World of Tanks: The T2 Light Tank & The Lone Commander

Of all the forums, boards, reply threads and bingo nights I post to, it indeed wins....

An avid Tolkien fan's take on The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (SPOILER ALERT!!!)

THE BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!
As Christopher Lee said (real life friend of J.R.R.T.) in the extra DVD footage of LoTR: "You do not improve upon Tolkien." I simply think Jackson and company feel that they can..
All things being equal, why not go with the book?
All from memory, forgive if I get any book facts wrong:
An avid Tolkien fan's take on The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug
1st, things I liked about the movie:
-The river scene was well done. I loved it!
-Smaug was an incredible work of CGI. Never once did I think about the CGI. He was totally convincing.
-I like the Kung-fu-Panda Bombur. What a hoot!
-Radagast: he has been a nice addition to Jackson's movies and a nice augmentation to Gandalf as a kindred.
-Mirkwood: the scenery of this sickly forest was an artistic pleasure.
-Bilbo: Martin Freeman is an incredible Bilbo. I simply love the way he says, "Smaug."
All of these things I just listed about the movie that I like are entirely detached from my thoughts on the book which now follow:
I have read The Hobbit dozens times over the decades, and once out loud with my daughter. I have read LoTR many times over, and atm out loud with her too we are almost done. I have read The Silmarillion over and over as well, along with tertiary books such as Tolkien's letters, etc. So, here is an avid fan's take on this latest Peter Jackson movie:
This was a good movie and I do not not recommend it. As a movie, detached from its source material, it's worth seeing. Yes, I liked it. I was not bored one minute, and I'm glad I saw it, but ...as an avid Tolkien fan over decades -- I'm an older guy.... The liberties taken in this movie were so much (compared to its source material), that I actually feared what would happen as I'm watching it. It took more liberties than any of Jackson's Tolkenesque films to date, and maybe that's the best word to describe the film: Tolkenesque, because it sure wasn't 100% Tolkien. I audibly groaned at one point so that my daughter asked what was wrong: it was the developing love affair between Kili and this fabricated-for-the-movie female elf. (Note: there would not have been a dwarf found without a beard, at all; these dwarves in Jackson's movies are just too gd pretty IMO, since when do we need to Channing-Tatum-up dwarves? /the-dwarves-are-too-damn-pretty-meme) Spider scene -- why not have the dialogue where Bilbo taunts the spiders? Where is "attercop"? Where is this (and other) wonderful examples of writing wherein, Tolkien isn't just writing a fantasy book, but introducing English speakers to ancient parts of the language, that encourage us to delve further into the past of our language? The dialogue in the book here is legendary IMO, and now masses will replace it with the vacated display of this movie. Lake town -- we have humans, dwarves, orcs and elves ... oh and a hobbit. Reality: there were just humans, dwarves and a hobbit ever in Laketown. Dol Guldor -- all to do with Dol Guldur is 100% conjecture. Bilbo and Smaug -- this is by far my biggest disappointment. Bilbo NEVER took the ring off when talking with Smaug, and this bullshit of Smaug being in cahoots with Sauron is nothing but that: bullshit.... Bilbo named Sting, not some spider. The barrel river scene -- whilst well done in the movie, my daughter and I laughing out load at one point -- was NOT a combat sequence. These orcs were NOT chasing "The Company" the entire movie, they were never in Mirkwood. They were never in Laketown. Radagast was NOT in The Hobbit, and he NEVER had bird shit running down his face. The dwarves NEVER encountered Smaug, at all, much less had a walt-disney-ride tour through Erebor -- Lonely Mtn -- that was nothing less than WoW Iron Forge. Smaug was NOT covered in gold, ever. There was not this great forge scene and Smaug never got covered in molten gold, and I guess the boat or whatever Thorin rides in, in molten gold, does a hellava job dissipating heat. There was NOT some special bow