Spring Has Sprung

Pictures taken today:

Please enter... followed by the pound key

I have a question. I'm just going to throw this out there. If you're like me, you end up calling the people who send you bills way too often. For instance, I currently have a phone bill (which I've paid for six months) to a phone that is not mine. It was a mistake. So, now they have disconnected my phone and evidently credited my account. I have nearly $200 credit to an account which is no longer in operation. That means that when that account gets billed, I won't have to pay it until the total bill equals more than $200. Which it never will because the phone number doesn't exist. So, of course, I have to call the phone company to tell them to send me my money which they erroneously charged me and which they have not cut a check for. I actually have to call to tell them that crediting a closed account is not the same as giving me money. But hey...

So, here's the question. Why is it that no matter which automated service you dial, they ask you questions to speed up the process (please enter the account number, please enter your telephone number, etc.), and when you finally get someone live on the phone, they ask you the very same question? In other words, they do not receive the information you've JUST entered. What process does this speed up? Wouldn't you think that when you enter your account number, and the automated system patches you through to India, the person on the other end of the line, having just received the information you just gave, would have your account up already? Moreover, just curious, but why does no one ever know your account history? Why is it that if you have a problem, and someone claims to fix it (but doesn't), you can't just tell the person you talk to next that you're still having the same problem as before? Instead, you have to recite the history of their incompetency like Biblical patronymics? Can you tell that I'm on hold while writing this blog?

"Thank you for waiting. An AT and T representative will be with you as soon as possible. Please continue to hold. You will not be disconnected. Thank you for your patience."

An actual conversation with Jason

So, some of you also read Jason's blog, which admittedly is better than mine, but then he doesn't cater to the warhammer crowd. So, there you go. Anyway, The Drivler decided to tell me a story yesterday, or rather I should say that he, with great excitement, wanted to tell me about the "great" thing that happened to him last week. Now admittedly, by writing out the Drivler's "great" moment, I am stealing much of his thunder, but I feel it's necessary to give my side of this, or else its impact may be lost.

He started the conversation by saying: "Let me tell you the highlight of my week. Two words for you, 'Blind Justice'" Intrigued? So was I. I mean who was the recipient of this blind justice? Who was the party deserving of not just justice but blind justice and what horrible thing had they done to deserve it. Most of you know that the drivler is a misnomer; he rarely tells a bad story, and with a segway like this, well who knows where this will go.

He continued: "Way back in the day, Mrs. Drivler lived with this girl (I can't remember her name so I'll call her...) Shannon. Anyways, this girl was a freak. She came home one night and she decided she wanted to "purify" herself by shaving every hair off her body and then taking a hot bath."

Ahah! So, it is Shannon who would be the recipient of this "blind justice," though its not clear why the drivler would even want vengeance or why it would so satisfy him that this girl had gotten hers 13 years after the Drivler had known her. I mean, it's sort of intriguing that Jason would even find out that this Shannon-person had got what was coming to her (despite the fact that I didn't really know why she had anything coming to her at all). I mean, without explanation, one may assume that the Drivler turned on the news and there Shannon was, finally getting arrested for some heinous crime or act. Or better yet, she was on Cops getting arrested for huffing paint. I mean something, right? He lives in North Carolina. One can only imagine that for him to learn anything about Shannon out in California, she'd have to make into the national spotlight. What had she done, back at the beginning of the story or even now? Not just justice, people: BLIND JUSTICE. The hand of God descending from the clouds to strike down the evil-doers just when they finally thought that they were safe, that they had escaped punishment for their crimes, but oh no...not Shannon. She had finally gotten her come uppance for whatever heinous vile thing she had done.

Jason continued:
"So, anyways, I was watching this show the other day called "Blind Justice" and there's this blind guy, and get this, he's got a shaved head. How the hell does a blind guy shave his head?"

I'm not fucking joking. That was the point of his story. That's it. That was the "Blind Justice" he was referring to.

