A quintessence of code

To stab, or not to stab…that is the question.

I haven’t written much about my SWTOR adventuring, and after pondering it (instead of writing) I think I finally know why. When I started blogging about WoW, I was really into it…speed leveling characters, maxing out an entire support group of alts for my main character, running dungeons and raiding nearly every free day to build a stronger toon, to see the content. Raiding seemed like the natural end of PvE gaming and I saw no reason not to play it to the hilt. Plus, I had years of WoW already played and a nice connection to my death knight; I didn’t just like playing him, I liked the death knight class, and the legacy of Warcraft gaming that I’d been part of for years.

Skip ahead to the future in SWTOR, and it’s just not there. I have had zero interest in speeding to level 50 on anything. All of the classes are fun, but none of them have dazzled me. I have found no community to be part of, not that I really tried. Flashpoint hard modes and operations nearly make me shudder. So in spite of maxing out a Scoundrel, being fairly close to maxing out an Operative, plus a few other classes I’ve tried…well, playing a Scoundrel and an Operative was a mistake, they’re just the same thing and at long last, I ended up not liking their style.

It’s unfortunate that the advanced classes can’t be changed, because every Scoundrel must pistol-whip you rather than shoot you with it, and every Operative must stab you repeatedly with knives rather than hang back and shoot whatever fancy rifle is hanging off his shoulder. And if I had gone the Sniper route, that would have been ok, but then I’d never get to shoot my friends in the face with kolto darts. And the lightsaber classes? Oddly enough, they seem to be the ones I am least interested in – kind of self-defeating, as I’m sure the devs spent the most time polishing them.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be online this evening, so off I go.

Maybe this would make it cooler…

It works on everything.

Everything.

In which my rep, Raul Grijalva, makes me proud

…as usual. It has been a while since I blogged much of anything on account of the dust storms and the sinus infection that ensued. But today I made a little time to comment on my rep in Congress. I am lucky to have such a liberal sort as Grijalva. If I hadn’t been working I might have gone out on their door-to-door thing today, but alas, stuck at work.

So next best thing, took a few minutes to mention his stance against the proposed Rosemont Copper mine, which even his Democratic challengers support. Feh. They won’t get my vote with positions like that.

On the Wild Things

Since the storyteller Maurice Sendak has died and it’s all over the news, just thought I would share a video someone shared this afternoon. I’m not sure what to make of Christopher Walken narrating Where the Wild Things Are. I kinda like it, though.

Some promising new-ish Soulfly

Didn’t know it, but Soulfly released a new album in early March (there’s another one from a couple years back that I also missed). The inventory at the local record stores varies; I hadn’t seen it. But based on some tracks like this that I’ve listened to, I may go get their new CD, Enslaved. Or get it online, more likely. Anyway, pretty good stuff. Good old Max Cavalera, he does not disappoint.

Twisted justice

Closed out the week on Daily Kos with one more diary, sort of a follow-up on my earlier work and sort of not. I seem to end up writing a fair bit about justice, the criminal justice system and the death penalty, so I often run into the folks who whinge about the ‘poster boy’ for capital punishment. It seemed ironic that in a diary written specifically to address that earlier in the week, someone came by to make the same old arguments again, as if they hadn’t really read what I wrote.

I might have written this one up today anyway, though. It’s a story from NPR about a convicted murderer who was later exonerated, and by ‘later’ I casually gloss over twenty-five years. Ouch. But there are still those who go on commenting, immune to the counter-arguments. They tend not to talk much about it, just fire off a ‘poster boy’ example and dash off.

Considering that part of the story today addresses a jury that may have sought a conviction out of the sense of security it provides, makes one wonder. It’s that same feeling that inspires Sue’s crime porn (she watches a lot of procedurals and crime shows) to settle most cases in an hour. It may be a new idea for me, something beyond simple revenge fantasies, although that does play in. Convictions might help the community to feel safer. It’s an understandable idea. And yet that impulse is just begging to be abused. It was, perhaps, in the exoneration story out of Texas.

The NPR story is linked in the DKos diary, feel free to check it out; I recommend it. Offers far more detail.

Revenge fantasies

My latest offering on DKos has to do with an execution scheduled for…well, right about now, in fact, here in AZ. Another inmate set to be killed and not much news at all about it, really, because it’s one of those cases where the possibility of injustice or innocents being killed is rather unlikely. It doesn’t inspire the outcry of a Troy Davis or Cameron Willingham.

