Tuesday, September 21, 2010

OGL odia la felicidad

OGL sólo sabe contar una historia estos días:
Kronikas Kuadradas es un webcomic donde OGL y los integrantes de su estudio exponen sus puntos de vista y utilizan como foro para criticar a sus detractores. A OGL se le acusa, principalmente, de crearse su séquito de gente que está de acuerdo con su visión del cómic en México y de fomentar un "culto" a su persona. En ese aspecto no lo critico. El hombre como sea saca a la luz su trabajo, apoya a los artistas jóvenes y publica, de manera irregular, pero publica, cosa que muchos de sus detractores no hacen.

Mi principal objeción con OGL no es su vida privada ni pública, sino su filosofía. Se ha dicho en el pasado seguidor de la filosofía Zen, al punto de publicar el Manual del Guerrero Kundalini, donde expone a sus lectores a sus principales inspiraciones tras la ideología de Karmatrón. Dicho esto quiero comenzar a hacer una crítica de su obra en base a la filosofía Kundalini y la la escuela de Zen que aprendí con mi viejo maestro.



OGL confronta a uno de sus amigos; "¿Porqué no eres un cuadrado como yo? ¿Cómo te atreves a ser rombo?". Con esta aseveración es incapaz de afrontar la falla de su juicio; critica a el medio nuevo con los estándares de los medios viejos. En esta tira critica que los eventos modernos los hagan llamar Eventos de Cómics, sin ver que el manga también es arte secuencial, tanto que Miller y Eisner se alimentan de él, el anime y el cosplay siendo derivativos del manga. OGL habla de una memoria histórica que no le pertenece a su amigo el Rombo. Si hablara de Ryoichi Ikegame, Rumiko Takahashi ú Osamu Tesuka estaría hablando en términos que el Rombo entendería, y más si lo hiciera con la misma compasión y amor que con Romita y Eisner. OGL falla en entender que la manera de compartir las cosas que ama es con amor. Sin embargo su falla es decir: "Sólo lo cuadrado es bello", por supuesto que parte enojado, hay que admirar que la gente a quien dirige su desprecio es feliz mientras él no.

Para compartir debes de entender a la persona enfrente de ti. Es egoísta forzar a otra persona a tomar de ti sin que tomes nada de ella, más que tomar sin dar nada a cambio.

Chis Chis es feliz y viene a compartir su felicidad con su amigo Joe, quien no sabe tomar la felicidad de otros. Piensa que la manera de hacer intimidad es compartir su miseria. Chis Chis, quien es noble y quiere a su amigo, comparte del pan de su mesa, sin embargo el pan es amargo y se une a su miseria.

Debemos ser conscientes del pan que convidamos en nuestra mesa. Ésta, más que la de nuestra casa, son nuestras palabras y actos. ¿Qué pan le darías a un amigo que viene a visitarte? ¿Qué le darías para untar? No conozco a nadie que sirva pan rancio o leche cortada, ¿porqué hacerlo con tus palabras?

Hay gente que piensa que no se merece ser feliz mientras otro ser sufra, Joe rehúsa el pan fresco de Chis Chis. La felicidad de los otros no se consigue sufriendo nosotros, ¿O es que Joe no quiere que nadie sea feliz? Joe está triste y sin embargo se queda en el suelo, sin hacer nada. OGL ha dicho que la inacción es tan culposa como la acción, ¿entonces Joe no es culpable?


En este caso OGL se equivoca. Para construir un círculo perfecto debemos construirnos primero a nosotros mismos. Debemos reconocer nuestro lugar en el universo, si soy albañil debo preocuparme por colocar cada ladrillo con amor, si soy doctor debo de aliviar a mi paciente. Es qué hacemos respecto a otros lo que nos define, ser un quejoso no alivia ni construye edificios.

Y estoy consciente que escribir este blog no curará a nadie, por eso elijo criticar sin encono y con compasión. Actuar con amor es actuar de verdad.


Joe hace una pregunta no por obtener una respuesta, sino para imponer una opinión. Si le interesara la respuesta de su amigo escucharía lo que tiene que decir y lo entendería antes de destruir su réplica.

Debemos preguntar y verdaderamente interesarnos por lo que los demás dicen, no preguntar para imponer. Joe no quiere escuchar a su amigo, sino destruirlo.

Para OGL Axayácatl es un hombre de paja (¿perro de paja?), encarna las opiniones con las que no está de acuerdo, no tiene amor alguno por el Peje (en eso estamos de acuerdo), pero en vez de analizar y tratar de entender porqué dice lo que dice pone en ridículo a un hermoso xoloizcuintli (nos amigos tienen una perrita xoloizcuintli, Maya, es un amor canino). Muestra a Axayácattl con la nariz metida en un libro, absorto, incapaz de ver la realidad a su alrededor. En eso estoy de acuerdo con OGL, la verdad no está en un libro o en la opinión de una sola persona. La verdad está en todos lados. En todos los argumentos, en todas las manifestaciones humanas hay verdad, incluso en las mentiras, porque ellas nos hablan más de quien las cuenta.

