DarthTofu

This January was the fourth and third anniversary of the passing of my grandmother and grandfather respectively. They both left behind a spouse (separate sides of the family), and neither has really been quite right since. Losing a family member is always difficult, but it always prompts me to ask how I would want them to carry on were I the corpse. Truth-be-told, I don't think I've ever found anyone who really wants a tearful, mourning funeral. It doesn't mean that they won't almost always get one, but it makes me feel better about moving on with my life.

Not if you ask me...

I'm a pretty poor poet, and I openly acknowledge that- those of you who remember my Two Years poem from way back when are remembering the single greatest piece of poetry I ever wrote. You should realize that it wasn't a very good piece of poetry. Writing is one of my passions, and a fair number of people have told me that I know what I'm doing when it comes to it. SOCL may be the exception on occasion, but that's why I send him stuff- so that he can fulfill the purpose of this thread and tell me what I need to fix! Dialogue is likely my strongest point, and so far as overall plot development goes I have a fair bit of talent. My greatest issue stems from realism and sentence structure. In my oh-so-natural-sounding dialogue I will occasionally implant my good friend the semicolon; this is apparently a massive no-no. I've also discovered that when I write as I talk I organize my sentences strangely, causing others to stumble- case in point last Friday when I did a group presentation and two people stumbled like mad over my wording in describing a particular slide. My weakest point probably lies in knowing where I want to go right now when I write. I'll go off on a tangent, and I feel like I have to resolve it by the end of a section of story when, in fact, I could probably get away with leaving it. I hate to end on a cliffhanger whenever I write stuff, thus I come to resolutions either too soon or after too much build-up describing the problem and establishing how dire it is that a solution be found. None of that winds up contributing to the overall story and just detracts from it.

Heyo- it's working! For the record, why don't we just link the "Edit my Profile" button to that part of the site that you gave me? It seems to work more often than the current setup.

Okay, now I'm getting Rob-syndrome; when I post it jumps to a screen that just says "testing." My post doesn't show up. Hopefully this one will.

In addition to seeing you with my avatar of the hospital garb, I still see myself. (That freaked me out when I saw it a second ago, by the way- I thought I'd double posted or something) When I go to "Your Account" Under "Home" it shows me my differing avatar, though. Here, I'll see if Photobucket will cooperate with me- http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a169/DarthTofu/untitled-1.jpg http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a169/DarthTofu/untitled2.jpg

While they were all busy with your rank insignia, I did one better, Rob. I found you an avatar that perfectly represents who and what you are: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a169/DarthTofu/n537238482_418075_7569.jpg

Warning: Most people that view this will be offended. I know I was. After about two seconds, though, you'll realize that it's frigging hilarious. http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a169/DarthTofu/love.jpg

Shak Ti? I kinda like the look of the Imperial Knights- they're rather badass. Rob officially has a ballin' new rank insignia. My image of the Colt from Supernatural might just pale by comparison- by the way: my avatar is still the same, E.

Okay, so the competition to make it into that program was about as fierce as a tamed hamster- I could have won that thing if I'd shown up with half of my face shaved and the other half covered in a Merlin-style beard. The questions were all on government on the national level rather than the State level, which I'd studied for.

There are planning sessions held with members of the LucasFilm literature staff, who consult EU sources and the the like and then consult authors about their ideas of having a story in a certain time period. It's explained pretty well on the Star Wars websites and in the back of some of the novels, one can find interviews with the authors where they explain a lot of the details. I'm not sure exactly who comes up with the plots. I know back when Timothy Zahn was tapped to write the Thrawn trilogy, he outlined the idea and basically did whatever he wanted until he ran into a "wall" where LucasFilm didn't want him to delve. It works differently now, though, with the enlargement of the general EU, so that much of it is preplanned and requires a lot more consultation, now that there's so much history to work around/within. :lol: The shift to a more structured EU really came with the shift from Bantam to Del Ray. The nineteen-book-long NJO was the first long, over-arching storyline in the Star Wars universe as the readers knew it. Sure, everything before fit in with continuity, but it was sort of like seeing a tree by the side of the road as you drive by- it's there, it's happening, you acknowledge it, but it hardly figures into anything. The X-wing novels are really the only ones comparable to the current EU setup, and some of that doesn't count- comic book characters in the Rogue Squadron books had been written by Stackpole in the first place. The stuff with Zsinj, Dala, and Thrawn,though- that all worked sort of like Del Ray does. The way Del Ray puts it, they had to get darker and more structured. Bantam had pretty much let everyone run rampant with the "Superweapon of the week" in their novels. By getting all of the authors together, they make it work better. The interview at the end of The Unifying Force describes the novel writing as a group of directors who said "You must hit points A, B, C, and D, but other than that, you're pretty much on your own. Don't kill off a main character unless we tell you to."

