I'd like to go for a walk...

ah...I'm not fooling anyone.

I'll be stone dead in a moment.

Just a little note to let you know, I'm still here.

2 Girls +
Thanksgiving with both sides coming and I'm cooking +
Grad School =
________________
No time for anything


But I should leave you a nugget of something.

There's this program/website called Mercora.com.
it works like IM, except you stream music in the format of proprietary files that they made. What it means is that you can stream music from other peoples PC's. It also means you can record those streams. And it's legal, due to the same law that allows you to record music off the radio or shows off the TV. Nice huh? You can't burn them, at least I haven't figure a way around it using Audacity and a stream recorder yet. But for listening on your PC it's fine, plus you can get a mobile version for your PDA or whatever. So now I can listen to the latest albums of whoever before plunking down $15.00 for it.

hits on Proteinstar's PC right now:

X&Y by Coldplay (yeah I'm strapped to that bandwagon)
Demon Days by Gorillaz (the track Dare has me completely obsessed with them)
Transatlanticism by Deathcab for cutie (dragged to my death behind this indie wagon)
Give Up by The Postal Service (Since one of the leads are from Deathcab it's a given)
Aphex Twin (Got over his nightmarish face and have fallen completely in love)
Sigur Ros (so what if it's not English? So what if it's not actually Icelandic either?)

Man I love that Dare song, just gets me bopping.


"You've got to press it on you

You just think it

That's what you do, baby

Hold it down, DARE"

No idea what they mean but the beat jams. Seriously Whole Crap jams.

Sounds like a novelty indie jelly company. Seriously Whole Crap Jams. Only the freshest Whole Crap is good enough for our Jams.

The BIG ONE is on its way

Did you feel that?

Boston just had a bit of an earthquake. Yup, that faults acting up again, gonna send that urban sprawl from Boston to Providence right into the drink.

Yup all I have time for, can't wait for school to be done.

I should feel real bad but it's hard

Watching France burn is a bad thing, yet satisfying. I know...People read this blog, you can't say things like that anymore. But it's true. The government of France is one of the most egotistical meglomanicial in Europe and it's nice to see them get their cumuppance.

Every single major city is having major riots, 4700 vehicles have been torched. Schools, businesses, warehouses, all aflame. What's Chirac and his guys doing? Nothing. It's been 12 days and they are finally thinking about curfew. CURFEW! That nation is nuts. Can you imagine riots in every major city in the US? Completely unimaginable, it would be civil war. The National Guard would be all over the place.

I think it's interesting that the Muslim extremists are attacking their biggest ally. We'll see what Frances view on Muslim immigrants will be after this, they do have 5 million after all. Europe looks at the US with such disgust but we can at least manage our population. Someone compared Frances riots with the LA riots in '92. Come on, they aren't even close! If the riots extented 2500 miles across the country maybe then it could be.

I sure hope we don't need to cross the Pond to bail them out again.

If I could channel one man into my forebrain

"Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it."

It would be Chesterton. That beautiful and most rare amalgamation of literary genius and commonsense.

Reinforcing Previously Held Beliefs

The result is always good, only the process can be uncomfortable at times. Case in point.

Hitchhikers.

I don't pick them up, unless they are incredibly old and feeble or female and pregnant.

Yet last night I broke my vows and did the unthinkable.

I let a strange man in my van. gasp!

The Bro of Proteinstar and myself had just finished a rollicking good adventure in Faerun. Rykon our resident Sorceror took the noggin off a goblin archer from 40 feet. Gotta love that magic missile, now I just have to wait for the flames to die down before bursting through...oh hitchhikers.

Anyway, game done Bro walks me to the van and this dude comes up to us...

"Got jumper cables?" "Yup" I say and offer him a jump.
"Thanks man, you don't know how bad I need it, I'm not from here, but Pottsville (or something)"

I grab the cables and he's like, "oh, my car isn't here, it's at the Grayhound station."
I was like, "how the heck did you get over here? This is nowhere near the station."

"oh I was at a bar with my bud and...(he smelled it too)...well I have to take care of my ma..."
blah blah

Well, I stepped in it now. How can I retract my offer of help beacuse it got a litttle more involved? My bro gave me a fierce look but came along. So the guy was here for the first time and was "scared of the city". please. He knew how to get to the bus station easily enough, which had me wondering.

Well we chat about Alma Maters and such and turns out he's a college boy from somewhere but isn't going currently, we feign interest.