Debo estar de acuerdo con Axayácatl, yo tampoco creo en el sol. No tengo porqué creer en el sol, Existe independientemente de lo que yo crea ú opine. El sol es parte de la realidad objetiva más allá de los sentidos. La tierra gira alrededor de él a pesar que los antiguos y algunos necios piensen que el sol gira alrededor de ellos. Lo que otros opinen no hace que el sol brille menos o no se mueva alrededor del centro de una galaxia.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

10 stupid things about comics

Don't get me wrong, I love comics. They have given me endless hours of joy, made me laugh, but also made me cry and rage. For every Watchmen there are hundreds of mediocre comics,for every brilliant story arc there are tired old clichés that need to be put to sleep, these ten things are a personal pet peeve of mine.

10. Getting superpowers always means running around in pajamas



You are a victim of a chemical laboratory accident, come to adolescence and manifest your latent mutant power or get bitten by a radioactive halibut, what do you do next?
Of course combat crime! But you have to protect your loved ones from the vindication of such criminals, what shall one do?



Of course, silly me.

9. Death has a revolving door.

Oh no! Captain Pastiche has died in the line of duty! Such a heroic sacrifice! Such lavish funeral and the heartfelt farewell of all his friends, but wait! Less than 6 months later he is back! Turns out the Captain Pastiche who died was a clone/ a robot / a ghost/ from an alternate universe / a shapeshifter /an illusionist. Then the new creative team comes with new ideas and kills him for real! Next issue he is revived through magic/hyperdimensional science/alien medicine.




Don't worry they are all OK now.

8. Being a woman and loving a superhero is a capital offense.

Oh no! The new bad guy in town is the real deal! He has brutally murdered/crippled/tortured/raped/all of the above our hero's girlfriend!!!


Except because it has been done so many times there is a whole website devoted to it; womeninrefrigerators.com

7. Superheroes cannot/have not/will not/do not want to influence world events.

They have god-like powers, they could end world famine and disarm every hostile power in a whim, Super Elastic Scientist has technology that could cure cancer/aids/ebola/malaria/the common cold in a jiffy, yet the choose to let humanity decide their fate.


Even when Doom has done even greater atrocities he is no match for some real world angst. What a pussy.

6. The new superhero in town beats the old supervillain without even breaking a sweat.




Squirrel-friggin'-girl defeated Dr.-Bloody- Doom.

5. Wretched-looking heroes get hot girlfriends.



Whatever you do NEVER click this link, this is rule 34 in action, DON'T ever think about clicking THIS.

4. Spiderman has had to contractually appear in every Marvel comics title even if it doesn't make any friggin' sense.




3.Marvel's utter lack of respect for their own properties.




HULK SMASH PUNY MOTORCYCLE!!!!!





Hey! I am soo kewt!!!! I can haz genocide???

2. This guy:





I hate drawing feet!!!!



Even when drawing people in "calm"scenes they shall grimace!!! It's edgy!!!


Oh no! Someone has revealed my utter lack of knowledge about anatomy!!!

.

Oh no, I did it again! I shall rename this character the Incredible Wretched Girl

1. There are hundreds of superpowered individuals, yet bank robberies and petty theft are still committed every day.

You would think that by now the criminals of Ersatz City would have smarted out, as no matter what they do they are always foiled by Pastiche man and his trusted sidekick, but no. Even when the hero could use supersmell to bust every meth lab in the world and end the war on drugs he chooses to stop small time thieves one by one instead.




Even with the spiffy outfit they shall know by now that the superhero is waiting for them outside.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Leteroj de la Estonteco (Science fiction short story)


¿Kiel vin nomas? Neniu volas paroli kun mi.

I always was a natural for languages, that’s why I took on Esperanto. Imagine my surprise when I found someone typing perfectly natural and fluent Esperanto on Chat Roulette.

Her name was Katya, no one wanted to chat with her because they couldn’t understand her and she didn’t have her webcam on. She had been online for a couple of hours trying to find someone who understood. Not because she was studying Esperanto and wanted to practice.

Vivas kun mia fratina, estas la jaro du mil kvincent, estas la lasta familio sur la tero.

My Esperanto was good enough to follow her frenetic typing, she told me she lived with her sister and their father inside a bunker, the last humans alive in the year Twenty Five Hundred. Her father just installed a machine that could connect her to the Internet of the world before the big disaster. Before that it was only books, she had read the classics in Esperanto and generated their own electricity with a treadmill.

