PROCRASTINATORS UNITE - Post a comment

So a priest scribbled a column in a paper today, more or less saying "Video games bad! Make people dumb!" And, to a degree, he's right. However, as he stopped even really looking at games after Tetris, I don't feel he's qualified to speak on the matter. Admittedly, he's more qualified that the twits who're yammering for the entire industry to be closed down, (by actually admitting to playing game(s), specifically mentioning the title) but not by much. It was apparently brought about by a member of his parish bringing in an Xbox, and asking that it be given to a needy family. Rather than simply taking it and saying "Thank you; they will, as well, though they don't know who gave them this," he might've near run him off. (As it happens, he wound up giving the needy family the system.) For those interested, the article's on GP.

Different story: Vince Desi (The guy behind the Postal series) ranted briefly (and really, he just talked) about the Manhunt 2 Debacle (really, I'm getting tired of hearing about it. EVerybody. Shut. Up. About It.), and who was really to blame. "Politicians (lying asses), Publishers (kissing retailer ass), Retailers (do anything to keep their asses clean), Developers (kissing publisher ass while looking for their balls) and PLAYERS for not getting up off their asses to DEMAND THEIR RIGHTS TO BUY AND PLAY whatever games they want!" Vince said it best (though, actually, that's more for the state of the game industry as a whole. Personally, I think that professional lobbying is going to bring the country to its hands and knees (it's already on it's knees from it). All they do, really, is gum up the government with bureaucracy. And there's already enough of that going around. Don't need any more, don't want any more. On the off chance I find myself in Congress (assuming I don't shoot myself for getting into such a contrived situation; I don't WANT to be a member of congress. Not like it is now, anyway), any lobbyists will be turned out of the office, either by me personally, or someone working for me. They're wastes of money, and time. If someone in charge of an organization wants to come to my office and discuss something (and is willing to hear a conflicting viewpoint), then I'll let 'em in. But someone paid to push one agenda? Bugger off, I don't even wanna SEE you.

Since I wanna meander to another subject now, I may as well tell you.

After clever torrent-hunting (okay, so I scanned Isohunt), I found an ebook version of Starship Troopers. It looks to be based on what I call the Heinlein "signature" series; there's the cover art, and on the spine side, a single color bar with Heinlein's signature on it, but that's really beside the point. Since when I read it before, I was still in a haze from the movie (having selected the book for an assignment in high school, I was under time constraints, and didn't read it as I really should have), I missed a lot of stuff, I took my time, and chewed over every line properly. I certainly feel I could do a better job of it now, but as I don't have to, I'm not gonna. Well, not deliberately. The biggest difference from the movie to the book (discounting the distinct lack of powersuits in the movie, which probably would've been easier than they thought) was the overall philosophy; in the book, the Bug War was defensive (and, in the movie, it's portrayed the same way, and there are few, if any, things to make you think otherwise), and people go into Federal Service for various reasons, and the attrition rate (for the MI, at least) is crazy high (Of Rico's class, they started with over 2,000. They graduated with less that 1% of that number. Thirteen dead in training, one executed after desertion and killing a baby girl, and the rest quit, or could not hack it, and got medical discharges (though some didn't accept them). In the movie, the boot camp seems to have either lost some effectiveness, or people are a lot tougher, both in mind and body. Either way, that's just part of it. In the book, RIco says that you can't buy an MI; the best you can do is find one. With a 1% rate (assuming Rico's battalion's graduation rate was more or less average), that's not a whole lot of people who are actual soldiers. And in the MI, *everybody* fights. Cooks, chaplains, engineers, EVERYone. Rico said it in the beginning of the book: "Once all the capsules left the ship, there wouldn't be a Roughneck left on the ship, except Jenkins, and that' wasn't his fault." (Jenkins had been ordered to stay aboard due to a fever. He'd initially complained, but the platoon leader overruled him: "The surgeon ain't makin' a drop, and neither are you, with a... fever!") When not fighting, every MI worked to take care of the other stuff that they needed to do in order to make sure that when they DO fight, they're as caught up with other stuff as they can be. It takes the old Marine Corps adage ("Every Marine is a rifleman first"), and takes it to the next level. Every MI has a secondary job on the ship (even if it's just scrubbing bulkheads). That's not seen, but rather, assumed, in the movie (which is more an action flick than anything). Actually, anything non-combat in the movie is marginalized, and barely seen. The opposite is true in the book. There are a grand total of about three drops shown in the book: The raid on the Skinnies in the first chapter, Operation Bughouse (the Klendathu invasion; as ill-fated in the book as the movie), and the raid on Planet P, and they're of secondary importance. In the movie, there are five drops (though they're more accurately termed "missions;" the troopers land in dropships not unlike the ones in Aliens, at least in function). The combat is the centerpiece of the movie (and understandably so; when's the last time you paid $7.50 for a two-hour civics lecture against a backdrop of war?). Each trooper is still considered expendable, but their leaders have it drilled into their heads that the troopers are literally the LAST thing that is to be expended. Indeed, in the book, Lt. Rasczak is killed making a double wounded pickup; he throws the two wounded men the last twenty feet into the retrieval boat, and immediately after, is hit with some sort of weapon, and dies. If you've seen the movie, in that "same" unit (he says mockingly..), Raczak's platoon sergeant is wounded by a Hopper bug. Instead of going and grabbing him for a medevac, Rasczak takes the one sharpshooter rifle (One per platoon? Yeah, right..), and shoots the sergeant. Doesn't even make an effort to go retrieve his body. Later in the movie, the Lieutenant gets his legs bit off (by what I presume to be a Tanker bug; y'know, those overgrown beetles with the dragon breath?), and orders Rico to shoot him. Interestingly, the same sequence shows the only real use of tactics in the whole damn movie: They all got on the wall, aimed at the approaching horde of Bugs (and the two guys on the tower with the twin-.50 turrets helped out), and cut loose. Given that they later seem to run low on ammo (and, in one case, completely out,) you'd think that they'd at least try to pick their targets. However, those rifles they had were rifles in nothing but name and mechanical function; there were no sights, save on the sniper rifle. Poor design feature, yes?

yeah, okay, done yammering.

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