So badass. I love online series.

Trailer from io9

Okay, the fact that I'm linking this from BoingBoing, and that it was from Making Light, says deeply strange things about the world we live in. It either makes you feel really small, or really giant, and I know which I prefer to feel.

We Love XKCD

If the "late 2000s recession", like the Wiki describes it, has a theme, it's probably Fallen on Hard Times, remixed by Marco Hietala. It could probably describe the vast majority of the small towns in the Midwest that the tides of time and history simply trampled over, as I've come to believe. Some people simply refuse to change.

I'm still working on figuring out when the culture of the United States changed from rural to urban, but I think that'll be a long project, like the diplomacy.

Anyway, if por nada anyone else, Fallen on Hard Times es mi Recession Grande theme. It only seems appropriate that someone out of Nightwish would come up with the theme song to something as decaying and Gothic.

Bah, you know what? I can ramble into the void a little more. At least yo tengo a few readers on here... one of whom knows German more than Spanish, which I figure makes it simply demented that I'm cranking out some of that. Oh well!

Anyway, I read about a fifth or a sixth of Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. Heavy reading, and I could have read more, but I learned what I intended out of it. It was a little like Antony Beevor's Berlin, but instead of a litany of rape, it was a litany of bread lines and train riding.

I had only heard of them a little, with... not reverence, not awe, for the people who went through that, but perhaps a deep admiration and a weird respect for not daring to speak of it. Ugly and existentialist. Oh well, like Stefanie said, clawing a path into the world is what your 20s are for. I'm coming close to caving, though.

The thing was written in the 1970s. That wasn't a long time ago.

Perhaps?

All right, I had to mention Moiraine, because that's about the uberest Moiraine I've seen.

But you, as I think of it, I should mention the entire swarm of the Ebook covers. They all rock. Mentioned because The Shadow Rising has probably one of the coolest Mat remixes I've seen, too.

You know, I find it difficult to believe there are people in the world who haven't read The Wheel of Time. Especially as I'm rereading it and rediscovering the coolness...

Anyway, go look at something cool.

Moiraine Damondred's ultima momento on the cover of The Fires of Heaven's Ebook.

My mind is blown. Between the agelessness and the expression, that is so Moiraine. On one level, "I have to time this for the exact specific moment and be sure things are set up right..." and on the other, "Lanfear, I am going to kick your ass."

All right, so I see why it's groovy to watch things straight through instead of starting a half hour before the ending.

Princess Mononoke makes a whole lot sense more sense that way.

I don't follow very many webcomics, because, like any pulps, they can be either boring or time consuming, but I have followed a couple. Currently, I'm following la segunda comic from those who created A Miracle of Science, Afterlife Blues.

Around page 127, holy bog, has it been running for that long, seems that the primary conflict is finally starting. Looks like quite a bit of nifty... Brody, the thief whose role is not yet completely known, standing on a street corner, with Liraz, a cyborg woman with blood on her hands in a leather jacket...

Afterlife Blues

My mind has been completely blown. I find it difficult to find words to describe my feelings. I re-obtained Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game, a fun, complex, and emotionally and rationally heavy book, and, like I say whenever I reflect on the book, I feel as though I'm reading the stories of my ancestors. The warriors in the British-Russian Great Game were spies and adventurers... and the similarities to my science fiction interests are striking.

I can barely describe it, and then I find something in the current version of the book I've obtained, from St Paul, Minnesota's public library. I glance at the back pages of the book, usually placeholders, and find that someone posted a newspaper clipping. I love finding notes in old books, and am beginning to think I should write in them more. You never know what might change someone's life.

But this clipping in this book was incredibly startling. Have I checked out the St Paul book before? Had I simply not seen it before? I don't know. The clipping is an article from the New York Times dated, in careful, precise handwriting, 10 - 6 - 96. The category is A New 'Great Game' and the title is Afghanistan Reels Back Into View.

The very first paragraph tells of Afghanistan's last Communist President, Najibullah, and that he translated into his native language, Pashto, the precise book that I have on my desk beside me. The article tells about the Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989, the fucking Taliban's "ban on women working", the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and a warning from the Russian national security adviser.

Mr. Najibullah told United Nations officials "they can see how our history has repeated itself. Only if we understand our history can we take steps to break the cycle." He didn't complete his effort. A photo with the article shows Najibullah and his brother's bodies hanging from a Kabul traffic post. Just... hanging there.

Yeah.

I, I don't think I can describe how I feel about this, though something feels fascinating and important about reading it. I really hadn't expected to find something like that.

...

Following this in a different tone, I do know how intense I've become, and why, and the noir heaviness of this subject. I hope I can keep from becoming a krieger of der dunkel macht, and because of that, I think I need to increase my efforts on learning a Central Asian language. I need to really understand their culture.

