All Your Base Are Belong To Us — The Kip Lange Homepage

Whoops. Episode 1004 of South Park appears to have been censored. In “Cartoon Wars II”, Kyle races to make sure an episode of “Family Guy” that features Mohammed giving someone a football helmet will air. The scene where he’s (finally) supposed to appear is just black with the words, “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.”

Now, at first, I pretty much thought that this was a bit of self-propaganda; namely, South Park getting miffed over its “Trapped in the Closet” episode, plus the fact that the scene is followed by Bush, an unwed mother, and Jesus pooping on each other and the American flag (the idea being, look what we CAN show you, then look at what we CAN’T).

There’s one problem. Comedy Central has aired a South Park that showed Mohammed WELL BEFORE THIS. In “Super Best Friends”, Mohammed is right there, and nobody got held hostage at Comedy Central’s offices.

So what is this? Just a reflection of heightened concern due to the Danish problem? Or is this maybe a sneaky way of portraying themselves as martyrs again, although this time under false pretenses? I’m inclined to believe that Matt and Trey did want a short picture of Mohammed, and that it is the change in times now, but I’m one skeptical son of a bitch and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a publicity stunt, perhaps with Comedy Central complicit because of the whole Scientology debacle (“You take a heeet for us now, Comedy Central!”).

Anyway, it’s worth debating.

Well, just writing a quick note to let all you good folks note (all three of you) that you may have noticed kiplange.com was down for about four days, and my mail was also down for that period. The good folks at 3Media Web Solutions were performing a software upgrade, and it’s now finished, so I am pleased to say that I am back and blogging away again. Did you miss me? 🙂

Alright. I have to admit it. I like the new Doctor Who. Yes, yes, I know it’s kind of crappy, but I like it. They at least kept the spirit going much more than, say, the idiots who did Star Trek: Enterprise did with Star Trek (may that awful thing descend the bowels of the Earth and be seen no more).

Whew. That’s a weight off my shoulders.

I recently picked up a copy of Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. I’ve always been a Civ addict — you can find me after a week locked up in a dark room with only the light of the monitor illuminating my stubble-covered face, sweating in my boxers and mumbling, “I’ve got to fortify the northern rim!”

Anyway, for those who are wondering, yes, Civilization IV, the, um, fourth Civilization game, is a big step up from Civ 3. Although most of you are going to need a patch for it, as it considers my 2 GHz, 1024k RAM system “low-end”. The 1.52 patch at the Civilization website fixes that. Anyway, the interface now looks more like a RTS (real-time strategy — like Command & Conquer) than the old plain vanilla Civ interface. You can now zoom way in, zoom way out, the units are animated…and so on. It’s a little bit clunky, though.

As for gameplay, it’s mostly the same, although, mark this, I have not played the game for that long. New additions include religions and a much more complex political system. One feature they took away, which is unfortunate, is the ol’ aerial view of the city, where you could view the wonders you had built in your city and get a general idea of how big it was.

On the whole, yes, the new Civilization is a big step up in looks, and is much more complex (like it NEEDED to be more complex, though). I have not tried online gaming yet, as most of the time if I play a game online without pwning the computer AI, I get destroyed by legions of pimply-faced teenagers, and that’s not good for my UC Berkeley-educated ego.

Should you buy it? If you have the money and you love Civilization games, the answer is yes. Just make sure your computer can RUN the damn thing, first.

Hah! Good news. I have converted both of my parents into loyal watchers of both “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”. How? Relentless and subversive suggestion — it’s always the way to go.

The best part? We’re all still die-hard conservatives. Muhahahahaha!

My personal goal? Elimination of all networks except Comedy Central, The SciFi Channel, and, yes, of course, Fox News.

Okay, found a really good link to a BitTorrent stream for “Trapped in the Closet” — South Park Episode 912, the one Tom Cruise doesn’t want you to see. For information on BitTorrent and a client to download the file, follow this link.

To download “Trapped in the Closet”, South Park Episode 912 — the one Viacom will not re-air because Cruise has threatened to pull his publicity from Mission Impossible III if they do, follow this link right here (you need a BitTorrent client, see above).

Note: I am not hosting this file. The above is a link to a completely different site. In other words, if you want to yell at me about copyright infringement, don’t waste your time. First off, I believe I’ve read over and over that Mssrs. Stone and Parker are not that worried about their episodes being available online, and I’m damn sure they don’t mind if you’re finally free to see “Trapped in the Closet” for the first or second time, since it has effectively been censored. Beyond that, as I have said, the file is not on this server. So go bother someone else if you have nothing better to do than gripe that the world is ending because of filesharing. 😉

Again, the link to “Trapped in the Closet”, AVI format.

