Why Sequels Suck: Dungeon Siege II.

Ok.
Secretly, in my browser, I have like 300 links to news stories from the last week or so, all queued up and ready to be mocked ruthlessly.
The problem?
My next day off is Saturday.
So instead, let's talk about Dungeon Siege 2.

Just got this game a while ago, and I've played it enough to notice some things about it.
For those of you who don't know, Dungeon Siege and Dungeon Siege 2, made by Gas Powered Games and published by Microsoft, are pretty stock examples of the "clickclick" genre of gaming, which features such luminaries as Diablo, Diablo 2, Sacred, The Fate, and... ummm... Oh well, you get the idea.

Dungeon Siege did do a few innovative things, though; it allowed for multi-character parties which you could control, RTS-style, in real-time. It also allowed the player to wander freely throughout the game world without loading, even once; not even so much as the in-engine animations used to disguise loading between maps used by the Legacy of Kain series. This was done through a truly innovative pre-loading method, which allowed the portions of the map the player moves toward to be loaded dynamically by the engine while still outside the rendering distance. (I know, I know. Three or four of you who know what that means but didn't already play the game are going "Cool!" while everyone else is scratching their heads.) That way, by the time a player party moved to the edge of one map area, the next map area was already loaded, which lets you make the run from one end of the game to the other without ever, ever, ever stopping to watch movies or loading screens.

Dungeon Siege also allowed greater control over the members of the player party than is common in this type of game; each controllable character (up to 8) had a set of AI scripts which allowed the player to set all the archers to attack anything in range, while the melee fighters chase things all over the board, while the mages heal, summon minons, and defend with spells. Or, if the player was nuts, or just really bored, the archers could heal, while the mages chase things... You see?

Dungeon Siege was, despite a few flaws, a great game.
But the sequel isn't.
Don't get me wrong; DS2 isn't a TERRIBLE game, but it's not GREAT, either, and it's because someone tried to reinvent the wheel.

That's never a good idea.

In the original, although you had character portraits, health and magic bars, inventory, and quick weapon and spell slots on the left side of the screen, the game camera allowed you to zoom out far enough that nothing was ever obscured, and that combined with the very free-moving, responsive camera system prevented one of the things I've noticed often being an annoyance in the sequel: monsters attacking you from off-camera, while you are unable to get them in view. I cannot even tell you how often I have sworn at this game as some monster chews my party into chunks with impunity, as I frantically swing the camera back and forth, looking for an angle from which the monster will be visible, instead of hidden by the gigantic UI in the left corner.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the graphics haven't had an upgrade of any real significance. The original was a very pretty game, but it's been almost 6 years, and it's starting to show its age. GPG, in their infinite wisdom, didn't even add support for resolutions higher than 1024x768, despite the growing popularity of LCD monitors, most of which go up to 1600x1280.

Adding further insult to injury is the plethora of game-breaking bugs that came in the retail box. There is, of course, a patch; but if you just paid $50 for a game, and one of your quests is to rescue an old man, and you defeat all the enemies around him, and he says "Help me!" thus forcing you to reload from a savegame until he gets it straight, you will be annoyed. A huge download doesn't help, especially if you are on dialup; (which, thank God, I'm not, but still) why in God's name can't these game companies get that kind of thing ironed out before the game ships? I can understand a minor issue with a font, or a sound issue that only occurs when the player has a particular sound card and driver version, but the bugs that make this game annoying are in the event scripting system that drives the game itself. Not minor. Really.
Then, just for the purposes of innovation, GPG thought to themselves, "Hey, I've got a great idea for a sequel! Let's take out everything that made the original game good, replace it with suck, and see how much money we can rake in! We can even use the same graphics engine, if we throw in antialiasing and anisotropic filtering no-one will even know we didn't do an upgrade."

Think I'm kidding? Let's break it down:

• Party size has shrunk to 4 for the initial difficulty setting, maxes out at 6 for the highest - there are three, just like Diablo 2. Wonder where GPG got the idea, considering it uses the same procedure to check difficulty and start the game as Diablo 2 did - 6 years ago.


• The reason the party got smaller is because GPG made the UI huge and intrusive, leaving insufficient space on the left of the screen for more than 6 character portraits. Want to see what I mean by this? They traded this UI for this one.


• The party no longer has individual AI settings for party members, and the party members are no longer separable into subgroups, or mobile alone. Instead, you have two AI settings: Mirror and Rampage, and a third button: Regroup.


• Mirror is supposed to mean "everybody attack the same monster." Instead, it means "shoot every which way and miss often."


• Rampage is supposed to mean "attack everything that moves." Instead, it means "I will attack, you other guys stand around looking confused."


• Regroup is supposed to mean "everybody come back to the party leader," but instead means "hey, you! Lost dumbass! Get over here!"


• More specifically, path search nodes in DS2 are reduced to a point where your characters frequently remain behind, tragically stuck in an impenetrable blockade of quarter-inch-high grass.


• In fact, all AI scripting for player-controlled characters is astonishingly stupid in DS2. Enemies, however, are razor-sharp, with bosses ignoring multiple melee characters completely to repeatedly one-hit unarmored healing mages, using special attacks the second they're available and always seeming to hit every member of your party at once, and using spells which are much cooler than any you get to cast.


• The camera doesn't zoom out nearly as far, which contributes to the constant barrage from offscreen monsters.


• The excellent preloading routine used to provide a seamless experience and game world in the first game is used far less in this game; DS2 uses cutscenes (pre-rendered, out-of-engine movies) to disguise the loads between major landblocks. At first I had chalked this up to their attempt to make things look cooler, but as I progressed into the game I discovered cutscenes with monotonous regularity, even extending to the Stargate-esque teleports used for transportation around the world of Aranna.


• There is never enough money available to your characters in DS2. Items sell to merchants for a fraction - a very, very SMALL fraction - of their value when YOu buy them, which means that you are constantly broke, which is highly annoying. GPG addressed this, or tried to, by placing health and mana bushes around, which characters with the right skills can harvest for health and mana potions. It's not enough. You're still broke all the time, and it gets annoying if you bring in a dozen magic swords, three suits of armor, and 14 magic necklaces and rings, and can swap them for two heal potions and a helmet.