I wonder sometimes if the penchant for revenge fantasies in our entertainment doesn’t teach us to seek revenge as a society. I like a good Kill Bill or High Plains Drifter as much as the next fellow. It’s just that these neat capsules of precision-applied justice are so far removed from reality. Whether it’s Iron Man in his movie using computers to identify hostiles in a split-second and shoot down a half dozen of them without so much as a scratch to their hostages, or justice on a timer in CSI or Law & Order…

Society teaches us about the reliability of criminal justice such that we may have a completely false impression about it, and then reinforces it by burying contrary evidence, hiding the prison system from us, and offering token stories in the media seemingly designed to assuage any doubts that might bubble up. It’s nasty work and it’s killing people. Some of them may be outright bungled executions of innocents, although I question whether anyone cares enough to merit calling it a ‘mistake,’ but I don’t know why any of it is necessary.

Afternoon edit: The diary got rescued for community spotlight and the Abolish the Death Penalty crew, some folks I greatly respect, also picked it up. Always nice to get read a bit.

Phony-catholic outrage week!

Rawr. Ok, after watching this story brew all week, and trying (and failing) to post something relevant about it that hadn’t already been done, I put out a diary today on DKos about the Peoria bishop who compared Obama to Hitler.

Although I expect it to go nowhere, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has filed a formal complaint with the IRS about the sermon on the entirely reasonable grounds that it violated the church’s tax-exempt status to engage in such overt political advocacy. And the rule does include speaking out in opposition to a candidate, so it’s not as if they had to endorse Romney to violate the rule.

But let’s face it, in a two-party system, saying ‘don’t vote for this guy’ is equivalent to ‘vote for the other guy’.

Obama being the centrist uniter type though, I expect he’ll get the IRS to either do nothing or do it so slowly, quietly and ineffectually that it may as well be pointless. I just don’t see him taking on the conservative clergy in the RCC, even if it seems like he should. It’s not like all catholics blindly obey these jerks in funny hats and everything they say to do.

Even if it is the good fight, though, he’s probably better off letting organizations like the AU do battle with the right wing churchfolk. Someone has to do it, though.

P.S. ‘phony catholic’ is in reference to these right wing blowhards who wouldn’t know from Jesus if he showed up in front of them. It’s a shame that the bible is so easy to twist to serve conservative interests, but you know what they say…the poor you will always have with you.

Quick edit: this one might get read, someone changed it to ‘Recommended’ on DKos. The latest episode in the continuing saga of I have no idea how diaries make the Rec List.

Busy SWTOR weekend

It was only a long trek to 50 because I made it that way, but finally the Dark Schneider made it to 50 last night. Although I am not sure I will keep playing him a lot at 50 – wanted to try out Scoundrel healing but the server population made it impossible to try – it was definitely worthwhile to play through the end of the stories on Corellia and the smuggler’s class story. Props to the Wookiee Bowdaar for sticking it out with me, responding quite affectionately to…most of my choices! After a long history of being the good guy, making the light choices, and sparing folks, working with shady types, and getting betrayed repeatedly for it…Daku went on a dark-tinged killing spree on Corellia. Darmas Pollaran, who made the Republic privateer job sound so good before he twisted it all to serve the Empire? Contemptuously asking for a price to spare him? Blam! Senator Dodonna, who recruited you for the privateer job before throwing in with the Empire? Ends up a kitchen slave? Even plays the True Love card? Blam! And the Voidwolf, the beneficiary of all that betrayal…well, let’s say his plan to unite the underworld to work for the Empire backfired, along with the grenade that he should have had on a shorter fuse. Oops.

So that’s the wrap-up on 50 levels of scheming, plotting, finagling and flirting. The smuggler becomes the hero of the Republic for freeing Corellia, and ruining the Voidwolf’s plot, and getting the other smuggler types to work for the Republic…at least, for a while. A nice final touch was hearing from the entire crew, most of which I sadly hadn’t seen much of since I started working with Bowdaar, my kick-ass melee partner. And after a little chat, the crew heads back to the ship for more adventure…and there is more. How much more I don’t know yet. Clearly not enough for some, but plenty for me, so far.

Besides, still haven’t finished courting Risha, and that simply will not do.

Fight!

Just passing along some really nice music from the Gundam Unicorn OST volume 2, that I used yesterday as inspiration for an RPG fight scene. The last minute in particular is wonderfully intense. Maybe I’ll loop it this evening as I go into SWTOR and try to get my smuggler at long last to level 50. One more level to go.

Will the South ever change…

Just mentioning a short diary I posted this morning before things get busy. The prospect of the last abortion clinic in the entire state of Mississippi being closed makes me wonder why we don’t just evacuate the sane people from the South and wall it off already. It’s stories like these that inspired the epithet ‘rot in a hell of your own making.’ And they really are building some kind of hell in the southern states.

Yes, I include mine…