|
|
|
March 5th, 2008
03:40 am - Final Fantasy 7 for the NES
Check it out.
This is quite possible one of the coolest things ever.
|
12:07 pm - RIP Mr. Gygax
You invented an industry, and now it's outliving you.
There's a nice short post about it over at Dean's World, where I've left some thoughts.
|
12:18 pm - Welcome to Academia, Leave Your Rights At the Door
School administrators have over the past several decades increasingly clamped down on the freedom of speech, thought, and association of students - and even faculty - at their universities in a clearly unconstitutional manner. It is ironic that those people who in the 60's protested and demonstrated nonstop during their academic years have turned around and done their best to squash those among their students who would do the same thing.
Here's a case of a man reading a book about Notre Dame students fending off the KKK, and being branded with a racial harassment charge which will mar his academic record for the rest of his life. He sat down and read a book during his break time: A book about how brave students stood up to evil thugs for freedom and equality. But Mr. Sampson is branded a racist for reading it by the enlightened sovereigns of Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). This is not right, and it is certainly not legal.
Did you know that a university student doesn't even have the freedom of speech to post a picture of himself on myspace to share with his friends? It's true. One woman was denied her teaching certificate and the degree she earned for a picture of her wearing a pirate hat and drinking out of a cup. To be sure, the picture's caption said "drunken pirate" but this hardly seems to be the sort of thing that would mark an individual as being unworthy of teaching middle school. Administrators have abused their power in similar ways in my other cases, but fortunately seem to be getting the idea that people like to be goofy and have fun in their lives sometimes - and maybe, just maybe, they like to share pictures of it with their friends. The situation is ridiculous; publicly funded institutions like the vast majority of colleges and universities cannot infringe on constitutionally protected speech, even if that speech happens to be on Myspace.
The worst cases though, are those administrators that believe that going to college isn't about learning and getting a diploma to represent that. No sir. These administrators believe that college is about forming the correct (i.e. their) opinions on things. You don't have free speech, or even freedom of conscience. You have only the freedom to conform. Amusingly, the administrators pushing this are so-called "Liberals" who preach freedom by day and do everything in their power to destroy it by night. See a recent conference sponsored by University of Delaware's Residence Life directors for proof. Dictators that hold "liberal" positions are hardly liberal - and being liberal, believing in freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and all those other wonderful freedoms we take for granted in our society is generally a good thing - despite what they may claim. Totalitarians are still totalitarians, whatever guise they hide themselves in.
And that is my rant for Academia today.
Thank you FIRE and other organizations for doing what you do.
|
01:42 pm - Returners FFRPG Beta Release is a Go!
Just in case you've been living under a rock, I decided to post this for you. The Returners Final Fantasy RPG is currently reaching the beta phase for the third edition of the rules. You can see more details at Returnerblog.
|
06:44 pm - I Have a Nightmare
And now we are upon the time in which all fortunes are reversed, and the depths of madness rise towards us at a frightening pace. For this is the land of Halloween.
Picture, if you will, an underground city. It's surrounded by a moat, and for the most part there's only one way in or out - through a massive iron gate preceded by a rotten wooden bridge festooned with crow's feathers, skulls, and bones. The iron gate is barred by massive iron doors so that no mortal may pass into the strictures of the city, but the unholy things living withing are free to pass through the doors, some even rise from the murky moat as if they had always been there.
The US Government sends in a team of specialists, including me and my mother, to purify the city and remove this dark blight from under a major European city - it was under both Vienna and Geneva. The situation is tense, but virtually everything encountered is easy to dispose of with most of it being common cannon-fodder undead, with some larger monstrous beasts that succumb to massed gunfire. Casualties are light, despite the ever pressing crush of fiends.
Then the first demon shows up. And it's a tough SOB. It gets one of the machine gun crews before anyone sees it. After that the team withdraws and regroups. The counter attack annihilates the creature.
A wave of skeletons rise from the wooden bridge as the team returns to its positions and things are difficult for a while before the team gets matters well in hand. Some monsters try to flank us but we handle them with fire - which is dangerous because we're very far underground.
And then the scariest thing I've ever seen in my dreams appears. At first it doesn't look scary, because it has the form of actress Kathy Bates. She just stood there before the iron gate, eyes cast down, as if ashamed. Which was how we knew what it was: a kind of demon that lives within a dead human body. When the demon comes out, you can kill it by killing the body the same way the original human committed suicide.
Google didn't help us find out how she killed herself. The answer should be obvious: Kathy Bates isn't dead. And while I'm sure there are dead people that once upon a time were Kathy Bates impersonators, we didn't have time.
While the team is crawling the webs and sporadically shooting zombies, I was It. And I see the demon coming out of her. Her eyeballs swell up, and then it passes through the pupils: massive inky black bulges. I look away for a second and when I glance back it's done: it looks like a fourteen year old girl, long hair, braces, and the most evil eyes I've ever seen.
One of the team members closer than I was her first victim. She fixed him with her stare, and his head swelled up like a tumorous growth and then popped. We ran. Somehow we managed to get away and these things didn't follow to the surface. I think everyone but me, my Mother, and two other people died.
Later, I'm hanging out at this gun shop in Geneva (...which I think is impossible), probably trying to get silver bullets and a handgun, and a Swiss cop offers me a ride - and he drives back to the undercity. I get my head exploded in about five seconds.
Later, I'm in a shopping mall, and somehow end up in the undercity - along with a bunch of hapless shoppers. I realize where I'm at and run, and I can hear the demon laughing and people's heads popping like overfull zits in the corridors behind and below me. I manage to get through a door and shut it. And then wake up.
|
|
|