• Multiplayer features wonderful things like lag for no reason in small spaces with only two player characters present; lag in wide open spaces with dozens of monsters present, and lag in cities with fixed populations. Actually, every location we've visited so far in multiplayer has huge latency issues, which are not related to our network. If we can transfer a multi-gigabyte archive from one workstation to another in a minute or so, there shouldn't be any problems with a game, and other games have experienced no latency, but there it is. GPG scrapped the original, good network code, and substituted buggy crap written by someone who clearly thought they didn't get paid enough. Lag this bad can only be considered deliberate sabotage.


• Multiplayer also, for some reason, makes the AI scripting bugs ten times worse, both in terms of the event engine, and in terms of player characters standing around with their heads up their fourth points of contact while enemies beat their mages into mush.


• Players now have a skill system, which wasn't present in the original game - players in DS1 were archers, melee, healing, or combat mage. That was it. Now, they have a fairly standard RPG skill tree, causing my wife to whine and constantly pest me to tell her where she should put her next skill point. This causes my head to catch fire, which is never good.

Oddly, after that list of bad things, there were some good things; GPG did do some things right. Multiplayer can now save sessions, so that players like my wife and I can play after work and then pick up where we left off the next night, a welcome change. The addition of a system allowing the player to collect reagents and enchant their own magic items was also welcome, even if some of the design decisions involved were real headscratchers. The variety of spells is much smaller than the original game, which isn't good, but they're organized better and give better information in the popup tooltips. The inventory space for each character is smaller - always an annoyance - but GPG compensated, this time successfully, by placing a stationary item box in town, which was very innovative, or would have been if they hadn't stolen it from Diablo 2.

The story is a whole lot more involving this time around, which is good. That's unqualified; good story = better game. Sadly, in this case, the story merely serves to hold your interest until you are screamingly frustrated by the plethora of problems in this title.

My advice is to heed the critics. If you had been paying attention in 2000 to gaming news, the original Dungeon Siege title was all the buzz, and got attention from critics worldwide, for good reason. This time around, we didn't even know the game had gone gold, which is never a good sign. If the critics can't even be bothered to say something about the game, it sucks.

I really, really wanted this game to be good. My wife, a huge fan of the original, wanted this game to be good. It isn't. Hopefully, GPG will come to their friggin' senses when they put together the third game and try to make it actually be good, instead of relying on the title's popularity to sell endless, quality-free sequels until they've run it into the ground.

Don't buy this, unless you just WANT to be frustrated and swearing at your screen. Instead, try the original, or maybe one of the Elder Scrolls games; they're a lot of fun, and don't require the patience of the Dalai Lama to play.

Wow, Great Connection To Reality You Got There...

Swiss And Belgian Police Raid Razorback Filesharing Servers

Razorback2, which has been one of eDonkey2000's largest indexing servers has been taken down by Belgian and Swiss Authorities. Belgian Federal Police have raided and seized Razorback2's servers at the Internet Hosting centre and the Swiss authorities have arrested Razorback2’s operator at his home in Switzerland. According to the MPAA, this is a major blow to file sharing users and as a result, the authorities have succeeded in taking down all the major eDonkey servers throughout Europe and the US.

Well, how big a blow, really?

Well, slyck.com reports that the eDonkey network is down from 3.5 million users to 3 million users, which is a major shift, sure enough.

Except I got to wondering... how accurate is this, anyway?

So I go to the eMule homepage and download the client. After all, if I download nothing, nothing is wrong with looking at the serverlist, right? And with Razorback being down, and approximately a seventh of all the users in the whole network out of commission, I wouldn't even be able to connect, right?

So, I install the client, run the setup wizard, and look at the server list, only to see:
Servers. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of servers, some claiming over 800,000 clients apiece. In fact, the client returns a list of (it claims) 22 MILLION clients connected.

I uninstall the client, laughing my ass off.

Clearly, the MPAA has an inflated idea of their impact on the filesharing community. Good night, all.

Now, PAY ATTENTION This Time, Dammit!

There's no post summaries this time; it's not that long.

You know how I'm always going on about the RIAA and MPAA and how they are orchestrating a huge campaign to obliterate our rights of fair use of media such as music and movies, and how they suck, and should be destroyed?

You should, if you've been reading this blog for more than a week or two.

Well, now you can help stop them in their tracks.

This is the text of House Resolution 1201, the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2005. In effect, it amends the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to codify into law the fair use right, and allow technological advancement to proceed, by designating scientific research as a non-infringing use of digital media and its offshoots.

If this law passes, your VCR is safe. So is your CD burner, DVD burner, TiVo, MP3 player, and PlayStation Portable. You really, really, really want this bill to pass. Trust me.

Because I am such a swell guy, as anyone who knows me will lie to you about, THIS RIGHT HERE CLICK HERE NOW!!! is a link to the form on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website where you can send a message to your elected representative, requesting his (or her) support for the bill. The RIAA and MPAA are spending millions upon millions of dollars to defeat this bill; all you can do is send an email, but emails can swing it if we send enough of them. Click the link. Send a message to your Congressman that you are tired of the RIAA's crap.

The Trouble With The Mainstream Media...

...is that they lie, lie, lie.
Yeah, I'll say it again.
The mainstream media is a pack of ravenous, lying jackals.
Why do I think that? Well, I'll let the mayor of Tall'Afar in Iraq tell you that.

(This letter courtesy of The American Thinker.com)

From: Mayor of Tall ‘Afar, Ninewa, Iraq

In the Name of God the Compassionate and Merciful

To the Courageous Men and Women of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tall’ Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life.

To the lion-hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets for many months.

To those who spread smiles on the faces of our children, and gave us restored hope, through their personal sacrifice and brave fighting, and gave new life to the city after hopelessness darkened our days, and stole our confidence in our ability to reestablish our city.

