Packbat's Journal

Writer's Block: All-Nighter

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:45:47 GMT

When was the last time you stayed up all night? What were you doing?

The lock-in at X3O! Yep, that was a fun night of videogaming, indeedy! (And we rocked out in the Left 4 Dead tournament!)

FiveThirtyEight: Worst. Damage Control. Ever.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:31:16 GMT

I've generally tended to take the position that while the people running Iran are a bunch of reactionary thugs, they're at least a fairly intelligent bunch of reactionary thugs.

After this revelation on Iranian Press TV, however, I'm not so certain.

FiveThirtyEight: Worst. Damage Control. Ever.

(As I mentioned in the Google Reader repost, NY Times noted that Iranians are allowed to vote in districts they aren't registered in. This in no way suffices to explain what we're seeing here.)

"The Wire", Season One

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:08:44 GMT

I mentioned picking up the complete first season of The Wire - finished that today.

I'll say this much: I wasn't disappointed. Glad I paid for that one.

Not an update.

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:42:20 GMT

I haven't read my flist in ages - so many ages, in fact, that I actually lost entries.

But for the record: every personal journal on my friendslist I read.

(P.S. Excluding work-related material, the main news in my life is my new DVDs: the first ADV English-dub/sub DVD of Azumanga Daioh - only five episodes - watched, Volume One of Batman: The Animated Series, watched first two episodes, and The Wire: The Complete First Season, watched first three episodes. Oh, and I should probably write a review of the first Dresden Files book, but I need to reread it to do that. And I want to run a Truth & Justice campaign next month, so I really ought to prepare...)

Tank Man

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:38:59 GMT

On the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square, the New York Times "Lens" blog made two memorial posts regarding the photographs of the Tank Man: first, the classic four photos with comments from the photographers, and second, the fifth photo, unreleased until now.

I am sure I can say nothing to add to these. But I am wondering: what of the driver and other crew of that lead Type 59 tank? It seems to me an incredible thing, that these four PLA soldiers, presumably with orders to drive away the protesters from the square, saw this single man (incongruously carrying plastic bags, as if he was just out shopping) walk out in front of them ... and they stopped. Their guns were silent. Ashamedly, the driver turns the tank to go around the man - like you might turn your car to avoid a pothole - but the man puts his body in the way, seventy or so kilos of meat and bone against thirty six thousand of metal, and ... I don't know. Were they confused? Or did they, somehow, in the midst of the machinegunning of hundreds of people, look out through their periscopes and see a person, a fellow human being, before them?

I have been thinking for a while that nonviolent protest is the strangest sort of moral judo - if war is an extension of diplomacy, seeking victory by the destruction of your enemies personhood, then this is likewise an extension, an anti-war, seeking victory by the construction of your own personhood. The acts of passive resistance bewilder because it is impossibly to justify as war. It can only be understood as human.

We don't know who the Tank Man is. As far as I am aware, we don't even know who was in the tanks.

Mishle Packbat: The Proper Shape and Stiffness of Moral Strictures

Wed, 27 May 2009 02:14:28 GMT

Hi! I'm going to talk to you about morality, because I'm arrogant and you're imperfect.

No, these facts have no relation. Everyone is imperfect - myself more than you, I wager - and I'd be arrogant even if the lot of you were plaster saints. But the second has interesting consequences which the first permits me to address.

(And as long as I'm blathering, let me make a quick clarification: morality is not law, and law is not morality. If you find yourself interchanging the two, you need to recheck your math. Moving on.)

The thing about morality I want to address today is not the content, but the form. Morality acts on three grammatical persons - the first, the second, and the third - and among most people it tends to be different for all three. (This is why Mormons come to your door - it's harder to be rude to a face than a phone.) This makes sense except for one important factor: a lot of people (though probably fewer than it seems) get the proportions backwards, and need correction. So let me break it down for you.

In the first person - in your morality for you - you ought to be strict but fair. As some wit commonly cited as "Yahl, J." is quoted: "Perfection is our goal, excellence will be tolerated." Stick to the straight and narrow road, get it right the first time, and if you get it wrong, get it right the next time. Practice your morality with all the intensity, precision, and dedication that you were supposed to practice the piano when you were growing up.

In the second person, and still more in the third person - in your morality for your friends and for your strangers - be looser. If your personal code is the double-yellow line, give your friends the entire road and strangers two city blocks in both directions. If your personal code is the Geneva Conventions, let your friends have the Declaration of Independence and allow the rest the Golden Rule. Or, if you prefer: an it harm none, let everyone else do what they will.