and arrow system to fight dragons -- it was just a plain bow and arrow. The way they meet Beor is fucked up. It is entirely fabricated from the book, and I think the book was better, with Gandalf introducing "The Company" in pairs and such, in an elegant manner. And Beor never said he disliked or hated dwarves. The way they meet the elves is fucked up -- wtf fuck with that at all?. "The vanishing party of elves" in the forest could have made for great cinema IMHO. Oh, and Legolas was NOT in The Hobbit. ffs, Jackson has a dwarf and elf falling in love with each other .. my god.... Ok, and let's be sure to imprison Gandalf again, I mean, that's always a crowd getter! Why mess with principle scenes such as Smaug/Bilbo meeting? When Biblo takes off the ring revealing himself to Smaug, my heart collapsed. The power of that scene is that Smaug is truly baffled by this Hobbit. A thread throughout TH and LoTR is that the hobbits are true mysteries, to even ancient beings such as Fangorn (Treebeard). Bilbo is able to engage Smaug in a lengthy dialogue, mostly, because Smaug is just damned curious about what Bilbo is, and the fact that Bilbo is also invisible, makes the dragon as intrigued as hell. Smaug never knows about the ring. He never makes a single, solitary statement about the ring, at all! And where is one of my all time favorite Tolkien quotes, as Bilbo taunts Smaug just a little too much, making a joke as Smaug's expense, who then tosses a line of flame up the single tunnel (yes, it was a single tunnel that the dragon had always thought he should have blocked-up) to which Bilbo makes a saying he uses from then on: "Never laugh at live dragons." <-- WHERE IS THAT PETER JACKSON!?!? It could have been worse. Aragorn coulda showed up. He woulda been like, idk, 12? Since the 1st "The Hobbit" Jackson carved down the number of dwarves. Oh, and, let's make sure to have a wounded dwarf, who has to stay behind in Laketown (and there was not a 'river gate' that closed, and bottle-necked the barrels; and btw, the barrels were sealed, this is how barrels could float down a river without sinking (you see, because the barrels were sealed -- note: open barrels would quickly fill with water and sink), but now, his brother demands to stay behind too, and then, another dwarf overslept. So now, we have 3 nice dwarfs in laketown, along with legolas and this make-believe female elf -- that was NOT in the book at all. Because -- and you can see this coming in the next movie -- like, there's gonna be all this action-jackson combat fucking shit that filled the screen. 'Sleeping Bombur is 100% done away with, replaced by 'arrow-knee Kili' Bruce Lee would watch these elves fighting and be impressed. Neo would be impressed. My god, just how many orcs are there to die? These orcs vs these 2 elves is like me vs my bag of popcorn.... I worried before I ever saw the first Peter Jackson movie covering Tolkien's work. Upon seeing it, he won me over, and I was on board. I have been great, good and ok with all his "Tolkenesque" work since, until now. This last iteration has me getting those feelings again, that I had before ever seeing the 1st move. Please, Mr. Jackson: get it right, get it tighter, and err a bit more toward the source material. I know that was acerbic, but honest. I understand a movie is tough to produce, must have rhythms, action, ebbs and flows, that books do not have to deal with. I am a Jackson fan, I just would like to leave his movies covering Tolkien with the same feeling I left after LoTR:FoTR. This one is the worst of the lot, and I feel he both can do better, and knows he can. And it was Bilbo who saw the missing scale on Smaug when he had the ring on an when he was flattering Smaug and when Smaug rolled over to show off his body not some fucking kid of Bard who didn't exist in the book. Why take this small thing away? Why not err on the side of the book?
Mr. Jackson: you are tasked (have tasked yourself) with introducing the masses who might never read these books, to the works of Tolkien. Seeing how his writings are some the greatest in English Literature, I feel you should simply err on the side of authentic words he wrote, not a script written by graduate, pressured to sell "HTDoS" cups at Taco Bell.

