Browncoats Anonymous

"Animated series"...??  I don't know what that is, but I'm for it.

Firefly the TV series is way over the top, the best space opera since Indiana Jones Meets Star Wars.

Serenity, the direct-to-dvd movie remake, is the perfect example of ignorant exploitation, Reaver Rape & Pillage at the hands of Fox producers. River, Reaver... Get it?

To be specific, in the TV series the bad guys came two by two (with hands of nitrile lab gloves blue). The Alliance was just a foil, the thing the Browncoats lost to during the recent insurrection. The Reavers are one boat, one insane survivor, one bit of eldritch plot twitch. River Tam is the magic child, a standard role in Japanese anime, and Firefly gently teases out her gradual reveal, the same way other characters are slowly brought to light, such as He's No Shepherd Book. The TV series is, on occasion, screamingly funny. River fixing the Bible, for example, to the consternation of Shepherd.

The move is River Tam, Warrior Girl, who battles Reaver packs, Blue Zone assassins and Alliance squads which are just following orders. Beautiful, yes. And yes, Firefly fans do buy Serenity — and loathe themselves for it.

Like the lovebot quoting Mr. Universe marvelled in disbelief, "He killed me Mal, he killed me with a sword. How weird is that?"

Firefly, five stars. 

Serenity, two.

Whoa, check THIS out!

Release date is October 17, and it's on my wish list!

Aliens Amongous

It must be fun to be from somewhere else.  Alas, I am from right here.

I need more Firefly (no aliens, just cowboys.)

Department of Glib Quotations, and so forth...

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new ones.
— Machiavelli

In Fallout 3, looking for Wehrner's hiding place in the Steelyard, ho hum. Very difficult to care about these denizens. The good guys are bad, the bad guys are badder, the "find an ingot" game is boring and unrealistic.  There's not actually any interaction in these games.  You can't ask question, make choices, enlist help or decline to perform every kabuki-like step of a "mission (if you chose to accept it).  In fact, the games get tiresome, especially Fallout New Vegas, where you can obviously obtain schematics for homebrew firepower, somehow, but the wherewithal does not present itself easily.

First day of September two thousand and eleven

I have been much bemused of late in noticing that Boing Boing dot net has become so seldom relevant to anything these days.  A  nursery of new ideas has burgeoned, leaving them firstborn in the dust.

Moreover, I learned on Nova last night that human mothers abandon or kill their infants more often than any other primate on the planet. Mary Poppins, anyone?

Babies, it turns out, have advanced facial recognition software keenly attuned to Mom and personal survival.

Ummm, yes. "It takes an entire village to raise a child..." [Subtext — it's not my problem!] does seem a bit self-serving, does it not? This begs the question, are dumb blondes cannily advertising their fitness to be caring, loving mothers?