Yearly Archives: 2011
Where I Was on Sept. 11
I remember exactly where I was when the Twin Towers were hit on Sept. 11, 2001. I remember how I found out. I still remember the crappy joke I made about it, not yet knowing the full context of what was happening. Some parts of the day are hazy. But I remember some details. I don’t have any really good way to honor the troops or the sacrifices that have been made since Sept. 11. So I thought I’d share this little tidbit with you.
I was in the basement of the Physics Building at Syracuse University waiting with several other students for our Astronomy lab to begin.
Google + 'patriotic' = this picture
It was my freshman year of college. I’d been on campus for a few weeks by then, since college starts in late August. I’d made several friends, gotten used to my class schedule had had turned 18-years-old the week before. I very much enjoyed Astronomy class, but the lab on the side was something less than fun. It started at 8:30 a.m., we were in the basement and our Teaching Assistant had already developed a reputation for being pathetic. And late.
Only later would I understand that Teaching Assistants in those types of classes are actually graduate students working to get their degree. All I knew then was that we had some Russian guy who was always late and spoke only broken English. He was a bit of a nutter, too.
So there we were, a mix of freshmen and upperclassmen, hanging out in the hallway outside the lab room waiting for our TA. I’d made a few friends in the lab, people I’d often partner with, but all of us were kind of chatting and joking around. We often tried to quote that unwritten rule (or was it written?) that if a TA is 10 minutes late then you’re free to go. I believe professors get 15 minutes before class is simply considered null and void.
Some girl got a call or a text or something on her cell phone about the Towers. That’s how I found out.
I didn’t have my own phone back then. And I think cell phones were still something of a new thing. But some girl found out that a plane had crashed into the Twin Towers and she told everybody. But we were in the basement of the Physics Building with no TV and no way to know or find out what was really going on.
I joked something like, “There are planes flying into the Twin Towers but we’re still waiting for this TA to show up?” I’m paraphrasing.
Anyway, none of us left, or few of us did, if any. The TA eventually showed up and we held our lab. I don’t remember what the lab was about, and I don’t remember what new information came in about the Towers while we were in class. I believe that’s when they fell, sometime while we were busing doing Astronomy stuff. I don’t remember much of what came next. I vaguely remember walking back to my dorm and standing in the lounge on Brew 5 watching the news. I remember visiting a few of my friends in the dorm to see if they were OK. I didn’t know anybody in the towers or anybody in New York City, so I was not personally effected.
I remember going with everybody else to the mass at the chapel on the Quad, but I don’t remember anything about that. I think I found a friend of mine sitting on a bench, and I went and sat with her. I had to ask her for a pencil.
Because weirdest of all, we still had an Astronomy test that day. I know a few of my classmates had decided to skip it, but I was torn by my scholarly honor. I borrowed the girl’s pencil and went and took my best.
I think I got a B.
Anyway, I just thought I’d share. Much love and respect to everyone who died on that day, and everyone who has died since. And especially to those who are still fighting.
The Delightful Joy of a Farmer and His Sheep
Here’s a quirky little cartoon that Alyssa found online. The animation is delightful, the story is quirky fun and it’s just an all around blast. This is Henchman-4-Hire, bringing you really cool things from the Internet.
Review: Punisher #3
What should have been a vicious fight between the Punisher and lame-o villain Vulture is instead a murky, hard-to-follow shadowfest that I guess ends the only way it could. Sadly, that the entire issue is turned over to this fight scene is a shame because it’s a real dip in quality from what we’ve been reading so far, both in terms of art and storytelling. As I said in my last review, the new Vulture is just a stupid, uninteresting character and nowhere near the Punisher’s weight class.
Punisher #3
But I suppose this issue takes care of that problem – Punisher kills the Vulture!
I sort of predicted that in my last review. If you’re going to throw the Punisher up against real Marvel Universe villains, he’s going to want to kill them. So of course Marvel and writer Greg Rucka threw him a completely disposable nobody to dispatch. Introduced as a Spider-Man villain, the Vulture is so lame he ends up getting jobbed down to the Punisher. Take that, loser! Maybe be more interesting next time.
