AfterShock reviews Guild Wars

And AfterShock LIKES Guild Wars an awful lot apparently :-) Check out his review over at AfterShock's Gaming Haven. This is one game I'm seriously considering getting: I got a chance to see it a few weeks ago and it's just plain beautiful. It's also the only massively-multiplayer role-playing game that I know of that doesn't have a monthly fee! I'm probably going to be getting this soon for myself. This review only whets my appetite for it more.

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So... how about the chapter titles for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? Plus: "Dumbledore dies?!?"

These are legit. For real. Have it on good authority that these are the actual chapter titles for Harry Potter #6 that a lot of us (the lovely "spousal overunit" and I included) will be standing in line at midnight this coming Friday night in the local bookstore to get. I've no idea what most of these could possibly be referring to (and I'm re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix right now) so parse these as you will...

1. The Other Minister

2. Spinner's End

3. Will and Won't

4. Horace Slughorn

5. An Excess of Phlegm

6. Draco's Detour

7. The Slug Club

8. Snape Victorious

9. Half-Blood Prince

10. The House of Gaunt

11.Hermione's Helping Hand

12. Silver and Opals

13. The Secret Riddle

14. Felix Felicis

15. The Unbreakable Vow

16. A Very Frosty Christmas

17. A Sluggism Memory

18. Birthday Surprises

19. Elf Tails

20. Lord Voldemort's Request

21. The Unknowable Room

22. After the Burial

23. Horcruxes

24. Sectumsempra

25. The Seer Overheard

26. The Cave

27. The Lightning-Struck Tower

28. Flight of the Prince

29. The Phoenix Lament

30.The White Tomb

Chapter 22 is the scary-sounding one. I've heard that a major character dies in this one (which will honk off a LOT of readers if its anything like the character J.K. Rowling "offed" in the last book). Las Vegas should do a "betting odds" thing for this. Personally I'm betting that Rowling kills off Dumbledore. He's like the Obi-Wan Kenobi of this story, the "elder master" who's been guiding Harry into wisdom and experience... but for the apprentice to really come into his own, the master must step aside. That's what's being set up right now, I think. Dumbledore's death will be the final thing that "clicks" it all into place for Harry to fulfill his destiny. That, and because nothing would ratchet up the "oh CRAP NOW WHAT?!?" element for this saga than to kill off its number-one figure of goodness and authority. The clues are all there, including these chapter titles: "The Phoenix Lament"? That's Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes crying over his dead master. "The White Tomb"? Who else could be buried there? Why else is Dumbledore shown on the cover of book #6 with Harry? He's never been on the cover of any others before now, so this is like finally getting his time in the spotlight before the curtain falls. Yeah, light a candle and say a prayer for Albus Dumbledore: his days just might be numbered.

The good news is, I'm also betting that Dumbledore comes back somehow, either "resurrected" in the flesh or as a ghost (remember what Near-Headless Nick said about that toward the end of Order of the Phoenix, hmmmmmm?).

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It's MONDAY NIGHT LIVE with Ken and Mark!

Back in April I reported the return of a local institution: the ever-intriguing, most curious and always entertaining "Monday Night Live" call-in show on Reidsville, North Carolina's WGSR Channel 39. Back in my high school days this hour-long show was THE highlight of the week for us (parse as you will whatever message that is about how much excitement we had in good ol' Reidsville :-) Well it took three months but tonight I finally got to see the show, still hosted by Mark Childrey and Ken Echols. And I'm happy to report that the unique chemistry that made "Monday Night Live" work so well is still working its charm as strong as ever! I would even say that in the almost ten years since its first run ended that "Monday Night Live" shows good seasoning: it's still as witty but there's a good edge to it. Or maybe it was just weird hearing Ken and Mark talk about "Googling" something and giving out the URL for "Monday Night Live"'s website. Either way, it was a real joy seeing it once again and I couldn't resist calling them up once again for old times' sake. Mark even brought up Forcery and I got to give out the movie's website address, in addition to talking about some of our stars and how we filmed some of it at Short Sugar's Drive-In. The show is now 90 minutes long, whereas the original ran for an hour: plenty enough time to run contests where they gave out such curios as weird sun-faced clocks and "Anthony Perkins as 'Mother'" Psycho action figures (no I'm not making this up) while intermittently showing clips from an old movie called Maniac about two doctors in a morgue with a cat running around it... no I'm not making any of this up. I must say, it was entertaining enough to make the short trip from out-of-town to my parents' house to watch it well worth it, and it was enough to make me want to see more of the show now that it's back. I just wish that we could watch it here: maybe they'll give it a live streaming feed on the Internet someday. If they do, I will gladly give them a prominent link somewhere on this blog for your convenience and viewing pleasure :-)

