All you people with your bloody expectations

Projects

You know what’s totally unfair? People who are expecting Phenomenon 32 to be really cool. Because every time I test it, I’m like “yes, it’s not bad, but if I had read all the stuff I posted, I’d be expecting a lot more.” And then I go and add more features, or try to give it more depth. And it still feels simplistic and mediocre. It still feels like there ought to be ten times as much content.

Damn you people and your expectations. Now I have to add a better system for equipping your ship. Do you know how much work that will be? And I have to add new types of locations, too. And rebuild the research system to make it more efficient and fun.

Fun. I mean, who needs a game to be fun? Or to have a story? Or not to hang every five minutes? The games industry seems to be doing perfectly well releasing crappy, uninspired pieces of shit that will break in two the moment you start them up.

Oh, wait. Yes. I see.

Sigh.

And a random quote for today…

Thoughts

“Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.” – Karl Marx

More later. Have to do some boring work now.

Thunder and Rain

Thoughts

JONAS: Do you think we’ll have a thunderstorm?
VERENA: Definitely.
JONAS: It kind of looks like it, but I haven’t heard it rumble at all.
STORM: (mischievously) *rumble*
VERENA: Looks like it heard you.
JONAS: I think I’ll go shut down my PC now.

Harsh Interrogation Techniques

Thoughts

Read this and weep.

In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by U.S. forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest.

“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”

But all is justified in the name of imperialism and state terror protecting freedom. And Bush III glorious, shining Obama can’t do anything about all of this, because he wants to keep on using the same techniques we have to move on and forget the past.

Star Trek (2009)

Film

So, we saw Star Trek. I wanted to like it. With everyone raving about it like mad, I was really excited. And the result?

Well, it was OK. There were good bits and bad bits.

Let me go into detail. (WARNING: SPOILERS)

The Positive:

  • I can’t say that the film isn’t Star Trek. I mean, I can count it as a Star Trek film, which I can’t really do with Star Trek: Nemesis. I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s better.
  • Leonard Nimoy is in it. And he is, as always, amazing. When we finally hear him speak the words (more or less) of the original intro, it’s hard as a Trekkie not to cry. Space: the final frontier… *weep*
  • The sets and effects are well-done. I’m not 100% happy with the super-futuristic iTrek design, but it’s certainly better than the shit that was Nemesis, or the amateurish nonsense of Generations. I’ve always said that one of the major problems of Star Trek is that while the people who created it were a family, it was a family where quite a few people just weren’t particularly good at what they did. If you compare Deep Space Nine to something from its own time, like Babylon 5, it’s shocking to see how antiquated and badly done it is. First Contact and Insurrection are well-shot (especially Insurrection), but films like Generations and Nemesis are just embarrassingly badly done. And even at its best, old Trek is… flawed, on a technical level. Not so this new installment.
  • The music is good. Star Trek, despite having two awesome themes, generally has dreadful music.
  • The actors… well, the actors didn’t bother me, except for Anton Yelchin, who while a good actor did not work as Chekov. At all.
  • The writing was occasionally funny, and at least did not totally throw out everything about the continuity (such as it was).
  • The opening was very, very powerful.
  • It was entertaining. As an action-heavy work of popcorn, it was entertaining.

The Negative:

