I finally got around to watching the end of Kyle XY, and MAN, I have not been as disappointed in how a series ended (or how the writers/directors wanted to take the series if it ever restarted - Julie Plec Answers Questions About Kyle XY) since Cowboy Bebop.

Ugh ugh ugh. Kyle and Jessi made a perfect yin-yang sort of relationship, Kyle's innocent, logical, contemplative where Jessi's devious, competitive, adventurous, and in the last season they were rubbing off on each other - Nicole tells Kyle he's angrier, lying comfortably; Jessi shows the beginnings of restraint and sacrifice.

Julie Plec talks about Kyle's "prophet" destiny, how he's to wander the earth alone fixing things ... we already have The Pretender, and the Kwisatz Haderach. The crap about a relationship between Kyle and Jessi being "ultimately self-destructive" pisses me off. I feel like that degrades Jessi. First, the idea that Jessi's broken - Kyle even addresses that in-character: he had all the advantages, he got a ride out of the lab on a gurney, not an explosion, and got a loving family instead of a drunk guy with a knife. Sure, Jessi's messed up, but it's easy to love someone who's perfect, and Amanda, as written, is too sweet and too close to perfect to be real. I loved watching their relationship grow in the first two seasons, but I'd like to think that's what every first-love is like: too sweet to be real. But I also don't know anyone whose first love was their only love, or who married their first love and was happy. Ugh, so mad.

I was really hoping for a sort of Reverse Hancock. The show establishes that while logic and experimentation allows for the discovery of new abilities, it is emotion that fuels those powers. Instead of Hancock throwing himself out of a hospital to get away from Mary and save her life, go the opposite route: when Kyle and Jessi are together, they can do things they wouldn't have imagined possible, but apart, they lose their focus, their drive, and their moral center; they become more and more normal.

Start at the cliffhanger; Kyle mind-wipes Cassidy, goes full-on Dark Side for a while. Give Amanda an opportunity to see just how scary Kyle's world is, give the Tragers a chance to see Kyle isn't just an innocent, super-smart teenage boy, that he has responsibilities (dare I say it, a destiny), and give Jessi a chance not only to grow as a person (stick her with 'saving' the Tragers every week while Kyle's off on his mission of Terrible Vengeance), but save Kyle from himself.

You could have Kyle and Jessi learn that, since they need to constantly challenge their own expectations to grow, they need a partner; since their powers need strong emotions to fuel their abilities, the more they trust each other, the deeper an emotional bond they can form, and the stronger a bond, the more powerful they become. Eventually, they can fulfill their Latnok-anticipated roles, but with each other, they don't need a secret-society support structure because they can do anything; with each other as sounding boards, they don't ever have to worry about doing anything shortsighted or evil. They'd be the future of mankind, a metaphor for life, science, religion, and marriage all rolled into one.


Or, you know, instead, Kyle can be some weird solitary Jesus/Muad'Dib/Jarod/JC Denton clusterfuck-hybrid, Amanda can get her heart broken again, and Jessi can be free to fulfill her nightmare-destiny of being alone for the rest of her life.

Fuck you, Julie Plec.

Two posts in a row about almost the same thing: is anyone looking at picking up Champions Online? Open beta starts tomorrow; only way to get into Open Beta is continuing from Closed Beta or having Pre-Ordered. That being said, is anyone in Closed Beta or waiting for a pre-order code?

So has anyone else tried playing FreeRealms? It's like Fable and the Sims had an MMO baby. It's nowhere near hardcore (in terms of graphics or gameplay) and it looks like it won't run on anything but XP or Vista, so I'd guess that quite a few people who had heard of it wouldn't have bothered to even try it.

My recent experiences with WoW progression raiding have been driving me nuts lately, and FreeRealms is, well, free, so I gave it a try ... and despite its simple nature, FR is pretty fun.


Just wondering if anyone I know is there.

IF you haven't already hit Rolling Stone for Matt Taibbi's article, go now:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print


The kicker:

"The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"

But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.

Good luck with that, America. And enjoy tax season."