So yeah, this issue can be summed up in three words: Punisher vs. Vulture. The other ongoing storylines are only given the tiniest of pushes, though not much happens in any of them. We see detectives Bolt and Clemons, but they don’t do much of anything. The Bride has a few scenes that are clearly leading to something bigger, but we’re definitely not there yet.
There are two truly sucky issues with the fight scene: the art is too dark and murky to really follow, and neither of the two combatants say anything. For the third issue in a row, writer Rucka keeps the Punisher silent (except for the final page). He’s just a quiet killing machine. The Vulture, meanwhile, speaks in incomprehensible squawks. So the fight is basically just the Punisher silently stabbing the Vulture while the Vulture makes random squawks about who knows what.
Stabby McStabberson likes to stab
That’s practically the entire fight right there in that picture. The Vulture can fly, so right at the very beginning he picks up the Punisher in his talons from the warehouse and carries him off. The redhead villainous tells her men not to shoot the Vulture, and then they disappear for the rest of the issue. So the fight between the Punisher and the Vulture is in the air, but there’s nothing truly exciting about the fight. Basically it all takes place as an extended grapple, with Punisher getting the upper hand as he clings to the Vulture high above the streets of New York. Presumably he takes his knife and starts stabbing, but as I said, the art is just too dark and murky to really make anything out. It’s just ugly-looking stab followed by the Vulture spewing yellowish spit from his mandibles as he gets stabbed some more.
It’s not an interesting fight. For all the menace that the Vulture was supposed to inspire, he goes down fairly easily. Sure there’s some red thrown into the pictures to indicate blood, but it mostly looks like the Punisher got cut by accident. There’s no fight. There’s just stabbing until the Vulture goes down.
Or DOWWWWWWWNNNNNNN!! If you'd prefer
The issue ends with the Punisher stabbing Vulture through the head – up through the underside of his jaw, no less. But that means the Punisher is falling from their aerial fight! He lands in a dumpster and seems to get through it OK, though he’s all bloody and beat up. Still, he survives the fall without too much of a hassle. Then he utters the only words he’s said in three issues.
“You…help me.”
Who’s he talking to? Why it’s Norah Winters, the reporter who appeared last issue! She was alerted to the aerial fight and then followed Punisher in a cab, eventually making it to his crash site. We’re led to believe that maybe Bolt and Clemons are going to get there first, but nope, it’s Norah. She straight up asks how he was able to survive the fall, so perhaps there’s more to his fall than we realize. Rucka and artist Marco Checchetto also try to get cinematic with the fall. The panels of Punisher falling into the dumpster are intercut with panels of all the other characters. So we’re flashing from one scene to another. If this were a movie, there’d be some cool dramatic music playing. You can sort of see it playing in your head.
Anyway, as for the other characters in the book, detectives Bolt and Clemons are one step behind the Punisher and the bad guys. They arrive at the warehouse, but they’re too late because the Punisher and Vulture are gone. They find Liam’s body with his head blown off. Bolt thinks the Punisher did it, but Clemons disagrees and has already deduced that someone who can fly has already left the scene. Norah Winters takes Clemons’ advice and goes to the salon to get her blonde hair cut short. But she leaves in the middle of it, with her hair only half cut, because of the fight going on. Her appearance at the end seems to indicate a Punisher/Norah team-up for issue #4.
Sounds like a hoot.
The Bride is told by the doctors that she’ll have a long rehab process, but at the end of the issue she defiantly gets out of bed and tries to walk. That’s the part that’s intercut with the Punisher falling. The Bride gets a few steps before collapsing to her knees.
It may be a small bit of storytelling, but I think it’s clear that the Bride is supposed to be similar to the Punisher. Her family was gunned down as well, and now it’s just her and her military training. She’s clearly going to tough it through her rehab and get back on her feet, seeking vengeance. Previous Punisher writer Garth Ennis wrote a similar story, about a mob princess who lost everything and decided to become like the Punisher. In the end, neither she nor the police detective investigating that story had what it took to truly sink to Frank Castle’s dark, depressing level. I suppose we’ll see what happens with the Bride.
Perhaps the Punisher will get a sidekick?
Madrox Lives!
The day we’ve all been waiting for has arrived: the full X-Factor teaser has been released and Multiple Man lives! My fears of Jamie Madrox dying were for naught. Behold, faithful readers, of the awesomeness that is X-Factor!
