I dont know about you guys, but some people are so braindead anymore. Case in example is Metacritic's viewer ratings of V for Vendetta. As some of you may know, I'm a big Alan Moore fan, and was able to see this movie the day it was released, so I've read both the comic and seen the movie, so have an understanding of it. Today, I was trolling around through Metacritic, which I sometimes do to see what games and such I might want to get or avoid. On the front page, they listed V for Vendetta, so I thought I'd throw my two cents in, and as I'm reading through the reviews first, I can't believe how some people are. Comments being made about "what kind of government does that to its people besides communists", "How does blowing up random monuments show anyone they mean business", "Government fear the people? In the US and UK, the goverment is the people! If we don't like it, we can change it!", "Makes Christians seem like crazy right wing fundimentalists, christians have been repressed too!", etc.
For the first comment, well, facist coverments do that too. Moussolini wasn't communist, yet he repressed his people. The brainwashing Hideki Tojo did to the Japanese people as well as the abuse, wasn't communist inspired. I won't even invoke Godwin's law here, but you get the point.
Next up, was the one about blowing up monuments. Destroying a monument is a devistating morale blow to a group of people, and can really mess with their heads. We all know how the US was in the few weeks and months following 9/11. Relatively few people were killed (I say relatively, since if the terrorists were solely after a body count, they could have attacked at a different time, or another location and killed many many more people), yet people were scared shitless for a while, since they were able to undermine all of our security measures, and attack us on our own turf. Such an event can have massive impact. The Pentagon and New York attacks here, Reichstag Fire in Germany, The Burning of Washington during the War of 1812, etc.
The third one has some semblance of intelligence, but also neglects alot of things. For instance, yes, we in the US vote for the majority of government officials, it is quite often that the officials we've chosen are truthfully nothing like they lead us to believe, or specifically hid believes and wants from us to improve their chances of election. Look at George W Bush, he's done alot of things that people wouldn't have imagined he'd done if they went purely off what they knew before the 2000 or 2004 elections. Problem is, most politicians lie, so more often than not anymore, when we replace one we get another just as bad. If the government was truely the people, then there wouldn't be secrets withheld, actions taken out that a large portion of the public dislikes, etc. As far as the British goverment goes, well, thats a different story almost. They really have little say over who is controlling a large portion of the government. Their parliament is formed of two houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of Lords is completely unelected. In the House of Commons, The voters only vote for a person to represent their area. An example of that would be, if we were to only vote on Senators. Prime Minister isn't a traditional elected position either but rather an appointed one based off several factors.
For the Chrisianity bit, people have to concede that there are good and bad with every group, especially with religion. Just because there is one looney running around who is from a group, that doesn't mean that the entire group is. Also, people need to remember, that the UK's government is religion rooted. The Anglican church is a governmental body, and the official religion of the UK. Church officials from the Church of England do hold government positions in the House of Lords' Lords Spiritual. That is why in the story, when the facist regime took over, they got rid of non-christians, and any other groups that did not fit the Church's ideals (homosexuals, etc). Also, another reason for the religious angle in V for Vendetta, is because quite often people have seized power through reasoning to the people's religious beliefs. Look at the middle east and parts of africa, now. How many warlords and terrorists are controlling the people through religion?
Well, I could go on some more, but I think I've said enough for now. I personally thought it was a good movie, I loved the comic, but then I understood the background. Most people seem to be falling into two camps, those who love it, and the hate it, based mostly off of their misunderstanding of certain key points or parts of the story. If anyone wants to discuss things with me, I'm more than willing. Just post comments here, or email them from the Contact link on the right.
Also, I think I am going to be returning to putting the links in the body, such as today, rather than putting it into the "Related Link" spot, since I'm not sure how many of you noticed that. Might have been confusing to see me talking about something but not being able to see what.
First I want to start off with a bit of humor, or atleast I thought so. Checkout the URL that the image is hosted on too.
Hope everyone had a good April Fools day. Was neat seeing all the places do something, however, what was the deal with the Pink pony crap? A good half dozen sites, atleast, changed their pages to be pink and chanted "OMG PONIES!". Wasn't funny I thought.
Saturday, cruise season starts! Yay!
In other news, Apple released Boot Camp, a program to help setup multiboot systems on Intel Macs. Its in beta, but, hell, so is gMail. This is a nice step for easy multibooting, since effectively Apple says its ok now, and is helping. The next best thing is virtualization (which Leopard supposedly will have)
Some pissant came up to me in a game, and attacked me. He lost big time. I attacked him, and spanked his ass big time. I do this for a few days (this game limits number of attacks against a person per day), and then I get a message from him, calling me a cunt for attacking him. I had reached a point that I was going to stop attacking him, untill I got that message. So, I beat his ass yesterday, and today. Today, he gets the other little kiddies in his group to attack me. These guys are even weaker than he is. So I clean all their clocks. I check my messages, and someone from the group who didnt attack me had sent me a note earlier exclaiming "waht do you have against TBK". So I try to craft a finely worded message as follows…
[quote]
I have nothing against your group. I simply was attacked by some of your members, and afterwhich I've attacked them back. One in particular has not shown me any reason why I should not stop, since the first time I recieved communications from him, he was insulting me and using vulgar language. If he had requested for me to stop nicely, I would have done so post haste. As a matter of fact, I had previously planned on stopping my attacks untill I logged in and saw those messages.
Hopefully you can understand my side of this, and possibly help come to an understanding. Also if you could, please let Solman know that profane and vulgar speech is not a mature choice of action, and can infact be damaging to his own situation.
Thank you for your time.
[/quote]
The entire group seems to be about 12, but hopefully the reciever of the message will have some intelligence.
Yes, thats right, Mario-esque powerups scare town. I find it kinda funny. Yeah, if the boxes were unmarked and just laying out infront of a busy building, maybe, but jeez. Paranoid nutjobs.
Cheeta, of Tarzan fame, is now 74. Also, the lil guy is recognized as the world's oldest chimp by Guinness World Book of Records.
As far as shit going on here, I've been working on a good resolution vector map of the US, with all the states outlined. I wanted one, but refused to pay the $50 most places wanted. I'll probably be releasing it for free soon. Have a few more things I have to tweak.
