The Forest
[Exits: North East South West]
You stand in the midst of a huge forest. The trees here are huge, and tower far above you. All around you, deer move through the trees, and occasionally you can see a figure dressed in green and brown leather, observing you through the brush. A small stream can be seen through the trees to the north and west.
(Magical) A magical fire burns brightly. (627)
Xaxtnilax the Greater Sage is standing here.

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

Remember, only YOU can start forest fires.

Casting all those took like 5 hours, btw. All to get a measly 12k xp, level 13, and 95% adept in create fire. Argh.

I was going to write this originally as a reply to various people in the timeline post, but it's a bit large for that now, so...

I don't usually need to pull out Wordpad for a commentary reply. Sheesh.

Well, seeing as how Western Civilization developed without the United Nations or anything even close to it, I'm pretty sure things aren't going to suck too bad without such an absurdly worthless institution.

Yes and no.

On the one hand, the UN is fundamentally flawed. I think we all pretty much recognize this. In efforts to be more inclusive or whatever, it has come to lack the collective will to enforce the things it says it wants. Iraq is one example. Human rights violations by any number of member states is another. There's a pretty long list, which I think we all know about, about which I'm not going to elaborate.

On the other hand, the UN symbolizes a number of things, including a commitment to peaceful relations, global cooperation, and such. These are, I think, useful goals. Because let's face it. The system of international politics that brought us the First World War didn't exactly work out. Excessive nationalism, military saber-rattling, and imperialism all contributed to that particular collective mental deficiency.

We got the right idea after the war with the League of Nations, but it had the UN's main foreign policy problem - a lack of collective will (among other things). Commitment to peaceful relations or no, we saw how far that got Neville Chamberlain. Repeat the cycle with World War II and then the UN.

The founders of both the United Nations and the League of Nations recognized that another war on the scale that they witnessed, in some cases twice, would destroy humanity. We've come at times in the last half century very close to that. So the goal of cooperation and diplomacy is one that sits well with me.

And yet the organization designed to foster it has more or less failed in that goal. Without some sort of effective form of coercion answerable only to the UN leadership, it will always and forever fail. Any newer, more effective UN must address that problem, or be yet another reject to the scrapheap of history.

Too, such a body must enforce reasonable goals. As Marechal again notes, the UN's human rights record is rediculously abysmal, yet he also complains about ceding national soveriegnty to anything. I should note, as an aside, we give some soveriegnty over our troops and the like to NATO, but you don't hear him complaining about NATO. Any future UN must take into account both of these issues. There's a line somewhere that must be drawn. I haven't the faintest clue about how to draw it, however - the questions over human rights for one are very, very difficult to answer.

Breaking down into individual quotes:

Quoth Marechal: Just because a nation exists doesn't mean it should have sovereignty or just because Saddam is in power does not mean he has legitimate sovereignty, Citizen Toast. Come on now. Don't go pull a Bernadotte or I'll be sad.

But, we ponder, who is it that decides if a nation should have soveriegnty or not? The United States? The United Nations? The UN route is of course more equitable to more people, but brings up all those will problems I mentioned earlier. The US route of course begs the questions of what sort of moral authority we think we have to go around deciding who lives and who dies. And there's some justification behind that question, as a whole host of people in Latin America would have you know.

And will someone PLEASE tell me what is so wrong with imperialism???? Everyone is kicking around the "I" word like it was fascism or communism or some other repulsive, stupid ideological program of destruction. What the hell. I'm talking about the old school imperialism of Great Britain and France pre-1870s here. That's genuine, glorious, honorable imperialism in its purest and unadultered form. Imperialism post-1870s is more like neo-imperialism, tainted and not quite as wholesome as the old school.

Christ, Marechal. You're a history student. Hell, you even study the period. You should know this better than I do, yet apparently not.

Let us, before I get really started and for the sake of Iraq, distinguish between things like the US occupation of Iraq, which is best described as "nation building" with the clear intent to get the hell out after we accomplish the setting up of a viable government, and what Marechal is talking about, which is good old-fashioned dictatorial screw-the-people resource exploitation imperialism.

