JOURNAL: alternatefutures (Jim Schuler)

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  • The facts of life 2001-10-30 21:43:47 Well, first things first. Here's an update on my Outlaw Star DVDs... They still aren't here. Hopefully the postal employees are on the last disc, as I would like to get it in my hands sometime this year. Alright, on to todays lesson. I'm writing this because I notice quite a few people still don't "get it."

    What is the difference between a crime and a war? A lot of times there aren't much, especially when dealing with organized crime, so this confuses many people. So, I'll come back to it later and we'll concentrate on when to use the police and when to use the millitary. The police are used in areas where the government controls the ground rules. For instance; with a search warrent you can break into the suspects house, you can supeaona witnesses, if you're following the suspect in a helicopter, you can reasonably sure they won't pull a stinger missile out and shoot you down. Police. The millitary, however, is an instrument of foriegn policy and is used when the government cannot set the ground rules. For instance: you could have all the evidence in the world that John Doe blew up your skyscrapers, but the government in FuzzyWuzzy Land isn't going to hand him over because they signed off on John Doe's actions. Now, if you don't believe this, by all means, form your own little police possy and try to get John Doe out of FuzzyWuzzy Land. I hope that you have your will made out and that your idea of a proper burial is having your corpse eaten by vultures after your body is paraded through the streets and mutilated by the crowd.

    So, let's define whose a criminal and whose a soldier, shall we? A criminal works for a financial gain or they are disorganized acts of violence motivated by emotional distress or psychotic tendancies, while a soldier works for a political gain. The mob may have given Chicago the best government money can buy, but that was to facilitate it's goal to run it's illegal operations safely. Flying two planes into the World Trade Center may have allowed Bin Ladin's group to gain some money off of stock purchases, but that was secondary to their goal of killing as many Americans as possible. Besides, all that money will go into training more suicide bombers and buying more weaponry. Now, there are gray areas in here, of course, such as radical millitia groups who often try to hide behind the Geneva convention as they honestly believe they are at war with the US Government, but as our constitution prohibits the use of the military on our own citizens on our soil, we run into a problem there.

    So, what's the moral of todays lesson. If we REALLY want Bin Ladin, we would nuke the crap out of Afganistan and turn the desserts of Iraq into a sea of glass for good measure. If we just want to make it look like we're doing something while being completely ineffective, we would hold our breath until the Taliban allowed us to send Officer Barbrady to arrest a heavily armed and well defended group of fanatics who are more than happy to die if they take you with them. Perhaps we would take the Clinton approach and launch a million dollar missile to destroy a three dollar tent and another to take out that all important aspirin factory. We don't want those terrorists getting relief for the hangovers their going to have after they celebrate our stupidity all night long.

    You see, here's the big problem. With the way the Middel East is set up, you can send them all the love and understanding you want. You can have them over for a picnic and let them sleep in your house on a nice comfy bed while you take the couch and still, some of these people would take the opportunity to rape your wife and butcher your children. The media and schools are set up such that ONLY anti-American and anti-Isralei doctrin is taught. The only way to stop this in Afghanistan right now is to shatter the government and make sure we're good friends with whoever comes to power. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Taliban isn't very popular with the general populace of Afghanistan. As long was we replace the government with a moderate group (ie, someone who doesn't hate the US enough to advocate our complete and total destruction) who doesn't treat their people like total and utter crap, there will be some progress and they will get at least a ration of the love and understanding we send to them. Until then, we need to send bombs and troops, not candy and flowers. 
  • Leave for a weekend... 2001-10-29 02:02:27 and EVERYTHING goes to hell. Well, maybe not everything, most of it was already screwed up. The thing that really gets me is while I was on the road up to Milwaukee, Tripod took my site down. It's like they purposly waited for the moment when I would be powerless to even say "F*!K YOU!" Bah... screw 'em. Let's see, what else is FUBAR. Oh yeah, my bank account... it seems I can buy whatever I want without it affecting the ammount of money I have. Interesting... On the surface it seems like a great glitch, but one of these days the sh*t's going to hit the fan, so I need to fix that ASAP. Then there's the unresolved issue of my Outlaw Star DVDs... it seems the Postal Employees in Oregon want to watch them first. Well, I hope they enjoy them, I really do, they just better be in good condition when they finally get here.

