Dear Leader VI
Jun 13, 2007, 9:53 PM
It was a tragedy. I stared at the screen in horror as my Instant Messenger spun out of control in the hands of a rogue virus. But the terror was just beginning. The screen began to fill with Norton email scanner notifications. Puzzled, I pondered why this was happening until I realized that Outlook express was attempting to send hundreds, if not thousands, of emails at a time.
My options were limited, but something had to be done. I opened the Control Panel and started a System Restore. But for reasons unbeknowngst to me, Windows failed to complete it.
I had only one choice left if I wanted to save my computer. I had to reset it to factory conditions, meaning all of my work - Sketchup, Word, Flash - was about to vanish into the bowels of my hard drive. I had no choice, though. With the trepidition of a hostage at the end of a kidnapper's gun, I selected the option. Windows asked me to confirm. I sat silently, pondering my actions. A few seconds later, I did what had to be done.
I clicked 'Yes.'
Meanwhile, in the SSP universe, Vladison began to hemorrage important manufacturing and service-sector jobs as its companies left for greener (both metaphorically, financially, and literally). The corruption of the inept city government had finally done what it had for decades threatened to do: break the city's fiscal spine. As tax dollars and wealthier residents fled the city, the once-bustling downtown screeched to halt. After twenty years, the downtown looked not like the most populous city of the Northwestern United States, but rather a computer-generated backdrop for the latest Hollywood apocolypse. As the city continued to falter and fail, city services suffered severe budget cuts and reductions in employees.
So it was no wonder that a routine fire in the Port Galveston section of the city, one that any other city in urban America could have put out with three firefighters and a hose, spread through the abandoned rowhomes like wildfire. The resulting fire closed the curtain on the Shakespearean tragedy that was Vladison in the late-20th century. It sealed the fate of the city as it graced the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK. The fire was so bad that it was compared to the nuclear bombing in 1945 of Nagasaki in terms of devastation. It was one of the few fires in modern history to be viewable from space, as NASA engineers begrudgingly displayed color images taken from space probes and other satellites.
Thus, the end, but also the beginning.
In the real universe, I began fiddling around with Sketchup once again as a way of procrastinating work I knew I'd never get done. But my efforts were not fruitless; for out of the ashes of Vladison rose a new city: Metropolis.
Why Metropolis? Have I run out of creativity, as displayed by Hollywood's "Summer of the Threequel?" Nonsense. I intend to use skyline photos for an upcoming project of mine, The Adventures of Paper Bag Man and Blender Boy, a spoof about a bumbling superhero and his sarcastic sidekick. While using various cities and towns in my native New Jersey as the physical manifestation of Metropolis, I intend to splice a few images of my Sketchup creation as well.
That is the introduction. City History and Photos will come tonight at around 9 or 10.
Until then, remember the Paper Bag Man motto: "Acting the part is half the battle."
Dear Leader VI
My options were limited, but something had to be done. I opened the Control Panel and started a System Restore. But for reasons unbeknowngst to me, Windows failed to complete it.
I had only one choice left if I wanted to save my computer. I had to reset it to factory conditions, meaning all of my work - Sketchup, Word, Flash - was about to vanish into the bowels of my hard drive. I had no choice, though. With the trepidition of a hostage at the end of a kidnapper's gun, I selected the option. Windows asked me to confirm. I sat silently, pondering my actions. A few seconds later, I did what had to be done.
I clicked 'Yes.'
Meanwhile, in the SSP universe, Vladison began to hemorrage important manufacturing and service-sector jobs as its companies left for greener (both metaphorically, financially, and literally). The corruption of the inept city government had finally done what it had for decades threatened to do: break the city's fiscal spine. As tax dollars and wealthier residents fled the city, the once-bustling downtown screeched to halt. After twenty years, the downtown looked not like the most populous city of the Northwestern United States, but rather a computer-generated backdrop for the latest Hollywood apocolypse. As the city continued to falter and fail, city services suffered severe budget cuts and reductions in employees.
So it was no wonder that a routine fire in the Port Galveston section of the city, one that any other city in urban America could have put out with three firefighters and a hose, spread through the abandoned rowhomes like wildfire. The resulting fire closed the curtain on the Shakespearean tragedy that was Vladison in the late-20th century. It sealed the fate of the city as it graced the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK. The fire was so bad that it was compared to the nuclear bombing in 1945 of Nagasaki in terms of devastation. It was one of the few fires in modern history to be viewable from space, as NASA engineers begrudgingly displayed color images taken from space probes and other satellites.
Thus, the end, but also the beginning.
In the real universe, I began fiddling around with Sketchup once again as a way of procrastinating work I knew I'd never get done. But my efforts were not fruitless; for out of the ashes of Vladison rose a new city: Metropolis.
Why Metropolis? Have I run out of creativity, as displayed by Hollywood's "Summer of the Threequel?" Nonsense. I intend to use skyline photos for an upcoming project of mine, The Adventures of Paper Bag Man and Blender Boy, a spoof about a bumbling superhero and his sarcastic sidekick. While using various cities and towns in my native New Jersey as the physical manifestation of Metropolis, I intend to splice a few images of my Sketchup creation as well.
That is the introduction. City History and Photos will come tonight at around 9 or 10.
Until then, remember the Paper Bag Man motto: "Acting the part is half the battle."
Dear Leader VI