I had plans for several posts on diverse topics, but seeing as how none of the thoughts were congealing into structured, rounded, complete articles, I have decided to write partially formed, abrupt, unfinished tidbits on things none of you care about.
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OK, that last picture of Redemptrix was mean. Here's one of the ship in broad daylight, as an apology.
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| Redemptrix, as seen by a space-bug about to get gooshed all over the bow. |
The Murloc and I are pleased with the recent developments on Strip Search (not what it sounds like). That, by the way, is our official title for the show now, including the "not what it sounds like" part. We were on Team Lexxy (along with Team Katie), so bringing her back from the dead, so to speak, was well received here.
Although, I'm beginning to agree with some forum commenters who are pointing out that the game is, perhaps, ill-suited to the competitors. The elimination challenges are to produce, in 90 minutes, a short gag comic strip. This makes sense, seeing as that's the type of strip produced by the makers of the show. However, some of the comic artists on the show do not draw short gag strips, but write longer-form dramatic narratives. This makes them rather at a disadvantage for the elimination challenge. It would as if someone made a show called "America's Best Driver" wherein half the contestants were NASCAR or IRL drivers, and the other half were professional chauffeurs. I mean, they're both forms of driving, but neither is directly comparable to the other. If you made all the competitions favor one of the driving types or the other, half the competitors would be immediately out of their league.
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A section on Sherlock Holmes, spun off into a separate piece, originally appeared here. Don't think I'm not gonna count it towards the number of quick takes.
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So the Clone Wars cartoon show has ended. The Murloc and I just got around to watching the final episodes. I was pleased with the ending. It basically makes the show the story of Anakin's apprentice, Ahsoka Tano. The show started with her being assigned as Anakin's apprentice, and ends with her (spoilers) leaving the Jedi order. This also goes a little way to help answer the question of what happens to her after Anakin turns dark. If she's not in the Jedi order, she wouldn't have been killed by the clones, so she has a chance of escaping the Order 66 executions.
The final episode(s) of the Clone Wars hinted towards a, I think, completely underutilized and ignored theme of the prequels: namely, that the Jedi are evil. At least, they are during the Clone Wars. Maybe at one point they were guardians of peace and justice, but by the time of the fall of the Republic/rise of the Empire, they were totally corrupt. This was first really highlighted and brought to my attention in Karen Traviss' excellent Republic Commando novels.
As exhibit A in this argument, take the clones themselves. The Jedi are giving (under very mysterious circumstances) an army of human beings, specifically engineered and cloned to be soldiers. They are essentially slaves, since they do not volunteer to join the Grand Army. They are engineered to age quickly, so even if they survive combat, they have genetically-programmed short lives.
And not a single Jedi ever at any point questions the morality of using human beings in this manner. Not Yoda, not Obi-Wan, not even Anakin, who you would think might be a little sensitive to the whole slavery issue. In typical George Lucas fashion, he has a character loudly and in great detail describe Chekov's gun, then forgets about it for the rest of the story. But that's what Expanded Universe is for, right?
In the end, it turns out the Jedi are stupid-evil, because this army obtained in highly questionable circumstances ends up being their undoing. ("You mean, someone who died mysteriously 10 years ago, allegedly ordered an army for us around the time of his death, with funds obtained from who-knows-where, and it just so happens that the army is now ready at exactly the moment we need it? I see absolutely nothing suspicious about that!")
The morality of the clone army could have been a great plot point, and driver of Anakins fall. Perhaps he objects to the slave-like nature of the clones and refuses to command them in battle. Obi-Wan is sort of with him, but uses them out of necessity. Mace Windu is all for them. This could easily push Anakin away and make his fall to the Dark Side more believable. The Jedi order would have fallen because they rotted from within.
In the Clone Wars series finale, the traitor to the Jedi order, who framed Ahsoka, says she did it because the Jedi had become corrupt and were warmongers. Ahsoka begins to wonder if the Jedi aren't perfect and leaves the order. As she ought.
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So I've been teaching Damien to play Minecraft.
It started with him just watching me while I built St. John Notch (which, by the way, has been restored via the use of a level editor; I recreated a new world with the same seed, then copied and pasted the intact parts of the cathedral to the new world via an editor). Then I showed him the minecart and tracks, and made a four and a half-minute minecart circuit for him. Then he found out that there are cows and sheep and pigs and puppies in the game. Then I showed him that I could spawn cows and sheep and pigs and puppies. Then I showed him that you could "pop" them (when you kill them they die in a poof of dust). Then I showed him how to pelt them with snowballs. Then I left him for an hour and took a nap. When I came back, he was still giggling maniacally while pelting farm animals with snowballs. He'd also figured out how to dig holes and place jack o' lanterns. I showed him how to move up and down. His next move was to dig a hole straight down, out the bottom of the world, and he died.
OK, respawn and come back. Next I showed him how to spawn animals, and he started spawning sheep and cows and pigs and wolves everywhere. I left him again, seeing how long it would take for him to spawn enough critters to crash the game. The Murloc checked on him, but noticed that the wolves were eating all the sheep and baby cows and pigs, and he couldn't get a farm going. She decided to try to tame the wolves, but not knowing quite how, ended up left-clicking (instead of right-clicking) them with the bone.
(Those of you who have played see where this is going.)
Left-clicking attacks a critter. When you attack one wolf, all wolves in the area will attack you. When The Murloc informed me that she couldn't tame the wolves, I came back to check why and found this:
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| Three-year-old logic: if it's funny once, it's funny a hundred times. |
He thought it so funny that he wanted me to dig another hole and spawn more wolves in it so I could blow them up too.
We'll need to keep an eye on this one.
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