Death To Blog

Spring weather is finally starting to peek out. It's not coming out full force, of course; no, that would be cheating. The seasons love it when we suffer in cold weather. Those arrogant pricks.

I'm confused, though; did it take this long to get our Spring last year? Or is the US government developing devices that can control weather and the seasons? Sorry, pollution does that...let's go for another angle. Is the Greek Pantheon pissed? Did Poseidon's wife miss her period, and is he pissed off about having to deal with yet *another* child? I'm not sure.

Long story short, I won't be so hesitant to step out of the house anymore for lack of warm air. If only this had come earlier: I might have had the desire to attend more morning classes (although I only have one), and might have gone on more walks. Stupid weather. The gods are out to make me fat!

I added that last part for all the wussy scientists who like to argue that God doesn't exist (while criticizing the view that God does exist).

Anyway, all I need for this is the premise that God is all-powerful. Or, let's just say X is all-powerful.

So, can X drive any car? Of course X can; X can learn anything through X's infinite power. Can X use ingredients in baking a cake that haven't been invented yet? Of course X can
; X can traverse time for the components, or even create them through X's infinite power. Can X create an object that is too heavy for X to lift?

This is where we get tricky.

The short story is, X can. Logically, we might think that X cannot: can X bypass a paradox which it itself creates, with infinite power? Logically, this seems to be a contradiction. We are taking for granted, though, that a being of infinite power - X - is subject to the laws of a finite logic. Even under logic, the question should be: can X (using infinite power) bypass a paradox that it itself creates (using infinite power)? What happens when infinite power meets infinite power? We find yet another paradox, even logically.

That said, why would a being of infinite power - X - be bound by the laws of a finite logic? I'm not quite clear on that. So, if one asks "Can God create an object that is too heavy for God to lift?", we're not stuck with the answer of "no", but indeed with yet another paradox. Infinite power, though, we assume can accomplish anything, even circumvent other infinite power (that's included in the definition; "it can do anything"). If you don't take the paradox, then, you can choose to take the easy "yes" answer; it's merely a little fishier, and I'm sure the logicians and scientists will attack you. You should be able to tread firmly along the lines of the paradox, rather than the "no" answer, though; any rational attempt to rebute that should pretty much fail.

Ok, let's take Batman. Batman has a pretty neat costume, aesthetically speaking (I'm thinking the smoother black suit, not the clunky armour in the movies or the blue/grey show stuff): it has a bunch of useful goodies, and hides Bruce Wayne's identity pretty damn well. The same goes for Spiderman, as much as I don't like Spiderman: he wears that silly spandex, stretches in poses that you wouldn't catch Peter Parker dead in, and again, wears a great disguising mask.

So, who decided on the costumes of the X-Men? What happened to their masks? Is it *really* so difficult to distinguish Ororo Munroe and Storm? Not really. If I saw Storm on the news, and Ororo on the street, I'd probably say (if I were a stupid kid or something) "Hey look, it's Storm!".

Have disguises gone out the window? I mean, in the Marvel universe, mutants are (at times) hunted down like animals, to be slaughtered as hideous aberrations of the human race. Talk about xenophobia. Why, then, do the X-Men not believe in masks, especially since they go out into public and try to live "normal lives" when possible?

Cyclops wears a mask. Unfortunately, this is because he has to, and not because he's disguising his identity. Besides which, it's just as effective as those nasty glasses girls wear nowadays. Most of you have probably either read the comics or seen the movies: the X-Men just plain don't like masks.

The only excuse they'd have is psionic alteration of memory. Professor X and Jean "Wussy" Grey wouldn't do that, though Emma Frost might. What else have they got? I'm not really sure, and it's been bugging me lately.

Yes, it's been bugging me lately. Ever been bothered by something in a book or movie? Same thing. Lousy glaring problems. If someone can solve this in a non-smartass way, please help me out here.

A beginner's guide to Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", I guess you could call it. This is as I understand it, anyway; he might have just written a jokebook in Chinese, for all I know, or maybe a guide to milking cows. Anyway.

Strategy is your over-arching plan (modified or not, though if you don't modify it to counter your opponent's strategy, you're probably a noob): it is the grand method of attack you use to crush, kill, and eat the babies of your enemy.