Naturally, I had questions; Had she been typing in English I would have dismissed it as a prank, but why would anyone take the time to type in perfect Esperanto just for laughs? Besides, a person from the far future wouldn’t speak English but something else, not pure Esperanto, but one dialect spiced with Spanish words and expressions.

“Nia patro prizorgas nosotras, ĝi eliras al la mondon de eksteren por atingi nin manĝo, akvo kaj medicinoj. "

It made sense that if they lived underground they would need vitamin supplements, the treadmill where they generated their power and used also to purify water would keep them fit and the books they had read would keep their mind busy. Her sister, Met, was only a year younger. Both were fascinated with the “Old World” but saddened because they would never touch it, I also could speak to her.

Vi lernus La anglan, tiel vi povus povi uzi pli libroj kaj muziko " I said, a little ashamed my Esperanto would appear awkward and inelegant for her.

I offered to teach them English, at the best of my capacities. I asked if they could listen to me in their speakers, but turns out they were using an old PowerPC with no sound or video card. Even though they could not watch video and the pictures they could see were in 16-bit colors they were astonished by how beautiful our world was.
I was curious as how the world had come to an end:

Nia patro nin rakontas ke al la fino la bastardos finis por mortigi inter ili.

A man-made disaster sometime in the Twenty Fifth Century, guess we didn’t bother to seek out new life and new civilizations after all.

I asked if we could prevent it. For me it would not happen for centuries, there was still time. But Katya told me I’d have to be alive 400 years only to be dismissed as a madman.

After some weeks of talking to them it was clear that by now any prankster would have dropped the act or asked me for money. If this was indeed real I could track their IP, and possibly discover a gateway into the far future.

I could find it easily, but it turned out to be a proxy server somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, some independent island nation that financed itself with illegal servers. I frantically asked in several forums how I could unmask an IP behind a proxy, they always told me to find the administrator, but if the log file was deleted there’s no way I could find out unless I contacted the authorities. But what would I tell them? “Help, there are two girls trapped in a bunker, ah, by the way, they only speak Esperanto and live five hundred years in the future”

And asking them about their location was useless, according to them they lived in the middle of a wasteland in the mountains, but only know so because their father told them so.

I repeatedly asked to speak to him.

Paĉjo ne volas paroli kun vi, se ĝi faras lin sentu ke al ni donas falsajn esperojn. "

He didn’t want to give them false hopes, For all purposes I am long dead, they are just speaking to ghosts.


We talked less and less, sometimes only an hour a week compared to the four hours I would devote in the beginning and had to stop only to attend school and do enough homework to pass. My Esperanto improved very rapidly, they would teach me some words and at the best of my capacity I tried to teach them some English, much to the chagrin of their father.

One day Katya appeared;
Paĉjo jam ne volas ami min, ĉi tiuj tagoj amas pli al mia fratina, por iu ne ĉesas tuŝi ŝin. "

I didn’t know what she meant, for the first time I could understand the words, but not the meaning behind them. I asked what she meant when she said their Father doesn’t want to love her anymore, she became too old.

Then I understood everything.

That man kept them inside a padded room to have sex with them as many times as he wanted, he had kidnapped them when they were very young and created a fantasy world so they never ever wanted to escape.

That was the last time I talked to her and the administrator does not return my calls anymore.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

How I would improve TWILIGHT

Accept it,the Twilight craze is everywhere. The same power that has made vampires popular; the sex appeal, the sense of tragedy, immortality and bloodthirst, is what has wrought their undoing.
Vampires are monsters. Sexual monsters, eliminate one from the equation and you have nothing. Long gone are the days of Nosferatu, The Hunger, even Interview with a Vampire, which believe it or not is more than ten years old.

And as I stared agape as how this corny edulcorated travesty became really popular I decided to conduct a little experiment, I would watch it, voluntarilym as it was just starting on Movie City.

And because I found out that it had lovely Christian Serratos in the cast.
C'mon, she can reach the doorknob!!!



So, I went and saw the whole thing, I was not angry at it, I was distraught, as I felt the bloody thing was incomplete, I spent many hours going through it in my mind and all of the sudden epiphany hit!

It could be better.

So, without further ado, Let me tell you how I would make Twilight a better, even watchable movie:

CARLYLE CULLEN IS THE BAD GUY

We see Peter Faccinelli (three months my senior, OMNG) with dyed hair as the spitting image of Tom Cruise as Lestat in Interview with a vampire.

You can't get any gheyer than this.. OH WAIT YES YOU CAN

who basically sits around doing pretty much nothing, he is an emasculated patriarch, playing baseball and cooking human food with his pretty-looking family of cardboard cutouts.