fkd the Moabite

Deep thought of the day: Blogging turns 5 minute emails into 50 minute posts -- the difference being, no body reads your blog posts....

I am a Moabite, erm, MOBAite....

^This is a Moabite

HoTS is coming!  Yes, Blizzard, who actually provided the canvas ... well, and the paint, the brush, the camera, the film for the camera and ever Bob fucking Ross to paint the picture that _is_ the genre of MOBA (oh look! a wiki on what a MOBA is!) ...is finally releasing their MOBA:

HoTS

(I've been told to stop putting pics in between all my words and/or, that I use too many images, fuck that!)

/am-I-the-only-one-around-here-that-hears-"Heroes-of-The-Storm"-thinks-of-the-Doors-tune:-"Riders-on-The-Storm"?-meme

tl;dr: great page on the coming hero categories

It appears the heroes will be drawn from Blizzard's main-stays: Warcraft, Diablo and Strarcraft, and will be in 4 classes of:

Warrior – Mostly melee characters who can soak up lots of damage while also dealing it back.
Assassin – Your top damage dealers that can pick off enemies, but also tend to be more squishy.
Support – Assists other characters either by healing, buffs, or other abilities
Specialist – More specialized roles that don’t fit into the above. These include Siege and commander heroes.

Btw, the best part of writing this post is I'm listening to the Doors right now, RoTS....

It is odd, the MOBA genre.  Unless it really clicks, when I show a MOBA to another avid gamer, istg, it's like the boringest thing ever, but then again, I never got into power-card games or wtfever they are called....

The 5 stages of fkd

This did not remind me of World of Tanks, nope, not for a second....

I am Galadriel....

"The world is changed. I feel it in the reddit. I feel it in the internet. I smell it in the web." --fkd

^did I get that right?

My Grandfather's father died when he was four years old.  He was the oldest of three kids with a younger sister and then youngest being a brother.  At age 10, the thick of The Great Depression hit.  He lived with his mother and two siblings in a single room shack.  Literally, a shack.  It had a stove in it, and he said snakes could crawl through the spaces between the boards.

So he's 10, and his mother tells him to go get food or they will all starve.  He begins work on a farm for 25 cents a week, walks the train tracks to pick up pieces of coal that bounced off the train cars, and once he made a big enough bag of these, he said he would get 10 cents for that.  He then also killed rats, and each rat tail he turned in would net him 1 cent.

All of this money he gave to his mother to feed the family.  He also hunted and fished and brought all of that home.  Rabbits, squirrels, fish, and one time a skunk (he said you only ever need to kill one skunk before you never tried again).

At age 17, he volunteered for the military and said he, "learned the nomenclature of the 50 caliber machine gun."  They put him in recon.  Recon had some of the highest casualties in combat, as they are usually seeking out the enemy, filling-in weak spots etc.  (I've told his story before, but doing it again as I am setting up a rant here).

On June 6, 1944, he hit Utah beach with the first surface-borne division to land: the 4th "Ivy" Division.  Needless to say, he survived the war (or I wouldn't be here).  He saw hard combat from D-Day all the way through The Battle of The Bulge wherein, his division was put there to "rest" as it was considered a place no attack would come.  Those poor guys in that division -- including my Grandfather -- having had the hell beat out of them since the beach, now faced the very last, great, German assault of the war.  He said his feet froze, and he nearly lost them, that he didn't eat for days during TBoTB, and was tossed 30 feet by a bomb.

Out of 124 men in his original troop, only he and six others survived the war.

My life with him was filled with hunting, fishing, carpentry (he had an awesome wood shop) and very manly things such as gun cleaning, honing scopes on rifles, trapping, etc.  He never saw the Internet or used a computer that I know of.  He died in 1990.

He loved to read and write.  He loved to read the Bible.  He corresponded in letters a lot too, to friends and family that lived far off.  He also wrote open letters that made it to print in the local paper.  He was a character, loved people, loved to joke.  The pastor of the local church, retired, would come visit with him just to discuss religion, politics.  He said my Grandfather had a unique way about him, but more than anything, he was nice to people.  He was nice to their face and he was nice in his letters, his writings.

I know I'm not the first to discuss this, but it is dying ... nice is dying.  The old ways are gone and "the world is changed...."

I learned in college (and my Grandfather only had a 2nd grade education, but went on to business school after the war), that in Shakespeare's day "nice" meant "retarded."  It meant someone who is slow-minded, but you see, we are not threatened by slow-minded people.  They don't play passive aggressive games, they are not typically smart-asses.  You can take them at face value.  They are honest, truthful ... they are "nice."  And so, "nice" became a word we associate with someone who doesn't threaten us, or who isn't necessarily mean to us.  But in Shakespeare's day, it meant "not so smart."

Nice simply means people like you as you have done nothing to insult or threaten them.  They like you.  You are nice.  (Try it some time).

And how did my Grandfather correspond with friends, family and even people he argued with?  (And he did argue; he loved to argue politics, religion, etc.).  He started each letter with "Dear" and it ended it with "Sincerely."

^You never see this on the Internet.  Not at all.  It is gone, as Galadriel lamented the loss of the grand-past, so I miss my Grandfather, and not just him (I surely do miss him).  I miss that he was nice to people.  I miss that people were nice to him.  I miss that people used to be nice.