Our city was the main base of operations for Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. The city was completely held hostage in the hands of his henchmen. Our schools, governmental services, businesses and offices were closed. Our streets were silent, and no one dared to walk them. Our people were barricaded in their homes out of fear; death awaited them around every corner. Terrorists occupied and controlled the only hospital in the city. Their savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpsesof children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young. This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi’s followers after harsh fighting, killing many terrorists, and forcing the remaining butchers to flee the city like rats to the surrounding areas, where the bravery of other 3d ACR soldiers in Sinjar, Rabiah, Zuma and Avgani finally destroyed them.

I have met many soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment; they are not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism.

The leaders of this Regiment; COL McMaster, COL Armstrong, LTC Hickey, LTC Gibson, and LTC Reilly embody courage, strength, vision and wisdom.

Officers and soldiers alike bristle with the confidence and character of knights in a bygone era. The mission they have accomplished, by means of a unique military operation, stands among the finest military feats to date in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and truly deserves to be studied in military science. This military operation was clean, with little collateral damage, despite the ferocity of the enemy. With the skill and precision of surgeons they dealt with the terrorist cancers in the city without causing unnecessary damage.

God bless this brave Regiment; God bless the families who dedicated these brave men and women. From the bottom of our hearts we thank the families. They have given us something we will never forget. To the families of those who have given their holy blood for our land, we all bow to you in reverence and to the souls of your loved ones. Their sacrifice was not in vain. They are not dead, but alive, and their souls hovering around us every second of every minute. They will never be forgotten for giving their precious lives. They have sacrificed that which is most valuable. We see them in the smile of every child, and inevery flower growing in this land. Let America, their families, and the world be proud of their sacrifice for humanity and life.

Finally, no matter how much I write or speak about this brave Regiment, I haven’t the words to describe the courage of its officers and soldiers. I pray to God to grant happiness and health to these legendary heroes and their brave families.

NAJIM ABDULLAH ABID

AL-JIBOURI

Mayor of Tall ‘Afar,

Ninewa, Iraq

Now. Why do I think the media are a bunch of lying jackals?

Because you didn't get this letter from the New York Times, or the Washington Post. CNN hasn't said jack shit about it. Even FOX News Channel hasn't said anything.

Because...
Because the Iraqis, and their opinions of what's going on over there, directly contradict the mainstream media's agenda of portraying the conflict in Iraq as an ongoing debacle; the media is sacrificing the "inconvenient facts" on the altar of their political outlook. Their FUNCTION AND PURPOSE IN EXISTENCE IS TO RELAY FACTS. Nothing else. Yet instead of the FACTS, they are persistently reporting only those events that seem detrimental to the image of the United States.

Well, I'll tell you what. I'm very suspicious of anyone in New York who presumes to know "the situation in the streets" of Baghdad. So, I decided to look at what the people who are ACTUALLY FUCKING THERE are saying. No, not our troops; they might be Republicans, and therefore automatically suspect. No, not for me - I wanted to go to the Iraqis themselves. So, what do they have to say?

Well, let's see.

Mohammed at IRAQTHEMODEL says

From where I'm sitting now I can hear both Sunni and Shia mosques are condemning the attack through their loudspeakers.

I believe there are foreign terror groups behind this attack and I don't think local insurgent would do such a thing, simply because this particular shrine had been in Sunni territory for a thousand years and the residents of Samarra had always benefited from the movement of religious tourism and pilgrimage.

Sami at An Iraqi's Thoughts said

I guess now the talk of a unified government are encouraging, but you have the Shiites who are upset that not enough is being done to avenge the death of the martyrs being killed daily. You have idiots like Saleh al Mutlak who talk and sound like Saddam trying to talk nonsense. The end result is unknown and to be honest it won’t be easy but that just needs time. I hope I still have a readership and I will be writing more often soon. Hope you all enjoyed your new years. 70 percent of people voting give or take five percent is a good omen that people do want to use their voice. It was not all in vain but the Iraqi people need to change their mentalities which will happen with education and a better standard of living to be able to choose the right people to move the country forward.

SEVENTY FRIGGIN PERCENT VOTED. (BIIIIIG failure of democracy, that, considering our elections often feature less than 25% turnout.)
Raghda Zaid, a 14-year-old girl living in Baghdad, has plenty of free time (when she's not being oppressed by jackbooted American thugs in service of godless heathen imperialism, that is) to devote her blog, Baghdad Girl, to pictures of cute kittens.

"Sunshine," another 14-year-old from Iraq, this time in Mosul, gripes about the roads:

Hello all , it has been a very bad week for me ,I spent my mid year holiday in Baghdad , I had a nice time there ,my mom didn't have a surgery (they postponed it) , & I was a babysitter for two days!!! My way to Baghdad was ok, but my way back to Mosul was terrible I spend NINE hours in the unpaved roads... we came back to Mosul as soon as we could because my grandma's mom died during her surgery.

and then tells a wrenching story about her friend's father being murdered, and asks

I was thinking why would someone kill him ? what was his guilt ?, he is an engineer, not a policemen , nor from the national guards , he don't cooperate with any political gathering , & he isn't rich , as these are the reasons behind killing nowadays…..

( A note: apparently, it was the "men in black" who assaulted locations all over Iraq a few days ago, including the now-infamous Sunni mosque.

Husayn from Democracy In Iraq says, proudly:

I am happy to say that the current elections are going on without any problems, it is strange that we have no violence during elections though, if anything - it shows me that our security forces are growing in strength and that is another signal that we are moving forward.

What else can I say - except to say to the naysayers that you must stop your nonsense, and realize that Iraq will be built in a democratic fashion - and that it will happen. Despite all the violence, carnage, and negativity, the Iraqi people continue on the path to freedom.