Why this? Because you don't really know what's right and wrong, not to any sensible degree of accuracy. Oh, you're better off than the Hittite slave holder who, lacking our hard-won experience, never made the connection between the wretched condition of the slave and the moral repugnance of the institution, but "better off" is a long way from omniscient. And the hard part about morality is that it's chaotic - it depends on a tremendous array of details which you might (if you're lucky) know for your own situation but which you are more ignorant of the farther you look from your center of consciousness. While on the one side you want to do right, on the other you don't want to be - in fact, you shouldn't be - the one who beats people up when they haven't done anything wrong.

So how do you do this? You set an engineering margin of error - draw yourself a circumference small enough that you may be confident it (mostly) resides within the right and aim for that, while drawing for others a loop which (mostly) circumscribes the right and nudge what falls outside back in. In other words, you be the anti-hypocrite: you criticize in yourself what you let pass in others.

And that's the form to take, in the first, second, and third persons. Thank you for your patience.

Writer's Block: There Can Be Only One

Fri, 22 May 2009 12:50:19 GMT

Do you believe in monogamy?

View other answers

I don't believe in enforced monogamy, no. That said, first, most people do better in closed monogamous relationships, and second, it's not a good idea to betray the trust of the people you're with.

A brief moment of commercial lust

Fri, 22 May 2009 12:41:51 GMT

If I were not the most unprepossessing square I'd ever heard of and didn't already have a better bag, fellas, I would be all over the FreakAngels KK Field Bag like black on soot.

Ah, well.

Televicon!

Thu, 21 May 2009 16:38:10 GMT

Stolen from active_apathy, who swiped it from laurenmitchell:

Choose an episode of anime or television series you have on your computer. Make sure you're certain you want that one, you cannot change your mind once you skip this step. DO NOT TELL YOUR FLIST WHAT YOU CHOSE.
Make note of how long the episode is here: 59:59
Ask your flist to choose a time between 00:00 and whatever the length of your episode is. Be specific - e.g. 21:09, 02:42, 36:50. (No guarantees that times more precisely than the second will be respected, but feel free to try!)
Make them an icon using THAT FRAME ONLY no matter what it is. And remember, you can only use that ONE episode you chose previous, even if the person posting isn't familiar with it.

Writer's Block: BFF

Sat, 16 May 2009 00:36:58 GMT

Who was your first friend on LiveJournal? Are they still on your Friends list?

View other answers

Almost certainly nanakikun - he's still on my list, though he hasn't updated in months.

Truth & Justice

Tue, 05 May 2009 17:45:30 GMT

A man in crazy pajamas atop a skyscraper rains laser death down on the streets. He's laughing as he does it.

Below, fires bloom for the news cameras. Reporters duck debris as they yammer on about demands and manifestoes and terror.
Meanwhile, in the background, the screams of scorched innocents melt into the wail of sirens.

It makes me angry. My cheeks burn with it -- or that just might be from the wind.

The madman grows closer and closer, impossibly fast. His eyes widen as he lifts his weapon in my direction. He won't make it in time.

My hands tighten into fists as I brace for impact.

I have a set of crazy pajamas of my own.

Truth & Justice is a superhero RPG Eric Burns-White (nee Burns) recommended ages ago.

I desperately want to play this thing.

Writer's Block: Meant to Be?

Tue, 05 May 2009 13:57:03 GMT

Do you believe in fate? Why or why not?

Submitted By and2c_hersmile

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Assuming the author meant, "Do you believe fate exists?" - no, I don't.

Quick definition: fate is that which must happen regardless of any person's choices, regardless of any person's actions, regardless of any conceivable action by any conceivable person, ever. You know how Oedipus killed his dad and married his mom? Yeah - fated, had to happen.

Well, the universe doesn't work like that. If Oedipus had confronted his foster parents about the prophecy, none of it would have happened. Heck, if the weather had been a little different and he'd died of exposure on the road, none of it would have happened, and the weather is chaotic - anything you do can change it a month down the road.

Free Comic Book Day, part 2

Sun, 03 May 2009 22:12:34 GMT

Continuing yesterday's entry...

Worlds of Aspen Free Comic Book Day #4

...has four previews in it: Executive Assistant: Iris, Soulfire: New World Order, Fathom, and Soulfire, in that order. I'm guessing the Soulfire continuity sells pretty well for them or something. Anyway, all four samples are too short to make any judgements other than "the art is good and conveys events well." I don't see anything original enough to capture my interest.

