I got's me some questions damn it!

Sometimes when you are reading a comic, or watching a movie or TV show you have questions. Questions that are never answered. Sometimes it's because of time, sometimes it's because the writers didn't think it through, so here are a few of the questions that keep me up at night (well that and the insomnia!)

Gremlins-

So you cannot feed the Mogwai after midnight or it turns into an evil reptilan gremlin. but at what point is it safe to resume feeding your mogwai without having the little bugger become a cackling ball of teeth, claws and attitude? Is it sun up? Noonish? What, See now if someone ever give
s me a mogwai, I might have to let the poor little bastard starve becasue frankly I don't know when it's safe to feed it!

Highlander- 

So if they loose their heads they die right? what about if you chop em in half? exactly what portion of the body has to leave the cranial region to be considered adios immortal? if he looses his head and shoulders will he spend hours or days in agony as the rest of his body regenerates, or will he just buy the farm right there, what about if we Darth Maul him, then what? hey should I ever need to fight the Kurrigan for the prize this info would be damned important!

Star Wars (Episodes 1-3) 

O.K. so if midichlorians are the source of the force the micro organisms that literally do all the heavy lifting in the Star Wars universe, and we know that concentration of them in the blood is important (Obi Wan freaks when he finds out Anican's concentration is even greater than that of fabled Jedi Master Yoda. so then do amount of midi chlorians matter? Sure Yoda could put the smackdown on Anican just on the raw power vs skill in using. (I.E. if vader is more powerful he lacks Yoda's skill with manipulating them) Are some areas more or less force heavy (and would this matter?) when Vader lost about 30-30% of his body in Episode 3 did this affect his ability to use the force if he had less Midichlorians, and if not, Why not?

Field of Dreams-

How the F*** did they mistake this for heaven? I have lived in Iowa for most of my life, don't get me wrong it's a great place to live, but Heaven? really? Oh come on now! drive the boarder any time from any bordering state, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, take your pick! Do you hear choirs of seraphim or harps when you hit the state line? neither do I.

Transformers (Original cartoon movie, not the Michael Bay crap!)- 

how is it that when the Ark crash landed and left the autobots and decepticons in a massive scrapheap within, then some 5 thousand years later was able to build them all good as new from shattered parts. but about 5-6 good hits from Megatron, and Prime dies? Why the hell couldn't the ark/teletran 1 not just reassemble him from the damn blueprints? it makes no GODDAMN SENSE!

Anyway these are the kind of thoughts that plague me, Maybe I need to have a soak in the tub with some Mr. Bubble, and figure it all out...

League of Exrordinary Bloggers: Hello, My name is...

So with being back in the saddle it's time to jump back into the league, and with out much time to spare this week's Subject is in short- Who am I?

I'm Batman!

Just kidding I had to say it, of course no one has ever seen me in the same room as batman so...

Seriously though, I'm Jamie Herbert, I was born in Odessa Texas in  May of 1972, to Jerry and Linda Herbert. The younger of 2 boys, my father was in the oil business as a roughneck and thus we moved all over the world, From Thailand, to Norway, to Iran, To Spain, to Scotland, and most alien of all Louisiana.

In fact, we left Iran right before all the revolutions happened, I still remember the Shah's face adorning huge paintings in local shops, and on the test pattern of our TV, where my brother would anxiously wait for his portrait to fade so we could watch Tom and Jerry!

When We left we came home to New London Iowa (where My Grandpa and Grandma lives, and more or less the placed lived when in the USA. also where I started going to school. after coming back from Iran, we saw a movie in the drive in that many think of as the touchstone of our generation,

I hated it. Hey, I was 5 years old and jet lagged, i fell asleep through most of it. The second time I watched it however I was hooked. It was awesome, I was obsessed and it was my life, as my other obsessions, The Bionic Man, Megos, Star Trek and of course Superheroes...

I really learned to lessons from moving and being the perennial new kid, First is that everyone is different. For example, when we lived in Scotland I watched plenty of british TV, and not just the classic like Monty Python, but stuff like Blue Peter, The Goodies, Educating Marmalade, and Black Adder. I still recall watching the Doctor Who Episode series "The Five Doctors" When it originally aired and also became a who fan a certain Galifreyan traveler. You know, you never do forget your first doctor. Beyond that I realized that people hate things they don't understand I took flack in iowa for calling teachers Ma'am or Sir, but in Louisiana you did this or got hit, it becomes habbit. When I loved in Scotland we learned about factor trees. and on a math test i took the month after in Louisiana, I got shit for cheating on a quiz where I was showing my work. My brother coped by trying harder to fit in, but not me. I prettymuch became increasingly of the opinion that if you think I am weird or not cool for not following the herd, then screw you, I'm fine with being an iconoclast. This is also probably the reason I hate it when something I love becomes main stream enough that the kind of people who ridiculed me for liking it are now somehow claiming to be the biggest fans of this!