He may be tucked way down off to the side, but at least he's there!
Madrox dying would have really put a crimp in my comic book reading habits. For all you non geeks, I figure it would be like if your favorite sports star was no longer playing the sport. Or if your favorite TV character left the show. The final season of Scrubs just wasn’t as good without JD. Of course I watched it, but it felt less than itself. That’s what a Madrox-less X-Factor would have been like.
And it’s not just Madrox, but Longshot and Polaris as well, which was one of my guesses from the last post. So that’s very exciting. Granted, there are now 11 characters on the team. That means less panel-time for everybody. But I’d like to think that writer Peter David knows what he’s doing. The man rejuvenated Multiple Man, after all! I’ve got to have faith!
For anyone interested, here are the full X-franchise teaser images for all their titles. None of the character reveals have made me want to pick up a book that I wasn’t already planning to pick up. Though now I’m even more excited to be getting Wolverine and the X-Men since Iceman and Toad are on the team. My brother Cippy is getting Cyclops and the Uncanny X-Men.
First is Wolverine and the ‘Gold Team’.
Click to enlarge
Second is Cyclops and the ‘Blue Team’.
Click to enlarge
The only sadness in all of this is that my other favorite X-Character, The Mimic, is not on any team. Oh well. Back to comic book oblivion for him.
The Greater Unified Robot Theory
Since it was recently my brother’s birthday, I felt I’d do something nice for him and write a blog entry. Naturally the topic had to be something geeky, so I’ve decided to share my Classification system for Automatons with you. We are all aware of the presence of robots in our everyday lives. Robots build our cars, stand in Disney’s Hall of Presidents, and scare the shit out of us.
This is the stuff of nightmares.
But today we are going to focus on a different kind of robot… the fictional kind. Yes, for many years mankind has been delighted by whimsical flights of fancy wherein mechanized humanoids fight, kill, and sometimes…love. From Star Wars to Star Trek it seems that you can’t throw a stone without some machine man laughing at your primitive use of stones. Nowadays we have so many different fictional robots out there. It is hard to keep track. And to make matters worse, we now have different kinds of robots; like cyborgs and androids! And I don’t even want to get into what Japanese anime has done to these lovable tin men.
But I shall anyway! For I have devised The Greater Unified Robot Theory!
The G.U.R.T. makes the case that all synthetic persons can be broken down into four main categories: Robots, Cyborgs, Tech Suits, and Clones. Each category has its own pertinent criteria to help take the chaotic world of Automation, and make it much more manageable. Let’s start with some definitions.
Synthetic Person refers to any fictional character that has not been made by birth, hatching, or some other natural means of reproduction (i.e budding). Also, a synthetic person must display some level of artificial intelligence or A.I.
The dude on the right built the dude on the left. That’s a Synthetic Person!
Human refers to everything else. If you were born, hatched, spawned, or secreted then congratulations you’re a human! Now obviously bats, fungus, aliens, and Gary Busey aren’t actually “humans.” But for the purposes of G.U.R.T. we’re going to ignore all of those things. Primarily because this is a purely Ficitonal Theory and things like cloned sheep are real. But also just to keep it simple, we’re talking about robots and humans.
The chick on the right birthed the chick on the left. That’s a Human!
Category 1: Robots!
Robots are simple. A robot is any synthetic person lacking human parts. No skin, hair, brain, heart, etc. Robots are almost always made of metal and wires. Complex computers act as their “brains.” And cold metal casings replace the flesh. Nothing on or part of a Robot can come from a human. Robots are made. Famous Robots include: R2-D2, C3PO, Bender, Optimus Prime, Tom Servo, Johnny 5, the list goes on.
By Robot standards, this picture is about as famous as that one of the sailor kissing the nurse.
Also real quick, the Robot category also includes Androids. Androids are robots that do contain skin, hair, hearts, or any other human organ under the condition that the organ in question is not actually Human in origin. Androids often wear fake skin, fake hair, or are given fake hearts by the Wizard of Oz. These organs can sometimes get really complex. The Terminator has to eat and breath to keep his skin “alive.” They can even get as complex as taking actual organs from humans and attaching them to the Android. But with the exception of the brain, no matter what you put on an android, it is still an android. Famous Androids include: Terminators, Data, the Chee, The Vision, etc.