Then, as I sat there on the phone utterly dumbfounded, I could hear the Drivler in the background turn to Mrs. Drivler and say:
"Hey, remember Shannon?"
"OH yeah."
"Remember when she shaved all her hair?"
"Yup."

Somehow, this was supposed to make everything...you know... make sense.

It wasn't until I got off the phone that I realized what happened, but I've figured it out, I think. The Blind Justice that Jason was referring to was not some well shaved blind guy. No. At some point in my life, I must have told Jason some kind of bullshit story that didn't make a shred of sense and he had been waiting--the Drivler is patient--for the one day when I would least expect it, and then he would unleash his story of Shannon on me, knowing full well that I would take him seriously and I would be left wondering what the hell one story had to do with another, and why any of this constituted the high point of his week. The high point of his week is right now, reading this, realizing full well that he got me.

So to you Drivler I say this, Kudos. But remember, I too am patient. The day will come. Mark my words. When I too will have my "Blind Justice," and I too will wonder, 'how the hell does that guy shave his head?'

40k ahead-- A review of the Striking Scorpions

A number of sites are available for learning eldar tactics. Such as, and, and, to name but a few. Most of these suck. To be quite honest, every member of the Eldar army is useful in some way, but generally, only in that way. In other words, unlike space marines, if you use a unit of Eldar incorrectly, they will be wiped out. So, to say that Striking Scorpions are good at hand to hand is dumb. That's what they're sort of designed to do, but point of fact, they aren't very good at it. You can't, for instance, hope to wipe out an enemy squad in a turn--that's what howling banshees are for. But this is not to say that striking scorpions are not without their purpose, and I thought I'd elucidate on this some here on my blog. Hell, it's my blog.

Okay, so a few things to note. Striking Scorpions do not get fleet of foot because of their armor save. This means that the Striking Scorpions are not going to be moving very far across the battlefield. They are not designed to bring the fight to the enemy and work best in a defensive capacity. Some Eldar players may argue that you can put the Striking Scorpions in a Wave Serpent or Falcon, but for many reasons this is not a good idea. First of all, you probably have better things to put in your personal carriers. Second, according to the new rules, troops cannot charge after disembarking and so the Striking Scorpions will be left for an entire turn unable to do crap except die. Don't do that.

The third reason that you shouldn't move the Striking Scorpions to the enemy relates to the basic point behind the scorpions which I will discuss, but first a quick break down of kill ratios.
Assume that a squad of 10 scorps charges a squad of 10 space marines. First of all, there will be one fire phase. Unlike other troops who have to decide what to do with their pistols (use them in fire or get an extra attack during hth), scorps don't have this problem. They have three close combat weapons, and thus, using the pistol will still leave them the extra attack. So...fire the pistols. One shot a piece.

Each scorpion will hit 2/3 of the time, will wound 1/2 of the time, and will make it through the armor 1/3 of the time, or 1/9 of the shots fired will kill. 10 scorpions, 9 marines.

Hth time, the scorps charged (+1 attack), they have two weapons (+1 attack). So, each scorpion gets 3 attacks. One worked out at initiative 7, the other two worked out at inititiative 5, both of which beat the marines initiative. So...
The mandiblasters hit 1/2 the time, they wound 1/2 the time, and they penetrate armor 1/3 of the time. In other words, 1 out of every 12 shots fired will kill a marine. 10 shots fired. Going off of statistics (and not luck), the mandiblasters don't do shit this turn.
The other attacks (of which there are 20) may be a little more effective. They hit 1/2 the time, wound 1/3 of the time, and penetrate armor 1/3 of the time. Or 1 out of every 18 kills. So, one more dead marine. Eldar 10, marines 8.

The marines retaliate: they hit 1/2 the time, wound 2/3 of the time, and penetrate armor 1/3 of the time, or 1 out of every 9 attacks kills. 10 marines=10 attacks. 1 dead Eldar. At the end of turn 1: Eldar 9, space marines 8.

