Burrowowl

Something I’ve been hearing recently that used to just never come up in polite conversation is a constitutional convention to overhaul California’s founding legal document. The Golden State’s constitution has been so severely modified over the 130 or so years since its last overhaul that it requires a search engine to consume the darned thing.

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 18 AMENDING AND REVISING THE CONSTITUTION

SEC. 4. A proposed amendment or revision shall be submitted to the
electors and if approved by a majority of votes thereon takes effect
the day after the election unless the measure provides otherwise. If
provisions of 2 or more measures approved at the same election
conflict, those of the measure receiving the highest affirmative vote
shall prevail.

This means that 50% plus one voters during a primary election (when very few people show up to the polls) can trump the Governor, Assembly, Senate, and State Supreme Court. This is all very democratic, of course, but also leaves a nasty situation when a poorly-conceived proposition goes through that seemed like a good idea at the time. Compare this process to that used for the United States Constitution, which sets a much higher bar, and has only resulted in a couple of totally boneheaded revisions.

Our legislators complain that their hands are tied by too many spending formulae, leaving only a handful of big-ticket items in the budget to fiddle with. A couple of examples of government reveue sources that are strictly limited in their reallocation off the top of my head:

• Property taxes
• Tobacco taxes
• Vehicle licensing fees
• Gasoline taxes
• Lottery revenue

I propose that we cut them loose. Drop the restrictions on what kinds of government revenue can be put to what purposes and let our legislators legislate. If they do poorly, their challengers in the next election have a stronger argument that we should kick the bums out.

Since we can’t count on the critters in Sacramento to call for a constitutional convention on a 2/3rds vote as currently required, we introduce a ballot proposition to introduce a provision allowing for constitutional convention by popular referrendum. Put said popular refferendum on the same ballot as a separate measure and let the ad war begin!

Who’s with me?

Finally started playing Fallout 3. I’ve been a fan of the series since stopping by by buddy Scott’s place years ago and playing Wastelands with him. A couple thoughts on the subject:

• It’s crawling with supermutants. What the hell?
• Animating the human face is something the Havok engine just doesn’t handle very well. I’m under the distinct impression that these people’s skin doesn’t fit over their heads properly.
• People sure are talkative in the post-apocalypse. They just love to drone on and on about every little subject. Must be lonely or something.
• I don’t remember radscorpions being so tough. I seem to recall beating the snot out of one with my bare hands early in Fallout and schooling several with a spear in Fallout 2. In Fallout 3 a chinese assault rifle barely puts a dent in one.
• God damn landmines. God damn them.

Ricardo Montalban died today. We all remember him as Star Trek‘s Khan, Fantasy Island‘s Mr. Roarke, and as just a generally-awesome walk-on in all manner of movies and television shows. He introduced me to the concept of “fine Corinthian leather” as well as a string of other distinctive quotables.

I must admit that it’s been over a decade since I’ve followed the inter-title continuity of western comic books. I couldn’t tell you which titles were involved in the Marvel Civil War, or give you a cogent description of what DC’s Countdown was about. So I don’t really know who Terra is. Or was. Apparently she had something to do with the Teen Titans. I inferred this while reading the four-shot series Terra.

Terra follows a young newcomer to the superhero scene of the DC continuity. She has been very busy recently, popping up from the Earth to save the day from all manner of subterrannean threats, saving coal miners, staunching rogue lava flows, et cetera. It’s all very heroic, and the behavior of the new heroine is markedly naive.

This series does something that I had grown alien back in the late 1980′s and 90′s when I was regularly following the convoluted plot conceits of superhumans-in-tights: it doesn’t really explain things. I don’t know who the first or second Terra were. I don’t know what their powers were, who they associated themselves with, what perils the faced, overcame, or were defeated by. I have no idea how powerful they were on a scale of The Question to Superman. Terra doesn’t bother telling me. It’s important that there were two previous metahumans named Terra that had similar powers to this title’s protagonist. That’s all I needed to know, and the writers were kind enough to leave it at that. If I hadn’t known who Hawkman or Geoforce were, it wouldn’t have mattered and they didn’t tell me. Thank you, Gray and Palmiotti, for keeping the continuity in your pants.

The art, by Amanda Connor, is interesting. Stylized with a fair amount of detail but leavin enough room for the colorist to get some detail in, she does a great job conveying motion, keeping it easy to follow from frame to frame in a way that many artists often fail to. The faces, however, showed some inconsistency that was a little disappointing. All four covers were great, but Connor falls into the trap of defining a character by a few overt features (costume, hair color & style), and lets things blur from there. In some scenes featuring Power Girl, I was certain that a change in coloring work would have rendered the two superheronies indistinguishable.

Overall, I found Terra to be a refreshing glimpse into the DC Universe. It didn’t smack me about the face and neck with seventy years of back-story. It told a story from beginning to end, showed character growth (terribly rare in superhero comics), and ended appropriately. The artwork was solid if not perfect, and is certainly worth picking up either individually or as its inevitable TPB.

Ruby is a rabbit. She is trapped, and confronted with a series of puzzle-like challenges. Back in December, somebody calling himself “Weaver” started up a choose-your-own-adventure thread on 4chan‘s /tg/ board wherein the imageboard participants could suggest the little rabbit’s course of inquiry and action.

The first wave of puzzle challenges are resolved much as you would expect from a typical “you are stuck in a closet” point-and-click flash puzzle, but as it progresses we are exposed to the horrible imagination of Weaver, and Ruby is subjected to increasingly creepy or even horrifying situations. As one participant remarked: “Shit just got DOUBLE LOVECRAFTIAN.” By the time the second session of the Ruby story is under way, there is a seriously paranoid air to things, as shown to us through a rolling archive of message-board posts, with anonymous participants shouting each other down in exaggerated panic as to which button should be pushed next, which items should be examined in what order, and whether or not Ruby’s feminine physique is up to a particular task.

If you ever played games like Survival in New York City or the old Manhunter game by Sierra, I cannot recommend this game strongly enough. Go though the archives and agonize over the stupidity of the other players, revel in their genius, and be horribly horribly frustrated by the recommendations Weaver goes with. Also recommended if you like zombies, rabbits, or very crudely-drawn puzzles.

• 1d4chan.org article on Ruby Quest
• Sugtg’s archive of Ruby Quest (contains everything as of today)