So, as it works out, I have to read about 3 books and write a 15 page paper by Thursday morning. This is, in fact, doing better than I was last night by a fair amount. Still, the next two weeks are not looking to be a bastion of Goodness, Light, and the Warm Fuzzy Feeling. But such is college.

I'd like to put in a good word for Thanksgiving. We're about out of relatives to celebrate it with these days, but the food really, really rocks. Those of you who still live at home will understand where I'm coming from in a couple years, here. But really, it's generally agreed that this Thanksgiving was one of the top five we've ever had or so. Good times.

I had in mind some good old fashioned political blogging, but I can't seem to find the article I want, so I'll instead leave you all to wonder about anti-war protesters.

And, of course, the rather interesting life of Andrew Jackson. Or at least I'll be wondering about it.

I've a few other things to say, but they can wait for a while. For the moment, I'll just wish everyone who reads this a happy Thanksgiving, for those of us what celebrate it.

On another note. I don't usually approve of our president as a general rule, but I think well of him for this.

But anyway. Happy Thanksgiving.

One of these days, I swear I'm going to stop going to bed the instant I get tired, then wake up 2 hours later. I mean, I like 4am, but not when it's being a dick about things.

Anyway. Instead of, you know, actually doing my homework last night, I ran into a thing called Megatokyo and read the whole thing. It's sort of warped, but good in its own little way. Probably if you're into Japanese pop culture more than I am, you will enjoy it even more. Maybe not. Who knows.

Also, I finished HTMLizing the writeup for the latter half of the Tonto Succession Game for Civ. Those of you in Tonto might remember this from about a year ago, and might remember that it sort of died halfway through. In the quest for a French high score, I resurrected it. Enjoy.

I also put down on paper a whole bunch of thoughts for a new D&D setting I feel like running. It's pretty small so far, but it's a lot more tightly written than my last several. It's nice being able to write without the feeling that I'm going to drown in the details, yet still be able to get creative and, I think, have a reasonable world without being totally contrived. More on this later, perhaps.

Also, if I can survive 7 more hours, I'm done with class for the week. That's going to be awesome. Not so awesome is the fact that I have to read a bunch of stuff and write a paper over my holiday weekend. Fortunately, I feel pretty good about this paper. There's hope.

So instead of going to class tonight, I'm going to read the book I need to read for tomorrow, which means I will eventually get there after procrastinating like mad.

But aside from that, we have...stuff. Such as, for instance, this article, which if you think about it for about 2 seconds should be exceedingly funny.

Also, there's a certain thing Frontpage does if you highlight an image, which looks Really Freaking Cool. Witness:

Along those same lines, I shall have a Civ post soon. I'm sure you can't wait.

And this just in, courtesy of Suzanne.

That aptly sums up life.

So this is pretty old, but I was just thinking about it, and I never did post it I don't think, so we shall fix this.

I got quoted at RBCiv for my Epic 31 report. Yay!

So what if it was in July. That's not the point. ;)

And of course the joke only makes sense if you're a Civ fanatic. Oh well.

On other Civ-related topics, I've begun a quest to play out games as each of the remaining civs I have yet to play through with:

Zulus - Just haven't ever played with them. Dunno.
Iroquois - I actually played like 20 games with them back in the day, but my scores all got wiped long, long ago when I switched computers. Besides, it gives me a chance to try Epic 10, which I always wanted to do.
Mongols - The Zulu boat. Militaristic Expansionist just doesn't float mine very well.
Arabs - *shrug* And some civs, you just never get around to.
India - I actually played a fair bit with them in Sirian's Sandbox, but since the game died...plus it may well give me a good chance to play Epic 2 at long last.
France - More on this later. We played about half the Tonto SG with France, then the game died. However, I've resurrected it, and am playing to completion. More on this RSN, at the rate I'm playing.

Where, as a saying I heard recently goes, men are men, and sheep are scared. But anyway.

Watched Master and Commander today with Tali and Laurent. It was good times. Probable spoilers ahead, Cap'n! You wonder about massive historical epics, some days - are they going to deliver something of appropriate goodness? Uphold the glory of the profession, and all that? Fortunately, recent ones have - Braveheart did, in it's way, Gladiator did in it's. This one keeps up. Not as well, but it does.

