ALT.SF4M Amusements 8/8/98 • j********o@***.com 08/08/1998 00:00:000 UTC Recommended: the "Super Adventure Team" on MTV: pretty cool spoof of the Thunderbirds marionette show. n.b.: they're running new Darias too. Gorno Mmmmm. Inga Hammond with glasses. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. • s******j@p*******.**o.com 08/08/1998 00:00:000 UTC In article <1***************.********0@l*******.****.***l.com>, JohnGorno wrote: >Recommended: the "Super Adventure Team" on MTV: pretty cool spoof of the >Thunderbirds marionette show. Don't forget Cartoon Sushi and Celebrity Deathmatch! >n.b.: they're running new Darias too. La-LA-LAHHH-la-la! I keep waiting for Daria to turn into a an animated version of that twisted Shary Flenniken cartoon that used to run in National Lampoon. ("Bonnie and Trots"? Something like that.) -- +-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ SeJ@ay-oh-el-dot-com ~ stefanj@eye-oh-dot-com http://www.io.com/~stefanj/ CHARGES APPLIED FOR UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL! • p*******x@****.com 10/08/1998 00:00:000 UTC While muttering something about 'Amusements 8/8/98' s******j@p*******.**o.com (Stefan E. Jones) was heard to remark: >I keep waiting for Daria to turn into a an animated version of that >twisted Shary Flenniken cartoon that used to run in National Lampoon. >("Bonnie and Trots"? Something like that.) Trots and Bonnie, I think Bucky was a blast -- 73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK "Go not to the programmers for counsel, mailto:p*******x@****.com for they will say both 1 and 0" http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux -- Elvish saying • s******j@p*******.**o.com 11/08/1998 00:00:000 UTC The Person Your Mother Warned You About wrote: >Bucky was a blast Please tell! I was cranked on going but money (lack of) reared it's ugly head. (Of course, today I learned I got a raise and bonus. Greaaaat timing, Oracle!) Stefan -- +-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ SeJ@ay-oh-el-dot-com ~ stefanj@eye-oh-dot-com http://www.io.com/~stefanj/ CHARGES APPLIED FOR UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL! • j********o@***.com 31/08/1998 00:00:000 UTC Was rewatching Millennium (late, late at night): part one of Owls and Roosters, where they're hunting for a piece of the Cross of the Crucifiction, and Frank and Watts are having a tiff, and Watts tries to explain about prophecies and the Millennium, etc.. Anyway, they fade out (one of those indefinite fades that made be to another scene or to a commercial) and indistinct, shadowed shapes appear on the screen; an ominous voice intones: The Sun turns black, oceans boil, mountains shatter... the few who survive beg the Lord to take them now... and their Levi hard jeans wonder what all the fuss is about. Levis: they're tough. Armageddon tough. Reread some books: Niven's "A Gift From Earth." Set on Plateau, a pre-FTL colony: here the colonists are oppressed by the idle descendents of the crew and the prevailing penal system of the time - execution and the organ banks for almost all infractions. A young man gets mixed up with the tiny rebellion and must run for his life just as a delivery from Earth threatens to overturn the social order. Pretty cool. Saberhagen's "Berserkers: The Beginning." Which is a compilation of two old books I'd already read, despite the misleading cover text! Anyway, good stories, although an alarming number are gimmick stories, which threaten to trivialize a serious subject. I don't remember the old books having such a definite chronological order, so the stories may have been interleaved from the original collections. Clarke's "Sands of Mars." Pretty good, although it's a little too self-aware as science fiction. About a famous SF writer who goes to visit the small but proud Martian colony. He discovers secrets about himself, the colony, and the planet. Things are a little too easy: technological schemes go off without a hitch, etc.. In some (technical) ways he's prescient, others ways (like social evolution) he's way too conservative. I suppose the book may have been intended as a corrective to the tropes of Golden Age fiction, but would have been more effective if the protagonist had been constantly disappointed by reality, despite knowing better. This book was written when there was still some hope that human skill would matter in the future (admittedly, it seems to be set ten years ago!) In a few decades, the central qualification for space travel will likely be the foolishness to take the risk and do the jobs too menial for the computers! There's also the stubborn belief that one must actually fully explore a world on foot before declaring it worthless... e.g. any day now, were going to find a hidden civilization of sand-men in the Sahara! (In one of his short stories, a Mars mission has the special goal of photographing the Earth's transit of the Sun! Whoop-de-doo!) Also, he runs up against the perennial problem of getting well-equipped people in trouble. The solution is to make them not-so-well equipped: in this case, the colony could be self-sufficient but poor. The Cold War is over, so wasteful jingoistic projects are being ended, and the leader of the colony has been waxing about a proud independent civilization on Mars - a competition that the people of Earth, having just defused their planetary powder-keg, want to avoid. So many of the colonist stay on, despite budget cuts, and without constant resupply and personnel from Earth. And their children, despite the highly educated and intelligent parents, are few, undereducated, average intellects, and put to work at eight years old. Now that's a recipe for interesting living! Another spin would be that the colony was founded in response to some resource crisis that has since been averted ("On the wall of my office sits our epitaph: 'Massive Tantalium Strike in South Africa!'"). Space Rangers had a similar recipe: they were underpaid and overworked. Life can be much more interesting when all the gadgets don't work the way they should. Gorno Ahh... Julie Auclair in glasses. Perfect.