Diary of a Colonial Marine

Posted: February 14, 2013

Journal Entry 003448

The doc cleared me for action. Looks like we'll be boarding the Sulaco around some crappy planet that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation tried to colonize. Everyone died down there, including a bunch of Marines. Gotta love the Corps.

Journal Entry 004532

This deployment is going to suck, I can tell already. All these Marines, they're like stereotypes from a really crappy movie. Even the officers. Our captain called us "chicks and dicks." Who says that? This guy O'Neal, he never looks you in the eye when he talks. Actually, none of them do. And they don't look at each other, either. Their eyes... they're like a doll's eyes. Nothing there. Plus the females have freakishly huge hands. It's disconcerting.

Journal Entry 005021

OK, things are starting to come unglued. I'm wondering if the Doc missed something in my psych clearance. Maybe I'm just on edge because of all the acid-filled monsters that keep leaping at me. I don't understand why they come after me every Goddamn time. They bump into the other Marines on their way to attack me. I know they're filled with deadly concentrated acid, but when I get some on me it just sort of burns for a second. No real harm. It's fortunate because I keep sticking my pistol into their mouths and shooting them at extremely close range. If the acid actually did what we were briefed it would, I'd be severely burned over most of my body, and my pistol would be a blob of smoldering waste.

Journal Entry 005659

When we were in infantry school and we had to do those door drills, I thought it was just some stupid punishment. I never thought I'd say it, but for once, our training turned out to be useful. All those hours opening and closing doors. Not to mention welding them closed or cutting them open. I can still hear old Sarge, "A Marine is an opener of doors FIRST, hoorah." If I ever see that bastard again I'll thank him.

Still worried I might be coming unglued. If I get ahead of the other Marines, they'll randomly flash into place next to me. Maybe I'm just not noticing them catching up, but it is really weird.

Journal Entry 007810

OK. I think I'm going Section 8. My squad was standing around saying the dumbest stuff to each other and I swear I was able to... I don't even know how to describe it. It sounds insane, and it probably is, but I was able to walk inside of them. I saw their eyes from the back... their mouths talking. Then I just walked right back out. Am I dead? Am I a ghost who can just pass through other people? This is really messed up.

Journal Entry 012825

I shot a bunch of xenos today and they taunted me from death. One of them just kept thrusting his hips at me, like that classical music video "Gangnam Style." Another's disembodied arms sat there, flailing about, like they were clapping for me, for a job well done. A couple of the others, their heads turned purple and smooth. The shape was still there, but it was totally devoid of all texture. This is bad. This is really bad. I don't think I'm combat-ready any longer, but we still have our mission to complete.

Journal Entry 013009

We're killing people now, Weyland-Yutani mercs. I feel bad about it. I know it's not a Marine's place to overthink this sort of thing, but these guys must be mentally challenged. I shot a guy in the head and took his armor, and when I turned around there was another guy right there, running into the wall. I don't know how he was doing it, but he didn't even know I was there. I put him down. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I wonder about the level of intelligence in my squadmates. They will empty load after load of ammunition into a crate if one of those mercs is behind it, but bullets don't make it through. Yet still they fire.

Journal Entry 013667

These people, they say the dumbest things. I cringe every time one of them decides to make a quip. I'm embarrassed for them, to be honest.

Journal Entry 013851

I think I've lost it. I really do. Nothing makes sense any more. Nothing. This Marine we found... he was a hostage. For some reason my squad mates made him keep his Abu-Ghraib hood on until we brought him back to the captain. And then it turned out it was a guy who died. The records are explicit about it. There is no question that this Marine is dead. And yet he's talking about... something. I can't even follow it any longer. Damn military shrink, he really blew it on me. I'm friggin nuts and here I am.