If you keep applying these statistics over time, what transpires is an overwhelming victory for the striking scorpions. They will kill these hapless marines and still have 7 models left to carry the fight to the next enemy. That's not really the important feature of the Striking Scorpions combat potential. What is striking is the fact that this victory will occur on turn 8. That is, 7 turns after the Striking Scorpions begin their assault. Considering that most games of Warhammer 40k are only about 5 turns long, you may very well be asking "what's the point?"

And it is the answer to this question that really gives you some sense of how Striking Scorpions are meant to be employed. Keep in mind that Hth pretty much blocks every aspect of the game--line of sight, movement, etc. So, here in the middle of the battlefield is a rolling mass of combat (conceivably 20" wide) that is likely to block everything for 8 turns. I mean sure, you can "make" cover with tanks, but tanks can get shot at and blown up. You can't shoot the striking scorpions when they're in hth. Also, you shouldn't get too close to them, or they will more than likely pull units into the hth. Even if they lose, you have locked up the enemy worse than any barricade could.

This is why I say you should never put Striking Scorpions in a transport. Why set up this barricade on the enemy's side of the battlefield? Use this living wall to provide cover for your falcon, your fire prism, your vypers, or your jetbikes--anything that can move across the wall, fire and then move back. Also, are you having trouble getting your howling banshees into hand to hand (let's face it, you shoot them and they die)? Here's their cover and their destination. This wall is exceedingly a pain in the ass for the enemy because there is nothing they can do about it except to throw more troops into the fray. If you drop a personality model in with the scorpions you can take out those pesky marines who've upgraded to power fists, and if you make sure there are other hth specialists (howling banshees, wild riders, or storm guardian squads), you can quickly win the hand to hand, if you want to take down the wall and release the striking scorpions to set up somewhere else.

And if you don't play 40k, but still enjoy my pictures of my miniatures--this is for you.

Smart Horror

In Jason's recent blog, he commented that he wanted me to comment on my comments concerning his comments concerning Saw...which I haven't seen.

Let me try that again. Jason wrote a comment about Saw and in it, he explained that fans of horror are willing to suspend disbelief in order to make horror work. I disagree. In fact, I disagreed to Jason who then called me up to ask me to elucidate my response. Then, on his own blog he all but dared me to elucidate my response in writing. I could not tell if he wanted me to do this on his blog or on my own, but as such elucidation might take up some space I decided to do it here, rather than there. My postings have been a bit sparse lately and so I figured I should punch the thing up.

So, horror. Okay, first of all, I come by my knowledge honestly. I used to run many many adventures of Call of Cthulhu, which is basically the horror version of Dungeons and Dragons, and as such, I was constantly attempting to make my "adventures" scarier and scarier. To wit, I have thought up many a horrific episode--and case in point, I have used far fewer than I ever dreamed up.

The reason? Well, that's the thing. Horror allows a suspension of disbelief, but only in certain areas. For instance, you might suspend your disbelief that a race of half man/half fish creatures has been populating the world's oceans since the paleazoic era, but when they show up, and nobody calls the cops, you cry "Unrealistic!" Why? Well, barring giving my reading of Freud's "The Uncanny," I'll just say this: there's something horrifying in and of itself about something living outside the realm of nature. That is, we walk around making assumptions about the world. If we meet something or experience something that really threatens those assumptions at their core level, man, that's fucking scary. It doesn't matter whether it's realistic. That's the point. If it were realistic, it wouldn't be scary. The point is, it forces you to redefine "real" and in such cases, let's you know that you may have been very wrong about all those things that you thought were real previous to the encounter. Egads!

That having been said. It's not really that hard to come up with something that's scary--that isn't where horror gets its intelligence from. You learn one day that cows are our intellectual equal, you find out you are not alone in this knowledge, and yet, we still eat the intelligent cow. Even that lame ass example's kind of creepy.