The kitty is not an android.
Category 2: Cyborgs
Cyborgs are the link between man and machine. A cyborg is born like a human but then winds up with synthetic body parts. Cyborgs must always have some combination of both parts. Once the last body part is replaced with machinery, the Cyborg becomes a Robot. Sonic the Hedgehog’s Uncle Chuck is a prime example of a man who became too machine. He was put into Robotnik’s Roboticizer and came out a robot. Whereas in the same cartoon, the character Bunny stopped the Roboticizer halfway through and only came out with a robotic arm and leg. She’s a cyborg. And even though Uncle Chuck eventually regains his free will and remembers who he once was, he’s still a Robot. You can never go back. Cyborgs work in one direction: Cyborg to Robot.
Though you can go from Cyborg to Human. In Futurama, Fry switches hands with the Robot Devil. While wearing the Robotic hands, Fry is a cyborg. When he gets his original hands back, he’s a human. The Robot Devil, however, is always a robot regardless of hands. Let us imagine for a second that Fry didn’t get his own hands back. Instead he gets new hands. If he grows them himself (i.e regeneration) then he’s a human. If they’re grown somewhere else and then attached………..well……..we’ll get to that.
Famous cyborgs include: Cyborg (duh), Robocop, Kickpuncher, General Grievous, The Brain, Inspector Gadget, etc.
Both men in this picture are cyborgs.
Category 3: Tech Suits
Here’s where things start to get a little tricky. Have the robotic components to a human become integral in carrying out normal bodily functions? If yes, you’re a Cyborg (see above). If no, you’re just wearing a Tech Suit. That’s the difference between Iron Man and Stilt-Man. Stilt-Man can take off his robotic suit anytime he wants. He’s a normal human wearing fancy clothes. If Iron Man takes off his armor, he’s still got a little battery in his chest that allows him to live. If he took it out, he would die. He’s a cyborg.
Now let’s discuss the complexity of Tech Suits. Take a look at a Mobile Gundam from any of the anime series. These things are “piloted” but that doesn’t necessarily make them vehicles. Due to the human-like nature to piloting a Gundam (you move your leg, the Gundam moves its leg. You move your arm, the Gundam moves its arm) it acts more like a suit than a car.
A certain amount of AI is also required. Think of a Space Marine in one of those big hulking suits that they wear. The wearer’s leg strength is not really involved in lifting or moving the suit’s leg. In fact there are many mechanized components within the robot leg that cause it to move based on signals that the human leg sends it (i.e. moving it). So because Batman’s mask will shock people who try to take it off of him while he’s unconscious, his costume is a Tech Suit, and therefore Batman in his costume can be considered part of the 3rd category of Synthetic Persons. Other Famous Tech Suits include: Master Chief, Dr. Doom, Zion’s APU Corps, and that thing from District 9.
Fun Fact: There’s a hot chick in there.
Category 4: Clones
Now things start to get really interesting. The short definition is: Clones are grown copies. Rather than building a Synthetic Person from machine parts, you copy a human’s parts and then grow them into a Clone. The Clone Troopers are the best example of this. Kamino scientists took Jango Fett’s DNA and grew new soldiers by accelerating their growth.
To take it one step further, unlike all other Synthetic Persons, Clones can be born…in a manner of speaking. Clones must be grown, but where they grow is up for debate. One of the more realistic places for a clone to grow is inside a womb. So eventually a clone grown in a womb is shot out of the uterus or “born.” Famous Clones include: Superboy, The Venture Brothers, Scarlet Spider, I think Solid Snake is too….I’m not sure, I haven’t played the game in a long time.
Oh, and Mario’s a clone.
Now let’s address a previous concern. What if Fry replaced his hands with cloned hands? In fact this a major positive to the cloning argument. If you need an organ transplant, why not clone the organ? Or make a clone of yourself and steal all his organs? But what would you become? (Besides an abomination unto the Lord.) You’d become what I call…a Cyclone!
A Cyclone is a Cyborg with cloned parts instead of robotic parts. A Cyclone can also refer to a Clone with life-altering Robotic attachments on his person. That would be like Hank Venture getting a robotic hand. Also a cyclone can refer to a tornado…but that’s neither here nor there. I wish I could give you some famous examples, but since I’ve invented the term “Cyclone” just now, naturally there won’t be any examples in pop culture until word of G.U.R.T. spreads.