I actually remember getting letters from people in the mail that still said "Dear" and "Sincerely."  Believe it or not, many of these were hand-written, with thoughtfulness, but not anymore.  It seems even close friends and family have succumbed to the zombie-hive mentality, the virus of being, well, just plain fucking mean on the Internet.  Benign emails from life-long friends quickly turn into smart-ass remarks, as we each feel like Louis C.K. or some other celebrity ("but you're not" --Tyler Durden).  And yes, I, too, am fully a participant in the batshitfuckingmeanness that is the gd motherfucking internet.  You bit me you asshole! Now iZombie!

I have this one friend that I've known now for over 20 years.  I remember sending him his first email reply.  He didn't reply back.  I asked him later, and he said he was offended at the "on this date, you said this, and in reply, fkd says" body-header crap <-- get that?  He was so normal, so natural back then, so used to the "Dear" and the "Sincerely" of "normal" correspondence, that even that benign auto-header crap offended him.  Today ... today?  He is one of the most nastiest, trolling people I ever communicate with via modern text-based communication.

And whereas my Grandfather faced: starvation, poverty, war, combat, killing, national upheaval, and worrying each day, often, as to whether he would eat or not, or if his family would eat or not, today, in this 1st world country, we are greatly concerned over ... fonts and memes.  Yes.  We need to insult someone else, be no-so-nice to them over their usage of a font type or meme nuance..

Enter the Internet:
Enter 2013:

I'm going to explain this as if I'm talking to my Grandfather on his first use of the Internet/reddit/the-web/wtfever:

Dear Grandfather,

I am so very happy to see you are going to use the Internet finally.  It is truly a wonderful place.  Do make sure to visit Wikipedia and search for anything you can possibly think of.  It is an incredible site.  It is basically the greatest encyclopedia you could ever imagine.  You can read all about your Army division, your favorite president (Roosevelt of course), etc.  You can even make additions yourself!  Imagine adding your own knowledge to the page on D-Day.

By the way, a "page" on the Internet is simply the current screen you are looking at.  Some of the words will have different colors.  These are called "hyperlinks" and when you move the arrow over them, and click the mouse (left button) it will take you to another page!  You can always go back and forth between the pages you are viewing.

Google is awesome too, and I highly recommend it.  You can find places nearby to eat, or where to get your oil changed, or you can search for info on ailments/cures, etc.  You can find just about anything using google.

At some point, you are going to want to add your own 2cents.  Everyone does on the Internet (and I mean everyone..).  It is here that you need to be extra careful.

First, do not use "Dear" or "Sincerely" no one does this, and it will make you appear foreign.  When you see words such as "what's on your mind" or "comment" there is no need to say "I have nothing on my mind" or "I have no comment."  This too will not help your reputation in this global arena.

A blog is a great way to start out.  People will probably never read it, and if they do, they will not read much of it, will quickly leave it and so on.  But just maybe, someone will like what you write or they will not.  Either way, they might leave a comment (and most comments on the Internet are not nice at all).  If they are nasty, you can block them from your blog as you own it.  But if you are on a website such as reddit, then you are just like everyone else, and if they say something insulting there isn't much you can do about it.  (You can downvote them, but if other people think their put-down is funny, then your downvote won't have much impact).

You will also be able to do things such as: set the font style.  Fonts are incredible things as I know you are familiar with them from type writers and such, but with modern computers and the Internet, you can have literally endless font styles.  I know you like to be creative, but please note here that you should not try any of these fonts.  You should stick to the fonts everyone else uses.  Especially, most especially, never use a font called "comic sans."  I would rather see you not even try the Internet than to use that font.  It is the death-nail of those who use it.  It tends to drive people using the Internet nuts.

You can also add pictures to your blog or on reddit, and you can make pictures using tools on your computer or on the Internet.  You can search for pictures others have made, and you can even reuse these perhaps.  At some point, you will see pictures with words.  These are typically called "memes."  Memes are pretty much like fonts -- although you have the ability create endless types of memes, DON'T DO IT!!!  If you even slightly miss the very subtle nuance of a meme, then people will not like it.  Furthermore, they will not like you at all.

Now, Grandfather, I would like to explain to you what a troll is....


Come to think of it, why do you and I even want to use the Internet?  I say let's not today.  How about we go fishing Papaw?  I really would like to do that again with you.  I miss it.  It is very nice.

Sincerely,

Your Grandson,

-fkd