Endings and Beginnings

F.U. News, being a contingent being, does not explain its own existence. That is, it passes in and out of existence, and can only be explained by reference to forces external to itself.

A little history on how it passed into being: the original F.U. News was a website put together by Tom Adams and myself circa Fall 2000, and hosted by Geocities (!!!!), IIRC. We used it to spoof goings-on at our school, make fun of friends, and for reporting on the Kazakhstanian Terrorist Movement (officially renamed Kazakhstanian Workers of Mercy on Sept. 12, 2001). At the time, we were devotees of The Onion, and wanted to create our own little Onion for our on-campus world. We also happened to take great delight in the fact that our Alma Mater's initials sounded like a rude phrase. Explanations for why I found it so funny can be seen in the graph below:

My biographers will refer to the sudden drop in maturity as the "Tom Adams Event".

After graduation, the satirical news bug was still biting me, so I revived F.U. News as this blog. (True story: shortly thereafter, Google bought Blogger, then shortly after that Google launched Gmail, and gave very exclusive beta invites to people with Blogger accounts, which is how I got my Gmail account three weeks after the public announcement of it, and why my email address is "joecool" and why I get SO MUCH FREAKING WRONG EMAIL.)

Now, a note on how F.U. News will pass out of existence:

Originally, this blog was made to fulfill my news satire appetite, but it gradually evolved into so much more. It became a vehicle for saying "hello" from across the world, posting pictures of cats, philosophizing, being a shameless shill for John C. Wright, exercising poor blogging habits, and announcing the best things that there are to announce. It stopped being a satirical news site long ago (in fact, it's been over a year since I've even posted any satire).

At some point (probably measurable with function f(x) where x is the amount of time since my last real-life contact with Mr. Adams), I became a little embarrassed by my blog's legacy. ("Yes, let me direct you to my blog. It's 'Eff You'—. No, I'm not telling you to have sexual relations. That's the name of my blog. 'Eff You News.' It's for 'Franciscan University.' Ow! Ow! Stop slapping me!") Something didn't seem right about posting long rants about Why the Church is Right and You're Wrong to a blog with a title that could be so easily misconstrued.

So it is with a bittersweet heart that I make this, the final post to F.U. News. I shall leave it up, indefinitely for archival purposes.

What's that? Oh, of course I'll still be blogging. You can find me at my new home, over here, Bell and Whistle ("Life with all the frills"). In fact, I've imported all archives and comments from F.U. News, so it'll be like nothing ever changed. Except for the color scheme and fonts. And the URL.

So, update your bookmarks, links, and RSS feed, and join me at my new home on the web.

TL;DR: My blog has a new look and URL. Nothing else substantial has changed.

Hope

Oh, what a world I'm leaving you, Damien.

He sits on my lap as I read him his bedtime story. He snorts and snuffs with the rhinoceros, ruffs with the little dogs, and quacks with the duck. To him, the world is so simple. Cows moo, sheep baa. The only confusion is whether pigs say oink or "la, la, la". He doesn't read the news headlines. How could he possibly understand how much the world is opposed to him? Why would I even want him to know?

We finish the book, and I turn out the light. I get out the rosary blessed by Blessed John Paul the Great (he will get upset if I don't), he makes the sign of the cross with it (always sure to kiss the crucifix), and we pray. I pray the sorrowful mysteries tonight. It seems it's always the night for the sorrowful mysteries. They fit my mood of late, as I really don't see much to take joy in.

One wonders where our country turned so very wrong. Why did we decide to abandon our foundational principles in favor of sexual licentiousness? I remember when I was a kid, hearing boomers apologize for how they had messed up the world, and telling me that the burden would be on my generation to fix it.

It looks like I'll have to pass that burden on to you.

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Priorities

If you've ever stopped to help a homeless or needy person—and I mean truly help them by providing food, clothing, or shelter—you may have found yourself in the awkward and paradoxical position of being rejected by someone desperately in need of your help. While this has never happened to me, I have heard more than enough anecdotal evidence that this type of thing can happen. I don't mean to condemn all homeless people, or urge against offering charity to those in need, but merely to illustrate that sometimes, people will act contrary to their best interests, and attack those with their best interests in mind.

The drunk who curses at the helpful soul who offers food or a job instead of a handout is, of course, addicted to his vice. He cannot, through strength of will, alone, overcome his temptation and has become so dependent on it that he refuses the basic help he needs. Another way of stating this is that his appetites are not subject to his reason, and he cannot freely choose what is good for him, but is instead enslaved to the dictates of his passions.

With me so far?

