Monday, July 8, 2013

Day 245 - "Harry Potter And The Unsustainable Population", Windows 8 Explained, Wakizashi, and The Strange Doom Of Mr. Blue

Mr. Brown

LOL They are hiring trainers for Carrie and Mark for the new Star Wars movie.

9:06 AM Mr. Gray

I want that job.

"Mark....do what you did before"

9:06 AM Mr. Silver
"This is called 'brisk walking'...you may remember it from 20 years ago."
9:06 AM Mr. Amethyst

LOL
9:07 AM Mr. Gray
Ohhhh...PHYSICAL trainers. Yeah, that’s different.

9:07 AM Mr. Amethyst

LOL

9:07 AM Mr. Gray

I think he needs to go all Dark side and break into the Joker laugh.

9:07 AM Mr. Silver
That would be great!
"Cut! Mark! Stop calling him 'Bats' in your lines, please."
9:09 AM Mr. Gray

He really did do an excellent job voicing the Joker. All the toons I've seen since with other people just don’t compare.

9:11 AM Mr. Brown

Didn't Luke go Dark side for awhile Mr. Gray?

9:13 AM Mr. Silver
He went Dark side for a while, yes.
9:16 AM Mr. Silver
Perhaps they'll run him like Yoda and Palpatine should have been in episodes 1-3.
"Screw sabers...I'm a grand master. Sabers are for dispatching chumps with blasters."
"Watch this, you Sith wannabe (Luke snaps fingers, villain's brain turns off and he collapses.  Snaps again.)
"Oww! My head hurts! What just happened?"
9:19 AM Mr. Brown

You are not the one you are looking for.” (wave hand)

Man stands there, very confused.

9:21 AM Mr. Blue

So these new Star Wars movies come after episode 6?

9:21 AM Mr. Amethyst

Yea

9:21 AM Mr. Blue

So no Darth Vader then? Or did he live?

9:21 AM Mr. Amethyst

He died.

9:21 AM Mr. Brown

Yeah he's dead.

9:21 AM Mr. Amethyst

Unless the Sith got into necromancy, and in that case I HAVE to watch it.

9:23 AM Mr. Silver
They certainly got into necromancy.
(Undead Vader) "I told you, you don't know the power of the Dark Side."
9:23 AM Mr. Amethyst

LOL

9:26 AM Mr. Silver
I still want to see Darth Jar Jar
Mr. Brown

I still wish they could go way back on a Star Wars movie to the time of original light sabers.

9:59 AM Mr. Silver
"Early lightsabers" is a surprisingly long and convoluted topic.  Like hundreds/thousands of years.  No one would ever pursue it as a technology.
10:02 AM Mr. Silver
As an anthropologist, I'm skeptical of their hinted origin stories.
10:03 AM Mr. Amethyst

A fanthropologist.

10:04 AM Mr. Silver
Nice word!
Having the anthropologist POV can do strange things to fandom of stuff.
10:04 AM Mr. Silver
The Lord Of The Rings, for instance.
10:07 AM Mr. Silver
The heroes are either total snobs who ignore common folk, or the population of Northwestern Middle Earth is so low there that there's something seriously wrong.
There's evidence for both.
10:07 AM Mr. Amethyst

Mhm

10:08 AM Mr. Amethyst

Do Harry Potter next. What's going on there?

10:09 AM Mr. Brown

Huh?

10:10 AM Mr. Amethyst

He commented on Star Wars and LOTR as a skeptical anthropologist. Time to do Harry Potter.

10:11 AM Mr. Silver
Harry Potter didn't have a sustainable society until like book 5-6
There were just not enough people in the wizarding schools. Certainly not enough to explain the wizard/witch crowd.
10:12 AM Mr. Silver
There are only 3 wizarding schools mentioned, and they are talked about as THE ONLY 3 wizarding schools.
10:13 AM Mr. Amethyst

None of the 3 are American either.

