DarthTofu

I saw "shoot 'Em Up" on a friend's Zune (sp?). OH MY GOD! Best gun movie ever! It is the 300 of gun fights! Honestly! Sure, the physics is pure crap in a bunch of places (For instance, that car crash where he jumps into the SWAT-style van), but it was still cool as hell! And on top of it all, that thing was against gun violence and the whole second amendment stuff! My favorite bits were those recurring themes of the carrots (He kills two guys using only carrots) and the line "You know what I hate?" primarily because I hate several of the same things (That turn signal scene was the best). Def recommended it to everyone back when it first came out, and now I wish I'd seen it in theaters. Sure, a few lines were very corny (That guy in the suit was awful), and some bits were poorly done (The skydiving gun fight in particular), but it was still a great flick. Nine stars out of ten, easily.

Click this link before you start reading my post. Play the music in the background as you read, in fact. I've returned from Italy, and I bear great, wonderful gifts... for myself and my immediate family! I started out in Venice, which is a very nice city, though I unfortunately only got to see some of it. We had a day and a half in the lovely city before we headed out to our next city- Verona. We stayed there for about four hours and I participated in a popular local legend- rubbing a bronze statue of Juliet's left breast for luck in the realm in love. That's really all that there was to do in Verona. From there it was on to Florence. Despite the fact that I wasn't in the market for one when I arrived, I bought a leather jacket that went from two hundred to one hundred and fifteen Euros- not a bad deal, if I do say so myself. Granted, I really shouldn't say so myself, because I was just trying to leave the whole time. A friend who was with me helped out and got the price lowered incrementally for me, as well as swapping me out from three jackets to the one that I wound up purchasing. I look like Indiana frigging Jones in the thing. It raises my coolness power to at least the fifth power. I also got to have a lot of fun in the hotel learning from hands-on experience how to give a very good-looking woman a "sensual massage," but that's another story for another time. Saw the Academy of Fine Arts and the famous David. Apparently some crazy guy mangled up his left foot at one point, and I got to see that as well. I also noticed that David would have had no problem remaining abstinent. The poor fellow was decidedly not packing, and he didn't even have a crazy with a hammer and chisel to blame it on. On to Orvieto, again for just a day. Orvieto had to be my favorite city- it was a small, very Italian little town, with only two real "landmarks" around. The first was the Doma, the home of the Pope prior to the construction of the Vatican. It's a large church, make no mistake, but it's not nearly as pretentious as, say, the Sistine Chapel, or the St. Peter's Cathedral. It was clearly a labor of love, not of "let's show everybody how much money the Catholics have." The second was the original city walls, which stood just as tall and just as proud as they did in ancient times. Orvieto also had the best food for the best prices- at one cent per gram on some awesome-tastic freshly-cooked, home-made-style pizza and two Euros for huge Gillato cones I had a very good lunch for less than four Euros. Focaccia and pizza are a very tasty combination. From there we went to our final stop: Rome. I took fifty or more pictures of the Colosseum- I chose to go there a second time on my free day strictly to get more pictures and see more of it. Well, that and to totally school a couple of greasy "Roman soldier" Italians in ancient Latin and yell at them for screwing up the costumes. Honestly, who's dumb enough to think that the Romans wore nose studs and smoked Menthols? And don't even get me started on the fact that they had a woman in rather revealing armor with them as well. Saw the Pantheon and the Vatican (Turns out that, despite claiming to be a separate nation, the Vatican will not sign your passport. Catholic bastards.) and the S.P. Cathedral. The Vatican charges way too frigging much for blessed Rosaries and jewelry. Forty Euros to get my sister a blessed charm and neckless chain. Catholic bastards. The Pope better have been the one to bless it, or I'll be even more annoyed. (I know that the Pope wasn't even in Italy at the time. I'm even more annoyed. Catholic bastards.) I came back via the Roman airport wearing pajama pants, an undershirt, and my leather jacket. I like to think that I'm the strangest thing the airport ever saw. Unfortunately that probably isn't true, but with my Navy seabag and nineteen eighties suitcase I looked like a pretty cool hobo. One transatlantic flight to Newark (I officially hate the Newark airport. Their air conditioning was nonexistent and our flight was delayed by an hour and a half) and an hour-and-a-half flight to Orlando later, I'm back in Florida typing this out to everyone. I'll upload a few pictures later. The Internet doesn't currently seem to like me. Edit: Pictures Just keep hitting "next" till you come to the end. I didn't want to make an album or slideshow or link overload.

I'm leaving for Italy on Thursday. You'll all get a nice, Tofu-free week while I'm off in Europe checking out Venice, Florence, and Rome. I appologize if Venice sinks all the way into the water upon my arrival- one of our chaperones is my exceedingly fat U.S. History "teacher" (I use the quotation marks because she simply tells us to memorize the text rather than bothering to teach it).