This is the nerd funeral. There can be no higher honor for an individual so far as I'm concerned.

Warning: What follows constitutes spoilers for the Cube trilogy. If you are partway through it or enjoyed the first one, you may not want to read this. If you've only seen the first one and you enjoyed it, read on for a long list of reasons on why you ought to stop there. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hated/i] when the movie Cube had a sequel and a prequel made- Cube 2: Hypercube and Cube Zero. Cube Zero wasn't as bad as Hypercube, but Hypercube was a piece of crap- it tried to pass everything off as a government conspiracy- a Canadian government conspiracy. I'm sorry, Canada, but you don't have government conspiracies. Cube Zero pissed me off when it explained the autistic character, Kazan, in the original Cube. Apparently he was a guy that worked outside of the Cube that wound up getting stuck in after brain surgery, and was reduced to knowing only the key to survival, really. The original Cube was great- yes, parts of it were poorly acted out, and some of the math was really a lot easier than it pretended to be (prime factors of 523 are not astronomical- any number that's even is not prime, any number that ends in five is not prime; don't take twenty seconds to figure that out, Leven!) but the character development and the way the Cube changed them all- it was great! Wondering what the deal was with how everyone showed up in the Cube, why they couldn't remember anything- that was half of the movie! Then other directors decided to leech off of the original and try to explain it all. Cube Zero ruined Kazan, and Hypercube was just... it just was, at best. No plot development- the big twist at the end was that Alex Turner (or something like that) was a woman. I'm shocked. Gah.

Blah blah blah, "If I didn't suck I wouldn't suck." That's all I hear from you, Mad. The thing was starting to seriously itch, but I would have kept it had I not ben forced to shave by the American ****ing Legion. I'm also getting a haircut for the jerks... And donating part of a Saturday to learning about politics within the State of Florida (matters for which I have little to no interest).

I kinda like the idea of a Cold-War-era movie, but didn't we already see this when we bought Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine way back in 1999? Well, assuming that you bought the game, obviously. It was actually a pretty good one- had a nice tie-in back to the even earlier Fate of Atlantis through the inclusion of Sophia Hapgood, though why she suddenly had purple hair is beyond me.

... Say the two men who refused to participate!

Well, well, well, Mitth is back. I"m well over twice your post-count, sir- what's up with that? Platteville, you say? I believe I did a check through on you guys, but I don't remember anything about it. I think I also got a ton of mail from the admissions department...

I'm going to go with these guys being Soviets rather than Nazis. I didn't see any red banners with Swastikas the first time through, except for in the recaps of Raiders and Last Crusade

GAT- it's only been, what, seven months since you logged on? Good to see you back. We've only had Def representing Canada for the longest time- you need to help your country save some face so that we don't think that the whole nation is obsessed with Demotivators!

Rob and Mad- I know what you look like. You can't escape that, now. Neither can Mitth, SOCL, or Jahled. I only saw a poor picture of Krytos, so he's still a large orange ball. Now then: Tomorrow, March seventh, two thousand and eight, a day which will live in infamy, Tofu's beard was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the forces of the Empire of Society. Yes, my beard must, unfortunately, go. I will take one final picture, but then I have to shave to keep up appearances tomorrow- I'm presenting for a business ethics competition, and our team can't afford to have me showing up looking like my present bummed-out self. On Sunday I have an interview with the American Legion for the Boys State program, and I would have had to shave anyway- I doubt that the American Legion would consider a kid who looks like a hippee born fifty years too late. I must, sadly, say good-bye... such is life... Life is a bitch.