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Terror attack "imminent" within next 90 days?

This one caught my eye bigtime. It was four years ago, arond late June/early July of 2001, that a few reports surfaced in the press indicating that Osama bin Laden was planning a massive attack on the United States in what was then considered the very near future. Most of the reports got pushed toward the rear for sake of "bigger" stories, like the stem cell research debate and the Gary Condit thing. I remember those stories pretty well though, and did think about them a lot when 9/11 happened. I think a couple of them even appeared on WorldNetDaily, which is where this next story comes from. I know, it has a rep for sometimes over-sensationalizing an issue and it's still a little too partisan shills for the Republicans, but otherwise I've never had a reason not to respect it. All that said, this story they published Saturday merits some consideration...

Intel analyst: Attack on U.S. imminent

Former Israeli agent says government not preparing citizens

Posted: July 9, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Terrorists will try to carry out an attack on the United States within the next 90 days, a former Israeli counterterrorism intelligence officer predicts.

Juval Aviv, head of the New York-based intelligence company Interfor and a special consultant to the U.S. Congress, told Fox News his information is based primarily on intelligence "floating in Europe and the Middle East."

An event is "imminent and around the corner here in the United States," he said. "It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most."

Aviv, author of "Staying Safe: The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business," said Americans should look at what happened in London and expect mass transportation to be the next target of attack.

"We have put all of our emphasis, right or wrong, on the aviation area," he said. "What has happened, in the last two to three years, based on information we have, the terrorists have realized that they cannot hijack a plane in America soon because the passengers are going to fight back."

(SNIP)

"What they're going to do is hit six, seven, or eight cities simultaneously to show sophistication and really hit the public," Aviv said.

But this time, he emphasized, it will not only be big cities.

"They're going to try to hit rural America," Aviv said. "They want to send a message to rural America: 'You're not protected. If you figured out that if you just move out of New York and move to Montana or to Pittsburgh, you're not immune. We're going to get you wherever we can and it's easier there than in New York.'"

Mash here for the rest of the story. If this does happen, I'll bet good money that it will be because the perpetrators easily crossed the border from Mexico, or perhaps from Canada. Our border security is a sham and a half, and so far President Bush and a complacent Congress are doing nothing to improve the situation. You can't have a secure nation without recognized and enforced borders of some sort. That doesn't mean we erect walls on the north and south and barricade both coastlines, but it does mean that we cast a more wary eye on who is coming into our country and for what purpose. As it stands now, it's almost as if Bush and crew are inviting disaster to sneak across into America.

Expect bad repercussions across the board if this intelligence guy's warning has some validity to it. I don't know if it does or not, but I do know that it was this same time four years ago that we got a warning, and we didn't heed it very well.

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NY governor Pataki: "Your vehicle vill be vulnerable to us undt you vill LUFF it!"

From WNBC in New York comes this item, another step forward for the Pin-Striped Gestapo gang...

Law Bans License-Plate Spraying To Foil Radar, Cameras
Law To Take Effect In 120 Days

POSTED: 9:54 pm EDT July 8, 2005

UPDATED: 1:19 pm EDT July 9, 2005

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Gov. George Pataki on Friday signed a new law that bans using sprays or other synthetic materials to hide license plates from radar and camera detection.

The sprays, available online and elsewhere, create a gloss invisible to the naked eye that reflects the flash of radar or traffic cameras, making it difficult to identify a license plate by electronic means.

"It's important that law enforcement have the ability to identify all vehicles that use our public roadways, and anything that hinders their ability to do that is clearly a public safety hazard," Pataki said in a statement.