But what if things were different?


The very concept of Vampire Baseball is wrong in so many levels...

Carlyle is an outcast of Vampire society, he rejected the way of the Predator in order to follow a legendary way of Vampire Enlightenment (In Vampire:The Masquerade terminology this is called Golconda) and he parted with similar minded vampires in order to create a small coterie dedicated to cultivate their humanity and pursue a semi-normal existence, where they could even, in a limited way, mingle with humans.

Edward is his child, his progeny. Carlyle embraced him because he saw himself in him, even as a human Edward couldn't fit into society, but was kind-hearted (Edward even hints that his appearance is part of his vampire existence, it would be interesting to imagine that Edward was plain looking, even deformed when he was human) as well as the rest of his small cult. Carlyle knows that high humanity translates to a more human appearance, the capacity to blush, mimic breathing (Vampires don't do it), eat human food and develop a higher tolerance to sunlight. (That beautiful sparkle Edward gives while under the Sun? Well, if he overdid it he would be reduced to ashes, as every other vampire)
IT BUUUUUURNNNNNS!!!!!!

When Edward meets Bella he sees himself all over again, he makes the same mistake Carlyle made with him a century ago, he sees himself (in my version Bella is even more average looking, just as in the book) so he wants to approach her to understand the human condition, he develops feelings because he perceives her as "safe".

Everything is fine until Edward takes Bella to meet his family and Carlyle lays eyes on her for the first time (Yes I am well aware Carlyle takes care of Bella just after the car crash, couldn't the doctor in the family be Esmee instead?). Carlyle is happily preparing the salad, when he sees Bella he just cracks the bowl. Just as if you showed some quality-grade heroin to a recovering addict. Edward just reintroduced Carlyle to his former primary source of nourishment, young virgin women (we also know beforehand that Bella is menstruating, Oh, the scent of virgin blood!). The dinner goes as planned, but Carlyle has to excuse himself, he is all shaken up by the experience.

Then a series of mysterious murders ensue, girls from Bella's school (Yes, in my version Suzie Crabgrass dies, much to my chagrin). Charlie Swan, Bella's dad, becomes increasingly suspicious and overprotective (then again, who wouldn't? his daughter is hanging out with a kid who is always tense, never smiles and is as pale as paper)

The vampire baseball scene still takes place, but it's not interrupted by the Trackers (they are unnecessary in my version), Bella cuts herself with a splinter, the vampires usually grab the bat a little too tight. At the smell of blood Carlyle goes full vampire, Esmee and the other members of the family contain him and give Edward a chance to take Bella as far as possible from the bloodthirsty monster.

The chase that ensues continue taking place,but Charlie is also a pursuer, in his mind Edward got his daughter in some crazy shiat and now they are running together.Carlyle also goes for Reneé, Bella's mom, but he tortures and kills her losing more of his humanity on the way, and he ambushes Bella at the dance academy with the promise of delivering her mom.

The showdown, where Carlyle delivers Reneé's head, becomes more poignant and tragic, here is a monster who was Edward's beacon of virtue, Carlyle gives Edward the choice of giving up Bella to him and leave his life for good or be destroyed, Edward has no doubt in his mind, he has to stop his sire at all costs. Edward puts a stake to Carlyle's heart and then burns the building to the ground.

Bella is safe, but now Edward has committed one of the worst crimes in Vampire society, he has destroyed another vampire, so now the Volturi, the enforcers of Vampiric traditions, are coming to destroy him as he has become the prey. He can't take Bella with him, nor embrace her as he knows that it would mean her certain death.

And with Edward gone fugitive New Moon starts in an organic, non-awkward manner.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Welcome from the 365 days of Astronomy!!!!

As part of my contribution we decided to edit the complete interview along with additional graphics in order to explain better the wonderful process by which the Mayans calculated their calendar. This video will be available here August 31st 2009, please be patient! Here is a teaser:



In the mean time you can Buy Victor Torres Roldán's book Ciudades Estelares at Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/oxtkkx
or Contact the author: vientoro (at) gmail (dot) com

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Kickyoutube Bookmarklet

Use this bookmarklet to convert and download any video from Youtube to any popular formats, I personally use it to put videos in my iPod, but my brother rather extract the mp3.

Instructions:
Drag the following link to your taskbar

Kickyoutube

When you visit the videopage at youtube click it and it will automatically take you to the KickYouTube frame, choose the option, wait until the system prompts you to save link as.

Enjoy!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

A horrible person has died... He will be remembered as a saint.

This single response posted at the latimes blogs summarizes everything I hate.

THE DEATH OF MICHEAL WAS LIKE 9/11 EVENT IN WORLD TRADE CENTER .

