C3PX

xhonzi said:

I am often tempted, when using my small and inaccurate cell phone keypad, to use "l33tsp3ak" but I decline because of how strongly u feel about this, C3PX.

I have no idea what "l33tsp3ak" means... and all these u's are making my eye twitch. I have honestly never seen "u" made into a contraction before. Reading rcb's last post with all the "u'd"s was a bit of a surreal experience for me. Well, I've got to go sob uncontrollably now. See you all.

xhonzi said:

Gaffer Tape said:

GARBLAHERGHEREFG!  I AM VERY ANGRY AT THIS 'OVERRATED' COMMENT!

I will now calmly sit down and do nothing because I cannot stand for this.

 Well, that was honestly a stronger reaction from C3PX's fan(s) than I expected...

Maybe I need to go rethink this...

You can remove those () from around that "s". "Fans" most definitely needs to be plural, I have fans and lots of them!

@rcb, Senor Gaffer Tape is very much a he not a "she". Don't let that avatar fool you (you wouldn't be the first, I might be way off on this, but I think there may have been a past incident where another male member made that same mistake and came onto him...).

EDIT: Oops, due to my slow typing, Gaffer beat me to the punch in correcting the gender confusion situation.

Gaarrrrg!!! I hate that "u" has become an acceptable replacement for "you" in our English language! Drives me absolutely insane! Sorry, I usually don't post gripes like this, it is very out of character for me. I just had to vent a bit before my head exploded.

I am pretty sure when they talk about the Imperial Navy, they are talking about the Imperial military in general. You never hear them mention the Imperial Air Force or Imperial Army, the Stormtroopers are all soldiers on board Navy vessels, makes sense they'd be considered Navy.

Technically in our world, Navy operates at sea, but in the SW universe it has clearly been expanded to be space operations.

Maybe it is just me, but I think it would be silly to conscript officers but mass produce cloned humans for your regular joes. Why wouldn't all the officers be clones too? You have to admit, this whole mess is very poorly thought out. If you have the technology and resources to makes vasts armies of clones, you'd obviously want to aim for mass producing the best soldier you can possibly find (obviously, judging by the general intelligence level of a Stormtrooper, the Empire and I don't see eye to eye on this one), so if you are able to mass produce the perfect soldier, why wouldn't you simply use this same perfect soldier for your commanding officers as well?

Maybe Lucas was just as retarded back then as he is now, only back then retarding things like this clone nonsense was simply not known by everyone. The whole idea of a clone army sounds cool, a military that consists entirely of the best soldier they could get their hands on... but that is clearly not what we see on screen, and this just makes the Empire look way more incompetant and stupid than it should.

miker71 said:

having found a bunch of the Marvel comics, I see what you mean about Marvel having disregard for clone status. I guess the clone army is augmented by regular guys, but is that canon?

There wouldn't be much point in augmenting a clone army with regular guys, might as well just make a few more batches. I think the real issue here is that vast numbers of us, myself included, never got the memo on the whole silly clone thing, and for years have been thrown by things like Luke's conversation with Biggs stating that he wasn't going to wait around to be drafted into the Imperial Navy.

No where in the films or any the absolute mass quantity of EU I consumed while growing up did I ever come across anything that suggested to me that Stormtroopers were all clones. On the contrary, things like Luke talking about not wanting to be drafted and comics featuring Stormtroopers without their helmets and in other ways expressing individual personalities have always lead me far far away from ever even considering these guys could merely be clones. I also think it adds more of a hard edge to the Empire if they were all conscripts.

Is the idea of all Stormtoopers being clones actually true 1977 canon? I guess there were things to suggest it in early drafts, but there was a whole freakin' deleted scene from the actual movie to suggest they were conscripts.

I have actually never played more than five minutes or so of a Tomb Raider game. They have just never struck me as all that interesting.

Alright Gaffer. I have a great idea for your next video review of candy coated goodness. You're always defending Godfather III and saying you don't feel it is quite as bad as everyones makes it out to be. Why not make a video review of it giving a defense for the film and expaining the ways in which you feel it works? Sure, it is kind of different from your usual reviews of obscure things, but I think it would be interesting.

Vaderisnothayden said:

And who says it's not entertaining to analyze how the films fuck up and laugh at their awful screw-ups?

I do. It seriously doesn't entertain me. I don't enjoy watching crappy movies one bit, except sometimes when they are an amusing level of crappy, to me the PT isn't amusingly crappy, but rather just plain not fun to watch crappy.