Mohammed Hassan Al-Musawi of Diwaniya says:

The words of thanks and gratitude expressed by PM Ibrahim Ja'fari for the American people and president Bush were not simply complements made during diplomatic visits and meetings as some would like to explain. They mark the end of an era and the beginning of a new one for both Iraq and America. An era of strategic partnership between the world's greatest superpower, the USA, and the most ancient civilization known in history; Iraq, Mesopotamia, the land of the two rivers, the land of Ali and Al-Hussein, where the first word was written, where the first laws were enacted (an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth). We can confidently say that those simple, yet articulate, words of thanks expressed by Ja'fari, representing the first elected government in Iraq's modern history, have pulled down the curtain over an era of empty slogans and false speeches appealing to emotions such as "America the Great Satan," "Arab oil is for Arabs, death to the reactionaries," "The Imperialist mother," and other leftovers of the cold war era which prevailed in Iraq for long years pushing us decades back behind the rest of the civilized world. Bush's new project in the Middle East came to confirm this new relationship between Iraq and the US.

Zeyad of Healing Iraq describes the aftermath of today's "men in black" attacks:

Apparently, the attackers were fended off in our neighbourhood. The fight ended about 2 hours ago, about the same time electric power returned to our area. Now we are only hearing sporadic gunshots here and there. To have an idea of what was going on, listen to these small audio files I recorded using a cell phone.

News are conflicting. Some say the local National Guard unit (its commander is from our own area) helped repel the assailants. Others say the neighbourhood watch teams clashed with an armed group in several unmarked vehicles.

And then goes on to say that they suspect the men in black are Wahhabi terrorists from neighboring countries, not Iraqis.

Iraqpundit writes, specifically about the American media:

If Moktada Al Sadr's thugs are behind much of the violence, would it really be accurate to describe this as open civil war? The information the reporters give us does not match that of an open civil war.

There is no question that Al Sadr's thugs are indeed a troubling group. And the chaos they seek to create should not be dismissed. But how much influence over the rest of the population do these gangsters have? How representative are they of the Iraqi people?

There have been reports of joint Sunni-Shiite peaceful protests of the attacks on the mosques, and there have been calls for calm from both Sunni and Shiite leaders. There also have been several joint Sunni-Shiite prayers throughout the country to help calm the tensions.

And in a show of unity, thousands of Shiites joined Sunnis and attended the funeral of a Sunni religious figure who was murdered by unknown thugs.

Iraqis have been working hard to avoid a real civil war in the midst of suicide bombings, killings and kidnappings. But the media prefer to ignore these efforts and instead choose to focus on the agressive acts of Moktada Al Sadr's gang.

I really hope that these reporters are just as wrong as they have been in the past. Those who have followed the Iraq story carefully might recall that if we were to believe press reports, there would have been no constitution written, there would have been no elections, and the Sunnis would never have joined the government.

Alaa, of The Mesopotamian, writes of the recent "cartoon controversy" that:

Those who have been following my blog should know that I am a practicing believer in the religion of Islam; so naturally I consider it offensive to show disrespect to Islamic religious symbols or any religious symbols of any kind, for that matter. However there is more to this than meets the eye. It seems to me quite suspicious that this storm is created at this particular time. To start with this is certainly not the first time that insults and affronts of this nature appear on print in western media in many countries and places. Such things do not deserve any kind of reaction other rather the contempt they deserve. Yet there are those who seem to seize upon such opportunities for motives that have nothing to do with the apparent religious sensitivities. Clearly there are those who wish to harm relations between the West in General and the Moslem World and more particularly we should not forget the contribution of Denmark to the allied effort in Iraq. Yes friends, I who consider my self a fervent Moslem, tell you that this is an artificial storm stirred by the same kind of people who are beheading, kidnapping and blowing up market places and day workers in Iraqi cities etc. Those in the West who give such people the ammunition and pretexts to launch such pitiful shows and stir up the emotions of gullible simple people, are their allies and facilitators. Yes indeed extremism and misanthropy has many faces and colors. Myself, and many of my friends have seen even in the comments section of this blog site much of this blasphemous nonsense which most of us just dismiss as “trolling” which was a new word that my friends taught me. For my part it suffices to read just the first sentence of any such trash to dismiss the whole diatribe simply out of lack of interest above anything else and generally they do not stir any kind of emotion other than boredom. You have noticed perhaps that I never tried to ban or delete any such kind of talk; it is not even worth the trouble of deleting.

24 Steps To Liberty posted

Here are some information,which, for whatever reason, you don’t get in your news about the bombing:

The first reaction to the bombing which “targeted a Shiite” shrine came from the Sunni residents of Samarra. The first demonstration to condemn the attack was held spontaneously by Sunnis in the area where the shrine is. Almost all Sunni leaders went on TV to condemn the attack and show solidarity and unity with the Shiites. Here are some of what the Sunni leaders said on TVs all day yesterday [that’s what I could get]

and goes on to post a laundry list of statements of cooperation from the various groups and parties in Iraq, none of which made it into the U. S. or international mainstream media.

Now, I ask you the most important question about this: what IS their agenda, and why do they think that they need to blacken the name of the United States intentionally to achieve it?

The Obligatory Dick Cheney "Hunting Accident" Post

Ok. Normally, at least for the last year or so, what I do on this page is pick a series of silly items from the news and mock them ruthlessly, without (or at least without OFTEN) focusing in on one particular thing. That said, the Saga of Dick Cheney's Hunting Accident deserves its own post, and now it's got one. This one will stand apart from others for another reason, as well, in that I will update it as new things come to light about the "incident."

So, let's just get started, shall we?

First off, you need to understand what really happened. Dick Cheney, Vice-President of the United States, was on a hunting trip outside Corpus Christi, Texas on Saturday. He was hunting quail. (No relation.) He was hunting with a lawyer named Harry Whittington. Whittington, a man of clearly near-infinite genius, ran up behind Cheney, who was carrying a shotgun, just as a covey of quail flew up into the air; Cheney fired, hitting Whittington in the face, upper chest, and arm.

THE FIRST RULE OF HUNT CLUB IS: DO NOT SNEAK UP BEHIND THE GUY WITH THE SHOTGUN.

Sorry, I had to.