We arrive at the bus station and I'm in the middle of my, "I saw a huge crane fall from this very spot" story and he gasps, well I thought he was totally into my description so I keep going. yeah, turns out he wasn't and was actually gasping about his missing car. Which he parked right in front of 2 dozen DO NOT PARK signs and another half dozen TOW ZONE placards. Idiot.

I was thinking, were you drunk before you parked?

This is where the story gets interesting.

The guy goes nuts, like is he carrying a knife? nuts. He gets desperate and angry and pleading and nearly violent. Sitting in the back of my Voyager raving.

Mike and I look at each other and brace ourselves for the worst.

"YOU GUYS GOTTA GIVE ME TEN BUCKS!!!"

Unfortunately neither of us had any money. Then he's begging, "please man, hit an ATM or something I just need a taxi out of here! Just a taxi to Reading, 10 bucks man that's all I ask!"

I inform him, none to softly, that a taxi to Reading will cost 3 times that.

We both refuse to give him any money and then he EXPLODES.

Fists clenched and shaking he demands we give him money.

And then it happened...Mike later said I sounded like a real adult...

the spirit of the father of Proteinstar erupted from deep within me and I bellowed, nay roared at this man.

Not sure what I said initially but the man didn't back down at first but retorted with a

"you think I'm scared of you?"

I increased my furor and was getting nearly to the point of contemplating violence when he changed 180 degrees.

"Wait man wait, I'm sorry. No Man I'm really sorry."

We took him to talk with a securitty guard and it looked like he was trying to bum more money. And finally I drove him down to 2nd street to find his friend. At this point I knew this guy only wanted money for more beers. There was no car, no Pottsville, no ma.

I waited 2 minutes outside the bar in case I was wrong and drove off.

I will never pick up a stranger again, and if I do you better be 80 years old and 8 months pregnant with triplets.

Star Trek we have arrived

When scientists can develop stuff that sounds like something Gene Roddenberry cooked up in a fever dream I get all sorts of excited.

photonic silicon waveguide

The man is such a genius I have to give you another

"The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings."

-G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton is the man

"When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything."

-G.K. Chesterton

I have become my father

A particularly poignant moment in my household was the weekly watching of Nova on WGBH Boston, the local PBS channel. During the late 80’s and early 90’s, Nova, it seemed, was running endless shows on evolution, the Piltdown man, or Lucy our long lost cousin. Listening to a paleontologist describe the life history of an entire race of beings after discovering it’s patella, which turned out to be a pigs, had my father in such a furious clamor that he was completely unable to sit on the sofa. He would lean forward towards the television, just waiting in anticipation for the narrators next line of complete inanity, upon which he would gesticulate wildly (being Italian) and declare the statement to be utter lunacy.

The day has come when I have taken up the mantle of my beloved progenitor.

I spent the evening watching "The Question of God" on PBS. It was a show comparing the world views of Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis. The quotations of both these men were impressive and intriquing, of course I am biased towards Lewis's way of thinking having adopted several of his mental concepts of God for myself. Yet the frustating part was the roundtable discussion between "highly educated and intelligent thinkers". Good Lord! It was insane. The things that would come out of these peoples mouths were laughable. Intelligent! Bah! They understand stocks, and how many atriums we have in our heart but when it comes to viewing and discussing our state of existence they are woefully inept. "Professing to be wise they became fools."

These agnostics, just another name for the philosophically lazy, and athiests/humanists, if they take their view to it's fullest extent it always results in nihilism and fatalism. If Nietzsche had it right, and God is Dead. With Him dead the standard of moral obligation is gone, we need to replace it, with what? Supermen, the concept of mankinds gradual upward development. As the ape is an embarassment to man so shall man be in comparison to the supermen that come after.

Sounds like...

Nazi propaganda.

Well looks like that's a great world view to replace God with. Germany and central Europe were at the height of Naturalistic thought. Looks like they picked a doozy to replace God with. Why do atheists and humanists think they'll do any better today? Why would they care? They won't be held to account afterwards.

Who cares? Ah my gradmother died..well at least I have her memory. What's that? How long will that last? One good blow to my head will knock grandma out of eternity for good. What kind of comfort is that? At least I can live through my kids. WHAT? Yeah uh that doesn't even mean anything. The good I do will live on. Live on in what? If you're really amazing it last a generation after you, maybe two. The truely great get in text books that no one cares about.