I find my time better spent analysing good movies and what they got right. The way I see it, with how little I watch TV and movies, I will most likely die before I even have a chance to finish watching all the good ones, so why spend my time watching the bad ones, especially if I have already seen them before. Unfortunately, I have already seen Ep. 2 and 3, but I don't intend to ever waste time watching them again if I can avoid it.

Whoa, looks like Left 4 Dead 2 is going to need to undergo some censorship in order to be released in OZ. Slightly too violent for the Munckinlander's government (okay, just playing around with the Munckin thing, I love Aussies). They don't allow the sale of games if they cannot be given a rating, and their highest rating is MA15+, anything over that rating cannot be released until edited down to fit the appropriate rating. Hope this doesn't effect the US and other releases of the game. They did this when Fallout 3 was being released and it resulted in "Morphine" being changed to "Med-X" in all regions, not just the Australian version. I am pretty sure it will only effect the Australian release of the game though.

Man, I wasn't even really looking forward to this game that much a few months ago, but the closer to release it gets and the more I read and see about it, the more I feel like picking this up on release. Anybody else looking forward to it? Goodness, it is hard to get video game discussion going in this place...

EyeShotFirst said:

 

But really, I think it is better for Anchorhead to just end it with the OT. He is a happier guy for it. I wish I could be that way. But no, I am OCD, I have to see something complete. I love the Beatles, so I have all of there albums. I love Star Wars so I have them all. I wish I could love only one thing.

I agree with this. Anchorhead didn't miss anything by not wasting his time or money on watching any of the prequels beyond The Phantom Menace. That movie was an absolute dog, he had no reason to expect the second one to be any better. I think he may have mentioned elsewhere that he figured he'd go see it if it was met with fantastic reviews and everyone talking about how wonderful it was, but that was not the case.

I don't really get the mentality of watching things that suck so you better understand how they suck, or even the need to see something through to the end even when you don't enjoy it. These things exist to entertain us, if we are not entertained, why even bother? Should I go see everything that sucks and also happens to be mildly related to something I love just so I can understand how it sucks and be able to compare the two? As if that would somehow benefit me in someway. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I have only seen AOTC two times I think, and I feel that is far too many times. Fortunately I only vaguely remember that films, and I certainly don't minds its memory slipping deeper and deeper into the obscure corners of my brain. I really cannot imagine any way how I am better off having seen that film.

VINH, don't you think you might be riding Anchorhead a little too hard? It is perfectly fine he thinks Return of the Jedi is crap, he has explained to you why he doesn't like it, and you have written off those reason as irrelevant or inadequate. There is really nowhere else for this particular branch of discussion to go. I know you want to engage the subject more indepth, but I don't think Anchorhead wants to play ball with you on this one. He has said his piece and heard yours, and being the old wise sage type figure my mind's eye probably quite inaccurately precieves him to be, I doubt he will make another post on the subject.

Now, with that said, to step into the conversation myself, I don't think I like Return of the Jedi half as much as you do, but I also seem to like it a good deal more than Anchorhead did. To me it is kind of a mixed bag, on one hand it has some of my absolute favorite parts of the OT, such as the speeder bike chase, the throne room finale, the space battle...*cough* Leia is a gold bikini *cough*, and on the other hand it also contains the parts I personally feel are the absolute worst in the trilogy (I think we have already discussed these at length). To me it certainly isn't worth throwing out the baby with the bath water on ROTJ. I can tolerate choking on a little cheese and fluff in order to enjoy the delicious steak that comes with it.

xhonzi said:

CO, you really need an Avatar.  You've been around too long to still look like a n00b upon first glance.

Yeah, seriously CO, especially since the avatar's size has just been blown up beyond all reason and now covers a huge portion of each post's real estate. I honestly didn't even realize you had no avatar until the things got jumbo sized a few days ago. Weren't you a Snowtrooper back in the days of the old software (back when I was a red eyed Ewok with a cowboy hat)? Perhaps someone should make you a lovely Snowtroper avatar that you can use, since you are too lazy to do it yourself. Oh, I have a great avatar of the Pope with a very Palpatinian look on his face that I am not using if you want it...

I also have a fine selection of Planet of the Apes related avatars, and I think I might even have a South Park Stormtrooper (which goes nicely with my South Park Cylon).

The void of all these blank faces around this place is starting to disturb me... Massive avatars might be a cool idea for a forum, if you have a forum where your members actually use avatars... Perhaps Jay should come up with a default avatar that all non-avatared user get. It could just be text stating something to the effect of "This user lacks technical know-how and/or the will to setup an avatar. Get over it."

xhonzi said:

C3PX said:

Personally, I think the word "overrated" is vastly overrated.