Let's talk about that for a bit, shall we? We here in America have this peculiar little document called the Declaration of Independence. In it, we list a whole bunch of things about this imperialism. And I quote:

"HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them."

"HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People."

"HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of the Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and the Convulsions within."

"HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers."

"HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures."

"FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us;"

"FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:"

"FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:"

"FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:"

"FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:"

"FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:"

"HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People."

And so on and so forth. And that's the mild form of it. I mean, the Thirteen Colonies missed out on the forced slavery (Africa, Spain in the Americas), random killings (Spain again), and other such things. The destructive forced economic servitude to fuel the homeland, thus preventing the colony from gaining any sort of wealth (that the 13 colonies gained a decent measure of wealth is something of a historical accident), is of course a given.

And we as Americans are, or ought to be, sort of opposed to that thing. Never mind that, in our hypocrisy, we took territory from Mexico and fought dozens of Indian tribes to extinction. Never mind that we kept among us millions of slaves. All of those things did, and still do, cause controversy, with just cause. It's written at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence:

"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Which is not to mention the horrendous cost of the military force required for occupation, which is a deal-breaker all by itself.

Because our world revolves around totally out of context Marechal quotes.

You have sent a message!
So tell me. What do you think about that new invention they came up with, fire?

You have received a message!
Change is bad. I'm strongly opposed to fire in all its forms, shapes, and uses. We must protect the sanctity of our fireless abodes.

Samson's fault for finding these and forcing me to laugh.

31. The proper name of Methyltheobromine is caffeine, not 'Holy life-giving fluid that is all we require for life'. (The blogger notes that this is a lie.)

97. 'MECHWARRIOR_4_SERVER' is not an authorized process to be running on the company's main router.

302. Mountain Dew is not radioactive and I should not tell Bob that it is. (Also a lie. With that kind of taste, it MUST be an Iraqi WMD reject substance)

304. Large sticks are not used in the repairing of computer technology. Ever. (Lies. Ever seen that picture of a duck holding a hammer over a computer?)

The relevant forum thread is here.

As far as the whole Iraq thing goes, this timeline makes interesting reading.

"This is interesting. To say the least." ---Toast

"Sadly, I'm not surprised. I went to the UN once, and they have a graph up somewhere where it shows how much money they'd need to solve or at least nearly solve many of the world's problems. The total cost is less than the total military expenditures of every country in the world." ---Regina

"Either way, I can't see why there's such a need for that much money being directed towards the military. The only plausible threat would be terrorists (which is plausible), but since when do you fight terrorists with, say, stealth bombers?" ---Toast

You, too, can have your very own topic, simply by making a political statement. Congrats, y'all. ;)

Anyway. I've a few points to make, regarding both the United States military budget and the United Nations as an effective entity. We'll start with the UN.

Whatever the UN may or may not need for it's budget, it ought to be noted that in many, many areas, they've fallen flat on their faces, budgetary and otherwise. I note the Iraqi chairmanship of their little WMD council thing (this just before the war), and a slightly older Sudanese chair of the one on human rights. You will be reminded that Sudan is like the only place in the world where slavery is still legal. Contrast that with what the UN believes are essential human rights (and there many of them - freedom is most certainly one), and ask yourself: With that kind of record, do I REALLY want these people to have my money? Throw in the French, throw in a certain leery feeling towards international courts that contradict the American judicial system, and a couple other things, and you've got in a nutshell why a whole bunch of Americans dislike the UN.

Which isn't to say it's not a good idea, but the implementation has become highly flawed.

That having been said, I will note that even the United Nations has not been able to escape from the necessity of having an armed military force. So far as I know, no country on the planet has escaped from it, with the possible exception of, say, Monaco.

Further note that a modern military is a very expensive thing. Aircraft carriers do not come cheap. Neither do jet aircraft, smart bombs, or M1 tanks. Further note that much of the reason for that expense is to make the weapons safer weapons, as paradoxical as that might sound. Smart bombs and cruise missiles come at a certain inflated price. Stealth bombers, which are harder to detect, thus resulting in a lower pilot casualty rate (a thing I am much in favor of), also bear a certain price. There's a tad more complexity than that, but that's the basics of it.