One other thing that i picked up in the UK was Dungeons and Dragons. it was big in the American School in Aberdeen where I went, and My brother had some interest after we had watched Pat Robertson declare it satanic on the 700 club when we were leaving for Scotland the 2nd time.  While my brother was the more interested into getting into it originally, I became the one who fell way deeper for it. The same thing happened with Legos, my mom bought them for Lonnie originally but he showed very little interest, and me, I became a guy who still plays with legos as an adult. Same goes for gaming. He bought the starting games but then When I played, I never looked back I went from D&D to Gamma World, Top Secret, Traveller, Champions, and eventually into miniatures wargaming. Starting with Warhammer, I still get a kick out of building, painting modelling and of course playing, among my current favorites are Bolt Action, Maurice, Infinity, and Kings of War.

Once puberty set in I was like any other male, obsessed with the opposite gender, funny enough, despite the Sterotype of Star Trek fans being all virgins with no chance of getting laid in a women's prison, I actually owe quite a bit of my Sex life to Star Trek. I met my first serious girlfriend at a costume party where I went in a full TNG science officer uniform, I lost my virginity explaining the TNG episode "the Inner Light" and my future wife and mother of my children I had met when I made up the excuse that I was asked to look at the Star Trek Pinball machine at the arcade I worked at to get a glimpse of the new girl. She was pretty hot, and while she seemed uninterested that day the next we had to work together and it was a different story, we have been together ever since, and have our first daughter (Arya Lucia Herbert), and we have as a family been to trekfest, as Captain Kirk's birthplace is about an hour south of us.

So that's me a geek, an Iconoclast, a gamer (actual gamer, not "I play xbox so I am such the gamer" Gamer but real, spent weeks working on modules, painting armies kind, and a husband and parent. and when I am not doing that I Nerd Rage, but you guys already know about that...

So let's look at a few more. SECRET ORIGINS OF THE LEAGUE OF EXTRODINARY BLOGGERS!!!

Monster Cafe
Jathniel
The Goodwill Geek
Geekshow Ink
the Holidaze
Erik Johnson
Pop Rewind
The Trashman

Set Phasers to, Rage!

So this week's assignment from the league is Star Trek, A show near and dear to my heart (and other organs!)- I have always liked Star Trek, but sometime around 1986, I became obsessed with it. Taping episodes on the family VCR, and replaying them constantly taking in every nuance of Gene Roddenbury's epic "wagon train to the stars" Also finding out that I live about an hour from James T Kirk's birthplace of Riverside Iowa, made me have to take the pilgrimage every year. Heck I even got George Takei to sign my copy of the Decipher Star Trek RPG Player's guide. Trek is in my blood, if we are going to argue Star Wars or Trek, this is a no contest for me Trek every time. I would rather deal with the innane space hippies or Wesley Crusher at his worst, than deal with Jar Jar Binks, and midichlorians!

 Not sure I am really this much of a Trekkie (Trekker's take note, I use the term Trekkie, because it is what Roddenbury himself used, hey he created it, he gets fanbase naming rights!) Here is a picture of Me and my wife and dog, Ein, at Trekfest in 2011,

Ein, is Dressed as "Bones" obviously, but yeah I look like goof, in this pic, but the wife and dog look fine. Speaking of Riverside, and knowing that this is Nerd RAGE against the machine, Brings me to a bit of a sore subject. 