10:13 AM Mr. Silver
In working on a roleplaying game and going through books, I generously put each "class" of students (split into 4 houses, and boys and girls) at something like 50 per year based on numbers mentioned. Each house gets a table. Even in the movies if you split the great hall into different years, the “big crowd” is tiny.
10:14 AM Mr. Silver
Fortunately, by the time you get to Tom-Riddle-origin hunting, it turns out the garden variety common wizard/witch was trained at home by the parents, so there's room for plenty more who couldn't go to a fancy public school.
Ghastly scenario before that though.
10:15 AM Mr. Blue

I never saw or read any Harry Potter stuff...doesn't interest me. It seems like it's geared for kids, and I’m not one.

10:16 AM Mr. Silver
Kids?  Eh...well, it ramps up through appropriate reader age with the kids.
10:16 AM Mr. Amethyst

Its actually pretty intense.

10:17 AM Mr. Silver
Hell...Harry kills a villain in the first one.  The adults pussyfoot around that fact.
10:18 AM Mr. Amethyst

Mhm

Turns him to dust with his bare hands.

10:18 AM Mr. Silver
Dumbledore - "Uh...your mom's love...hurt him."
"But he disintegrated, headmaster."
"Well...Lily always was a bitch, really."
10:19 AM Mr. Amethyst

Haahaha

10:19 AM Mr. Silver
"I don't understand."
"Just be happy she died before she could spank you growing up, Harry."
10:22 AM Mr. Silver
By the time Voldemort killed Cedric in Goblet of Fire, I kinda jumped...I think everyone reading it did.
10:22 AM Mr. Amethyst

Jumped?

Like "Sweet, he's dead?"

10:26 AM Mr. Silver
No, more an "Oh my God, the trump suit is open!" jump. 
Child murder isn't exactly common in most books, and up until then, death was alluded to, or was “escaped” through questionable luck.
And with Cedric, it was just Voldemort coldly saying “I don't need that one” and dropping an instant-death curse on him.
10:28 AM Mr. Silver
This scene was immediately followed by menace, torture, desperation...
10:30 AM Mr. Silver
So yeah...the series starts with kids and kids' issues and juvenile literature close calls versus a bogeyman...but it ends in death, horror, destruction, misery, torture, malice, living hell...
10:33 AM Mr. Amethyst

I haven't seen or read the last two. Are they good?

10:33 AM Mr. Silver
With those tags? Yes!



Mr. Blue

How is it even possible for Windows 8 to be this bad?
1:11 PM Mr. Silver
Well, there was this programmer walking down the road with a guitar and he got to this crossroads.  And a guy standing there got to talking to him and told the programmer that he could make him famous with a guitar.  And the programmer said that he was just carrying the guitar for a friend.  So the stranger said well what do you got?  And the guy said he was a programmer for Microsoft...so, they worked out a deal...

1:12 PM Mr. Amethyst

lol



Mr. Blue

How much would a wakizashi run? I want it to be pre-war at least.

3:07 PM Mr. Gray

In that case.....a lot.

3:08 PM Mr. Brown

About $20,000.

I figured I would throw in a big price.

LOL

3:08 PM Mr. Silver
A wakizashi would run about 2.5 feet into a human abdomen and out the other side.
More or less depending on the design, angle of thrust, and the skill and strength of the swordsman.
3:09 PM Mr. Brown

Yeah you hit that backbone and oh boy.

3:11 PM Mr. Blue

Here's one, pre-1900, for $5000.

3:11 PM Mr. Brown

Yeah that's more like it.

3:11 PM Mr. Brown

Well, an actual famous/famous-owner one would go for 20,000.

3:12 PM Mr. Blue

Did Abe Lincoln own any wakizashis?

3:15 PM Mr. Gray

No, he was an axe man...didn't you see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? Sheesh!



Mr. Blue

Do you know anything about like.. lumber or timber prices Mr. Amethyst?

Like how much is a tree worth to a tree cutter if it's a cherry or oak and pretty old/large?

10:59 AM Mr. Amethyst

No idea. I used to know stuff like that.

10:59 AM Mr. Blue

Hmm

I want to buy 2 acres next to ours. It's unbuildable, but I don't know what the timber would cost.

What say you, Mr. Silver?