Where horror gets its intelligence, where it requires its planning, is what the characters do in the face of such horrible knowledge. You see, in the real world, where things are realistic, when someone is trying to kill you, you go to the cops. If you don't do that, you are an idiot. When someone is stalking you for days on end, you call someone, you hang out at a friend's house, you buy a gun. Realistically, you're sitting in the attic of your home, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you hear a voice yell, "GET OUT!" What do you do? You get out. If you don't do that, you go call a priest or something. Moreover, after you've seen the devil, you pretty much don't have an excuse not to go to church. Realistically, you have a religious experience. There's a monster killing everybody in town? Where's the national guard? Because you can bet your sweet ass, they will show up for a man-eating radish monster from Planet 9. People find a corpse and it clearly looks like something busted OUT of its head. They don't just take that body down to get it cremated, people will investigate, and if more corpses start piling up, those people will be trained in the use of their firearms.

In other words, horror can quickly turn into action, in which case it is not horror, or it can quickly slip past the point of realism, in which case it becomes bad horror. In order to keep horror working--and we're not talking psychological intellectualism, we're just talking the kind of horror that really works--you have to make sure that the characters CANNOT do those things that would allow the horror to devolve into action. At the same time, you have to explain why the characters cannot do those things, or else the horror is going to be stupid.

Look, for instance, at the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Clearly, stupid horror. They're gross sure. Even entertaining. But they're not really scary in the way that say The Ring is scary or the way that Blair Witch is scary. Why? Well, there's this demon-esque character Freddy and he hunts people in their dreams. Then the people attempt to fight Freddy in their dreams. See, this isn't realistic. How in the world would anyone ever come to the conclusion that there's a knife fingered madman hunting them. Their friends die. Dang man, that sucks. But to be able to move from that moment to the moment when you're fighting Freddy, you have to be convinced somehow in this completely odd notion, and the only way to do that is to survive an encounter with Freddy, but how do you survive such an encounter without taking it seriously in the first place. Meanwhile, if this were really happening, every would-be psychic, scientist, and medical researcher would be on Elm Street. "These kids are developing laceration without explanation while they sleep." This shit would be front page news. There would be cults reacting to this shit by doing things five times more heinous then any of the crap Freddy could start.

No. In order for this to be horror, the Elm Street kids are going to have to want to go to the authorities and not be able to. We cannot just make the cops retarded. Keep dialing. Eventually you will find an authority figure that isn't. See how this works? Take, for instance, Dawn of the Dead. The characters would like to go to the authority, but they can't because what authority there is, is too busy fighting the zombies to worry about individual people trapped in houses. Blair Witch? She doesn't kill often enough for there to be a full scale investigation. Those kids just got lost in the woods. The Ring. Until you're dead, there's nothing to tell the authorities. Now, if a whole bunch of people were found dead after watching this tape, then the story would be different. But it's one tape, one person who then becomes one corpse.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep people from going to the police in order to make horror? I mean, sure, you can put every horror story out in the middle of nowhere, but after a while that gets old. There's a whole genre of horror stories devoted to the terror that lives next door to you. Investigative horror. Psychological horror. You aren't trapped. Pulling such stories off is a lot easier than if it were the love of your life living next door, as in a romance. "I found out my next door neighbor is the mass murderer the FBI have been looking for, and I think he suspects I know. Whatever will I do?" You call the FBI--end of the horror.

Horror is, in essence, a delicate set-up of dominoes. Its characters are trying, at every turn, to do everything within their spiritual, intellectual, and physical power to escape the horror, but to no avail. If you're designing the horror story, you have to account for how and why all these attempts fail--and I mean ALL of them. I mean, yeah, sure, you can totally forget about all of this and just make a monster and some people running from the monster until they get the monster's head under a pile driver, but the audience will know that they wouldn't have been so stupid, and the writer will no that the characters weren't supposed to be that stupid. The truth is, we don't really suspend our disbelief, not even with bad horror movies. Instead, we just turn the horror into comedy--is there really anything funnier than A Nightmare on Elm Street, part V. Aren't those soon-to-be-ex-counsellors making out in Camp Crystal Lake just slapstick with a machete.

So, finally to answer your point Jason. No. Horror is THE most difficult genre and it is precisely because it demands the most control over the realistic to keep it from becoming either action or comedy.

But then again, I still haven't seen Saw.