Those who dismiss God have nothing but oblivion to look forward too. Well, why suffer through this life for that? Why slog through another 50 years of mediocrity and lameness, oh yeah you'll have kids, run up debt, get old and busted and then NOTHING. ANd the thing is everyone who knew you will also be NOTHING. Eventually our sun in about 4 billion years will run out of hydrogen and swell, turning this planet into NOTHING. If we escaped the confines of the Solar System then the eventual Heat death of the universe will close the book on whatever good you did or your Grandmas memory or whatever lameness you're relying on to get by.

The thing is the surgeon/Harvard professor, who was also a Christian, should have had the conversation sewn up. I was spewing out defenses and agruements that would have had that athiest scratching his head, instead the Christian says he cannot answer the problem of evil! What?!! What good is our faith if you cannot answer the most basic of questions?! You can't understand why there is evil in the world and an all powerful/all good God? Sad. Very sad.

Well there I was shouting at the TV. "Come on!!!!", I'd shout. "You can't answer that?!" "Some one shut that Jungian Analyst up!" "If she says one more think about God's shadow I'm going to puke!" yeah...Papa Proteinstar here I am.

Well I didn't get any of my Saturday homework done. I have a presentation due Sat and I'll be doing it Friday night. Love that procrastination. Speaking of which I had a report due to the church this week. yikes. I'll have that in Boss.

In Response

BROADBAND THANK GOD!!!

I'm back I'm back I'm back I'm back I'm back I'm back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DSL is finally up and running and I can finally finally stream music and surf at the same time.

I swear my music soul was shriveling up into a little knotted hunk of tissue, a little longer and I would have been to far gone to enjoy Death Cab for Cutie.

And Shoop...kudos for listening to F.F. I didn't know you had it in you. Specially with a song like Micheal...a little light in the loafers it always sounded to me.

On the UrbanDead front, my zombie has killed 2 people in one night and received his 1st skill. Vigour Mortis. Now I can kill with ease, well shambling decomposing ease.

The Fam is here this weekend...dedicating the youngest member of the Brood. The Proteinstar clan continues it's expansion.

Hey Shoop, HOMM V looks like it will have a DVD and CD version so pick wisely this Feb.

Tomorrow's youth group lesson will be based off of the conversation between Motti and Vader in Episode IV. Gotta love talks about faith involving the Dark Lord.

"don't try to fool us with your sorcerors ways Lord Vader!"

Paraphrasing Herbert

Heroes of Might and Magic is the little Time killer.

You could not believe the amount of time at night I've spent trying to coach my blundering army of undead to capture 3 nearby castles. It's been horrible. But I have only 1 to go.

Between grad school, 2 girls, youth group, my wife, Heroes, and Urban Dead, I've had zero time for blogging.

A travesty I know. And it will be soon rectified.

The 3rd wave of heroscape figures came out. I haven't bought a single figure from wave 2. sniff. This wave rocks. A bunch of Scottish highlanders, some futury agent dudes, a cowboy and some crazy robot thing. I am way behind. Hopefully they'll be around for Christmas.

My bro and I are finally starting up a D&D campaign. The Spouse of Proteinstar is less than pleased. But at least it's free!

I will hereby be know as Gregory Thurmaturgus, Paladin, and all-a-round good guy.

5 pts for the 1st person to comment on who and when Greg was about.

Ah yes, mounted combat and religious zealotry in all it's glory.

OUT OF THE WAY PECK!

Amen!

September 14, 2005
Failure of an Idea -- And a People
By David Brooks

In his 1935 State of the Union Address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(FDR) spoke to a nation mired in the Depression, but still marinated
in conservative values:

"Continued dependence" upon welfare, said FDR, "induces a spiritual
disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To
dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle
destroyer of the human spirit."

Behind FDR's statement was the conviction that, while the government
must step in in an emergency, in normal times, men provide the food,
clothing and shelter for their families.

And we did, until the war pulled us out of the Depression and a
postwar boom made us, in John K. Galbraith's phrase, The Affluent
Society. By the 1960s, America, the richest country on earth, was
growing ever more prosperous. But with the 1964 landslide of LBJ,
liberalism triumphed and began its great experiment.

Behind the Great Society was a great idea: to lift America's poor out
of poverty, government should now take care of all their basic needs.
By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free
medical care, government will end poverty in America.

At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the failure
of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina passed by and
the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men who should have
taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies
to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape. The New Orleans
police, their numbers cut by deserters who left their posts to look
after their families, engaged in running gun battles all day long to
stay alive and protect people.