Now, to shift gears and approach my thesis from another direction: an argument made by the Other Side during the whole Komen/Planned Parenthood debacle, was that sure, Planned Parenthood might have its flaws, but can't we put that aside for the sake of helping women with cancer? One of the slogans I saw along these lines was, "Instead of having my cancer detected by an organization under government investigation, now my cancer won't be detected at all!" It, of course, ignores the reason that Komen halted some funding for Planned Parenthood, namely, that Planned Parenthood wasn't very good at detecting cancer in the first place, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Rather than screaming ad hominem arguments or beating down straw men, it is an actual attempt to engage in rational debate. Credit where it's due.

So I can understand that argument. Put petty squabbles (where "petty" involves the extermination of 300,000 human beings a year) aside in the interest of some greater cause.

But that argument should apply both ways, shouldn't it?

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Miscellany

(Source)

In light of the whole Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood PR fiasco.

It's hard to say exactly what is going on here. News headlines boiled down to "Komen to defund Planned Parenthood" and "Komen reverses decision", but neither is strictly true, from what I can tell. As the founder of the Susan G. Komen foundation said in an interview, they never defunded PP, and PP still has several grants from them. Of course, the pro-choice crowd immediately launched in hysterics, claiming that the Komen foundation must hate women, hacking the SGK website, etc. etc. Not one of them appears to be at all interested in what or why SGK is doing what it's doing: they simply changed their grant policy to try and give money to direct providers of cancer screenings, rather than referrers. Since Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms, or really any cancer screening aside from what you can do at home by yourself, SGK simply decided there was better use of its money.

To put that in words that even liberals can understand, SGK "defunded" (for certain values of defunded) PP because PP is not very good at providing cancer screenings.

Komen's "reversal" appears to be a rephrasing of their original policy shift. At this point, it is unclear what exactly is going on, other than PP is trying to bully SGK in some sort of mafia shakedown ("Nice charity, you got there. Would be a shame of somethin' were to happen to it"). Canonist Ed Peters (how do I get a title like that? I mean, aside from studying Canon Law) summed up what was going on pretty well. Of course, they have the media to assist them on the shakedown, and Get Religion has an excellent piece on the atrocious reporting of the story.

Perhaps the most humorous example of the media folly was MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell who, in an interview with SGK founder Nancy Brinker asked how a bipartisan organization such as SGK could deign to hire a pro-life Republican. 

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On Martyrdom.

Years ago, back when I went to the YMI day retreats, one of my group leaders asked us if we knew what it meant to be a martyr. Me, always the over-achiever, raised my arm high and proclaimed that it was someone who died for their faith. The missionaries laughed at me. "Not in America!" they proclaimed.

And I think they are right. The idea of feeding Catholics to lions, or burning them to death as was the fate of the Ugandan martyrs, seems highly unlikely. The American character is too averse to such open persecution, and the evil too blatant, to really grab hold in this country. So what does martyrdom look like in America?

(And you are fooling yourself if you think there aren't American martyrs. The world cannot simultaneously hate the Church and tolerate Her presence. A sinner hates nothing more than the guilt of his sin, and cannot help but harbor a grudge against those who reinforce that guilt by denouncing the sin.)

About once a year, a priest from Vladivostok, Russia, makes the tour of Orange County, preaching at parishes, and asking for support for the missionary work in Russia, undoing the evils of the Communists. He tells the story of what happened to the Church in Vladivostok at the beginning of the Revolution. Most of the city's inhabitants were Orthodox—too many to openly persecute—so the Soviets simply bombed the churches. One Easter Sunday, in front of all the faithful, they simply closed the Orthodox churches, save one, and blew them up, to be rebuilt for The Party's use. The Catholics were not so lucky. They were a small minority, and the Communists saw no reason to try and tolerate them. Catholics were simply rounded up and executed, and the city didn't notice much difference.

So there is strength in numbers. It's hard to imagine a relatively peaceful country killing off a fifth of its inhabitants (or even a twentieth, if we only count those who meet the bare minimum requirement of weekly Mass attendance). 60 million (or 15 million) is a lot of graves to fill. But the tactics of the Soviets may lend an insight. If there are too many to round up, simply keep them out of their churches.

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Moo, Baa, La, La, La!

The Build from Hell: Part VI: Batman: Arkham City

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't tell you that your log in information is incorrect. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't have to enter your 20-digit hexadecimal product code to complete the call. You turn a knob on a faucet and don't get a message that you've used water in the maximum number of approved sinks.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

Back in part I, I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to do on the new HTPC was be able to play vidjimagames. A nice new processor, with a good graphics card would make it faster than my desktop, and ideal for playing any games that support a controller.