One thing that really pisses me off about Star Wars (yeah I know this is about Trek, but just let me give a bit of backstory first!)  fans is their incessant need to try to prove superiority, I recall being in a Firefly discussion on line and listening to such winning arguments as "If it's the future why do they still use bullets, and drills?" Oh I don't know SITHDUDE2013, probably because they are proven to work, how long have nails been around? or the wheel Barrow? even with more modern ways of putting 2 boards together the nail works dumbass! And this from a fan of a show where we have energy beam based melee weapons and yet no one understands the basic concept of railing. the queens palace, endless chasms, no railing, the Deathstar, you need to go out on a 4" ledge over a endless chasm to turn off the tractor beam and of course, no railings. Osha would have a field day in a galaxy far far away how F&*^ing hard is it to come up with a metal bar about chest high, oh sure we can put forcefields all over the damn place the idea of a safety rail alludes us! Well With the new Trek movie, the complaint from all Star Wars fans was the same. "It's like a total rip off of a new hope!" "Old man mentor tells young idealistic kid to lead a bigger life and he fights a planet killing device. I mean Captain Kirk is like a total Luke Skywalker rip off!" So as someone who lives within spitting distance of Kirk's home town let me point this out! 

Riverside Iowa is about 30 miles from Iowa City. the former capital, it is also home to my alma matter, the University of Iowa, which is still rated as one of the top 10 party schools in the USA. The shot above is a normal tailgating during a home game. lets' compare this to the largest city we know that was near Luke Skywalker. 

Mos Eisley, never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. In short a back water world with a heavy crime rate run by a space slug. What is my point? simple Kirk as a teen had access to both a big ten University which has a top flight medical school, and a huge party scene every weekend. While luke (in the script and cutscenes) mostly does chores and hangs out with a few local acquaintances.  Kirk was most likely taking AP classes due to his higher intelligence, and sneaking over to the left side of Burge Hall (the women's side) on the weekend, if not trying to get in to One Eyed Jakes, the Field House or thier 22nd century Equivalents. This is why kirk turned out like this-

While Luke turned out like this. 

The bar scenes in both films tells the story pretty well. Luke meekly listened to Obi Wan, and was victimized in the bar leading to Obi Wan having to save his farmboy ass. Kirk, strode into the place, hit on the hottest girl he could find, and when someone tried to "defend her honor" Kirk was spoiling for a rumble. In this case no meekly hiding behind a Jedi, no Kirk jumped in full bore! this is the difference between Luke and Kirk, Luke is an innocent who was thrust into a much larger world, but Kirk was already too big for where he was.  I won't deny that there are similarities. Just like there are similarities between Star Wars and other established fantasies I mean a small town boy thrust into a war against an evil empire who has been given a power to destroy it, while it's the plot to star wars, it's also the plot to lord of the rings! In fact let's be fair all you Jedi out there, Lucas borrowed heavily from tons of sources, R2D2 And C3PO were inspired by two yojimbo from Kurusawa's hidden fortress. Vader's armor? Samurai.  Han and Chewy? Gunslinger and sidekick from about any western, and Obi Wan Reeks of Gandalf the Grey, complete with best friend who stabbed him in the back, but he comes back more powerful than you can possibly imagine. 

So what are the other blogs up to you may ask? 

Well,

 Fortune and Glory (days) talks Kreo.

AEIOU and sometimes why discusses power records.

the 30ish year old boy discusses heresy,( By going all pro Star Wars)

and infinite hollywood goes for the retro hat trick with mego! 

and for your listening pleasure,

A few more hardcore geek songs.

MC Mr. Napkins

More MC Mr. Napkins

M.C. Chris

More M.C. Chris

and this is just plain fun...

DAMN IT!!!

SO I have been looking at the new Star Trek game for the PSIII with almost as much enthusiasm as the movie. Trek has, unfortunately had a tumultuous history with video games a few good (starfleet academy ect) some bad (see the NES version) but this looks pretty good as a over the shoulder action game, and if done right I would be quite pleased mores because I had heard that the PS Move would get it's own phaser.

As all three of the big consoles decided to embrace the movement tracking schtick this time around after  so many non gamers flocked to the Wii for it's unique controls and easy to pick up play. I was impressed how Sony had at least tried to make the move not just a rip off Wii. Using the standard playstation eye meant you could but move in pieces rather than the whole console or expensive upgrade  options the other companies used. The other thing is they have tried to make motion gaming part of hard core gamer titles such as Resistance III, and Kill Zone III as a  supplemental but not required way to play. It's actually much more fun than i expected to pull out the rifle attachment and play full screen. that being said I thought phaser? Hell Yeah! but it was not to be. I mean just look at the thing! it's awesome add the epic fail of Star Wars Kinect, and it puts some serious prominence on move and Star Trek.
Oh and this is what I mean by Epic Fail of Star Wars Kinect-

So yeah Star Trek move could not dare be this kind of embarrassment to the franchise!

too funny

I am not normally a fan of college humor.com but this series cracks me up.