Ressurection #0 - Justin Greenwood and Marc Guggenheim

Now this has a hook. Not too original, not too spectacularly awesome, but a hook, a promise of the scope and shape of the story to come. To sum up: a man who was abducted by aliens for three (two?) months is visited in the asylum by a mysterious figure after the aliens invade. In the aftermath, when the invasion is (to all appearances) beaten off, he shows up in one of the destroyed cities, writes a journal documenting everything that happened while he was missing, and is killed by the aforementioned mysterious figure ... but the journal gets out.

Now, like I said, not too original. But, as they always say, Tropes Are Not Bad - it's a hook, and it might be good.

Included in the same free comic is a short Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen story, which I didn't finish. Like I've said: Jon Stewart fan, not Colbert.

Atomic Robo, Drone, and We Kill Monsters - Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Ronda Pattison, and Jeff Powell; Scott Chitwood, Randy Kintz, Garry Henderson, Jesse McGibney, and Troy Peteri; and Christopher Leone, Laura Harkcom, Brian Churilla, Hilary Barta, Ronda Pattison, and Jeff Powell; respectively.

Atomic Robo is fun! The title character is pretty much a straight-up Deadpan Snarker, and the whole short is a self-aware extended mocking of silly superhero-story origin stories.

Drone looks interesting. Set in the traditional Twenty Minutes In The Future, it looks like the protagonists are three college-age American boys (and I use that word intentionally); the story shown is one of them who has hacked into the control channel for a team of military robot drones, where they're watching them carry out some military action. It's also established that the hacker kid has programmed up a system to control a bot if he wants, and that the other side in the war being fought by the bots is planning an ambush. It could be good, but it's not caught me with what they've shown.

We Kill Monsters is almost exactly what you expect. Two guys - in this case, the owners of a rural (?) auto repair shop - run into a big monster of some kind, kill it, and are dragged into adventure. The sample here doesn't have a lot of storyline, just setup, but it sets a tone that looks pretty promising.

FCHS - Vito Delsante and Rachel Freire

FCHS - Forest City High School - is a straight-up fiction story in a high school. As far as I can tell, it's not even a romance, although romance is present; it's just a story about a group of high-schoolers in their senior year. The art is interesting, though - very spare, almost uniform line weight throughout, occasional hatching and fills. Minimal.

Also included is a couple stories from Remake (Lamar Abrams), whose artist was actually at the comic shop doing sketches - I picked up one of his characters, Max Guy, while I was there. The comic is about Max Guy and his friends - it's pretty lightweight and kinda weird. I'm not really interested, but I can't say it's bad.

There's also a mini preview of Driven by Lemons (Joshua Cotter), which is supposed to come out later this year.

That's all the FCBD for this year, unless I drop in later this week and see something else - ta!

Repost!

Sun, 03 May 2009 15:48:16 GMT

Thanks to bliumchik, I now have a Dreamwidth invite and corresponding account - unsurprisingly, called "packbat". With any luck, this ought to repost across to LJ just fine...

Comics!

Sun, 03 May 2009 03:41:44 GMT

Today was a fun day! In between eating Greek with my dad and sis, playing tennis with my brother, and playing Left 4 Dead ... with my brother, I had a chance to drop by the comic shop near campus for Free Comic Book Day! Besides the first trade paperback of Transmetropolitan and the next in sequence of Powers, I got a half-dozen even sample comics, and read them all.

(I also go Book 1 of The Essential Starchild in the mail, but I haven't read it yet.)

Going down the list in order - first, the trades:

Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1 - Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

Yes, Volume 1 is finally back. I've been wanting it since last November, when Blake Stacey posted a panel and I looked up the free preview of Issue #1. I finally have it. And it rocks. The protagonist, Spider Jerusalem, is a total knob, but his core of (gonzo) journalistic integrity, devotion to the truth, and compassion for the underdog lifts him above his cynical nature and gives the story intensity.

Powers, Vol. 5: Anarchy - Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming

Brian Michael Bendis's deconstruction of superheroes continues to rock my socks. Bonus: now, if I ever write a superhero story, I don't have to worry about deconstructing the trope, because it's already been done!

Then the free samples:

Gold Digger #101, May 09 - Fred Perry

This is one of those not-serious comics. This kind of story can be a lot of fun - witness The Matrix - but what it really comes down to are the Rules Of (warning: TV Tropes). And honestly, I don't find it Cool enough. Others may.