Journal Entry 013999

nothing makes sense it never made sense it makes less sense maybe i'm not the crazy one maybe it's all of them who are crazy it can't be me i was cleared i was cleared by the doc

Journal Entry 014001

VITAL SIGNS SELF TERMINATED. MARINE BATTLE JOURNAL ENTRIES COMPLETE. DISSEMINATE UNDER PROVISIONS OF USCMC FORM 7782-D

 

Dear Disney: Reboot the Star Wars Prequels

Posted: November 15, 2012

Hey there Disney, it's me, Seth. I just wanted to congratulate you on the acquisition of the entire Star Wars property. I mean, that's pretty incredible right there. You've got all of it now, and it belongs to you, and George Lucas is going to give all the money you gave him away to charity. Smiles all around. I do have my worries that Lucas is only giving away the money because he actually believes the Earth is going to explode when the Mayan calendar runs out, and when it doesn't, he's going to recant on his offer. But he can't go back on selling you guys Star Wars. So while educational charities may lose out, the rest of us win. What has education ever done for anyone? Did education put people into a theater seat at the age of seven and captivate them as the final chapter of the Star Wars trilogy unfolded before their glistening doe-eyes? Nope. We are all winners, thanks to you, Disney. And right now, you are standing on the precipice of greatness. Financially, that's a given, otherwise you wouldn't have shelled out four super-large for the franchise. But you can also be someone's hero. My hero. The hero of millions of others. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? It is. And it's so simple and will only cost you a few (hundred) million dollars, "simple" being a relative term.

Reboot the prequels.

I know, I know, it sounds crazy, because so much of the Star Wars canon is based off those three terrible movies, but who cares? You guys own it, you guys can change it. When I sold my first car (a 1989 Dodge Shadow) when I was 18, I didn't tell the guy who bought it what he could and couldn't do with it. I just counted my money and found a homeless person to buy me some booze. Disney, you can right a tremendous wrong.

There are some kids these days, young kids, ("kids" meaning anyone younger than me) who claim that the prequels were "good enough." You see, in 1999, many of these young adults were just kids, and they went to the theater and had a fun time, and now they wave off the terribleness of those movies by remembering the fun they had watching them. But I'll tell you something, to a kid, everything is fun. My four year old runs back and forth in our living room without any clear purpose for hours at a time, just because he enjoys it so much. My kids will play demos for games countless times, regardless of the game quality, because they're kids have they fun doing nearly everything. The only thing that isn't fun for kids is homework, bedtime, brushing their teeth, and divorce. So when a 20 year old looks back fondly on one of the Star Wars prequels, they're looking back fondly on just being a kid. Those movies stink. The originals weren't great because they were released when I was just a kid, they were great because they are great movies. Just watch Plinkett's review on YouTube if you don't believe me.

Reboots are all the rage these days. Why not reboot the prequels, Disney? It would be a license to print money. All-new characters and stories means all-new toys and video games. That is so choice. And you could make Anakin's fall from grace feel like it belongs in the same series of films as the originals. Reboots are no biggie. Sure, the "Internet" will post up a few rage comics to reddit and complain about their childhoods being "raped," but their histrionics shouldn't dissuade you from making what would be the most eagerly anticipated movies ever. Normal, non-Star Wars fanatics won't even notice. "Oh, they're rebooting the Star Wars prequels? I wonder who'll be playing the Hulk in this one." THAT'S WHAT THEY'LL BE THINKING!

The next thing you're probably worrying about is how those hardcore fans will react. Hardcore Star Wars fans are among the hardest of core there is, but don't worry about them. They will eat it up and just stuff so much money into your coffers. They will watch it and love it. How can I be so certain of this? Because they already love the prequels they were given, and to do so means they have to bend the walls of reality and pretend that those movies represent a satisfying story delivered expertly by one genius vision. We know that isn't true. I know in my heart that you could repackage that story, to make it fit into the original Star Wars trilogy in a way that isn't offensive to all the senses.