But, you say, the US military is so LARGE! How can we possibly need that many troops?

Very easily, actually. Consider for a moment that the US has non-trivial numbers of troops all over the planet (much of Europe, Korea, Japan, Iraq, others). Also consider that a very big chunk of the planet relies on the US military to protect it from various things, up to and including the United Nations, who we were involved with in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia, to name a few. Our presence in Korea stems from a UN mandate 50 years ago. Hell, our presence in Iraq is UN mandated from 1991 or so. America has responsibilities to a good number of international organizations, the UN and NATO among them, which require military presence.

That having been said, we're still a bit thin. The Iraq occupation is an enormous logistical problem, to the point where it's eating a whole lot of National Guard troops, the Army is desperate for manpower, and a Marine friend of mine who's already been there once is afraid he'll have to go back again.

I can't say I'm overly pleased about the military budget either, but I see why it is the way it is, and I'm fine with that.

[edit] I seem to have forgotten a bit of Toast's comments. What constitutes a threat. The terrorists are not the only one to be had. We just had, for instance, a very nice shooting war with Iraq in which our heavy equipment came in very handy. All those stealth bombers and such. It's been a few years, but when we took down Milosivic, we needed all of it, too. In fact, we lost a stealth fighter in the doing.

Too, there's a pretty non-zero chance we'll become involved in a shooting war with, say, North Korea at some point. They, certainly, warrent the use of stealth bombers and tanks and such. Iran is a much less plausible sort of threat, but they're there, too. India, Pakistan, Russia, China all have decent militaries we may end up fighting at some point. Etc, etc. [/edit]

So, in a fit of political something or another, I tuned in to watch Bush give his State of the Union speech tonight. On that note, let's hear it for C-SPAN for having a live webcast of the thing. In fact, let's hear it for live webcasts.

Anyway. This whole thing deserves some sort of gigantic hand wringing, which I'm not sure if I'm capable of in my current exhausted state, but we'll see what we can come up with. So...

For the curious, you can find the transcript of the thing here.

I'm not going to argue with the war on terror blurb. Mostly because there's not a whole hell of a lot to argue with, but also because I actually agree with him. To quote Regina's favorite Thomas Friedman line, "Some things are true even if George Bush believes them." Yeah. I do note, however that at this line: "Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year." rated ENORMOUS applause from the Democratic side of the isle. Certainly, I won't argue with their good judgement there.

That having been said, from everything I can tell, we're STILL screwing over the Afghans, and that STILL annoys me a great deal.

Too, I don't argue too much with the Iraq section, though I'm somewhat amused that he's still riding the still-breathing-but-not-long-for-this-earth WMD horse. I'd really love to see him take a spill off that one.

Too, the Democratic response to the SOTU speech had a point - internationalized the Iraq effort may be, more so than, say, the French would have you believe, but it's still mostly our troops on the ground. I don't really know what I want to say about that, but that's how it is.

And catch, if you will, the barely disguised connection he's trying to make between Afghanistan and Iraq in the, erm, War on Terror. We all know I'm for all of it, but Christ, Dubya, let's at least make an attempt to call it like it is.

There was much, much deserved beating of the wretched economy bullshit. A lot of it from C-SPAN callers, to the tune of "So, if we're gaining all these new jobs, where's mine?" There was a congressman what got interviewed after the thing who had some good things to say, as well, to the tune of "do you have any idea how many jobs we've lost in this recession? It's a lot. And we're not THAT recovered. Oh, and you know the No Child Left Behind crap? Yeah. What money? Because it ain't getting full funding."

It is also left as an exercise for the reader to wonder WHERE exactly all the money for these giant new programs Bush keeps coming up with, if we're cutting taxes. Apparently he's also going to reduce the deficit and balance the budget or some such crap, as well. As much in awe of Bush's mad money skillz as I may be...no.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, too, is a rant on Bush attempt to channel the spirit of JFK with that Mars thing, but it's not coming out yet, and it's best I don't let it, lest I hurt myself from the laughter.