It was the character and conduct of its people that makes the New
Orleans disaster unique. After a hurricane, people's needs are simple:
food, water, shelter, medical attention. But they can be hard to meet.

People buried in rubble or hiding in attics of flooded homes are tough
to get to. But, even with the incompetence of the mayor and governor,
and the torpor of federal officials, this was possible.

Coast Guard helicopters were operating Tuesday. There were roads open
into the city for SUVs, buses and trucks. While New Orleans was
flooded, the water was stagnant. People walked through to the
convention center and Superdome. The flimsiest boat could navigate.

Even if government dithered for days -- what else is new -- this does
not explain the failure of the people themselves!

Between 1865 and 1940, the South -- having lost a fourth of its best
and bravest in battle, devastated by war, mired in poverty -- was
famous for the hardy self-reliance of her people, black and white.

In 1940, hundreds of British fishermen and yachtsmen sailed back and
forth daily under fire across a turbulent 23-mile Channel to rescue
300,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. How do we explain to the world that a
tenth of that number of Americans could not be reached in four days
from across a stagnant pond?

The real disaster of Katrina was that society broke down. An entire
community could not cope. Liberalism, the idea that good intentions
and government programs can build a Great Society, was exposed as
fraud. After trillions of tax dollars for welfare, food stamps, public
housing, job training and education have poured out since 1965,
poverty remains pandemic. But today, when the police vanish, the
community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women and
the weak.

Stranded for days in a pool of fetid water, almost everyone waited for
the government to come save them. They screamed into the cameras for
help, and the reporters screamed into the cameras for help, and the
"civil rights leaders" screamed into the cameras that Bush was
responsible and Bush was a racist.

Americans were once famous for taking the initiative, for having young
leaders rise up to take command in a crisis. See any of that at the
Superdome? Sri Lankans and Indonesians, far poorer than we, did not
behave like this in a tsunami that took 400 times as many lives as
Katrina has thus far.

We are the descendants of men and women who braved the North Atlantic
in wooden boats to build a country in a strange land. Our ancestors
traveled thousands of miles in covered wagons, fighting off Indians
far braver than those cowards preying on New Orleans' poor.

Watching that performance in the Crescent City, it seems clear: We are
not the people our parents were. And what are all our Lords Temporal
now howling for? Though government failed at every level, they want
more government.

FDR was right. A "spiritual disintegration" has overtaken us.
Government-as-first provider, the big idea of the Great Society, has
proven to be "a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

Either we get off this narcotic, or it kills us.

Mike Peabody
The Evans Group, LLC
918-606-3329

Concept Art for Sylvan and Academy Factions!

OH YES!

These guys look great. And is that gremlin holding a blunderbuss? Ubisoft might be French but I love them.

First Academy.

Master Gremlin, Obsidian Gargoyle.



Now that gargoyl is looking mighty weird but I trust them, it'll be cool.
Next Golem, and Mage (man they look good!)




Now the biggies. A replacement for the naga, and a good one at that. And the Titan got a whole new bada** image.




Man that took some work...ok since I love you here are the Sylvan units!

The level 1 unit is a spirit, like a nymph. And a War Dancer (some elf sword dude)




I do not miss the stupid leprechauns. Whose brainchild was that?
The next two are a ranged elf (i think) and um...something else.



it's hard to make a walking tree look cool. I like the swirling etchings though.
next is a unicorn and druid.



FINALLY



They look great. Shoop, it will be an all out brawl to get that first copy. Even if it is just you an me.

Might and Magic 5

They just released concept and screenshots for the Dungeon faction! Looks great!!!

Take 3 parts Warhammer Fantasy Dark Elves and 2 parts HOMM and presto! You have these newly revised faction. Lead by dark elves ..well here, look for yourself...




and the piece de resistance!


Well actually the shadow upgradeable to black dragon would be that but the image was immense. These guys rock. The last 2 games with harpies and beholders were completely lame, I hated playing them. This game is going to be great.

They also released two other factions but no info on them. Sylvan (elves) and the Academy which seems to have a very similiar creature line up to Heroes 3.

The screenshots look great. Feb get here quick!

The living Dead!!!

Just discovered a brand new online game. It's free, a low tech for sure but the gameplay is great!

It's called Urban Dead
and it's awesome.

basically you start the game by making a character, one of 3 military types, several scientific positions, or civilians (cops, firefighters, normal people) or a zombie.

