Face is blurred out to protect the sweet person’s identity but I love the shirt and I want to encourage little people of both genders to be unafraid to promote their heroes, even if they’re fictional.
Futurama may no longer be having any new adventures beyond its comic book (published six times a year) but it’s great to see the show continue to have new calendars. This one is the best because expired months can be recycled into masks! There’s only one downside, poor Amy Wong got skipped.
Pluto as our technology improved.
I won’t deny being late to the party when it comes to all the Pluto hype. I’ve been busy taking care of my health and cleaning up affairs key to the maintenance of the Maggi Republic. I have been an Astronomy geek since I was a little kid and this probe taking nine years to get there was something I mentioned during my site’s first year, I’m not letting the matter go! Lastly, the dwarf planet was discovered by a dude from Streator, IL which is near my maternal grandparents’ stomping grounds of Seneca and Marsielles.
Below is a bitchin’ movie showing how far New Horizons traveled to arrive. I love how you see the mile-markers and orbits that were crossed.
Pluto’s visibility, “neighborhood” and other facts have come a long way from when I was a child. In the Seventies, I recall there weren’t many specifics. You just had to trust Science books about the dwarf planet. When I was in sixth grade, we had to do presentations about the various worlds in our solar system. Only one classmate took Pluto. I felt bad for her because there wasn’t must to tell in 1980 while I crushed the other kids over Jupiter thanks to my parents having a sub to National Geographic! OK, the classmate did bring up how Neptune had taken Pluto’s spot as the farthest object sometime in 1979 and they’d swap back in 1999.
When it comes to Sci-Fi, only three franchises have ever bothered to cover Pluto in any detail. The first was Star Blazers (the Americanized version of Space Battleship Yamato). The Gammilons used Pluto as their foothold against us. From there the aliens defeated the Earth Defense Force’s last space fleet under Captain Avatar and launched numerous radioactive planet bombs prepare Earth for colonization. Don’t ask me, it was a Japanese cartoon. When the Argo did arrive, the only thing the show guessed correctly was Pluto being icy. Rather a no duh moment. Next was Futurama taking a more comical stab at the place being a penguin sanctuary contaminated by an Exxon Valdez-like spill thanks to Bender’s soberness when he was at the helm. The last is in my header, Rick and Morty had Pluto and their “not-a-planet” denying government leading the A story paralleling our world’s whole climate-change denialism. The Plutonian government’s argument against Plutonian scientists was the rather dumb Jerry just saying, “Pluto is a planet” to counter the world’s shrinkage.
Yeah, I know, those are fiction. My point is how fiction tried to fill the gaps on an object Hubble can’t even get a solid look at.
Next up for New Horizons is even more exciting. We should get a better idea about the boundaries of the Heliosphere. Does it adjust? Is it constant? This probe is much more sophisticated than Voyager 1 and 2. I think its chances in what may be actual, interstellar space are stronger.
Two great minor-character cartoon voice actors have recently passed on. The first was Alex Rocco was more well known as a parent in The Facts of Life and someone who got whacked in The Godfather II. His first and recurring Roger Meyers Jr. appearances on The Simpsons rejuvenated his career according to him on a commentary (I could be wrong on this). Alex had a great show-biz type voice, especially when he’d go on a tear in court on how nothing is original or telling the writers to create Poochie. Really raspy and angry. The latter is often used an inside joke for those of us fighting against corporate idiocy. The crazy yellow family then led to him being the insect Thorny (head of construction) in A Bug’s Life. I hope they plan to write Mr. Meyers out alongside Mrs. Krabappel instead of recasting.
George Coe is not as famous outside us diehards. He was more recently recognized as Archer’s tortured butler Woodhouse. Since Archer‘s create came from the early Adult Swim days via Sealab 2021, I’m confident Georges “old man” voice was used in other productions, I kept imagining Space Ghost and/or Brak things. More obituaries said he was an early member of SNL. Not sure exactly how. I’m guessing maybe he was a minor bit player behind the so-called imaginary “golden age” with Belushi, Akroyd, etc. It’s similar to how they say Al Franken and Tom Davis were in the cast when they were writers who occasionally were in skits.
Thanks gentlemen. You contributions made two great cartoons even better. Jokes about Hanna Barbera ripping off other sitcoms and historical references to the overthrow of Iran’s legitimate, pre-shah government will always be in my memory.
My only remaining friend/family in Chicago started a new position this Monday. He had been searching for a while and it can be tough in the Midwest, a region stuck in a rut from many directions. This attitude is why my brother recently abandoned it for SF and I gave up on in the Nineties.
