...holy crap. Awesome kid. Also, special guest appearance!

http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/08/24/batman-beyond-returns/

They're bringing back Batman Beyond! At least for a miniseries - though there's the chance of more.

Hot diggity!

http://www.CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com/censorship

Go check it out, and send the letter if you agree with them - I just did!

I purchased Borderlands over Steam, and was hooked right from the opening movie; I have been greatly enjoying the single-player experience.

However, the multiplayer setup for this game is simply horrendous. For a game marketed as being multiplayer-oriented to not have something so simple as a working lobby system is surprising, to say the least.

Please, PLEASE fix the Borderlands multiplayer on PC - otherwise I cannot recommend this game to others, something that I would very much like to do.

(my response to Comfort's defense of his re-publishing of The Origin of Species here)

...is that he completely fails to mention the fact that he has cut out several chapters from the book. If he were publishing a copy of "The Origin of Species" with his own introduction added, that is fine and dandy. If he were to publish it with his own annotations added in, in Comic Sans font, then that's peachy-keen and far out. The problem is that he has not published the entire book.

His version cuts out Darwin's own introduction, as well as several full chapters, with no mention of their omission. Comfort conspicuously fails to defend that decision, or even mention it at all - perhaps he's hoping that it will simply be overlooked.

By giving away a butchered version to students, many of whom have likely not read the full version, he will not only be arguing against a dead man, but one with duct tape over his mouth and one rotting hand tied behind his back. It is both indefensible, and highlights perfectly Ray Comfort's lack of interest in a fair fight - he doesn't want to convince people on the merits of his point, he just wants them to agree with him and to hell with critical thinking.

Anyone who is playing Borderlands on PC may be interested in this:
http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=79043

All sorts of useful tweaks on that thread, including how to disable the (annoyingly long) opening logos and how to enable third-person view.

I'm rejoining the game, I think...I should be playing on the Sentinels server, at least to start. Anyone else have a 'toon there?

Pissed off? No? Well, you should be. Here's why:

Here's yet another case of a hospital ignoring the reality of a same-sex relationship in an end of life situation, even after being faxed the legal documents showing full control over medical decisions. The couple, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, were getting ready to board a cruise in Miami with their adopted children when Lisa collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

Janice then sat in the waiting room with their children, being refused any access to her partner and information on her condition for hours on end even after the hospital had the documents showing that she was designated as Lisa's healthcare surrogate to make medical decisions in such a situation. And a federal judge just dismissed her lawsuit against the hospital. You can see the ruling here.

Catch the details and a link to the judge's ruling at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

FurFright starts tonight! Well, tomorrow really, but I leave after work today for Waterbury. It was a blast last year, and I'm hoping it's even better this time around...

If you're there, and see a guy in a labcoat who's not Uncle Kage, say hi!

Captain Lou Albano has died.

Nevermore shall we do the Mario, for the Captain is done.
Granted, I only vaguely remember the cartoon from when I was a kid, but I always loved that silly bit.

I actually really would love a plushy Thread Leech (not linking it again, go look at my last entry. So nyaah!). Does anyone know a good custom-plush artist? Or better yet, a custom-plush artist who might be at a certain upcoming convention weekend after this one?

I dearly desire a plushy Thread Leech.

I will consider my DVD drive defective until I find the right person to yell at to get region encoding OFF this fucking thing.

I will personally give $200 to anyone who can prove that they have kicked the shit out of the person or persons responsible for this idiotic little bug.

Put simply: if your DVD player is region-encoded, any disc with a different region from yours will not play in your player. The sole and only reason for the existence of this region setting is to prevent you from buying, say, an American DVD a few weeks before the European release of a movie you like, or vice versa. Otherwise, any DVD player can play any DVD safely.

DVD-ROM drives originally ignored region encoding - those are called RPC-1.
Nearly every DVD-ROM drive released today is RPC-2 - that is to say, it enforces region coding. You can - sometimes - change this region. A limited number of times. PERIOD. Once you've used up all the changes? Even if you install the DVD-ROM drive in a different computer, you're stuck with whatever region you ended on.

This is, you may realize, not something that's advertised on the packaging.

I don't give a fuck who I have to piss on to get this fixed - I am starting at my computer's tech support line, and moving on from there to the DVD-ROM manufacturer until I get a) an apology for selling me this piece of shit, and b) some help getting it set up to be region-free. WITHOUT voiding the fucking warranty.