I'm rereading Unwind right now, and I have a copy of Speaker for the Dead. The former I know is great, the latter I hope will be great. Unwind is effectively a novel of a satire. It takes a stand on abortion by creating the Bill of Life. It goes something like this: There was a massive second civil war in America: The Heartland War. It was fought over abortion. To appease the two sides, a new idea was composed. From the moment of conception a child cannot be touched. However, from the ages of thirteen to eighteen the child's parents of guardians may choose to retroactively abort the child, under the condition that the child's life does not technically end. The process is called unwinding. No one quite knows how it works, but the parts of the retroactively aborted child, or Unwind, are harvested from their body- fully living- and transplanted into the bodies of people who are still alive. Every last bit of the child is still working, just in a different place. The book raises a bunch of difficult questions, such as when life ends. It follows three unwinds, all being unwound for different reasons. One has had issues at school, and his parents have gotten fed up with him. One is a resident of a state home, and funding has dropped, prompting several of the mid-range to lower-performing members of the home to be unwound. One is being "tithed," or donated, by his highly religious family, in order to give ten percent of all they own to charity. Needless to say, I seriosuly like the book. The characters are very dynamic, and it doesn't weigh itself down by explaining everything that they say or think.

Islam is an actual valid belief system. When you look at the moderates they're really quite rational, good people. Heck, when Malcom X made his pilgramage to Mecca he suddenly became one hell of a lot more peaceful. Granted, this got him gunned down by fellow black Muslims, but that's beside the point. There will always be crazy extremists in any religion, or even any lack of religion. Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden- they're the few people giving a whole group of people a bad name. All atheists are not Joseph Stalin. All Muslims are not Osama bin Laden. All Christians are not Adolf Hitler. To claim that a religion is bad based on a few people who are bad is ludicrous. Scientology- that's another story. That's the church of "make the top officials really really rich." That one I will probably never defend.

I've never been a huge fan of Islam, much less religions as a whole, but I still care about freedom of speech AND religion. Publishing an internet movie that comes down so hard on one group of people and that tries to kick out parts of their belief systems- that's just not right. That's discrimination against one group of people that are unpopular, comparable to Hitler's attacks on the Jews. I'm glad that you don't agree with that bigoted jerk, Scath. That said, I do agree with you on the freedom of speech thing. Violence should not be met with violence, else all is lost. Both parties are to blame- the movie for being so inflammatory and the people who send threats for letting it incite them to such heights- but I'd really like to see some more moderation from the religious communities.

It isn't exactly a requirement, Eagle- no need to feel bad. It's just a section of the forums that we seem to neglect, so I'm pointing it out.

How can you call Disney and Universal stupid tourist traps??? Next thing you know, you'll be calling the Islands of Adventure stupid as well!!! Very well: Islands of Adventure is stupid as well. Long lines for piss-poor rides. "Oh my gosh, look, a Dinosaur! Whee, down the shaft! Oh, look, three hours of our lives wasted in line for a three minute ride. That was fun." The coasters are good, but there are only three of 'em. Bush Gardens is a much better bang for your buck. More coasters, though the lines are still a pain. If you absolutely must go to a tourist trap, do so during the week day. Fewer people will be in the lines. A Schwartzeneger accent, eh? Are you from a heavily Austrian region?

I've been into the "Questions from Newbies" section only once in, like, two years. I know plenty about Rebellion to answer all of those questions, I just never bother to answer them. Neither, by the looks of it, do many other forum members. Some of those questions have gone unanswered by anyone but other newbies who don't know for sure. Jahled and Bud were the only two regular forum members that I saw who had recently answered questions. Should we have a sort of "on duty" forum member who has to answer questions from newbies when they pop up? Just something where every third week or something a frequent forum member gets a notification every time there's a new newbie question, and they can go off to answer it. Myself, Rob, Krytos, Mad- we're all here enough that we could probably do that. Do we want to implement this?

Divided is quicker, more is more likely to succeed. The more researchers/diplomats you have working together the slower they will report back to you- but the more likely they are to report success. The likelihood of the success as well as the time before they report increases with each new character.

Having more researchers or diplomats working together means that they will take longer on the mission, but that they will have a better chance of success each time they report to you. The time and success rate increase with each new researcher/diplomat. Note that this won't make a bunch of crappy diplomats successful.Ackbar will pretty much always suck as a diplomat.

I'm decent with machines, but I could barely tell you the differance between a window motor and a servo motor. I quite the robotics team, because all I ever did was woodworking- I've been able to do that since I was eight. I'm willing to easily concede that the kids in this galaxy would surpass me by leaps and bounds due to the more advanced tech- but they're surpassing too far. A nine-year-old might build a small droid with very limited functions, sure, but a full-out, custom-designed machine that surpasses some of the best tech out there? I think not.