Ok. First off, the White House's reaction to this has been to joke about it; so, apparently, has everyone else's. Second, Dick Cheney was NOT DRUNK. REALLY. They even paid the Sheriff's Department to say so.
But what was merely a few isolated jokes has become a tidal wave of stupidness, with such clearly under-employed blowhards like the Bradys (both of them) leaping into the fray for no reason; the governor of Florida, who conveniently happens to be the President's brother, making jokes; PETA coming out of wherever they're trying to hide from animal cruelty charges to say the Veep oughta pick a better sport, hell, even the official paperwork is funny reading.

The thing is, it's really not funny, and there are a hell of a lot of things wrong here. Initially, the story took 18 hours to get into general release - why is that? We know in 20 minutes, worldwide, if Saddam Hussein farts in court, but the Veep shoots someone in the head, and it takes the better part of a day for the news services to get it? Secondly, until Whittington had a heart attack and they began to worry about manslaughter charges, why is it that the only trouble it looked like the Veep was gonna get came from his failure to buy a $7 hunting stamp from the state of Texas? Why did the owner of the ranch they were hunting on have to be the one to go to the press? Didn't they know that this would just give the Democrats ammunition?

And now, things are really starting to get bad. Now we've got teenaged girls shooting their boyfriends for laughing at Cheney; Cheney still denying that alcohol was a factor, but admitting he'd had a couple over lunch; and the White House press corps is all pissed off that the news was broken by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, instead of the New York Times, despite the fact that the accident happened in Corpus Christi, not New York.

The thing is, there were 850 total hunting accidents in 2002; of which 514 were this same kind, someone shooting someone else. (I use 2002, because it's the most recent year for which I could find compiled statistics.) But the point is the same - it's not that uncommon. "Unintentional discharge of firearms" was the 100th-ranked cause of death in 2002, (WARNING - slow, annoying .pdf link) out of 113 causes common enough for the CDC to bother ranking them. That's, um, more common than drowning, and less common than falling down, mkay? Just to give you an idea where this really stands. IF Whittington dies - which is, as yet, by no means certain, and the doctors are optimistic - then he's a member of a statistical class more likely to occur than you getting a fatal charley horse because you didn't listen to your mother about eating and pools.

Which makes me wonder if someone didn't set all this up - the Democrats looking for an opening, maybe, or PETA just to try to throw up a smokescreen - because it's flashy, attention-grabbing, and ultimately not all that important, except to the individuals involved.
I do have to say, though, that Frank from IMAO summed this situation up admirably well in his post; he said:

"Don't this of this as Vice President Cheney having a hunting accident. Think of this as Vice President Cheney ONLY WINGING a lawyer."

Yeah.
{Update as of 03/01/06}
Whittington is a hell of a team player. He got out of the hospital and said he was sorry to have caused so much trouble for the Veep. Now, that's a hell of a guy, as far as I'm concerned - more loyal than I am, for sure. I mean, even if I've known you for years, if you shoot me in the face with a shotgun from 20 meters away, and then try to be all buddy-buddy, I'm likely to react poorly: "You sonofabitch, YOU SHOT ME. Get away from me."

Apparently, this story is "over," despite the fact that there are all KINDS of questions the media doesn't seem to be interested in. With that in mind, I will conclude this saga with a few joke pictures I got from a friend (yes, I have friends.)

1,000 Points of Stupid, Part Three

Hey, Your Honor, Put My Daddy in Jail, Please!

Judge Daniel Bryan sentenced Matthew Koso to 18 to 30 months in prison, saying probation wasn't an option because Koso continued to have sexual relations with his underage wife.

Ok. Now I have to admit, I look at it a bit askance too - I mean, the guy married a 14-year-old. The thing is, THEY'RE FRIGGIN' MARRIED. There's no law in Kansas claiming a minimum age for marriage if the parents of the minor consent, which they did; apparently this makes it legal for this couple to get married, but marriage is no bar to statutory rape charges. The wife, Crystal Koso, now age 15, told the judge he was being an asshat, although not in so many words:

"If you send my husband to jail, maybe you'll see my daughter here in 15 years,"

You tell 'em, chickie. And maybe, although I almost hate to admit it, this isn't ENTIRELY a bad relationship - after all, the dude is willing to go to jail for it, the girl is trying to get him out, and they're not getting a divorce. Maybe the laws governing legal ages for marriage ought to be established, or maybe the government oughta just plain get its head out of its ass.

Be aware that this is as tame as it gets; are you ready?

Well, I hope so, because here we go.

Remember Rock The Vote? Well, soon that may be all you do with it. The Democratic Party poster-child non-profit organization is going into bankruptcy, because apparently passing classes in basic economics wasn't important enough for its staff. Promoting new music acts, however, was, with the result that the organization is now over $700,000 in debt. Way to lead the MTV generation, guys! No, I really mean it! By giving them a stellar example of how logical consequences (spend more money than you make = broke) operates in the real world, you just may have saved - well - I guess dozens? - of kids who still find you relevant from a fate of joining the idiotocracy. Way to go!

You've heard by now about the furor surrounding the editorial cartoons in little-read newspapers in Denmark and Norway, right? I mean, I DID tell you about it. Ok, now that we're all on the same sheet of music, ever wonder where the protesters in the Middle East come up with all the Danish and Norwegian flags they burn at their violence rallies? Well, I did. But now I know - shopkeepers in the Middle East special-ordered them when they heard about the cartoons, so that the locals would have plenty on hand to burn. Think I'm kidding? Just ask Abu Dayya, who runs a shop in Gaza:

"I knew there would be a demand for the flags because of the angry reaction of people over the offence to Prophet Mohammad," said Abu Dayya, whose PLO Flag Shop also sells souvenirs and presents.

About which, I can only say that at least they're buying the flags, which I suppose has to make someone somewhere happy.

