Di

I wish I had been born into obscene wealth. Apparently, it gives you a free pass to embarrass your family, waste millions of dollars on clothes, have torrid affairs, and still be universally loved, so long as you give a fraction of the money you don't waste to charity.

I guess I'd have to die early, like James Dean, to maintain my image forever.

Bleach

I've been watching the anime Bleach. It's a strange combination of drama and comedy. It has a continuous plot instead of an episodic one, so I don't know where it's going. I'm enjoying finding out where it's headed.

The History of Supers

This is another post about my setting about supers.

Historians go back and forth calling various historical figures supers. Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Buddha, etc., are all tossed around as potential historical supers. The first supers for certain were born around 1900, and came into light when they reached their mid-teens around WWI.

In both World Wars, supers fought and died, but their actions largely canceled each other out. Each side of the war had roughly proportional super forces. Since a tank shell could take out most every historical super, they weren't able to run rampant on the theaters of war.

During the Cold War, supers had a more important part to play, since a man with nearly undetectable abilities has great value in a war of shadows.

With the fall of the USSR, the super world had a general feeling of relaxing. CoCMH regained some symbolic power, and El Campeador led a movement to make supers known to the public, less intrusive, and more scrupulously ethical. This attitude earned the super community some criticism after 9/11, although accusing a super of "letting" 9/11 happen is a good way to get punched in the mouth. Or disintegrated.

Now, our world is in an eternal war between abstract concepts. There is a new wave of secrecy and paranoia in the super community. It's thought that there are super-terrorists, but there is nothing known about them, if they exist.

CoCMH

CoCMH is the organization of Supers in the Super game I may be running later. The rest of this post is a description of the organization.

CoCMH (The Council of Concerned Meta-Humans, rhymes with "Rock-muh") was founded in 1950 in an attempt to provide a "super" counterpart to the UN. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an embarrassment to the UN, since all CoCMH did was provide a forum for people to complain and no one was willing to give it the authority to actually enforce any of its declarations.

Since the fall of the USSR, there has been renewed interest in CoCMH, but almost exclusively as an American institution. It still has little power, but it has provided arbitration for some Super-disputes.

Although CoCMH has a complicated parliamentary procedure, it is largely ignored. Instead, the most powerful person generally controls the flow of debate and has a strong influence on votes. Fortunately, the current most powerful super, El Campeador, isn't interested in rules, and is a generally good, if naive, man.

A super can register with CoCMH at any time; he must swear an oath to uphold the laws of his nation and of CoCMH, and provide his personal information to the Council. This is a quick way for a super to declare his good intent and presence to the state. If a super is operating without registering through CoCMH or other means, he is assumed to be hostile by both the USA and the super community.

Bill Maher Interviews Dennis Kucinich (04/27/07)

I'm putting up this video to test the system for putting up videos, but it's also interesting in its own right. Dennis Kucinich is deemed an "also-ran" by the popular media, but the issues that he supports: Exiting Iraq today, Universal Health Care, etc. are supported by either a majority of the people (Leaving Iraq today and Universal Health Care) or are supported by a strong group.

Why is one of the only supporters of the most popular choice in the most pressing issue in politics today polling so low? Because the media decided that he can't win, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

4th edition

D&D announced it's going to release 4th edition soon. If you were interested in the subject, it was already apparent, but now it's official. This just goes to show a little difference between GURPS and D&D: GURPS hadn't had a new edition for 16 years when it released its fourth edition. D&D had released a new set of core books less than five years previous.

PS.
GURPS Martial Arts is in the US. They're only selling it at Gencon right now, and it's driving me insane. I bought it online about a month ago!

New Look

As you can probably tell, I've changed the look of the ol' blog. Blogger has had a new system for a while, and I thought I may as well bite the bullet and update the thing. If you don't like it, please comment. I'm still messing around with the options/look of the thing, so we'll see.

The Wussification of Games

Over time, video games have become easier and easier. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this. One of the most basic is the size of games over time. Games like Zork and King's Quest I can be finished in less than half an hour. (I understand Zork can be finished in less than a minute, since it's a text based game.) The first Mario can be beaten in five minutes. People want a return on investment, and a 5-minute game wouldn't be much of a payoff for 60$.

Since you can't make a game bigger on the NES, (there's only so much filespace, after all) you have to make them harder to make the game take more than half an hour. You can play Mario for hours because it's very hard.

Nowadays, you can make a game take as long as you want by adding more levels. File space isn't infinite, but it's so much more than earlier generations that it allows a whole new type of game design. Super Mario World didn't have to be hard to entertain for hours; only the most ambitious speed-runners could finish it in less than half an hour, and there's no way a first time player could stumble on to the absurd path necessary to finish that fast.

Anyway, I've been playing the REAL Mario 2 lately, (The Lost Levels) and I can understand why they didn't bring it to the US. It is really, really, really, EXTREMELY hard. (I've been playing it on the SNES Mario All-Stars, and that is actually an easier version than the original NES version.)

Clean House

I'm back from the Boundary Waters. While away, I've come up with the basic precepts of my new political party, the Clean House Party. (Clean is meant as a noun and a verb). Basically, a member of the Clean House Party has only internal reform as issues. Everything else is done only to the degree necessary. (Ex. A Clean House President would direct troops in a war since it is his role to do so, but he would not make the case for war, since that is the role of the congress.)

Anyway, to be a member of the CHP, you must believe in these issues:

*Publicly funded elections
*The creation of a new branch of government whose role is to investigate the activities of the other branches
*Uniform enforcement of the law
*Balanced Budget

That's it. Any other issue is not appropriate for a CHP politician to pursue. Once passed, laws in this regard will be self-perpetuating. This means that the CHP is attempting to eliminate its reason to exist. If this occurs, a new party with new issues may arise, but it will need to stand or fall on its own merits.

Gawkers

As you may know, I work security, Because of this bridge falling down, I've been reassigned to redirecting traffic away from the bridge area. This is not very rewarding, and it means I have to work in the outdoors. This does not please me.

A note to the people trying to see the bridge:

1. You are ghouls. You sicken me.
2. Much worse than that, you made me stand out in the sun. I hate you.

Mario

I've been playing the first Super Mario. (The one for the NES). Look at it with eyes unprejudiced in expectations of "fancy graphics" and it's still a good game. In fact, the level of variety and interaction it offers through an extremely simple and intuitive interface would be the envy of some of the more popular games out there today.

Modern games seem to want to use every button on the controller, and give the player the fanciest looking 10 hours of gaming that 60$ can buy. I'd rather play a modest game with a good interface then another Doom 3.

PS. A bridge collapsed in Minnesota, and there's a new state law mandating that everyone on the internet mention it. I'm doing my part.