xhonzi

Ice Cold!

TV's Frink said:

bioshock pc demo

O RLY?

You could have just bought BS1&2 for PC for $4 the other day... but noooooo.....

Did you find a demo?

ORIGINALENGLISH.COM!!!

And then maybe a frienemies list.  Though I'm still not sure I know what that means.

doubleofive said:

 

xhonzi said:

I borrowed a DVD from the library the other day.  I had to bring the empty case to the this redbox style vending machine which spits out the discs.  A monitor shows an animation of a DVD case being scanned, the disc being vended, and the disc going into the case.

What's on the case?

The Star Wars Holiday Special.

Which is sadly not available at my public library.

The animation on the vending machine is of the Holiday Special? You have to take pictures of this.

 

Yes, I just checked out Brick.

You get a reprieve for the moment, 005!  As there (currently) is no enemies list.

I would like to put 005 on it.

I don't want to ignore him, because that would make it more work to antagonize him.  But I want a symbolic way to express my dissatisfaction in our friendship that involves a list here on ot.com.

That's it!  I'm moving you from my friend list to my enemies list.

I found the Lutecia (plural?) to be the highlight of the game as well.  At first I thought they were just local colour... but I still really enjoyed their interludes.  I thought the coin flip at the start was goofy, and perhaps a reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but as with the rest of the Lutecox (plural?) interactions, it all made sense (well... sorta) once the later game reveals were had.  The game definitely turned a corner when I found a vox-o that included some of Rosalind's past.  I was much more excited and interested in her mystery than I had been in much up til then.

I've read theories that Rosalind is from Comstock's reality (I think this one is pretty much obvious) and that Robert is from Booker's.  I don't know that there's enough evidence to determine if that's true, or that it really matters... but I guess I figured that Robert was more accomplished in his own reality before jumping into Rosalind's.  We don't know that much about Booker's world outside his office, but I think we can assume that there is no Columbia... so I'm not sure what Robert would be working on.  I guess it could be anything...

More of a stretch- I read that some people decided that Robert (and Booker) must also be from the reality where Rapture is built.  Which makes even less sense to me, but whatever.  Further, people have speculated that Booker is a blood relative to Ryan, but if you remember Ryan's background, that makes very little sense.  But still, Booker can use the Bathysphere, which was locked down to Ryan's genetics... so perhaps that's a clue that they're related... or maybe interdimensional traveler's get a pass.  Someone else argued that just like Robert and Rosalind are the same person, minus the cause-and-effect that determined gender... that perhaps Booker/Jack/Comstock/Ryan are the same person, minus the cause-and-effect that caused their exact birthdays.

Which brings me, Johnny, to one of your points, that Comstock and Ryan were too similar.  Which really strikes me as odd.  I guess the method is similar, but the madness is so not. 

I love BioShock (in all of its manifestations (so far)) and yet perhaps I shouldn't.  Because I guess I identify more closely with the villains, if villains they truly be.  I am not an Objectivist, but I like more of Objectivism than I don't.  I have my few nits to pick with Objectivism, but I don't think it's flawed from the ground up.  The way I see Ryan and Rapture is not that it was a bad idea doomed to failure, but that it was not quite a complete idea and that Ryan's succumbed to the pressures of leadership that turned him into the very tyrant he sought to escape from the surface.  But it, apparently, worked for some amount of time, so it can't be completely broken.  Had Adam not been discovered, who knows how the history of Rapture would have gone differently???  My experience, which I would like to assume is pretty universal, is that Ryan seems like a really bad dude when you first enter Rapture, but by the time you club him to death, you mostly feel for him.  And then when you find out that Atlas/Fontaine has been turning your screws, I really wished I hadn't killed Ryan.  In fact, had the game not wrested control from me, I very much doubt I would have killed him in the first place.

However bad Ryan was, I think we were supposed to think that Fontaine was worse.  Ryan's motivations were pure, even if his execution of them wasn't.  Fontaine's motivations were evil from the start- though that's the kind of selfishness that opponents of Objectivism claim it props up.

I think I posted it in this thread, but I read a whole conversation over at the Cult of Rapture forums where people referred to Rapture as a "Failed Communist Utopia".  I think they either skipped every audio log or they think anything bad can be called "communist" without it necessarily making sense.

• Hey man, did you see that traffic on the 10 this morning?
• Yeah man... communist.

Back to the subject- I similarly identify with Comstock and the people of Columbia more than I don't.

• I am deeply religious.
• I believe the Founding Fathers of the US to be inspired men who did God's work in setting up my country.
• I believe that making myself and my country the best it can be is a good thing, as long as neither are done at the expense of anyone else.  I believe it's possible to do this and not at the expense of anyone else.
• Though I am a patriot, I fear for the direction this country is taking and would sadly leave it behind for one more in line with my ideals if it existed.
• I believe in secure borders.
• I have a daughter that can control space/time rifts and takes me to realities with better Star Wars movies.
• I like old timey renditions of modern pop hits.  Apparently... this is something I just learned about myself.

All of that said, I never quite found Comstock sympathetic the way I did Ryan.  Which makes me wonder if that sympathy I found for Ryan was unintended and something Irrational sought to fix for their next despot. 

However, I do seem to be on the politically opposed to many who played the game, because I have read several people say how much they liked/identified with the Vox generally and Fitzroy specifically.  I thought she was exactly like Fontaine- a rat in sheep's clothing that only fools the naive.  When the naive help her obtain her objectives, her true purposes are revealed and some of the naive are filled with regret... the rest still have no clue what happened.