    So, let's see, I guess I should talk a little about the State Street party. I wasn't going to dress up as anything this year, as my costume last time kinda prevented me from seeing anything. No, really, I had to be led around by the hand and be talked through by my friends to make sure I didn't trip over a curb, fall down a manhole or bump into some big, drunken guy named "Bubba." That was a great trust building experiance, but not really what I signed up for. So, this year I went as the Great Ordinary Guy! Yeah! My host in Madison (Eric) was dressed up as a Green Beret, which under normal circumstances would have gotten a protest rally centered around him. Meanwhile my former roommate (Justin) and his girlfriend (Jessie) were dressed up as Star Wars characters; an Imperial Officer and a TIE fighter pilot. Strangely, no one got the TIE Fighter costume, they kept yelling "Darth Vader." As for the Imperial Officer, most everyone thought he was supposed to be Hitler. There were some good costumes floating around out there, but the most common ones were the slut, whore, or slutty whore costumes. Actually, I'm not even sure if they WERE costumes. Then there was the "just wrong" costume as someone dressed up as an anthrax letter... he didn't get the hand writing right though.

    Anyway, Eric neglected to tell us that he wanted to spend the evening in a couple crowded and smokefilled bars, and Justin and Jessie didn't bring their IDs (when you don't have pockets...) so we basically left him. The problem was he was our ride, so we couldn't simply leave when we wanted. Anyway, eventually we got the opportunity to get out of there... well, two of us did anyway. One of Eric's freinds took Justin and Jessie back, while I was left to stay with him inside another bar. The good thing is I found out how to get people to trust you. Allow me to explain. Durring his second barhop we again left Eric, but we were going to meet up with him THROUGH THE BAR WINDOW. You heard me. We were going to stand outside the bar window and supposidly he'd see us and take us back. Anyway, as is the nature of Eric's plans, they fell apart/got changed/ignored, but he had to tell us this somehow. He couldn't simply go outside and I couldn't go inside because of this nice long line and a bouncer at the door, and the glass didn't conduct sound very well. To make matters worse, none of us could lip read very well. Anyway, I had to make arangements with the crowd outside to allow me to peek my head inside. Of course, as soon as I asked everyone said "no way" "screw you" "go to hell" or some other such comment. What got them to come around was the promise that if I tried to cut anyone, the whole crowd could have fun beating the living crap out of me. They readily agreed, some a little too readily for my liking. Extreamly long story somewhat shorter: I wound up staying another two hours, they got back safely.

    What else happened durring the weekend... oh yeah, Eric's roommate has a cat. This cat is psycho. It thinks my right arm makes a very good scratching post. I'll be sitting down, drink some alcoholic beverage or watching some anime, and suddenly two sets of claws and a collection of fangs would be attacking me. When I was trying to fall asleep the demonic creature actually stalked me three times! It would hide behind a subwoofer, with his head peering over it and looking at me. Then it would move to the side of the subwoofer and croutch down low. As soon as my eyes were off of it, Satan's gift to felines would dart under another futon in the room. Then... the silence... After a while, I'd begin to relax, and that's when it lunged on top of me. Fortunately it didn't get the concept of a sheet, and after not finding any interesting bodyparts to go after, it would jump down... only to start the process again. I will never complaign about my cat ever again... 
  • The Tripod collapsed and now the camera's broke... 2001-10-26 19:14:06 Well, we all knew it was bound to happen. The great pinheads who run Tripod have kicked me off for "violating TOS." In otherwords, I really didn't violate it, I just used too much bandwidth. Maybe if I had a website devoted to some stupid topic like "the top ten reasons I like cats" or "how to make frozen fruit pops" then no one would visit it and my website could still be up. So it looks like I'll be moving over to FeaturePrice much sooner than expected, which means I need to get some more cash. Fortunately everything is backed up on my computer, as well as on Zip disk, so I should be alright, it just means I'll be out of buisness for a few weeks. BTW: TommyRude's server is still up, so you can still get the high quality version of MIMH. 
  • TYRUE 2001-10-24 19:56:46 Hooray! It came! Silly Animenation, why couldn't they have told me they actually shipped the thing? So, I now have the little Outlaw Star toy... it's not real accurate in terms of detail but it does give me a far better idea as to the overall structure. Worth half the money I spent on it (the other half went to the Gene and Melfina characters that came with it, which I could do without). I'm still going to need my collection of screen shots. It seems the studio couldn't decide on a consistant version of the ship, so I still get to take liberties! Yea! Now, it's important that it appears accurate, but it also has to look good as well. Some things can just lose alot transfered into 3D. So tonight I'll get working on the new model.