Every person and zombie in the game is a real player. The cool thing is, if a human is killed they become a zombie, and the zombies can get experience and better skills etc. Zombies with aid from scientists can be turned back to humans it's really cool.

You can read logs of huddled groups of survivors trapped in a mall with hundreds of player zombies trying to bash the doors in. Low level zombies are unable to open doors but higher level zombies begin to regain memories and can open doors, so players ahve to make larger and larger barricades to keep the zombies out of their ransackled bunker.

Right now my cop is out of ammo and hold up in the Birmingham Hotel. I have the doors secure but against a larger pack of zombies I'm dead! The neighborhood is quiet for now, although the church down the street is packed with bodies. I've only I could get into the gun store down the block.

I heard that the local precinct was completely overrun. 30 people wiped out in one night. Word of advice, don't sleep in police stations.

Yeah I know this isn't healthy for me.

Fwd:

George was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place.

Looking up toward heaven, he said "Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of my life and give up tequila."

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

George looked up again and said, "Never mind. I found one."

Birthdays of Sept 9th

Deion Sanders 1967
Adam Sandler 1966
Hugh Grant 1960
Micheal Keaton 1951
Tom Wopat, Luke from Dukes of Hazzard 1951
George Roger Waters, Pink Floyd 1943
William Bligh, captain of the HMS Bounty 1754


and the crown jewel

Cardinal Richelieu, 1585

he said this

"If you give me six lines written
by the most honest man, I will find
something in them to hang him."

Known for his crushing of a Huguenot rebellion.

Great guy to share a birthday with.

And he's FRENCH!

WHOLE CRAP!

Read about a new project that includes germ-line genetic engineering. I shouldn't have to explain the major problems with this sort of research.

Vacations Done...Now the Real Work begins

Yup. I'm back from RI. The whole ProteinClan is back. Suntanned and exfoliated from the glorious beaches of the Ocean State.

Tomorrow The Spouse of Proteinstar starts school. I start watching The Brood.

Saints protect me.

Ubisoft has released the creatures for the necropolis. The ghosts look great. No death knights though.

Looks like another P2P is going to bite the dust. Kazaa lost a major court battle. In the end the music industry is going to lose. Information is so easily obtained today tomorrow will be even easier. File sharing will continue to to go further and further underground. Until the industry realizes that paying nearly $20 bucks for a 1 dollar album is insane they will lose.

A compnay named Mashboxx is kind of neat in that it allows you to listen to a track several times before deciding the purchase. It's nice to hear the whole thing rather than 20 seconds. Unfortunately they only have Sony in their corner.

I'm taking 3 courses this semester. Saturday goes from 8am to 5pm. And I thought those guys in Abu Ghraib had it bad. I'd wear womens underwear on my head to waive these courses.

Good to see Shoop posting 5 days apart. Sorry Matt for that diatribe about #16, that's what you were trolling for though right?

Well that's about it. I'm reading some "non-fiction" book about the Ark of the Convenant. It mentions the Urim and Thummim. Yeah those are magical stones mentioned by Joesph Smith. Any book that gets it's "factual" information from a prophet from 1830 who has since given prophetic utterings which have been found false is useless. Check your sources Randall!

Yeah I promise to one of these days actually write a blog post that isn't ADD.

Here's a Proteinstar insight.

The majority of the people evacuated from New Orleans where horribly poor. Most were renters. With their place of residence completely destroyed and their jobs gone they have no reason to return. The only people who can afford to return to that city once it is rebuilt will be the wealthy or those with valuable technical skills. It being a major port city would of course require dockworkers and the like. New Orleans may have cleaned itself of it's massive poverty problem by foisting the dispossessed and poor on the likes of Houston and Baton Rouge. With the help of government aid the city will rebuild, with major adaptations, ie. no more slums in the low lands. I think in 5 to 10 years that city will be a BOOMING tourism town, hailed for it's utopian qualities. The liberal democrats claiming it a victory for their modern and progressive policies...all the while missing the very truth that it was the local liberal government that failed the very people they claimed to support. Rather that deal with underdeveloped canals and levees they focused on giant floating casinos. Rather than dealing with government aid cuts by selling bonds to raise funds for their cities required protection, they drew up plans for a huge casino island in the middle of their lake. Rather than develop functioning methods for evacuating their populace they blame the federal government for not doing what they should have.

They fell for their own lie that life is Mardi Gras, and did nothing about their sinking city.

There, that's a poignant little rant.

Mission accomplished.