Send Nelson a big congratulations! He earned it. This is a major shift. After many years with the giant Chase (I remember when he joined, they were Bank One), he’s working with a smaller company, which I think is an advantage, they’re often more nimble/agile than the establishment. It gives me some inspiration about what I may be doing in the near future.
Plus what’s with these posts requiring a password? I would blame those on the death of privacy in some ways. They’re not incriminating or anything really awful, we just live in an over-cautious, over-reacting, heavily-handed PC world.
Quick aside: Contrary to the stereotype of Liberals, I for one am against Politically Correct (PC) tactics to shut down any speech. One person said it best, PC is the Left using the Right’s strategy to eliminate things they’re uncomfortable with. For example, the stars and bars flying at a state capital or being on license plates, not appropriate because that’s a government endorsement for a flag used by domestic terrorists. Someone wearing a t-shirt with the symbol, waving around the flag and painting it on their car…knock yourself out. I still don’t care for it yet I’m with Bill Maher’s joke, “Hey, you’re just telling the cops the meth is in your car’s trunk.” My point? If those angry people want to brandish the Dixie flag (it’s not really the Confederate flag) in OKC during the president’s visit, let them. Obama is a big boy, he has thicker skin than most people and the only people being “hurt” are the flag-bearers themselves; the civilized world sees them for what they are, bigoted sore losers.
OK, it wasn’t a quick aside…humor me. I just took several posts out from “easy view” to practice things on my site and maybe find something to reward the actual readers/friends I might have. You know, like those extra tracks CDs used to include so you’d buy the more expensive format over tapes or vinyl.
I also took time off, ignoring the site while I’ve been taking it easy and recuperating. Many good and sad things occurred too. I decided to spend a little time today writing before I let them get away from me, namely the ones which are too awesome to slip into complete irrelevancy.
Will things get back on to a more regular flow? Eventually. For now, enjoy this upcoming blitz of stories, reviews, obits and news. I’m hoping better things in the near future.
Lucky person. She got David X Cohen, the co-creator/developer of Futurama and Patrick Stewart/Captain Picard. It’s good to have her back after a little vacation from her former hometown of Baltimore. I’ll allow Kristin to have an exception in being allowed to move to Austin. She and Jeremy are a happier couple plus she shares the values of what Austin is about unlike the invaders we have from other Texas toilets.
Jeremy and Ben have plans for her…I don’t know, I just figure they do.
Have a great day Kristin.
Unlike some cowards in the Middle East and at FXX, I’m sticking by this name since it fits her and she continues to respond to it. Her birthday picture is a looping GIF because cats are like children, they don’t look directly into the camera at the right moment. Besides, it was an excuse for me to show off how I’ve learned the essentials in Photoshop which can do this. No more hunting down a compatible app! Contrary to the “neutral” face she’s making, something you hear cat haters use to make their arguments about cats not being affectionate, loving, loyal or good pets…Isis is having a standard, happy day. This time was a rare moment she wasn’t playing Rapunzel in the tower, her favorite hideout. Isis is getting braver at hanging with us directly when the other three cats are present, namely Kuroneko, our current alpha cat. I remember it took Miette a couple years and a new house before she would hop up on me for direct attention. Animals are more socially aware of pecking orders than people.
Isis continues to be a joy around the house. She is the proud mother of nine kittens (Not all at once! Try three litters) who managed to be adopted from the AHS. Even the nasty-spirited Weth probably overcame her distrust of people as she grew older and her mama’s disposition genes kicked in.
The people behind enworld.org, a decent rumor site plugging both D&D and Pathfinder, mentioned that around this time, WOTC released the new starter kit for what would be their apology for Fourth Edition. Trying to keep an open mind, I plunked down the $50 for the new PHB to see which parts of each edition they kept intact for the beloved game’s Fifth edition.
My short version:
This is what should’ve been published between the second and third editions. It has certainly more of second in its DNA than third. The rules are light but light to the point of problematic. Plus they can’t make everyone suddenly forget all the third’s strong points and its true successor…Pathfinder. Lastly, I don’ t need 170 pages on character creation material to make up a background with hooks for why the heroes came together. Skip on to the conclusion.
The slightly longer version:
WOTC certainly returned to the game’s 3E roots to put it back on track. Fourth was an abomination and had more in common with WoW online than being a good RPG. Fifth tries to return to the roleplaying elements but I think they both dumbed it down and gimped the system too much. Thus, if their goal was to snuff out Pathfinder, they’ll have little success beyond the fanboys who think WOTC can do no wrong.