I went in, I guess, expecting an epic. What I got wasn't particularly epic, but once I realized that, I was happy with it. I mean, what I was expecting was along the lines of Trafalgar, and what I got was two ships chasing each other around for a while with tons of little scenes about what it was like to be on a ship and such as that. As I am the sort of person that revels in that sort of thing, I was pleased. In fact, everything looked so cool, and was played so well, that I pretty much ignored the story and just sat there going "Dude! Dude!" for a while. Anybody who revels in such things is likely to be pleased by that if nothing else. I'm sure they had to wipe Marechal's seat, after. ;)

One thing grated, and that slightly - the naturalist and the Galapagos and such. For all I know, this was common on ships of the era. OTOH, the whole setup seemed far too much "let's ape Darwin because we can!" for my taste. Also seemed somewhat overblown and pointless to the story. Maybe. I would have to see it again to tell. A minor point, in any case. And it must be said that the actor playing said naturalist, this man, is a genius. Among other things, he was also the best part of both A Knight's Tale and A Beautiful Mind. Not so much this, but that's only because everything about this was cool.

The mark of a good movie is when I sit there for two hours in awe, not moving at all. I did that for this movie.

So I was playing Civ...

"What," you say? "Dwip was playing Civ? I can't imagine such a thing!"

Oh, but it gets better. You see, I wrote an Epic-style report for it. And despite none of you but Gris being heavy Civ players, I'll even share it. Thusly:

Riders on the Storm

The title, you ask? Comes from a Robert Jordan book. I thought of it somewhere in the first turns of the game, and thought it was particularly apt, given the end. But I won't spoil it for you. ;)

Or not so numb. But there was lots of numb.

Also, I passed a dead rabbit in the road on my way home. That was slightly disconcerting.

Anyway. Been very busy lately. Should be working right now, but I need a break. We're back to a book per 2 days again, or worse. Right now is worse - 2 books in a day, plus a small paper. Of those, I have the one book done, partway into the second, ignoring the paper because it's far too easy. Also part of the plan was to complete my essays for going to England, and to get my recommendations to people. Well, no. Books first.

But wait, there's more.

This is going to be another one of those entries about the Perils of Dentistry, I'm afraid. Because, little did I remember, I had an appointment for a filling today. This is, as it happens, a good thing, because about a week ago my rear-left molar decided that its life would be appreciably enhanced by developing a fairly large hole. Whatever, tooth. So I got to drive in to Eugene today, an hour and a half drive.

Fortunately, I manged to beat the snow. Yes, the snow. In November. That doesn't happen a lot here. So I walk into the dentist's office, and I'm like "Merry Christmas!" They liked that. They also liked the apparently gargantuan hole in my tooth, too. Did their best bedside manner with me, but you could hear an undertone of "Holy shit!" Since that tooth now feels appreciably different on the whole side, I take it that it was a damn big hole.

I need to put in a plug for the greatness of nitrous oxide here, and the benefits of being high while you get worked on are beyond compare. Normally, I'm not one to advocate going out of your mind like that, but having run the gamut on these things, from being drilled without being numb to the whole nine yards, I much prefer the whole nine yards. Turns the experience from one of pain into one of amusement. Frex:

*cough*

"Erik?"

*cough cough cough*

"Erik!"

(I think they're calling my name...that's nice...)

*COUGH!*

"ERIK!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Something in my throat."

"Oh, ok. We'll get back to it now."

A sense of clinical detachment descends upon me as I feel them prepping for the needle, and I'm like "Oh, they're stabbing me with an enormous needle now. That's nice." "Oh, they're drilling me now. That's nice." "Man, they're really throwing my jaw around something fierce. That's nice."

Two hours and a couple fillings later, I'm wobbling out of there only slightly the worse for wear, but really tired. The numb feeling didn't die off for like 5 hours. That and the fact I can barely move that side of my mouth makes me wonder if they didn't hit a nerve. Oh well.

On another note, I was digging around, and unearthed a couple of pictures from Back In the Day. From roughly 5 years ago, my freshman year of college. Oddly this is the only year for which I have pictures at all. In any case:

Rabbits In Trees

Me in a tree in the Memorial Union quad one night. Big group of us was out, and in a spirit of insanity, I climbed the tree. Fun times.

Rabbits Asleep

Me, crashed out at my desk, sometime freshman year. Roomie snapped this one night when I was apparently very very tired. For those of you clueless about dorm life, that's about half of our double room, there. The other side looks like this one, and the part you can't see, from the green thing in the foreground that's my pillow on, is beds, one to a side. Note the desk - that binder on the open drawer was my mousepad, and my keyboard sat diagonally in front of my monitor in order to make room for my entire comp on the desk. In my single room, almost nothing has changed except there's one set of furnishings, and the desk is almost half again as big - no more annoying binder mousepads!