Owly and Friends! - Owly: Andy Runton, Korgi: Christian Slade, Johnny Boo: James Kochalka, Yam: Corey Barba

If Gold Digger was not-serious, this is anti-serious - the titular story is about Owly putting his plants in a greenhouse, and would almost fit perfectly in a Dora-the-Explorer slot. Owly has an interesting gimmick, though - the characters speak in pictures, no words. (Or almost no words - a lightbulb and a horseshoe are used to represent an idea and good luck, respectively, and exclamation and question marks are employed liberally. These aren't words with letters, but they are quite culture-specific symbols.)

Owly is the headliner, but three other stories are shown inside - the included Korgi story was similarly lightweight, although with a more complex artistic style; the two Johnny Boo stories were silly; and the Yam story (only one page) was rather cute and strange. None of them were bad, but Yam is the only one I'd really be curious about going forward.

[entry truncated for lateness of hour - remaining four tomorrow.]

Give it a second! It's going to space!

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:10:13 GMT

Via my dad*: Louis CK on the Conan O'Brien Show, Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy.

* Technically, he posted a YouTube clip of the segment, but I figure NBC won't make copyright claims against itself.

Writer's Block: End of the World as We Know It

Fri, 01 May 2009 11:53:39 GMT

Robert Frost speculated about the world ending in fire or in ice. Which do you think is likely to end us all: meteorite, global warming, nuclear weapons, zombies, or the superflu?

View other answers

"All" is the key word in that question. Nuclear weapons or meteorite. None of the others have the pure biosphere-warping powers of those two.

Writer's Block: Swine Times

Fri, 01 May 2009 02:23:22 GMT

Are you worried about catching the swine flu? Do you have a plan for avoiding contagion or dealing with quarantine?

View other answers

The problem with the swine flu isn't that it's deadly, but that it might spread easily through the population. It probably kills something like one in two hundred who catch it, if previous outbreaks are any measure - but if very few people have resistance to the disease, that could become a two-hundredth of hundreds of millions of people, so it's worth taking precautions.

But nah, I'm not scared. I'm not even convinced it'll go pandemic.

Evomeme!

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:07 GMT

Inspired by active_apathy:

This is the evolving Internet meme. Copy this text, change it in any way you like, and then repost it on your blog. Then come back here - http://packbat.livejournal.com/250271.html - and post a link to your new version so we can see how it's changing!

Writer's Block: Community-Minded

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:22:52 GMT

The first LiveJournal communities began in December of 2000, and now there's a community for any and every topic possible. What is your all-time favorite LJ community?

View other answers

As blatantly community_promo as it may seem, it's nomicide - the Livejournal Nomic community I manage with active_apathy. It's one of my favorite games, and I'm thrilled to be playing it, still.

Writtins!

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:09:40 GMT

Coming from the maggiebloomes and the active_apathys, with appropriate edits/redactions¹:

The first ten respondents to this post making the request shall get probably-crappy sketches from me, word- or pencil-. However, they have to make a similar offer on their own blog, or be forever² dubbed a freeloader.

1. I suppose I could leave the whole "of a pairing" language in, but (a) I have no fanficcing experience and (b) my fandoms pretty much comprise, first, the original Dragnet series with Jack Webb, second, most of the Hal Clement canon, and third, Castle.

OhgodImentionedaNathanFillionshowIshouldleavenowbye.

2. Length of forever may vary. Offer not valid in parts of Alaska south of 51° 15' 43" north latitude. Limit one per customer.

Video: Noteboek

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:35:43 GMT

Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.

h/t to kirabug (who credits Jared Spool).

Writer's Block: Philanthropy

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:03:08 GMT

Do you volunteer your time or donate money to any charitable organizations? Which ones, and why?

View other answers

I donate a lot of blood to the American Red Cross. Mostly because of Hal Clement.

No, I'm serious. I was reading Hal Clement books all the time as I grew up, and the biography always mentioned that he donated a lot of blood.

AnZac Day

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:47:32 GMT

pecunium reminds us: April 25th is AnZac Day.

Writer's Block: LiveJournal Book Club

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:19:13 GMT

Out of all of your favorite books, pick just one you'd recommend everyone read. As a bonus: why did you pick that one?

View other answers

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. Picked it for two reasons:

It's well-written.
It's funny.

Seriously. If you can read in English, I think you will enjoy this book. J. is one of the greatest raconteurs of all time.

P.S. It's out of copyright - 1889 - so it's available everywhere online.