  • This may not seem like much, but the product placement drove us nuts. After the very powerful opening mentioned above, which had us in tears, the movie suddenly throws a gigantic Nokia advertisment at us. And that’s just offensive and wrong. The world of Star Trek is not capitalistic. It’s just not. When the characters go back to the 20th century in The Voyage Home, they are utterly unable to deal with silly concepts such as money. Whether you like it or not, the world of the Federation is basically socialist. That’s not me projecting my ideals onto a series, it’s just how it is. And having a big fucking product placement in front of our noses just does not fit.
  • The portrayal of Starfleet as a purely military organization. A character refers to them as a “humanitarian and peacekeeping armada.” Well, that sounds a whole lot like the people who bombed Kosovo to me. I realize that this isn’t the first time Star Trek has gone in this direction – it starts with the influence of Nicholas Meyer, goes through Deep Space Nine and ends with the disgusting mess that is Enterprise – but it’s not what Star Trek was meant to be about. There’s a reason it’s the Starship Enterprise, not the Warship Enterprise. Star Trek is about helping people and exploring the universe, not bombing some innocent planet back to the Stone Age. Granted, this doesn’t exactly happen in this film, but basically Starfleet is shown as a slightly idealistic version of the US military, complete with unpleasant thugs who beat up people in bars.
  • Fitting with the above, the outright rejection of diplomacy in favour of revenge at the end of the movie. That’s just disgusting. They have defeated their enemy, and now they have to kill them and enjoy it? No thank you. That’s not the spirit of Trek, and that particular scene leaves a very bad taste in one’s mouth.
  • The fact that the movie reboots all of Star Trek, thereby invalidating everything from the TOS movies to The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Why? This wasn’t necessary. Why not just leave things alone and do something original?
  • They could come up with a wonky plot to screw up the whole continuity but they couldn’t come up with a way of bringing back Kirk and undoing the awful awfulness that was Generations? Pffft.
  • The lack of plot or character development, at least outside the Kirk/Spock relationship. The overall plot is contrived and unnecessary; the main villain starts out with a motivation which basically disappears about halfway through the film, making him rather one-dimensional; and apart from Kirk, Spock and Uhura no-one gets more than a few lines, let alone character moments.
  • When we got home, we decided to watch an episode of the original series. I’d gotten the first two seasons as a present, and we still hadn’t looked at them. I grew up with TOS, but it had been at least six years since I’d last seen an episode. Verena grew up with TNG, and had only seen a few episodes of TOS in German. Now, TOS is of course quite flawed. The sets are… less than fantastic, the editing is bad, and the music is mostly annoying. But after fifteen minutes of The Man Trap (not the most brilliant of episodes) we agreed that there’s a reason that the original cast in legendary – every single actor has oodles of charisma and screen presence, and they feel more real after those 15 minutes than the cast of the new movie feel after two hours.
  • And they have more dialogue, too. Especially poor Mr. Sulu, who barely gets to say anything in the new film. In TOS, the characters have dialogue that gives them personality. Combined with the excellent casting, that makes for a pretty cool experience. The characters in the new film feel a lot more detached, and the writers rely rather heavily on people’s recollections of the characters from TOS and the older films.
  • Kirk is actually portrayed as something of an idiot. Or at least arrogant to the point of being unpleasant. That is not the character. The actual Kirk is a lot more interesting: he’s cocky, yes, but also extremely intelligent. That does not come across properly.
  • In The Man Trap, the crew of the Enterprise ultimately kill the “villain” of the episode. And yet, at the end, Kirk isn’t happy about this; there’s a sense of tragedy about having had to kill the creature. A sense, even, of compassion. There’s nothing like this in this film. Bad guys are bad, and need to be killed. End of story. No complexity, no nothing. Good military dudes versus evil crazy miner dude. Good guys win, all happy.
  • You know, some idiots make fun of fans who would prefer dialogue and diplomacy scenes to things blowing up and people shooting at each other. How sad is that? Have we all become so anti-intellectual that we complain every time a character in a movie starts using arguments and logic? Is it too hard to follow, perhaps? Shall Giant Corporate Mommy pre-chew all our thoughts and spit them down our throats? Or is it just that words hurt cause words make brain think, urgh? Because as much as I enjoy a cool adventure film – and I really do – I also really think that Star Trek is about more than just explosions in space.

All in all, it’s enjoyable enough, and despite some moral issues it’s at least related to the Trek family; but there’s not a whole lot of depth to it, and about thirty minutes after it’s over it starts to dissolve in your mind. There’s not much more to it than that. People will never remember it like they remember the one about the whales. (Which, by the way, didn’t need another bloody supervillain. When will people get that you can do good stories without having to kill someone? That’s what Star Trek is all about.)

In short: shiny surface, no real content.

Happy Birthday, Verena!

Projects / Thoughts

Today is Verena’s birthday. Yesterday we went and took care of the final registration of our marriage – it is now officially happening on the 23rd of July.

Much yayness and birthday-ness. Presents shall be given shortly. And tonight we shall go see Star Trek. (We saw Wolverine yesterday, and it sucked in a rather boring and non-hilarious way.)

Also, yesterday I suddenly came up with the coolest idea ever for Phenomenon 32. I am so glad I have taken the time to put in more details. Now the game world is not only considerably larger – approximately 100 screens/areas all in all – but also way more complex. And the anomalies caused by Phenomenon 32 are much nastier. Especially the one I came up with yesterday. Muahahaha.

OK, back to the birthday of the most wonderful being in all the universe, who gives meaning to my days and purpose to my life. Or possibly the other way around. It’s good, anyway. In fact, it doesn’t get any better. (Sorry cat, you come in second. But you’re cute, too.)

Go see Terra! Now!

Film

It appears that Terra (aka Battle for Terra) is now playing in the US. Please go see it! I saw it a while ago when it was playing at a festival and was utterly, utterly stunned by it. It is not a children’s movie but serious, well-done sci-fi. In fact, it’s one of the best sci-fi movies I have ever seen.

