Testing Chat V: The Final Mysterious Island: Miami Beach

[Flagg]

Christianmingle?

[adr]

just log in to my facebook account and get like 4 different instant ads for dating sites on the side

[RyanThunder]

Christianmingle?

The kind of site that isn't most likely to attract bible-thumping fire-and-brimstone heretics lol

But hey, I guess it can't hurt to try it.

[Flagg]

Christianmingle?

The kind of site that isn't most likely to attract bible-thumping fire-and-brimstone heretics lol

But hey, I guess it can't hurt to try it.

I'm sure they have denomination preferences and shit. I think jdate does.

[Bounty]

This is a terrible title. This is what happens when you pander to the centre, guys.

You're just mad Rocky V didn't have a subtitle.

[Gands]

Assignment: Miami Beach!

[Bounty]

Assignment: Miami Beach!

aw crap

aw crap aw crap

I thought Citizens On Patrol was V

[Oxymoron]

It's still time

you can still make a difference

/doom paul

[The Spartan]

I thought Citizens On Patrol was V

That was IV.

My sister and I used to watch VHS tapes of III, IV, V and VI all the time when we were kids.

[Gands]

I only had II and V.

[The Spartan]

We weren't allowed I or II. Too racy.

Not that the next four were exactly tame...

[adr]

i just watched some clips from the 2003 tour de france and phil and paul said, quite a few times, "it's unbelievable the strength of this man" or sometimes skill or something rather than strength

this man, of course, being lance armstrong

unbelievable indeed

[Oxymoron]

Look, it's perfectly normal for people to be able to pull 50 kilometers per hour on a bike under the power of their own muscles while climbing a mountain pass road, okay ? I'll have none of your suspicious bullshit.

[Flagg]

I just assume all athletes use PEDs until proven otherwise at this point.

[Darksi4190]

Jesus Christ. Three times today the power's crapped out and come back. I think DTE did a half-assed job with the repairs last weekend.

[Flagg]

My cable Internet keeps shitting itself. I'm thinking of going with centurylink.

[Darksi4190]

After last weekend I really wish there was a different Electric company I could switch to.

[Flagg]

After last weekend I really wish there was a different Electric company I could switch to.

Legal monopoly FTW. Why they don't just nationalize them shits me. SOCIALISM!

[Darksi4190]

Yeah. Either nationalize it or allow competition so someone has to provide a better service. This "guaranteed profit" shit the utility companies get is insane.

[adr]

god i just got into a welfare argument on the facebook

i was going to just hit and run some communist anarchism lite at the progressives and libertarians spewing stuff back and forth but then someone brought up the millionaire driving his limo to cash his welfare check

ugh what nonsense

[adr]

anywho i'm simultaneously writing up some overview of the backstory of my fanfiction (which i'm actually password protecting for limited distribution, my first time ever doing that kind of thing. while the setting setup stuff i'm doing right now is open - i've outlined it on public forums once or twice in the past - after this i'ma write some character stuff which i don't want on teh googlez and other NSA servers)

but anyway the one thing i have the hardest time doing when writing

is keeping consistent tense.


i write liek "they were totally cool. the first ship leaves and then the second ship will leave"

which just ain't how you're supposed to do that. or so i'm told. but i think i'm just inclined to shift back into the present tense as i go on because these things are always unfolding now, always changing as time goes on, in my mind

and i just kinda spew it out

[Flagg]

Yeah. Either nationalize it or allow competition so someone has to provide a better service. This "guaranteed profit" shit the utility companies get is insane.

What pisses me off is that they are guaranteed to never suffer losses due to outages. If your power is off for a long time one month they are allowed to use the prior years meter reading of the same month and charge you that.

[RyanThunder]

wait, so they have literally no reason to keep the power on? or even do anything really. they could just allow the entire infrastructure to collapse and keep charging for a service they're totally failing to deliver

[adr]

anywho i'm simultaneously writing up some overview of the backstory of my fanfiction

i wanna talk about a little bit of this here too

so one part of it is colony ships from future earth go to another star. the end result is:

1) the ppl who land on the planet lose all their tech and shit. a few thousand years later, they believe themselves to be native to the planet and there's no solid evidence discovered down there to contradict this (no ship wreckages, high tech artifacts, anything like that) for a long time.