I'm also not entirely sure what I want to make of his ideas on illegal immigrants. Believe you me, though, the callers in on C-SPAN sure had ideas, mostly involving tar, feathers, shotguns, and maybe the odd burning cross. In support of Bush, mind you. Frightening business.

I'm not sure I want to touch health care with a stick, but I will note:

I know there's not much chance of stopping the War on Drugs, but really, we need to do something SLIGHTLY less insane than we're doing. Too, this whole "Hey kids, drugs are bad, mmmkay?" thing is old. It was old when I was in fucking grade school, actually.

And the steroids thing...whatever. I'm slightly incredulous that we need the POTUS to put this in the State of the Union of all things. Aeeyah.

Too, while everything he says about abstinence-based sex ed is true in a technical sense, it's still an incredibly stupid idea. I could go on about that one, but I'm thinking not right now.

And about the time he started blathering about the "sanctity of marriage" and "faith-based initiatives" is about where I started getting very annoyed. VERY annoyed. EXTREMELY pissed off.

Although the bit C-SPAN did while he was blathering about it all where they cut to a shot of Ashcroft clapping was pretty amusing.

Still, if I didn't know anything else about Bush, the fact that he's a severe right-winger would be enough to make me frightened and ready to vote against him. Almost more than anything else he stands for, actually.

And I think the Democratic response is worth reading. I won't comment on it, but I think it's mostly pretty good.

Today's entertainment:

Read to page 195 David Herbert Donald's Lincoln. Done.

Read to page 35 a book of articles on Lincoln.

Write 4 pages on Lincoln in the New York Times. Half done.

Write out a paper proposal, with 2 seperate topics, for the Lincoln class.

Read an unspecified number of pages for 19th Century Europe and write an impression on the work.

There's other work to be done in other classes, but it is negligable and can be safely ignored until, say, tomorrow.

That having been said, a note on Donald's book. It rules. Great biography, and it hasn't even made it to him being elected president yet. It may in fact be the best class textbook I've ever had. Good times. Go forth and add it to your reading lists presently.

One of these times, I shall find it within myself to finish Ye Olde Truman Biography, too. For it too rules muchly.

My throat hurts like hell for no reason. I'm angry about that. Anyway.

So, last Sunday, we all gathered together for the weekly D&D ritual at Rema and Mel's. Whereupon our group was hired by the Temple of Antion, the knowledge god, to go investigate some ruins we found while clearing out the demons I was talking about a while back. We're getting paid 1500 gold per week for this task, which for the clueless amongst you means we're not quite the equivilant of a Guatemalan sweatshop worker, but we're close.

Anyway. So we go in, start digging around. Get in an inconsequential fight with some wraiths, which loses a couple people some levels which get restored, and then we keep going. End up in this cave, a big big big cave, with a ramp leading down blocked by some shrieker mushrooms and some other 'shrooms. I, being clever, toss a rock through the shriekers, which of course sets them off and rings the front doorbell, so to speak.

Bad move. Next thing we know, this big black spikey monster does this little skiing up the walls thing, appears right in front of our gnome mage, and chomps him a lot, which has the dual effect of losing him a lot of hp and losing him a lot of int.

We prepared for the fight scene, such as it was. Which looked like it might go well for a moment, when us rogue types got dual sneak attacks going, except for the fact that A, the monster absorbed 10 damage from every single attack, and B, it also used some psionic power to stun our frontline fighter, leaving, uh, me to attack the thing, with Mel's cleric's and the gnome's robot's help.

Realize that either of them making it above 10 was pretty tough. Realize also that it was doing 10 and 12 damage hits at a time, and I have 36 hp.

Still, we tried. And apparently got it down to 0 before it regenned to 5, killed me, and ran off. Still, I died. Like, dead dead.

The plus side of this is, I got raised from the dead. The down side of this is that I lost a level, and the party is like 5000 gold in the hole. That's hurting.

At any rate, we prepared a bit harder this time, and went back in, spelled up and raring to go.