IS A GREAT LOST TO THE WORLD AND MOSTLY AFRICANS BECAUSE HE WAS AN AFRICAN DESPITE ALL.

IF THERE COULD BE A RANSOM FOR DEATH PEOPLE LIKE LUCKY DUBE AND 2PAC WOULD HAVE BEEN ALIVE BUT IS IMPOSSIBLE ACCEPT BY MIRACLE .

THREE AFRICAN ILLUSTRIOUS SONS HAVE GONE .

I THINK I WILL MOURN HIM WITH HIS MUSIC WHICH I WILL PLAY TILL NEXT DAY AND A BIG BOTTLE OF WHISKEY AND ICE.

Posted by: AYOKA IMPETUS | June 25, 2009 at 10:29 PM


How do you compare the death of a single individual to the death of 100,000? I seldom call people idiots, but this guy, uneducated, deluded himself into believing that some popstar's life is more important than his and now he is going to get pissed drunk.

And the same brainiac at movieline gives us this jewel, apparently the lad fancies himself a poet:



UPDATE: Another pathetic human used the death of an unknown to waste her life: (Google cache, the original was deleted but there's an image of it)



You may have read at the description of my blog; "If you value someone you don't know more than someone you do then you are no friend of mine". These two retards value their imaginary bonds with a stranger more than those of the people they have, OMNG, the stupid woman is going to abort because of these ideas.

And yet since Thursday 6000 people have died, will they mourn for any of them?

D&D Alignments (Part 1 of 9) Chaotic Good: Jenny McCarthy

The Alignment series is a personal exploration through the nature of Good and Evil, I know that reality is complex and I do not mean to reduce a person to a single aspect, but I mean to question what everyone holds as the paragons of truth, My first subject of analysis is actually a force of good:



These kids are getting better and I will not shut up and will not stop fighting about it.

Jenny McCarthy is a revolutionary, someone who will not just take the authority's word at face value, she senses something wrong and acts upon it. She knew her child Evan was different,and while at first she fell into the Indigo Children trap she knew better, there was another cause, The Thymerosol in the vaccines that The System demands every child to take made her kid sick, so, according to expert advice and her mommy instinct she undertook a one-woman crusade against Big Pharma and is awaking consciences across the United States and soon around the world.

She is a revolutionary and a hero, someone who honestly wants to make the world safe for our children.

So; I prithee, riddle me this...

Why can it be proven that she is directly responsible for (as of 6/28/09) 178 deaths?



She is a genocide and preys upon the ignorance and fear of people to further her agenda, she desperatelt wants to find reason in an irrational world, as her child is not normal she wants to make someone responsible, she wants to ,make someone pay, she is avengeful and close-minded, she already decided on her bad guy, although the study she bases her conclusions upon has been long discredited.

But she is beautiful and a force of good, and yet she murders by sheer indifference towards reality.
Welcome to Supervillain logic: No one chooses to do evil, even the most brutal monsters think they are doing the right thing. And Jenny McCarthy is the Superhero in this scenario, who could lift a hand against that angelic face?

But she must be stopped, people need to tell reality from falsehoods, the problem is people do not want to know reality, they are content with the first thing they are told.
Alongside the series we will see people who have lead to destruction, but are considered Good, and people who have done great deeds, but are considered evil.

Remember; You shouldn't have heroes or villains, they are human just as you and me.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Portable Music, Then and Now.






The disadvantages of the Sanyo Walkman from 1985:
1. Bulky. Carrying that thing required either a leather pouch or a strap which was a fashion don't, or putting it into the backpack, which was awkward if you wanted to change the tape.
2. Requires disposable batteries (you could buy rechargeable, but they are not included in the price tag)
3. You are pretty much stuck with a predetermined order of songs, you could tape a mixtape, but taking into consideration the recording vs. playing ratio (1:1, it takes as long to record as to play it) and the quality loss on each subsequent generation of taping, you get what you originally got.
4. Skipping a song you are not in the mood for listening requires an additional effort.
5. Tapes occupy additional space, you may want to listen to more than one hour of music when you travel.
6. Useless if you want to go jogging.
7. Magnetic tape is vulnerable to wear and tear.
8. You want to listen to that song again? Rewind, which takes a great toll on battery life. We used to counter this by rewinding manually with a pen, which in retrospective looks totally delayed.
9. Utter inability to look for an specific song unless you were familiar with every minute of the tape.
10. Hiss, that bloody, wanker hiss...