It might take a while, but I thought I should alleviate this with a little bit of light.

Scorpius on his own series! I'm not sure whether it will be a miniseries or a full-throttle monthly one, like Farscape proper, but nonetheless! Scorpius! This is a very happy Farscape nut. Can I get a hell yeah?

Farscape: Scorpius from io9.

The wind howls outside. I can't see further than a single block.

Fucking midwest. Fucking blizzard.

Be seeing you.

Glancing through the archives of zis thingy, and adding the appropriate tags, I see a RPG Purity Test.

"Written a journal in character?" Yes!
"Written a song or a poem in character?" ... I, I did ...
Aaaand the next one in the list, aaaand the next one...

In contrast to the former one, I have way more experience with 'Sensitive Roleplaying' and 'Livin' La Vida Dorka'. About like it.

Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	55.66% Will kill for XP	53.6%
Sensitive Roleplaying	56.96% "But what's my motivation for this scene?"	54.7%
GM Experience	81.16% "Um... You guys are in a 10'x10' room..."	69.3%
Systems Knowledge	97.18% Played in a couple of campaigns	90.4%
Livin' La Vida Dorka	64.37% Goes nuts on the weekends	63.3%
You are 74.49% pure Average Score: 68.8%
Take The Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Test and see how you match up! (By The Ferrett)

Whedon's one of meine favorites... whether he's writing BtVS Season 8, Angel or his Astonishing XMen series. The latter, so far the first two volumes, Gifted and Dangerous is surprising the arse out auf mich. If they were remixed as films, they were blow all three of the current movies out of the water. No question about that.

Whedon, in most of the things he writes, uses a huge cast of supporting characters that have quirks of their own. It's not like ridiculously epic scale, usually, but I think, like in Farscape, even the lesser characters have at least a quirk that stands out from the crowd. I think this is one of the strengths of comics, especially.

Like someone said about Claremont's XMen, which is half of the fun of it, every character is a Mary Sue. They all have insane powers, overblown personalities and pure pulpy cool.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the first few pages of Astonishing XMen #14, but I thought they were rather intriguingly powerful. Cyclops had his shades off and just stared at the sunset. When the guy puts them back on, the blue background of the setting lessens and the red starts up again.

Jean Grey asks him, "Did I make you sad?"

No, and not for mich, either. Just introspective... and pleasantly melancholy, but that's not quite sad, from my perspective. I wear glasses, too, and I hope people who look at that panel who don't wear them learn that, yes, this is how it feels when I take them off. I'm seeing the world with my actual eyes! Usually I don't get to do that.

SFSignal asks various people for their favorite anime movies. The usual obvious get mentioned - Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Miyazaki - but there's a couple on the list that I haven't seen!. Such a situation needs resolution as soon as possible.

As an otaku, I suppose I should say what meine favorite anime are, in reaction to the post.

1) Whatever anime I'm watching
2) The Read or Die OVA
3) Akira
4) Paprika
5) Stand Alone Complex. I don't give a rip if the thing isn't a movie. It's astounding.

Really, any SF/F anime I haven't seen yet I need to see.

Anime List - SF Signal

Haiti had another aftershock today. The States send 4K more troops. I don't think I can, on a personal level, imagine the scale of the horror in that city. But it isn't like it isn't unimaginable, it's happening right now and there's things to be learned. I wouldn't have thought about this a decade ago, but now it's right up there in my mind.

It might get repetitive, but oh well.

Think of this as a reminder.

Yeah. I can how this works. Frightens the fzk out of me. Why the hell would anyone do that?

Bible Code Weapons from Professor Cole and BoingBoing

UPDATE: Trijicon, Inc. issues a press release in which they state they will stop manufacturing the guns with verses and will provide removal kits. Hey, rock on. Update from the Tangentials on RPGnet.

It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Last year, or any of the years before, I wouldn't have noted a holiday, other than a day to stay home from school or college or a day when Dad's home. I'm probably the only person who read the MLK speech included in the "welcome to SMSU" envelope when I first enrolled in the college in 2004. I think it was the Letter from Birmingham, but I don't really remember it.

I've changed to the core since then, and it's fascinating to see that, which I've riding the rapid changes of the world, the petrified rural people around mich at the moment don't change. They. Don't. Ever. Change. They probably never will, either, and it disgusts mich. Since reading Chris Moriarty's Spin Control, I even understand how it is to be a homosexual, slightly more, and I'm anxious for Laura Anne Gilman's Hard Magic from the perspective of a polysexual goth.

Thing is, I love having meine buttons pushed, and I always have. But unlike then, I'm questioning things I never, ever would have understood.