I think it's possible that the moral here is "be careful what you wish for" and that the revolutionaries are usually worse than the status-quo.  But I have seen that people don't take it that way.  Several people think that Fitzroy was pure and honest until you go into the reality where she is not.

This would be a natural segue to talk about my perspective on the racism as presented in the game... but that's going to have to be a topic for another day.

Sooo... that's enough for now.

doubleofive said:
Suggestions on #1's I should make a priority?

The 2005 restarts of Captain America and Iron Man were both pretty good.  I'm not sure if issue #1 really knocks it out of the park, but the first 25 issues or so are all great.

I wish Planet Hulk had a #1 so you could read it... but it started in something like ~98 of the ongoing series.

Secret War #1 (not Secret Wars)

I'd also say House of M and and some others... but they're not really going to make sense out of context.

Astonishing X-Men #1 (2004) was pretty good.

It's funny... there are so many #1's that I consider to be poor jumping on points.  Which is sort of the opposite of what they're trying to do.

Sounds like a crappy 70's game show.

It's supposed to sound like this:

But maybe you lot didn't grow up with that.

Johnny Ringo said:

Sometimes you seem like a smart guy and then sometimes...not so much.

A friend and co-worker once announced that I was the dumbest smart guy he knew.  I wear that like a badge of honour.

Maybe I shouldn't.

:)

Annihilation Proglogue.  Not sure if that's considered a #1 or not...  :(

If all you've got is Annihilation #1, don't bother... it's actually issue 20 or something in a 26 issue series.

I have this plastic frame on my desk that has a little rubber nub on the back.  I popped the nub out and it bounced off the desk, onto my lap, and who-knows-where onto the floor.  I looked for a couple minutes and it was solid-gone.

5 minutes later I found it in my pocket.

I know, right?!?!

Went to the comic store to buy a copy of Guardians of the Galaxy.  My thoughts are that if it's successful, they might bring Dan and Andy back to run the show and return to where they left it.  

But it was sold out everywhere... so... good for them.

I did notice that Stupid Kid Nova gets his own comic now.  Why in the world is Rich Ryder still dead now that the 3 people he died with, Thanos, Star Lord, and Drax, all seem to be alive and kicking.

Somehow.

But where the heck is my Rich Ryder Nova and get rid of this stupid kid Nova!

1. I don't think you need a facespace to click that link.

2. What's a facespace?

3. It's not really his facebook.  At least, the odds are approximately three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one that it is.

There's a 20th Anniversary edition of Another World that my phone would really like me to buy.

I don't think it's a logic hole at all, actually.  Marty travels back to 1955 and it takes a couple weeks for the changes to catch up to him.  If it were different, he would have vanished the moment he pushed his dad, dad, daddio out of the way of old man Baine's car.

The changes play out in real time.

Old Biff gives the book to young Biff, but goes back to his time before the young Biff does anything with it, before the ripple catches up to him.

And yes, there is the deleted scene that seems to fix this.

Hey...

TheBoost said:

zombie84 said:

It would be more interesting to make a comic of the proper treatment though. Or Leigh Brackett's first draft of Empire. There is some amazing stuff in that one that just begs to be brought to life.

I would throw a kitten in a blender for that comic. 

 Pft.  You were going to do that anyways.

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

xhonzi said:

DuracellEnergizer said:
I like time travel, provided it makes some lick of sense (and incorporates parallel universes into it's method of operation).

Er... Back to the Future Pt 2?

BTTF2 doesn't utilize parallel timelines, Doc's "1985A" explanation notwithstanding, as all the other stuff involving paradoxes, changing timelines, etc. makes that impossible.

 

Isn't that a bit like saying "BTTF2 doesn't involve time travel, all of the time travel notwithstanding"

doubleofive said:

Is this the first instance when we realized VFP had disappeared?

 He has a facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vote-for-Palpatine/169171616459797

The other day, I heard someone say that there were 3 types of people in the world: Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness.  Clearly my lovely wife is none of these, but I am squarely Army of Darkness.  A little less so ED2, and even less so ED.  I don't know how the remake factors in.

Speaking of Evil Dead, I just watched Cabin in the Woods.

*Spoiler free comments*

I liked it!  I don't generally go out for horror flicks, but if it has a decent hook, then I may go in for it.  The Rubicsy Cabin on the poster had me interested and the trailer sealed the deal.  My reaction to Whedon is very mixed, so I didn't know whether this would be a hit or a miss.  But I really enjoyed it.

*Spoilers follow*

I was a little shocked how quickly the cast started to bite it.  This started to tip me off about how much of the movie would take place post-cabin.  Though I had seen the trailers and read more spoilery stuff than I should, I was still not sure how far the ending went.  Heck, they show you quite a bit of the underground stuff as the movie starts. 

I found it a delightful subversion of a genre that I don't really enjoy.  I heard Whedon call it his love/hate letter to horror and I understand exactly what that means.

*End Spoilers*

DuracellEnergizer said:

xhonzi said:

Bingo "I hate show tunes" wings:
I've never met anyone too old for time travel.

Unless you're Dur, apparently.

I like time travel, provided it makes some lick of sense (and incorporates parallel universes into it's method of operation).

Er... Back to the Future Pt 2?