It faces critics that are so in love with Pixar and Dreamworks they are likely to dismiss its beautiful images and so stupid they are unlikely to get the complexity with which it presents the story. The only thing that can support an excellent film like this one is people going to see it. So do – you won’t regret it.

They’re not innocents, they are the enemy.

Thoughts

From: Military investigations whitewash Israeli war crimes

IDF Commander of the northern troops Gadi Eizencout first described this strategy in an interview with Yedioth Aharonoth last October. He explained, “What happened to the Dahiyah neighbourhood of Beirut in 2006 will happen to each village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force and inflict huge damage and destruction. In our mind, these are not civilian villages but army bases… the next war must be decided quickly, aggressively, and without seeking international approval.”

“This is not a recommendation, this is a plan and it has already been approved,” he continued.

Colonel Gabriel Siboni wrote a report for the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a military think tank in Tel Aviv, at about the same time. He stated, “With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.” [Emphasis added]

Major-General Giora Eiland, writing for the INSS, goes further. He argues that Israel was fighting the wrong enemy—Hezbollah—during the 2006 Lebanon war, and in the next war should target the government and civilian infrastructure.

Major-General Eiland argues in an article on Ynet, “The only good thing that happened in the last war was the relative damage caused to Lebanon’s population. The destruction of thousands of homes of ‘innocents’ preserved some of Israel’s deterrent power.”

As Azarov explained, “It transpires that there was no intention to comply with basic principles of international humanitarian law, such as the principle of distinction or the obligation to use appropriate precautions before launching an attack”.

“The soldiers’ testimonies are what unequivocally exemplifies the fact that this was the overarching goal of the whole war— it was systematic and based on policy decisions,” she continued.

This is practically the definition of a war crime. Dehumanising the enemy, striking the civilian population intentionally, trying to create as much misery as possible. These are the tactics of fascism, pure and simple. There are no excuses. There are no justifications. There is nothing else to say.

May Day

Thoughts

Today, on the first of May, it would be a good idea to look at the history of the last 150 years. To remember that the current world crisis we find ourselves in is neither the first, nor an unpredictable event that no-one could have forseen. We should look back and see the importance of the struggle for workers’ rights – for the rights of every person to work under decent conditions and for fair pay; to work no more than is needed for society, and to have the safety that is the prerequisite for enjoying one’s life.

All around us, these rights are being taken away by a privileged class that makes up less than 1% of the population. In the name of increasing profit, they have started wars, destroyed democratic rights, and driven our entire economy to the brink of total collapse. They have told us, and unfortunately convinced many of us, that this path is the only path there is. That human greed is the only reasonable basis for an economic system; that all other systems are bound to fail.

But capitalism isn’t some eternal truth. It hasn’t always been there. It’s a historical development, the result of certain economic and historical events; there is no reason it has to stay. But there are many, many reasons it has to go, and today they are more pressing than ever before. The last collapse of capitalism brought World War II – what will this one bring? And with the weapons that we have, what will remain of us afterwards? You know what Einstein said about World War III, right?

Technologically speaking, we live in a post-scarcity world. We have the ability to easily take care of every single human being on this planet while not destroying the environment. We are more advanced than any civilization has ever been in the history of humanity. And yet we cling to a system that is based on scarcity, even as it all falls apart around us. We throw around us the magical words of capitalism as if they actually meant something; the reality is right in front of us.

So, on May Day, let us hope not for socialism or the worldwide revolution, but for common sense. Because that’s the true starting point.

That, and courage and the will to stand up and fight. Because we’re going to need it.

The Boat That Rocked

Film

If you only see one movie this year, see The Boat That Rocked.

It’s not about rock and roll – it is rock and roll. It is pure, unadulterated rock. It is funny, sexy, honest, touching, hilarious, heartwarming, silly, crazy and magical. It is perfect.

It is a giant slap in the face of stuck-up conservatives everywhere, a celebration of life and joy and humour and sex and, above all, music. That’s why this movie, like Almost Famous, is true to the spirit of rock and roll. Because it loves the music. It loves the music and the characters and life.

That many critics will see it as a silly comedy tells you how low the world of art has sunken. This is art. This movie says more about art than all the Adornos and Blooms of the world will ever say. Its view of humanity is more important than all the ravings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. I am serious about that. Profoundly serious. And I pity anyone whose enjoyment of life is so twisted that he cannot understand that.

Or, as The Count would say, fuck that sideways.

See this movie. Please – do yourself a favour. See it, and enjoy it. Laugh your arse off, love the characters, love the music. Love the pure, pure joy of it. The freedom of it.