The disadvantages of the iPod Shuffle 1 Gb from the XXI century;
1. Your dog can swallow it.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Little Fears - Role-playing Game


Your sister has been kidnapped and taken to the depths of the Realm of the Demon-Lord Amduscias, who needs the life force of young women to open the Gates of Hades and wreak havoc and destruction upon everything you know and love. It's only you and your ragtag party who are aware of this. Heavily outnumbered you have another problem, everyone else thinks you are being silly, that monsters and demons aren't real.
Then again, you are only eight years old.
Little Fears asks the question;
'What if every single thing you believed as a kid was terrifyingly real; the Bogeyman, The Man with the Sack, but also your imaginary friends'?
In the genre of Survival Horror this game stands out as your character faces the greatest disadvantages, ones that we ourselves suffered as kids, feeling we couldn't control a hostile world.
Besides Monsters, the characters of Little Fears also have to deal with real-life horrors; bullies, abusive teenagers, criminals and other abusive adults. The game still offers a very real possibility of Kids being shot to death, kidnapped or abused.
I offer this game in PDF form as it has been out of print for a long time and copies on eBay are rare and expensive (starting at $150). As a bonus you can listen to the unofficial soundtrack the Industrial Band Janus composed for the German version of the game.

Enjoy!

Download the Soundtrack!!!
Janus - Kleine Ängste

http://rapidshare.com/files/123323223/JA-KA.rar

Read The Book
Little Fears - The Role-playing Game of Childhood Terrors Little Fears - The Role-playing Game of Childhood Terrors Dan A strange survival horror style roleplaying game where creatures like the Boogeyman and the Closet Monster are real, and the power of children's belief can work magical effects

Saturday, June 13, 2009

How I would improve the Star Wars Movies

11.- The Jedi Council is a corrupt and complacent cult more interested in holding political power than defending the galaxy. The Head of the Council is not Yoda, but a fat slobbering Huttese Jedi who hasn't seen a day of action in its life.

10.- No midichlorians, of course. Qui-Gon has little or no evidence to support his claim (that Anakin is The Chosen One) and he is viewed by the Council as a lunatic. Obi-wan is torn between loyalty to his master and loyalty to the Elders.

9.- Boba Fett is not a clone, just an awesome bounty hunter who got himself a Mandalorian Battle Suit in a Flea Market. Jango Fett is pure Mandalorian stock and both are not related, Boba Fett's past remains a mystery.

8.-A complete rewrite of the scene before Darth Vader; Anakin, charred and mutilated, is found by Palpatine, who is surrounded by troopers, "Well, look at yourself, dog, you look like Bantha droppings. You are of no use to me, please die". Palpatine turns his back on him and Charred Anakin points a stub of flesh where his arm was and mentally chokes everyone around. Palpatine laughs; "Now we're talking! come." and the fully armored Darth Vader scene does no longer include the DO NOT WANT.

7.-Love triangle between Obi-wan, Anakin and Padmè. Anakin's jealousy is an integral part of his fall to the Dark Side and Obi-wan is fully responsible, and all because of a fine piece of blue-blooded booty. His twisting of the facts in Episode IV are because of guilt.

6.-Anakin slaughters Amidala in a fit of rage before Obi-wan's eyes, the royal showdown ensues. Luke was already born.

5.-Boba Fett decides not to hang out with Jabba much longer, he continues preying upon rebellion targets and there is a big showdown between him and Han Solo, whom he tracked to Endor.

4.-Anakin Skywalker is a teenager when found by Obi-wan. he is already a great pilot.

3.-Jar Jar Binks is an anarchist primitivist who oposses Boss Nazz' regime based on his politics of racial hatred against the human squatters of Naboo (ruled by Amidala) and he is certainly not goofy. His distrust on institutions and his idealism makes him a puppet for Palpatine's ambitions anyways.

2.-The Battle of Endor takes place in Kashyyyk as originally intended, in episode three we get to return to the Wookie planet.

1.-Luke and Leia are not brother and sister. Luke is certainly Anakin's and Padme's child, but Leia is Bail and his wife's child. Leia's mother plays an important part as a Harriet Tubman-like character who helps a few Jedi escape the Great Jedi Purge.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Why I don't believe in... (Part 1, UFOs)

I a an openminded person, that doesn't mean I will believe everything you tell me. I like fantastic things, I am ready to believe a bacteria can live inside a can of hairspray. But I also like to put ideas to the test. During my life there are many things I stopped believing and many others I started to know.
When I was a child I was fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life but as more information has become available here are the questions that made me stop believe. If you can give me informed evidence backed by real science I will believe, but the "I don't know and we cannot expect to know" answer just doesn't really cut it for me.

