The Goth Club

Well… maybe if programmers lived in my neighbourhood when I was growing up, this’d be a Saturday morning cartoon.

It would seem that I have exhausted the supply of legitimate, ye oldè religious cartoons that have very fucked up teachings (I still insist they a lot of them simply have not made their way to YouTube / Vimeo), so we’re going to have to go with a new tack to keep you folks entertained on a Saturday morning.

Last week I showed you all how I think The Wizard of Oz should have ended.

This week is scene you’d only normally find on the special edition, re-re-release of Avatar: Director’s Cut.

The real irony is that there actually was a sex scene in the script where they have intimate hair tendril sex… but it was cut because it might have been a bit too full on for the young children going to see it. Ummm, are these the same tendrils that their sticking in animals? Considering parasites and disease exist on every world, what kind of freaky STDs would they have picked up? Psychic worms? Bioluminescent herpes?

Being a little more serious, this scene does raise some interesting questions. Whilst one might think that these questions were actually answered by Kirk in the first series of Star Trek, and then again in numerous fantasy canon with all the half-fantasy race creatures out there (half-giant? Really now? How does that even work logistically? You either get torn in half by a giant’s cock that’s nearly the same size as you, or you drown in vaginal lubrication and it’s doubtful your sperm will get further than two feet… I suppose maybe some giants having alfresco out in the forest and accidentally missing and hitting the local village? But then there’s still the issue of women basically exploding to give birth. It’s all very anime!), but it hasn’t been!

That's right, James Cameron has made furrys of us all...

Precisely how do two vastly genetically different creatures actually mate? Interspecies erotica!! Kelly can be a guys name!!! The whole sex scene is in avatar was predicated on the basis that the N’avi anatomy was somewhat like the picture here, or was at least left for the viewers to believe it was such.

Even considering the fact that Jake is technically in a N’avi body, and one assumes is somewhat cognisant of the biology behind it simply from using it, there’s still the issues surrounding the psychological and social implications of sex not only with an entirely different species, but also simply not knowing what those issues are between species.

Ahhh, Photoshop. Hours of fun! Click for full size

Considering the primitive nature of the society in which the N’avi live, and the hostility of the world that they supposedly live so harmoniously with, it’s hard to imagine that there is actually expectation of monogamy, which is predominantly a social construct, and rarely exhibited in hostile environment species as they are attempting to spread as much of their genetic material as possible.

This still doesn’t take into account the social impacts. In Avatar, Jake’s actually responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people (which does get mentioned in the How Avatar Should Have Ended cartoon) because he should have actually been attempting to setup a trade deal of some kind. Let’s face it, humans wanted the metal under the tree… Surely, with technology advanced enough to go interstellar distances and be profitable, it would be more than possible to set up an ecologically friendly (as possible) mining operation if it were fully explained to the N’avi (let’s face it, if it’s worth $20m/kg, it’ll still be profitable to setup an expensive mining operation)… But no, let’s get some native bush in the bush with my hairy tendrils, thinks Jake Sully.

So what does Avatar teach us? Actually, it’s almost along the lines of religious teachings really (oh yeah, sneak the religion in for the getting-back-on-topic segue…).

We learn that we should:

• Be good to the environment;
• Respect one another;
• Not betray our own people, whomever they may be;
• and don’t fuck aliens (read: people that aren’t your skin colour) or you’ll be responsible for the apocalypse!

Personally, I give this extra scene four and a half spinning blue cocks.

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If you’d gone to Solstone last night, then you would have noticed a number of drinks on the menu that were rather… aimed at the otaku set, shall we say.

I could have gone the traditional steampunk route, and had a whole bunch of classical Victorian era cocktails…  But let’s face it, Solstone was not Euchronia and nor was it meant to be.

It was merely meant to be the first “theme” to a set of anime inspired parties that Manifest is intending to hold from here on in. And to that end, the drinks were geared towards the otaku audience. And what drinks to otaku like?

Ramune, sake, midori… sweet things, generally. But really people drink for two reasons: either to get drunk or to solve their problems.