 C3PX-

YOU'RE OVERATED!

Yeah, you're right, I suppose I am a bit overrated. But you just try telling that to my countless hoards of loyal fans, I am not sure they'll stand for that kind of hate.

Have a good trip, Anchorhead. Safe travels.

Hmm, but isn't that just for "official" purposes? Such as mp3 files, videos, pictures, and memory for the on board camera? I doubt you can run homebrew through it, but maybe I am wrong. Would definitely be a plus not having to mess with the incredibly tiny microSD cards, though they honestly aren't that bad. Two GB holds so much content, I rarely ever take it out to add anything.

Glad to hear you added it to your Netflix queue, I don't think you'll be sorry. It is definitely worth checking out... might even be worth knocking somewhere toward the top of that million title queue...

Actually, I had zero interest in it myself before I finally got around to watching it. Several of my friends swore it was one of the best shows they had ever seen, but I just figured that was the Buffy/Joss Wedon fan in them speaking (and I never cared much for Buffy or any of Joss' other work myself). Finally I sat down to watch it the first time, made it to the opening title, got bored, and turned it off deciding it wasn't for me. There is a flashback in the pre-title sequence of the pilot, which gives some important background on the characters, but is also considerably less exciting than the rest of the show. Unfortunately, I figured the whole show would be pretty much like this and decided to give it a pass (I had also already made up my mind to some extent that I wasn't going to like the show, the premise of cowboys in space sounded lame, plus it was from the guy who made Buffy, I was pretty certain it wasn't my cup of tea before I ever took that first sip).

About a year or so later the wife was away for the weekend and I was bored enough to let one of my friends talk me into giving it another chance. I figured I suffer through one episode with him, then find something else to do... long story short, I borrowed the discs from him and had finished all episodes and the movie by the time my wife came home. After a week or so of trying to convince my wife that the show about cowboys in space really was cool, and that she'd like it, she too finally gave in and a few days after that had watched all episodes and the movie a second time with her. I actually think she enjoyed them more than I did.

If the DSi (which I know absolutely nothing about, other than the fact that it is the new version of the DS and sports a camera and a slightly larger screen) has the same homebrew abilities as the original DS and DS Lite, then it is definitely worth it. I think I have heard talk of concern for potential future Nintendo firmware updates on the DSi to block homebrew (unfortunately, the same devices that allow homebrew also allow very easy piracy of DS games :(

If you are on a budget, a regular DS or a DS Lite can be obtained very inexpensively these days (I use a "DS phat" as they have come to be called, paid $60 for it a few years back, bet they are really cheap now, and it works wonderfully and can do everything the Lite can do, save for the being able to adjust the screen brightness. The battery still lasts a good long while too, I go weeks at a time without charging it when under fairly heavy usage, months when all I use it for is light reading before bed.) A cheap DS or DS Lite and $20 more for a device to allow homebrew, and you've got yourself the swiss army knife of insomnia boredom fighters. The things are quite durable to, Nintendo still builds quality stuff, it is just too bad their native software is so mediocre.

I had nearly forgotten about the ISP-6, which was really great. Sure, it looks like the cheapo one man version of the Lambda class Imperial Shuttle, but as a kid I had two of them, both with the top canopy broken off (got them at garage sales), without the top wing (which is connected to the canopy) they simply look like generic star fighters. I think most of us could only afford one X-Wing as kid, so the ISP-6s made great wing men for my X-Wing, padding out my Rebel squadron a bit. Alternatively, I could pop a Stormtrooper into each ISP-6 and have something for my X-Wing to shoot at (since I never owned a Tie-Fighter) with its nifty buzzing noise and francy flashing red light. For a kid who made many of his own ships out of toilet paper roll tubes, paper cups, and tin foil, the ISPs were pretty sharp looking. 

I think Kenner was very wise in making the mini rigs as budget ships for kids who didn't have a lot to spend on toys. After all, what was Star Wars without spaceships? And a lot of the movie ships, like the Falcon, the X-Wing, the Tie-Fighter, and many of the others that followed were pretty big investments for some parents.

Time to bring back the ol' bridge club so I can make a rant that nobody will read and it can quickly sink back into obscurity...

Anyway, I just really feel like writing about my Nintendo DS. It truely is one of the most amazing devices I own. It never ceases to amaze me. The minute Mr. Hanky (that is my Ds' name) dies, I will immediate replace it. I really love my DS.

The weird thing is... I don't own a single DS game. Not one. Nor am I interested in purchasing any. There is not one single game Nintendo or any third party company has released for that system that I have the least bit of interest in. Home brew is where the DS really shines.