Well….There is Thor:
…..Kinda….
Once upon a time Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four became increadibly evil and cloned Thor using an Android body for structure. The result was some crazy Clone/Android who walked around killing C-List superheroes while believing himself to be Thor. He sorta fits into a couple of these categories, but for all intents and purposes, The Thor clone is actually an Android. He was never grown.
Well that concludes my guest lecture on the Greater Unified Robot Theory. I hope we’ve all learned something today about our metal friends—What’s that? You say I’ve forgotten something? Oh well I suppose you may be onto something. There is one glaring Synthetic Person that I’ve completely managed to avoid in this blog post up until now. But with good reason. These guys go to great lengths to take everything we know about robots, and pee gasoline all over it.
CYLONS!!!
This does change things a bit.
OK so before I go any further, let me be clear: I am only going to talk about the new Battlestar Galactica. I’ve never seen the show that it is loosely based off of. I never will. And the G.U.R.T. doesn’t really care about it anyways. But as far as these new Cylons go, if we follow the G.U.R.T. as I have laid it out, Cylons are ROBOTS! Well, Androids to be specific. But only at first.
We see from the hit show Caprica that the original Cylon is obviously a Robot. He has no organs whatsoever (except for some little girl’s digital soul…whatever that means). But when we meet the Cylons 40 years later, they have organs. And as we see in the film Razor, they took these organs from the humans and they made the Hybrids. Hybrids are therefore clones. It is understood that they used what they learned from human organs and grew some of their own. Then while they were at it, they strapped those Hybrids into their Base-Ships. This turned Hybrids into Cyclones. And that is as far as the Cylon Centurions had gotten on their own.
Are you starting to understand why I left Cylons out?
Then the Final Five show up. (I refuse to spoil anything as it was once spoiled for me. So no names.) The Final Five are part of a Cylon offshoot that figured out how to sexually reproduce. They also look just like humans and are Human in almost every way that counts. But we know they’re not humans. They can download their brains. We can’t call them Humans. But we can’t call them Androids because they grow. But we can’t call them Clones because they give birth. This is a problem! (Well…not in the sense that problems actually matter to people, but you get the idea.)
For the purposes of G.U.R.T. we are going to call the Final Five Cylons: Clones. Clones grow and are copied. We already know that the Final Five grow. They were young once and then they got older. Check. But we’re going to expand our definition of “copied.” When a Cylon makes a baby, that baby is technically copying stolen Human organs from thousands of years ago. They never fully stop being Robots and that’s why the Final Five are able to download their minds thousands of years after their species stopped doing it. They never evolved! Not really! One Cylon baby just copied everything from its parents just like they did from theirs. Cylons are cloned in their mother’s womb.
And then we have other 8 models. They’re Androids. When the Final Five meet the Centurions, they teach them how to make Cylons more advanced than the Hybrids. They build the 8 models (Grace Park, Tricia Helfer, etc.) These models don’t grow. And these models aren’t like the Final Five. They’re new. And very importantly, they can’t have babies……unless a Human fraks one of them.
Which was obviously only a matter of time.
So what happens when a Human and an Android have a baby? ……Fuck if I know. At this point R2-D2 and Robocop have thrown up their hands in frustration. This Robot stuff used to be so simple. But that’s part of why Battlestar Galactica is such an awesome show. And to answer my previous question: you get Hera.
She’s the chick in the middle.
Hera is the Robot Messiah who (spoiler alert) goes on to recreate all of existence. She doesn’t fit into any of the G.U.R.T. categories and she isn’t going to. I figure that it is best to leave her alone and let her do her own thing. If you’ve got a better solution, I’d like to hear it.
The Greater Unified Robot Theory is the best tool we have for the classification of Synthetic Persons. Any Synthetic character you meet in a book, movie, tv show, etc. is going to fit into one of these 4 categories. If you think you’ve found one that doesn’t, bring him forth, I challenge you. And at the end of the day, I feel that this is what Sean’s blog needed: To challenge* you.
01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111,
Cippy Mills
*(And by that I don’t mean the challenge it was to actually read this stupid thing)
Henchman-4-Hire 