And what could solve more of the types of problems you’re likely to get at an alcohol fueled NYE event full of teenagers and early 20 somethings than a Falcon Punch? (more…)

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Those of you that are regular readers know that I try to keep my personal life out of this thing. After all, if there’s something that the world doesn’t need, it’s another nagging, whining “woe is me” blog by some angst ridden no-longer-teenager that can’t even write poetry. Attempting to maintain that often means that there are times when the blog won’t get updated for weeks, except for posts that I’ve written well into the past and scheduled, which are no longer working by the time they post (i.e. Disney’s Muhammed). To that end, I’m attempting to write something of a missive, instead of a personal bitch fest about how craptacular my year has actually been… so bear with me here:

A.K.A. Giving Apathy 100% (more…)

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Ok, WTF are we talking about this week?

Telepresence. Telecommuting. Virtual Offices. The art of doing work from home.

2002 AD: Teleoperated hands with haptic feedback developed by Japanese prove to be successful and become implemented in many industries where deft handling is required but too dangerous for living people.

… or like all those smug Intel ads would have you believe, from under a tree on a delightfully sunny day while you’re a lot more attractive for owning a Centrino based device (even though the CPU has absolutely zero impact on the mobility and wireless connectivity of a device… but y’know, whatever, most consumers are too stupid to know the difference).

So fucking what, right? Telepresence is something that’s been done for ages. Nothing new there, right? I man, I do my job by telepresence three days a week because to work online doesn’t actually require you to be in any particular office location.

But what if you could phone it all in. You’re entire life. Live virtually through some kind of artificial agent. An android, replicant, surrogate.

2048 AD: Bruce Willis decides to actually get real life surrogates made and continue making sequels until cloning becomes legal

Which is basically the premise of the comic The Surrogates, of which the recently released film with Bruce Willis (+ Bruce Willis from Moonlighting) is based on.

The movie sort of weakens the premise of the comic because it doesn’t go into the depth, but what can you expect in 88 minutes, right? That depth, unfortunately puts a lot of holes in the premise of the film.

Obviously, there are some great uses for this tech, namely fighting wars without any real loss of life to your own site. But the civilian level seems rather implausible. What use is there for this other than being “100% physically safe” at all times, and being able to be young and pretty, and looking however you like, until you die of old age (or a malignant abscess because you never move)?

The idea of still working any real kind of job, other than ones that involve extreme hazard to one’s self (such as law enforcement) via surrogate is kind of ridiculous. Especially people that work lower tier jobs (such as Agent Greer’s wife in the film. How would a robo-beautician’s salary provide enough money for the level of quality surrogate she has?).

Some would argue you may as well go into a virtual world, like 2nd Life for this sort of activity, and with the advances espoused by the movie, surely graphics and haptic feedback issues are resolved. Technically speaking, we can do this right now if the virtual worlds are enabled. As in my previous post on this subject, we have virtual worlds, we have full immersion visual and auditory gear. We have basic haptic feedback happening. There’d be no need for this sort of tech for civilian usage.

This all begs a few questions:

• What the hell happens to the hospitality industry if everyone’s going around in a robot? No need to meet for coffee anymore, and you do all your eating at home! Billions of dollars of jobs and industry gone, just like that! Where does all the surplus labour go?
• 

  2055 AD: "Women's" soccer finally gets noticed on TV. All athletes are actually fat, mid 50s men living in their mothers basements

  For that matter, what happens to athletics if it’s just a case of what can be built?

• Would all popular spectator sport now become ultra violent because it finally can? If so, would the ratings change so that children can no longer watch or participate in sports?
• If the ratings change for sport, will they change for porn as it’s no longer degrading for “real” women?
• Will we get an R18+ rating for video games when real life becomes much worse?
• What if you’re suicidal and forget to put the gun to your actual head and blow your surrogates CPU out instead… Will your medical insurance cover the therapy for trauma over being such an amazing failure you can’t actually commit suicide properly?
• Would you use your surrogate to give yourself a Stranger treatment?
• Can Surrogates actually commit rape if the victim is also a surrogate? The victim can disconnect at any time, and the surrogate is not an actual person.
• Would it be proper for men to go around comparing the size of their ePenises?
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  2060 AD: Otaku the world over decide to get the Gundam surrogates

  How far would you actually go in body modification of the surrogate? The human form is actually amazingly impractical for a lot of things, so surely you’d want to have a few extras added in, such extra limbs… So why bother with a human form at all?

Personally, of all the cyberpunk ideas floating around there, I think the idea of 100% physical surrogacy via telepresence is the least likely to actually happen, even though a lot of the technology to actually make it workable is already on the markets.

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