Ok, before you get all pissed off about this next article, read the whole thing. The refugees from Hurricane Katrina are being booted out of their lodgings in Houston and other cities.
Wait!
Really! There's more to this!
Ok. See, someone has to pay for all these hotel rooms, and that would be FEMA. FEMA has gotten a lot of crap over its handling of Katrina, some of which I suppose is actually warranted, but this round of nonsense really isn't their fault. In order for FEMA to pay for all this, they have to have something to take to Congress to show how much money they need, because Congress can't just give them a huge chunk of money and say "deal with it." Well, I guess they COULD. But when have you seen Congress give money to anyone other than Congress without their arms being twisted?
Aha, thought so.
So, here's the deal. FEMA has been going around to the rooms where Katrina refugees are staying, trying to get them to file for extensions on their lodging. In some cases, up to SIX FUCKING TIMES. The response of the Katrina victims has been interesting - in many cases they've gone so far as to RUN AWAY FROM THE FEMA PEOPLE.
Read that again.
So when, predictably, their lodging funds run out, and they didn't file for extensions because they locked FEMA out, ran from them, and generally refused to cooperate in any way, they are going to be left homeless. The question is, why should anyone else give a crap? If you can't be bothered to fill out a form to house and feed your family, how much more handholding do you want?

Ok, this one will be short, even Fark-style, I promise. (Ahem.) "McCain to Obama: You Lying Bastid, You." That has, without a doubt, to be the single rudest letter I've ever even heard of from one Senator to another, and McCain clearly stands behind it, as he posted it on HIS OWN FRIGGIN WEBSITE. Whoa.

Now, if you were Joe Schmoe, and you were in the public library, and you found a "poo apocalypse" in the bathroom, you'd call a janitor, right? What if there wasn't one there? What if all there was was a city councilman's aide, who leaped into action with a mop and cleaners and took care of it himself? Wouldn't you think he was a swell guy, and a credit to his councilman? I would. The unionized janitors of Ottowa wouldn't, though. The city councilman whose aide it was said

"When there's poop on the floor, the first action has to be to clean it up, not send memos and form committees and that kind of thing," Chiarelli said.

Exactly. Which is why I'm a little confused at the actions of the janitor's union - none of their members were available, despite the fact that the library waited for over 3 hours for someone to come clean it up. The patron who reported the mess finally contacted Councilman Chiarelli's aide, who came over and cleaned it up himself rather than leave it sit any longer, and that's a problem? Some days I'm not sure I want to leave the house anymore.

THERE IS A LLAMA RUNNING LOOSE! That is all.

Striking the "Duh!" nail right smack on the head, music fans say "Your crap is just too stinkin' expensive, foolio!" to the record companies. Predictably, the record companies don't give a damn, and say it's pirates ruining their sales, not the fact that 75% of the poll respondents say they can't afford the CD's anymore, and 58% say the CD's suck too much to buy anyway. WTF are they going to get the hint, I wonder? The indie labels are sure gonna have a good time in the next few years, if things keep on the way they are now.

You may remember a while back my saying SunnComm was a bunch of idiots. Breaking News: they still are. Although the DRM company insists that they've updated their anticopy software to eliminate the security vulnerabilities inherent in its approach, they've failed utterly to adress the issues of compatibility with consumer equipment, which means the next batch of SunnComm - protected music CDs will still be crippleware. WTF. Good thing I stopped buying music a while ago, I guess.

Falling under the category "Yeah, but will it suck less?" Microsoft is planning to rename MSN to "MSN Media Network." I have no idea what this is intended to accomplish, but there it is.

The Nassau County, Florida School Board is considering handing out $100 "tip-off" bonuses to students who rat out their classmates for various offenses, like drugs. I can only ask, what can go wrong with this?
Actually, a lot, like maybe druggie students turning in innocent students to get money from the school board to buy drugs, or gangs turning in innocents just to start shit, or ANYBODY TURNING IN ANYBODY ELSE THEY HAVE A MINOR DISAGREEMENT WITH... As I said earlier, "WTF" just doesn't seem big enough anymore.

And finally, concluding my little spree of silliness, Canadian courts are allowing a suit to go forward alleging that airline flight attendants are as important to the airline as pilots and maintenance crew, and should get paid the same. I can only say that I'd like to see a non-maintained plane with no pilot fly. You can fly with no stewardesses, no problem, but the pilot is a bit irreplaceable, and so are the wrench jockeys who fix the planes. You simply won't get where you're going if the wings fall off over Toronto, folks. I can live without drinks and peanuts.
Unless, of course, there's some service provided by the flight attendants on Canadian airlines that we don't have here in the USA. Maybe I'll have to check that out, long past time I got into the Mile High Club. Although given the picture in the article, maybe that's not such a good idea, after all. Damn shame we can't hire flight attendants under 55 anymore, isn't it?

1000 Points of Stupid, Part Two

CNN, The Terrorist's Best Friend

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying the cartoons -- one depicting the founder of Islam wearing a turban resembling a bomb --showed press freedom should have its limits.

Muslims consider it sacrilegious to produce a likeness of the Prophet Mohammad. CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam.

Let's start this off right, shall we? THE WORLD IS IN FLAMES!!!

...Or nearly so, in any event, following violence and terror attacks worldwide by Islamic jihadists "in protest" over a couple of newspapers in Denmark and Norway printing cartoons depicting Mohammed. Like this: Now, I think that's not only funny, but sadly accurate. (It should, however, be said that this cartoon is the property of the newspaper which published it, and I will take it down if they ask me to, so enjoy it while it lasts. Hopefully, they'll just be glad people are even willing to show it, and not stealing their bandwidth.)
Now, the jihadists are all upset about how these kinds of cartoons trash the image of their peace-loving religion, right? Which is, of course, why they've responded not by writing letters, or even making a simple phone call ("Excuse me, but that's not cool. Please stop.") as a peaceful, loving religion might lead you to expect; no, they've responded with kidnappings, bombings, assaults, arson, and death threats.
I ask you: which image tarnishes the reputation of Islam, the image of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, or the image of a screaming fanatic sawing off the head of a civilian on live television? If the "silent majority" of Islam, the peaceful multitudes the jihadi apologists swear by, really exists, WHY THE HELL ARE THEY STILL SILENT?