So it was D&D night tonight. This is always good times, but it's especially good times when we're just at the end of a long fight with three high-powered demons and a high-level blackguard. We had, when we left off, just finished the enemies, losing our NPC ranger and putting most of us at 2 or so hp.

So we get the hell out of Dodge, hole up, and are about to sleep and heal when...

"Roll a spot check. Erik."

"Uh, 6."

"You notice the dog-headed demon about the time it slips a dagger into your ribs from behind. Take 13 damage."

"Excellent. I'm at -11. I am dead. Next time, I'm finding a bigger tree to slump against."

Fortunately, Rema let Mel's cleric attempt to heal me from the dead, and it succeeded. So we sort of beat off the 6 or whatever attacking demons, and camped, got some spells, healed. Next plan: Save the hostages.

So, in a brilliant display of woodsmanship, since we lost our ranger, Mel immediately gets us totally lost and we waste a day running around in the pouring rain on this hillside. Finally, we emerge onto a road. This would be about the time a big cloud of demons comes up over the treeline.

"We, uh, hide. This time, I find a big tree to get my back to."

"Ok. Matt, what are you doing?"

"I leap out in the middle of the road, draw my sword, and wait for them."

Oh crap.

The mother of all melees ensues. The 4 of us, half out of heals, versus something like 35 assorted demons. We quickly group up in the middle of the road, and it devolves into:

"I hit! I killed it! I cleave! I hit it! It didn't die! Crap! It hit me! For 4 more damage! I'm losing hp fast! Help!"

etc, etc for a whole long time, until in a scene eerily reminiscent of the last fight scene, everyone's at negligable hp and all the enemies are dead, and we limp off the road into the woods and collapse. I find a big tree. And we heal. Again.

So our mission, originally, was to recon the area, see how many demons there were, rescue the hostages if we could, and that sort of thing. Well... we get back up to the slave pens, and it's empty. So we check out the evil shrine. And find the hostages. Or the bloody remains of the hostages, anyway. Looks like we failed THAT one. But the demons look pretty much gone. We got that much, anyway.

Next up: Whereupon Dwip encounters Homework. And Dwip does battle with Homework, and Overcomes it. And Life is Good.

So I went and saw the movie again with Cole and Brian last night. And then in reply to a post of Sanjab's at Tonto, I wrote the following analysis. Be warned that this will pretty much spoil the whole movie if you read it.

--------------------------

On one, fairly shallow level, I enjoyed it. The special effects were excellent, some of the scenes very well done.

On another, deeper level, it's a travesty. Others have analyzed this in far more detail than I, but I'll note a few things.

1. The total abandonment of about half the plot threads from the first two movies, among other things the entire character of Morpheus.

2. Neo's magical powers. Yes, you've been setting him up as the Messiah for two movies now. Yes, there are ways to rationalize at least part of this. No, you didn't explain it at all well, which leads one to believe that either Neo has a wireless network card in his head now that lets him interface with the machines directly (very charitable), or that you gave him magical powers and thus totally sabotaged your movie in the process (not so charitable).

3. Let's hear it again for all those dangling plot threads, shall we?

4. An overlong, at times boring, Zion attack that was done very foolishly by both sides. Consider: How much would some small EMP devices and windshields on the battlemechs help out the Zion defense? How much would not flying around in cool-looking spirals and actually attacking help the machines? And how much would ignoring all those pointless characters we don't care about and getting on with the real plot help the movie?

5. Too, the Smith/Neo fight scene was a bit overlong and a bit too comical for my tastes. No, I'm not quite sure how to fix that in the context of the movie's world.

6. Too, the one fight scene I DID like was the bit where Seraph inexplicably goes with Morpheus/Trinity to the Merovingian's place and they do the whole upside down thing.

I say all of this having seen the movie twice now. We note that with Reloaded, both of the very long fight scenes actually got better on the second viewing because you could sit down and enjoy them. This didn't happen at all with Revolutions - Zion got a BIT better, except for all that stupid comical screaming and face grimacing, but the Smith/Neo fight still dragged and looked stupid.

7. The giant overload of Christian symbolism at the end. Count it, folks. You get Neo crucified on the Cross of Light. You get not one but two more crosses of light when all the Smiths start blowing up (anyone who thinks those streets just so happened to be in a cross like that is deluding themselves), and my favorite, the cross in blood on whasshername's (Zee? Our favorite rocket loader...) arm in the temple scene.

8. A message that essentially comes down to "if you unquestioningly believe in God/Neo/something, everything will work out ok." Yes, they've been setting up Neo as the Messiah for three movies. Yes, this totally abandons Morpheus' crisis of faith, not to mention Neo's little "I am not the One" thing. Yes, it is a total copout. I mean, if I wanted a "power of faith" movie, I could go watch The Green Mile or something. I'm not sure what I wanted out of the movie, but that wasn't it. While they did the whole zero-sum thing quite well, the Messiah bit was horridly, horridly done.