Yeah. Monsters aren't stupid either. First it stuns ME, then it stuns Chase the barbarian and Seebo the gnome in consecutive tries, then it whacks on Mel's cleric and the robot for, get this, more than the 12 rounds the stun lasted on me. So I come back, start whacking it, Chase comes back, starts whacking it, and Seebo comes back, starts blasting it. It's mightily unimpressed by this, kills the robot, and leaves. We decided that's a good plan, and do so as well.

It 2, us 0. But we've got a third try coming. There's hope. And the robot only costs 1k to rebuild.

So, Saturday night, I went over to Cole and Brian's, and played some Star Wars d20 just to learn the system because nobody had played it before. Fun times. I'm playing a Jedi consular of some screwy giant rabbit race nobody's ever heard of before, Cole's playing a Jedi guardian of some big blue buff race nobody's ever heard of before, and we've got Brian's NPC, San Holo the starship pilot to back us up.

And there was much leveling of a random Sith base with ease. And then we went in to talk to Java the Hutt to pay off San Holo's debts (what, you say? This is obviously a hastily written adventure? Yes, yes it is. But it's fun.), whereupon we hack Java's computers, kill a lot of droids and Gammoreans, release all his prisoners, rescue San Holo from being captured, and strike a deal with Java to pay the debts. Whee.

In other news, I sure do have a whole lot of homework to be doing.

So I just saw some guy downstairs wearing one of these. Ownage.

And I, uh, feel fine? Maybe.

On the plus side: I played KOTOR a lot today and beat it. It was fun. I can't keep binging on games like this, because I have a lot of work (some of which I even did today), but it was fun. Wholesome RPG goodness.

Then I walked into my HST 407 class. Whereupon I was handed the syllabus. And feelings of joy, light, and the Warm Fuzzy Feeling fled from my being as if being chased by a hungry-looking lion or something.

Check this out.

1/20 - Read >220 pages. Turn in 2 seperate paper topics. 4 page paper of New York Times research.

1/27 - Read >250 pages.

2/3 - Read >250 pages. 4 page paper on primary sources.

2/10 - 5 page paper discussing books.

2/17 - 2 page outline, bibliography due.

2/24 - 3 page beginning of large paper due.

3/2 - 10 page rough draft due. Massive critique of 3 pager for spelling/writing.

3/9 - Entire 20 page second draft due for critique in class.

3/11 - Final 20 page paper due.

They didn't lie about the writing intensive thing, believe you me. Mind you there are three other classes besides this one, each of which has its own assignments.

So, it's about 7:30 last night. I've been playing Knights of the Old Republic for like, all day.

Clock: It's 7:30. You need to go hang out with Tali and Laurent like you said you would, or they will be pissed.

Me: But I want to go with my ship to Dantooine. I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.

Clock: You're not Luke Skywalker. You're going to be late. Get going.

Me: But I'm about to build my liiiiightsaaaaber... It's going to be blue!

Clock: That's nice. Now get going.

Me: Argh.

So I went and we watched movies and then I played KOTOR until 6am. Because truly there is no God but Bioware, and KOTOR is their prophet. Yes.

Now, back to the game.

For the New York Times readers in the audience, I though this was a pretty interesting read.

Being a review of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King.

Yeah, I FINALLY saw the thing. After being snowed in, sick, and whatever else, Suzanne and I went, saw it, and had an entirely enjoyable evening, one of the better I've had lately.

Anyway. Like, damn. DAMN. Words practically fail me to describe this movie, this series. The best I can come up with is to go find Peter Jackson and grovel before him for a while until he unceremoniously boots me out into the street as being an embarrasment. I suspect I might need to fight some other people to get there, though.

I'll take a few shots at the really good stuff, first:

The Mount Doom climax. More or less, that's exactly how it happened inside my head, up to and including laying on the rock watching the lava go by. In fact, the general ability of these movies to do that astonishes me.

Minas Tirith in general. I was worried, sort of, because what you see of Gondor in TTT looks vaguely crappy. Instead, in RotK, I'm suddenly inspired to go build the model because it looks sweet.