For instance, mi Mutter likes reading biographies. They're not up my alley, because I would rather read about the actions of a person. I suggest that she read about King, or Gandhi, from whom King drew ideas, but she has no interest. I cannot understand that, and that type of reason is why I don't think I will probably get along with the Volks again. They don't want to fight. As far as they care, they're retired.

If it came down to it, would they have rebelled against the 1940s fascists?

And there's meine... acquaintance, Grant, in Minneapolis. I've had it with subtlety, and am not hiding again. If he reads this, so be it. Meine Schwester and I traveled to Grant's apartment at least three times in 2009, and from the beginning to the end we listened to his racist rants. He loves the words "nigger" and "porch monkey"... and even referred to the standing President as the latter. That made meine Schwester angry. At one point, he, and Eric, meine Bruder, actually questioned, "Was Hitler such a bad man?"

Were I to tell Grant about King, would he refer to one of the greatest rebels the United States have seen as a "porch monkey"? I know the answer to that. And that is why I have a deeper respect for this holiday. I've always had an admiration for the Black Civil Rights Movement, and feel pure anger, watching their works fade into the distance, or even oblivion.

I won't forget.

Honestly, I've been avoiding the subject of the earthquake, because I hardly know anything about the culture and the history of the area. I could look it up on the Wiki, sure, but I don't think that would be especially useful in this type of immediate moment. So I went to BoingBoing, and roamed around to look for things. And what did I find?

An interview with a sustainability activist and blogger, Catherine Laine.

Similar to how I felt with the Red River flood and the Cedar Rapids flood, I would adore getting down there, getting my feet on the ground, and being a citizen reporter right in the middle of the situation. But since I can't, well, this sort of thing works well. And, the main reason I'm mentioning this, is that Laine suggests "note this on the calendar and send help in a year."

Rebuilding takes a long time.

Announcement here.

Bog yeah.

Lured by Kristine Rusch's Signals column in the IROSF - the second to last issue, alas - I've been reading through other articles in the magazine. I ran across an article with the title Japanese Science Fiction and yes, there are references to anime and manga. I read through some of it, and then the writer speculated as to why anime has been ridiculously popular in the United States.

The writer brings up a book that suggests an influence of 9/11, and the possibility of "an apocalyptic event on a bright sunny morning." I could probably reply to this, as anime has far deeper history in this country than the attacks in 2001, and I certainly was an otaku before it, but I can understand why he thinks that.

From there I remembered the latter of the two "Artists on 9/11" and "Writers on 9/11" volumes I've been reading in small bits and pieces, suggested by Pat Brace, a professor from whom I've obtained insane amounts of Slayerverse graphic novels. On a whim, I grabbed the volume. Almost anyone that comes to mind is probably in that. Darick Robertson and Neil Gaiman are the first two that come to mind, though as of the moment I haven't got to their stories yet. I'm reading them in order.

Since meine own transformation on 3/20, I'm looking for anything with a raw intensity. The 2nd season of SAMCRO was d4mn near perfect on a level I haven't seen since Farscape's 3rd season or BSG's Daybreak), Flood by Andrew Vachss blows my mind and makes mich get to really like a transexual hooker named Michelle, and Transmetropolitan shows mich precisely where I need to be, right now.

Instead of that, there's a pair of people whose works I should read further into.

The "Writers on 9/11" issue was written in 2002, if the proximity tells you anything. They're short stories, and a few are cheesy, but Dwight McDuffie's "Wednesday Afternoon" feels incredibly raw. Static, the main character, has been feeling rage, where he's not used to being helpless... which I can completely understand now. And then, when teenagers come in with a baseball bat and rip up their Arabic friend's place, Static's friend says "Great. Yesterday Pearl Harbor, today Kristallnacht?" That's astounding noir... and astounding wisdom in 2002.

There's also Klaus Janson's picture in the book, which I've stared at perhaps literally for a few hours. It's a guy standing on his apartment's balcony on the left of the page, phone in his hand, leaning outside and poised toward something, maybe to move, maybe to help out. On the right, buildings into the distance, with a huge red and orange blotsch. Because there's a weird unsettling feeling about that image, I think that's precisely what I felt on the actual day of the attacks but didn't understand until 3/20.

I don't think I really need to read more, or post more, about this. That image was the answer I was hunting.

I'm not quite sure what The Edge magazine is, though a few of these essays I find interesting. They're a series of odd thoughts to brew on. I've read Stewart Brand's essay, which is a parallel to the physical and distance conflict I find I have with writing circles and close friends. He uses the word "guild", which is highly similar to the band of brothers and nakama thing.

Howard Rheingold's essay points out the conflict of digital being a source of many distractions, and that made mich think of Kim's Game. Maybe it's a little weird that I've read everything around Kipling, but haven't actually read it yet.

The page has a huge list, over a hundred, and the ones I read were interesting.

From, where else? BoingBoing