Chuck-ese

The best part of reading old speculative fiction is reading all the predictions about the current era, and seeing how close they came. I’m currently reading I Will Fear No Evil by Robert Heinlein, which I’m not too enamoured with. However, I did find one set of predictions he made interesting enough to comment on.

On pages 64-5 of my edition, the narrator talks about the political climate of the unspecified by clearly imminent time. In it, he identifies the major right-wing political parties as the SDS and the PLA, and their liberal opponents as the Constitutional Liberation Rally. The Democratic, Republican, and Socialist parties are labeled with the adjective “splinter.” While it is striking how he makes the three “major” political groups flip-flop political alignments (the SDS, for those who don’t know, were the fore-runner of the Weathermen; the PLA can only be assumed to mean People’s Liberation Army; and the Constitution Party that he knew was a conservative movement, to be differentiated from the paleoconservative former U.S. Taxpayers Party), it is also inconceivable to anyone in this day and age how any party could have dislodged the Democratic and Republican parties from thier traditional tyrannical dominance of the U.S. political process. Times of upheaval will tend to make one believe that things can actually happen.

Also, he got the average American’s short news-attention-span dead on.

I’m not by any means a Ron Paul supporter. However, I do have a certain interest in him as a man of his ideals who is outisde the corrupting mainstream of American politics.

Yes, I do realize that he gets the shaft from the media, who make or break candidates regardless of the popular will, as far as inclusion in the debates and campaign coverage. Hopefully, eventually, more people will be able to break away from the “conventional” media and have access to multiple viewpoints from which they will actually be able to extract the truth.

I never, however, expected the media to completely exclude him from thier poll results! Dr. Paul came in second in the Nevade caucus, yet was not mentioned in at least two random samples of coverage. Shocking, absolutely shocking.

In short, The Media fails in its purpose of informing the American people.

(I’m currently reading Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason, but I held these opinions independently.)

So, if I were to type in a url in my domain that doesn’t exist, such as http://www.chucksphere.com/infos.html, I don’t get that crappy little 404 page I made. No no no! I get redirected to my blog. This is clearly not my intention, and I’ve remarked about a similar phenominon in this post. Driving me nuts.

Also, if I were to forget how to access my webmail account outside of CPanel, and mistakenly type mail.chucksphere.com into my address bar, I will be taken to a website that is not in any way affiliated with me, at all. How does this happen? What the hell is “Enchanted Coyote.com” doing? How are they sponging off my domain? Why, how, since when? They’ve been active since 2005, if you believe the copyright notice, which is before I started The Chucksphere.

I want some damn answers.

So, I’m rather glad that Barack Obama won the Democratic Caucus, though I’m not sure I should be as overjoyed as I was this morning. After all, Iowa is just one little hick state, not the entire primary cycle.

I was a bit dismayed at Mike Huckabee’s strong showing. Just when I thought this was going to be a nice, rational election, Mr. Fundee-pants shoots to the front of the line when “they” all figure out he used to be a preacher. Now this election will be another fight against intellectual and social tyranny. I know Mitt Romney isn’t the most secular of candidates, but it’s just possible for me to believe that he’s just whoring himself out to the “Republican base” and will cool off when it comes time to woo the moderate voters. Speaking of political whores, John McCain (who I actually rather trust, for a Republican), was given a Godliness rating of 8 by Beliefnet, according to this week’s TIME magazine.

Bit of an aside, I’m heartened to know that Paris Hilton won’t be inheriting that bigass sum of money she was slated to receive. Maybe that will force her to become a productive member of society (although, for a person of her limited intelligence and skills, that amounts to little more than baby-factory.) [That was relavent only because I read it in the same issue of TIME.]

“Your servant is aware that from ancient times there have been discussions of the worth of parties. It is only to be hoped that a ruler will distinguish between those of gentlemen and those of inferior men. In general, gentlemen join with outher gentlemen in parties because of common principles, while inferior men join with other inferior men for reasons of common profit.” - Ouyang Xiu, in Roberts, J.A.G. The Complete History of China. Sutton Publishing, 2005. Page 135.

I had a LAN party on Saturday/Sunday, which is why I am only able to update on Tuesday (today). At said LAN, while playing Warcraft III (the only game we can consistently get to work), we discovered a nice multiplayer map called “Are you a Retard?”. It was fantastically fun for about an hour, and provided a nice change of pace from playing melees or some varient thereof. However, we quickly became frustrated, and abandoned it before we were able to finish. Below is my description and walkthrough of about half of the map.

The map opens with all (four, in this instance) players on a raised platform. The only path available is to the south. On the ground are gold coins. If you pick one up, you die. If you try to get one of the free items from the store, you die. If you start attacking your teammates out of frustration, you die. If you die, you get a message telling you to type “-res” to be revived; if you do, you are ejected from the game.

Continue south, then east along the corridor. You’ll come to a gate. You will receive very strong hints to pick up the key next to it; if you do, you die. (I might as well mention this now: if you pick up any item, you die.) Wait for a specific (in-game) time, and the gate will become vulnerable. Bust it and proceed.

The area you are in now will have two colors of flame to the north and a glowing pad to the south. Step on the pad and you die. It’ll be hinted that you should walk through the red flames, and a little guinea-pigging should confirm that. Next area has many flowers, which the game tells you that you will need to pass through the patch of blue flowers. This is nonesense; just click through.

Do NOT go through the “Exit”.

Bash through the gate, you’ll come to two paths. The north path will lead to an encounter with a horse that will kill you all. The southern path will lead to an encounter with an Orge that will only kill one of you if you pass it around 6:20 (game time.)

Pass through the entryway, go south (north will get you killed), you’ll see a 4×4 grid. Step only on the grid squares (stepping on the dirt will make you explode.) Step only in the pattern South, East, South, East, South, East and you’ll make it through the maze. Again, do not step on the dirt or buy anything from the shop. Stay on the white line through the goblins and the Naga (though you can go around them, slightly), and go north when you’re out of the water.

Do not go through any of the gates. Wait, and the brown trees will disintegrate, clearing a path. Pass the first acolyte and click on the second. You’ll be teleported to another part of the map. DO NOT CLICK IT^^. Continue east, then south. You’ll come upon another grid. Just take the middle row of gray tiles south.

We’d only gotten to this spot once. While in WorldEdit, it shows three green Treents, I clearly saw two red ones before Stephen bit the dust.

What happens here? I don’t know. I guess I’m too much of a retard to find out.

(Oh, yes, we did think of looking in WorldEdit for clues and such, but a good portion of the trigger names were in German.)