Rohan in general. I'm not sure I ever picked up on the Mongavikings bit before, but the way it turned out rocks. Plus the musical theme they get is nifty.

Frodo wakes up, and Frodo catches the last boat out of town. Genuine emotion in movies is a hard thing for me. I got this really goofy grin on my face when Frodo sees Gandalf, and that sort of stayed with me. Frodo catching the boat is probably my favorite scene in the entire story, and the movie did a very decent job of doing justice to it.

Shelob. Sort of generic horror-movieish at the start, but I JUMPED in my seat when Frodo got stuck, to Suzanne's amusement. It's hard to get that out of me, most days. Plus the CGI rocked.

Gollum. Like, duh.

The Smeagol/Deagol opening. A lot of people didn't like this, but I did. Felt like a good spot, it did.

Most of the Pellenor fields, just for existing. Eowyn's Big Day, obviously.

I've been amazed, constantly, at how for the most part the actors that play the assorted characters look EXACTLY like how I'd think they looked. The acting as a whole, of course, was stellar. Frodo and Sam get bonus points for making me like them this time around, whereas in the books it's like "can we PLEASE get some more Aragorn time already?"

My evil base is going to look EXACTLY like Minas Morgul with the light show on. That rocked.

That having been said, some issues:

Dialogue. I kept waiting for certain trademark lines, and when they didn't show up, it threw me. That's a problem of mine from all three films, actually. It fades on repeat showings, though the Council of Elrond STILL annoys me for some reason.

Legolas goes 'phant surfing. The CGI sucked for parts, and the climbing bit annoyed me. Then I liked it and it was ok.

Denethor. If they screwed anything in the movie, they screwed Denethor. Him and Saruman. Show us some palantirs, Pete. Sheesh. I expect any problems I have with these two things will be calmed once the real films[1] actually show up on DVD and I can watch the whole movie.

Faramir/Eowyn. "Houses of Healing? You mean there are Houses of Healing? Crap." Again, I expect that when the real movie shows up, this will go away.

I suppose the Scouring of the Shire could go here, but unlike a lot of people, I can't really work myself up enough to care. Oh well.

I sort of thought Arwen should have showed up a bit earlier than she did, and done more than she did, like maybe showed up instead of Elrond and pulled another Arwen Warrior Princess bit, because if you're going to make the change you might as well do it right and they were building for it. Ah well.

Really, that's about it. My complaints about the series as a whole are pretty negligible. The dialogue thing throws me some. The Council of Elrond. I still can't decide if I like Osgiliath in TTT or not. A scant few issues with assorted things in RotK that I suspect will end up fixed.

My compliments about the series, though? Words fail. I feel that I've been witness to one of the Great Cinema Achievements Of Our Time, one that in time may be ranked with, say, Star Wars and Indiana Jones. I am profoundly greatful for having been there to see it.

[1] - Real films, to be defined as the extended editions. Because that's really what they are, and trying to pretend otherwise is only going to get you ignored by me a lot.

So, for something like the sixth time in OSU history, we're closed. Snowed in, in fact, under a couple inches of snow and ice. Fun times.

Actually, it was worse yesterday. We were open, but ice covered EVERYTHING. Slipping to class was a lot of fun. So we'll see how tomorrow is. Should be fun.

Was going to go see RotK finally with Suzanne, but since my car was covered in a quarter inch of ice, that was a total non-starter. Ah well. We'll see how Thursday goes.

Much to say, now that I am once more in a place to say things.

Firstly, throat, whatever your problem is, stop it. Stop it right now. I am REAL tired of your attitude. Like, WAY tired. So unless you want to be sent to bed with no supper again, cut it out.

Anyway.

Much going on on the Civ front. I finally have a successful Succession Game in RBC4a, in which our 5CC Mayans do quite a lot of sacrificing, and quite a lot of math. Just what any game needs to be highly entertaining, right? Blood, sweat, and calculators.

And, something like 4 new SGs having started today*, I'm now in RBC9 (NINE!), and am up next, as it happens. An Oscillating War game with chariots should be fun.