Dumbed down: What I said before on spending 170 pages on character creation. Even the most novice player can make up their own background story as a starting DM can stitch all the PCs’ histories to start a story arc/campaign. I understand that you have to appeal to new players to keep the ecosystem alive. However, D&D and its brethren have been the exception to board games, video games and comics. Few gain basic proficiency on their own. The game is usually taught by veteran players due to its complexity and as much as I hate to agree with this, there’s a cultish nature to RPGs, especially when new “converts” express their enthusiasm.
Gimped too much: Another person whose opinion I don’t mind said he ditched PF for 5E because he didn’t like the players making small gods as characters. This was his defense for agreeing with the rules set saying no PC attribute scores can exceed 20. Maybe his games had the players making it to higher levels than I’ve ever experienced; eighth to ninth has been my record until everyone’s schedules fell apart. I personally haven’t had any PC get beyond a 20 yet, including the two half-dragons I’ve regretted to allow. NPCs, oh yes. The latter happens through a combination of age and levels. Yet with 5E, monsters get to exceed 20, the PCs get buckwheats.
WOTC also degraded Feats, a major perk in Third. They’re practically worthless and they’re taken in exchange for other things your PC might need in order to survive. It’s either a Feat or a one-point boost to a key stat.
The classes are very limiting, thus, almost every Fighter is the same, every Rogue is the same, so on. Multi-classing is discouraged but if you take a core class, there is an option down the road to take a different track toward what used to be a Prestige class: Arcane Trickster is a Rogue choice, Eldritch Knight for Wizards, etc. Yawn. Might as well be playing Second Edition and its clunky kits.
Lastly, the proficiency system is futile. Why do they repeat the same lame table for every class when it’s identical in every instance. Fighters have the same “proficiency bonus” with their melee attacks as Wizards, Clerics and Rogues. The only advantage the Fighter has in combat is their Strength modifier. These same crappy bonuses apply for Saving Throws and skills too. Combat is now back to being a long, slow grind due to the frequent missing.
What they’ve incorporated from the competition:
Before I get to what they took from other games, I want to point out that not every bad idea from Fourth was abandoned. The Warlock remains a core class to satisfy the players who prefer to play tabletop Gauntlet as they go “pew! pew!” and fight their horrible inner demons or whatever bullshit they cribbed from Spawn. I know I’m showing my horrible prejudice against the class ever since it was introduced by Complete Arcane nearly 10 years ago. It’s just often chosen by the player who feels obligated to turn the game into “Stump the DM” and/or this person only plays one particular race or class in any game; they have borderline tantrums if someone else wants this choice. When PF chose to make zero-level spells ‘at will,’ it mostly defeated the argument Warlock proponents backed. WOTC did crib my spell casting proposal from 2008 called recalls, another counter to the Warlock’s “necessity.” Fifth’s way of doing it isn’t very impressive though. It’s only for Wizards and the amount they’re allowed is equal to half their level. For example, at second level, a wizard can recall one first level spell; at fourth level, two first levels or one second level; etc. Mine is more generous as one player recently demonstrated as she threw lightning bolts left and right at rather wimpy foes, exhausting her wizard’s four or five recalls. It was her choice which was fine with me, I’m only the referee plus the recalls prevented her PC from becoming “useless” after two combat rounds.
What they did incorporate from PF was finally giving higher hit dice to the Wizards, Sorcerers, Rogues and Bards. They made zero-level spells at will too. From GURPS/Hero, WOTC converted spells down to their base elements and then made the higher-level versions of them just enhancements. For example, all Clerics to tend pray for cure light wounds as one of their first-level spells. When they gain the ability to cast second-level spells, they use the second-level slow for cure but it has the same outcome of the old cure moderate wounds spell. It cuts down on the paperwork obviously. I suspect the exchange will be supplements on the horizon.
Too much outsourcing:
Here’s the part I find the most disappointing about D&D’s current state. The WOTC staff appeared to write the core rules while the rather sparse choices for adventures have been written/developed by Green Ronin. When I worked at GDW in the early Nineties, this was a huge concern with Traveller. Is the staffing so thin they can’t flesh out their own game? Maybe it’s a cost thing. Often it’s cheaper to just contract out the creative work and have the employees edit it for style. Either way, it’s not a strong endorsement from WOTC itself nor the parent company Hasbro in my opinion. Not being a major attendee at GenCon is another red flag.
In one year, all WOTC has out there for 5E are the three core rulebooks, three adventures and two sets of miniatures. Meanwhile, Paizo has released more than twice as much material to keep their game going. It is better to have more to choose from than being stuck with the same, limited offerings.
