Today’s desktop comes from an image by Helen that I ran through a water color filter. The original image is Forest Falls, San Bernardino @ Sunset using manual settings. It can be found on her deviant art deviant art page As usual, here are the desktop sizes.
As I’ve never really fully articulated this concept before, this is very likely going to be a multi-part posting, so I’ll give you the synopsis first and go into more explicit detail after the page break. This concept ties in with an entire “Mature Mindset” philosophy I’m playing with… the Theory of Tools bit helps with the epistemological underpinnings. Part 1 really will be an introduction to a complete system of thought that I will hopefully be fleshing out soon.
The Theory of Tools is both a procedural and an ethical theory; it involves holding a particular moral mindset towards both one’s own ideas and the ideas of others, that mindset being one of moral neutrality towards the idea itself, reserving ethical judgments for the uses to which that idea is placed. An idea is nothing more than a tool, neither evil nor good in and of itself in exactly the same way in which a hatchet (the greatest tool evar) is neither good nor evil. Whether the tool in question is a hatchet, a bible, fire or Democracy or a thermonuclear MIRV, the moral and ethical connotations surrounding that tool can only be responsibly applied to the use to which that tool is placed.
With any luck AT ALL I’ll be moving to somewhere in the Southern California region around mid-2010. Jobs for guys with my “career experience” abound down there, so I feel my chances are pretty good… the big question(s) will be: 1) can I secure a job near a zoo/aquarium so Sarah has somewhere to work as well; 2) can I secure a job near a university with an advanced degree program in Zoology/Marine Biology , also for Sarah’s benefit; 3) can I secure a job that will allow me to build up capital towards founding my world-consuming Smoothie King franchise; and 4) should number 3 prove undoable, should I bend my efforts towards entering local politics and make a living off my not-inconsiderable bullshitting skills? To quote my new political adviser Manic Eightball: Signs point to YES. Read on!
There’s a new feature on Wasabisoft starting up Monday. Due to the lack of a complete comic being ready in the foreseeable future, I have decided that I need to exercise my photoshop chops some. The benefit to me is more pieces for my portfolio. The benefit to you is cool little desktops to enjoy. I will include varying sizes for common desktop sizes so hopefully everyone will have one that will fit their monitor. I will be attempting to update at least three times a week. These desktop can sometimes be abstract, retro, or even video game related. So check back every Monday to see what cool new image awaits you.
I saw this article on cnn.com today by accident… I WAS looking for information on this thing, and my eye was caught by a brief Internet piracy blurb. What follows is what I tried to post in the discussion, in its entirety. It was moderated out for some reason, probably ’cause I cited Wasabisoft at the bottom… but you tell me. I’ll try a re-post on cnn.com later, sans the shameless self-promotion. Enjoy an entire page of me not cursing. For once.
COVERED IN THIS ISSUE OF GYSTaPO: FEAR 2, Ace Combat 6, Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, and Dawn Of War 2. Let us begin.
I am officially declaring my self-nomination for the “Best Blog Title Evar” award. It descends upon YOU, gentle reader, to support my drive towards victory. Expect some kind of campaign/propaganda posters in the very near future; since I myself haven’t actually installed Photoshop yet, I’m now looking pointedly at Gerry here. I fully expect something along the lines of this, except maybe replace the word “Hope” with the phrase “Comma Bitches”… and I feel fully justified in being this unreasonably demanding of Gerry within a satirical context. I plan on holding my Presidential Campaign press conferences in a similar manner, as well: “Mr. Coincon, Mr. Coincon, Major Garrett, Fox News; how do you respond to the accusations that (except for ego, apparently) you’re nowhere NEAR qualified to be Leader Of The Free World? And I heard you’re French, too!” “Ah, Mr. Garrett, you raise some excellent points, and as always I admire your candor. In response, I feel that the only effective way to affect effective effects towards cleaning out the corruption-ridden cesspool we call a government is for someone with both thorough NON-experience in government and philosophical/intellectual integrity to man the helm. Start setting a positive course, as it were. The entire reason I hold these press conferences on a DAILY god damn basis is NOT to advance my own agenda, as is the norm for politicians (which, as per your own aforementioned observation, I am definitively NOT)… I subject myself to the rapacious attentions of the Media this frequently so that the American People may instead ask of me whatever questions they desire so that they might evaluate my philosophical/intellectual integrity. I want the American People to get to know ME and have confidence in ME as a person instead of the letter in parentheses to the right of my name… or the lack thereof, in my case. That being said, Mr. Fuckface, I have a small request for YOU… first, take a big step back… and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE! I don’t know what kind of pan-pacific bullshit power play you’re trying to pull here, but Asia, Jack, is my territory. So whatever you’re thinking, you’d better think again! Otherwise I’m gonna have to head down there and I will rain down a Godly fucking firestorm upon you! You’re gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I’m talking about scorched earth, motherfucker! I will massacre you! I WILL FUCK YOU UP!”