On a lighter note, everyone knows that Wall Street stockbrokers and bankers are huge death metal fans, right? We've all seen the mosh pits that form in the New York Stock Exchange and the floor of the Fed. We've all heard hideous rumors of chicken decapitations in subway stations, surrounded by crowds of men in suits waving their hands in Satanic invocations, flailing their heads around like late-80s MTV junkies watching Headbanger's Ball, haven't we?
That's right. We haven't. Because that crap never happens. So why the hell is the Wall Street Journal doing Op-ed pieces on death metal? Don't ask me; I have no idea - but it seems to me that this is merely a symptom of the ongoing disconnection between the mainstream media and reality.

Just how DOES a hard-core porn film get packaged as a "My Little Pony" DVD and sold to a mother of three? I have no idea, but I found this tidbit funny:

Mrs Laaroussi says she feels lucky the children grew bored with the adult content of the film and switched it off after just a few minutes.

But she said: "What would have happened if my children had watched it all? It would certainly have scarred them for life."

What I find so very, very amusing there is that the kids figured out what was going on, got bored, because they didn't yet have those hormones, (the oldest was a seven-year-old girl,) and turned it off themselves. I'm sure those kids were at risk of their very sanity, lady. That's why they turned it off, because they knew their tiny, fragile little MYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYNDS were at risk.

Now, they COULD have been at risk for real: they could have been riding Michael Cianci's school bus.

Authorities say the 38-year-old driver called himself The Emperor and used Star Wars characters like Jabba the Hutt to encourage his charges to follow storylines from the movie, resulting in kids pummeling each other and cutting each other's clothes with scissors -- instead of lightsabers.
Law enforcement sources told The Daily news that Cianci said he created The Death Cheese Club to discipline the middle school children, giving them names like Darth, Sith Warrior and Jabba.

Now THAT will cause psychological damage, I tell you - being called names from a George Lucas movie would traumatize ANYONE, these days. ESPECIALLY after Episode 3. At least he didn't call anyone Jar Jar - the other kids would have beaten them senseless in seconds.

The Tennessean.com website has a great story brewing about a fight over an upcoming local zoning ordinance. What makes ithat great, you ask? Well, rarely, if ever, do you get to see politicians come right out and say they're out to get you, right? They usually try to hide it in some way. But not in Tennessee, evidently: read on.

Push polls use loaded questions and slanted statements to try to shape public opinion, instead of simply measuring it. Elizabeth Merkel, a zoning-change supporter and a Sylvan Park resident for four years, said one of the questions she was asked this week was, "Did you know that the overlay infringes on the rights of property owners to add a second floor, new rooms, sunrooms or decks to their property?"
Parts of this statement are simply incorrect, zoning officials say.

Right, so the opponents are just making up questions to make the law sound bad, right? But wait! There, near the bottom of the story, nestles this little tidbit, like a pearl of evil in the giant oyster of slush:

Tim Walker, Metro's historic zoning administrator, agreed that some of the questions were misleading. The zoning change would not infringe on residents' rights to build decks, which wouldn't require government approval, Walker said. And most changes to houses would simply be reviewed by his staff rather than requiring what another question described as "numerous costly trips for hearings."

So, what you're saying is, the pollsters shouldn't have used the word "decks" in the question, and it would be accurate? Whoa, there, chief, somebody stop me! Let me think here: now, I don't have to ask you jack crap. I vote yes, and then I do? I think this time the "opposition" oughta win it, don't you?

Astonishingly, there is an intelligent, well-written article posted on AOL.

What?

Oh, did you want me to tell you what it was? Or was it just that you don't believe it at all?

Oh, fine. Canada has had another Really Good Idea, like nationalized healthcare. Guess what it is this time? They're testing a system in new automobiles to track their locations and forcibly ensure that they don't speed, by physically preventing the vehicle from accelerating. This, of course, is clearly necessary, because if we're free to speed, you know, millions would die a year! They would! We're all insane, conscienceless speed demons who smear babies into the pavement with our huge SUVs while simultaneously giving orders over our cellphones to beat someone's grandmother and watching DVDs on our dashboards, right? Not really. In fact, when our government did away with the federal speed limit of 55 miles per hour on the highway, the number of deaths per million vehicle miles dropped to the lowest level in history in just two years. Of course, THAT information isn't the part that makes it to the front page - it's the one drunken dumbass who rolls his Explorer into a water tower, instead. Here's a clue, Canada: nothing you can possibly do, EVER, can abolish the dumbass. All it does is make it more irritating for the rest of us to get around.

Now let me pose this unreasonably hard question to you: what, exactly, would you do with 3 miles of railroad track? Wait, wait, there IS a reason I'm asking this - unknown thieves outside the German city of Weimar actually stole 3 miles of railroad track. Clearly, this was a major operation of some kind - 3 miles of railroad track weighs a LOT - and yet no-one noticed it was underway, until the mayor of Weimar called rail operator Deutsche Bahn to ask if the dismantling of that line had been scheduled. They are still without clues; the thieves got away clean with 200,000 euros worth of track. Now, it only remains to wonder "WTF?!?"

And speaking of "WTF?!?" now there's the Hot Chicken Protection Bill, which would prevent Georgia police from stopping any vehicle transporting poultry if the temperature is above 85 degrees. No, there's no point to this, just thought I'd share.

Western Union has finally been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century; the company has stopped sending telegrams once and for all, as of January 27th, after 145 years of continuous telegram service. No mention, of course, is made in the article of what made Western Union keep sending telegrams for 145 years, especially after the invention of the telephone, the internet, email, and overnight air mail and package delivery services. How some companies stay in business , I swear, I'll never know.

A gentleman named Brian Quintana has succeeded in doing something I'm sure the rest of Hollywood would like; he's gotten a permanent restraining order against Paris Hilton. HE claims she's put out a hit on him, which on first glance I find somewhat unlikely, but the judge thought enough of Quintana's argument "how do you know what she'd do, Your Honor? She's a drug addict," that he went ahead and granted it. A permanent order is somewhat unusual, as a typical restraining order is limited in duration, 10 years being most common. Hey, chief, maybe you shouldn't have been running around telling people the richest woman in the world has herpes, huh?