Working through a backlog of tickets, I found an email that began as follows:

"This is an automated reponse to your email.

No one will ever see or read the email you just
sent"


and for some reason I spent the next five minutes laughing hysterically.

Warren Ellis fans will have already seen this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/09/germany-serial-killer

Hotlinked because I'm too lazy to copy and upload to my own space.

If you're writing a rambling screed to a faceless corporate entity to provide clarification for your previous rambling screed, it's probably best to proofread your clarification for obvious errors:

[My last email dt contain all the relevant data and its formatting may
have been garblsimos@hermes~/Desktop/Downloads$ cat *attack*

I kind of hope that's not just an accidental copy-paste, I hope his cat actually saw what he was writing and took justice into its own furious little paws.

Tangential to BrawdYmchwil's last post:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/23/what-went-wrong.html

Especially since my last post was a one-liner about crappy indie rock and my next post will probably be about a bowl of cereal or something, but:

Gillian (my girlfriend of the last 3.5 years, for those who haven't been following along) and I are getting married.

Since I don't really ever plan for the future and since I don't talk about her much on LJ, I'm sure those of you who have been following along are pretty surprised.

It's ok; she was pretty surprised, too.


I'm not sure we have an exact date, but we were looking at September 19th 2009. No, we didn't know it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day when we picked it. Yes, I know that means some of you will have iron-clad obligations for that day. It's okay; you probably didn't need the pirate-flag centerpiece anyway.


Those who are even vaguely interested in attending, please let me know. I was going to just write up a list like a normal person, but after Gillian went through, tallied up family, old friends, school friends, WoW friends, new friends, red fish, blue fish, and guests, she was, I think over 200. So if she's going to have to pare her list down a bit, I realized that just sending an invite to everyone I've ever been friends with wouldn't be fair.

So I was going to filter the list myself - BUT I'm terrible at keeping in touch with people, AND if I filtered out people who don't want to be in Buffalo in late September I wouldn't invite myself. Instead, I'm just dropping it on my journal for people to respond to.


If I still have your phone number in my phone and expected you would post but you don't, I'll probably call you. I've been working in a call center for years, so I hate telephones; it may take a while.



So, uh, comments are all screened, leave me your name and address if you want a formal invitation.

http://news.aol.com/article/hero-marine-wont-get-medal-of-honor/179205

A marine who threw himself on a live grenade to save his fellow soldiers is given the Navy Cross, instead of the more prestigious Medal of Honor ... because he was hit by friendly fire first!

Ta-da!

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

Lower is better. I probably could have spent more than 2-3 minutes on it and gotten better, but I tend to screw things up the more I second-guess myself, so who knows....

"Mariner's Revenge Song" is probably the only song by The Decemberists that I like, but boy is it awesome.

I'm sure most of you have seen the new Batman movie by now, and will recognize this:



I'm hoping that at least half of you have seen Citizen Kane and recognize this:





The two scenes aren't actually that similar, I know, but there is a certain confluence: in each scene, the sheer intensity with which the actor devotes himself to his clapping both alienates the actor from the other characters and suffuses the entire scene with an air of menacing, mocking foreshadowing.


It makes me want to take Orson Welles by the arm and say "Hey there, big guy, you look upset ... why so serious?"

"There are people to sell down south, honey."

http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=15130&cc=US

If you've never played it, go buy it. This is seriously one of the best games of the last 5 years and it's $4.99. Unless the only games you like are sports sims, dating sims, card games, or games where 80% of the development time was spent on groundbreaking research into breast-jiggling physics, you will like this game.

You owe it to yourself to buy this game. You also owe it to Jesus, and Democracy, and that homeless guy you hit while driving drunk last summer. Don't walk, run! Seriously, why are you still reading this?

"I CAN'T THE SECURITY TO DOWNLOAN IT NEEDS A EMAIL PASSWOOD AND I DON" T KNOW IT AND THE MAC OR THE MODEM IT DOES NOT CORRESSPOND TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS CAN YOU HELP THANK YOU"

My job is magical.