    Go Anthrax Go! This is going to seem really cold/cruel, but I'm glad the terrorists are using it. Why the hell would anyone say something like that? Well, think about. We tend to be a reactionary lot and the majority of our Politicians have problems thinking two seconds into the future. So here we have this Anthrax, which isn't really contageous and is easily treatable if detected, being sent to all this highly visible people. Suddenly, since our "fearless" leaders are threatened, they now find that yes, they can look into the future, and they're seeing Small Pox, Ebola, and host of other diseases. They're going to have to implement a line of defense, and the Anthrax threat will be used to test it. So I feel safe knowing we're being attacked by Anthrax. We're going to be getting some much needed experiance before something MAJOR happens. I do feel sorry for those who have died, and I now have respect for the postal service, probably more so than what I have for the members of the House. 
  • BVNGH 2001-10-23 19:24:37 Finally got a decent (as in, it actually gives specifics) review on my SMJ AMV. Thanks iserlohn for the response. I can't really criticise it, because I did ask him to do it :) Ah well, it least I can stop complaigning that it should be on the "Most Under-Rated" list. Now if only those people at Mindwarp would get their review done. I submitted it, so in theory...

    I've started squeezing blood from rocks now! I've begun extracting footage for my Outlaw Star vid from the second disc collection, which has to be one of the most useless sources for footage out there. The whole reason I bought this disc set first is to make sure I'd buy the rest, the theory being if you buy the worst of the series you'd realize that it only gets better and get the rest. Finally, after about six months that theory is paying off, well, no, my involvement with AMVs is... last time I try that again. Anyway, I'll probably wind up with about 10-15 seconds of footage from those nine episodes... as I said, blood from rocks.

    Amazon delivered. I now have my own copy of the CD, so I won't be a bastard for this video using a downloaded MP3. I guess the CD's OK... it's not going into my permanent roation but it's also not going to becomes a coaster. It'll probably be one of those CDs that you have to grow to like. The funny thing is, I wanted the model from Animenation to come the quickest, followed by the DVDs. So, of course I'll be getting everything the opposite order. Hell, I don't even know if Animenation has even shipped the thing! I'll probably wind up getting the thing three months from now... and I'll be pissed.

    This weekend I'm going to be heading up to Milwaukee to get together with some friends, the we're going to head out for Madison for their State Street Halloween celebration. If you don't know what Madison is, it's the most liberal city in the Union next to Berkley, CA. In other words it's a college town populated by rich students who don't have a single clue how the real world works. It's always fun to visit places like this :) Hell, it took them three weeks after the WTC tragedy and a huge debate before they allowed students in the public schools to say the pledge of alliegance. They need to make an announcement beforehand though saying it's OK to not participate. What are these people even doing in the country anyway?

    Well... I kinda strayed there... hmm... Anyway, this is for pyro72: Weren't you the one who said in your journal that special effects aren't necessary? If so, then why are you conceeding defeat already? That's no fun :( Hell, my CG could look like crap, and even if it does look good there are a bunch of anime fans who would hate me for doing it, so it's not such a long shot for you to be able to beat me. 
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