I don't know what kind of offer to even make on it. It's just sitting there and it's been untouched since I was born, and I don't want anyone to mess with it or clear it.

11:20 AM Mr. Silver
Land grab, eh?
What's unbuildable about it?
11:26 AM Mr. Blue

There's an old mine on the edge of the property and a stream that runs through the middle of it and no utilities.

11:27 AM Mr. Silver
So 50,000 tons of fill and it would be nice.
11:27 AM Mr. Blue

That and re-routing the stream.

It's kind of rectangle shaped, and the stream runs the long-way through the middle. That is fed by a pond, so it's always running.

11:34 AM Mr. Blue

(sends drawing) Like so. The L-shaped property is mine right now.

11:36 AM Mr. Silver
I see the mine as a vast hole that was dug for mithril until it hit a balrog.
11:36 AM Mr. Blue

It's weird.

It is just a big hole. I thought it was just a strip mine that needed filled in, but we found rails that go into it, and a neighbor said that it went pretty deep into the hillside.

11:37 AM Mr. Silver
(“Lovecraft Alert” starts flashing)
11:37 AM Mr. Blue

And nobody knows if they properly filled it in, or just covered the entrance. Probably the latter. It's heavily wooded now; the trees are 50 years old at least, but it was cleared out at one time.

11:45 AM Mr. Silver
So...just curious...do you ever wake up in the middle of the night, dreaming that you heard singing and ancient instruments, but when awake you just hear the normal sounds of night though you swear you think you see lights glowing out by the mine?
11:46 AM Mr. Amethyst

Once after drinking about half a bottle of absinthe for me...

11:46 AM Mr. Silver
Mr. Amethyst - "And I don't even have a mine."
11:46 AM Mr. Amethyst

Exactly.

11:47 AM Mr. Silver
By the time Mr. Blue is in Bellevue Psychiatric and the cops go out, they'll find no trace there ever was a mine.
11:57 AM Mr. Blue

Across the lane was a kosher pig farm. And the barn thing they kept the pigs in stood until a few years ago. Though I think the pig farm stopped operating at least 75 years ago.

11:58 AM Mr. Silver
(“Lovecraft Flags” go up)
Narrator "Oh, the tales about that land go back to the 1600s, and if the diary of Van Blauw is to be believed, the redskins would tell tales of it that their grandfathers grandfathers would only whisper. To be sure, no savage would settle there, or stay overnight..."
11:58 AM Mr. Blue

I found a gully with a bunch of old, old large glass bottles labeled Clorox. I assumed they used it to clean/sterilize?

12:00 PM Mr. Silver
(“Lovecraft Rockets” launch and burst)
Oh yeah...you're F-ing doomed.
12:00 PM Mr. Blue

And before *that*.. it was just a run-of-the-mill Indian burial ground. ;-)

12:01 PM Mr. Silver
"Young Mr. Blue scoffed at the so-called curse, of course. What man of reason wouldn't?"
"And yet, his obsession with that little stretch of land with its strange tree, as large as an oak but strangely more phenotypic of a cherry, could not be sated."
12:24 PM Mr. Silver
"The tree.  That curious tree.  Blue destroyed it at the end, as he collapsed into madness, screaming of unearthly things and cursing "the old red man" as he dismembered it with a chainsaw."
12:24 PM Mr. Amethyst

I want to read that story.

12:25 PM Mr. Blue

Is this based on the “Colour Out of Space”?
12:33 PM Mr. Silver
@Amethyst Working on it.
@Blue No...whole cloth after reading all his stuff for 25 years.
12:34 PM Mr. Blue

Ahh

12:39 PM Mr. Silver
"That the tree was his to destroy, there can be no doubt.  The property was his, bought and paid for. And though he was loud in his cursing, well then so was the chainsaw.  It was the smell that brought the police.  Downwind, the odor of chlorine had become miasmic.  And in combination with the brash theft of several cases of bleach from a shop the night before, the conclusions of the local police were, unfortunately, inevitable."
12:47 PM Mr. Silver
I was rather enjoying that...too bad it's a crap day for writing.

12:47 PM Mr. Amethyst

LOL

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