Fuck you, Tommy Cruise.

Ah, yes, I was extremely stupid. I had an extra folder in the FTP path for the archives, so…nobody could read the archives (yes, yes, I’m sure everybody had a good cry).

’tis now fixed. The archives work. Peruse at your leisure.

I can’t believe I forgot this one.

Katie Holmes is not going to be allowed to say a word in childbirth, because Scientologists believes this damages the child’s psyche somehow. And saying “sh” makes them stutter. So she’s going to be stuck in the birth room, with no pain medication allowed, and a bunch of huge white placards surrounding her, reminding her to stay quiet at all costs.

She will, however, have an iPod with 300 songs on it given to her by Cruise.

Wow. What a help, Tom. What a guy!

Jesus, these people are whacked.

In case anyone wonders what I, myself, believe about God and the cosmos and whatnot, I would have to say that I am an agnostic somewhere inbetween “strong” agnosticism and “weak” agnosticism.

The link above will give you an adequate explanation of the stance, but I also must admit I waver a lot. That’s why I say I’m between those two poles. The essence of agnosticism is not disbelief in any sort of God — that’s atheism. An agnostic stance is that a human being simply cannot know whether or not God exists; we’re just not equipped to handle it. I suppose you might say that an agnostic sits around saying, “Well, the jury’s still out on this whole thing.” I break a little bit from “strong” agnosticism there, in that I do, in a sense, believe that some sort of God exists — I just believe that there’s no way you’re ever going to empirically prove that such a God exists, even with a miracle, which I would most likely write off as a freak natural occurence. Personally, I just think it’s irrelevant to speculate on the nature of God when I believe the nature of God is inherently unknowable. This is where faith steps in. You could also call the agnostic a deist of any sort who is unwilling to take the blind leap of faith (I applaud those who do, however) into a religion (I did not say “cult’) of any sort. Thus, I think the general rules to life are acting as however your higher ethical and rational reasoning dictate (my theory being if God does exist and has given us any “gift”, it is reason). In other words, I still think one should attempt to lead a “good” life. I’m just saying I have NO idea if you’re going to get into heaven if you do it, because I have NO idea if there IS a heaven.

Right. That’s about it. 🙂

Okay. I may be ranting too much about cults here, Scientology in particular, but once I get my teeth into something I worry it like a dog with a bone. Two interesting things have come to my attention:

1. Apparently Scientology and Kabbalah are vying for Victoria Beckam (formerly “Posh Spice”), and rumors report that Kabbalah may win her over. Now, I’m not exactly in love with the way celebs are flocking to “neo-Kabbalahism”, as I would put it, but if you follow the two links above, you’ll see that Kabbalah is, at least, not ENTIRELY INSANE AND WHACKO and is, in fact, based on certain Jewish beliefs dating back to the 13th century. Now, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Victoria Beckham, but one less rich person funding Scientology makes me happy. So far I haven’t seen the Kabbalah Center acting in an outrageous manner. The first time I see them use their influence to get a TV show pulled or something, I will change my tune, I promise. They’re still getting far more money than they need, but, hey, what the hell, if they can convince people to give it to them — as long as they’re not frickin’ brainwashing people into it — fine. They’re not paying for “levels”, as far as I understand (please correct me if I’m wrong). I have no problem with someone paying tithes to a particular religious organization as long as that religious organization is not completely insane, as Scientology is. Here’s what I would LIKE to see though — a few more celebrities with backbone who don’t need to join a cult to justify their existence. My current favorite is James Woods, who was recently quoted as saying, “I am sick of starring in douchebag feminist movies where I play a bad guy in a good suit.” Amen.

2. Did I mention Scientology is completely insane? One of the good people at SouthParkStudios.com directed my attention to an article linking L. Ron Hubbard with the father of modern “magick” Alistair Crowley in an attempt to create some kind of moonchild or something with another one of Crowley’s followers. The FBI was interested (Hubbard spent his last few years fleeing from the FBI, I believe), and followed up on it. Apparently the poor man who trusted Hubbard ended up losing his yacht and his wife to him, although he did seem to succeed in consummating their weird idea with some woman, that is, the other man involved bonked some woman in some strange ritual and — now here’s what I want to know — the woman in question may or may not have had a child from it and if she did, where the hell IS IT? (you’ll wonder the same damn thing if you read the link to the FBI file above).

Rant off!