Just a quickie, then I gotta play some more: unlocking the Nazi Zombies! mode in Call of Duty: World at War (by completing the single-player campaign) is the best thing you can do with your spare time. If anyone (ANYONE) wants to play THAT particular game mode, just let me know. You’ll be doing your country a service.
UPDATE 22 FEB 09: Received the happy word that Left 4 Dead (360) is now on its way to me, due to arrive Monday. In theory. So assuming it actually shows up, should be able to explore THAT avenue of zombie destruction relatively soon. ALSO: played the Resident Evil 5 demo… the “legal” one, not the fucked up Japanese version Gerry tried to get me to download and install. I was not happy with the game, a verdict which I’m sure will get me shunned by the gaming community in general; lucky for me my opinion of the gaming community in general is pretty damn low already, so no worries there. The reasoning behind this unpopular opinion will require some additional explanation, which I choose to place below the page break. Oh, the suspense.
You read right: I KNOW HOW TO END THE ENERGY CRISIS… FOREVER! I actually developed this plan in its more-or-less-ready-for-submission form while chatting with the little wife after a decent workout. It is a testament to the Mensa card in my wallet that such a feat was possible. (Note to self: pay Mensa dues for the year soon. Those guys go for the kneecaps!) To be fair, though… I HAVE been kicking this kind of thing around for a while; both out of genuine interest AND a sense of intellectual responsibility to the whole Presidential Ambition shtick. Here’s the EXSUM before I do the “Read the rest of this entry>>” thing: combining a genuine, possibly Socialized move towards not only intracity mass transit but national mass transit with a conversion of our national power grid to renewable sources (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, hydroelectric, algae, etc.) will allow us to decrease our need for all the nonrenewable shit and switch existing production of such to export instead. The advent of electric-driven personal transportation means will go even further towards this goal, especially in the interregnum of intercity connectivity. And believe you me, NONE of this is particularly new thinking.
Capitalism contains a fairly efficient and fluid value system: a person, item or service is worth whatever demand for that person, item or service is willing to pay. Any particular commodity in our society is worth more than a comparable commodity if it possesses some quality that the prospective buyer finds useful. However, in our society there also exists a curious disconnect that appears to revolve around undue assignments of value; consider, as a baseline example, that a member of our society is allowed to vote (and thus wield extreme power over the direction of our nation) irrespective of their value to society (i.e., why should felons be allowed to vote?). Similarly, the cutoff for when a growing child is allowed to vote is an arbitrary constant almost completely unrelated to value: age. What exactly makes an 18-year old D-student more competent to vote responsibly than a 17-year old genius? Voting and citizenry rights aside for a moment (well… probably another article will be in order very soon): value of an individual, from a societal viewpoint, seems like it should derive from the individual’s demonstrated potential to contribute to society, just as value of a commodity is determined by the commodity’s degree of usefulness to the buyer. So it seems to me that if we, as a society, really gave a shit about our fellow citizens and their well being, then we could best help the disadvantaged to improve their value by enabling them to raise their potential. The most effective manner by which I believe we can achieve this is by supplying our citizens with biological contentment, allowing them to focus upon skill/education development opportunities. And, yes, when I say “supplying”, I mean that society should foot the bill.
I suppose this is what I should do first. Hello everyone, I’m Lisette. I’m friends with several of you on here, and hope to be friends with all of you soon. I went to Tara also, and so am sort of a remnant of what we would call a band nerd.