Thank you, Tex. I used Wookiepedia rather than brave the Dark Nest. I'm very glad that I did, especially after Inferno. Why does Del Rey keep letting these piss-poor authors play in the EU? Why? Er, right, back on topic. ... Actually, I've got nothing. I haven't actually watched the movies in close to five years.

Supposedly the new Jones movie will stay very true to the old eighties-style of film making. Less digital, more stunt men. I don't know that I'm convinced- I'm quite wary that it'll be ruined with too much green screen. Indy looked way too digital at a few points in the trailer. Add to that the not-hot evil Soviet woman and Indie's lines "Damn! I thought that was a lot farther away!" and "You're a teacher?" "Part time!"... I'm very afraid. I agree with you on just about all fronts, LLF. I never read the Hulk comics, so I enjoyed the movie as it was. True, it was a kind of dumb idea, but the central plot- that there really is no good guy- that I enjoyed.

I'm relatively close by if you plan to see Disney (don't, it's stupid), Universal Studios (Also a stupid tourist trap), or Kennedy Space Center (That's actually pretty interesting, even though I live here). I'm, like, an hour away from all of those places.

Hell didn't freeze over. It's still up in the nineties in Florida. But a free game from EA? I'd not have thought it possible! Granted, EA makes good enough stuff that they've a right to charge for it. At least, that's been my experience with the games I've bought from them.

You're coming to America? When? Are you going to be an exchange student or something? Speaking of exchange students, we just had a bunch of Germans over at my school. When do you guys start learning English, Eagle? These kids were fully fluent in it! Three German kids were having a conversation in German at my lunch table and I said something like, "Ah! Non spreken di Doich!" (All spelled wrong, I know. I was saying, "Ahh! I don't speak German") and they were just like, "Oh, sorry." They immediately started talking in English. The best moment came from a kid named Max. He had to stay with the world's most annoying Junior, whom no one, least of all Max, likes. The Junior was rambling on, being an idiot, when suddenly Max jumps into the conversation: (Warning: Not suitable for young eyes!) "Nick, your head is like your dick; small, und vith nothing inside!"

Gee, thanks. Just for that, I give you some more corny physics jokes! Power and Work catch up to the guy who hit Energy later and corner him. "The hell did you do that for?" They ask him. "Sorry. Just impulse, I guess." A fellow is walking along when he notices a large number of resistors in his friends yard. He knocks on his friend's door and says, "Hey, you have a bunch of resistors in your yard!" "Yeah, I know," says his friend. "I've taken a liking to garden Ohms."

Told you, Mad. I know nothing about the new Hulk flick, but I'll likely catch it. I'm excited about Iron Man, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Harold and Kumar 2 (weren't they supposed to be escaping from Guantanimo?), and the new James Bond flick. Daniel Craig (sp?) did a pretty good job in the last one. Hopefully they can replicate that in this one- it's nice to see James Bond finally being human for a change.

Yeah, but why throw out a piece of programming that can process over six million forms of communication? I think you'd want to sell it or something rather than just chucking it out. Seriously, though, what's up with all of the youngin's in Star Wars having a knowledge of Physics that surpasses even our highest technology? At nine years old you'd really think that they'd act, well, more like nine-year-olds. With their huge bounds in education maybe they'd be as bright as, like, a twenty-year-old in terms of Earth Science, but being able to construct full-out podracers and stuff? Come on.

Porkins? lol! Grevious has/had no Force-sensitivity. He was just able to wield them expertly and kill Jedi because his body was so powerful... Which prompts the question of "Why don't we have any other robots like Grevious that can run about acting as super-soldiers?"

lol- the lion one has to be my favorite.

lol, thanks for the vote of confidence, Eagle. I'm not a heavy drinker at all. For some reason I just don't like the taste of booze- I'm one of the only Juniors in my school that can honestly say that he hasn't gotten stark-raving-drunk at some point in his life. I just get along fine drinking soda or water. Maybe when I turn twenty-one or when the world seriously pisses me off I'll get stand-on-your-hands drunk, but I somehow doubt it. I'll probably just pretend to be drunk so that I can beat the crap out of somebody if the world pisses me off that much.

General consensus that I've heard is that the Dark Nest trilogy was a piece of crap. All sorts of dumb new powers, writing styles, dumb lines, overuse of original characters, etc. I never actually read it, though, so I can only give my opinion of Denning as an author: He sucks and deserves to die a slow and painful death for some of the atrocities that he has committed against Star Wars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu0I2eWe_dY&feature=related The trailer for it. It kinda sucks, but that's because the movie was a flop in theaters. On DVD and VHS it's a cult classic.