Imagine, all those old regular Nintendo games you used to play as a kid all stuffed into your pocket and playable at a moments notice. Same thing goes for Super NES or Genesis games, and Gameboy and Gameboy Color games. Old PC classics like the old Infocom text adventure games Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the classic point and click LucasGames/LucasArts classics like Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2, Zak McCraken and the Alien Mind Benders, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Loom, as well as a vast number of other point and clicks from other developers. Old PC games like DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D. All these play brilliantly on this little device. And this isn't even a fraction of the stuff that is available out there, I have only listed some of the things that I am personally interested in. Oh yeah, and it has a built in Gameboy Advanced.

Not to mention audiobooks, ebooks, comic books (works really well actually, one screen shows the whole page, while the other screen shows a zoom in of the section of the page you touch with the stylus), mp3s, pictures, and even video files.

These are just a few of the things packed onto my 2GB microSD card right now (and newer devices support mircroSDHC cards up to 16GB).

It is kind of sad to see all the DS owners out there that never have nor will ever realize the full potential of their NDS, doomed to spend their time playing gimmicky games with a stylus... 

So, anybody else into DS homebrew?

I think the large (or perhaps "absolutely vast" is a better way to put it) number of teenage fans Star Wars had back in the late seventies (and we are not only talking about the "geeky" kids here) is a pretty big testament to Star Wars having not been a kids movie.

Name one single kids movie that was released in the last ten years that has wound up with a large number of teenage fans. This sort of thing just doesn't happen.

Perhaps Star Wars is hard to place because it was something so new, there really wasn't anything else like it back in its day. Sure, there were plenty of sci-fi films, but Star Wars had a certian unique quality to it. Star Wars really caught audiences off guard and they fell in love with it, young and old alike. Nowadays Star Wars' style is often emulated by kids movies, perhaps this makes it easier to retcon it as strictly a kids film, that adults just happened to like (which is what Lucas claims it was all along). But evidence still indicates that it was intended for an audience much larger than just children.

Whoa! I am pretty sure we had this EXACT same conversation several months back, with both VINH and Gaffer saying basically the exact same things. Either that or I am going crazy.

Personally, I think the word "overrated" is vastly overrated. At the end of the day it really doesn't have a lot of meaning behind it. There are many things that I absolutely love that others couldn't care less about, and many things they care about I couldn't care less about. Likely in their opinions my crap is overrated, and in my opinion their crap is overrated.

TV's Frink said:

I didn't watch Firefly and I don't watch Dollhouse.  But why would you want a show cancelled that you don't like?  Just change the channel and let the people who do like the shows still have them.

Frink, let me just say that I would HIGHLY recommend you get your hands on Firefly's pilot and give it a watch (if you can't find easy access to the pilot, the second best starting point would be the film "Serenity" which should be available in the cheap section of any video rental place). If after you watch the pilot you feel like you wasted your time, you are more than free to blame me for the bad recommendation. But honestly, I think you will find it at least mildly entertaining, if not downright awesome. Worse case scenario: you'll really like it and go through that short bout of heartbreak the rest of us Firefly fans have all faced at the realization of what could have been but will never be.

Middle-class white boy angst sounds like a great way to put it. I get the impression some people like it simply because it is cool to like it and because of the whole anarchist theme. I actually really liked Fight Club, for some reason it just clicked with me. Things like finding non-conventional ways to supporting yourself and living in an old abandoned house are the sorts of things I have dreamed about doing myself since I was like 14. I also have a great deal of respect for that film in how closely it follows the novel it was based on.

Nice! ... errr, I mean... Arrrrrrrr! Thank ye for the info on this fine booty matey! Downloadin' me copy now.

This is incredibly funny. I thought it was a joke when I first saw it, but it turns out that this TV news station was completely serious in their concerns regarding a recipe for an alcoholic drink called "Grog XD" (taken directly out of the LucasArts' video game, The Secret of Monkey Island and includes ridiculous ingredients such as axle grease), that popped up on facebook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdgJfHDS4YE&feature=related

This is what makes the internets great. Bet whoever came up with the idea do this news piece felt like a complete retard after they discovered the whole thing was a joke referencing an old 1980's computer game.

Whoa, its Boon. I didn't even know he came around here anymore.

Vaderisnothayden said:

TPM is a bad film that can't be taken seriously as proper Star Wars, but the later two prequels have a sort of mastery of crappiness that is quite incredible.

"A sort of mastery of crappiness that is quite incredible" nice, that quote is very fitting.