I'm also not stupid enough to think that a rebooted prequel-trilogy will satisfy everyone. The prequels as they are now were up against some really hard circumstances. There was a fifteen year gap between Jedi and that first prequel movie. Most people had already constructed a backstory for Darth Vader's fall from grace in their own minds, be it a ramshackle imagining of a timeline or self-indulgently detailed fanfiction. We had decided what the force was, who the Jedi were; we envisioned our own rules for the galaxy far, far away. What Lucas did, unfortunately, was fail utterly and completely. Instead of skillfully leaving much of these points to the imaginations of the audience, he decided to just clumsily try to answer as many of them as he could, thinking it fan service. Do you remember how you felt on 9/11? That's how I felt when I found out the force was just bacterial meningitis.

Please, Disney. Please please reboot the prequels. You will make back your investment ten fold. You will make cynical Star Wars fans like me actually admit that there are prequels to the Star Wars movies. You will give the superfanboys something entirely new to obsess about. But most importantly, you will give Anakin Skywalker the chance to be a totally badass hero, the one we all imagined him to be when we watched Star Wars on VHS for the 100th time.

Minecraft in the Romanesque Revival Style

Posted: August 26, 2012

Chances are you're familiar with Disney's "Sleeping Beauty's Castle." It's pretty iconic, especially if you're familiar with Disney at all (SPOILER: you are). The design of that castle was influenced by many real-world castles, the most recognizably aped being Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria. The castle's design is a beautiful representation of the Romanesque Revival style, planned as a way to capture the idealized version of the middle ages that was popular at the time. It also captured King Ludwig II's enthusiasm for the music of Richard Wagner. Essentially it was designed by a super-fan to capture forever his super-fandom. Imagine if today someone built a large castle with perfectly coiffed tower ornamentation as an homage to the lasting legacy of Justin Bieber. It's sort of like that, but was old-timey and therefore acceptable.

While King Ludwig II sadly did not live to see his elaborate Honeycomb Hideout reach completion, the castle was still never completed as originally intended. Instead, the rooms that proved the most lucrative for the tourism industry were finished in grand style while the rest of the castle was used to store tiny ball-bearings [citation needed]. The castle has been reproduced countless times, in semi-precious stones, LEGO bricks, and as models and papercraft and Shrinky-Dink. It seems only logical that someone would have a go at it in Minecraft.

Many of us have booted up a game of Minecraft in creative mode and said to ourselves, "Yeah, I'm going to build something awesome. Then I'm going to get YouTube famous by showing it off. How hard could it be?" Myself, I am currently working on a Minecraft replica of Super Mario Bros. 3's world 8. It's more of an homage than a true replica, and it's more of something that I'll never actually finish. There are tools available to make building easier, but I haven't bothered to download them because really, having one airship is cool enough anyway. 

Creative mode and third-party building tools are great ways to build incredible Minecraft structures, but to be truly, magnificently hardcore, one would need to undertake a project in Survival Mode with no mods in place. Such is the case with the Minecraft player Swervish, who decided not only to build an incredibly complex structure, but also to do it by acquiring all the raw materials through crafting and mining. 

Yes, he acquired every single block to build his enormous structure by starting the game with a square fist, punching trees. He progressed the same as anyone else in Survival Mode would, only with a planned-out efficiency that would make the Germans proud. Building the structure was not simply a matter of stacking blocks. Rather it progressed like an actual large-scale construction project, with structures built to store raw materials, smelting shops, underground wheat farms, sheep meadows, and elaborate scaffolding. The major difference between it and an actual large construction project being that it was only one guy and when the sun set he was assaulted by dangerous and mindless monsters. It took Swervish over 7 months to complete, but the results are incredible. It's not even the final structure that impresses me so much as the amazing level of detail and logistical planning that went into and was undertaken in the building process. It's a case where the end is not as important as the sum of its parts. The completed castle is just the end product of a difficult process that shows off the organizational magic of its creator. I kind of hope Swervish is an engineer or something.

I recommend reading through all of his posts in the thread to see how the entire thing unfolded. He did have to resort to using some mods, but purely for overcoming limitations in the game itself, like maximum block height. None the less, it's still quite an achievement.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/909328-neuschwanstein-castle-308l-x-128w-x-155h-survival-no-mods/