Too, I picked up a turn in RBC5, which should finally give me something of a Mongol game.

Toast, never let it be said that I don't at least TRY to provide you with reading material.

* - So Mel and I are sitting around over the morning caffiene earlier, and she's like "You know, there's a whole bunch of new threads on Civfanatics right now. If you want a new game, you should get over there pretty quick." And sure enough, by the time I get there, RBC6, 7, and 8 are closed, and I was feeling lucky to duck into 9, and what will likely become 3 or 4 teams in 10 at some point. Jeeze.

And, incidentally, Conquests has been running for no reason for like, 10 hours now. That's sort of impressive, for some reason.

Moving on...

Having finished the Shogun miniseries, I shall now comment upon it. First by quoting myself:

On a more positive note, the whole 9 hour Shogun miniseries rocks. We haven't finished it yet, but that's ok. It's still sweet. It excises some things, changes others (reminded of LotR yet?), but overall it's a pretty viable rendition of the book. I'd prefer if they put in some subtitles for the rather copious Japanese, instead of the occasional English voiceover, but that's ok. I'll watch it subtitled next time. The way they've done it this time pretty well puts you in Blackthorne's shoes - you don't understand anything, but after a while, you begin picking up the language right along with him. That's cool and well done, I think. Plus it's made me rethink some of the scenes in the book in a way I haven't done for a long, long time. That's cool.

It turns out if you watch the special features that the "let's have the audience learn Japanese with Blackthorne" thing was actually the whole idea. Yes, I pick these things up well. That bit got done well, though by the end I was sort of impatient.

I did in fact rethink a bunch of the scenes from the book and what they actually meant, sometimes by seeing them on the scene, more often because they got cut and I was like "Uh, but..." Strangely, I missed the fight scenes the most. They cut the post-prison one and a couple smaller ones, which sort of sucked, but the ninja attack lived up to expectations, so all was well.

Too, you lost a lot of the book's detail by doing the "only see what Blackthorne sees" bit, which works, but makes it good for a totally different reason than the book ends up being good. *shrug*

The special features, incidentally, mostly sucked. There are reasons for that, most of which likely center around the fact that a good chunk of the people involved, including James Clavell, are very dead. So the commentary and the features are all a very technical making of thing.

There were a couple of little historical shorts talking about samurai and geisha and the tea ceremony. Those sucked too, because almost all movie historical features suck.

*takes a deep, deep breath*

That, incidentally, leads to a sort of strange dichotomy. The lack of historical accuracy, I mean. And let's face it - Shogun isn't even in the same ballpark as historical accuracy. Blackthorne existed as a guy called Will Adams, who did in fact shipwreck in Japan, got in with the real Toranaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and did a bunch of trading, and sailing in ships, and such. The very broad historical outlines happened. Otherwise Shogun sails off the deep end.

Which leads us to the dichotomy. Talk to Randafool on the street who's read Shogun, say my parents for a quick example, and they'll say "Yeah, Shogun was great! I loved every minute of it! Best book ever!" Stuff like that. And it really is good. Exciting, interesting, well-written, you name it. And apparently when it came out back in '75 or so, it sold some rediculous amount of copies (Clavell's books as a whole sold 17 million as of 1986, of which Shogun was a huge proportion).

Talk to a historian, on the other hand, and you're liable, as happened to me once, to get it dismissed in a huff as "historically inaccurate." OSU's history office has a board on the wall right now talking about which movies are historically accurate/inaccurate. Whenever I think on the subject, I always feel like I've stumbled into some bizzare professional territorial defense mechanism, not unlike, say, shit-throwing monkeys or growling at intruders or something.

Never quite sure what to make of that. I mean, on the one hand they've got a point. Historical accuracy on some level is something to be strived for, for the obvious reasons, I should think. You want your story to be as true to life as you can. On the other hand, to sink to the level of not being able to enjoy the story because of that seems to me to be a bit screwy. The public sure as hell is, so get the hell on board and capitalize on that, folks.