Eww... Edit: What was that about "less digital crap" we were hearing, Mr. Director? Lies. All lies.

I refuse to believe that that's you, Eagle. You will forever be a German Muppet in my mind's eye- you can be nothing else. Sort of like how Def still looks like George Lucas so far as I'm concerned, and how Evaders always walks around in full TIE Fighter regalia. Granted, Def has posted pics of himself- he does look sort of like Lucas...

Yes, but thankfully Florida isn't quite part of the "Bible belt." Further, there's a general policy of not letting old people have firearms 'round these parts, so I'm relatively safe from about 3/4 of the population.

OOC: babababum! IC: Cut through the floor. Check. Walk out to the edge of the building. Check. Don't get shot. Hopefully check. With a last, longing look at the ground beneath my feet I fired off my jet pack. Immediately my HUD started to screech at me- active targeting sensors were going off. Maybe Micus had tapped my conversation with Hohass. Maybe Hohass had sold me out. I cut thrust and dropped a bit, then fired it again, rotating so that the blast would send me back toward the building. A stun beam shot past me and grazed my foot. The foot spasmed, but the beam wasn't concentrated enough to take me out. The farther down from it I got the harder a time it would have of killing me. I dropped a second time and flashed past a transparisteel view port faster than was probably safe. The contour of the building face changed and I activated a second blast to avoid smashing myself upon a sudden outcropping. A second stun blast flew down and hit me full on, but my rate of decent had brought me down so far that it was an almost meaningless hit- I shuddered a little bit, and I felt a cramp in my calf, but other than that I was fine. A few more controlled burns and I'd be down on the ground. A blast so close that it actually melted the beskar on my arm ripped through the air. Micus had switched it back to sniping mode. Lovely. I glanced at the digital speed reading on my HUD. I was currently moving at approximately 100 Kilometers per hour thanks to controlled bursts from my jet pack, but that was still too much to just suddenly stop and veer into another building on a whim. The ground was still another kilometer away, and I was counting on my jet pack to save me. Another shot slammed sizzled past me, and I could swear that I felt the heat. I was a target over two kilometers away and Micus was still accurate. I had to give him points for that, but I took them away instantly for the fact that he was shooting at me. Making my body a forty-five degree angle with the ground, I aimed for the building Hohass claimed he and Igens had holed up in. Somehow, miraculously, I made it. I moved in a relatively straight line, but I made it to the other side and survived. "Hohass?" "Yes?" "I'm in your building. Is everything okay over there?" "To a certain extent. The Vong came in on your friend." "Did they kill him?" "No. They threw thud bugs and such at him, but none of them hit. His blaster killed three of them before he flew away." "Flew away... Alone? Is Omen still around?" "Yes." That voice was a woman's voice. Dammit. "Glad to hear that you're all alive. Are we meeting back at Base One?" "Yes. We're not taking the sky route again, though. Too risky." "Oh, great, we're using my least favorite method of travel." "You aren't afraid to get your boots wet, are you, Krassus?" "I don't like sewers. I can smell them through my air filter." "Imagine how they smell to us." "Probably about like you smell to me. Let's just go." Three hours of stamping around through cold, wet bedrock sewers returned us to the Crematorium. It was raining when we clambered out, making the ladder rungs slippery. My boots offered less traction than the synthetic materials on everyone else's feet, and I almost slipped on the way up; it made me glad that I was at the bottom of the ladder. As soon as we got into the Crematorium I was cornered. "Who was that man?" Hohass asked. He smelled like a wet pack animal. He looked like a wet pack animal. If Igens weren't looming behind him I'd probably have let him know as much. "He was Micus. He's a crazy man who's trying to kill me. End of story." "He was a Mandalorian." I snorted. "What, you think there's some sort of genetic code that makes it impossible for anyone but a Mandalorian to put the armor on? I'm no more a Mandalorian than Micus." "Then why do you wear the armor, Krassus?" "Because it's good and strong. It keeps me alive. Unlike standing still. End of story." I pushed past the three of them and walked into the rain again. Hate this moon...

As the age-old adage goes: You can have brains or beauty: Choose one.