Tactics are the immediate turns and twists you (or your troops) take in the course of enacting your strategy. Let's have an example.

My strategy is to cut off access to point X, in order to delay my opponent while I take point Y. His strategy is to push towards X. It seems, then, that my strategy is superior (And that I will be eating my opponent's babies soon enough!). The tactics here are how exactly I delay my opponent's attack on point X, and how exactly I take point Y. I could use guerrilla warfare against the troops that advance on point X, or perhaps I could set up a nigh-impenetrable bulwark and fight a battle of attrition. As for point Y, I could sneak in with a crack team of baby-eaters, or I could just attack with the larger part of my army once my opponent has committed to attacking point X, where I have delayed him.

So, there you go, if you didn't know. You learn something every day, or at least every third or foourth day in our TV culture. Now, go out and destroy your enemies with superior tactics. Oh, and don't forget to eat their babies, or at least their cats.

Some of you may be aware that I'm designing a table-top game involving lego. Why? Because lego is awesome. This game started out as a substitute for Warhammer, which was expensive as hell (you might think of the cost of lego, but we already had tonnes of the stuff, so we were set), but has started to evolve into a highly-customizable, not strictly combat-oriented game.

I say "started to", because we're still playtesting it. Currently, my friend (and you know who you are) is making use of a very heavily-armoured knight to pulverize my troops, and the only things really standing in his way are a) an armoured acolyte (who can eventually become either a druid, shaman, or cleric/priest), and b) an archer (who loves buying increased-movement potions).

I'm aiming to make this a relatively simple game with nigh-boundless depth: There are already seven or eight basic classes, which each branch off into many, many more; non-combat classes include crafters who generate money and goods, merchants who sell goods, medics who heal, engineers who design engines of war and buildings, and so on; various stage objectives and items, including a kind of capture the flag and an economic race; a real difference between spells and prayers, and so on.

Sounds interesting, huh? Well, I hope it'll be. If any of you have absolutely any ideas as to what to put in a fantasy tabletop game (something you've wanted to see, an interesting thought), please let me know. I'll credit you when and if the game becomes a bit more publically available. Further, if you want a copy of the rough rules, let me know. I can arrange to send them over.

Stupid lack of good castle lego sets.

This is the best stuff ever. I noticed an itching on the back of my hand last night, while writing a test (needless to say, I was pretty distracted, grr). This morning, it turned out to be a mild skin rash. Now, I know none of you care, or even want to hear about my skin rash, but it leads to a bigger point. Trust me.

So, I had a nasty case of eczema about a month ago, and I still had some cortisone cream left over. I don't know whether it's expired or not, but hey; if it works as a placebo, so much the better. This stuff is a god-send. If you ever, *ever* have any reason to get it and keep it around, do so. I'm not advocating cheating the medical system (or am I...), but this stuff is great for any sort of skin irritation, whatever the case may be.

Anyway, that was a little less focused than my other rants, but I just love this stuff. No more itching!

PS: If you're making fun of me right now, you have genital herpes. That is all.

Two groups of people with whom I hang out/do stuff smoke. Unfortunately, they do it around me. These are people with whom I enjoy spending my time (for the most part), so I've toughed it out until now. Finding that the "total crap" feeling persists a day or two after those particular instances (and not otherwise), I'm going to have to put my foot down. It's unfortunate that this poison is considered legal by the government (I no longer want to go to the Niagara Casino); I'm sick of smelling that garbage and feeling awful afterwards, so I'm going to stipulate that no such nonsense occurs when I go out with those people, or I leave. Hopefully they understand but, if not, ah well. Poison is bad!

Admittedly, I try not to pay too much attention to goings-on in the world. People are stupid, which we already know, and I'd rather not embroil myself in stuff they're up to. That said, I heard about some Danish - and I think it was the Danes - newspaper printing anti-Muslim comics, in the form of Mohammed concealing a bomb in his turban. Again, I emphasize that this is all second-hand information, but it's the principle I'm getting to, not the details.