Yesterday was an awesome day. It took me far longer than I expected to actually get out of the house - a little bit after 4 o'clock was when I walked out the door - but between stopping at the library and grabbing snacks (and alcohol) I got to the party at around 6:00.

The party itself was in the backyard of a farmhouse - which I had expected meant a former farmhouse, but turns out to mean a house with a literal farm taking up part of the backyard. A chicken coop (evil little feathery bastards...), a small but functional corn field and a pumpkin patch, as well as a couple of other areas I think.

We messed around for a bit, hung out and chatted (I bought an airsoft pistol and reserved an airsoft shotgun - three-shot and a really nice range! - from Santo), and jumped around on a trampoline for a bit - another reason for me to lose weight, since I REALLY like trampolines.

When it started to get dark, folks started up a bonfire - and we hung out chatting around the fire, with the bunny's hookah. The cat was running around playing, too - a very cute black kitty, not much more than a kitten, and very sweet-tempered - and wound up a) killing a menu and b) hanging out on Cubbi's lap for quite awhile, just helping him with his supervillain impression.

It started to rain so we doused the fire (mostly), and headed under cover - just in time for the food (yay chicken wings! Boneless!) to arrive and the rain to stop. We hung out nearer to the house under the tents after eating, then folks started leaving; I sobered up while hanging out inside, watching Ichi the Killer (gross movie), then headed back home at around 1:00.

All in all, an awesome party, a great chance to relax and get some time in with friends! I should hopefully be seeing Zombieland today, too.

I should not have listened to Star Wars music this morning. "The Battle of Yavin" is running through my head now on nonstop repeat. Damn you, John Williams! Why must your music be so addictive?!

I am feeling better now. Just FYI.
The bad mood really only lasted for about an hour...writing in LJ helps. Hope I didn't depress anyone else too badly!

By the way, Painkiller is sex on toast. I have a steam-powered stake gun. It fires TREES at people. And if you hit them, it can pin them to random objects behind them!

The Painkiller itself is pretty boss - "lawnmower" is the right word for it. Except instead of lawns, it mows bad guys. A lot.

Never would have heard about this game if not for Zero Punctuation - but you've heard of it now too! Go grab it on Good Old Games, it's only $10.

I am going to die.
So are you.

Someday, just like every day up until twenty-five years ago, I will not exist. There will be no me - the viewpoint, the "me" that looks out at the world from behind my eyes, will be gone.

It won't be too far in the future, really. I may, if I'm very lucky, see the year 2100. It is extremely unlikely that I will see 2109. A hundred years from today, the mind generated by the neurons firing in my brain, acting with and acted upon by this body of meat and bone, gut and sinew, will have ceased to be - like a computer disk overwritten with a magnet, reduced to random ones and zeroes. Or more appropriately, like that disc tossed into an incinerator - zero, zero, and nothing more.

I know that this is quite a bit maudlin, but every now and then it just - hits me that I will inevitably die, that everyone else will die, that the Earth itself is really, truly doomed - that in the end, in the far distance, unless our understanding of the world is fundamentally flawed (and I hope, I pray, though I cannot believe that it is), there is a wall that nothing in all of existence can pass.

One day, everything will stop. Every star will die. Every single civilization, no matter how powerful, no matter how beautiful, will go to dust - and dust will go to nothingness, protons degrading until nothing is left but silence.

I think that I may be depressed right now. Maybe I just lack the ability to forget this once it occurs to me.

I talked to God yesterday - in the privacy of my head - and there was no answer. There never has been, whether I talk alone or speak aloud. I can't worship something that won't show its face. I can't believe that there is something after, as much as I want to.

I don't know how people deal with it. How do you forget? How do we not think of this, every day, every hour, somehow not considering that every moment past is one moment closer to oblivion?

Death is not sleep. Sleep has waking on the other side, and dreams. Death is stopping, forever, no retrieval - format the disk, melt down the drive, and scatter the ashes on the wind.

I cannot think of any better day of the year to post this than today.

Everyone needs to see this at least once...and really think about it.



I was crying a little bit just now...I'm not entirely sure why.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

That is all.


Also:
Oh, you bastard.

Have I mentioned that I love comedy actors?