The law will take effect in 120 days.

This has nothing at all to do with the ability of "law enforcement" (which is a wrongfully-applied term anyway: the old-fashioned "peace officers" is more appropos). This does have everything to do with revenue-enhancement for the state though. This law is targetting those spray-on reflective glosses that are specifically intended to foil "red-light cameras", which are already a breach of personal privacy and civil liberty by the government. To which I say: to hell with 'em. If the state can't produce a living, breathing witness against you in a court of law when it seeks to deprive you of your property (i.e. money) it has no right to press a case against you at all. And YOU should have every right to make it as difficult as possible for the state to even pursue such a thing against you. Pataki isn't giving a damn about "public safety": he knows that such cameras are a HUGE money-making racket that most people won't even take the trouble to contest, instead opting to pay the fine and trusting "Big Brother"'s judgement against their own. And anything that gives the average person an advantage over Big Brother... well, can't very well have THAT now, can they? Next thing you know, regular folks will be getting even MORE uppity, start thinking they know better than the state official do after all.

If Pataki is going to seriously enforce this law, I hope and pray that the people of New York state will go on the offensive... and debilitate as many of these ILLEGAL cameras as possible. And there's lots of ways to do that, if you exercise a little creativity (wink-wink).

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For reasons that remain inexplicably unexplainable, it is discovered tonight that this is the very first time that Mom is reading my blog

Hi Mom!!

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Dennis threatens Florida

Great, just great: Mr. Wilson moves to Florida and now THIS happens to the poor guy...

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Man kills self after hearing spoilers for Harry Potter #6 (?!?)

Man, I don't know if this is for real or not. If so it begs the question: has there been a recent epidemic of Star Wars fans committing suicide now that no more movies are coming in that saga? From Jewish World Review:

Man commits suicide after learning Harry Potter spoiler

By Andy Borowitz

'I no longer have a reason to live,' says despondent fan

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A rabid Harry Potter fan took his life yesterday after inadvertently learning a plot spoiler from the soon-to-be-released J.K. Rowling opus, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

Jude Ralston, 32, of Hudson, Ohio left a suicide note indicating that since overhearing the plot spoiler at a shopping mall earlier in the day, "I no longer have a reason to live."

Click on the above link for more.

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The Homeland Security Threat Level Muppet-Meter now on this blog

This has been around for at least two year now, I remember first seeing it just before the Iraq war started. Didn't know that this system was still being used but in light of yesterday's bombings it's not only still around, it's been elevated to "orange". Personally, I always thought this color-coded system was pretty silly. But since it's yet with us and going up 'cuz of recent events, might as well have a little fun with it to make us smile. Here's the original graphic, if you feel so led to play around with it for your own blog, workplace, military installation etc.

I'm thinking about doing a Star Wars version, with Jabba as condition "green", Artoo as "blue", maybe those red guards the Emperor has as "red"... or maybe do it like Star Wars planets: "Dagobah", "Hoth", "Tatooine", "Bespin", and use Mustafar for "red". Anyway, feel free to adopt/adapt this if you like.

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Yesterday's London bombings hits beloved Harry Potter location

I just realized something a few minutes ago: one of the bombs that went off yesterday in London was at Kings Cross Station. That's the very same train station with the legendary Platform 9 and Three-Quarters from which the Hogwarts Express leaves every year in the Harry Potter books. J.K. Rowling has said a few times that ever since her books came out that kids like to play around there a lot, trying to find the platform so they too can leave for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It's not a "big" thing to notice about all of this, but I did just happen to catch that a short while ago.

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NASA hits mark with cosmic ballistics

Looks like the Deep Impact mission - that shot an 800-pound "bullet" into comet Tempel 1 - was a success:

"Yup, she got blowed up real good!"

Smash here for the official NASA Deep Impact page, with lots more photos and movies from the probe's approach.