Now, this sort of print is disrespectful, yes, but it shouldn't be banned. Nonsense like this borders on hate-crime, I'd say, as it's far more "severe" than the prophet sitting down to have a few drinks with Christ and Buddha or some such.

Anyway, to the point. I hear that, in reaction, the Danish Embassy was attacked (after the Norweigan embassy, forgive the spelling) took a severe hit itself. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the best way to protest a comic labelling your people as mad bombers and over-the-top religious zealots is not by blowing shit up. That situation is much like this one: I called you a gun-toting criminal, so you shot me with a "nuh-uh!".

Now, I've got a few Muslim friends, which makes me sad to say that these stupid reactions (combined with the crap in the Middle-East) make Muslims look worse and worse as the days go by. The sad fact is that conservative religious groups don't look like they'll ever grow up, and I'm not just talking about Islam here. Swords and violence might have been cool back in the day when your religions were founded, but they aren't cool now, despite what America's monkey-leader might have you believe.

I'm glad I'm doing this over the internet, so nobody tries to blow me up.

Episodes one to three, of Star Wars, are not canon. George Lucas is a nitwit, and I refuse to accept that bullshit. Discuss.

Noisy little idiots on the bus. Yes, that's right. This morning, I had the displeasure of sitting in front of a couple (not really a couple, but you know how 20-somes flirt these days) who insisted on babbling in Italian-accented English - the kind that kids put on to pretend to sound Latino, not even the real accent - about someone who evidently did mundane things so poorly that they were worth swearing about every second word. When you say it in a poor Italian accent, kids, it's cool!

If zombies had boarded our bus, I'd have scrambled behind these two, and hoped to any deities that exist that there were enough brains to go around. Honestly. People like this should be hauled to colliseums, where the dead have been animated for the express purpose of feasting on their irritating, over-cologned/perfumed, fabu-tanned (Thanks, Oscar), generally gimped flesh. Assholes.

Hey, their word, not mine.

Edit: "assholes" was supposed to be "self-centred fucks". Yeah.

So I'm sitting in my class today, and I start to feel something digging into my toe inside my boot. Given that I haven't trimmed my nails for more than a week (though I have been cleaning them, so piss off), I figured that my toes had arranged themselves such that one nail was digging into one toe. Now, this sometimes amounts to a sock-full of blood, so I waited for the break (which came 2.25 hours into a 3 hour class, by the way), then promptly hobbled to the washroom to check. No blood, fortunately, and my makeshift toilet-paper toe-sheath is holding. Yes, that's what we call it nowadays.

How the hell do you people tough it out? The pain (discomfort in public) started about ten minutes into the class, and I waiting - squirming - for two hours until I could fix it. I'm not female, so I don't have the biological excuse (sexist bastards). What do you do?

Further, pain hurts. That's right, pain hurts.

Yes, that's right, war sucks. Furthermore, I apologize for not posting for a while, but life got the better of me. Anyway.

War is good, for defensive purposes. In that case, it's really not war, it's more like resistance. That's ok, unlike my spelling. Invasion, on the other hand, is bad. I'm not saying that recent invasions haven't achieved anything good: dictators are almost always bad. Unfortunately, warmongers use dictators as excuses to do what they love doing.

Let's get this straight. The goals of war are conquest and money (which loosely fits under conquest, so...). If you're not interested in these goals, don't wage war. War games are fun. I love strategy and conquest on an animated scale. When people start dying, and you're doing more than throwing your hard-earned money into the meat grinder, you know something is wrong.

The hippies were right. Why do we keep on condoning this nonsense?

Nothing in my immediate world offended me horribly on Wednesday, surprisingly. Well, that's not *entirely* true; it just wasn't something to write home about. Wearing knee-high boots over one's pants is irritating and hideously ugly, but not on par with other ideological issues I've written on.

Also, I wish U of T was a car-free campus. Driving through there today, I realized just how easy it would be to run a pedestrian over. While the idea is satisfying in principle (especially with all those dumb kids...), it's not ethical. I don't bemoan this, but I do however rack up a few extra pedestrian kills in Grand Theft Auto.

That's pretty much it. I'll write some more when it comes time to tear the world apart again. For now, enjoy your existences.