Around this time, I was working my way through Batman: Arkham City, sequel to the game-of-the-year Batman: Arkham Asylum. I loved Arkham Asylum and pre-ordered Arkham City on Steam as soon as it became available.

The Resident Batman-lover, that is Anne Marie, forbade me from playing either game without her present at every moment. This usually meant me sitting at my desk, with her sitting behind me, looking over my shoulder. A workable solution, but not ideal. This seems like the perfect game to be able to sit on the couch and play with my wireless controller.

So I install Steam on HiFi and begin downloading the many billions of bytes necessary to play the game. While it's downloading would be a good time to explain Steam Cloud.

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Shocked and Appalled

Star Wars: The Old Republic launched about a month ago (motto: "What Would WoW Do?"). There is much that can be said about the game, like EA's general jackassery, the fact that it is simultaneously the fastest-selling MMO and failing to meet sales projections, whether or not a game of that scale is sustainable, how successfully Bioware integrated their "fourth pillar" of story, or myriads of other topics. Many others are talking about such things, and perhaps I will weigh in later. But for now, I wanted to focus on one particularly shocking and appalling aspect of the game.

The artists at Bioware decided, it seems, to give one of the six Star Wars movies particular attention. One scene from one of the six movies. One costume choice from one scene from one of the six movies (I think you see where this is going).

Slave Leia costume, seen modeled here by the Murloc's cosplay friend Christy Marie.

Apparently, Bioware thinks that this costume comprised fully three quarters of the Star Wars films, despite the fact that the costume only has a combined 150 seconds of screen time, "including facial closeups and shots of stunt doubles and visual effect images," according to Wookieepedia. Every planet in the game has at least one scuzzy dive populated by alien slave girls doing erotic dances while wearing this costume.

So shocked and appalled by this blatant objectification of women, er, aliens, er, females, that I decided to bring this shocking and appalling art choice of the game to your, and hopefully national, attention. And to properly convey the shockfulness and appallation of this singular-minded part of the game, I had to, for the greater good, record the shocking dancers doing their appalling stripteases, then go through, frame by frame, to find the most shocking and appalling segments, which I have saved to animated images, so you to can be made aware of how shocking and appalling this game is.

Shocking and appalling images after the jump.
(Maaaaaaybe NSFW, unless you work at a strip club.)

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The Build from Hell: Part V: Watching Blu-Rays

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't tell you that it only works on manufacturer-approved roads. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't have to press speakerphone to hear over the handset. You turn a knob on a faucet and don't get an error message that your sink is not in the correct region.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So part of the reason for the Build from Hell was to be able to watch Blu-rays. A few days after the initial frustrations, I decided to test this ability out.

The movie of choice was Toy Story 3, because it's one of three Blu-rays we have (the other two being Toy Stories 1 and 2). Pop the disc in, Windows Media Center automatically opens and... wants me to set the region for the Blu-ray drive. OK, this is a little odd, considering I had already set the region when I watched a DVD the other night. Can you set the region for Blu-ray playback separately from DVD? Kind of cool, if so, but irrelevant.

So I set the region, then hit play and... an error appears! (Were you expecting anything else?) The error is (some of the more knowledgeable of you may have seen this coming) "Blu-ray playback requires a connection that supports HDCP encryption, such as DVI or HDMI".

BLARGH BLARGH BLARGH BLARGH!

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The Build from Hell: Part IV: Christmas Morning: Part II: Network Nuisances

...First Blood, Part II: Revengeance of the Revengening: The Sequel: Episode I: Breaking Dawn.

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't explode. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't get electrocuted. You turn a knob on a faucet and acid doesn't come out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So as we read in the last chapter, Christmas morning is rapidly deteriorating from "spend wonderful time with wonderful family" into "fight to the death with technology". At least now we can actually see stuff on a screen. This is a big step forward. The next step is to plug in the network adapter.

I have a fancy-dancy D-Link USB wireless network adapter that I used to connect the old computer to our wireless network, so I didn't need to run a 50' network cable from the den to the living room. The wireless network doesn't work when the baby monitor handset is turned on. Weird, but irrelevant to our tale.

I installed the drivers for it, plugged it in, and attempted to connect to the network. It connected, but--oddly--had no internet connection. Windows' network troubleshooter was exactly as useful as a screendoor on a submarine. I tried resetting the adapter, resetting the connection, unplugging and replugging the adapter, cussing at it, sacrificing a goat to Baal. No dice.

I checked the router page, and it showed the computer was connected and had an assigned IP address, however, running ipconfig on the computer showed a different address, not in the given subnet. A google search showed that sometimes, D-Link's built-in software could conflict, and there were recommendations to remove that, install the driver only, and use the Windows network connections to connect. Tried that and it still didn't work.

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