Landicine Pumpkin

Shadowbane's gone. Good riddance!

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I'm a big fan of Brian Fuller's shows (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies). Off-beat and funny and very human. It is a pity they keep getting cancelled. I just saw the Dead Like Me direct-to-DVD "movie" that takes place 5 years after the series ends. It reminded me of the problems with the direct-to-DVD B5 though more of a budget - a little too short (87 min for Dead Like Me, 75 min for B5) , the feel was a little off (new sets for both), and both made me really miss the shows. Babylon 5 got its 5-year arc, but it has had 3 failed restarts (Crusade, Legend of the Rangers, Lost Tales). Dead Like Me got two seasons and was apparently cancelled due to low ratings (though the rumors are that it was an internal power struggle that killed the show).

I watched B5 when I was in high school, and I still want more. Dead Like Me was cancelled 5 years ago, and I still want more. Pushing Daisies was cancelled this year, and I'm going to have to buy the DVD set to get the last 3 episodes. Blah.
 

About a year ago during the whole "scandal" about a writer's autobiography being pure fiction, I remembered a Calvin and Hobbes:

Calvin: Want to help me write a book?
Hobbes: Sure. What's it about?
Calvin: Well, you know what historical fiction is? This is sort of like that. I'm writing a fictional autobiography.
It's the story of my life, but with a lot of parts completely made up.
Hobbes: Why would you make up your own life?
Calvin: Because in my book I have a flamethrower!

Every time I hear about another writer doing this, I remember this Calvin and Hobbes.

I think part of the appeal of Calvin and Hobbes was there was the right balance of slapstick, cynical humor, and sentimentality. I think the comic made a lot of good points that sort of stuck with me growing up.

I think the artist for this comic, Bill Watterson, was probably one of the few comic artists who saw himself as an artist. He did next to no merchandising, unlike the artists behind Garfield who designed the character with merchandising in mind. The rumor is Watterson is trying to be an oil painter and following some odd idea that the first 100 paintings of a painter are crap. He paints a piece and then burns it or something.  

I mention all this because according to my wife, I took a lot of my manerisms and speech patterns from the shows I watched growing up. One of them was Babylon 5 and the other was an anime called Ranma 1/2. I wondering what books and comics and such I got other bits of "me" from over the years. I'd like to believe Calvin and Hobbes was one of them.



 

My wife is a big Sims 2 player. She has all the expansions. I gave her the last one she needed for Christmas. However, with the last few expansions, she has bought them to install, but also downloaded the No-CD crack (usually used by software pirates) to avoid the game installing various anti-piracy malware. She mentioned that the Sims community (the people who make the extra items and extras for the game) has been moving toward piracy. Sites where people used to flame when someone asked where to download the game for free will now share the information. Since the Sims community is on average older and more female than other game communities, this is a big change. Grandma is downloading cracks.

Then there is Spore which thanks to its anti-piracy code:

"The game was ranked the most pirated game of 2008, having been downloaded over 1,700,000 times.^"

The advantages to downloading the game for free are actually pretty hard to argue:

Spore Download:
-Free.
-Can Be installed on any number of computers.
-Can Have multiple accounts.
-Doesn't infect your computer with malicious crippling software (usually).

Spore Purchase:
-Costs Money.
-Can Be installed 5 times before you have to fight with EA customer service.
-Can have only 1 account.
-Always infects your computer with malicious crippling software that most Virus Programs won't deal with.
-Gives money to EA, the Sith of Computer Games.

I think it would seem like common sense, but for those missing the point:

DO NOT PUNISH THE PEOPLE GIVING YOU MONEY.

The game pirates will get around anything. There are more of them then the programmers you've hired insufficient numbers of, worked to death, and fired at Christmas. Pissing off honest purchasers in hopes that maybe somewhere somehow a game pirate will go "Gee, I've learned my lesson. Guess I better just install the malware and play Spore." is bad business and bad game design.

It should never be more fun for a majority of people to trash your game in blogs than to play it.