1. Let's assume that UFOs are piloted starcrafts from another planet and there are sentient beings inside; What do they eat?
Really, have you heard about Moctezuma's revenge? Foreigners can get violently sick when trying food from a different continent, and that's assuming the aliens are carbon-based chordates like us. (Sillicon-based lifeforms present a yet-unsolvable problem; Carbon Dioxide, the stuff we exhale is a gas, but Sillicon Dioxide, what such lifeform would exhale; is a solid, so no Rock Monsters)

2. Let's assume they can eat our food without major discomfort; How did they build their immune system?
If you read War of the Worlds you will remember this spelled doom for the Martian Invaders. H. G. Wells based this conclusion on the fact that visitors from other lands bring with them and are exposed to new pathogens. Let's say that somehow they developed immunity thanks to advanced medical techniques, what about the pathogens they bring? Smallpox caused many deaths in the New World upon the arrival of the Conquistadors, who were very few. If a pathogen from beyond the stars ever arrived and contaminated us, we would surely be all dead as our immune response would be unprecedented, or an alien substance would kill us by anaphylaxis, that's the root cause for allergies.

3. Let's assume they can eat your food and are sterile; How do they propel their spaceships?
Let's assume our visitors come from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, which is 4 light years away; Michio Kaku analyzes the matter in this article. Not even Planck-Energy propulsion is able to propel a single atom to anything closer to lightspeed and Wormholes, which are largely theoretical, are either; too expensive (in energy requirements) to produce, largely unstable or one-way streets.

But Kaku gives us a way around the first three problems:

4. Unmanned, Robotic probes are far more plausible than manned spacecrafts which must account for the ticket back home.
Here are two very elegant solutions;
a) The probes were sent long ago and left to drift in space, just as our Voyager probes and they are able to transmit information back home.
b) The probes were sent via a wormhole. As they are one-way, they can utilize all their energy in research, collect samples and send back information.

I am more fond of this solution, it paints the aliens as not different from us, as we have sent robotic probes to explore our own solar system and it is not far-fetched that another civilization does the same in a bigger scale. However this solution also brings its own problems we must tackle.

5. If they can't return, what happens to them? How come there aren't any remains?
What happens to the probes after they finish their useful life? Do they self destruct? If so why haven't there been any unexplained explosions without any debris? Why hasn't anyone found a carcass of one?
We must remember something if we were to extrapolate from our own experiences, we sent our probes WANTING THEM TO BE FOUND.That's why the Voyager missions include messages and the Golden Record, so a possible alien may know us and locate our system and why not? return the call.

6.You may say; There are captured probes, they are held by the military in top secret locations, they were reverse engineered and that's why we have had such a great expansion in technology. But there is no evidence for that.

a) You are thinking too USA centric. A probe may have fallen into other government, agencies or individual's hands. The rule of thumb regarding conspiracies is the lesson we learned from Watergate, a high-end government conspiracy can be brought down by a single individual. Where is the Deep Throat of the UFO conspiracy?

b) You can't find a single technological advance that appeared spontaneously without any antecedents. You can backtrack any invention in evolutionary levels. Even the greatest invention of all, Quantum Computing, can be traced to small, logical steps, and that's technology we don't have as of yet.

c) C'mon, dude, you are taking your science fiction too seriously. The so-called UFO phenomenon can be traced back to stories in Pulp Sci-fi Magazines from the 30's, the same magazines that once contained stories from Hollow Earth. The Writings of Richard Sharpe Shaver depict UFOs as not coming from outer space, but from inside our own Earth and they were not piloted by aliens but by DEROs (Detrimental Robots), who are the sadistic and inbred offspring of an advanced civilization that abandoned Earth in prehistoric times.

Certainly the DEROs explanation avoids many, if not all of my objection, if it weren't for the fact that it's the rambling of a single individual who spent the last years of his life in a mental hospital.

We need to say that Sharpe depicted the DEROs ships not as saucers, but as rockets, the saucer retrofitting was added by one of his alumni.

d) We need just a single sample of alien material to prove the probes exist, No government is powerful enough to cover the whole earth all of the time. Also, Kim Jong Il, Ahmajenihad , Chávez or any other dictator would love to put their paws into alien technology.

7. What do they want?

a) Exploit our natural resources.

Kardashiev, referenced in the Michio Kaku article, measures possible alien civilization in types, Type II, which can harness the entire energy of a star, is the minimum requirement for interstellar travel,so they certainly don't lack on energy resources.

This is to say; It's like if you walked all the way from San Francisco to the Amazon in order to eat a single mango.

b) Warn us from impending doom.

Remember Billy Meyer? The message the supposed aliens gave him was that the Governments should stop producing nuclear weapons. That makes sense, it was the 70's it was the height of the Cold war and the zeitgeist was full of nuclear scares. Why didn't the Aliens warn Meyer of Global warming? If they were so advanced they should know our way to harness energy (Type 0 for Kardashev) is dirty and inefficient.

c) Knowledge for knowledge's sake.