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GONE FISSION: Filmmaking among the half-lifes and free radicals

So a few weeks ago I got a phone call from a friend and associate, who had an... interesting... offer for me. I got asked if I'd be willing to be hired for a filmmaking job. Guess you could say it would have been my first real gig as a professional: heh-heh, going from no experience to amateur filmmaker to seasoned pro in the space of a few months. Well, there's plenty about this that I still don't know, and I'm looking for any chance to further my knowledge and understanding of this field. Then my friend went on to talk about the equipment we would be using: the cameras would be much nicer than anything we used on Forcery. Top-of-the-line units, the three CCD chips variety (that's the route we'll go on our next movie) we're talking here. Top-notch gear all around. A strong cast of trained and experienced actors. Was I in?

"Heck yeah!" I said.

There was just one catch, my friend told me: it was going to be an unusual filming environment.

Namely, we would be working inside...

A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT!!
Yah that's probably what enters most folks' minds nowadays at the mention of "nuclear power plant". But THIS is what nuclear scary was all about before Homer hit the scene...1979's The China Syndrome, the debut of which coming just weeks before Three Mile Island probably didn't hurt it much at the box office. That's not what first entered my mind when I was told where we'd be doing this at, though. Instead, this was...Silkwood. Positively one of the most frightening movies you'll ever see, because this was a true story folks. Yeah, when someone starts talking about movies and nuclear power, this one always is first to enter my mind. Google has a lot more about Karen Silkwood if you're interested.

Couldn't talk about this kind of subject without giving this guy at least a passing mention either, eh?

Awright, where were we? Oh yeah... told my friend I'd definitely do it. So I headed out of town for several days this past week to film at the nuclear facility.

Now, I can't say which nuclear plant we were at: "Wally" (not his real name), the plant's liaison to our filming crew, asked me not to publish the name of this facility. I don't want to say where it was either, 'cuz there's not that many nuclear power plants in any given area, right? Nor does the nature of our filming lend itself toward talking much about that. But I can show some photos I took inside the place, along with some information that wouldn't necessarily identify it.

In lieu of being able to show any photos of the plant's exterior, I'll use this:

It looks a lot like Springfield Nuclear Power from The Simpsons, believe it or not. With the exception of more cooling towers (and they are nowhere as high as the ones at C. Montgomery Burns' establishment). Otherwise the one we were at has two reactors, and sits on a readily-available source of water. The plant we were at is a pressurized water nuclear reactor plant: the reactor heats up water but instead of turning into steam, high pressure keeps it liquid and has it flowing past another conduit containing water, turning that into the steam that runs the turbines attached to the generators. What this really means is that there are two separate water lines: one running through the reactor, and one coming into contact with the outside environment. No excess radiation gets out, unlike a boiling water reactor that uses steam made in the reactor to power the generators (and in case anyone's interested, Chernobyl was an entirely different reactor altogether). I asked "Wally" if this plant used heavy water and he said it doesn't: it's a "light water" reactor, and I found out later that's because it's using enriched uranium and plutonium for its fuel. And there is one other very cool bit of information about this nuclear plant and I'd love to share what that is on this blog... but I can't! This nuclear plant is the only one in America that's doing this particular something and that would make identifying it all too easy. Suffice it to say, it's something that absolutely stunned me when he told me about it.

We filmed for a few days and on the last one I whipped out my camera and took these pictures...

Our director took this photo of me...Here's another shot of me, next to a "CAUTION - HIGH RADIATION AREA" sign..."Hey look at me, I'm getting an accidental overdose of gamma radiation that's altering my body chemistry!"

Ignore the "Bartlett Nuclear/Bruce Long" on the helmet, 'cuz that wasn't the plant we were at. I've no idea where Bartlett Nuclear might be. And my name ain't Bruce since last time I checked :-)

Okay, something that needs to be said before going any further: we were not, at any time, exposed to high doses of radiation. We were told by "Wally" that nobody goes anywhere near the actual nuclear reactors unless there's a DARNED good reason for doing so. Normally that would be something like loading new fuel rods into the reactor. Otherwise, it's keep way, WAY away from it (especially if you're a newly pregnant woman). Forget what you've seen on The Simpsons: the Springfield Nuclear Plant would have been shut down in a heartbeat if it existed in real life. There are literally safety protocols on top of safety protocols at the plant we were working in: every system has a backup, and there's redundant backups for those backups. Not to mention that this was an incredibly dedicated staff on site: for every hour they spent working there, they spent just as much if not more in training and study, mostly regarding safety. Even if you're fresh out of the U.S. Navy from working with reactors onboard submarines, you're looking at two years of training before you're turned loose on civilian equipment. Anyone think Homer could do something like that? :-) Anyhoo, if there ever was any worries about something... bad... going down at a nuclear plant, what we saw at this facility would easily allay those fears, so don't fret about a Chernobyl happening here.

