talent back-woods, banjo piken, shit hearder. Who or what in the name of all that is holy decided to heave this stinking pile of actor onto the breast of comely humantiy. Thankfully others of my race have taken up the standard and they too fight to keep this 220 pound rack of fatback off the screen and in the spotlight of denegration and woe. MST3K has done much to redeme the Earth and Milkyway with their constant attempts to further denigrate this macabre assemblige of san-talented idiocy. Yet they are now gone to the rerun-yard. Please don't let this pox and blight on the good name of Earth go un faught against. Do whatever you can to let the universe know that you too think JDB should be eradicated.

Joe Don Baker Porkapalooza!

More Megalomaniac concepts

Fright: This is a funciton of how feared your troops are. If the enemy is in Fright of you they will drop their weapons and run screaming from the field. They will abandon castles, town centers, they will "run away!" Like lemings, if faced with the sea they will rather drown than end up at your mercy. Certain kingdoms may be unable to be in fright of you should they be in a babarian state. You can even stop a war between to kingdoms by simply sending in your forces.If both kingdoms are in fear of you they will stop attacking each other and go back to a nuetral stance.

I was also toying with the idea of marriage. Medieval times were the high tide of marriage diplomacy. I think that you could secure an allied stance with a kingdom if you offer marriage to the other sides princess or prince. Of course you would not want a stupid allience. You would want a marriage based on the largest dowery you could take hold of. You personal glory rating would impact what king would be willingto offer his daughter to you for such a purpose. This Queen would be an NPC stationed at your captial town or imperial city. If she died then the kingdom from whence she came would go back to the previous status. You can marry as often as you need. However you cannot kill your wife or divorce her. This also brings up the subject of heirs. If you produce an heir and that npc is 21 years of age or older upon your death then there is no civil war and that heir will inheirit all your personal status unlike a chosen succesor who will use it's own status upon your death.

Texas crap

This is a colossal waste of money, time, and manpower: I want to know how much it cost the illustrious state of Texas to get their 50$ fine?

Atwater was driving her two children home from soccer practice in 1997 in Lago Vista, Texas, when she was stopped by a police officer who had noticed the three were not wearing seat belts. Texas law allows police to make arrests for routine traffic violations, except for speeding. The officer arrested Atwater, handcuffed her hands behind her back and took her to the city police station. A friend looked after her children and her pickup truck was towed away. Atwater's mug shot was taken and she was released after posting bond. She later pleaded no contest to the seat belt offense and paid the maximum $50 fine.

I assume the trooper is making about 45 to 50 k a year so he's pulling in around 20 bucks an hour. You have the police personel who took the mug shots, Then you have the court personel to do the paper work. I think that it cost way more money than 50 dollars to harras this woman. Oh yes lets not forget the amount of money spent bucking this case all the way to the United States Supreme court!!!! Admittedly she should have had her kids seat belted in the car. but that is not the point. Not even close to the point. We have really screwed up priorities if this is an arresting offense. This country is screwed up. Our whole neighborhood couldn't oust a drug dealer from a house up the street yet we have the money to arrest soccer moms. You can drive 100 miles an hour and get a ticket and go on your way, but not where a seat belt and your in the slammer. What a load of
crap.

The dufus hard at work pleasing the chinese

After pretending to act tough we now know how the big dufus was able to get the flight crew out of China. He caved on the sale of destroyers to Taiwan. So any time China wants to tell us what to do all they have to do is take some hostages? Way to go Mr. President! If Clinton did this he'd be up on impeachment charges again. As much as I think Clinton was a scum bag, and I disagreed with his China Policy of trade and look the otherway, at least he never bent over for China. I am so very glad that we have a strong leader in the White House. I only pray that he is not the Nevil Chamberlain of our time.

Orders and stuff for Megalomaniac

Sea born commands:

The Admiralty: Kings Lord Admiral is an npc that is available as soon as you are king. Like generals an Admiral can control a fleet of ships of any size and can be given commands to carry out. They can also be chosen to succeed as emperor.

Admiral level commands: Take fleet X and attack Y until Y has recieved Z% damage. Take fleet X and blockade port or town Y for Z weeks or months.
Take fleet X and patrol sea sinking all enemy ships rebuilding ships as required etc.

You have all the AofE commands plus several others. You can garrison troops on any vessal. You can order warships to blockade a harbor. If a ship in a blockade is sunk another one is built by the admiralty and sent to fill it's place. Ramming is another order. Ramming is not an order that does the ramming ship any good but will 100% sink an enemy vessal if the rammed vessal is equal or lesser in size than the ramming ship. You can outfit any ship with a steel ram. This can give the ship the ability to ram two ships before itself sinks due to damage.

Nasty things that can happen to your kingdom:

Famine: Everyonce in a while the crops will fail and when they do all work stops. Nothing can be constructed and the population falls by 10%. Famine is an equal opportunity killer in this game.

Plague: Not good at all. It can start in any TC and spread to adjacent buildings and people. Trade carts canbring it to other towns and ports. Ships can take it to other kingdoms. It is technically possible to kill off the entire population including solders and even you. People stop working turn sickly green for a few days then keel over. Nothing can be done but burn the infected structures down, sink ships, raze castles, etc.

Draconian measures must be taken. Quarentining the infected to isolated areas unitl they die is a good thing. Burning down infect structures, greek fireing groups of the sick. As your empire improves global civilization the chance of plagure breaking out gets slimmer and slimmer.
bizzare yet cool orders you can give to the entire population;

Once you are emperor you can give Edicts. And Edict has an effect on all the population of the kingdom recieving the Edict. You can quickly tell a kingdom to go on crusade. When and entire kingdom is told to go on crusade it mobilze all of it's inhabitents to go and attack the kngdom that is labeled as infidel. Once orderedthe kingdom will put all it's resouirces into troop creation and offensive millitarty action and all the civilians become skirmishers. This is a powerful command but can have dire consequences if it fails.