Conclusion:
It’s not all bad. The minis work for both D&D and PF. I’m confident the plots to D&D’s current adventure lines can function in PF and vice versa too. Just a bit of homework which is nothing new when we’ve all taken a turn at converting beloved AD&D modules from the early Eighties to work in 3E, RoleMaster, GURPS, so on. I think the two main systems will manage to co-exist, keeping each other afloat decently as online gaming continues to chip away at all tabletop RPGs.
I plan to stay with Pathfinder though. I find it easier to have a system with a slug of things, then pick and choose what to go with based upon what works. For example, I allow all of the 11 core classes plus Witches and Cavaliers while excluding Summoners, Oracles, Brawlers, etc. The Paizo people appear to actually play Pathfinder based upon the materials I see them write. Every year there’s two complete adventure-path campaigns in addition to a half-dozen modules. Not every source book is a hit with me, but they aren’t drowning the game as WOTC did with 3.5; by at least keeping things rolling with adventures, it helps the rest of us who don’t have the time to write our own.
Now I would recommend Fifth to people who:
With the last one…no system is perfect, no system ever will be. There’s too much opinion involved plus games need balance or else it’s a horrible movie starring Ahnold or Stallone.
As for 5E, I don’t need a $50 book (really should be $40 as per inflation) to tell me it’s about role playing, not roll playing.
This didn’t catch me completely by surprise, my GWD co-captain Pablo had mentioned this happening as a possibility back in June or May, he works at Waterloo Records. Tuesday has been the day for years with me yet I can’t remember when I really started paying attention, I’ll go with only in the last ten years when I made a bigger effort to try harder on getting new stuff via Waterloo and the now deceased Cheapo.
The shift is partly stupid and moot. I’ll go with why I think it’s stupid first. Friday isn’t exactly the day most people will rush out to their local record store or big-box store to pick up the new releases of their favorite stuff. New movies hitting theaters and the thrill of the weekend kicking in tend to get all the attention. It’s no surprise that corporations and governments also let out shitty news on this same afternoon. New artists trying to get discovered by accident will suffer. Then comes the moot element. Thanks to digital downloads, streaming (a venue which has yet to generate an actual profit) and a younger generation which believes music (along with other forms of content) is/should be free…new material will just appear! Maybe people will pay more attention by looking over iTunes or AllMusic.com as Friday-morning ritual instead of getting around to it the following week.
Pablo told me the decision was being made by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (Phonographic? Vinyl is making a comeback courtesy of Hipsters, why not) to create uniformity. I had read how new-music day varied in the Western countries. Some were Tuesday, some Wednesday, etc. Like the UK and the US/Canada weren’t the same plus Germany was elsewhere (or is it else when?). Of course it’ll have no effect on some of my favorite UK-Anzac acts from releasing the US versions of their stuff a few months later.
I guess I could make a new Friday ritual and regain the use of every other Tuesday night. The parking lot at Waterloo has always been small.
After completing the really basic training on Apple’s Weblog solution that made its debut in Mac OS X 10.4 Server, I decided to give this a try. Since it was mid-2005 you could tell, Apple was late to the party because most people who knew anything about this style of writing/posting/hosting used better, more powerful, customizable solutions such as WordPress (2003) and Drupal (2001), not the Java-driven Blosjom (sic). It certainly didn’t impress Apple’s dedicated customers. Mac OS X Server 10.5 went with something built from the ground up and I rarely recalled any serious support calls.
The shift to ‘blog also provided something to take my mind off of how much I was missing Somara working in Phoenix. It was nice to go with a tool I could just whip out stories with on the fly. I had been doing it the “hard” way for years with GoLive. I also have the bits and pieces from my PageMill days in the late Nineties! Good stuff.
I wish these were happier times to celebrate a decade this incarnation of Maggi Picayune. There have been varying storm clouds for some weeks; they weren’t all about nor around me neither, seems some friends in my orbit have been encountering their own struggles. I have “powered through” by posting like crazy since I wanted to hit 4000 posts by today, I fell short by 19, damn it.
On the Media‘s last show was dedicated to Plan B should we experience an EMP burst which would wipe out all the digital crap we’ve done. Hell, many things from merely a decade ago are unreadable thanks to planned obsolesce (this is what happens when tech is driven by Capitalism). It’s seriously got me thinking about “archiving” past things to paper. Similar to what I used to do in the Nineties after making a print copy of Maggi Picayune for my friends. Somewhere in the storage shed is the box with all the final copies of what I wrote to them…fonts, graphics and all.
Let’s see what the next year has in store for everyone, not just me even though this site is all about me.