So where were these photos taken? Inside what is called the Flow Loop simulator. Training directly around the actual reactor isn't the hottest of ideas but something is still needed for hands-on experience. The Flow Loop simulator replicates just about every kind of environment that could be expected in and around the reactors and generators. That's where we were at during part of our filming. We got to see for ourselves: there was only normal background radiation where we were set up at, nothing abnormally high or even slightly high at all. Still, I couldn't resist having some fun in the place while we were there 'cuz hey, it's not every day you get to be turned loose inside a nuclear power plant!

...Better shot at the "workers" inside the simulator. Those are really dummies posed around a mock hazardous material spill....Big tank of glycol: wonderful coolant but hideously expensive. They have the actual stuff ready to train with here though....Big, BIG replica of a diesel engine. The actual diesels are located further inside the plant, at the generators. If anything were to happen that incapacitated the reactors from running the turbines, these babies can kick in and keep the juice flowing.

'Course, since the thought of a guy like me running around in a place like that is too frightening to contemplate, I had to take a picture guaranteed to scare most sane people...

And, that pretty much sums up where we were at last week when we did this filming. I left knowing much more about filmmaking than I did prior to this, and learned an awful lot about the nuclear power industry. And got some really neat material for my blog, all in one shot!

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Did Karl Rove leak Valerie Plame's being an undercover CIA agent to the press as political revenge against her husband?

Something I've been watching develop since Friday night. I just thought it'd be cool to be another blog making note of that well before the steaming pile of guano REALLY hits the high-velocity rotating apparatus.

Kyle Williams writes a piece touching on it this weekend, by the way.

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Best line thus far that describes Forcery

"It's like a Troma film, but with less violence."

We're still giggling after reading that one :-)

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We caught War of the Worlds a few days ago...

...and it's a pretty good movie. My favorite of the summer thus far is still Batman Begins though, even moreso than Star Wars Episode III. But for a Spielberg movie, War of the Worlds had a lot more depth for its characters than he usually gives them.

Being a Spielberg movie, it also has plot holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through. Like, the "lightning storm" that Ray and the other folks in New Jersey are watching is supposed to have knocked out ALL electrical power. So why does the camera focus-in on this one guy who's using a camcorder to videotape the tripod after it rises from the ground?

Not trying to be nit-picky, but that's something that really did stick out like a sore thumb.

If you've ever read the original novel by H.G. Wells, you'll find that this movie is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book, with a lot of nods back to the source material: Tim Robbins' character is named Ogilvy, f'rinstance.

I wish they would have given the aliens a flying machine though, like they had in the book.

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I have returned...

...after a pretty interesting week. Among other things I was involved in some filmmaking in a really unusual environment.

Will have photos up from it soon.

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One of these is not like the others...

It's normal to bring into question the over-use of prescription anti-depressants. It's very responsible to study the subject first-hand. And it's pretty bold to raise the issue before an audience of millions.

It's NOT normal to offer, as an alternative, the belief that the dread alien warlord Xenu fought over-population in his space empire by hoodwinking his excess citizenry into coming in for tax audits, then drugging them, then cramming them into DC-8 passenger planes and flying them to Earth ("which was then known as Teegeeack"), then putting their immobile bodies around volcanoes, that were then exploded with hydrogen bombs, then sucking up the disembodied souls, then forcing said souls to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" about God and Satan and Jesus etc., which then disoriented them, but then they started to cling to the minds of humans as we started to evolve on Earth, which now requires an investment of several thousands of dollars to become "clear" of.

That is probably all I could say on the subject, before $cientology's army of attorneys come scrambling after my butt.

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