Which isn't to say the public doesn't have a certain responsibility to educate themselves on the matter, but let's be honest, here - they haven't got the faintest clue where to start, which is why they take history courses in the first place.

Poor fools. I mean that, too. Have you people ever tried to read academic history? Half that stuff is so dry, I half suspect it's behind the formation of the Sahara. It CAN be made interesting, but most of the people who DO make it interesting aren't actually historians by training - John Julius Norwich and his excellent history of the Byzantines comes to mind. That too leads to bizarre turf wars in which the academic historians beat on the pop historians a lot. Not without some merit at times, because research IS important, but ye gods. The history profession, people in general, could benefit by being taught how to write in an entertaining and engaging manner. And anybody who's taken a writing class knows that that skill isn't exactly widely taught these days.

To a segue a bit, I offer a quote. From an academic historian who can, so far it would seem, write. Sort of shoots my whole argument in the foot, but whatever. From Chester Starr's A History of the Ancient World:

"How do we know what happened in history? This problem may not deeply concern a beginner in history, who perhaps tends to take every statement in a book as true - until he reads another book on the same subject and finds that opinions differ amazingly. Too often the result of this process is the other extreme, skepticism as to whether anything in history is true."

Truth. An important one, no less. One I hold to enough to consider putting a little sign above whatever classroom door I inhabit saying "Question Everything." We aren't particularly taught that in high school that I've found. Sometimes not even college. Certainly many people in the real live world lack the ability to do so. Sad, yet true.

The next paragraph is a good one as well.

"The story of any era rests in the end not upon secondary accounts, written by modern scholars, but on contemporary materials. These, and these alone may be called the sources for the period; they rise directly out of the life and events of the times and must be used by the historian to re-create its story. A general survey is only an introduction to history, which must reflect in part the predjudices and interests of its author..."

The obvious truth of that should be without doubt, I think. It gets lost to the point where I've only done two primary source research papers in my entire career, but. Though that's changing, with the Internet. Used to be you had to go on site to get somebody's letter or something. Now you can get on the Internet and get, say, the letters and papers of Thomas Jefferson, to quote an example.

All of 35 pages in, incidentally, I'm liking this book a lot. Easy to read, but informative and interesting. Good stuff. Also reading David McCullough's (remember him?) Truman. Big freaking book, like a thousand pages. But his John Adams bio was enjoyable as hell, so here I am.

I need to add some fiction to that, but haven't seen anything I wanted to read. Ah well. Pretty soon that won't matter anyway.

So, in talking about snow the other day, I said:

I'll be even more displeased if it prevents me from going out tomorrow, too.

As it happens, snow did not, in fact, prevent me from going up to Corvallis and to Mel/Rema's New Year's bash, where much fun was had by all, including:

- Carting the souls of the damned through Hell in Hell Rail, including such statements as "I burn some astrologers and some schismatics!"

- Armada 3, which involved such things as getting our enormous pirate bands slaughtered by natives, me suicidally attacking Rema and losing, and a large three-way fight over the central island objective. Funness.

Not wanting to brave the roads to my snowed-in house at 3am, I spent the night on the couch, which in and of itself had some exciting times, such as having my head used as a climbing toy in the middle of the night by cats. Somehow that was amusing, too.

Having had so much fun the last night, nature decided that I would be better off stranded in Corvallis and forced to play more games, and so dumped about ten inches of snow on my house. So we played some D&D miniatures and some MW:DA, whereupon my Uller Star of Doom ran over a Republic Atlas and a Republic Jupiter before being stepped on by Rema's entire side.

And then we went back and played some Roborally. Let me tell you, that game is fun. You drive little robots around with randomly determined cards, trying to move around conveyer belts and pits and such. There is much zotting people with lasers. And fun times are had by all.

And that night's sleeping adventure involved waking up to find the dog staring me in the face from 3 millimeters away. I think I was a cat toy, too, but slept through it.

At any rate, nature decided at that point that two days trapped in the same clothes are enough, and cleared the roads so I could go home. And I did. And here I am.

So, yknow, Happy New Year, boys, girls, and Whir.