"Takes a second to say goodbye/say goodbye, oh oh oh/push the button and pull the plug/say goodbye, oh oh oh"

I have nothing to say, really. I looked upon midterms, and found them wanting. An A- on my history of science midterm, a solid B on my American history midterm and my first poli sci midterm. Turned in the second of those today, and I expect no problems with it.

So I played some UFO: Aftermath.

I could say much about this game. I love the tactics of running your squad through cities, through forests, into buildings, all the while attempting to shoot up aliens. It's challenging - make a wrong move, and you may well die. There's enough adrenaline pumping around in UFO to make it very, very fun.

That having been said, I have a few screenshots and a story or two.

First, though, a game glitch shot

You'll note Ron there, who just got killed by that dead alien lying in the foreground. Yet if you act fast enough, you can medkit your guys back to health. They're still DEAD, but they look alive...

Now for the story. I'm defending one of my bases from alien attack. Understand that when you're defending a base, your squad starts scattered through the base, which can be quite sizable. Sometimes you get lucky and your guys all start next to each other, and sometimes, well, they don't.

"But sir, I REALLY hafta go!"

"Dammit Brian, we're under attack here!"

"I know, sir, but I've been holding it for HOURS!"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the base, my other three troops start next to each other, and group up. Unfortunately, where they group up is right on top of the alien spawn point.

The little grey boxes in that shot are dead aliens, sometimes 2-3 to a pile. There were 8 that came in, singly or in pairs. A single alien is survivable. Pairs? More iffy. More than that? Suicide. Remember that. In any case, there was quite a lot of gunning down aliens. 8 of my 12 needed for success.

So I went hunting for the other five. So I was sneaking down a long hallway, got to the end, and quicksaved, as is my standard procedure...just as an alien came around the corner. Followed by three of his friends, multiple of them armed with massive damage weapons or area effect weapons. Linette got off a couple of shots then went down. Jayrashee pulled out her medkit, got Linette up again, then died the final death. Joan and Linette managed to finish them up.

Brian? He spent the entire time in the bathroom.

Another story. Another base defense, but this time my troops all started near each other, so I got them together. The problem was, they were all in a room surrounded by very wide, very long halls. Why is this a problem, you ask? I stepped out, and about 5 rockets came shooting down the hall. So I ran flat out down the hall, dodging rockets, until a side hallway came into view. So I ducked into it and set up shop to wait for the aliens. Got out the grenades, set up snipers, the whole nine yards.

Then the aliens started coming. And coming. And coming. I was tossing grenades one after the other, and my shotgunners couldn't shoot fast enough. Eventually my grenadier got taken over by a mind control ray, and I had to bug out down the hall, dodging my own grenades and a couple of rockets, until I could duck around the other end...right into a couple more aliens, who had heavy weapons and incapacitated a couple of my troops before being taken out. Then, with my grenadier back, I got to go back and take out the OTHER aliens.

Fun times. Fun times.

So I went to bed at 1am because I'm really tired, and wake up at 3am. What the hell? Stop that, self. Stop it right now.

I'd love to have something fun and interesting to report, but no, 'fraid not. But I've remembered an episode from the weekend.

So we're in the theater for the Matrix. Before the movie, they play this little clip with this Hollywood stuntman talking about how making movies takes all this time and effort and how piracy totally cheapens that. So some guy shouts out "I'm gonna go home and download that!" Vast applause erupts in the theater.

Did I mention that our showing was like all college kids? Yeah.

Because I don't want to break the flow of the other post...

Speaking of studying, not only did I have a midterm Tuesday, I had a takehome midterm due Thursday, and got another midterm due next Thursday, and will have another midterm on Monday. Like, go away, school. Just go away, and let me play UFO: Aftermath in peace.

Yes. New game. Top-down squad-level tactical game. A lot like X-Com, they say, though I never played X-Com. In any case, it's a lot of fun. Normal is, erm, sufficiently hard, let us say.

But as I have 9 hours of Bob Marley video to watch, maybe we'll just pause on playing that for a bit.

So I saw Matrix: Revolutions last night, but we'll talk about that later.