This is more likely for a Type II civilization that moved beyond the local concerns of energy, research, however that still brings the problems I described above.

d) Enslave humanity.

You have to be f***ing kidding me.

8) Where do they come from?

According to Michio Kaku, were interstellar travel possible it would be restricted to a mere hundred of light years, of course, the farther the distance, the more energy is spent and the less likely it is for the spaceship to return.

We also have to consider Fermi's Paradox;

The apparent size and age of the universe suggests that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.
However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.


The Drake Equation gives the possible number of civilization in our galaxy as 10,000, but our galaxy is not 100 light years in diameter, but 100,000, and we also have to ask if any of those are Kardashev Type II civilizations instead of Type 0, like us, or Type I.

This question is the motivation behind observing the skies through radiotelescopes and other methods (SETI) and as the technology to detect extrasolar planets is here, it could be inevitable to discover a Type II in our lifetimes, but then again, Fermi's Paradox; Why haven't we seen them already?

9)OK, Ok, they might not be manned spacecrafts or robotic probes or Robots from inside the Earth, but you cannot deny the phenomenon is real... Think again.

If you believe that you haven't done your homework. Every instance must be analyzed separatedly, explanations range from the mundane (camera defects, lens flare, aluminum balloons) to the exciting (artificial satellites, weather conditions, electromagnetic discharges)

If you find an unexplained phenomenon THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITATION IS AUTOMATICALLY CORRECT.

Remember; Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, a camera phone video or a doctored photo is only evidence that some light appeared in the sky. Show me the evidence and we can discuss it and explore it together. But you see, you have a lot of explaining to do before assuming there are aliens.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Speculative Fiction part 3: Nirvana never formed.

(The Speculative Fiction series is an exercise in narrative merely done to practice my writing skills, the speculative fiction genre has reached history, but not music and it would be fun to imagine; what if Led Zeppelin never recorded Starway to Heaven? What if Grunge never had commercial success?)


Lfm:Today we are speaking with Kurt Cobain, bassist of the legendary Sludge band Melvins. Cobain was so kind as to invite us to his home in Aberdeen, Washington with his wife, Melanie and his three kids. Cobain, now in his forties, tells us about the Seattle scene in the late eighties and late nineties;

KC: I was just a kid carrying the equipment for some friends back then, The Melvins, Boy, was I obsessed with that band! Even though I knew [Crover and Osborn] from high school... I knew I was being silly when I asked him to audition. I was so nervous I even forgot how to play!!! When I asked; "Can I start again?"I knew I was doomed. I went home knowing I would never make it in life, but Buzz, oh, man. He called me to repeat the audition and I made it!!! I don't know what I 'd done! For sure you would find me with my brains sprayed over the fucking wall!! *laughs*

Lfm: You had a chance to work with William S. Burroughs...

KC: The man was larger than life, you know? You read all his books in secret when you were a teen, you know his life story and yet he treats you as if he were no different from you. And yet when he spoke you pondered his every word... Such clarity, I wish I live to be as sensible as he was...We did a single track in 1992... and some years later I was able to work with him again, short before he died...

Lfm: Although your work has gathered a large following you somehow have eluded the mainstream... With Houdini you had a short-lived success at the charts...

KC: Yes, The people at David Geffen were really into new sounds, they had worked with Sonic Youth... I remember there was some people from a major record company that was looking for something else, I remember the guy, he was genuinely sick and tired of the crap MTV was pushing at the time... he seemed really smart, but when he saw me in private and told me that the other members of the band were dragging me down I knew there was no deal possible. We and another band, Soundgarden, were in rotation on MTV for a couple of months... But the glam bands were so aggressive... The powers that be would never take risks with new stuff. We would never translate into merchandise or toys as the other bands did.

Lfm: Or Saturday Morning Cartoons...

KC: They were the worst!!! I sure didn't want to see myself solving mysteries in space!
Mainstream has become increasingly stale... prefab bands had a limit and it was crossed time and time again. The new wave of Gothic Glam and Dark Glam,, just makes me sick... We worked with Brian Warner from Coma White... He used to be in a Glam band, The Spooky Kids, he simply could not take it.. all the executive meddling. His Idea was to combine divas' names with serial killers, but after the fiasco of the Charles Manson Tribute Album by Guns N' Roses... I think it was for the best, Warner and Trent Reznor have made some very interesting music...

Lfm: For the Mainstream you are a one-hit-wonder... Do you resent that?

KC: Not at all!!! I am not sure if I could handle some executives demanding new material, Melvins has given me the opportunity to listen to myself. The short period we were pushed to promote our MTV material was, like, torture. There was all this material we wanted to explore and people just wanted the same tired song from TV...

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