false fires in the shadows

yesterday's quote answer:
x-men. the first film. magneto and xavier talking about their fears.

today's quote:
"Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - *I want ROOM SERVICE*! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."
what's that film?

need hints:
there's a dolphin in the movie...
EXTRA HINT:
futuristic
EXTRA EXTRA HINT:
it starred dolph lungdren

today has been interesting.
while doing my usual morning post-lecture surfing the building alarm goes off.
as usual everyone ignores it.
the first alarm's always false. if it were a real alarm i'm sure we'd see the secretaries and the cleaners bailing down the corridors at full steam...
since the hired help weren't making like rats on a punctured sailing machine, we sat calmly surfing. occasionally someone would sniff the air just in case they could smell smoke.
you never can tell, a flash fire may have taken out all the hired help before their wailing screams alerted us. alternatively they could have escape through the back doors.
a minute or two after the first alarm, a calm voice quietly slides over the builing's broadcast system, gently urging everyone to evacuate.
i stuck around to finish typing a comment and to make sure it posted, before logging out and leaving.
i wasn't the last one out either.
no idea what it was all about, but it gave me a much needed cigarette break and i picked up a coke while i was out there.
by the time i got back everyone was filing back in.
i assume the network admin needed to get an extra boost to his pr0n dowloads so he hit the fire alarm and took the full bandwidth for the 15 minutes everyone was cattling outside wondering if the building was gonna blow.
on the plus side i remembered how to do those horizontal line rule thingies again :)

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do you like shadowrun?
i do.
ever since i first heard of it.
fasa is king.
(actually fasa is no more... um... long live fanpro who now have the shadowrun license from wizkid and are continuing the work).
if you've never heard of it then let me give you a quick rundown:
its a roleplaying game (if you've never heard of those: i'm not going to explain it. that's what google is for) with an unusual setting.
its a cross between wiliam gibson style cyberpunk and your traditional dungeons and dragons fantasy.
its the future, but the cycle of magic has returned to the world and woken many dormant things.
previously slumbering genes awaken and humans split into several sub-species generally only showing signs of mutation around puberty.
trolls, orcs, elves, dwarves and people walk the street side by side.
except for the poli-clubs, and the riff raff and wage slaves, and the corps...
ok... not so much walk side by side but you get the idea...
since magic has returned to the world, people have awakened.
some people are able to wield the magic and call on elementals or spirits.
these people can train to become shamans or mages.
man and machine combine with cyerware and neural jacks become standard.
slumbering dragons awaken and return to a world which has been taken over by global megacorps.
everyone has a SIN chip with their unique ID... well, almost everyone.
you see there are a lot of people left in the slums and sprawls.
no SIN = no job.
so the poor are screwed (not like the megacorps would hire the riff raff any way)
and what are you to do if you happen to end up in the slums with no prospect of getting legal work, and no SIN?
easy! you do the dirty, underhanded, black-ops jobs that the megacorps don't want traced back to them.
you join a shadowrunning team and take jobs from a "mr. johnson."
do well and there'll be more johnsons and more jobs.
the more dangerous, the more creds you can get.
and if any stupid slothead gets in your way you frag the bastard. just make sure he's not a suit otherwise you brought a world of drek down around you.
no problem.

browsing through fanpro's website i discovered they have a nice little section with some fan fiction short stories... i've been reading them all day :)
that and downloading the free pdfs from DriveThruRPG.
you can get the 3rd ed quick star rules, the critters book, and the gm screen from there.
plus there's a whole load of desktop wallpapers (some of them are very cool) all made with shadowrun artwork here...
so its been a real busy day for me :)

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there was a little bit of news that i was going to comment on, but the evacuation had me close all my links so i can't really link any of the sources now.
but i'll try remember the main bits...
the proposed march (cosatu) yesterday happened everywhere but cape town (since the security guard riots on tuesday made the municipality rethink the situation).
i was surprised. i wouldn't have thought legality would have stopped them... it doesn't normally.
but the stayaway (from work) went ahead as was expected. (you can't expect them to work when there isn't a march that they aren't going to can you?)
any way: there have been conflicting reports as to the success.
cosatu claims a whole bunch of numbers across the sectors...
employers say that it was a bit higher than the usual absenteeisnm expected on a normal day (10% as opposed to 6%) but no higher than a bad flu week.
since cosatu have outright lied before i guess that it wasn't that bad.
lots of workers were stranded without transport though as taxi drivers decided to "stick it to the man" too.
there was violence though: 2 buses torched, 8 buses stoned extensively, 1 bus driver dragged out of his bus and badly beaten a a mob of non-working workers. (i'd say that's an oxymoron, but i think they're more like the regular brand of moron)
that's all that i really picked up on but i didn't go in depth.

i did discover that a new bout of taxi violence is flaring up in cape town though..
turns out that this time 'round they're using snipers with rifles.
how evolved these moronic asses are becoming... it tugs the heartstrings.
no longer do they stick their gun-hand around the edge of the taxi and blindly open fire in the approximate direction of the other taxi (and all its passengers) while the other taci driver does the same...
now they've become sophisticated and hire gunmen to snipe taxi drivers.
last time i checked the life of a taxi driver was worth 50 rand (less than US$10).

for the overseas non-saffers (i'm looking at you mr angry) in south africa we don't have the usual london cab or new your taxi cab... we have delapidated volkswagen minibuses that are occasionally driven using a monkey-wrench because the steering wheel is missing. sometimes the driver holds a piece of string out the window and pulls on the brake pads to slow down/stop because the brake line has been cut (seriously: moonflake has seen that one first hand).
and since the minibus seats about 9 people comfortably (without anyone accidently impregnating anyone else on a trip down a gravel road) they pack about 24 people on to each one.
one reason why road deaths are so high here is because whenever a taxi is hit by a truck (happens often) or rolls over a cliff because the driver stopped to take a leak and didn't put on the hand-brake (also true) or simple terrible driving brings the trip to a sudden stop, the entire passenger load of the taxi get seriously injured or killed... and that is always 20+ people. always!
i've taken a taxi once in south africa. i will never do so again.
i'd rather walk for a few hours than catch a taxi for a few minutes.

think i made it all up? i qoute THIS newspaper clipping (better clipping available HERE):
"Some of the 23 passengers (17 adults and 6 children) with the goat outside a minibus taxi that was stopped for overloading on Saturday morning. Traffic officers impounded the vehicle, which was on it’s way to the Transkei."
that's right... 23 people and a goat in a minibus.
morons.
they probably all piled onto the next taxi that came along too...
if they were unlucky it was this one:

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well i leave you with one final question to ponder:
if a quiz is quizzical what is a test?