So Dad's hobby just so happens to be photography. And, as it so happens, he was part of a local show at LaSells here on campus last night (or is, I should say, as the pics are still there, but). And he wanted me to come for part of it. So I, with my devious mind, got an idea. "Hey, Tali, Laurent. Come see Dad's photography, and meet the parents who you haven't despite my having been friends with you for 5 years, and we'll go see the Matrix after." Ok, this works. So they come, I come, we all hang out at the show. So there's going to be a poetry reading of local stuff. Arright. Not my cup of tea, but whatever. Turns out one of the readers is my former English teacher from a couple years ago, who I really liked. "Wow," I'm thinking. Small world.

But wait, it gets better.

So later, we're in line at the Matrix, and I hear this "Erik!" Look around, and who should be 2 places ahead of us in line but Suzanne. Arright. This is TOO weird. So we stand there and BS for 10 minutes or so until they let people in, both of us more or less ignoring her date. Right. This despite the fact we talk at least once a week on ICQ. *shrug*

Anyway, the movie. For those of you what haven't seen it, thar be SPOILERS ahead, Cap'n!

I expected more crunchy plot details. Explanations. But no, we didn't get a lot of those. No wordy Architect-style expositions about things. This, it appears from the reviews, has confused quite a lot of people. I was not among them. Then again, I appear to have been at the top of my movie comprehension game right then, but more on that in a moment. My only hangup - did Neo, or did Neo not have magical powers in the real world? The best explanation I've heard says that no, he was somehow jacked into the machine's network. Not the Matrix, but their own internal one. Ok. That's pretty screwy, but I buy it better than magic powers. Then again, there was so much Christian symbolism scattered around... Which was a peeve. Neo-as-blinded-Tyr was cool. Neo on the mechanical King Arthur funeral barge was cool. Neo-as-Christ on the cross of light, less cool but arright. But the cross of light running through the streets at the end of the Smith/Neo fight? The freaking cross of blood on whasshername's arm? There were doubtless others. Rub it in, why don't we. Then again, I appear to be the only one who actually caught those, so whatever.

Oh well. Back to studying.

Or not so alas, but. Spot the ref, win a point.

So the main OSU server decided to up and take a vacation for most of Sunday/Monday, which meant no Internet for me. This was horribly convenient, because I had a presentation due Monday which I was going to use it for. As it turns out I didn't need to talk. So it all turned out well.

So anyway. I'm very tired, and it's midnight, so I go to bed. Only to wake up at 3am, wide awake. What the hell? It's 3am. Can't sleep. The Internet is a fleeting memory. What to do? What to do?

Play Civ, of course.

Wasn't in the mood for a huge game, so I decided I'd try the mythical One City Challenge idea. Ended up deciding on Babylon to facilitate a 20k culture run (cheap religious/science buildings see, which are all culture), and because I've never played Babylon before. First run through, it's me and Hiawatha on a mini-continent. Hiawatha decides that Babylon needs to be purple and not red, and thus initiates a giant smackdown. Ok. Try two. The land is great. There's no resources, but it'll do. Better yet, nobody smacks me down because it's a Pangea and they're all having enormous world wars every 5 seconds. This, of course, leads to enormous AI armies roaming my little outpost, while I think "PleasepleasepleasegokillEnglandorsomebody. Pleasepleaseplease."

So they did, actually. And the Mongols ate it. And Persia. And the Ottomans. And I think somebody else did. Greece almost did after dominating forever and ever. Spain almost did. There was a LOT of war going on, fortunately never involving me. They were all afraid of my huge army of 4 spears, I'm sure.

Also, this was the first game I ever actually listened to the soundtrack to. It's actually a good soundtrack, although the addition of very soothing classical music to the Industrial Age is slightly disconcerting when there's dozens of AI units blowing the hell out of each other every turn.

To make a long story short, I missed Sistine's, I missed Shakespeare's, but I hit the Oracle, the Hanging Gardens, Bach's, and the Great Library. It was enough, eventually, for values of eventually = 1976 AD. Very nerve-wracking, though, watching the AI wars, and wondering if India was going to overwhelm everyone.

For the curious, here's a screenshot of Babylon and environs in 1975.

So I didn't manage to get back to sleep again until about 10am. Sort of. For like 20 minutes. Maybe. That sucked, especially because I had a very lengthy midterm at 12:30. Not sure how that's going to work out, since I went kinda out there on one question... "What is the Sambo Thesis? The Sambo Thesis says that the slaves were all happy-go-lucky and content to be slaves. This fails when you realize all these happy, content slaves were rebelling all the time, and everyone was so happy and content they were afraid of each other, which led to a happy and content low-level guerilla war between slaves and masters that lasted until the Civil War." I hope to hell the prof has a good sense of humor.

And in 3 hours, I can go to bed. I can't wait. I'm soooooo tired.