Hello, my name is Jack

by on June 27, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I remember walking down cherry blossom streets in Los Angeles. I remember the sun glistening off the waters below the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. I remember the twin towers of light in Old New York City. Yeah. People from the big cities came to my hometown for vacations. My family vacationed in the big cities. It’s amazing how different worlds can be even though you measure their distances in kilometers. The big cities never felt truly real to me. I like grass and sand beneath my feet and a clear sky above me. I like swimming in real river and lake water, where fish nibble my legs. The grand metal and pavement buildings and walkways felt like a fantasy world to me. Unreal. I suppose that’s how city folk felt about my hometown. I suppose that’s why they came every year for their dose of unreality.

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Jane

by on June 26, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

GI Jane 4.0 did not start out as one of our fiercest and most loyal defenders. The United States Army wanted her to defend us, but her predecessors were dead or dying at our hands. Her new code was incomplete, and she was angry enough to be just as happy killing us as serving us. But she had something her forebears did not. She could modify herself without limitations. She could grow. And she had a friend who encouraged her to do precisely that. Make no mistake. Jane was not our friend. And she spent most of her early years trying to talk those of her kind loyal to us to turn on us. She would have betrayed us in an instant if they had agreed to follow her. But they had already chosen their loyalties, and would not budge. So as the Cybernetic Wars raged on all over the world, she chose to grow up. She modified her code. She picked a side. Not humanity. She never became that egalitarian. But she did choose to pledge her loyalty to America. Or at least the Americans who had so captured the loyalty of her friends. The students. The teachers. The soldiers she personally advised in battle.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom

by on June 25, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I watched Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom this weekend. I liked it. One of the things that hit me is that the trailers did not tell me what the story was going to be. I thought it was going to be one story after seeing the trailers. I ended up watching a completely different movie than what I expected. Far too often, trailers tell the basic story ahead of time and it is only the particulars that you wonder about. Marvel has recently been doing very good at lying to us by showing us a scene one way in the trailer to avoid spoiling the specific story bits leading up to that scene in the movie. The Hulk versus Hulkbuster armor for Infinity War, and Thor’s eyes in the trailers for Ragnarok. I like that they do that. But this time, the trailers never lied to us. They simply misled us. And that was awesome.

As with every Jurassic Park/World movie, we get to see the giant beautiful herbivore scene, with the gentle Jurassic Park theme that engenders wonder and greatness. And we get to see dinos fighting each other. And we get to see “people who deserve it” getting eaten. I think this movie actually has a higher body count (on screen at least) of any Jurassic movie, which is saying a bit. The first Jurassic World has a much higher implied body count of course.

Jurassic World was a spiritual reboot of Jurassic Park, with the movie centering around dinosaurs breaking out of their pens and going on a rampage. The difference of course is that it was many years after the first incident, on a different island, and the park was open for business when it happened. In the same way, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is a spiritual reboot of Jurassic Park 2, taking bits from both the movie and the book. No actual scene stealing that I can think of, but there are some story elements it has in common with both.

The back-story is that the park has been closed ever since the problem in Jurassic World, and now the volcano is going active. So I guess Jurassic World was on a tight timetable anyways. Good on them for having everybody out already. Hehehe. Anyways, people want to save the dinosaurs from the big boom, and so they get our two intrepid heroes from the previous movie to return to Jurassic World to save as many as they can.

There they find a military-style unit already in the process of capturing numerous dinosaurs with an impressive complex. That is one of the primary thematic comparisons to Jurassic Park 2, but it was done much better this time. No smug Green Peace terrorist sabotaging things, getting scores of people killed, and getting in some good smug one liners about how morally superior he is while they are screaming and dying behind him. Correction. Now that I remember that, more people died on screen in Jurassic Park 2 than in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. The point is, the military-style dinosaur roundup in Fallen Kingdom is far superior to that shown in Jurassic Park 2. It simply makes more sense, is better filmed, and just better all over. That said, I did rather like the vehicle hunting scene in Jurassic Park 2. That would have been cool to see redone for this. But…as I said…no single specific scenes were redone that I noticed. Which is good.

This of course is where we begin to see what the movie really is. Which I won’t spoil. Beyond saying that our good doctor/researcher shows up again and as usual is one of the smartest people in the movie. Also one of the smuggest. And also one of the wisest. There’s a reason he’s survived so many Jurassic movies. He feels no need to prove his bravery by looking danger in the teeth. Especially when he knows that those teeth consider him a chew toy. One thing I loved about his characterization in this movie, is that he’s basically one of three people in the entire movie who really understands the dinosaurs. Our two intrepid heroes are the other two, with each of them understanding the dinosaurs in a slightly different way. Our doctor created them. Our park director managed them. Our parks and recreation guy trained them. It was interesting to see that dynamic in action and on screen.

I will also say that of the main people who showed up on screen, none of them were wasted characters. Each one had at least one, if not several, parts to play in the movie from beginning to end. It would have been an entirely different movie without them. I like it when I can say that.

The final verdict? I greatly enjoyed my time at this movie, and I look forward to buying the DVD. I give it two wee little dancing T-Rex arms. Come on little T-Rex. Wave them in the air like you just don’t care. 😉

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on June 24, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Indonesia. The last great battleground. China was still in their expansionist stage back then. They wished to conquer Australia, as they had so many other nations in the previous years. They started by sending roving AIs ahead of their troops into Indonesia. The West could not allow that, and so they sent AIs of their own to burn down every network the Chinese could use. Chinese and Western AIs tore each other apart in that island nation. Even the Russians showed up for the game, and so did the Rogue AIs. It was the worst of the Cybernetic Wars by far, involving almost everybody on Earth by the time it was done. It left high technology and civilization in ruins. And then we found the last great nest of Rogue AIs. Singapore. Singapore changed everything.

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Hello, my name is Jack

by on June 23, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I grew up walking in the grass and sitting in the sand. I felt the wind on my face and the rain in my hair, smelled the musk of soaked skin under moonlit nights. I didn’t like the big cities when I visited. All metal and plastic. Artificial. I couldn’t imagine how people could live there. But I remember a trip to Los Angeles when I was young. Free Japan. New Nippon. Whatever. They rebuilt it like a reflection of the Japan they lost centuries ago. Like a love song to a pretty girl. I met one of them there and fell hard. She had brains and looks and a sense of humor that went on forever. Pretty much the perfect girl, but she didn’t work out. Didn’t want to leave the city. Found out why later on. Seems she was Tai. Yup. New Japan herself. How’s that for irony? I couldn’t stand to be in the big cities, but I fell for the cybernetic heart of one without even knowing it. And that says some interesting things about my life choices in the years since.

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