2) there's no evidence left in planetary orbit, so the reborn civilization's space program doesn't hit hard evidence either

3) but there ARE other colonists from the expedition that still lived on in solar orbit, at like the L4 point with the sun or something like that. it is the discovery of them, a loooong time later, that finally proves the ancient astronaut theorists right


oh my god ANCIENT ALIENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!11!!1!!!11!!11!11!111


so i had previously had some fun shit with creationism in there

(PS the creationists are kinda right, as they are descendants of genetically engineered ppl)

but now i have to work this in



NARRATOR: "Could this be the result of a natural process? Or, is it, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, due to deliberate terraforming performed ten thousand years ago?"

ARGUER 1: "So you say this is the result of an evilutationary process. Then, where are the intermediate species?"

ARGUER 2: "What the fuck makes you think there /would/ be any intermediate species? There ain't no record of that shit in the fossil record for anything, it seems to be more of a punctuated equilibrium with rapid change in the middle of long periods of not much changing."

ARGUER 1: "Rapid change == ancient alien terraforming efforts."

ARGUER 2: "Where's the evidence that these aliens even exist?"

ARGUER 1: "YOU AND ME!!!!!!!!!!"

ARGUER 2: "YOU'RE BEGGING THE QUESTION!!!!!!!!"

ARGUER 1: "I'LL BEG YOUR QUESTION!"

ARGUER 2: "wait what"

*cue porno music*





ANYWAY



so the thing is how to explain the collapse of civilization on the planet with the varied outcomes with the ppl in orbit? see if the planet was in trouble, surely the orbital folks would try to do something to help, they're all part of the same colonial expedition

before i was thinking it was a kind of political schism. so they *could* help but didn't want to. earthquakes are killing them all? fuck those assholes.

(and then later, the space peeps have some trouble, and now there are no more planet faction to help, even if they wanted to, which is why high technology mostly collapsed in there too)


and i still kinda like that, but if it was a schism, why would they go so far away to L4? high earth orbit is still pretty isolated yet close enough to grab materials if need be, and if they were planetary colonizers in the first place, they might not even have the fuel to burn on that trip anyway


but now i'm thinking it could be a navigational error. they didn't decelerate just right and missed the planet, thus falling into the other orbit accidentally without enough fuel to join the others (and similarly the others didn't have enough fuel to mount a rescue)

and then being ill prepared for this - they were planning to land - they had to just make due with what they had... and it didn't quite work out, which is why they fell.

but then the odd thing is finding survivors still living in there (stargate planets of a week in o'neill cylinders!) thousands of years later. if they were able to build habitats, they'd be able to build ships to rejoin the others.


so maybe the "fuck you" way is still the best to achieve all my goals. i just don't feel that it makes sense for all these civilizations to fall without *some* good reason, and fuck you falls kinda short for that in space.

maybe a solar storm, but if they were living in space, they'd have to be ready for that kind of thing anyway. but perhaps this sun is different than the sun they came from and they weren't ready for the specifics?

i've heard solar induced geomagnetic storms can fuck shit up on earth, so an unprepared space hab cluster getting clobbered just might cause enough devastation to plausible knock them all out at once, so they can't bail each other out


hmmm i kinda like it


MAN TO NATURE: "i control you"

NATURE TO MAN: "no you don't"


edit: actually i'm pretty sure i discussed exactly this with jung a couple (maybe even three or four!) years ago, when the colonization thing first struck me, IIRC the solar storm thing was actually his idea back then. at the time though i don't think i embraced it - if i did, it would just be a "fact" already and i wouldn't be thinking so much about it now. but yeah i'm reconsidering it now

and i like it a lot this time

[RogueIce]

I only had II and V.

I loved that series so much, and I'm sad the rumored "Police Academy 8" never came to be because I thought it would have been cool. I suppose it could happen but it'd be stretching things a little. They would all have been on the force now for almost 30 years (since 1984), Callahan and Harris for even long since they were a Sergeant and Lieutenant respectively.

It could still be done but they'd all be very, very senior. Although having them close to retirement could mean they train a new crop of cadets who can make a new series. Reboots are all the rage still, right?