Clearly, someone in Ireland is thinking ahead. After all, speeding is DAAAAAAAYYYYYYNGEROUS! So, they lowered the speed limit nationwide by 10 miles an hour. What happened? Speeding is up 800%. Any more accidents? Gee, no, not really. Hell of a lot more fines for the government to keep, though, eh? I have a revolutionary idea for you, guys, ok? Take a second to think about this: maybe, just MAYBE, the huge majority of the people in the world aren't complete jackasses, and they know how fast THEY PERSONALLY ARE ABLE TO DRIVE SAFELY. Maybe, just maybe, this 800% figure indicates that you have the speed limits set too slow. Of course, maybe that was on purpose, as an opportunity to jack up revenues from traffic violations. Next thing you know, Ireland will be trying Canada's new anti-speeding "safety" system, you just watch. Things that make you go "Hmmmmmm..."

And finally, Britney Spears, she of the ever-so-safe-driving-with-baby skills, is finally, at LAST, under investigation by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Woohoo! Maybe her poor child can have a chance at a real life, rather than being constantly in danger from her antics, and those of her man Cletus.
Failing that, though, maybe the bribes she pays them to make this go away will allow some OTHER poor kids to have a decent life, instead.


Shortage of stupid in the world, you say? Not so's you'd notice, actually, no.

1,000 Points of Stupid, Part One

Before I begin, I'd just like to say that this massive, 3-part, superrant stems from the simple fact that I was absolutely deluged with silliness over the last few days, without a long enough gap in the goofball news to take the time to blog any of it. Finally, I have a bit of a break, so I'm just going to kind of regurgitate the last couple of days' worth of weird news at you, all at once and in no particular order.

Ready?

Good. Take a deep breath, and click.

First, there was iTunes. They sold music, and it was good. Well, decent. Well...
...But I digress. Someone had the brilliant idea to start selling TV shows over iTunes, and Steve Jobs liked it.
And then, CBS said "Suck it, Apple." Steve Jobs was not happy. They grumbled, and swore dire retribution. CBS, in a rare case of remorse, reversed their position overnight. Good backbone, CBS! Way to stand behind your web design team like you stand behind your reporters!

Science predicts that cats and dogs are not enough; it may well rain fish and pink frogs, too. That is all.

What do you do if you go to an amusement park in Hong Kong on vacation, and it's sold out for 8 straight days? Why, throw your kids over the wall into the park, of course! Why didn't I think of this?!?
Oh, yeah, it's because if I had any kids, I would love them enough to want to AVOID leaving them on their own inside an amusement park for any length of time. But maybe that's just me.

According to Really Important Phone Polls, the U. S. is "the second biggest bummer in the world." Iran is first - nukes + fanatics = scary - and Russia is third - I guess people are just getting tired of hearing about their Mafia problems. China is fourth, for reasons that should be immediately apparent, but oddly North Korea isn't in the top ten at all, despite the whole previously mentioned nukes and fanatics thing. Go figure.

Russian hackers are bragging about having stolen as many as 53,000 credit card numbers from Rhode Island's website. The spokesman for New England Interactive, the company that maintains the state's website, said that it was actually far fewer, maybe only as many as 4,000. No attempt was made to contact the individual cardholders; the state notified the credit card companies, but let the voters swing. Lots of bona fide concern for the constituents, there, RI.

The British Navy apparently doesn't love the record industry, but they do love their sailors these days. The newest warship in the Royal Navy, HMS Daring, comes equipped with a full combat load of the latest technology, and iPod charging stations. Wouldn't want your sailors to run out of juice; they need their badass soundtrack to shoot missiles, and stuff. Nice use of 605 million pounds.

Today marks the day the Kama Sutra computer virus was scheduled to delete everybody's hard drives and ruin their day. Clearly, since you're reading this, it didn't actually happen. This is good, because if it had, you'd have been screwed - Microsoft refused to update their Malicious Software Removal Tool to counter Kama Sutra until the 14th, nearly 2 weeks after the scheduled date for the virus attack to take place. I can't quite decide if this is because Microsoft looked at it a little more realistically than Kaspersky Labs, Symantec, MacAfee, and Panda Software did, or because they just plain didn't give a damn if your computer gets fried, as long as their schedule didn't get disrupted.

Now let me tell you, I know ONE good reason not to fall asleep at work: I don't want to get taken to Turkey. No kidding! This luggage handler at the Saudi airport at Jeddah fell asleep in the cargo hold of a Turkish Airlines plane, which then took off and flew him to Diyarbakir. That's some travel by red line, I tell you.
On arrival, he was hospitalized and treated for pneumonia and hypothermia, because planes fly high, and stuff. He only survived because the crew heard him banging on the walls to get out and turned on the heater for the compartment. Couldn't go let him out, of course, but they could keep him alive so they could laugh at his shivering, "WTF am I?" ass when they landed. That's just plain rude, guys, really.

Japanese people have too much freakin' free time. You think I'm kidding? A radish - yeah, the one they use in salad - started growing out of the sidewalk in the city of Aoi. It was so weird the residents nicknamed the tiny plant Dokonjo Daikon, which translates as "radish with great spirit," or some such. And then...

Imagine their dismay then when one morning, they found the radish had been decapitated.

Yes, do. Imagine how upset they were that a local sidewalk weed got killed. Oh, The Drama! But wait, there's more!

The local town council has since been trying to re-grow the radish from its severed top.
It now hopes to extract its seeds or DNA.
The wilting leaves and shrivelled top of the radish were carefully packed in a cool box and accompanied by a throng of reporters and cameramen, driven to an agricultural research centre.
There, evening news programmes showed white-coated scientists pronouncing gravely on the radish's prognosis.

That's right, they called in the scientists, who harvested its DNA and are trying to regrow it from the severed top. "What the Fuck?" just somehow doesn't seem large enough. But wait, there's more! The friggin' radish has its own website!

I.
Am.
Agog.
This, of course, is the only fitting conclusion to the first part of this little opus, don't you think?